For my part, Sir, in this business I put all indirect considerations wholly out of my mind.  My sole question, on each clause of the bill, amounts to this:—­Is the measure proposed required by the necessities of India?  I cannot consent totally to lose sight of the real wants of the people who are the objects of it, and to hunt after every matter of party squabble that may be started on the several provisions.  On the question of the duration of the commission I am clear and decided.  Can I, can any one who has taken the smallest trouble to be informed concerning the affairs of India, amuse himself with so strange an imagination as that the habitual despotism and oppression, that the monopolies, the peculations, the universal destruction of all the legal authority of this kingdom, which have been for twenty years maturing to their present enormity, combined with the distance of the scene, the boldness and artifice of delinquents, their combination, their excessive wealth, and the faction they have made in England, can be fully corrected in a shorter term than four years?  None has hazarded such an assertion; none who has a regard for his reputation will hazard it.

Sir, the gentlemen, whoever they are, who shall be appointed to this commission, have an undertaking of magnitude on their hands, and their stability must not only be, but it must be thought, real; and who is it will believe that anything short of an establishment made, supported, and fixed in its duration, with all the authority of Parliament, can be thought secure of a reasonable stability?  The plan of my honorable friend is the reverse of that of reforming by the authors of the abuse.  The best we could expect from them is, that they should not continue their ancient, pernicious activity.  To those we could think of nothing but applying control; as we are sure that even a regard to their reputation (if any such thing exists in them) would oblige them to cover, to conceal, to suppress, and consequently to prevent all cure of the grievances of India.  For what can be discovered which is not to their disgrace?  Every attempt to correct an abuse would be a satire on their former administration.  Every man they should pretend to call to an account would be found their instrument, or their accomplice.  They can never see a beneficial regulation, but with a view to defeat it.  The shorter the tenure of such persons, the better would be the chance of some amendment.

But the system of the bill is different.  It calls in persons in no wise concerned with any act censured by Parliament,—­persons generated with, and for, the reform, of which they are themselves the most essential part.  To these the chief regulations in the bill are helps, not fetters:  they are authorities to support, not regulations to restrain them.  From these we look for much more than innocence.  From these we expect zeal, firmness, and unremitted activity.  Their duty, their character, binds