replied that commercial interests ought to be adequately represented in the Council, and that any other method securing commercial representation was not likely to find favour with the House of Commons. Lord Ellenborough's view, however, proved to be mistaken, for Mr. Bright and the Liberal party condemned the proposal, and Lord Derby was compelled to admit that the Queen's disapproval was endorsed by the general feeling of the country. The Bill underwent many vicissitudes, and at one time seemed in danger of being shipwrecked in the storm aroused by Lord Ellenborough's indiscreet onslaught on Lord Canning's Proclamation to the Oudh landholders. The House agreed to proceed by the way of Resolutions, and ultimately, on the 2nd August, 1858, the measure became law.
The transfer of the government of India from the Company was rather a formal than a substantial change. The effect was little more than to bring the ostensible machinery of administration into closer accordance with the real facts of the case, and to clear away arrangements which tended to obscure them. India had become far too important a member of the body politic to admit of its being administered by any other authority than a Government in direct touch with and directly amenable to the House of Commons. Parliament must, in the last resort, override every other authority. It was necessary, accordingly, that a Secretary of State, subject, as every other Head of a Department, to Parliamentary
