DUTIES OF THE BOARD OF CONTROL.

MARCH 14th, 1822.

MR. CREEVY Submitted the following motion-" That it be referred to a Select Committee to examine into the different duties annexed to the office of the commissioners for managing the affairs of India, and by whom the ame are performed; and to report their observations thereupon to this House."

MR. CANNING* said, he rose under the same necessity that had called up the right honourable gentleman opposite, allusion having been made by the honourable mover to him (Mr. C.) and to his conduct of that office which he had recently had the honour of filling for five years. He felt it his duty to say of the right honourable gentleman (Mr. Tierney), that at no time, so far as his retrospect carried him back, was the office of President of the Board of Control more efficiently discharged, than it had been by the right honourable gentleman. In many points referred to they both concurred; and with respect to some in which they disagreed, the change of circumstances, the progress of time, and the increase of business in the office, would, he believed, account satisfactorily for the difference. What he should have to state on the subject of the motion would be, like what the right honourable gentleman had stated, more in the shape of testimony than of argument. But before he proceeded to make that statement, and therein to lay the grounds of his objection to the motion of the honourable gentleman, he would beg leave to call the attention of the House to the precise nature of it, and to the circumstances under which it was brought before the House. The motion, then, had

for its object the reform of a great and important department of the public service; and it turned out that one honourable member who made the motion had been secretary, and another right honourable gentleman who supported it, the presiding minister in that department; and that, both from their own respective statements and from the notcriety of the facts, it was established that one of them had been a most efficient, the other a most inefficient officer of the board. Such being the state of the case, if the right honourable gentleman, the former President of the Board of Control, had brought forward a motion to ascertain the manner in which the business of the office had been carried on, in order to see what part of the duty had been satisfactorily performed, and where there had been a failure, and had concluded by moving for a committee to inquire into the conduct of an idle secretary of that board—had such been the character of the motion, he could have understood the motives which brought the subject before the House. But as the only data yet offered in support of a proposition for reform, was the assertion, or rather the just boast, of efficiency on the part of the right honourable gentleman who had been president, and that efficiency aided by material assistance from the commissioners, but altogether unaided by any help whatever from the secretary, it was most extraordinary that this idle secretary should be the identical person to bring forward a motion for reform. This was reform with a vengeance! But it was a picture—and not an unfaithful picture-of the principles on which reform was clamoured for upon a thousand other occasions; and if they could trace the greater part of those clamours to their source, they would find, on inquiry, in nine instances out of ten,-Habetis confitentem reum-that the evil existed where the clamour arose. It was most extraordinary, that any person could be so completely

blinded by his own fancies, or by his own pamphlets, as to come forward with such a motion under such circumstances, announcing his own utter inefficiency. "Me, me, adsum qui non feci," or rather " qui nil feci"-I am the man who did nothing; and I now call on you to inquire, why those who were associated with me, and who were diligent and laborious, failed to follow my example. I call on you to demand of them why they should thus break in upon the practice which my conduct went to establish, and disturb, by their troublesome activity, the stillness of my stagnation. The honourable gentleman stated himself to have been well paid. He had received £1,500 per annum, yet all that he had to do, at least all that he had done, was to amuse himself with the newspapers. The President, indeed, was engaged in the penetralia of his inner cabinet, in forming plans for the good government of India; but the honourable gentleman had told them, " I washed my hands of every thing of this sort; I did not occupy myself in any such a way. I had only to repose myself in my office, and to look from the window into the park, to amuse myself with what might be passing there; and now I come to revenge myself on those whose industry formed so strong a contrast to my inactivity, by calling on the House to inquire into the manner in which those duties were performed, no part of which certainly was performed by me." Now, if the authority of the individual bringing forward a motion was to pass for any thing in that House, it was a little too much that they should be called upon to go into an inquiry, when no earthly grounds were laid for that inquiry, but the confessed fault of the party calling for it— when the grounds of the motion which he made were really and substantially laid in the inculpation of no man living except himself.

He (Mr. C.) did not wish to overstate the importance of

that department of the state which the honourable gentleman had attempted to run down. The right honourable gentleman opposite, who, during the short period of his presidency, had applied himself so closely and diligently to the duties of his office, had stated them to be duties of some importance. He, however, hoped that that right honourable gentleman would not be offended with him, when he assured the House, that the actual business of the Board, in point of extent, delicacy, and difficulty, compared with what it was at the period when the right honourable gentleman presided over it, partly from circumstances arising out of the renewal of the Company's charter, partly from the political and military changes which had since taken place in India, had materially increased. The circumstances to which he had alluded, would, of themselves, in a great degree, account for the burthen of affairs now thrown upon the Board of Control being much heavier than formerly. He could not of course speak as to the former period from his own knowledge; but, from the information he had obtained from others, he could state, that if they compared the present state of the business at the India House and the Board of Control, with what it was in 1793, it would be found to have increased nearly a hundred fold. out fear of contradiction; and, what was still more to the purpose, he could assure the House, that it had increased, within the last five or six years, in the ratio of 20 If, then, two commissioners were found necessary in 1807, when the honourable mover and his right honourable colleague were in office, it was surely not too much to say, that no reduction in these commissioners ought to take place at present.

This he stated with

per cent.

During the debates on Mr. Fox's India Bill, no question had been more argued, than whether the control of the India Government should be vested in one person, or in a

Board of Commissioners. Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox, though they had widely differed in many respects, perfectly agreed in this that a Board was the fair instrument, not for the Government-for there the mistake had been-but for the control of the Government of India. A Secretary of State was not the fit person for superintending such a Board. A Secretary of State was the servant of the Crown, by whom the pleasure of the Sovereign was signified. It was not so in the Board of Control. In this office the King's pleasure was never signified. The duty of the Board was great; but it was not an original, acting duty. With a trifling exception, which he would afterwards mention, the Board originated nothing. He had no wish to enter into the details of such a subject, nor would he now proceed to do so, if it had not been actually forced upon him. The course of business, so far as related to despatches sent out to India, was this. The despatches were prepared by the Court of Directors, and sent up to the Board of Control for revision, correction, or approbation. No despatch could be sent out to India without the approval of the Board of Control, signified by the signatures of three commissioners. He did not mean to say that many despatches were not forwarded in the form in which they were first prepared; but, in others, it was found necessary to make corrections, or additions, which were again sent back to the Court of Directors, assigning the reasons and adducing the motives which required such alterations. Now, such a course of proceeding afforded a guarantee for the diligent performance of the duties of the several parties concerned. If the president or the commissioners were even disposed to be idle, the House would evidently see, that where they were obliged to give their reasons for any proposed alteration or omission, no man would risk his reputation in giving such reasons, unless he had previously made himself acquainted with the subject.