General should be abolished. Perhaps some hon. Gentlemen may think this
a very unreasonable proposition. Many people thought it unreasonable in
1853 when it was proposed to abolish the East India Company; but now
Parliament and the country believe it to be highly reasonable and
proper; and I am not sure that I could not bring before the House
reasons to convince them that the abolition of the office of Governor-
General is one of the most sensible and one of the most Conservative
proposals ever brought forward in connection with the Government of
India. I believe the duties of the Governor-General are far greater than
any human being can adequately fulfil. He has a power omnipotent to
crush anything that is good. If he so wishes, he can overbear and
overrule whatever is proposed for the welfare of India, while, as to
doing anything that is good, I could show that with regard to the vast
countries over which he rules, he is really almost powerless to effect
anything that those countries require. The hon. Gentleman behind me
(Colonel Sykes) has told us there are twenty nations in India, and that
there are twenty languages. Has it ever happened before that any one man
governed twenty nations, speaking twenty different languages, and bound
them together in one great and compact empire? [An hon. Member here made
an observation.] My hon. Friend mentions a great Parthian monarch. No
doubt there have been men strong in arm and in head, and of stern
resolution, who have kept great empires together during their lives; but
as soon as they went the way of all flesh, and descended, like the
meanest of their subjects, to the tomb, the provinces they had ruled
were divided into several States, and their great empires vanished. I
might ask the noble Lord below me (Lord John Russell) and the noble Lord
the Member for Tiverton (the noble Lord the Member for King's Lynn has
not as yet experience on this point), whether, when they came to appoint
a Governor-General of India, they did not find it one of the most
serious and difficult duties they could be called on to perform? I do