38 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
Unfortunately, the mutiny did occur in 1857 and gave a strong impetus to the abolition movement already in full swing.
On the 31st day of December, 1857, the Chairman and the Deputy Chairman of the Company replied to the notification of Palmerston urging that “an intermediate, non-political, and perfectly independent body” similar to the Company was a necessity for the administration of India.
Besides this the Company sent a formal petition to both Houses of Parliament. John Stuart Mill who drafted the petition showed the fallacy in the arguments of the mover of the Bill for the abolition of the Company. From the very beginning the Crown had exercized its control over the Indian Government through its Minister presiding over the Board of Control. Between the Government in India and the Crown Minister there was the Court of Directors which the new Bill wanted to do away with. Mill argued that this Court of Directors (the organ of the East India Company), the embodiment of experience was a good guide for the Crown Minister who really controlled the entire administration of India, and said that if evils have really arisen from the mode of administration the remedy that was sought viz. of doing away with the Court of Directors and thus making the Crown Minister an autocrat was worse than the disease. “To believe that the administration of India would have been more from error had it been conducted by a Minister of the Crown without the aid of the Court of Directors, would be to believe that the Minister, with full powers to govern India as he pleased, has governed ill, because he had the assistance of experienced and responsible advisers.”
A diversity of opinion prevailed as to the future connection of India with England.
The Stanlay Review, an important newspaper in England argued that the East India Company be maintained to keep India away from English politics. It made quite a point of the fact that Englishmen who went over to India became autocrats and that in it there was a danger to democracy. It boldly proclaimed that “India, like a colossal torpedo, will paralyze the beneficient activities and benumb the free moral life of England”...... and if......“brought full in sight of England, will serve her as a great