JOHN STUART MILL. 313 



tour, being absent about eight months, in Italy, Sicily, and Greece. I 

 remember Sir James Clark giving a very desponding view of his state; 

 the local disease, however, he said, was not so serious as the general 

 debility, and, in all likelihood, he never would be fit for any other con- 

 siderable work. According to a remark made to Grote by Peacock, 

 the head of his office, his absence was severely felt at the India House. 

 He rallied, nevertheless, and resumed his usual routine. 



In the year following his recovery, 1856, his two seniors in the Ex- 

 aminer's office retired together, and he became head of the office. This 

 made an entire change in his work: instead of pre^Daring dispatches in 

 one department, he had to superintend all the departments. The en- 

 grossment of his official time was consequently much greater ; and he 

 had often to cut short the visits of friends. In little more than a 

 year after his promotion, in the end of 1857, the extinction of the Com- 

 pany was resolved upon by the Government, and he had to aid the 

 Court of Directors in their unavailing resistance to their doom. For 

 this purpose, he drafted the " Petition to Parliament " in behalf of the 

 Company, in which he brought to bear all his resources in the theory 

 and practice of politics. The petition, as ultimately submitted, after 

 some slight amendments by the Court of Directors, was pronounced 

 by Earl Grey the ablest state-paper he bad ever read. I do not mean 

 to advert to its contents, further than to quote the two introductory 

 sentences, the point and pungency of which the greatest orator might 

 be proud of : 



" That your petitioners, at their own expense, and by the agency 

 of their own civil and military servants, originally acquired for this 

 country its magnificent empire in the East. 



" That the foundations of this empire were laid by your petition- 

 ers, at that time neither aided nor controlled by Parliament, at the 

 same period at which a succession of administrations under the con- 

 trol of Parliament were losing to the Crown of Great Britain another 

 great empire on the opposite side of the Atlantic." 



Several other documents were prepared by Mill for the Court of 

 Directors, while the abolition of the Company was under discussion in 

 Parliament. It so happened that the Liberal Government, which first 

 resolved on the measure, retired from office before it was carried, and 

 the Government of Lord Derby had to finish it. Under the manage- 

 ment of Lord Stanley, as President of the Board of Control, the new 

 India Council was much more assimilated to the constitution of the old 

 Court of Directors ; and I am inclined to believe that the modification 

 was in great measure owing to the force of Mill's reasonings. 



The passing of the bill led to his retirement from the India House. 

 He told Grote that, but for the dissolution of the Company, he would 

 have continued in the service till he was sixty. An attempt was made 

 to secure him for the new Council. After the chairman, he was the 

 first applied to by Lord Stanley to take office as a Crown nominee. In 



