the heads of the department would have to | Museum is, under any circumstances, and correspond with the trustees, and the trus- even in the time of Mr. Panizzi, a sort of tees with the heads of the department, despot, is an exaggeration which ought considerable time would be wasted, and not to be imported into Parliamentary perhaps opportunities lost. But really no- debate. The trustees of the British thing of the kind occurs. The communi- Museum elect their acting committee, and cations are direct, the decisions are prompt. there is no body of men in this country If the head of the manuscript department who take a more direct part in the affairs hears that there are certain valuable ma- which they have to administer. It was nuscripts for sale which ought to be pur- necessary to make these observations bechased for the nation, he immediately cause the hon. Gentleman is very anxious communicates with the trustees, whose to know whether, when this separation meetings are frequent, and the moment takes place, the separated collections will the application is before them they decide be under the superintendence and control without having any correspondence with of the trustees. Now, that is a point which the head of the department. If they wish it is for the House of Commons, when they to see him they summon him to their get into Committee upon the Bill, to decide. board and communicate with him there. It is not at all a principle of the measure If, as is often the case, his statement is which we are going to bring forward; the sufficient, they decide on it at once, and principle of that measure is the separation the manuscripts are purchased. Therefore, of the collections. If the House agrees to the House would be under a completely separate the collections, under the circumerroneous impression if they were to think stances which the Bill will provide, then in that there is a cumbrous administration, Committee we will fairly and candidly diswhose work is marked by procrastination cuss with the House what is the best and delay. On the contrary, the adminis- course which ought to be taken. At pretration is simple in its character and very sent, I do not think that we ought to prompt in its decisions, and no correspond- pledge ourselves upon that subject in any ence of any kind takes place between the way whatever. If, when the plan is placed acting committee and the heads of depart- before them, the House should be of opiments. Then, the hon. Gentleman would nion that it is inconsistent with the preconvey to the House that the principal sent constitution of the trustees that they librarian exercises an extraordinary power, should exercise any control over that part and that, in fact, he is the principal man- of the collection which will be established ager of the British Museum. That also is an at Kensington, it will be perfectly open to erroneous impression. There is no doubt the House to make proposals in Committee that the librarian, occupying a very respon- accordingly. But it would be premature sible post, filled always by a gentleman of to express any opinion upon that subject considerable intelligence, exercises an ade- until the House has before them the proquate influence in the management of the posals of the Government, which I hope British Museum; and he ought to exercise may soon be made, and until the IIouse see such an influence. Moreover, when a post the arrangements for the separation of the of that kind is filled by a man of a very re- collections and the duties which will then markable character, he will, of course, have devolve upon those who have the adminisgreater weight than that usually possessed tration of affairs. I am not sorry that the by persons filling that department. Mr. hon. Gentleman has brought this subject Panizzi, who is no longer the principal li- under the consideration of the House. The brarian, is a man of most eminent ability, separation of collections, which we have who has, I believe, done great and good now for upwards of a century been graduservice to this country, and probably we ally forming in one particular portion of shall not easily find a man of equal vigour the metropolis, which by their great richand variety of mind again in that position. ness and variety command a more than The gentleman who now occupies it has European reputation, and which, I believe obtained that post by proofs of eminent I may say without exaggeration, are quite talent and by most sedulous and praise- unequalled in any country-this is a subworthy fulfilment of his duties. He is ject upon which it is highly important that perfectly competent to perform the duties the House should form an accurate and of principal librarian, and is worthy of all just view. confidence. But to contend for a moment that the principal librarian at the British

The hon. Gentleman himself has now for a series of years devoted a great deal of his intelligence to this subject,

and there is no one who can speak upon it | distorted medium, as our subjects in India with greater authority. He has acted see us. This was a fitting time to turn upon several Committees of great import- our attention to the question. Ten years ance. As one of the trustees of the ago the Government of India was transNational Gallery he has personal expe- ferred from a corporation, which had enrience of the mode in which public collec-joyed it for more than 250 years, to the tions can be managed, and I know well Crown. True, in 1784 a Minister was that in that department he has shown sin appointed, with a seat in Parliament and gular ability and efficiency. But while I with great authority in Indian matters; but admit it is well that our attention should up to 1858, when the transfer took place, be called to this subject, the House for the practically all that Parliament did was to present will allow me to impress upon them give advice to the Company. He would that it is unwise that we should, in the not complain of the very decided opinion present state of our information, enter into expressed by the Governor General in the any engagements. It is better to wait demi-official circular which he issued to his until the Bill of the Government is fairly officers in connection with this subject; before the House. At present, I will only but he was disposed to regret the interpresay that, so far as regards the collection to tation placed on the speech of the noble which the hon. Gentleman has particularly Viscount (Viscount Cranborne) which adverted, it is the strong wish of the Go- originated the inquiry. That interprevernment, and I believe it is also the wish tation, he thought, was calculated to of the trustees, that that chronological mislead those to whom the circular was arrangement which has been well described addressed. The noble Viscount was repreby the hon. Member for Galway should be sented to have said, he doubtedobtained. That is one of the great objects of separating the collections; and with regard to the control which may be exercised over that portion of the collection which may be transferred to Kensington, we shall, on the part of the Government, consider it a question which it is perfectly open to the House to discuss when the time comes for deciding in what manner this collection should be administered.

MR. GREGORY wished to say, in explanation, thad he had never represented the principal librarian as "a despot." What he had said was, that it was impossible that any one man could be found capable of understanding and managing three great departments, such as the library, the natural history, and the antiquities.

SYSTEMS OF GOVERNMENT IN INDIA.

OBSERVATIONS.

LORD WILLIAM HAY said, he rose to call the attention of the House to the Correspondence respecting British and Native systems of Government in India. It spoke well for the future prosperity of that country that our representative in India did not shrink from calling upon his officers to inquire into and report upon the popularity of our rule. Self-knowledge was as important in a State as it was in an individual; and we might consider ourselves under an obligation to Sir John Lawrence for giving us an opportunity of seeing ourselves, even if through a somewhat

'Whether the system of British administration in India possessed, in the estimation of the Natives, any superiority over the method of government pursued in the independent States." Now all that the noble Viscount asserted in his speech was, not that Native rule was, in the estimation of the Natives, superior to British rule; but that British rule was not as perfect as it was supposed to be, but, on the contrary, was susceptible of great improvement. It was also to be regretted that the question was placed as it was before the officers whose opinion was invited; and that they should have been called on to express an opinion on the merits of rule in Native States as compared with rule in British States, for this excellent reason that such a thing as a Native State governed on a system peculiar to the Natives did not exist. Take, for example, the cases of Travancore and Putiala, quoted as excellent specimens of Native administration; now what was the history of Travancore? why so disordered was the Government in 1811, that the British resident, at the solicitation of the Native authorities, assumed the management of the State. Colonel, afterwards Sir Thomas, Monro, was sent there as Prime Minister and during his administration, and that of his successor, which extended over sixteen or seventeen years, the foundation of the prosperity of the country was laid. As to Putiala, it was the very child of British rule, and its good government was the fruit of the advice, occasionally of the

direct interference, of such men as Sir George Clark and the two Lawrences. The same might be said of many other Native States. If, therefore, we would be just to ourselves, we ought to institute a comparison not between our Government, and that of the Native States as they at present exist, but that of a State like the Punjab before our influence had extended so far. What was the condition of the Punjab under the rule of Runjeet Singh, one of the most able, energetic, and liberal-minded of Native rulers? An acute and critical French traveller, M. Jacquemont, who always expressed himself with great freedom on the subject of British rule, and who must be regarded as a most impartial witness, wrote in these

terms

"One must have travelled in the Punjab to know what an immense benefit to humanity the English dominion in India is. I cannot witness the frightful evils of such a system without ardently desiring to see the English extending their frontier from the Sutlej to the Indus, and the Russians occupying the other bank."

Natives of Mysore would prefer the rule of their old hereditary chiefs to British rule. They seem to forget that but for the ascendancy of the British, the choice would be not between the Government of an hereditary chief and the Government of the English, but between the Government of a Mahomedan, like Hyder Ali; a Mahratta, like Sevajee, or a Sikh, like Runjeet Singh. The real difference between Native rule and British rule was this-British rule was progressive, whereas Native rule was retrogressive. British rule had a capacity for improvement; Native rule had not. British rulers were aware of great faults and defects in their Government, and were always devising means by which to rectify those faults; but Native rulers were either unconscious of if conscious of them, took no steps to redefects in their system of government or, move them. Now, the vital question was, what were the real defects of our rule in India? We knew that it possessed great merits. We were aware, for instance, that we had protected the Natives from foreign This was a very important testimony, for it invasion, and that property was as secure came from a perfectly independent witness, in India as in Europe, if not more so. as to the comparative merits of English and That peace reigned throughout a country Native rule. In investigating this subject where for centuries anarchy had prevailed. we ought to take into consideration the That the Thug or the Dakoit was as rare state of helpless decrepitude into which the as a highwayman on Hampstead Heath. Native Governments had fallen before we That railroads traversed what a few years set foot in the country. That decrepitude ago were pathless jungles. That upwards was owing to the operation of a despotism of 50,000,000 of letters were delivered anthe most complete and degrading that had nually in a country where only the other ever been devised-he alluded to the des- day not so many thousands were conveyed potic Government which owed its origin at enormous cost and with great irregu to the Brahmins. Every spark of public larity; and above all, we knew that we spirit and national feeling was under its had revived in the minds of the Natives a influence extirpated. The surplus wealth belief in the existence of such a thing of the country was, through the interested as the impartial administration of jusavarice of the priests, collected into a few tice. We were aware, too, that a cerfavoured spots; but left so completely un-tain amount of discontent and disaffecprotected by natural or artificial means tion must always prevail. That one kind as to present to the unscrupulous adventurer a booty, the value of which was in no way diminished by the absence of all risk in its acquisition. The consequence was that the first foreign invader that set foot in the country overturned the Hindoo Government, which fell to pieces like a house of cards. It was a consoling fact that, in almost every instance where we had established our authority in India, we had displaced, not the ancient Ilindoo rulers, but men who were just as much invaders as ourselves. This was an answer to those who cited as a proof of the ill-success of our system the fact that the

of discontent and disaffection was rather a mark of good government than the contrary; for it was a sign that the people were beginning to awake from their lethargy, and becoming conscious that there was a condition better than that which they had been accustomed to. That another kind of discontent existed in the minds of those who felt that we had supplanted them, who regarded every law we passed, every school we opened, and everything we did calculated to promote the happiness of the people, as an additional offence committed by us. Just as in the olden time a priest had said of printing, "We must

thirty-three Bills to be introduced. He would not trouble the House by stating the objects of all of them, but he might mention, by way of example, that one of the measures affected the law of inheritance throughout the whole of India, a second consolidated and amended the law relating to the stamp duties, or, in other words, increased very largely the cost of justice. A third was to provide for the uniformity of weights and measures throughout India. Bills of this character, touching the prejudices and affecting the usages of the people of England, would give rise to no appre

root out this printing or it will root us | to the manufacture of laws for the Natives. out," so there were Brahmin or Mahome- For this purpose there was a machine going dan priests, who said in their hearts, We at the head-quarters of every Presidency, must root out these English, or they will and one great machine at Calcutta, all root us out. Yet, making due allow- of which turned out laws with mischie ance for such feelings and such consi- vous rapidity. A paper in the Library derations, if he were asked whether we of that House, entitled, Reports of the were losing ground in the affections Course of Legislation during the offiand confidence of the people of India,cial year of 1866-7, contained a list of he was afraid that he should be obliged to reply in the affirmative. Mr. Roberts, one of the most experienced men in India, remarked that the gulf was widening every day between the governors and the governed, which, of course, meant a want of sympathy between the two classes. This opinion was confirmed by Sir Robert Montgomery and Sir Richard Wingfield, who, above all men, had done their very utmost to bridge over this gulf. The question-" What is the defect of our government in the East?" was not a difficult one to answer. It appeared to him that we had shown a ten-hension, because everybody in this country dency to impose on the subject-race laws knew that no Bill of the kind could posand institutions which were not suitable to sibly pass into law unless a very large mathem; that we had forgotten the fact that jority of the people approved of it, and India was not a one nation, but many not until ample opportunity had been afnations, numbering 150,000,000 of people, forded of understanding its scope and dissome of whom were scarcely removed cussing its merits. But nothing of that from mere animals, while others were, in sort was the case in India, where, on the point of intellectual capacity, at least, ca- contrary, out of the 150,000,000 people pable of bearing a comparison with the fore- under the sway of the Indian Government most youth of this country. This tendency not more than 1,000,000-and that was tainted the whole of our administration in making a very liberal allowance-had the India, and led to hasty and ill-considered romotest idea of what was going to be legislation. It affected our financial sys- proposed for them in the way of legislation. tem, our sanitary measures, and even those Again, as an instance of the undue sewhich were intended to develope the re- verity of the criminal law in India, he sources of India, and to improve the moral would refer to the Cotton Frauds Act, and material condition of its people. which was, in fact, an Act for the benefit Down to 1858 there were certain checks of the rich merchants of this country. upon the Indian Government in this re- Well, no doubt, it was right to check the spect. During that period we were extending adulteration of raw cotton; but was it not our rule, and we considered it desirable to a little unfair to the ignorant ryot to throw conciliate the people and avoid giving them him into gaol, because he was guilty of offence; and if we did introduce new laws" mixing one quality of cotton with anowe gave the people time to get accusther quality of the same variety," while the tomed to them. Their feelings were not then wounded, as they were now, by the rapid introduction of new laws. In Lord Wellesley's correspondence there would be found scarcely a single Minute relating to the internal administration of the British possesssions; and Lord Hardinge is alleged to have made it a stipulation that he should have nothing to do with civil questions. Such was not the case at present, and the whole time of the officers of the Indian Government appeared to be devoted

wealthy merchants of this country might, with impunity, send out to India shipload after shipload of cotton goods literally rotting from the deleterious substances applied to them, and utterly unfit for any purpose other than to proclaim throughout the length and breadth of the land-from the bazaars of Calcutta to the bazaars of Bokhara-that the honour of the British merchant belonged to the things of the past? He should like to say one word with respect to the criminal and civil procedure