Page:Earl Canning.djvu/173

Palmerston had represented to the Queen the inconveniences occasioned by the so-called 'double Government' of India, that of the Board of Control and that of the Court of Directors. In December he laid before Her Majesty the heads of a plan, recommended by a Committee of the Cabinet, for superseding this cumbrous and obsolete machine. In February of the following year Lord Palmerston introduced a Bill for giving effect to these recommendations. Lord Ellenborough in the House of Lords objected that the supremacy of British rule should be completely established before structural questions of administration could be properly discussed. It was, however, apparent that the main weight of Parliamentary opinion inclined to a transfer of the government of India from the East India Company to the Crown. The Company was too powerful a corporation to resign its powers and dignities without a struggle. Earl Grey in the Lords and Mr. Baring in the Commons presented the Directors' protest against the threatened extinction. Lord Palmerston, in introducing his Bill, pointed out the inconvenience of the double government, the delay and confusion involved in a procedure which kept momentous despatches oscillating between Cannon Row and Leadenhall Street — the obscurity thrown on the real seat of power and the real responsibility. He proposed to substitute an Indian Council, presided over by a Secretary of State, with a seat in Parliament, in lieu of the Court of Directors, the Secret Committee, and the President of the Board of Control. 'I am not