Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1Bright, John
History
Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1
Bright, John
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1837-1901
'In judging of responsibility, we should remember that the whole
foreign policy of the East India Company is regulated by the
Board of Control; that in the solution of the most vital
questions--questions of peace and war--affecting the finances of
the country, and, therefore, the means of internal improvement,
the Court of Directors have no more power than the mayor and
aldermen of any corporate town. India depends less on the will of
the twenty-four than on one man's caprice--here to-day and gone
to-morrow--knocked over by a gust of Parliamentary uncertainty--
the mistaken tactics of a leader, or negligence of a whipper-in.
The past history of India is a history of revenue wasted and
domestic improvement obstructed by war.'
This is very much what I complain of. I admit the right of the East
India Company to complain of many things done by the Board of Control;
and I am of opinion, that if the House left the two bodies to combat one
another, they would at last come to an accurate perception of what they
both are. The East India Company accused the Board of Control of making
wars and squandering the revenue which the Company collected. But Mr.
Kaye said that Mr. Tucker deplored the mystery and the mockery of a
system which obscured responsibility and deluded public opinion. It is
because of this concealment, of this delusion practised upon public
opinion, of this evasion of public responsibility and Parliamentary
control, that you have a state of things in India which the hon. Member
for Guildford (Mr. Mangles) has described, when he says that the Company
manages the revenues, collects the taxes, and gets from
20,000,000_l_. to 30,000,000_l_. a-year, and nobody knows how
much more. But, whatever it is, such is the system of foreign policy
pursued by the Board of Control--that is to say, by the gentlemen who
drop down there for six or eight or twelve months, never beyond two
years--that, whatever revenues are collected, they are squandered on
unnecessary and ruinous wars, till the country is brought to a state of
embarrassment and threatened bankruptcy. That is the real point which
the House will have to consider.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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