Examples of his Minute-writing may with some confidence be submitted to the criticism of those whose experience of public business has taught them in what a Minute should differ from a Despatch, a Memorial, a Report, and a Decision.  His method of applying general principles to the circumstances of a special case, and of illustrating those principles with just as much literary ornament as would place his views in a pictorial form before the minds of those whom it was his business to convince, is strikingly exhibited in the series of papers by means of which he reconciled his colleagues in the Council, and his masters in Leadenhall Street, to the removal of the modified Censorship which existed in India previously to the year 1835.

“It is difficult,” he writes, “to conceive that any measures can be more indefensible than those which I propose to repeal.  It has always been the practice of politic rulers to disguise their arbitrary measures under popular forms and names.  The conduct of the Indian Government with respect to the Press has been altogether at variance with this trite and obvious maxim.  The newspapers have for years been allowed as ample a measure of practical liberty as that which they enjoy in England.  If any inconveniences arise from the liberty of political discussion, to those inconveniences we are already subject.  Yet while our policy is thus liberal and indulgent, we are daily reproached and taunted with the bondage in which we keep the Press.  A strong feeling on this subject appears to exist throughout the European community here; and the loud complaints which have lately been uttered are likely to produce a considerable effect on the English people, who will see at a glance that the law is oppressive, and who will not know how completely it is inoperative.

“To impose strong restraints on political discussion is an intelligible policy, and may possibly—­though I greatly doubt it—­ be in some countries a wise policy.  But this is not the point at issue.  The question before us is not whether the Press shall be free, but whether, being free, it shall be called free.  It is surely mere madness in a Government to make itself unpopular for nothing; to be indulgent, and yet to disguise its indulgence under such outward forms as bring on it the reproach of tyranny.  Yet this is now our policy.  We are exposed to all the dangers—­ dangers, I conceive, greatly over-rated—­of a free Press; and at the same time we contrive to incur all the opprobrium of a censorship.  It is universally allowed that the licensing system, as at present administered, does not keep any man who can buy a press from publishing the bitterest and most sarcastic reflections on any public measure, or any public functionary.  Yet the very words ‘license to print’ have a sound hateful to the ears of Englishmen in every part of the globe.  It is unnecessary to inquire whether this feeling be reasonable; whether the petitioners who have so strongly pressed this matter on our consideration would not have shown a better judgment if they had been content with their practical liberty, and had reserved their murmurs for practical grievances.  The question for us is not what they ought to do, but what we ought to do; not whether it be wise in them to complain when they suffer no injury, but whether it be wise in us to incur odium unaccompanied by the smallest accession of security or of power.