I held
this office as long as it continued to exist, being a little more than
two years; after which 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 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.
Personally I considered myself a gainer by it, as I had given enough of
my life to india, and was not unwilling to retire on the liberal
compensation granted. After the change was consummated, Lord Stanley,
the first Secretary of State for India, made me the honourable offer of
a seat in the Council, and the proposal was subsequently renewed by the
Council itself, on the first occasion of its having to supply a vacancy
in its own body. But the conditions of Indian government under the new
system made me anticipate nothing but useless vexation and waste of
effort from any participation in it: and nothing that has since happened
has had any tendency to make me regret my refusal.
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