Within the last fortnight I have had a conversation
with a gentleman who has seen a long period of service in India, and he
declared it was hopeless to expect that Englishmen would ever invest
their property in India under any circumstances which placed their
interests at the disposal of those courts of justice. That is one reason
why there appears no increase in the number of Europeans or Englishmen
who settle in the interior of India for the purpose of investing their
capital there. The right hon. Gentleman endeavoured to make an excuse on
the ground that the Law Commission had done nothing. I was not in the
House when the right hon. Member for Edinburgh (Mr. Macaulay) brought
forward the Bill of 1833, but I understand it was stated that the Law
Commission was to do wonders; yet now we have the evidence of the right
hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Control, that the Report of
the Law Commission has ever since been going backwards and forwards,
like an unsettled spirit, between this country and India. Mr. Cameron,
in his evidence, said (I suppose it is slumbering somewhere on the
shelves in the East India House) that the Court of Directors actually
sneered at the propositions of their officers for enactments of any
kind, and that it was evidently their object to gradually extinguish the
Commission altogether.
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