I come now to the question--and it is for this question that I have
wished principally to address the House--if at any time we obtain the
simplicity which I contend for with regard to the government at home,
what changes will it be desirable to make in the government in India?
And I would make one observation at this point, that in all the
statements and arguments which I hope to use, I beg the House to believe
that I use them with the greatest possible deference, with the feeling
that this is a question upon which no man is at all entitled to
dogmatize, that it is a vast question which we all look at as one we are
scarcely capable of handling and determining. I submit my views to the
House because I have considered the subject more or less for many years,
and I believe I am actuated by the simple and honest desire of
contributing something to the information and knowledge of Parliament
with regard to its duty upon this great question.

What is it we have to complain of in India? What is it that the people
of India, if they spoke by my mouth, have to complain of? They would
tell the House that, as a rule, throughout almost all the Presidencies,
and throughout those Presidencies most which have been longest under
British rule, the cultivators of the soil, the great body of the
population of India, are in a condition of great impoverishment, of
great dejection, and of great suffering. I have, on former occasions,
quoted to the House the report of a Committee which I obtained ten years
ago, upon which sat several members of the Court of Directors; and they
all agreed to report as much as I have now stated to the House--the
Report being confined chiefly to the Presidencies of Bombay and Madras.
If I were now submitting the case of the population of India I would say
that the taxes of India are more onerous and oppressive than the taxes
of any other country in the world. I think I could demonstrate that