John Morley

“ 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 to apply itself to practical purposes for the improvement of the conditions of such a community, they will earn the crown of beneficent fame indeed. ”

“ And while you are in India, and among Indians, and responsible to Indians, because you are as responsible to them as you are to us here, while you are in that position, gentlemen, do not live in Europe all the time. Whether or not—if I may be quite candid—it was a blessing either for India or for Great Britain that this great responsibility fell upon us, whatever the ultimate destiny and end of all this is to be, at any rate I know of no more imposing and momentous transaction than the government of India by you and those like you. ”

“ But I will not be in a hurry to believe that there are no such people and that we can never depend on them. When we believe this—that we have no body of organised, reasonable people on our side in India—when you gentlemen who know the country, say this—then I say that, on the day when we believe that, we shall be confronted with as awkward, as embarrassing, and as hazardous a situation as has ever confronted the rulers of any of the most complex and gigantic States in human history. ”

“ They are overheard thousands of miles away by a vast and complex community. They are overheard by others who are doing the service and work of the Crown in India. By those, too, who take part in the immense work of commercial and non-official life in India. We are overheard by great Indian princes who are outside British India. We are overheard by the dim masses of Indians whom, in spite of all, we shall persist in regarding as our friends. We are overheard by those whom, I am afraid, we must reluctantly call our enemies. ”

“ Then why should we be surprised that young Indians feel the same movement of mind, 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!" ”

“ I hope it will not be bad taste to say in the noble Lord's presence, that you will never send to India, and you have never sent to India, a Viceroy his superior, if, indeed, his equal, in force of mind, in unsparing and remorseless industry, in passionate and devoted interest in all that concerns the well-being of India, with an imagination fired by the grandeur of the political problem that India presents—you never sent a man with more of all these attributes than when you sent Lord Curzon. ”

“ It is a difference in life, in tradition, in history, in all the social things as well as articles of belief, that constitute a community. Do not let us forget what makes it interesting and even exciting. Do not let us forget that, in talking of Hindus and Mahomedans, we are dealing with, and are brought face to face with, vast historic issues. We are dealing with the very mightiest forces that through all the centuries and ages have moulded the fortunes of great States and the destinies of countless millions of mankind. ”

“ Do not think there is a single responsible leader of the reform party in India, who does not deplore the outbreak of disorder that we have had to do our best to put down; who does not agree that disorder, whatever your ultimate policy may be—must be with a firm hand put down. If India to-morrow became a self-governing Colony—disorder would still have to be put down with an iron hand; I do not know and I do not care, to whom these gentlemen propose to hand over the charge of governing India. ”

“ 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 and sovereign task? ”

“ Well, the Government of India and myself have from the very first beginning of this unsettled state of things, never varied in our determination to persevere in the policy of reform.
I put two plain questions to your Lordships. I am sick of all the retrograde commonplaces about the weakness of concession to violence and so on. Persevering in our plan of reform is not a concession to violence. Reforms that we have publicly announced, adopted, and worked out for more than two years—how is it a concession to violence, to persist in those reforms? It is simply standing to your guns. ”

“ Is all that is called unrest in India mere froth? Or is it a deep rolling flood? Is it the result of natural order and wholesome growth in this vast community? Is it natural effervescence, or is it deadly fermentation? Is India with all its heterogeneous populations—is it moving slowly and steadily to new and undreamt of unity? It is the vagueness of the discontent, which is not universal—it is the vagueness that makes it harder to understand, harder to deal with. ”

“ One of the happy qualities of youth—and there is no pleasure greater than to see you in that blissful stage, for one who has passed beyond, long beyond it—is not to be, I think I am right, in a hurry, not to be too anxious either for the present or future measure of the responsibilities of life and a career. You will forgive me if I remind you of what I am sure you all know—that the civil government of 230,000,000 persons in British India is in the hands of some 1,200 men who belong to the Indian Civil Service. ”

“ Gentlemen, we have seen attempts, in the lifetime of some of us here to-night, attempts in Continental Europe, to govern by pure repression. Has one of them really succeeded? They have all failed. There may be now and again a spurious semblance of success, but in truth they have all failed. Whether we with our enormous power and resolution should fail, I do not know. But I do not believe anybody in this room representing so powerfully as you do dominant sentiments that are not always felt in England—that in this room there is anybody who is for an era of pure repression. ”

“ That they would sharply criticise the British system of government has been long known. It was inevitable. There need be no surprise in the fact that they want a share in political influence, and want a share in the emoluments of administration. Their means—many of them—are scanty; they have little to lose and much to gain from far-reaching changes. They see that the British hand works the State machine surely and smoothly, and they think, having no fear of race animosities, that their hand could work the machine as surely and as smoothly as the British hand. ”

“ They have been faced by the servants of the British Crown with toil and courage and patience, with deep counsel and a resolution that has never faltered nor shaken. If errors have occurred, the agents of my government have spared no pains and no self-sacrifice to correct them; if abuses have been proved, vigorous hands have laboured to apply a remedy.
No secret of empire can avert the scourge of drought and plague, but experienced administrators have done all that skill and devotion are capable of doing, to mitigate those dire calamities of Nature. ”

“ I can only say, in conclusion, that I think I have said enough to convince you that I am doing what I believe you would desire me to do—conducting administration in the spirit which I believe you will approve; listening with impartiality to all I can learn; desirous to support all those who are toiling at arduous work in India; and that we shall not be deterred from pursuing to the end, a policy of firmness on the one hand, and of liberal and steady reform on the other. We shall not see all the fruits of it in our day. ”

“ In the great charter of 1858 Queen Victoria gave you noble assurance of her earnest desire to stimulate the peaceful industry of India, to promote works of public utility and improvement, and to administer the government for the benefit of all resident therein. The schemes that have been diligently framed and executed for promoting your material convenience and advance—schemes unsurpassed in their magnitude and their boldness—bear witness before the world to the zeal with which that benignant promise has been fulfilled. ”

“ Yet we still hold that it would be the height of political folly for us at this moment to refuse to do all we can, with prudence and energy, to rally the Moderates 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. ”

“ You will have to stop the printing of unlicensed books. The possession of a copy of Milton, or Burke, or Macaulay, or of Bright's speeches, and all that flashing array of writers and orators who are the glory of our grand, our noble English tongue—the possession of one of these books will, on this peculiar and puerile notion of government, be like the possession of a bomb, and we shall have to direct the passing of an Explosives Books Act. ”

“ You, Gentlemen, who are still in the Service, and the veterans I see around me who have been in that great Service, naturally and properly look first of all, and almost altogether, upon India. A Secretary of State has to look also upon Great Britain and upon Parliament—and that is not always a perfectly easy situation to adjust. I forget who it was that said about the rulers of India in India:—"It is no easy thing for a man to keep his watch in two longitudes at once at the same time." ”

“ I think each of us can see for himself the desirability of every one who goes out there, having certain ideas in his head as to his own relations with the people whom he is called upon to govern. That is the mission with which we have to charge you, and it is as momentous a mission as was ever confided to any great military commander or admiral of the fleet—this mission of yours to place yourself in touch with the people whom you have to govern. ”

“ 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 impatience of the idealist! (Loud cheers.) I should like to ask the Indian idealist, whether it is a good way of procuring what everybody desires, a reduction of Military expenditure, for example, whether it is a good way of doing that, to foment a spirit of strife in India which makes reduction of Military forces difficult, which makes the maintenance of Military force indispensable? ”

“ No doubt an Imperial Conference raises one or two very delicate questions, as to whether common citizenship is to be observed, or whether the relations between India and the Colonies should remain what they are. I am not going to expatiate upon that to-night, but it did occur to me in reading all these proceedings that the part of Hamlet was rather omitted, because India after all is the only real Empire. You there have an immense Dominion, an almost countless population, governed by foreign rulers. That is what constitutes an Empire. ”

“ Although the Government of India is complicated and intricate, they cannot suppose that I shall fail for one moment in doing all in my power to demonstrate that we are moved by a kindly, a sympathetic, a friendly, an energetic, and what I will call a governing spirit, in the highest form and sense of that sovereign and inspiring word. ”

“ Nothing strikes me much more than this, when I talk of the better mind of India—there are subtle elements, religious, spiritual, mystical, traditional, historical in what we may call for the moment the Indian mind, which are very hard for the most candid and patient to grasp or to realise in their full force. But our duty, and it is a splendid duty, is to try. I always remember a little passage in the life of a great Anglo-Indian, Sir Henry Lawrence, a very simple passage, and it is this, "No one ever ate at Sir Henry Lawrence's table without learning to think more kindly of the natives." ”

“ All men have enjoyed protection of the law. The law itself has been administered without disrespect to creed or caste, or to usages and ideas rooted in your civilisation. It has been simplified in form, and its machinery adjusted to the requirements of ancient communities slowly entering a new world.
The charge confided to my Government concerns the destinies of countless multitudes of men now and for ages to come; and it is a paramount duty to repress with a stern arm guilty conspiracies that have no just cause and no serious aim. ”

“ None of those who are responsible take gloomy views. They know the difficulties, they are prepared to grapple with them. They will do their best to keep down mutinous opposition. They hope to attract that good will which must, after all, be the real foundation of our prosperity and strength in India. We believe that this admission of the Indians to a larger and more direct share in the government of their country and in all the affairs of their country, without for a moment taking from the central power its authority, will fortify the foundations of our position. ”