The leading enactments of the measure[299] provided that for the future the government of India, described as having been hitherto vested in, or exercised by, the Company in trust for her Majesty, should be vested in her Majesty, and exercised in her name; that one of her Majesty’s principal Secretaries of State should have and perform all such powers and duties relating to the government or revenues of India as had formerly belonged to the 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,