THE INDIA GOVERNMENT AMENDMENT BILL. Ox fuller consideration, the Ministerial
plan for reconstructing the Indian Government, foreshadowing the " bill," appears to be at least as promising as it looked on its first announcement. It seems to us to bp a real reform, wrapped up in the husk of a sort of compromise continuance bill. That it is open to very damaging criticism, there is no doubt : but the criticism tells most entirely against that part of it which is a continuance bill; and on account of that part it will have to undergo, during the discussion, the fate of all compromises, in meeting with dislike from all sides, and not with sufficient recognition of its substantial merits. The East India Company objects to anything which is other than a simple continuance of their own sway ; they still believe twenty-four to be the sacred number for Directors in office, and avow their belief with a simplicity which is touching. The demands transmitted from India are not satisfied in the measure, and therefore it will disappoint the agitators for reform among the Anglo-Indians, and still more among the Natives, who receive no promise of recognition. The India Reformers in London find their game started in an un- expected direction : it is natural that they should be irritated rather than satisfied, and the continuance part of the scheme offers ample field for their animadversions. The very diversity of the scheme also contributes to disguise its more substantial parts. The number of the provisions " cuts up " the aspect of the whole structure : although it is necessary to provide for the organization of a new province, to furnish an assistant Governor in Bengal, and to improve the judicial bench, there is a disadvantage in the com- position of a great scheme thus encumbered with details. At the same time, there are striking omissions, which may perhaps be supplied hereafter,—such, for example, as that grand source of so much misery and discontent in India, the vicious tenure of land ; which is properly left to be dealt with on the spot, but which ought to have had its place in the sketch of the general reform. Thus the scheme is perplexingly ramified, damagingly encumbered with ancient odiums, and deficient in its first aspect. It is a prime subject for debate, with plenty of game for all who choose to attack it ; and it will be cut and come again as long as it is under the discussion of Parliament.
Nevertheless, this Compromise Continuance Bill, with all its pettier details and want of details, really contains a reform bill, which is to appearance as insignificant as the graft upon the fruit- tree, but is really to be the great fruit-tree of the future. The principal heads of this new reform, casting aside smaller improve- ments, are five.
1. Six men who have served ten years in India are to sit among the Directors and to minister in the affairs of that empire. These six officers are likely to prove the true spirit of the Directory. As the ancient Directors of the Continuance Bill are but the diluting element, and the character of the Directory will of course be im- parted by its new blood, the six are likely to become de facto the Directors. They will either give a definite purpose to the conduct of affairs, or if they are obstruoted they will let the public know " the reason why." It is understood that Sir Charles Wood, though he omitted it in his speech, intends six of the Continuance Directors to be persons who shall have been ten years in India ; and if so, the new rule will apply a severe screw to the present constituency in the choice of their future representatives. Those six Directors will increase the positive character of the future Di- rectory ; and it seems evident that with these new elements the eighteen Directors of 1855 will form a body totally unlike the twenty-four or thirty Directors of 1853.
2. A Law Commission is to be appointed, to sit in England, and to superintend the practical application of the reports of the old India Law Commission, which have been so long on hand. The same Commission will probably aid in those reforms which will follow from the amalgamation of the Supreme and Budder Courts in the Presidencies, and the appointment of judicial officers in the Legislative Council. Thus a degree of force will be imparted to the judicial administration of India, which will be a second inno- vation of a striking character, drawing a broad line of distinction between the past and the future.
3. The Legislative Council, which is to consist of the principal civil officers from the several Presidencies, with their judicial as- sessors, is the third great innovation. It will not be a representa- tive Parliament ; but, more resembling the Legislative Council of our chartered colonies, it will at least have power, as it will have information, to make laws on the spot suitable to the different lo- calities and actual circumstances of India. Should its .debates be public, which is to be hoped, it will hold its power under ao small share of responsibility; and the very exercise of such a power In public presence will be the best means of calling forth avail& opinion in India with a definite purpose, both amongst the BrSttg and amongst the Natives. This also marks a total distinetisinibed tween 1855 and 1853.
4. A considerable proportion of the appointments in India-I4 thrown open to the general public competition, with the check of examination, as the mode of entering the public schools or the body of assistant-surgeons in the army. Appointments to the military commissions in the army are very properly kept to the chief responsible department; a reserve, however, which it does not ap- pear necessary to have retained for the appointment to military studentship. Still the principle of competition is introduced, and is extensively applied.
5. The fifth great innovation, which also marks as strongly as anything can the future from the immediate past, and opens the way for supplying defects in other branches of the reform, is the, fact that the present scheme is not enacted in all its branches £ a given term, but is to remain during the pleasure of the Im rial Government and Parliament. With so much of reform as th present project contains there is a distinct reserve in favour of ther reform.
We have given an account of the scheme, not a judgment upon it. We take things as we find them; and we do not perceive that, there is any competing plan for the renewal of the Indian Gover01 ment. Abstractedly, we do not see that Ministers were bound to continue even a part of the old absurd machinery ; but it is their taste to do so, and as nothing better offers we may at least ex- amine and understand what we have got before us.
Previous page
