ABSTRACT
The catastrophe of the Indian Mutiny brought, of course, some measure of justification to the Radical critics of 1853. It certainly induced both Whigs and Tories to agree to the necessity of ending “Double Government” by winding up the East India Company and making a Secretary of State, advised by an India Council and answerable to Parliament, directly and undividedly responsible for the welfare of India. During the epoch of “Beaconsfieldism” between 1875 and 188o India tended to become more and more a topic of direct party dispute with the Radical wing of the Opposition leading the struggle against the more theatrical Imperialist exhibitions of the Prime Minister. As Gladstone himself knew from the native petitions he had been asked to present, political self-consciousness had grown enormously in India during the epoch of “Beaconsfieldism.".
