Indian speeches (1907-1909)

. OCTOBER

aid, "It is a most unattractive subject, India." At any rate, this is the last place where any apology is needed for speaking about India, because it is you who are responsible for my being the Indian Minister. If your 2,500 majority had been 2,500 the other way, I should have been no longer the Indian Minister. There is something that strikes the imagination, something that awakens a feeling of the bonds of mankind, in the thought that you here and in the other burghs-(shipmen, artificers, craftsmen, and shopkeepers living here)-are brought through me, and through your responsibility in electing me, into contact with all these hundreds of millions across the seas. Therefore it is that I will not make any apology t

ed the principles of a lifetime. One of your countrymen said that, like the Python-that fabulous animal who had the largest swallow that any creature ever enjoyed-I have swallowed all my principles. I am a little disappointed at such clatter as this. When a man has laboured for more years than I care to count, for Liberal principles and Liberal causes, and thinks he may possibly have accumulated a little credit in the bank of public opinion-and in the opinion of his party and his friends-it is a most extraordinary and unwelcome su

akes it more fitting in anticipation all those difficulties which some excellent people, with whom in many ways I sympathise, feel. Again, I say, let us see where we start from. Does anybody want me to go to London to-morrow morning, and to send a telegram to Lord Kitchener, the Commander-in-Chief in India, and tell him that he is to disband the Indian army, to send home as fast as we can despatch transports, the British contingent of the army, and bring away the whole of the Civil servants? Suppose it to be true, as some people in Arbroath seem to have thought-I am not arguing the question-that Great Britain loses more than she gains; supposing it to be true that India would have worked out her own salvation without us; supposing it to be true that the present Government of India has many defects-supposing all that to be true, do you want me to send a telegram to Lord Kitchener to-morrow morning to clear out bag and baggage? How should we look in the face of the civilised world if we had so turned our back upon our duty

cus olim, and others-too oftened coloured with personal partisanship and deep-dyed prepossessions. There is a spirit of caste outside the Hindu sphere. There is a great deal of writing on the Indian Government by men who have acquired the habit while they were in the Government, and then unluckily retain the habit after they come home and live, or ought to live, in peace and quietness among their friends here. That is another of our difficulties. Still, when all such difficulties are measured and taken account of, it is impossible to overrate the courage, the patience and fidelity, with which the present House of Commons faces what is not at all an easy moment in Indian Government. You talk of democracy. People cry, "Oh! Democracy cannot govern

e, of the grossest fallacy in all politics. It is a thoroughly dangerous fallacy. I think it is the hollowest and, I am sorry to say, the commonest, of all the fallacies in the history of the world in all stages of civilisation. Because a particular policy or principle is true and expedient and vital in certain definite circumstances, therefore it must be equally true and vital in a completely different set of circumstances. What sophism can be more gross and dangerous? You might just as well say that, because a fur coat in Canada at certain times

tful diplomacy; I have no gift for it. There are two sets of people you have got to consider. First of all, I hope that the Government of India, so long as I am connected with it and responsible for it to Parliament and to the country, will not be hurried by the anger of the impatient idealist. The impatient idealist-you know him. I know him. I like him, I have been one myself. He says, "You admit that so and so is right; why don't you do it-why don't you do it now?" Whether he is an Indian idealist or a British idealist I sympathise with him. Ah! gentlemen, how many of the most tragic miscarriages in human history have been due to the im

ind. To nobody in this world, by habit, by education, by experience, by views expressed in political affairs for a great many years past, to nobody is exceptional repression, more distasteful than it is to me. After all, gentlemen, you would not have me see men try to set the prairie on fire without arresting the hand. You would not blame me when I saw men smoking their pipes near powder magazines, you would not blame me, you would not call me an arch coercionist, if I said, "Away with the men and away with the pipes." We have not allowed ourselves-I speak of the Indian Government-to be hurried into the policy of repression. I say this to what I would call the idealist party. Then I would say something to those who talk nonsense about apathy and supineness. We will not b

to the cause of the Government, simply because the policy will not satisfy the Extremists. Let us, if we can, rally the Moderates, and if we are told that the policy will not satisfy the Extremists, so be it. Our line will remain the same. It is the height of folly to refuse to rally sensible people, because we do not satisfy Extremists. I am detaining you unmercifully, but I doubt whether-and do not think I say it because it happens to be my department-of all the questions that are to be discussed perhaps for years to come, any question can be in all its actual foundations, and all its prospective bearings, more important than the question of India. There are many aspects of it which it is not possible for me to go into, as, for example, some of its Military aspects. I repeat my doubt whether there is any questio

nd, when they are made free of our own immortals. I would only say this to my idealist friends, whether Indian or European, that for every passage that they can find in Mill, or Burke, or Macaulay, or, any other of our lofty sages with their noble hearts and potent brains, I will find them a dozen passages in which history is shown to admonish us, in the language of Burke-"How weary a step do those take who endeavour to make out of a great mass a true political personality!" They are words much to be commended to those zealots in India-how many a weary step has to be taken before they can form themselves into a mass that has a true political personality! My warning may be wasted, but anybody who has a chance ought to try to appeal to the better, the riper, mind of educated India. Time has gone on with me, experience has widened. I have never lost my invincible faith that there is a better mind in all civilised communities-and that this better mind, if you can reach it, if statesmen in time to come can reach that better mind, can awaken it, can evoke it, can induce it

secret hatching of a new Constitution. Their circular was sent about to obtain an expression of Indian opinion, official and non-official. Plenty of time has been given, and is to be given, for an examination and discussion of these proposals. We shall not be called upon to give an official decision until spring next year, and I shall not personally be called upon for a decision before the middle of next Session. One step we have taken to which I attach the greatest importance. Two Indians have for the first time been

r. Racial dislike is a dislike not of political domination, but of racial domination; and my object in making that conspicuous change in the constitution of the Council of India which advises the Secretary of State for India, was to do something, and if rightly understood and interpreted to do a great deal, to teach all English officers and governors in India, from the yo

l be the worst that has ever been known, I think, in India's recorded annals. Pestilence during the last nine months has stalked through the land, wasting her cities and villages, uncontrolled and uncontrollable, so far as we can tell, by human forethought or care. When I read some of these figures in the House of Commons, a few perturbed cries of "Shame" accompanied them. These cries came from the natural sympathy, horror, amazement, and commiseration, with which we all listen to such ghastly stories. The shame does not lie with the Government. If you see anything in your newspapers about these plague figures, remember that they are not like an epidemic here. In trying to remedy plague, you have to encounter the habits and prejudices of hundreds of years. Suppose you find plague is conveyed by a flea upon a rat, and suppose you are dealing with a population who object to the taking away of life. You see for yourselves the difficulty? The Government of India have applied themselves with great energy, with fresh activity, and they believe they have got the secret of this fell disaster. They have laid down a large policy of medical, sanita