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Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 2, p. 515.

xIvj HISTORY OF BRITISH RULE 515 The Act for the Better Government of India (i858), which India finally transferred the entire administration from the Company transferred - to the to the Crown, was not passed without an eloquent protest from Crown, the Directors, nor without acrimonious party discussion in 1858. Parliament. It enacts that India shall be governed by, and in the name of, the Sovereign through one of the principal Secretaries of State, assisted by a Council of fifteen members. At the same time the Governor-General received the new title ' The of Viceroy. The European troops of the Company, numbering Viceroy.' about 24,000 officers and men, were amalgamated with the Royal service, and the Indian Navy was abolished. By the Indian Councils Act (I86I), the Governor-General's Council, and also the Councils at Madras and Bombay, were aug- mented by the addition of non-official members, either natives or Europeans, for legislative purposes only. By another Act, also passed in IS6r, High Courts of Judicature were constituted out of the old Supreme Courts at the Presidency towns and the AdAlats or appellate courts of the Company. It fell to the lot of Lord Canning both to suppress the India Mutiny and to introduce the peaceful revolution which under the followed. It suffices to say that he preserved his equanimity unruffled in the darkest hours of peril, and that the strict impartiality of his conduct incurred alternate praise and blame from partisans of both sides. The epithet then scornfully levelled at him of 'Clemency' Canning is now remembered only to his honour. On November I, I858, at a grand darbdr Queen's held at Allahabad, he published the Royal Proclamation, which Procla- announced that the Queen had assumed the government Nov. i, of India. This document, which is, in the truest and noblest I858. sense, the Magna Charta of the Indian people, proclaimed in eloquent words a policy of justice and religious toleration, and granted an amnesty to all except those who had directly taken part in the murder of British subjects. Peace was proclaimed throughout India on July 8, I859. In the following cold season Lord Canning made a viceregal progress through the Northern Provinces, to receive the homage of loyal princes and chiefs, and to assure them that the policy of 'escheat or lapse' was at an end, and that adopted heirs would hence- forward be recognized by the British Government. The suppression of the Mutiny increased the debt of India Cost of the by about 40 crores of rupees, and the military changes which Mutiny. ensued augmented the annual expenditure by about io crores. To grapple with this deficit, a distinguished political economist and parliamentary financier, Mr. James Wilson, was sent out L1 2