In the year 1853 there came the proposition for the renewal of the East India Company's charter. I opposed that to the utmost of my power in the House of Commons, and some of you will recollect I came down here with Mr. Danby Seymour, the Member for Poole, a gentleman well acquainted with Indian affairs, and attended a meeting in this very hall, to denounce the policy of conferring the government of that great country for another twenty years upon a Company which had so entirely neglected every duty belonging to it except one--the duty of collecting taxes. In 1854, Colonel Cotton--now Sir Arthur Cotton, one of the most distinguished engineers in India--came down to Manchester. We had a meeting at the Town Hall, and he gave an address on the subject of opening the Godavery River, in order that it might form a mode of transit, cheap and expeditious, from the cotton districts to the north of that river; and it was proposed to form a joint-stock company to do it, but unfortunately the Russian war came on and disturbed all commercial projects, and made it impossible to raise money for any--as some might call it--speculative purpose, like that of opening an Indian river. Well, in 1857 there came the mutiny. What did our rulers do then? Sir Charles Wood, in 1538, had made a speech five hours long, most of it in praise of the government of the East India Company. In 1858--at the opening of the session in 1858, I think--the Government brought in a Bill to abolish that Company, and to establish a new form of government for India. That was exactly what we asked them to do in 1853; but, as in everything else, nothing is done until there comes an overwhelming calamity, when the most obtuse and perverse is driven from his position. In 1858 that Bill passed, under the auspices of Lord Stanley. It was not a Bill such as I think Lord Stanley approved when he was not a Minister; it was not a Bill such as I believe he would have brought in if he had been permitted by the House and the Cabinet to have brought in a better Bill. It abolished the East India Company, established a new Council, and left things to a great extent much in the same state as they were.