Accordingly, in the first week of the session of 1858, Lord Palmerston, as Prime-minister, introduced a bill to transfer the government of British India from the East India Company to the crown.  It was natural that the principle of such a measure should be opposed by the Directors of the Company, though it was supported by more than one person who had held high civil office in India; and equally natural that the arrangement of its details should call forth a minute and rigorous examination, and on many points a very determined opposition.  We need not, however, say more about this bill, since circumstances prevented its being proceeded with; and the history of those which succeeded it is now only worth referring to as showing the extreme difficulty of the task of framing a government on new principles for a dependency of such vast magnitude and importance.[297]

Lord Palmerston’s bill was dropped, in consequence of the fall of his ministry, before the time came for its second reading; but the discussion on it had to some extent smoothed the way for that of his successor, Lord Derby.  A great impression on the Parliament, and on the country in general, had been made by a very able speech of Sir G.C.  Lewis, Chancellor of the Exchequer.  He traced the whole history of the Indian government from the day of Plassy, and substantiated the right of the home government and Parliament to remodel it as they might judge best, by proving that ever since the passing of Pitt’s first bill, in 1784, the Company had been constantly subject to Parliamentary control.  He showed, too, most convincingly, that a petition which the Company had presented to the House of Commons, deprecating any change in the existing system which should tend to diminish the authority of the Directors, was based on one great fallacy—­speaking, as it did, of the Company as one and indivisible, and unchanged in character, functions, and influence, down to the date of the last renewal of its charter, only five years previously; whereas the truth was, that in the one hundred years since Plassy the system had undergone as many changes as the English constitution between the Heptarchy and the reign of Queen Victoria.

He had thus removed some of the obstacles out of the way of the measure of the new government, though Lord Derby would have preferred postponing it till tranquillity should have been restored to the country by the complete suppression of the revolt, had not the large majority[298] which had sanctioned the introduction of Lord Palmerston’s bill, in his opinion, “placed the Company in such a situation that they could no longer command the same amount of public confidence and public support as they were entitled to receive previously to that vote of the House of Commons.”  It may be added that the first bill on the subject which was introduced by his government bore evident marks of the difficulties under which it was framed—­difficulties existing from the unexpected suddenness of his accession to office; so that, after a not very short discussion, it was eventually withdrawn, and it was not till the end of June that the measure which was finally adopted was introduced.