Read Ebook: Indian speeches (1907-1909) by Morley John

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 201 lines and 44927 words, and 5 pages

Some fault was found, and I do not in the least complain, with the deportation of two native gentlemen. I do not quarrel with the man who finds fault with that proceeding. To take anybody and deport him without bringing any charge against him, and with no intention of bringing him to trial, is a step that, I think, the House is perfectly justified in calling me to account for. I have done my best to account for it, and to-day, anyone who knows the Punjab, would agree that, whatever may happen at some remote period, its state is comparatively quiet and satisfactory. I am not going to repeat my justification of that strong measure of deportation, but I should like to read to the House the words of the Viceroy in the Legislative Council in November last, when he was talking about the circumstances with which we had to deal. He said, addressing Lord Kitchener--

"I hope that your Excellency will on my behalf as Viceroy and as representing the King convey to His Majesty's Indian troops my thanks for the contempt with which they have received the disgraceful overtures which I know have been made to them. The seeds of sedition have been unscrupulously scattered throughout India, even amongst the hills of the frontier tribes. We are grateful that they have fallen on much barren ground, but we can no longer allow their dissemination."

Will anybody say, that in view of the possible danger pointed to in that language of the Viceroy two or three months ago, we did wrong in using the regulation which applied to the case? No one can say what mischief might have followed, if we had taken any other course than that which we actually took.

Let me beseech my hon. friends at least to try for some sense of balanced proportion, instead of allowing their wrath at one particular incident of policy to blot out from their vision all the wide and durable operations, to which we have set firm and persistent hands. After all, this absence of a sense of proportion is what, more than any other one thing, makes a man a wretched politician.

Now as to the reforms that are mentioned in my hon. friend's Amendment. It is an extraordinary Amendment. It--

"submits that the present condition of affairs in India demands the immediate and serious attention of His Majesty's Government."

I could cordially vote for that, only remarking that the hon. member must think the Secretary of State, and the Viceroy, and other persons immediately concerned in the Government of India, very curious people if he supposes that the state of affairs in India does not always demand their immediate and very serious attention. Then the Amendment says--

"The present proposals of the Government of India are inadequate to allay the existing and growing discontent."

Dr. RUTHERFORD: I was in the hands both of officials and of Indians.

Mr. MORLEY: Then let me assure him, perhaps to his amazement, that he came out of the hands of both of them still with something to learn. I wonder whether, when this House is asked to condemn the present proposals of the Government of India as being inadequate to allay the existing and growing discontent, it is realised exactly how the case stands. I will repeat what I said in the debate on the Indian Budget. The Government of India sent over to the India Office their proposals--their various schemes for advisory councils and so forth. We at the India Office subjected them to a careful scrutiny and laborious examination. As a result of this careful scrutiny and examination, they were sent back to the Government of India with the request that they would submit them to discussion in various quarters. The instruction to the Government of India was that by the end of March, the India Office was to learn what the general view was at which the Government of India had themselves arrived upon the plans, with all their complexities and variations. We wanted to know what they would tell us. It will be for us to consider how far the report so arrived at, how far these proposals, ripened by Indian opinion, carried out the policy which His Majesty's Government had in view. Surely that is a reasonable and simple way of proceeding? When you have to deal with complex communities of varied races, and all the other peculiarities of India, you have to think out how your proposals will work. Democracies do not always think how things will work. Sir Henry Cotton made a speech that interested and struck me by its moderation and reasonableness. He made a number of remarks in perfect good faith about officials, which I received in a chastened spirit, for he has been for a very long time a very distinguished official himself. Therefore, he knows all about it. He went on to talk of the great problem of the separation of the executive and judicial functions, which is one of the living problems of India. I can only assure my hon. friend that that is engaging our attention both in India and here.

Another of the subjects to which the attention of the Indian Government has been specifically directed has regard to the mitigation of flogging, the restriction of civil flogging, and the limitation of military flogging to specific cases. In this we are making a marked advance in humanity and common sense,--which is itself a kind of humanity.

My hon. friend appeals to me saying that all will be well in India, if the Secretary of State will make a statement which will show the Indian people that, in his relations with them, his hopes for them, and his efforts for them, he is moved by a kindly, sympathetic, and friendly feeling, showing them that his heart is with them. All I have got to say is that I have never shown myself anything else. My heart is with them. What is bureaucracy to me? It is a great machine in India, yes a splendid machine, for performing the most difficult task that ever was committed to the charge of any nation. But show me where it fails--that it is perfect in every respect no sensible man would contend for a moment--but show me at any point, let any of my hon. friends show me from day to day as this session passes, where this bureaucracy, as they call it, has been at fault. Do they suppose it possible that I will not show my recognition of that failure, and do all that I can to remedy it? 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.

INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE

GENTLEMEN,--I have first of all to thank you for what I understand is a rare honour--and an honour it assuredly is--of being invited to be your guest to-night. The position of a Secretary of State in the presence of the Indian Civil Service is not an entirely simple one. 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." That is the case of the Secretary of State. It is not the business of the Secretary of State to look exclusively at India, though I will confess to you for myself that during the moderately short time I have held my present office, I have kept my eye upon India constantly, steadfastly, and with every desire to learn the whole truth upon every situation as it arose.

But there must be a thorough comprehension in the mind of the Secretary of State of two things--first of all, of the Indian point of view; and, secondly, the point of view as it appears to those who are the masters of me and of you. Do not forget that adjustment has to be made. It would be impertinent of me to pay compliments to the Civil Service, to whom I propose this toast--"The Health of the Indian Civil Service." You might think for a moment, that it was an amateur proposing prosperity and success to experts. I have had in my days a good deal to do with experts of one kind and another, and I assure you that I do not think an expert is at all the worse when he gets a candid-minded and reasonably well trained amateur.

A DIFFICULT PROBLEM.

I am trying to feel my way through the most difficult problem, the most difficult situation that a responsible Government can have to face. Of course, I am dependent upon information. But as I read it, as I listen to serious Indian experts with large experience, it all sounds estrangement and alienation even though it be no worse than superficial. Now that is the problem that we have to deal with. Gentlemen, I should very badly repay your kindness in asking me to come among you to-night, if I were to attempt for a minute to analyse or to prove all the conditions that have led to this state of things. It would need hours and days. This is not, I think, the occasion, nor the moment. Our first duty--the first duty of any Government--is to keep order. But just remember this. It would be idle to deny, and I am not sure that any of you gentlemen would deny, that there is at this moment, and there has been for some little time past, and very likely there will be for some time to come, a living movement in the mind of the peoples for whom you are responsible. A living movement, and a movement for what? A movement for objects which we ourselves have all taught them to think desirable objects. And unless we somehow or other can reconcile order with satisfaction of those ideas and aspirations, gentlemen, the fault will not be theirs. It will be ours. It will mark the breakdown of what has never yet broken down in any part of the world--the breakdown of British statesmanship. That is what it will do. Now I do not believe anybody--either in this room or out of this room--believes that we can now enter upon an era of pure repression. You cannot enter at this date and with English public opinion, mind you, watching you, upon an era of pure repression, and I do not believe really that anybody desires any such thing. I do not believe so. 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. Gentlemen, I would just digress for a moment if I am not tiring you. About the same time as the transfer, about fifty years ago, of the Government of India from the old East India Company to the Crown, another very important step was taken, a step which I have often thought since I have been concerned with the Government of India was far more momentous, one almost deeper than the transfer to the Crown. And what do you think that was? That was the first establishment--I think I am right in my date--of Universities. We in this country are so accustomed to look upon political changes as the only important changes, that we very often forget such a change as the establishment of Universities. And if any of you are inclined to prophesy, I should like to read to you something that was written by that great and famous man, Lord Macaulay, in the year 1836, long before the Universities were thought of. What did he say? What a warning it is, gentlemen. He wrote, in the year 1836:--"At the single town of Hooghly 1,400 boys are learning English. The effect of this education on the Hindus is prodigious.... It is my firm belief that if our plans of education are followed up, there will not be a single idolater among the respectable classes in Bengal thirty years hence. And this will be effected merely by the natural operation of knowledge and reflection." Ah, gentlemen, the natural operation of knowledge and reflection carries men of a different structure of mind, different beliefs, different habits and customs of life--it carries them into strange and unexpected paths. I am not going to embark you to-night upon these vast controversies, but when we talk about education, are we not getting very near the root of the case? Now to-night we are not in the humour--I am sure you are not, I certainly am not--for philosophising. Somebody is glad of it. I will tell you what I think of--as I have for a good many months past--I think first of the burden of responsibility weighing on the governing men at Calcutta and Simla and the other main centres of power and of labour. We think of the anxieties of those in India, and in England as well, who have relatives in remote places and under conditions that are very familiar to you all. I have a great admiration for the self-command, for the freedom from anything like panic, which has hitherto marked the attitude of the European population of Calcutta and some other places, and I confess I have said to myself that if they had found here, in London, bombs in the railway carriages, bombs under the Prime Minister's House, and so forth, we should have had tremendous scare headlines and all the other phenomena of excitement and panic. So far as I am informed, though very serious in Calcutta--the feeling is serious, how could it be anything else?--they have exercised the great and noble virtue, in all ranks and classes, of self-command. Now the Government--if you will allow me for a very few moments to say a word on behalf of the Government, not here alone but at Simla--we and they, for after all we are one--have been assailed for a certain want of courage and what is called, often grossly miscalled, vigour.

We were told the other day--and this brings us to the root of policy--that there had been a momentary flash of courage in the Government, a momentary flash of courage when the Government of India and we here assented to the deportation of two men, and it is made a matter of complaint that they were released immediately. Well, they were not released immediately, but after six or eight months--I forget exactly how many months--of detention. They were there with no charge, no trial, nor intention of bringing them to trial. How long were we to keep them there? Not a day, I answer, nor one hour, after the specific and particular mischief, with a view to which this drastic proceeding was adopted, had abated. Specific mischief, mind you. I will not go into that argument to-night: another day I will. I will only say one thing. To strain the meaning and the spirit of an exceptional law like the old Regulation of the year 1818 in such a fashion as this, what would it do? Such a strain, pressed upon us in the perverse imagination of headstrong men, is no better than a suggestion for provoking lawless and criminal reprisals. You may not agree with me. You are kindly allowing me as your guest to say things with which perhaps you do not agree. After all, we understand one another--we speak the same language, and I tell you that a proceeding of that kind, indefinite detention, is a thing that would not be endured in this country. Yes, if there were great and clear connection between the detention and the outbreak of disorder, certainly; but as the disorder had abated it would have been intolerable for us to continue the incarceration.

Last Monday, what is called a Press Act, was passed by the Government of India, in connection with, and simultaneously with, an Explosives Act which ought to have been passed, I should think, twenty years ago. What is the purport of the Press Act? I do not attempt to give it in technical language. Where the Local Government finds a newspaper article inciting to murder and violence, or resort to explosives for the purposes of murder or violence, that Local Government may apply to a Magistrate of a certain status to issue an order for the seizure of the Press by which that incitement has been printed; and if the owner of the Press feels himself aggrieved, he may within fifteen days ask the High Court to reverse the order, and direct the restoration of the Press. That is a statement of the law that has been passed in India, and to which I do not doubt we shall give our assent. There has been the usual outcry raised--usual in all these cases. Certain people say, "Oh, you are too late." Others say, "You are too early." I will say to you first of all, and to any other audience afterwards, that I have no apology to make for being a party to the passing of this law now; and I have no apology to make for not passing it before. I do not believe in short cuts, and I believe that the Government in these difficult circumstances is wise not to be in too great a hurry. I have no apology to make for introducing executive action into what would normally be a judicial process. Neither, on the other hand, have I any apology to make for tempering executive action with judicial elements; and I am very glad to say that an evening newspaper last night, which is not of the politics to which I belong, entirely approves of that. It says: "You must show that you are not afraid of referring your semi-executive, semi-judicial action to the High Court." This Act meddles with no criticism, however strong, of Government measures. It discourages the advocacy of no practical policy, social, political, or economic. Yet I see, to my great regret and astonishment, that this Act is described as an Act for judging cases of seditious libel without a Jury. It is contended by some--and I respect the contention--that the Imperial Parliament ought to have been consulted before this Act was passed, and ought to be consulted now. My veteran friends lived before the days of household suffrage. Well, it is said that the voice of Parliament ought to be heard in so grave a matter as this. But the principles of the proposals were fully considered, as was quite right, not only by the Secretary of State in Council, but by the Cabinet. It was a matter of public urgency. I stand by it. But it is perfectly natural to ask: Should the Imperial Parliament have no voice? I have directed the Government of India to report to the Secretary of State all the proceedings taken under this Act; and I undertake, as long as I hold the office of Secretary of State, to present to Parliament from time to time the reports of the proceedings taken under this somewhat drastic Act.

I will not be in a hurry to believe that there is not a great body in India of reasonable people, not only among the quiet, humble, law-abiding classes, but among the educated classes. I do not care what they call themselves, or what organisation they may form themselves into. 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. I am confident that if the crisis comes, it will find us ready, but let us keep our minds clear in advance. There have been many dark and ugly moments--see gentlemen around me who have gone through dark and ugly dates--in our relations with India before now. We have a clouded moment before us now. We shall get through it--but only with self-command and without any quackery or cant whether it be the quackery of blind violence disguised as love of order, or the cant of unsound and misapplied sentiment, divorced from knowledge and untouched by any cool consideration of the facts.

ON PROPOSED REFORMS

I feel that I owe a very sincere apology to the House for the disturbance in the business arrangements of the House, of which I have been the cause, though the innocent cause. It has been said that in the delays in bringing forward this subject, I have been anxious to burke discussion. That is not in the least true. The reasons that made it seem desirable to me that the discussion on this most important and far-reaching range of topics should be postponed, were--I believe the House will agree with me--reasons of common sense. In the first place, discussion without anybody having seen the Papers to be discussed, would evidently have been ineffective. In the second place it would have been impossible to discuss those Papers with good effect--the Papers that I am going this afternoon to present to Parliament--until we know, at all events in some degree, what their reception has been in the country most immediately concerned. And then thirdly, my Lords, I cannot but apprehend that discussion here--I mean in Parliament--would be calculated to prejudice the reception in India of the proposals that His Majesty's Government, in concert with the Government of India, are now making. My Lords, I submit those are three very essential reasons why discussion in my view, and I hope in the view of this House, was to be deprecated. This afternoon your Lordships will be presented with a very modest Blue-book of 100 or 150 pages, but I should like to promise noble Lords that to-morrow morning there will be ready for them a series of Papers on the same subject, of a size so enormous that the most voracious or even carnivorous appetite for Blue-books will have ample food for augmenting the joys of the Christmas holidays.

The observations that I shall ask your Lordships to allow me to make, are the opening of a very important chapter in the history of the relations of Great Britain and India; and I shall ask the indulgence of the House if I take a little time, not so much in dissecting the contents of the Papers, which the House will be able to do for itself by and by, as in indicating the general spirit that animates His Majesty's Government here, and my noble friend the Governor-General, in making the proposals that I shall in a moment describe. I suppose, like other Secretaries of State for India, I found my first, idea was to have what they used to have in the old days--a Parliamentary Committee to inquire into Indian Government. I see that a predecessor of mine in the India Office, Lord Randolph Churchill--he was there for too short a time--in 1885 had very strongly conceived that idea. On the whole I think there is a great deal at the present day to be said against it.

Therefore what we have done was in concert with the Government of India, first to open a chapter of constitutional reform, of which I will speak in a moment, and next to appoint a Royal Commission to inquire into the internal relations between the Government of India and all its subordinate and co-ordinate parts. That Commission will report, I believe, in February or March next,--February, I hope,--and that again will involve the Government of India and the India Office in Whitehall in pretty laborious and careful inquiries. It cannot be expected--and it ought not to be expected--that an Act passed as the organic Act of 1858 was passed, amidst intense excitement and most disturbing circumstances, should have been in existence for half a century without disclosing flaws and imperfections, or that its operations would not be the better for supervision, or incapable of improvement.

I spoke of delay in these observations, and unfortunately delay has not made the skies any brighter. But, my Lords, do not let us make the Indian sky cloudier than it really is. Do not let us consider the clouds to be darker than they really are. Let me invite your Lordships to look at the formidable difficulties that now encumber us in India, with a due sense of proportion.

What is the state of things as it appears to persons of authority and of ample knowledge in India? One very important and well-known friend of mine in India says this--

"The anarchists are few, but, on the other hand, they are apparently prepared to go any length and to run any risk. It must also be borne in mind that the ordinary man or lad in India has not too much courage, and that the loyal are terrorised by the ruthless extremists."

It is a curious incident that on the very day before the attempt to assassinate Sir Andrew Fraser was made, he had a reception in the college where the would-be assassin was educated, and his reception was of the most enthusiastic and spontaneous kind. I only mention that, to show the curious and subtle atmosphere in which things now are at Calcutta. I will not dwell on that, because although I have a mass of material, this is not the occasion for developing it. I will only add this from a correspondent of great authority--

"There is no fear of anything in the nature of a rising, but if murders continue, a general panic may arise and greatly increase the danger of the situation. We cannot hope that any machinery will completely stop outrages at once. We must be prepared to meet them. There are growing indications that the native population itself is alarmed, and that we shall have the strong support of native public opinion."

The view of important persons in the Government of India is that in substance the position of our Government in India is as sound and as well-founded as it has ever been.

I shall be asked, has not the Government of India been obliged to pass a measure introducing pretty drastic machinery? That is quite true, and I, for one, have no fault whatever to find with them for introducing such machinery and for taking that step. On the contrary, my Lords, I wholly approve, and I share, of course, to the full the responsibility for it. I understand that I am exposed to some obloquy on this account--I am charged with inconsistency. That is a matter on which I am very well able to take care of myself, and I should be ashamed to detain your Lordships for one single moment in arguing about it. Quite early after my coming to the India Office, pressure was put on me to repeal the Regulation of 1818, under which men are now being summarily detained without trial and without charge, and without intention to try or to charge. That, of course, is a tremendous power to place in the hands of an Executive Government. But I said to myself then, and I say now, that I decline to take out of the hands of the Government of India any weapon that they have got, in circumstances so formidable, so obscure, and so impenetrable as are the circumstances that surround British Government in India.

There are two paths of folly in these matters. One is to regard all Indian matters, Indian procedure and Indian policy, as if it were Great Britain or Ireland, and to insist that all the robes and apparel that suit Great Britain or Ireland must necessarily suit India. The other is to think that all you have got to do is what I see suggested, to my amazement, in English print--to blow a certain number of men from guns, and then your business will be done. Either of these paths of folly leads to as great disaster as the other. I would like to say this about the Summary Jurisdiction Bill--I have no illusions whatever. I do not ignore, and I do not believe that Lord Lansdowne opposite, or anyone else can ignore, the frightful risks involved in transferring in any form or degree what should be the ordinary power under the law, to arbitrary personal discretion. I am alive, too, to the temptation under summary procedure of various kinds, to the danger of mistaking a headstrong exercise of force for energy. Again, I do not for an instant forget, and I hope those who so loudly applaud legislation of this kind do not forget, the tremendous price that you pay for all operations of this sort in the reaction and the excitement that they provoke. If there is a man who knows all these drawbacks I think I am he. But there are situations in which a responsible Government is compelled to run these risks and to pay this possible price, however high it may appear to be.

It is like war, a hateful thing, from which, however, some of the most ardent lovers of peace, and some of those rulers of the world whose names the most ardent lovers of peace most honour and revere--it is one of the things from which these men have not shrunk. The only question for us is whether there is such a situation in India to-day as to warrant the passing of the Act the other day, and to justify resort to the Regulation of 1818. I cannot imagine anybody reading the speeches--especially the unexaggerated remarks of the Viceroy--and the list of crimes perpetrated, and attempted, that were read out last Friday in Calcutta--I cannot imagine that anybody reading that list and thinking what they stand for, would doubt for a single moment that summary procedure of some kind or another was justified and called for. I discern a tendency to criticise this legislation on grounds that strike me as extraordinary. After all, it is not our fault that we have had to bring in this measure. You must protect the lives of your officers. You must protect peaceful and harmless people, both Indian and European, from the blood-stained havoc of anarchic conspiracy. We deplore the necessity, but we are bound to face the facts. I myself recognise this necessity with infinite regret, and with something, perhaps, rather deeper than regret. But it is not the Government, either here or in India, who are the authors of this necessity, and I should not at all mind, if it is not impertinent and unbecoming in me to say so, standing up in another place and saying exactly what I say here, that I approve of these proceedings and will do my best to support the Government of India.

Now a very important question arises, for which I would for a moment ask the close attention of your Lordships, because I am sure that both here and elsewhere it will be argued that the necessity, and the facts that caused the necessity, of bringing forward strong repressive machinery should arrest our policy of reforms. That has been stated, and I dare say many people will assent to it. 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. A number of gentlemen, of whom I wish to speak with all respect, addressed a very courteous letter to me the other day that appeared in the public prints, exhorting me to remember that Oriental countries inevitably and invariably interpret kindness as fear. I do not believe it. The Founder of Christianity arose in an Oriental country, and when I am told that Orientals always mistake kindness for fear, I must repeat that I do not believe it, any more than I believe the stranger saying of Carlyle, that after all the fundamental question between any two human beings is--Can I kill thee, or canst thou kill me? I do not agree that any organised society has ever subsisted upon either of those principles, or that brutality is always present as a fundamental postulate in the relations between rulers and ruled.

My first question is this. There are alternative courses open to us. We can either withdraw our reforms, or we can persevere in them. Which would be the more flagrant sign of weakness--to go steadily on with your policy of reform in spite of bombs, or to let yourself openly be forced by bombs and murder clubs to drop your policy? My second question is--Who would be best pleased if I were to announce to your Lordships that the Government have determined to drop the reforms? Why, it is notorious that those who would be best pleased would be the extremists and irreconcilables, just because they know well that for us to do anything to soften estrangement, and appease alienation between the European and native populations, would be the very best way that could be adopted to deprive them of fuel for their sinister and mischievous designs. I hope your Lordships will agree in that, and I should like to add one reason which I am sure will weigh very much with you. I do not know whether your Lordships have read the speech made last Friday by Sir Norman Baker, the new Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, in the Council at Calcutta, dealing with the point that I am endeavouring to present. In a speech of great power and force, he said that these repressive measures did not represent even the major part of the true policy dealing with the situation. The greater task, he said, was to adjust the machinery of government, so that their Indian fellow-subjects might be allotted parts which a self-respecting people could fill, and that when the constitutional reforms were announced, as they would be shortly, he believed that the task of restoring order would be on the road to accomplishment. For a man holding such a position to make such a statement at that moment, is all the corroboration that we need for persisting in our policy of reform. I have talked with Indian experts of all kinds concerning reforms. I admit that some have shaken their heads; they did not like reforms very warmly. But when I have asked, "Shall we stand still, then?" there is not one of those experienced men who has not said, "That is quite impossible. Whatever else we do, we cannot stand still."

I should not be surprised if there are here some who say: You ought to have some very strong machinery for putting down a free Press. A long time ago a great Indian authority, Sir Thomas Munro, used language which I will venture to quote, not merely for the purpose of this afternoon's exposition, but in order that everybody who listens and reads may feel the formidable difficulties that our predecessors have overcome, and that we in our turn mean to try to overcome. Sir Thomas Munro said--

"We are trying an experiment never yet tried in the world--maintaining a foreign dominion by means of a native army; and teaching that army, through a free Press, that they ought to expel us, and deliver their country."

He went on to say--

"A tremendous revolution may overtake us, originating in a free Press."

I recognise to the full the enormous force of a declaration of that kind. But let us look at it as practical men, who have got to deal with the government of the country. Supposing you abolish freedom of the Press or suspend it, that will not end the business. You will have to shut up schools and colleges, for what would be the use of suppressing newspapers, if you do not shut the schools and colleges? Nor will that be all. 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. All this and its various sequels and complements make a policy if you please. But after such a policy had produced a mute, sullen, muzzled, lifeless India, we could hardly call it, as we do now the brightest jewel in the Imperial Crown. No English Parliament will ever permit such a thing.

I do not think I need go through all the contents of the dispatch of the Governor-General and my reply, containing the plan of His Majesty's Government, which will be in your Lordships' hands very shortly. I think your Lordships will find in them a well-guarded expansion of principles that were recognised in 1861, and are still more directly and closely connected with us now by the action of Lord Lansdowne in 1892. I have his words, and they are really as true a key to the papers in our hands as they were to the policy of the noble Marquess at that date. He said--

"We hope, however, that we have succeeded in giving to our proposals a form sufficiently definite to secure a satisfactory advance in the representation of the people in our legislative Councils, and to give effect to the principle of selection as far as possible on the advice of such sections of the community as are likely to be capable of assisting us in that manner."

Then you will find that another Governor-General in Council in India, whom I greatly rejoice to see still among us, my noble friend the Marquess of Ripon, said in 1882--

"It is not primarily with a view to the improvement of administration, that this measure is put forward, it is chiefly desirable as an instrument of political and popular education"

The doctrines announced by the noble Marquess opposite, and by my noble friend, are the standpoint from which we approached the situation and framed our proposals.

I will not trouble the House by going through the history of the course of the proceedings--that will be found in the Papers. I believe the House will be satisfied, just as I am satisfied, with the candour and patience that have been bestowed on the preparation of the scheme in India, and I hope I may add it has been treated with equal patience and candour here; and the end of it is that, though some points of difference arose, though the Government of India agreed to drop certain points of their scheme--the Advisory Councils, for example--on the whole there was remarkable agreement between the Government of India and myself as to the best way of dealing with these proceedings as to Legislative Councils. I will enumerate the points very shortly, and though I am afraid it may be tedious, I hope your Lordships will not find the tedium unbearable, because, after all, what you are beginning to consider to-day, is the turning over of a fresh leaf in the history of British responsibility to India. There are only a handful of distinguished members of this House who understand the details of Indian Administration, but I will explain them as shortly as I can.

This is a list of the powers which we shall have to acquire from Parliament when we bring in a Bill. I may say that we do not propose to bring in a Bill this session. That would be idle. I propose to bring in a Bill next year. This is the first power we shall come to Parliament for. At present the maximum and minimum numbers of Legislative Councils are fixed by statute. We shall come to Parliament to authorise an increase in the numbers of those Councils, both the Viceroy's Council and the Provincial Councils. Secondly, the members are now nominated by the head of the Government, either the Viceroy or the Lieutenant-Governor. No election takes place in the strict sense of the term. The nearest approach to it is the nomination by the Viceroy, upon the recommendation of a majority of voters of certain public bodies. We do not propose to ask Parliament to abolish nomination. We do propose to ask Parliament, in a very definite way, to introduce election working alongside of nomination with a view to the aim admitted in all previous schemes, including that of the noble Marquess opposite--the due representation of the different classes of the community. Third. The Indian Councils Act of 1892 forbids--and this is no doubt a most important prohibition--either resolutions or divisions of the Council in financial discussions. We shall ask Parliament to repeal this prohibition. Fourth. We shall propose to invest legislative Councils with power to discuss matters of public and general importance, and to pass recommendations or resolutions to the Indian Government. That Government will deal with them as carefully, or as carelessly, as they think fit--just as a Government does here. Fifth. To extend the power that at present exists, to appoint a Member of the Council to preside. Sixth. Bombay and Madras have now Executive Councils, numbering two. I propose to ask Parliament to double the number of ordinary members. Seventh. The Lieutenant-Governors have no Executive Council. We shall ask Parliament to sanction the creation of such Councils, consisting of not more than two ordinary members, and to define the power of the Lieutenant-Governor to overrule his Council. I am perfectly sure there may be differences of opinion as to these proposals. I only want your Lordships to believe that they have been well thought out, and that they are accepted by the Governor-General in Council.

There is one point of extreme importance which, no doubt, though it may not be over diplomatic for me to say so at this stage, will create some controversy. I mean the matter of the official majority. The House knows what an official majority is. It is a device by which the Governor-General, or the Governor of Bombay or Madras, may secure a majority in his Legislative Council by means of officials and nominees. And the officials, of course, for very good reasons, just like a Cabinet Minister or an Under-Secretary, whatever the man's private opinion may be, would still vote, for the best of reasons, and I am bound to think with perfect wisdom, with the Government. But anybody can see how directly, how palpably, how injuriously, an arrangement of this kind tends to weaken, and I think I may say even to deaden, the sense both of trust and responsibility in the non-official members of these councils. Anybody can see how the system tends to throw the non-official member into an attitude of peevish, sulky, permanent opposition, and, therefore, has an injurious effect on the minds and characters of members of these Legislative Councils.

I know it will be said--I will not weary the House by arguing it, but I only desire to meet at once the objection that will be taken--that these councils will, if you take away the safeguard of the official majority, pass any number of wild-cat Bills. The answer to that is that the head of the Government can veto the wild-cat Bills. The Governor-General can withhold his assent, and the withholding of the assent of the Governor-General is no defunct power. Only the other day, since I have been at the India Office, the Governor-General disallowed a Bill passed by a Local Government which I need not name, with the most advantageous effect. I am quite convinced that if that Local Government had had an unofficial majority the Bill would never have been passed, and the Governor-General would not have had to refuse his assent. But so he did, and so he would if these gentlemen, whose numbers we propose to increase and whose powers we propose to widen, chose to pass wild-cat Bills. And it must be remembered that the range of subjects within the sphere of Provincial Legislative Councils is rigorously limited by statutory exclusions. I will not labour the point now. Anybody who cares, in a short compass, can grasp the argument, of which we shall hear a great deal, in Paragraphs 17 to 20 of my reply to the Government of India, in the Papers that will speedily be in your Lordships' hands.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet