wars and squandering the revenue which the Company collected. But Mr.
Kaye said that Mr. Tucker deplored the mystery and the mockery of a
system which obscured responsibility and deluded public opinion. It is
because of this concealment, of this delusion practised upon public
opinion, of this evasion of public responsibility and Parliamentary
control, that you have a state of things in India which the hon. Member
for Guildford (Mr. Mangles) has described, when he says that the Company
manages the revenues, collects the taxes, and gets from
20,000,000_l_. to 30,000,000_l_. a-year, and nobody knows how
much more. But, whatever it is, such is the system of foreign policy
pursued by the Board of Control--that is to say, by the gentlemen who
drop down there for six or eight or twelve months, never beyond two
years--that, whatever revenues are collected, they are squandered on
unnecessary and ruinous wars, till the country is brought to a state of
embarrassment and threatened bankruptcy. That is the real point which
the House will have to consider.

With regard to some of the details of the Government plan, we should no
doubt all agree: but this question of divided responsibility, of
concealed responsibility, and of no responsibility whatever, that is the
real pith of the matter. The House should take care not to be diverted
from that question. [Mr. Mangles: 'Produce your own plan.'] An hon.
Gentleman has asked me to produce my plan. I will not comply with that
request, but will follow the example of a right hon. Gentleman, a great
authority in this House, who once said, when similarly challenged, that
he should produce his plan when he was called in. I believe that the
plan before the House to-night was concocted by the Board of Control and
the hon. Member for Guildford and his Colleagues I shall, therefore,
confine myself at present to the discussion of that plan. Some persons
are disposed very much (at least I am afraid so) to undervalue the