opens with the following effective antithesis: "Your petitioners, at
their own expense, and by the agency of their own civil and military
servants, originally acquired for this country its magnificent empire
in the East. The foundations of this empire were laid by your
petitioners, at that time neither aided nor controlled by Parliament,
at the same period at which a succession of administrations under the
control of Parliament were losing, by their incapacity and rashness,
another great empire on the opposite side of the Atlantic."

I am fortunate enough to be the possessor of the original MS. of this
admirable state paper, which I mention, because I once heard its real
authorship denied in that quarter of all others in which it might have
been supposed to be least likely to be questioned. On one of the last
occasions of the gathering together of the Proprietors of East-India
Stock, I could scarcely believe my ears, when one of the directors,
alluding to the petition, spoke of it as having been written by a
certain other official who was silting by his side, adding, after a
moment's pause, "with the assistance, as he understood, of Mr. Mill,"
likewise present. As soon as the Court broke up, I burst into Mill's
room, boiling over with indignation, and exclaiming, "What an infamous
shame!" and no doubt adding a good deal more that followed in natural
sequence on such an exordium. "What's the matter?" replied Mill as
soon as he could get a word in. "M----[the director] was quite right.
The petition was the joint work of ---- and myself."--"How can you be
so perverse?" I retorted. "You know that I know you wrote every word of
it."--"No," rejoined Mill, "you are mistaken: one whole line on the
second page was put in by----."

In August, 1858, the East-India Company's doom was pronounced by
Parliament. The East-India House was completely re-organized, its very