ADMINISTRATION AND FINANCE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 41
view, altered the conditions of their trust from time to time, and finally relieved the trustees of its exercise altogether. When the subject is carefully examined, it will be found that the Government of India, so far from being the Government of a distinct state, has been, from the first, simply a department of the British Government. The British ministry, acting through the President of the Board of Control, formed the real motive power which decided the policy of successive Indian administrations, and the East India Company was simply a convenient screen...... If the facts be so, then, and they cannot be gainsaid, we seem to be shut up to the conclusion that the acts of the Government of India, from first to last, have been the acts of the British nation. India has never had even the shadow of a constitution, or of a national government, but has been ruled as a conquered country, according to the views of successive British Parliaments and the British administrations. The Indian debt has really been incurred by the Government of this country : and how, then, can we possibly shake ourselves free of Indian liabilities ?”
Mr. Wingate also appealed to the humane part of the British public by dwelling upon the advantages to England and the injuries to India :
“In proceeding to consider these advantages, there is one most important fact, which should ever be present to the mind of the reader, and that is, that those advantages, be they great or small, have cost the nation nothing to acquire. This may sound as a startling assertion in the ears of Englishmen of this generation, who have not yet forgotten the heavy bills which they have had to pay for Canada rebellions, Caffre wars, Ceylon insurrections, and many manumissions of West Indian Slaves; and who are annually reminded of the cost of governing, or protecting our colonies and dependencies, by the financial estimates submitted to Parliament; but the assertion, nevertheless, is strictly and liberally correct. “Strange,” may we wonderingly exclaim, “that we, who have spent so much on our colonial possessions, and have waged so many costly wars for thankless foreigners, should have laid out no money in the