Critical and Historical Essays — Volume 2Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
History
Critical and Historical Essays — Volume 2
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
English literature -- History and criticism; Great Britain -- History
Where Mr. Gladstone has seen this treaty we cannot guess for, though
he calls it a “known treaty,” we will stake our credit that it is quite
unknown both at Calcutta and Madras, both in Leadenhall Street and
Cannon Row, that it is not to be found in any of the enormous folios
of papers relating to India which fill the bookcases of members of
Parliament, that it has utterly escaped the researches of all the
historians of our Eastern empire, that, in the long and interesting
debates of 1813 on the admission of missionaries to India, debates of
which the most valuable part has been excellently preserved by the
care of the speakers, no allusion to this important instrument is to be
found. The truth is that this treaty is a nonentity. It is by coercion,
it is by the sword, and not by free stipulation with the governed, that
England rule India; nor is England bound by any contract whatever not to
deal with Bengal as she deals with Ireland. She may set up a Bishop of
Patna, and a Dean of Hoogley; she may grant away the public revenue for
the maintenance of prebendaries of Benares and canons of Moorshedabad;
she may divide the country into parishes, and place, a rector with
a stipend in every one of them; and all this without infringing any
positive agreement. If there be such a treaty, Mr. Gladstone can have
no difficulty in making known its date, its terms, and, above all the
precise extent of the territory within which we have sinfully bound
ourselves to be guilty of practical atheism. The last point is of great
importance. For, as the provinces of our Indian empire were acquired at
different times, and in very different ways, no single treaty, indeed no
ten treaties, will justify the system pursued by our Government there.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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