o v 
 
 REESE LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 ] UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 Class 
 
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 ; 
 
 BY LORD CURZON OF KEDLESTON 
 
 L Y A U G U ST, i g 04 
 
 BHHHH 
 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 
 
SPEECHES ON INDIA 
 
SPEECHES ON INDIA 
 
 DELIVERED BY 
 
 LORD CURZON OF KEDLESTON 
 
 (i 
 VICEROY AND GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF INDIA 
 
 WHILE IN ENGLAND IN JULY AUGUST, 1904 
 
 UN; 
 
 LONDON 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 
 
 1904 
 
I 
 
 SPEECH ON THE PRESENTATION OF 
 THE FREEDOM OF THE CITY OF 
 LONDON, AT THE GUILDHALL, ON 
 JULY 20, 1904 
 
 ON Wednesday, July 20, 1904, Lord Curzon was 
 presented with the Freedom of the City of London, 
 in the Guildhall. After he had been addressed by 
 the City Chamberlain (Sir J. Dimsdale), and had 
 signed the Roll of Burgesses, Lord Curzon replied in 
 the following words : 
 
 My Lord Mayor, my Lords, Ladies, and Gentle- 
 men, Let me begin by thanking the Chamberlain 
 very warmly for his kind reference to Lady Curzon. 
 Though, as he remarked, not officially present here 
 to-day, she is yet in this hall to hear the courteous 
 things that he said about her, and with which, in 
 reference to the assistance she has rendered to me 
 and to the work that she has done in India, I venture 
 cordially to associate myself. 
 
 My Lord Mayor, I do not suppose that there is 
 any honour which a public man can value more 
 highly than the Freedom of the City of London. No 
 fee can purchase it, no conqueror can claim it as his 
 own ; it is the free gift of the corporation of the 
 greatest city in the world, and it has the added 
 dignity of the associations that accompany it, and 
 
2 SPEECH AT THE GUILDHALL [i 
 
 the memory of the illustrious names with which each 
 fresh recipient is proud to find his own enrolled. 
 But the honour seems to me to carry an especial 
 grace when it is conferred upon those servants of the 
 Crown who have been serving their country in 
 distant parts, for it shows them that in their absence 
 they have not been altogether forgotten, and that 
 those of you who are at the heart of Empire are not 
 indifferent to what is passing on the outskirts. 
 
 By a law which was designed for different times, 
 and which, in my opinion, is now obsolete, no Viceroy 
 of India can leave India for England, whatever the 
 urgency, public or private, without vacating his office ; 
 and so it is that a man may be absent, as I have been, 
 from his country for an unbroken period of five and 
 a half years without sight or sound of home. During 
 his long exile the weight and isolation of his great 
 post tell heavily upon him. Fatigue of body and 
 spirit often press him down ; the volume of work 
 that he has to discharge is such as no man who has 
 not undertaken it can well imagine. You may judge, 
 therefore, what a reward I had almost said, what 
 a tonic to body and soul is such a reception as this 
 to such a man ; how his heart warms within him at 
 the sympathetic recognition of his countrymen, and 
 how fresh courage and spirit are infused into him to 
 go forth again and renew his task. 
 
 My Lord Mayor, the City Chamberlain in his 
 speech has drawn an appreciative and flattering 
 picture of some of the aspects of the administration 
 with which I have been concerned. If I detected in 
 some of his remarks the too generous partiality of one 
 old Etonian for another, I am yet conscious of the 
 service that he has rendered to India by inviting the 
 
i] ENGLISH INTEREST IN INDIA 3 
 
 attention of this representative assemblage to some 
 features in our recent administration. 
 
 May I also take advantage of the present oppor- 
 tunity to say a few words to my countrymen about 
 that great charge the greatest that is anywhere 
 borne by the English people, nay, more, in my 
 judgment, the most onerous and the most impressive 
 that has ever rested upon the shoulders of a conquer- 
 ing and civilized race? I sometimes think that the 
 most remarkable thing about British rule in India 
 is the general ignorance that prevails about it in 
 England. Seventy years ago Lord Macaulay said, in 
 his speech about the Government of India, that a 
 broken head in Coldbath Fields produced a greater 
 sensation amongst us than three pitched battles in 
 India. Twenty years later Lord Dalhousie, that 
 celebrated pro-consul, wrote that nothing short of a 
 great victory or a great defeat in India was sufficient 
 to create in English society even a transient interest 
 in Indian affairs. If these are the tests of English 
 interest in India, then, my Lords, any such service as 
 it may have been in my power to render must be, 
 indeed, unknown. But I think that things have 
 somewhat advanced since those days. Communica- 
 tions have greatly improved between the two 
 countries ; postal and telegraphic charges have been 
 cheapened; more cold-weather visitors come out to 
 us in India every year; and there is always an 
 intelligent minority of persons here who follow, with 
 the utmost interest, everything that goes on there. 
 Yet, in its main essentials, the indictment still remains 
 true, and you have only to look at the morning 
 newspapers, with rare exceptions and there are 
 exceptions ; for instance, I was delighted to see, only 
 
4 SPEECH AT THE GUILDHALL [i 
 
 a day or two ago, that The Times has announced its 
 intention of recommencing the series of periodical 
 articles upon India which those of us who are 
 interested in that country used to read with so much 
 delight in bygone days I say you have only to look 
 at the newspapers to see that, with rare exceptions, 
 the average Englishman is much more concerned in 
 the latest football or cricket match, in a motor trial, 
 or a wrestling encounter, than he is in the greatest 
 responsibility that has been undertaken by his fellow- 
 countrymen on the face of the earth. Even if he 
 looks abroad he sees more and hears more about the 
 11,000,000 who inhabit the Colonies than he does 
 about the 300,000,000 who inhabit India. In the 
 happiness of our insular detachment, or in the pride 
 of racial expansion, he forgets that the greatest con- 
 stituent of the Empire in scale and in importance lies 
 neither in these islands, nor in the Colonies, but in 
 our Asiatic dependency. It is true that for this 
 ignorance and want of proportion on his part there 
 is abundant excuse. Here are our own people ; this 
 is the hearthstone of the Empire and the nursery of 
 the race ; these islands must always be our first con- 
 cern ; even the Colonies are, in a sense, only one stage 
 more distant, because they are peopled by our own kith 
 and kin. India, on the other hand, is very remote and 
 very unintelligible, and the average Englishman, if only 
 he hears nothing about it from day to day, is apt to 
 think that matters must be going on sufficiently well. 
 My Lords and Gentlemen, I have always ventured 
 to hold a different idea about British rule in India. 
 To me it is the greatest thing that the English 
 people have done, or are doing now; it is the highest 
 touch-stone of national duty. If the nations of the 
 
i] PART PLAYED BY INDIA 5 
 
 earth were to stand up to be judged by some supreme 
 tribunal, I think that upon our European record, or 
 upon our colonial record, we should survive the test. 
 But if there were the slightest hesitation on the part 
 of the judge or jury I would confidently throw our 
 Indian record into the scales. For where else in the 
 world has a race gone forth and subdued, not a 
 country or a kingdom, but a continent, and that 
 continent peopled, not by savage tribes, but by races 
 with traditions and a civilization older than our own, 
 with a history not inferior to ours in dignity or 
 romance ; subduing them not to the law of the sword, 
 but to the rule of justice, bringing peace and order 
 and good government to nearly one-fifth of the entire 
 human race, and holding them with so mild a restraint 
 that the rulers are the merest handful amongst the 
 ruled, a tiny speck of white foam upon a dark and 
 thunderous ocean ? I hope I am no rhapsodist, but 
 I say that I would as soon be a citizen of the country 
 that has wrought this deed as I would be of the 
 country that defeated the Armada, or produced 
 Hampden and Pitt. 
 
 But we all live in a severely practical age, and 
 I can afford to be rather more concrete in my illus- 
 trations. I should like to convey to this audience 
 some idea of the part that India is capable of playing, 
 nay, of the part that it has recently played in the 
 Imperial burden. As I say, my illustrations shall 
 be drawn from recent history and from my own 
 experience. Two of them have been mentioned by 
 the City Chamberlain in his speech. If you want 
 to save your Colony of Natal from being overrun 
 by a formidable enemy, you ask India for help, and 
 she gives it ; if you want to rescue the white men's 
 
6 SPEECH AT THE GUILDHALL [i 
 
 legations from massacre at Peking, and the need 
 is urgent, you request the Government of India to 
 despatch an expedition, and they despatch it ; if you 
 are fighting the Mad Mullah in Somaliland, you soon 
 discover that Indian troops and an Indian general 
 are best qualified for the task, and you ask the 
 Government of India to send them ; if you desire 
 to defend any of your extreme outposts or coaling 
 stations of the Empire, Aden, Mauritius, Singapore, 
 Hong-kong, even Tien-tsin \or Shan-hai-kwan, it is to 
 the Indian Army that you turn ; if you want to build 
 a railway to Uganda or in the Soudan, you apply for 
 Indian labour. When the late Mr. Rhodes was 
 engaged in developing your recent acquisition of 
 Rhodesia, he came to me for assistance. It is with 
 India coolie labour that you exploit the plantations 
 equally of Demerara and Natal ; with Indian trained 
 officers that you irrigate Egypt and dam the Nile ; 
 with Indian forest officers that you tap the resources 
 of Central Africa and Siam ; with Indian surveyors 
 that you explore all the hidden places of the earth. 
 
 Speaking before an audience such as this, I should 
 wish, if I had time, my Lord Mayor, also to 
 demonstrate that, in my opinion, India is a country 
 where there will be much larger openings for the 
 investment of capital in the future than has hitherto 
 been the case, and where a great work of industrial 
 and commercial exploitation lies before us. 
 
 Then, again, how familiar we are in recent times 
 with the argument that India is the vulnerable point 
 of the Empire. And assuredly it is true that if we 
 were engaged in a great international war which 
 God forbid it is not at Dover or London that one, 
 at any rate, of your possible antagonists would strike. 
 
i] IMPORTANCE OF INDIA 7 
 
 He would not bombard Quebec or land a force in 
 Sydney Harbour. It is in Asia that the pressure 
 would be applied; it is your Indian frontier that 
 would bear the brunt. It is there, or thereabouts, in 
 all probability, that the future of your dominion 
 might be decided. 
 
 There is an old proverb which says, " He that 
 England fain would win, must with Ireland first 
 begin." I have always thought that this was rather 
 a dubious compliment to our brothers across St. 
 George's Channel, but I suppose it alludes to the 
 times when the foreign enemy who had aggressive 
 intentions upon us used to begin his invasion in that 
 quarter. At all events, if you were now to substitute 
 " India " for " Ireland " in the refrain, I do not think you 
 would be so very far from the mark. I hope I have 
 said enough, therefore, my Lords and Gentlemen, to 
 show you that you cannot afford to leave India out of 
 your calculations. She is as important to you as you 
 are beneficial to her. In the world politics of the 
 future believe me that India will play an increasing 
 part, and a time will come when in our reformed 
 Board Schools the average English boy will require 
 to know more about India than he does now, will 
 require to know as much about India as he now does 
 about Marathon or Waterloo. 
 
 I grant, my Lord Mayor, that the features of govern- 
 ment in the two countries are very different. And 
 perhaps this is the main cause of the ignorance and 
 misconception to which I have referred. We have 
 in India a good many of the problems that you have 
 here, but they are magnified almost beyond recognition 
 by the complexity of the factors and the immensity 
 of the scale. We also have our own problems, to 
 
8 SPEECH AT THE GUILDHALL [i 
 
 which, in the tranquil uniformity of life in these 
 islands, you are fortunately strangers. You have not 
 the perpetual and harassing anxiety of a land frontier 
 5700 miles in length, peopled by hundreds of different 
 tribes, most of them inured to religious fanaticism 
 and hereditary rapine. A single outbreak at a single 
 point may set entire sections of that frontier ablaze. 
 Then, beyond it, we are brought into direct contact 
 with the picturesque but perilous debility of in- 
 dependent, or quasi-independent, Asiatic States, 
 some of them incurably diseased, and hastening to 
 their fall; and behind them, again, are the muffled 
 figures of great European Powers, advancing nearer 
 and nearer, and sometimes finding in these conditions 
 temptations to action that is not in strict accordance 
 with the interests which we are bound to defend. 
 That, my Lord Mayor, is the external problem of India. 
 Then, if we look within, whereas you in England 
 have a population that is relatively homogeneous, we 
 have to deal in India with races that are as different 
 from each other as the Esquimaux is from the 
 Spaniard or the Irishman from the Turk, with creeds 
 that range between the extreme points of the basest 
 animalism on the one hand and the most exalted 
 metaphysics on the other, and with standards of life 
 that cover the whole space between barbarism and 
 civilization. You have here an aristocracy that is 
 drawn from the people, and that goes back to it. Our 
 aristocracy in India consists of native chiefs of diverse 
 races, many of them as much aliens to the people as 
 we are ourselves, presenting every variety of status 
 and privilege, from the magnificent potentates that 
 you sometimes see in this country to the pettiest 
 landed proprietor. 
 
i] LAND PROBLEMS AND FAMINES 9 
 
 You hardly know here what the phrase "land 
 revenue" means. In India it is the be-all and end-all 
 of millions of the population, and it is the mainspring 
 of our internal administration. In England your 
 railways are built, managed, and financed by private 
 enterprise ; in India they are one of the chief charges 
 of Government. I remember that it fell to me, as 
 Viceroy, to issue orders, on my own responsibility, 
 for the better accommodation of native passengers 
 in third-class carriages. Here, in England, your 
 education problem, as any Parliamentarian present 
 will bear me out, is thorny enough ; but it is as 
 nothing compared with ours in India, where we 
 are trying to graft the science of the West on to an 
 Eastern stem ; where we have to deal with religious 
 differences, compared with which all your sectarian 
 animosities sink into the shade; where we have a 
 chaos of languages, and stages of mental organization 
 that extend, as I have remarked, from the transcen- 
 dentalist to the savage. 
 
 Then, here in England, you do not know what 
 famine is. My Lord Mayor, I thank the Chamberlain 
 for the remarks that he made on that subject in his 
 address. It is quite true that I had to administer in 
 India the greatest famine that has befallen that country 
 in modern times within the range to which it applied, 
 and I can assure you that it is an experience that 
 would wring blood from stone. You have your sun- 
 shine and storms, your drought and floods in this 
 country, but you do not know the awful possibilities 
 that are summed up in the single word " monsoon," 
 and which spell the difference in India between life 
 and death to areas in any one of which the whole of 
 the United Kingdom might be swallowed up. You 
 
io SPEECH AT THE GUILDHALL [i 
 
 have your suffering and destitution, but you have not 
 such an appalling visitor as the plague the plague, 
 now in its seventh year in India, defying analysis, 
 defeating the utmost efforts of medical skill and ad- 
 ministrative energy, inscrutable in its origin, merciless 
 in its ravages, sweeping off, as our records show, very 
 often thousands in a day and tens of thousands in a 
 week. Then, above all, your public men in England 
 have not before them the haunting question that is 
 always before us in India, like a riddle of the Sphinx 
 what is in the heart of all those sombre millions, 
 whither are we leading them, what is it all to come 
 to, where is the goal ? 
 
 Such, my Lord Mayor, are some of the superficial 
 differences between the problem of government in 
 India and in England. They are, I think, sufficient 
 to show you that those who are charged with the 
 government of that great dependency can seldom 
 have a careless moment or an idle hour. They are 
 weighed down with incessant anxiety, with an almost 
 overpowering responsibility, and with unending toil. 
 But I can assure you that every one of them, from the 
 Governor-General down to the youngest civilian, is 
 proud of the duty, and resolved to do justice to it ; 
 and when the commander is called up and praised, a 
 thrill runs down the ranks, and encourages the latest- 
 joined private in the lines. 
 
 Sir Joseph Dimsdale said something about the 
 character of the work in which we have been engaged 
 during the past five years. My Lord Mayor, it has 
 been a work of reform and reconstruction. Epochs 
 arise in the history of every country when the 
 administrative machinery requires to be taken to 
 pieces and overhauled and readjusted to the altered 
 
i] EFFICIENCY u 
 
 necessities or the growing demands of the hour. The 
 engines are not working to their scheduled capacity, 
 the engines are perhaps slack or overborne. I agree 
 with those who inscribe on their administrative 
 banners the motto " Efficiency." But my conception 
 of efficiency is to practise as well as to preach it. It 
 is with this object that we have conducted an inquiry 
 in India into every aspect of the administration. 
 First we began with the departments themselves, the 
 offices of Government, revising the conditions under 
 which they work, freeing them from the impediments 
 of excessive writing, with its consequences of strangu- 
 lation of all initiative and dilatoriness in action. Then 
 we proceeded to investigate every branch of the 
 Government in turn. We endeavoured to frame a 
 plague policy which should not do violence to the 
 instincts and sentiments of the native population ; a 
 famine policy which should profit by the experience 
 of the past and put us in a position to cope with the 
 next visitation when unhappily it bursts upon us ; an 
 education policy which should free the intellectual 
 activities of the Indian people, so keen and restless as 
 they are, from the paralyzing clutch of examinations ; 
 a railway policy that will provide administratively 
 and financially for the great extension that we believe 
 to lie before us ; an irrigation policy that will utilize 
 to the maximum, whether remuneratively or unre- 
 muneratively, all the available water resources of 
 India, not merely in canals I almost think we have 
 reached the end there but in tanks and reservoirs 
 and wells ; a police policy that will raise the standard 
 of the only emblem of authority that the majority of 
 the people see, and will free them from petty diurnal 
 tyranny and oppression. It is impossible to satisfy 
 
12 SPEECH AT THE GUILDHALL [i 
 
 all classes in India or anywhere else. There are 
 some people who clamour for boons which it is 
 impossible to give. But the administrator looks 
 rather to the silent and inarticulate masses, and if he 
 can raise even by a little the level of material comfort 
 and well-being in their lives he has earned his reward. 
 I am glad that our finances in India have placed us 
 in a position to give the people the first reduction of 
 taxation that they have enjoyed for twenty years. 
 We have endeavoured to render the land revenue 
 more equable in its incidence, to lift the load of usury 
 from the shoulders of the peasant, and to check that 
 reckless alienation of the soil which in many parts of 
 the country was fast converting him from a free pro- 
 prietor to a bond slave. We have done our best to 
 encourage industries which little by little will relieve 
 the congested field of agriculture, develop the indi- 
 genous resources of India, and make that country 
 more and more self-providing in the future. I would 
 not indulge in any boast, but I dare to think that as 
 the result of these efforts I can point to an India that 
 is more prosperous, more contented, and more hope- 
 ful. Wealth is increasing in India. There is no test 
 you can apply which does not demonstrate it. Trade 
 is growing. Evidences of progress and prosperity 
 are multiplying on every side. Six years ago, just 
 before I left England, a committee of experts was 
 sitting in London to provide us in India with that 
 which is the first condition of economic advance 
 that is, a sound currency policy. I thank Sir Henry 
 Fowler, the chairman of that committee, and the 
 authorities co-operating with him, for the great ser- 
 vice that they rendered to India. Profiting by their 
 labours, we have introduced there a gold standard and 
 
i] LOYALTY OF INDIAN PEOPLE 13 
 
 established fixity of exchange, and we seem to have 
 put an end to the fitful and demoralizing vagaries of 
 the silver rupee. 
 
 But I think I can point to more satisfactory symp- 
 toms still. I believe there to be a steady and growing 
 advance in the loyalty of the Indian people. When 
 the late Queen Victoria died there was an outburst of 
 sorrow throughout India almost equal to anything 
 that you could see here in England. A little later, 
 when the present King succeeded and we celebrated 
 his Coronation at Delhi, there was a similar display 
 of national feeling, not at Delhi alone, but in every 
 village and hamlet throughout that vast continent. I 
 know it has been the fashion in some quarters to 
 deride that great ceremony at Delhi as a vain and 
 unprofitable display. My Lord Mayor, if we spent 
 about as much, and I do not think we spent more, in 
 crowning the Emperor of 300,000,000 as you spent 
 here in crowning the King of 42,000,000, I do not 
 consider that we need reproach ourselves very much 
 for our extravagance. But we did much more than 
 that. Already the people of India knew and revered 
 the Prince of Wales, because they had seen him. We 
 brought home to them at Delhi that that Prince was 
 now their ruler, and that in his rule were their security 
 and salvation. We touched their hearts with the idea 
 of a common sentiment and a common aim. Depend 
 upon it, you will never rule the East except through 
 the heart, and the moment imagination has gone out 
 of your Asiatic policy your Empire will dwindle and 
 decay. 
 
 There is another respect in which India has been 
 advancing by leaps and bounds, and on which I should 
 like to say a brief word. In the point to which I am 
 
i 4 SPEECH AT THE GUILDHALL [i 
 
 about to refer I doubt if modern India would be 
 recognized by those who knew it a generation ago. 
 The British public knows that between one-fourth 
 and one-fifth of the population there is under the rule 
 of native princes and chiefs, though subject, of course, 
 in all essentials to the British Power. There are 
 many hundreds of these chiefs all included, but the 
 most important of them numberless than one hundred. 
 In this country you know all about their ancient 
 lineage, their costumes and courts, their liberality 
 and loyalty to the Crown. But it has been too much 
 the fashion here to regard them as so many picturesque 
 excrescences from the dull uniformity of Indian life, 
 to look upon them as survivals of an obsolete era, 
 without any practical utility, and sometimes sunk in 
 selfishness and lethargy. My Lords, that is not my 
 idea of the Indian princes. I have always been a 
 devoted believer in the continued existence of the 
 native States in India, and an ardent well-wisher of 
 the native princes. But I believe in them not as 
 relics, but as rulers ; not as puppets, but as living 
 factors in the administration. I want them to share 
 the responsibilities as well as the glories of British 
 rule. Therefore it is that I have ventured to preach 
 to them the gospel of duty, of common service in the 
 interests of the Empire, of a high and strenuous aim. 
 But you cannot expect them to attain these standards 
 unless you give them an adequate education ; and 
 accordingly, in consultation with them, we have revised 
 the entire curriculum of the Chiefs' Colleges in India, 
 which have been set up for their instruction. And if 
 you thus train and educate them you must give them 
 an object and a career. It is for this reason that, by 
 permission of His Majesty the King, I founded the 
 
i] FRONTIER DEFENCE 15 
 
 institution known as the(Imperial Cadet Corps, where 
 we give military education to the pick of the Indian 
 aristocracy, and which will eventuate as time goes on 
 in the bestowal for the first time of commissions as 
 British officers upon Indian chiefs, nobles, and gentle- 
 men. This is a policy of trust, but I am confident 
 that it will be repaid, for already the princes of India 
 are giving to our efforts the reply that might be 
 expected of their nobility of character and their high 
 traditions. They are coming forward in response to 
 our appeals. They welcome and do not resent these 
 changes, and we are gradually, nay, I think we are 
 quickly, creating there the spectacle of a throne 
 supported by feudatories who not only render military 
 service they do that without stint but who also vie 
 with it in administrative energy and devotion to the 
 welfare of their people. 
 
 My Lords and Gentlemen, I ought not to conclude 
 these remarks without saying a word about another 
 and a wider aspect of our policy the problem of 
 Frontier Defence. It is not necessary for me to sing 
 the praises of the Indian army. The Indian army 
 has written its name on the map, not only of India, 
 but of the British Empire. It is writing its name in 
 the windy passes of Tibet at this moment. Army 
 reform is very much in the air, and I can assure you 
 that in India we are not free from the contagion. 
 We are doing our best there in respect of equipment, 
 organization, and armament, in readiness to mobilize, 
 and in facilities of communication, to carry out the 
 lessons of the most recent science and the most 
 recent experience. And since, as we have been told, 
 you have banished our modern Hercules to the 
 Himalayas, we are not letting him rest, but are 
 
16 SPEECH AT THE GUILDHALL [i 
 
 utilizing him in the execution of labours every whit 
 as important as any on which he might be engaged 
 here. 
 
 I We have had a period of almost unbroken peace 
 for six years on that stormy frontier of India which 
 looks towards the North-West and Afghanistan. 
 And I think the reason is this that, abandoning old 
 and stale controversies, we have hit upon a policy in 
 India that is both forward and backward forward in 
 so far as we hold up to our treaty frontier, neither 
 minimizing nor shirking our obligations, backward in 
 so far as we do not court a policy of expansion or 
 adventure, but depend rather on a policy of co-opera- 
 tion and conciliation than one of coercion or sub- 
 jugation of the tribes.) I do not prophesy about the 
 future. No man who has read a page of Indian 
 history will ever prophesy about the frontier. We 
 shall doubtless have trouble there again. Turbulence 
 and fanaticism ferment in the blood of those races. 
 But we have given you peace for a longer period than 
 you have enjoyed at any time during the last thirty 
 years, and I believe that slowly and surely we are 
 building up the fabric of local security and content- 
 ment on the border. 
 
 But I am not sure that some student of public 
 affairs will not interpolate at this moment the question 
 What, then, are you doing in Tibet, and how do 
 you reconcile this with the policy of peace and con- 
 ciliation that you have described ? My Lord Mayor, 
 the instruments of Government often cannot speak 
 their own minds, and my lips are tied by obligations 
 which you will be the first to recognize. At the same 
 time, as the recent head of the Government of India, 
 I may perhaps say this. Though we shrink in India 
 
i] TIBET 17 
 
 from expeditions, and though we abominate a policy 
 of adventure, we had not the slightest hesitation or 
 doubt in recommending the policy that we did to His 
 Majesty's Government. We felt that we could not 
 afford any longer, with due regard to our interests 
 and prestige on that section of the frontier, to acquiesce 
 in a policy of unprovoked insults, endured with 
 almost unexampled patience, at the hands of the 
 Tibetan Government ever since they, and not we 
 please remember this, ever since they, and not we 
 assumed the aggressive, and first invaded British 
 territory eighteen years ago. And still less could we 
 acquiesce in this treatment at the very time when the 
 young and perverse ruler of Tibet, who it seems to 
 me has shown himself to be the evil genius of his 
 people, while refusing to hold any communication 
 with us, or even to receive letters from the repre- 
 sentative of the British Sovereign, was conducting 
 communications with another Great Power, situated 
 not at his doors, but at a great distance away, and 
 was courting its protection. I was sent to India, 
 amongst other objects, to guard the frontier of India, 
 and I have done it. I was not sent there to let a 
 hostile danger and menace grow up just beyond our 
 gates, and I have done my best to prevent it. There 
 are people so full of knowledge at home that they 
 assure us that all these fears were illusory, and that 
 we could with dignity and prudence have gone on 
 turning our other cheek to the Tibetan smiter. These 
 fears were not illusory. The danger was imminent 
 and real. Perhaps the frontier States may be taken 
 to know something about it, and if we have, as we 
 have never had before, the frontier States of Nepal 
 and Sikkim and Bhutan, the majority of them allied 
 
 C 
 
i8 SPEECH AT THE GUILDHALL [i 
 
 by religious and racial affinities to Tibet, all support- 
 ing our action and deploring the folly and obstinacy 
 of the Tibetan Government, there must be strong 
 prima facie ground that we are not entirely mistaken 
 in our views. No one regrets more than myself the 
 fighting with innocent people or the slaughter of 
 ill-armed but courageous men. I should have liked 
 to carry the matter through without firing a shot, 
 and we did our best to do so. Months were spent 
 in the sincere but futile effort to avoid a conflict. 
 But only the meanest knowledge of the frontier is 
 required to know that it is not vacillation that pro- 
 duces respect, and that the longer you hesitate and 
 palter the severer is the reckoning you have to pay. 
 I hope that as a result of these operations we shall 
 be able to introduce some measure of enlightenment 
 into that miserable and monk-ridden country, and 
 without adding to our own responsibilities, which 
 the Government of India are without the least wish 
 to extend, that we shall be able to ward off a source 
 of political unrest and intrigue on this section of our 
 border, and gradually to build up, as I believe it to 
 be in our power to do, harmonious relations between 
 the harmless people of Tibet and ourselves. 
 
 My Lords and Gentlemen, these have been the 
 main incidents of the policy of the Government in 
 India during the last six years. There is only one 
 other feature of the situation to which I wish to 
 allude, if you will bear with me, because it is in one 
 sense the most important of all. I have been speak- 
 ing to-day about the acts and symptoms of British 
 rule in India. What is its basis ? It is not military 
 force, it is not civil authority, it is not prestige, 
 though all these are part of it. If our rule is to last 
 
i] JUSTICE 19 
 
 in India it must rest on a more solid basis. It must 
 depend on the eternal moralities of righteousness 
 and justice. This, I can assure you, is no mere 
 phrase of the conventicle. The matter is too serious 
 on the lips of a Governor-General of India for cant. 
 Unless we can persuade the millions of India that 
 we will give to them absolute justice as between 
 man and man, equality before the law, freedom from 
 tyranny and injustice and oppression, then our Empire 
 will not touch their hearts and will fade away. No 
 one is more ready to admit than I that if you put 
 side by side the rulers of a European race and the 
 ruled of an Asiatic, and particularly such races as 
 the Indian and the English, where you have a small 
 minority face to face with a vast alien conglomeration, 
 you cannot expect to have complete coalescence. 
 On the one side you have pride of race, the duty 
 of self-protection, the consciousness of power; on 
 the other you have struggling sentiments and stifled 
 aspirations. But, my Lord Mayor, a bridge must be 
 built between the two, and on that bridge justice 
 must stand with unerring scales. Harshness, oppres- 
 sion, ill-usage, all these in India are offences, not only 
 against the higher law, but against the honour and 
 reputation of the ruling race. I am as strong a 
 believer as any man in the prestige of my country- 
 men. But that prestige does not require artificial 
 supports ; it rests upon conduct and conduct alone. 
 My precept in this respect does not differ from my 
 practice. During the time that I have been in India 
 the Government have taken a strong stand for the 
 fair treatment of our Indian fellow-subjects, who are 
 equal with us in the eyes of God and the law. I 
 rejoice to say that the conduct of Englishmen in 
 
20 SPEECH AT THE GUILDHALL [i 
 
 general in India towards the Indians is exemplary, 
 even in trying and provocative circumstances ; but 
 where exceptions occur I think that the sentiment 
 of the majority should be as quick to condemn them 
 as is their conduct, and that the Government, which 
 is above race or party, and against whom any injustice 
 is a reproach and a slur, should receive the unhesi- 
 tating support of the entire community. That is the 
 policy which the Government has pursued in my 
 time, and by my conduct, my Lord Mayor and 
 Gentlemen, I am willing to be judged. 
 
 I will now bring these remarks to a close. It is 
 seventeen years since I first visited India; it is 
 fourteen years since I first had the honour of being 
 connected with its administration. India was the 
 first love, and throughout all that time it has been 
 the main love, of my political life. I have given to it 
 some of my best years. Perhaps I may be privileged 
 to give to it yet more. But no man could do this 
 unless he saw before India a larger vision or were 
 himself inspired with a fuller hope. If our Empire 
 were to end to-morrow, I do not think that we need 
 be ashamed of its epitaph. It would have done its 
 duty to India, and justified its mission to mankind. 
 But it is not going to end. It is not a moribund 
 organism. It is still in its youth, and has in it the 
 vitality of an unexhausted purpose. I am not with 
 the pessimists in this matter. I am not one of those 
 who think that we have built a mere fragile plank 
 between the East and West which the roaring tides 
 of Asia will presently sweep away. I do not think 
 that our work is over or that it is drawing to an 
 end. On the contrary, as the years roll by the call 
 seems to me more clear, the duty more imperative, 
 
i] PERMANENCE OF OUR WORK 21 
 
 the work more majestic, the goal more sublime. I 
 believe that we have it in our power to weld the 
 people of India to a unity greater than any they 
 have hitherto dreamed of, and to give them blessings 
 beyond any that they now enjoy. Let no man admit 
 the craven fear that those who have won India cannot 
 hold it, or that we have only made India to our own 
 or to its unmaking. That is not the true reading of 
 history. That is not my forecast of the future. To 
 me the message is carved in granite, it is hewn out 
 of the rock of doom that our work is righteous and 
 that it shall endure. 
 
 I thank you, my Lords and Gentlemen, for the 
 encouragement that has been given by the citizens 
 of London through me to all those who are engaged 
 in this great and noble undertaking. I shall go forth 
 again refreshed and reinvigorated by your sympathy. 
 
II 
 
 SPEECH AT THE MANSION HOUSE, 
 ON JULY 20, 1904 
 
 FOLLOWING the ceremony at the Guildhall, the Lord 
 Mayor entertained a distinguished company at the 
 Mansion House at luncheon to meet Lord Curzon 
 " on his admission to the Freedom of the City of 
 London." 
 
 The Lord Mayor read the following letter from 
 Mr. Balfour: 
 
 " My dear Lord Mayor, The House of Commons 
 is still sitting, and seems likely to sit. Under these 
 circumstances, to my profound regret I am unable to 
 take part in a ceremony to which I had been greatly 
 looking forward. I had two motives in desiring to 
 be present at the first ceremonial, which is, I suppose, 
 while I am writing actually taking place. One of 
 these was my lifelong affection for your distinguished 
 guest, the other was my great admiration for the 
 genius and energy with which he has administered 
 the highest and most responsible post outside the 
 United Kingdom which his country can confer. I 
 much wished to give expression at the Mansion 
 House to both these sentiments, but as hard necessity 
 makes this impossible I hope you will, at all events, 
 consent to read this letter to your guests." 
 
 Continuing, the Lord Mayor proposed the health 
 
n] LORD MACAULAY 23 
 
 of " The Youngest Citizen of London," to which Lord 
 Curzon replied in the following terms : 
 
 My Lord Mayor, your Highness, and Gentlemen, 
 I have already detained a large audience, some of 
 whom I believe are also present here, at no incon- 
 siderable length in the Guildhall, and I am afraid that 
 I should ill requite your hospitality if I were again 
 to trespass at any length upon the indulgence of 
 your guests. I have yet to find the audience in 
 England that would stand two long speeches on India 
 in the course of the same summer afternoon. I 
 expect that they would call aloud for an allopathic 
 treatment. I remember reading a story of Lord 
 Macaulay when he was first appointed a member of 
 the Board of Control in England ; while he was still 
 studying the question of India he wrote a letter to his 
 sister in which he said : " Am I not in fair training 
 to become as great a bore as if I had been in India 
 myself that is, as great a bore as the greatest?" 
 With this warning ringing in my ears, I fear that 
 I must not show any great eagerness to respond to 
 the lead which you have given me in the graceful and 
 complimentary remarks to which I have just listened. 
 Your speech was in itself a high compliment to me. 
 It contained a statement of further compliment, about 
 which, until the moment that you announced it, I 
 was not myself certain namely, that I am at this 
 moment the youngest Freeman of the City of London. 
 It was accompanied by yet another compliment in 
 the shape of the letter which you read from the head 
 of His Majesty's Government. I was sent out to 
 India by one Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury ; when 
 I left England my health was proposed at a vale- 
 dictory banquet by another Prime Minister, Lord 
 
24 SPEECH AT THE MANSION HOUSE [n 
 
 Rosebery ; and now to-day you have read out the 
 language of compliment of a third, Mr. Balfour. 
 Lord Salisbury had a peculiar acquaintance with 
 India, for not only was he twice Secretary of 
 State for that great dependency, but his despatches 
 and minutes about the Government of India are 
 among the very best models of official literature in 
 the English language. Lord Rosebery is, I believe, 
 the only English Prime Minister who has been out 
 to India since the days of the Duke of Wellington, 
 and I should like to commend his example to the 
 many embryonic Premiers who are possibly seated 
 at this table. Mr. Balfour has never yet done us 
 that honour, but I should like also to suggest to 
 him a visit to that great dependency as a preferable 
 alternative to some of the experiences which will 
 possibly lie before him in the ensuing years. How- 
 ever that may be, Mr. Balfour has devoted to the 
 military and political problems arising out of our 
 Indian Empire an amount of attention unequalled 
 by any of his predecessors, and likely, in my opinion, 
 to be fraught with inestimable advantage to the 
 interests of the Empire as a whole. 
 
 My Lord Mayor, I detect only one omission in 
 your remarks, and it has reminded me of a still 
 greater omission in the speech that I made in the 
 Guildhall this morning. When any assemblage of 
 Englishmen meet together to extol the manner in 
 which India is governed, do not let them forget the 
 men by whom it is governed. This is the more 
 necessary, because, owing to the conditions of their 
 work, the majority of them are unknown at home. 
 The Viceroy, the Commander-in-Chief, and a few 
 high officials more or less fill the public eye and 
 
n] INDIAN OFFICIALS 25 
 
 earn praise for the work which is done by others. 
 Sometimes, it is true, they are criticized for acts on 
 the part of their subordinates of which they have 
 never even heard. But there can be no question 
 that the balance is largely on the other side, and that 
 many an official name has been written in characters 
 that have lasted on cairns that others have raised. 
 And who, if I may pursue the subject for a moment, 
 are these men of whom I speak? They are drawn 
 from every part of this country and from every rank 
 of society. They are typical of the best of the British 
 race and of British life. Some of them are the pick 
 of your Universities. Others carry to India names 
 that have already been borne in that country by 
 generations before them. Accident, no doubt, takes 
 some into the Civil Service, hereditary associations 
 take others, but I believe that it is the Englishman's 
 passion for responsibility, his zest for action on a 
 large field, that is the ruling motive with most. And 
 I think that they are right. For in India initiative is 
 hourly born. There great deeds are constantly being 
 done, there is room for fruition, there is a horizon 
 for results. I do not mean to say that it is not so 
 at home, but to one coming back from a long service 
 abroad those considerations are less patent to the 
 eye. In the Guildhall this morning I saw men who 
 had administered provinces with a population double 
 that of the United Kingdom, with a population half 
 again as great as that (India excluded) of the whole 
 British Empire. I have myself served with col- 
 leagues in India who would have been entitled to 
 a place in any Imperial Cabinet, and who would have 
 risen to high place in any Government in the world. 
 It is true that the names of these men are not on 
 
26 SPEECH AT THE MANSION HOUSE [n 
 
 the lips of their countrymen their faces are unknown 
 but allow me to say for them, on this rare occasion 
 when I have the opportunity of speaking, that they 
 are the real Empire builders, for in the sweat of their 
 brow have they laid the foundations of which you 
 in England only see the fair and glittering super- 
 structure as it rears its head into the sky. 
 
 I sometimes think that in the catalogue of our 
 national virtues we hardly lay sufficient stress upon 
 the enormous administrative ability of the English 
 race I speak of ability as distinguished from the 
 moral ingredients of character and courage, which 
 are the more obvious elements of success. And yet, 
 in all parts of the Empire, and more especially in 
 India, we have an amount of administrative ability 
 which could not be purchased for millions of pounds 
 sterling, and which is the envy of every other empire- 
 possessing nation in the world. I hope that in what 
 I have just said I have not given the impression that 
 1 think the service of such men is unrecognized at 
 home. I do not believe there is any deliberate lack 
 of interest or want of pride in their work. It arises 
 rather from the Englishman's familiar indifference to 
 the great things that he is doing on the face of the 
 earth, and his fussy and parochial agitation about 
 the small. 
 
 If I may keep you a moment longer, there is 
 one other aspect of the work of the Civil Service in 
 India to which I should like to refer. I spoke this 
 morning about the magnitude of the undertaking ; let 
 me add a word about the industry that it entails. I 
 sometimes hear people at home speak about the 
 members of the Indian Civil Service as though they 
 were persons who had little else to do in India but 
 
ii] THE MEN IN THE PLAINS 27 
 
 perspire. At least, that is their idea about the men 
 who live and work in the plains, and as for those happy 
 ones, including myself, who go up to Simla or the 
 hill stations, we are regarded as the lucky denizens of 
 places where a mild frivolity alternates with an almost 
 Olympian repose. That is not my experience of any 
 seat of government in India, whatever its altitude. 
 There is a story told of two eminent Frenchmen I 
 believe they were M. Littre, the great lexicographer, 
 and M. Dumas, the novelist. They are said at one 
 time to have occupied the same residence, and to 
 have kept such different hours of work that when 
 one of them was going upstairs in the early morning, 
 after completing the labours of the night, he used to 
 meet the other coming downstairs to commence the 
 work of the day. I do not say that we have reached 
 that standard in India consule Planco, but there are 
 many among the admirable officers by whom I have 
 been served who would not find it so very startling. 
 
 While I am speaking of the service in India, let 
 me add one word about the men in the plains. I do 
 not think any one ought to make a speech about India 
 without remembering the men in the plains. All 
 through the heat of the summer, when the earth is 
 like iron and the skies are like brass, when during the 
 greater part of the day every chink and crevice must 
 be closed to keep out the ravening air, these men and 
 their wives with them for Englishwomen in India 
 are just as capable of devotion and heroism as are 
 their husbands remain at their posts devoted and 
 uncomplaining. They sometimes remind me rather 
 of the men who are engaged in the engine-room of a 
 man-of-war; there they are, stoking the furnaces 
 while the great ship is being manoeuvred and the big 
 
28 SPEECH AT THE MANSION HOUSE [n 
 
 guns are thundering overhead. Sometimes they go 
 down with the vessel without ever having seen the 
 battle or the fighting; but, if their commander wins 
 the victory, up they come, begrimed with smoke, to 
 take their share in the rejoicing. My Lord Mayor 
 and gentlemen, these are the real organizers of 
 victory ; and never let any of us think of the service 
 of his son, or brother, or relative in India without 
 turning a thought to the men and women in the plains. 
 Such is the character and such is the work of the men 
 with whom it has been my privilege to co-operate 
 during the last five and a half busy years. We have 
 been living in strenuous times in India. I have heard 
 it whispered that they have been too strenuous for 
 some, but, if this be so, it is not from the members of 
 the Civil Service that I should ever have learnt the 
 fact. Though the work of reconstruction and reform 
 which I was speaking about in the Guildhall this 
 morning is one which must have imposed a heavy 
 strain on their energies, I have never, from any one 
 of them, young or old, high or low, heard one murmur 
 of protest or complaint. You will pardon me if I 
 refer to this fact on the present occasion, and if I say 
 that in accepting the compliment you have offered to 
 me I think much more of them. It is on their behalf, 
 even more than on my own, that I gratefully acknow- 
 ledge the gracious words that you have spoken, and 
 thank you for the manner in which you have proposed 
 my health. 
 
Ill 
 
 SPEECH ON THE PRESENTATION OF 
 THE FREEDOM OF THE BOROUGH 
 OF DERBY, ON JULY 28, 1904 
 
 ON Thursday afternoon, July 28, 1904, the Freedom 
 of the Borough of Derby was presented to Lord 
 Curzon, in the Drill Hall at Derby, before a large 
 and distinguished audience, drawn from all parts of 
 Derbyshire, his native county. After speeches by 
 Alderman Sir T. Roe, M.P., and Alderman Sir H. 
 Bemrose, the Mayor (Mr. Councillor Boam) invited 
 Lord Curzon to sign the roll. This he did, and then 
 spoke as follows : 
 
 Mr. Mayor, Ladies, and Gentlemen, I am very 
 grateful for the great reception that was accorded to 
 Lady Curzon and myself as we drove through the 
 streets of the town this afternoon, and for the refer- 
 ences that have been made to her in the speeches to 
 which we have just listened. I acknowledge with 
 sincere thanks the great honour that has just been 
 conferred upon me by the Mayor and Corporation of 
 this ancient borough. That beautiful casket there, 
 which contains the certificate of the freedom, will 
 always remain in my family, and will be highly prized 
 and jealously guarded by them in generations to 
 come. I hope I am not fanciful in detecting a certain 
 difference in the character of the reception which, you 
 
30 SPEECH AT DERBY [in 
 
 have accorded me to-day from those which I have 
 
 been fortunate enough to meet with elsewhere during 
 
 the past few weeks. On those occasions I have felt 
 
 that the compliment that was offered to me was paid 
 
 quite as much to the post which I have been filling 
 
 during the past five years, to the service of which I 
 
 have been the head, and to the Government which it 
 
 has been my duty to administer, as it was to myself. 
 
 But to-day I seem to recognize a more personal and, 
 
 I should like to say, even a domestic, flavour about 
 
 these proceedings. It is true that the honour that 
 
 is being bestowed upon me is the freedom of the 
 
 borough of Derby, an honour not, I believe, given 
 
 during the past seventy years, and one which any 
 
 public man might be proud to receive. The practice 
 
 of conferring this distinction is one of the few means 
 
 left to representative bodies and institutions in this 
 
 country of showing their consideration to those public 
 
 servants whom they desire to honour. It is a practice 
 
 that I hope may never be abrogated or done away 
 
 with. But it has a separate value when it emanates 
 
 from those who have known a man from childhood, 
 
 and when it represents the verdict, not of strangers 
 
 or outsiders, but of lifelong friends. For it shows, 
 
 not merely that they are generous in their recognition 
 
 of public service that is a mark for which the people 
 
 of England have always been distinguished but that 
 
 the recipient of the honour has survived the test of a 
 
 long experience, and has not been found wanting by 
 
 those who have had an opportunity of watching every 
 
 stage of his career. 
 
 It is true, ladies and gentlemen, it is unfortunately 
 true, that I have not been in Derby much of recent 
 years. Twenty years ago, when I was engaged upon 
 
m] REMINISCENCES OF DERBY 31 
 
 an enterprise that had a somewhat unpropitious 
 ending, I was more frequently in this place. The 
 first speech that I ever delivered to a large public 
 audience was delivered from this platform, in this 
 very hall. In those days I used sometimes to have 
 mimic encounters very mimic encounters with your 
 distinguished representative, Sir William Harcourt. 
 Then I recollect going one day to the Midland 
 Railway Station to address the railwaymen during 
 their luncheon hour. I am afraid that they were 
 not in very close sympathy with my political views. 
 Anyhow, I remember that my remarks were received 
 with considerable disturbance, and with volleys of 
 small paper pellets filled with soot, which freely 
 struck me over the face and shoulders. One more 
 recollection I possess, and that is my speech in 
 the County Hall of Derby, when, after the election 
 of 1885, it was my duty to thank the electors of this 
 division of the county for having placed me in a 
 minority of two thousand at the bottom of the poll. 
 On that occasion I had the temerity to offer a wager 
 to my successful antagonist that I would address the 
 House of Commons before he did. With some 
 prudence he declined the wager, which, I may say, if 
 he had accepted it, I should most certainly have won. 
 All these memories come surging around me to-day, 
 and many more to which I have not the time to allude ; 
 but point is lent to them by the fact that the two 
 principal speakers whom we have here this afternoon, 
 and who have talked in such gracious and kindly 
 terms about myself, were also the two protagonists 
 in those bygone days, and have been, ever since, the 
 leaders of the two political parties in this borough. 
 I do not think the occasions have been very numerous 
 
32 SPEECH AT DERBY [m 
 
 upon which the three of us Sir Thomas Roe, Sir 
 Henry Bemrose, and myself have appeared upon the 
 same platform in Derby. Two of us used frequently 
 to be there, but the third was somewhere else. These 
 two gentlemen were engaged for many years in trying 
 to convince the free and enlightened electors of this 
 borough that each was the best-qualified person to 
 represent it in the House of Commons, and the 
 electors, with an admirable discrimination and im- 
 partiality, responded to that appeal by electing each 
 in turn. Now, ladies and gentlemen, that we are all 
 reconciled and meet together as a happy family, I find 
 in this fact an illustration of that good humour which 
 is one of the most cherished possessions of the British 
 people, and also a tribute to the purely non-party 
 character of the post that during the last five and a 
 half years I have been privileged to hold. 
 
 I do not think I can exaggerate the importance of 
 the consideration to which I have just drawn atten- 
 tion. Party has nothing whatever to do with India, 
 and ought never to have anything to do with it. 
 India stands outside of party. We know nothing 
 there of the party labels of Liberal and Conservative, 
 or Unionist and Radical, or even of those more recent 
 metaphors drawn from the farmyard which fill so 
 large a part in the political controversy of the day. 
 During the time that I have been serving in India 
 I have almost forgotten to what party I originally 
 belonged in this country, and I have received and 
 am grateful for the fact the support of both political 
 parties at home. I should like myself to go further. 
 I should like to place a ring-fence round the whole 
 British Empire, with a notice board, on which should 
 be written, " Any party man will be prosecuted who 
 
m] INDIA AND PARTY POLITICS 33 
 
 trespasses here." For to me the Empire is so sacred 
 and so noble a thing that I cannot understand people 
 quarrelling about it, or even holding opposite opinions 
 about it. But I know as a matter of fact that they 
 do, and that what to one man appears to be a splendid 
 and beneficent conception strikes another, some others, 
 at any rate, as a vulgar and even contemptible form 
 of greed. Therefore I am afraid that I must remain 
 an idealist in respect of the Empire. But as regards 
 India let there be no dispute and no doubt that party 
 and India ought never to have anything to do with 
 each other, and must never be brought into the same 
 connection. 
 
 There was a time in the past when the Govern- 
 ment of India was made the sport of political parties 
 in this country. Indeed, there have been two periods 
 in British history when this was pre-eminently the 
 case. The first was at the end of the eighteenth 
 century, when the government of India, or the mis- 
 government of India, whichever it was, was un- 
 doubtedly treated as a move in the political game. 
 That great and ill-used man, Warren Hastings one 
 of the most eminent although the most suffering 
 public servants that we have ever known was prose- 
 cuted, not for what he had done or what he had not 
 done in India for most of the charges against him 
 were false but in order to do injury to the political 
 party that had appointed and supported him at home. 
 Then later on, in the middle of the nineteenth century, 
 the Manchester school of politicians that school of 
 high aspirations and futile performance took up the 
 question of India, and once again nearly converted it 
 into a party cry. Fortunately the danger of both 
 these periods has passed away, and I hope that it is 
 
 D 
 
34 SPEECH AT DERBY [in 
 
 now impossible to revive them. The reasons for 
 which it would be so pernicious to introduce anything 
 like party into the government of India are very 
 obvious, and must be known to all of you. In the 
 first place remember this : the lines of cleavage in 
 India are entirely different from what they are here. 
 Here they are mainly political, between the two 
 parties, both of whom I am glad to see represented 
 in this hall. In India they are racial, religious, and 
 social. In so far as they are political at all, they 
 represent the inevitable line of cleavage between the 
 rulers and the ruled, and that is a gap which in India 
 we are always doing our best to bridge over, and to 
 fill up. You may imagine, therefore, what a mistake 
 it would be to add another to the numerous causes of 
 fissure that already exist in that country, and par- 
 ticularly one so mischievous in its character and so 
 deleterious in its results. The second reason is this : 
 If there is one thing that India wants for its gradual 
 recuperation, and that the Government of India more 
 than anything else desire in their effort to carry it 
 -out, it is continuity of administration. Nothing can 
 be more fatal than that violent oscillations of policy 
 should either occur, or should be expected to occur, 
 when one party goes out and another party comes in 
 in this country. It has been one of the main sources 
 of the weakness and even of the failure of our frontier 
 policy in India that the two parties in this country 
 have held different views about it, and that one party 
 was supposed to be always wishing to push forward, 
 whilst the other was credited with a desire to hang 
 back. More than one of my predecessors in the 
 Governor-Generalship of India have been recalled or 
 have retired for this reason, when their party was 
 
m] MR. BRIGHT ON INDIA 35 
 
 defeated at the polls in England, and this fatal system 
 has been the cause of more blunders and bloodshed 
 on the Indian frontier than any other cause that I can 
 for the moment think of. But the third reason is, I 
 think, the most important of all. In the tremendous 
 task that confronts us in India we want all English- 
 men to be united, We cannot afford to have any 
 divisions amongst ourselves. If I may take an illus- 
 tration from another sphere, we have many of us seen 
 how terribly handicapped the Christian Church is in 
 its struggles with pagan religions by its own sub- 
 divisions into so many sects and denominations and 
 creeds. Do not let us repeat that mistake in the 
 sphere of Imperial statecraft. Let every man who 
 works for India in India, or who thinks about India 
 in England, do it not as a party man, but as a national 
 man. Let India be regarded as so sacred a thing that 
 it ought never to be fought about on British hustings, 
 and never introduced as a plank into a party pro- 
 gramme in this country. 
 
 I was wondering a day or two ago upon what 
 particular aspect of Indian government I should say 
 a few words to this audience this afternoon, when I 
 found in my library a volume of the collected speeches 
 of John Bright. He, as you know, took a great 
 interest in India, and his speeches upon that subject 
 which were contained in this volume were delivered 
 between forty and fifty years ago, just after the great 
 Mutiny had swept like a tornado across the face of 
 India, and when the ideas of men were in a state 
 of fluidity as to what the future was going to bring 
 forth, or what form the Government of India ought 
 to assume. These speeches of Mr. Bright were cha- 
 racterized by great and unaffected sympathy for the 
 
36 SPEECH AT DERBY [m 
 
 Indian peoples, by those lofty principles which seem 
 to me to have invariably inspired his public action, 
 and by that beauty and simplicity of language which 
 remind one, in the ordered flow of his argument and the 
 rhythmical cadence of his words, of the plash of waves 
 upon the sea shore. But these speeches almost with- 
 out exception were striking illustrations of the proposi- 
 tion that I have just been discussing, for they were all 
 of them dominated by the narrow and, as it seems to 
 me, mistaken tenets of a particular political school. 
 
 To me it has always seemed a remarkable thing 
 that the three most powerful intellects in the sphere 
 of British politics that have ever seriously devoted 
 themselves to the study of Indian problems should 
 all have been so wrong in their verdicts, and, as it 
 seems to me, all for the same reason. I speak of 
 Burke, Macaulay, and Bright. The eloquence of 
 Burke poured like a stream of lava across the whole 
 field of Indian administration. But it very often 
 scorched and disfigured quite as much as it illumined 
 what it touched, and his presentation of the Indian 
 incidents of his day, whatever it be as rhetoric or 
 as literature and in my view it is magnificent as 
 both was most certainly not history. Then fifty 
 years later we come to Macaulay. Just now I men- 
 tioned to you the name of Warren Hastings, and I 
 said with truth that Warren Hastings was a man 
 greatly to be pitied, and perhaps chiefly to be pitied 
 for this : During his lifetime he was exposed to the 
 passionate and unjust invective of Burke, and when 
 he died and all this calumny ought to have been 
 hushed in the grave, his reputation was, so to 
 speak, exhumed again, and subjected to the unfair 
 and partisan censure of Macaulay. Lord Macaulay 
 

 in] MR. BRIGHT'S SPEECHES 3 7 
 
 rendered great service to' India, particularly in the 
 domain of law and education. He did what men of 
 genius almost invariably do. He made everything 
 round him palpitate and glow with the reflex of his 
 own intellectual force. But his Essays, which I sup- 
 pose are the foundation of all that nine out of ten 
 of us in this hall know about India, contained quite 
 as much fiction as fact, and are often most vexatiousb 
 inaccurate and misleading. Finally, we come to the 
 time of John Bright. His views about India, which 
 I shall briefly mention to you in illustration of the 
 position that I take up, were, in some respects, the 
 most erroneous of all. I do not allude to the picture 
 that Mr. Bright drew of the Government of India in 
 his day, though I believe it to have been grossly 
 exaggerated. He described the Civil Service of 
 India as arrogant and tyrannous, the military service 
 as clamorous and insatiable for expenditure, the 
 people as crushed and downtrodden, education as 
 trampled upon, crime as rampant, trade as stifled, 
 communications as non-existent. I believe that that 
 was not a true picture in his time, and it is certainly 
 not a true picture now. He said that the Govern- 
 ment of India was not a Government for watching 
 over the people or conferring blessings upon them. 
 I believe that that remark was not wholly true then ; 
 I believe it to be wholly untrue now. But I think 
 that his forecasts were even more erroneous than his 
 opinions. He held that the post of Governor-General 
 was one so high and so great that it ought not to 
 be filled by any subject of the Crown, and he laid 
 down that the indispensable preliminary to the good 
 government of India was the abolition of that post. 
 I should not be addressing you here this afternoon 
 
38 SPEECH AT DERBY [HI 
 
 if that advice had been followed, although it is not 
 on personal, so much as on public, grounds that I 
 greatly rejoice that it was never done. He went on 
 to say that the only way by which good government 
 could be secured in India was to split up that country 
 into a number of separate presidencies or provinces, 
 each with a separate and almost independent Govern- 
 ment, and with a separate army of its own. I greatly 
 rejoice that that advice was never carried out. I 
 believe it would have been almost disastrous in its 
 results. In 1858 he said: "The immense Empire that 
 has been conquered by you in India is too vast for 
 management ; its base is in decay." When he spoke 
 those words the population of India was 150 millions ; 
 it is now 295 millions. When he spoke, the revenues 
 of India were 30 millions; they are now nearly 
 80 millions. And yet the Empire of India is no 
 nearer dissolution than it was in his time. On the 
 contrary, I think it is a great deal further from it ; 
 and so far from its foundations being based in decay, 
 I believe that every year that passes it is striking 
 its roots deeper and deeper into the soil. 
 
 Then I come and I have only one more quotation 
 to the famous passage in which he said : " Does 
 any man with the smallest glimmering of common 
 sense believe that so great a country, with its twenty 
 different nations, and its twenty languages, can ever 
 be bound up and consolidated into one compact and 
 enduring Empire? I believe such a thing [he said] 
 to be utterly impossible ; we must fail in the attempt 
 if ever we make it." Well, we have added a good 
 many nations and a good many languages to that 
 Empire since then, and I am here to-day to say 
 that in my opinion, and, I believe, in the opinion of 
 
m] BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION 39 
 
 most of those who know anything about India and 
 who have worked with me during the past five years, 
 that which Mr. Bright regarded as an utter impos- 
 sibility is neither a chimera nor a dream. Let me 
 at once concede the extreme difficulty of the task. I 
 do not say that we have attained our goal. Perhaps 
 we are not even in sight of it. It is impossible to 
 produce absolute unity among 300 millions of people. 
 Sir Henry Bemrose alluded in his remarks to the 
 speech which I made the other day at the Guildhall. 
 In that speech I said something about our rule in 
 India covering the whole space between barbarism 
 at one end and civilization at the other. Let me tell 
 you a little story which, in a parable, will indicate 
 that which otherwise might take a great many words. 
 I remember hearing of an English sportsman in India 
 who examined the arrows in the quiver of a native 
 shikari belonging to one of the aboriginal tribes. He 
 found the first arrow tipped with stone a relic of 
 the neolithic age ; the next arrow was tipped with 
 electric telegraph wire, a theft from the twentieth 
 century. That story is typical of the whole of India. 
 It conveys to you the amazing synthesis of anthro- 
 pology, of history, of human experience, which is 
 gathered within the boundaries of that great area. 
 You may imagine that with a people so diversified, 
 representing such opposite poles of creed and civiliza- 
 tion, complete unity is a thing which we cannot aspire 
 to produce. India must always remain a constella- 
 tion rather than a single star, must always be a 
 continent rather than a country, a congeries of races 
 rather than a single nation, j But we are creating ties 
 of unity among those widely diversified peoples, we 
 are consolidating those vast and outspread territories, 
 
40 SPEECH AT DERBY [in 
 
 and, what is more important, we are going forward 
 instead of backward. It is not a stationary, a retro- 
 grade, a downtrodden, or an impoverished India that 
 I have been governing for the past five and a half 
 years. Poverty there is in abundance. I defy any 
 one to show me a great and populous country, or 
 a great and populous city, where it does not exist. 
 Misery and destitution there are. The question is 
 not whether they exist, but whether they are growing 
 more or growing less. In India, where you deal 
 with so vast a canvas, I dare say the lights and 
 shades of human experience are more vivid and more 
 dramatic than elsewhere. But if you compare the 
 India of to-day with the India of any previous period 
 of history the India of Alexander, of Asoka, of 
 Akbar, or of Aurungzeb you will find greater peace 
 and tranquillity, more widely diffused comfort and 
 contentment, superior justice and humanity, and 
 higher standards of material well-being, than that 
 great dependency has ever previously attained. 
 
 I am sometimes lost in amazement at those critics 
 who fail to see these things, who protest to us that 
 our rule in India is ruining the country and crushing 
 the people ; and I am still more amazed when I reflect 
 that that class of critic is, as a rule, to be found 
 among a small set of my own countrymen. It seems 
 to me so perverse I had almost said so wicked. 
 The cant of self-praise is a disagreeable thing, but 
 the cant of self-depreciation seems to me to be even 
 more nauseating. Of the two types of Pharisee, the 
 man who takes pride in his virtues is often a less 
 offensive spectacle than the man who revels in 
 imaginary sins. If it were strangers or foreigners 
 or outsiders who held these views, and announced 
 
m] AN INTERNATIONAL JURY 41 
 
 to us that our rule in India was a failure and a 
 crime, we perhaps should not be so much surprised ; 
 we might attribute it to jealousy, or ignorance, or 
 suspicion. But the very reverse is the case, and 
 sometimes while I am reading the almost ferocious 
 diatribes of a small number of my own countrymen 
 about the alleged iniquity of our rule in India, I am 
 simultaneously receiving letters from thinkers and 
 men of action in other countries asking me to tell 
 them what is the secret of our wonderful and un- 
 paralleled success. Year after year a stream of intelli- 
 gent foreigners comes to India from France, from 
 Germany, from America, from distant Japan, to study 
 our methods and to copy our institutions. Book 
 after book records the results of their inquiries and 
 the admiration which they feel at the results. I take 
 heart when I feel that I can appeal to this enlightened 
 international jury in justification of the work that the 
 rulers of India are doing. And whenever you meet 
 any of the critics of the class whom I am describing, 
 I commend to you this particular form of confutation. 
 I am not so bold as to say that we make no 
 mistakes in India. I dare say we make a great many. 
 I am quite willing to claim a most liberal share for 
 myself. Our rule is sometimes inflexible and harsh 
 and unyielding, or, if it is not so, it appears to be so 
 to the people. It is so difficult to understand them ; 
 it is so much more difficult sometimes to get them 
 to understand us. The points of view of the governor 
 and the governed, and still more of the Asiatic and 
 the European, are so wide apart that one hardly 
 knows where to find a hyphen to connect thernj It 
 is impossible to explain everything that we are doing 
 in India, or to meet and to check every form of 
 
42 SPEECH AT DERBY [in 
 
 misapprehension and attack. Let me give you an 
 illustration. It is widely believed in many parts of 
 India that the Government has purposely introduced 
 the plague into that country in order to decimate the 
 population, and thereby to render our task of govern- 
 ment more easy. Well, you will say to me, " A most 
 extraordinary thing ! But, of course, that can only 
 apply to the very ignorant." Quite true. But the 
 very ignorant are the enormous majority, the over- 
 whelming majority, of the entire population. Even 
 among the educated and intelligent classes, the most 
 astonishing misconceptions prevail. For instance, 
 if I take any particular branch of the administration 
 and endeavour to reform it with the object of pro- 
 ducing a higher state of efficiency and that alone, I 
 find myself at once exposed to the charge that I am 
 creating a number of unnecessary and lucrative billets 
 to be filled by my countrymen from England. As if 
 an administrator cares one snap what is the nationality 
 of the man whom he wants for a post ! What he 
 wants is the best man for the post, and the work 
 to be best done. If he can get a native, so much the 
 better. The service of the native is cheaper ; they 
 know the language, the traditions, the customs of 
 the country ; they are inured to its climate. We take 
 them where we can, but if we cannot find a native 
 with the requisite scientific knowledge or the expert 
 training, then we have to come to this country to get 
 the man, even if we have to pay rather more for him. 
 Well, the whole thing seems to me would seem to 
 any of us so obvious as scarcely to require explana- 
 tion. Yet I can assure you that it is one of the 
 most fertile causes of misrepresentation and attack 
 from one end of India to the other. 
 
m] UNION OF HEARTS 43 
 
 In this state of public feeling we have to be very 
 patient in India, and to be indifferent to the various 
 forms of misrepresentation and abuse. For my own 
 part I think the highest duty that a ruler of India 
 can set before himself is to create, if I may so describe 
 them, special interpreters between the people and 
 ourselves, to explain our ideas to them and theirs to 
 us. It is with this object that while I have been 
 there I have done my best on all occasions to take 
 the public into my confidence, and to explain to them 
 what I have done or what I meditate doing. The 
 one thing in governing an Asiatic country is to break 
 down the barriers between the hearts and con- 
 sciences of men ; and the man who can bring together 
 the hearts of the peoples or races who are on either 
 side of the barrier, and make them beat more closely 
 together by a single pulsation, is a greater public 
 benefactor than the conqueror of kingdoms. I have 
 only one more thing to say. When I hear eulogies 
 passed, as I did three-quarters of an hour ago, upon 
 the administration in which I have taken a part during 
 the past five years, I am sometimes afraid lest people 
 should think that it differs very much from that which 
 has ipreceded it, or from that which will follow. No 
 one man is necessary in any post in the world. I 
 have come to the conclusion that no one man is very 
 important. One who may be younger and tougher 
 may carry on his work longer and more energetically 
 before he breaks down. One man may enjoy good for- 
 tune and opportunities that are denied to another. But 
 that is about all the difference. The machine in India 
 is so vast that it is independent of the individual, or, 
 rather, it is composed of the concentrated energies and 
 abilities of so many individuals that to single one out 
 
44 SPEECH AT DERBY [in 
 
 for praise is merely to follow the recognized practice 
 of rewarding troops in the person of the commander. 
 I should not have been standing here to receive the 
 freedom of the borough of Derby to-day if great and 
 distinguished Viceroys and Governors-General, with 
 whom I do not venture to compare myself, had not 
 preceded me and built the foundations upon which 
 I have only laid another course. And when I have 
 passed away and am forgotten, other and abler men 
 will come after me, who will produce better results, 
 and earn a more-deserved applause. My sole ambition 
 has been, during the time allowed to me, to add 
 something to the solidity of that marvellous fabric 
 of British rule in India, to repair, if possible, some 
 of its weak places, and to leave it more enduring. No 
 greater reward do I desire, or can I receive, than that 
 the people of my native country, and perhaps even 
 more the inhabitants of my native county and native 
 town, should recognize that my intentions have been 
 sincere, and that I have not laboured altogether in 
 vain. 
 
IV 
 
 SPEECH AT A LUNCHEON GIVEN BY 
 THE UNITED CLUB, ON AUGUST i, 
 
 1904 
 
 ON Monday, August ist, Lord Curzon was entertained, 
 at the Constitutional Club, at luncheon by the members 
 of the United Club. The Right Hon. A. J. Balfour, 
 M.P. (the President), occupied the chair, and was 
 supported by Lord Roberts and a large number of 
 members of the House of Commons. Mr. Balfour 
 proposed the health of Lord Curzon, but was obliged 
 immediately afterwards to return to the House of 
 Commons. Lord Curzon rose shortly afterwards to 
 reply, and said 
 
 Mr. Vice-Chairman and Gentlemen, When the 
 Committee of the United Club first asked me to be 
 their guest at a public dinner, shortly after I returned 
 to England, I felt greatly tempted to accept the 
 invitation, both because of the compliment it conveyed 
 and also for the opportunity that it would give me of 
 meeting so many members of the party with which 
 I used to be associated, and among which I count so 
 many friends ; but at that time I felt compelled to 
 refuse, partly for a reason which Mr. Balfour would 
 find a difficulty in understanding namely, that I. was 
 not in good health, but still more because I was very 
 doubtful whether during the short interval that I am 
 
46 SPEECH AT THE UNITED CLUB [iv 
 
 spending in England between two periods of my 
 Indian administration it would be at all right or 
 proper for me to attend at a public function which 
 might be thought to present a party character. Then 
 your committee pressed me to attend at a more 
 informal gathering, and I really did not think there 
 was anything in the compunction that I had pre- 
 viously felt that need deprive me of the pleasure of 
 coming to an entertainment like the present, or 
 prevent me from meeting so many to whom I was 
 attached in the days now long gone by, and with 
 whom I hope to work again in the future. Of course, 
 it is a great additional compliment to me to have been 
 supported as I have found myself at this table. On 
 my right hand I have had the most distinguished of 
 all Indian commanders, on my left has been the Prime 
 Minister. And I must really set it down as an 
 additional bad point to the many with which we are 
 already familiar in the party system, that for the 
 second occasion during the last fortnight has that 
 system deprived me of the privilege of his presence 
 at the very moment when I was about to reply to the 
 compliments that he had lavished upon me. Mr. 
 Balfour said in his remarks that he and I were very 
 old friends. That is quite true. Mr. Balfour possesses, 
 as we all know, the rare quality of attaching men to 
 him, not only by the strongest ties of political loyalty, 
 but also by those of personal affection. In him all 
 parties in this country regard with respect the first 
 Minister of the Empire. His own party follows him 
 with unquestioning confidence as its leader. But 
 there is another sentiment warmer, I think, and 
 stronger, which is the happy and peculiar prerogative 
 of his personal friends. When Lord Salisbury died 
 
iv] MR. BALFOUR 47 
 
 there was not the slightest strain or effort on the part 
 of any of us who were servants of the Crown in 
 transferring our allegiance to Mr. Balfour, and if he 
 were present I could assure him that he has the 
 devoted adherence of followers in all parts of the 
 Empire quite as much as any he can lay claim to 
 at home. We who serve the Empire abroad recognize 
 in him a statesman who is imbued with the larger 
 spirit, the finer sense, of Empire, who lifts every 
 subject that he touches on to a higher moral and 
 intellectual plane, and who, we believe, is actuated in 
 governing the country, not by any petty or transient 
 motives of expediency, but by a wide and far-seeing 
 conception of the public good. Mr. Balfour was kind 
 enough to make some remarks about myself to which 
 1 do not quite know in what spirit or manner I ought 
 to reply. I feel almost tempted to say that for the 
 first time in my experience Mr. Balfour dipped his 
 brush in the colours of the impressionist school ; 
 indeed, it was the only political portrait I have known 
 him to draw which seemed conspicuously wanting in 
 fidelity to the original. However that may be, I am, 
 of course, very grateful for the kind remarks that he 
 made about myself. I am really not conscious of 
 having done anything in India except that very 
 obvious and simple thing, my duty, and I can only 
 attribute it to the generous recognition of public 
 service, to which we are so accustomed in this 
 country, that I have received anything in the nature 
 of acknowledgment or reward. 
 
 I spoke just now of the extent to which I have 
 been the victim in the past few weeks in England 
 of the party system. Those who occupy the sort of 
 position that I have been filling in India in the past 
 
48 SPEECH AT THE UNITED CLUB [iv 
 
 five and a half years stand in a very peculiar relation- 
 ship to that system. From that great distance we 
 see the political game going on here I need hardly 
 explain that I do not use the word in an invidious 
 sense much as a sailor may look on at the manoeuvres 
 of a fleet from the crow's-nest of a man-of-war ; but 
 we occupy a position towards it all of quite curious 
 detachment. Getting our papers, as we do, some 
 three weeks after the events they record, I am sorry 
 to say that we skim very cursorily the debates in the 
 House of Commons. We are even so impertinent as 
 sometimes to doubt whether the House of Commons 
 is either the best or the most sacred institution in the 
 world. Those of us who have been in the House in 
 former days see our old friends still at the mill see 
 the two sides engaged in saying much the same 
 things and doing pretty much the same things as 
 they were doing years before. Probably it is all 
 quite necessary and quite right, for we are told that 
 this is the only system in the world that can provide 
 a constitutional country not only with an actual 
 Government, but with a potential Government in 
 reserve, although I am not sure that recent events 
 have not thrown some doubt even upon that hypo- 
 thesis. In India the case with us is quite different. 
 There we think a great deal, and every day, about the 
 Empire, but we are not so much concerned with 
 party ; and in so far as we turn our attention to the 
 latter, the party that we want is the one which will 
 remember that the Empire has a circumference as well 
 as a centre, and that, although the lifeblood goes out 
 from the heart to the extremities, it also comes back 
 from the extremities to the heart. The ideal party for 
 us in India, that is the ideal party at home, is the one 
 
iv] OUR DUTIES IN INDIA 49 
 
 that will recognize the place of India in the Imperial 
 system namely, as an organic factor, not as a trouble- 
 some appendage, which will act both as the impartial 
 umpire as well as the superior authority in the 
 disputes that sometimes arise between us, and that 
 will not unduly favour the home country at our 
 expense. That is the sort of party that we desire. I 
 should probably be making a partisan observation if 
 I were to indicate whether we have or have not such 
 a party in office at home at present. 
 
 I have very little to say to you about India to-day. 
 The fact is, I doubt if anywhere India would make 
 a very good luncheon dish ; it lies a little heavy on 
 the palate. During the last ten days I have been 
 called upon to discharge what I think is one of the 
 most onerous duties that I have ever had to perform 
 that is, to make three long speeches about India to 
 audiences on hot summer afternoons. The experi- 
 ment is one that does not bear repetition either in 
 the interests of the speaker or of the audience; 
 besides which, I know that many of you have en- 
 gagements a little distance from here, from which 
 I must not keep you. 
 
 But there is one observation which I should like 
 to make. My main object during the past few years 
 in India has been identical with that which I take 
 to have been the object of every Governor-General 
 before me and of every patriotic Englishman who 
 knows India, namely, to render the foundations of 
 our rule in that country more secure ; and, if you ask 
 me why, the reason is not for the honour and glory 
 of the thing, still less for J:he selfish advantage of 
 England or Englishmen. We must remain in India, 
 because if we were to withdraw the whole system 
 
 E 
 
So SPEECH AT THE UNITED CLUB [iv 
 
 of Indian life and politics would fall to pieces like 
 a pack of cards. We are absolutely necessary to 
 India. J That is recognized by the best of the people 
 themselves, just as it is by us ; and I think that the 
 bitterest foe of England, if he were also a true friend 
 of India, would be the first man to vote against our 
 departure. I cannot myself conceive of a time as 
 remotely possible in which it would be either practi- 
 cable or desirable that we should take our hand from 
 the Indian plough. Carlyle once posed a curious 
 question namely, whether the British people would 
 sooner lose their Shakespeare or their Indian Empire, 
 and he decided in the favour of the latter, because, 
 he said, "your Indian Empire in any case must go 
 sooner or later, but this Shakespeare cannot go ; he 
 lasts for ever with us. We cannot give up our 
 Shakespeare." Well, I find it somewhat difficult to 
 decide between such incongruous factors as an author 
 and an Empire, but I venture to submit that no 
 comparison is necessary. There is no reason why 
 we should lose either. Let us keep both. Let India 
 remain our India just as much as Shakespeare is our 
 Shakespeare that is to say, as a part of the inalien- 
 able heritage of Englishmen and the lasting glory of 
 the British race. 
 
 I believe I see before me many of the rising 
 members of one of the great parties in the State, 
 and a good many also of the risen. Some of you are 
 in Parliament already ; others, we hope, will follow 
 their footsteps towards that desirable goal. Is there 
 any message that I can give to you from India? I 
 think it is this in the first place, come out and see 
 us. Should any of you find yourselves at no remote 
 distance of time in what are euphemistically called 
 
iv] INDIA AND THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 51 
 
 "the cold shades of Opposition," come out and get 
 a touch of the Eastern sun. A hospitable welcome 
 will always await you in Calcutta, and we will show 
 you there and elsewhere a great deal that will interest 
 you, inspire you, and make you proud of your country. 
 Then, when you come home again, keep a warm 
 corner for India in your hearts ; but do not bother us 
 with an excessive display of Parliamentary affection. 
 There was a distinguished Indian statesman, Sir 
 Charles Metcalfe, who recorded his opinion seventy 
 years ago that India would be lost on the floor of the 
 House of Commons. I think that that was an ex- 
 aggerated sentiment. I do not see why India should 
 be lost there or anywhere else. Indeed, if any such 
 crisis were impending, I should be disposed to look 
 to the patriotism and common sense of the House of 
 Commons to avert any such disaster. But no such 
 question, happily, arises, and meanwhile we appeal to 
 the practical sympathy, the interest, and the sense 
 of justice and of duty of the House of Commons. 
 Parliamentary interference we do not require, but 
 a high and lofty sense of Parliamentary responsibility 
 I think we have a claim to expect, for, wherever the 
 ultimate and sovereign power rests, there also the 
 rights of dependencies find their security and pro- 
 tection. I will not detain you further ; but among 
 the compliments that I have received since I have 
 been in England there is none which I value more 
 highly than this informal gathering of old associates 
 and old friends, and I shall always look back upon it 
 with the utmost pleasure. 
 
 IE END 
 
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