which was established by Pitt was really the Government of the Crown; at least Pitt made the administration of India completely subject to the English Government. The difference between Pitt's measure and that introduced by Fox was that Pitt preserved the independence of the company in matters of patronage and commerce, whereas Fox would have placed the whole commerce and commercial administration of the Company under the control of a body nominated by the Crown. By the act of 1853 the patronage of the civil service was taken from the company, and yet was not given to the Crown. It was in fact a competitive system. Scientific and civil appointments were made to depend on capacity and fitness alone. Macaulay spoke for the last time in the House of Commons in support of the principle of admission by competitive examination to the civil service of India. In the beginning of 1858 Lord Palmerston introduced a bill to transfer the authority of the company formally and absolutely to the Crown. The plan of the scheme was that there were to be a president and a council of eight members, to be nominated by the government. There was a large majority in the House of Commons in favor of the bill, but the agitation caused by the attempt to assassinate the Emperor of the French, and Palmerston's ill-judged and ill-timed Conspiracy Bill, led to the sudden overthrow of his government. When Lord Derby succeeded to power, he brought in a bill for the better government of India at once; but the measure was a failure. It was of preposterous construction. It bore upon its face curious evidence of the fantastic ingenuity of Lord Ellenborough. It created a Secretary of State for India, with a council of eighteen. Nine of these were to be nominees of the Crown; nine were to be concessions to the principle of popular election. Four of the elected must have served her Majesty in India for at least ten years, or have been engaged in trade in that country for fifteen years; and

they were to be elected by the votes of any one in this country who had served the queen or the Government of India for ten years; or any proprietor of capital stock in Indian railways or other public works in India to the amount of two thousand pounds; or any proprietor of Indian stock to the amount of one thousand pounds. The other five members of the council must as their qualification have been engaged in commerce in India, or in the exportation of manufactured goods to that country for five years, or must have resided there for ten years. These five were to be elected by the parliamentary constituencies of London, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, and Belfast. This clause was Lord Ellenborough's device. Anything more absurdly out of tune with the whole principle of popular election than this latter part of the scheme it would be difficult to imagine. The theory of popular election is simply that every man knows best what manner of representative is best qualified to look after his interests in the Legislative Assembly. But by no distortion of that principle can it be made to assert the doctrine that the parliamentary electors of London and Liverpool are properly qualified to decide as to the class of representatives who could best take care of the interests of Bengal, Bombay, and the Punjaub. Again, as if it was not absurd enough to put elections to the governing body of India into the hands of such constituencies, the field of choice was so limited for them as to render it almost impossible that they could elect really suitable men. It was well pointed out at the time that by the ingenious device of the government a constituency might send to the Indian Council any man who had exported beer in a small way to India for five years, but could not send Mr. John Stuart Mill there. The measure fell dead. It had absolutely no support in the House, or the country. It had only to be described in order to insure its condemnation. It was withdrawn before it had gone to a second reading. Then Lord John Russell came

to the help of the puzzled government, who evidently thought they had been making a generous concession to the principle of popular election, and were amazed to find their advances so coldly and contemptuously received. Lord John Russell proposed that the House should proceed by way of resolutions—that is, that the lines of a measure should be laid down by a series of resolutions in committee of the whole House; and that upon those lines the government should construct a measure. The suggestion was eagerly welcomed, and after many nights of discussion a basis of legislation was at last agreed upon. This bill passed into law in the autumn of 1858; and for the remainder of Lord Derby's tenure of power, his son, Lord Stanley, was Secretary of State for India. The bill, which was called "An Act for the better Government of India," provided that all the territories previously under the government of the East India Company were to be vested in her Majesty, and all the company's powers to be exercised in her name. One of her Majesty's principal Secretaries of State was to have all the power previously exercised by the company, or by the Board of Control. The Secretary was to be assisted by a Council of India, to consist of fifteen members, of whom seven were to be elected by the Court of Directors from their own body, and eight nominated by the Crown. The vacancies among the nominated were to be filled up by the Crown; those among the elected by the remaining members of the council for a certain time, but afterwards by the Secretary of State for India. The competitive principle for the civil service was extended in its application and made thoroughly practical. The military and naval forces of the company were to be deemed the forces of her Majesty. A clause was introduced declaring that, except for the purpose of preventing or repelling actual invasion of India, the Indian revenues should not, without the consent of both Houses of Parliament, be applicable to defray the expenses of any military

operation carried on beyond the external frontiers of her Majesty's Indian possessions. Another clause enacted that whenever an order was sent to India directing the commencement of hostilities by her Majesty's forces there, the fact should be communicated to Parliament within three months, if Parliament were then sitting, or if not, within one month after its next meeting. These clauses were heard of more than once in later days. The Viceroy and GovernorGeneral was to be supreme in India, but was to be assisted by a Council. India now has nine provinces, each under its own civil government, and independent of the others, but all subordinate to the authority of the Viceroy. In accordance with this act the government of the company, the famed "John Company," formally ceased on September 1st, 1858; and the queen was proclaimed throughout India in the following November, with Lord Canning for her first Viceroy. It was but fitting that the man who had borne the strain of that terrible crisis, who had brought our Indian empire safely through it all, and who had had to endure so much obloquy and to live down so much calumny, should have his name consigned to history as that of the first of the line of British viceroys in India.

It seems almost superfluous to say that so great a measure as the extinction of the East India Company did not pass without some protest and some opposition. The authorship of some of the protests makes them too remarkable to be passed over without a word. Among the ablest civil servants the East India Company ever had were James Mill and his son John Stuart Mill. Both had risen in succession to the same high post in the company's service. The younger Mill was still an official of the company when, as he has put it in his own words, "It pleased Parliament, in other words, Lord Palmerston, to put an end to the East India Company, as a branch of the Government of India under the Crown, and convert the administration of that

country into a thing to be scrambled for by the second and third class of English parliamentary politicians." "I," says Mr. Mill, “was the chief manager of the resistance which the company made to their own political extinction, and to the letters and petitions I wrote for them, and the concluding chapter of my treatise on representative government, I must refer for my opinions on the folly and mischief of this ill-considered change." One of the remonstrances drawn up by Mr. Mill, and presented to Parliament on behalf of the East India Company, is as able a state paper probably as any in the archives of modern England. This is not the place, however, in which to enter on the argument it so powerfully sustained. "It has been the destiny of the government of the East India Company," says Mr. Mill, in the closing passage of his essay on "Representative Government," "to suggest the true theory of the government of a semi-barbarous dependency by a civilized country, and after having done this, to perish. It would be a singular fortune if, at the end of two or three more generations, this speculative result should be the only remaining fruit of our ascendency in India; if posterity should say of us, that having stumbled accidentally upon better arrangements than our wisdom would ever have devised, the first use we made of our awakened reason was to destroy them, and allow the good which had been in course of being realized to fall through and be lost, from ignorance of the principles on which it depended." "Di meliora," Mr. Mill adds; and we are glad to think that after the lapse of more than twenty years there is as yet no sign of the realization of the fears which he expressed with so much eloquence and earnestness. Mr. Mill was naturally swayed by the force of association with and confidence in the great organization with which he and his father had been connected so long; and, moreover, no one can deny that he has, in his protests, fairly presented some of the dangers that may now and then arise