Councils in India. I think every Governor of a Presidency should have an
assistant Council, but differently constituted from what they now are. I
would have an open Council. The noble Lord the Member for London used
some expressions the other night which I interpreted to mean that it was
necessary to maintain in all its exclusiveness the system of the Civil
Service in India. In that I entirely differ from the noble Lord. [Lord
J. Russell here indicated dissent.] The noble Lord corrects me in that
statement, and therefore I must have been mistaken. What we want is to
make the Governments of the Presidencies governments for the people of
the Presidencies; not governments for the civil servants of the Crown,
but for the non-official mercantile classes from England who settle
there, and for the 20,000,000 or 30,000,000 of Natives in each
Presidency.

I should propose to do that which has been done with great advantage in
Ceylon. I have received a letter from an officer who has been in the
service of the East India Company, and who told me a fact which has
gratified me very much. He says--

'At a public dinner at Colombo, in 1835, to the Governor, Sir
Wilmot Horton, at which I was present, the best speech of the
evening was made by a native nobleman of Candy, and a member of
Council. It was remarkable for its appropriate expression, its
sound sense, and the deliberation and ease that marked the
utterance of his feelings. There was no repetition or useless
phraseology or flattery, and it was admitted by all who heard him
to be the soundest and neatest speech of the night.'

This was in Ceylon. It is not, of course, always the best man who can
make the best speech; but if what I have read could be said of a native