Court of Directors, as the Court of Proprietors of the Company; that a Council of the Governor-general should be established, consisting of fifteen members, seven of whom should be appointed by the Court of Directors, being persons who were, or had formerly been, Directors of the Company, and eight should be nominated by the crown. And as to both classes, it was provided that the majority should consist of persons who had served or resided in India for ten years at the least, and should not have left India more than ten years when appointed. They were to hold their offices during good behavior, to receive salaries, and to be entitled to retiring pensions, but to be incapable of sitting in Parliament. The appointment of Governor-general and Governor of each Presidency was to belong to the crown. The expenditure of the revenues of India, both in India and elsewhere, was to be subject to the control of the Secretary of State in Council; other clauses provided for the dividends of the Company, for the admission of persons into the civil service; and, with reference to existing establishments, one clause provided that 'the Indian military and naval forces should remain under existing conditions of service.'
This last clause was strongly objected to by the Queen,[300] as 'inconsistent with her constitutional position as head of the army, which required that the Commander-in-chief should be put in communication with the new Secretary of State for India, in the same manner in which he is placed with regard to the troops at home or in the colonies toward the Secretary of State for War.... With regard to the whole army, whether English or Indian, there could, with due regard to the public interest, be only one head and one general command.' She yielded her opinion, however, to the resolute objections of the Prime-minister, with whom on this point his predecessor,[301] Lord Palmerston, agreed; but the result proved the superior soundness of her Majesty's view. It was not only a most anomalous arrangement, since the supreme control of all the warlike forces was one of the most inalienable prerogatives of the crown, but it had the strange fault of preserving the double government in the case in which, above all others, unity of system and unity of command were most indispensable. And, what weighed more than either consideration with the generally practical views of English statesmen, it was from the beginning found to work badly, creating, as it did, great and mischievous jealousies between the two divisions, the Royal and the Indian army. It was found that all the generals then in the highest commands in India-Lord Clyde (Sir Colin Campbell having been ennobled by that title), Sir Hugh Rose, and Sir William Mansfield-strongly disapproved of it, and recommended a change; and consequently, in the summer of 1860, Lord Palmerston, who in the mean while had returned to the Treasury, came round to the Queen's view of the subject, and a new act was passed which amalgamated the two armies into one Imperial army, taking its turn of duty throughout all parts of the British empire.[302]
A letter addressed by Lord Palmerston to the Queen in the autumn of 1857, which appears to have been his first statement to her Majesty of the opinion which he had formed of the necessity of abolishing the governing authority of the Company, states the principal arguments in favor of such a measure with great clearness, as arising from 'the inconvenience and difficulty of administering the government of a vast country on the other side of the globe by means of two cabinets, the one responsible to the crown and Parliament, the other only responsible to the holders of Indian stock, meeting for a few hours three or four times a year, which had been shown by the events of the year to be no longer tolerable.' His disapproval of parts of Lord Ellenborough's policy probably prevented him from alluding to his recall from India by the Directors, in direct defiance of the opinion of the government,[303] though that strange step can hardly have been absent from his mind. But, in fact, the case for taking the whole rule of so vast a dominion wholly into the hands of the Queen's government at home was so irresistible, that it did not require to be strengthened by reference to any individual instances of inconvenience. When the double government was originally established, the English in India were still but a small mercantile community, with very little territory beyond that in the immediate neighborhood of its three chief cities. Of the conduct of the affairs of such a body, still almost confined to commerce, the chief share might not unreasonably be left to the merchants themselves, subject to such supervision on the part of the government at home as was implied in the very name of the department invested with that supervision, the Board of Control, which, as Pitt explained the name, was meant to show that it was not to be, like the measure proposed by the Coalition Ministry, a board of political influence.[304] But the case was wholly altered when British India reached from Point de Galle to the Himalayas, and spread beyond the Ganges on the east, to beyond the Indus on the west; when the policy adopted in India often influenced our dealings with European states, and when the force required for the protection of those vast interests exceeded the numbers of the royal army. India, too, is a country the climate of which prevents our countrymen from emigrating to it as settlers, as they do to Canada or Australia, and where, consequently, the English residents are, and always must be, a mere handful in comparison with the millions of natives. In such a case their government must at all times rest mainly on opinion, on the belief in the pre-eminent power of the ruler; and it was obvious that that belief would be greatly fortified by the sovereign of Britain becoming that ruler.[305] The great rajahs cordially recognized the value of the transfer of power considered in this light, and felt their own dignity enhanced by becoming the vassals of the sovereign herself.
Turning to French affairs, a brilliant French writer has remarked, that his countrymen are, of all peoples, the least suited to be conspirators, since none of them can ever keep a secret. But it was the ill-fortune of Louis Napoleon that he had provoked enmities, not only among his own countrymen, but among the republican fanatics of other nations also, who saw in his zeal for absolute authority the greatest obstacle to their designs, which aimed at the overthrow of every established government on the Continent, and shrunk from no crimes which they conceived to be calculated to promote their object. To free themselves from such an antagonist, the most wholesale murders seemed by no means too large a price. And in the middle of January, as the Emperor and Empress were going to the Opera, a prodigious explosion took place almost beneath the wheels of their carriage, from the effect of which they themselves had a most narrow escape, both being struck in the face by splinters, the aide-de-camp in their carriage also being severely wounded on the head; while their escort and attendants were struck down on all sides, ten being killed and above one hundred and fifty wounded.[306] It was soon found out that the authors of this atrocious crime were four Italians, of whom a man named Orsini was the chief, and that he, who had but recently escaped from a prison in Mantua, had fled from that town to England, and had there concocted all the details of his plot, and had procured the shells which had been his instruments.
It was not unnatural that so atrocious a crime, causing such wide-spread destruction, should awaken great excitement in France, and in many quarters violent reclamations against England and her laws, which enabled foreign plotters to make her a starting-place for their nefarious schemes. Even in the French Chambers very bitter language was used on the subject by some of the most influential Deputies, for which our ministers were disposed to make allowance, Lord Clarendon, the Foreign Secretary, writing to the Prince Consort that 'it was not to be expected that foreigners, who see that assassins go and come here as they please, and that conspiracies may be hatched in England with impunity, should think our laws and policy friendly to other countries, or appreciate the extreme difficulty of making any change in our system.'[307]
But a different feeling was roused by a despatch of the French Secretary of State to the ambassador here, which seemed to impute to this country that it deliberately sheltered and countenanced men by whose writings 'assassination was elevated into a doctrine openly preached, and carried into practice by reiterated attacks' upon the person of the French sovereign, and asked, in language which had rather an imperious tone, 'Ought the English Legislature to contribute to the designs of men who were not mere fugitives, but assassins, and continue to shelter persons who place themselves beyond the pale of common right, and under the ban of humanity? Her Britannic Majesty's Government can assist us in averting a repetition of such guilty enterprises, by affording us a guarantee of security which no state can refuse to a neighboring state, and which we are justified in expecting from an ally. Fully relying, moreover, on the profound sagacity of the English Cabinet, we refrain from indicating in any way the measures which it may seem fit to take in order to comply with this wish. We confidently leave it to decide on the course which it shall deem best fitted to the end in view.' Still, though the charge that our Legislature contributed to the designs of assassins was some departure from the measured language more usual in diplomatic communications between friendly powers, under the circumstances this remonstrance might have been borne with. Unluckily, it was not all, nor the worst, that we were called upon to bear. A few days afterward some addresses to the Emperor from different military corps were published in the
