Conference. I was rather struck by the extraordinarily small
attention, almost amounting to nothing, that was given to the Dominion
that you here are concerned with. No doubt an Imperial Conference
raises one or two very delicate questions, as to whether common
citizenship is to be observed, or whether the relations between India
and the Colonies should remain what they are. I am not going to
expatiate upon that to-night, but it did occur to me in reading all
these proceedings that the part of Hamlet was rather omitted, because
India after all is the only real Empire. You there have an immense
Dominion, an almost countless population, governed by foreign rulers.
That is what constitutes an Empire. I observed it all with a rather
grim feeling in my mind, that, if anything goes wrong in India, the
whole of what we are talking about now, the material and military
conditions of the Empire as a whole, might be strangely altered and
convulsed. One of the happy qualities of youth--and there is no
pleasure greater than to see you in that blissful stage, for one who
has passed beyond, long beyond it--is not to be, I think I am right,
in a hurry, not to be too anxious either for the present or future
measure of the responsibilities of life and a career. You will forgive
me if I remind you of what I am sure you all know--that the civil
government of 230,000,000 persons in British India is in the hands of
some 1,200 men who belong to the Indian Civil Service. Let us follow
that. Any member of a body so small must be rapidly placed in a
position of command, and it is almost startling to me, when I look
round on the fresh physiognomies of those who are going out, and the
not less fresh physiognomies of those who have returned, to think of
the contrast between your position, and that, we will say, of some of
your Oxford contemporaries who are lawyers, and who have to spend ever
so many years in chambers in Lincoln's Inn or the Temple waiting for
briefs that do not come. Contrast your position with that of members
who enter the Home Civil Service, an admirable phalanx; but still for
a very long time a member who enters that service has to pursue the
minor and slightly mechanical routine of Whitehall. You will not
misunderstand me, because nobody knows better than a Minister how
tremendous is the debt that he owes to the permanent officials of
his department. Certainly I have every reason to be the last man to
underrate that. Well, any of you may be rapidly placed in a position
of real command with inexorable responsibilities. I am speaking in the
presence of men who know better than I do, all the details, but it
is true that one of you in a few years may be placed in command of a
district and have 1,000,000 human beings committed to his charge. He
may have to deal with a famine; he may have to deal with a riot; he
may take a decision on which the lives of thousands of people may
depend. Well, I think that early call to responsibility, to a display
of energy, to the exercise of individual decision and judgment is what
makes the Indian Civil Service a grand career. And that is what
has produced an extraordinary proportion of remarkable men in that
service.
There is another elevating thought, that I should suppose is present
to all of you. To those who are already in important posts and those
who are by-and-by going to take them up. The good name of England is
in your keeping. Your conduct and the conduct of your colleagues in
other branches of the Indian Service decides what the peoples of India
are to think of British government and of those who represent it. Of
course you cannot expect the simple villager to care anything or to
know anything about the abstraction called the _raj_. What he knows is
the particular officer who stands in front of him, and with whom he
has dealings. If the officer is harsh or overbearing or incompetent,
the Government gets the discredit of it; the villager assumes that
Government is also harsh, overbearing, and incompetent. There is this
peculiarity which strikes me about the Indian Civil servant. I am not
sure that all of you will at once welcome it, but it goes to the root
of the matter. He is always more or less on duty. It is not merely
when he is doing his office work; he is always on duty. The great men
of the service have always recognised this obligation, that official
relations are not to be the beginning and the end of the duties of an
Indian administrator. It has been my pleasure and privilege during the
three or four years I have been at the India Office, to see a stream
of important Indian officials. I gather from them that one of the
worst drawbacks of the modern speeding up of the huge wheels of the
machine of Indian government is, that the Indian Civil servant has
less time and less opportunity than he used to have of bringing
himself into close contact with those with whose interests he is
concerned. One of these important officials told me the other day this
story. A retired veteran, an Indian soldier, had come to him and
said, "This is an odd state of things. The other day So-and-so, a
commissioner or what not, was coming down to my village or district.
We did the best we could to get a good camping-ground for him. We were
all eagerly on the look-out for him. He arrived with his attendants.
He went into his tent. He immediately began to write. He went on
writing. We thought he had got very urgent business to do. We went
away. We arrived in the morning soon after dawn. He was still writing,
or he had begun again. So concerned was he both in the evening and in
the morning with his writing that we really had nothing from him but a
polite _salaam_." This may or may not be typical, but I can imagine
it is possible, at all events. That must be pure mischief. If I were
going to remain Indian Secretary for some time to come, my every
effort would be devoted to an abatement of that enormous amount of
writing. You applaud that sentiment now, and you will applaud it more
by-and-by.
Upon this point of less time being devoted to writing and more time to
cultivating social relations with the people, it is very easy for us
here, no doubt, to say you ought to cultivate social relations. Yet I
can imagine a man who has done a hard day's office work--I am sure I
should feel it myself--is not inclined to launch out upon talk and
inquiries among the people with whom he is immediately concerned. It
may be asking almost in a way too much from human nature. Still, that
is the thing to aim at. The thing to aim at is--all civilians who
write and speak say the same--to cultivate social amenities so far as
you can, I do not mean in the towns, but in the local communities with
which many of you are going to be concerned. I saw the other day a
letter from a lady, not, I fancy, particularly sentimental about the
matter, and she said this: "There would be great improvement if only
better social relations could be established with Indians personally.
I do wish that all young officials could be primed before they came
out with the proper ideas on this question." Well, I have no illusions
whatever as to my right or power of priming you. I think each of us
can see for himself the desirability of every one who goes out there,
having certain ideas in his head as to his own relations with the
people whom he is called upon to govern. That is the mission with
which we have to charge you, and it is as momentous a mission as
was ever confided to any great military commander or admiral of the
fleet--this mission of yours to place yourself in touch with the
people whom you have to govern. I am under no illusions that I can
plant new ideas in your minds compared with the ideas that may be
planted by experienced heads of Indian Government. The other day I saw
a letter of instructions from a very eminent Lieutenant-Governor to
those of the next stage below him, as to the attitude that they were
to take to the new civilians when they arrived, and you 24 or 25
gentlemen will get the benefit of those instructions if you are going
to that province. I do not think there is any reason why I should
not mention his name--it was Sir Andrew Fraser, the retired
Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal--and those instructions as to the temper
that was to be inculcated upon newcomers, were marked by a force, a
fulness, and a first-hand aptitude that not even the keenest Secretary
of State could venture to approach. I know that exile is hard. It is
very easy for us here to preach. Exile is and must be hard, but I feel
confident that under the guidance of the high officers there, under
whom you will find yourselves, you will take care not to ignore the
Indian; not to hold apart and aloof from the Indian life and ways;
not to believe that you will not learn anything by conversation with
educated Indians. And while you are in India, and among Indians, and
responsible to Indians, because you are as responsible to them as you
are to us here, while you are in that position, gentlemen, do not live
in Europe all the time. Whether or not--if I may be quite candid--it
was a blessing either for India or for Great Britain that this great
responsibility fell upon us, whatever the ultimate destiny and end
of all this is to be, at any rate I know of no more imposing and
momentous transaction than the government of India by you and those
like you. I know of no more imposing and momentous transaction in the
vast scroll of the history of human government.
We have been within the past two years in a position of considerable
difficulty. But the difficulties of Indian government are not the
result--be sure of this--of any single incident or set of incidents.
You see it said that all the present difficulties arose from the
partition of Bengal. I have never believed that. I do not think well
of the operation, but that does not matter. I was turning the other
day to the history of the Oxford Mission to Calcutta. In 1899--the
partition of Bengal, as you know, was much later--what did they
say? "There exists at present"--at present in 1899--"an increasing
hostility to what is European and English among the educated classes."
"No one can have," this Oxford report goes on, "any real knowledge of
India without a deep sense of the splendid work done by the Indian
Civil Service. The work is recognised by the Indian people. They
thoroughly appreciate the benefits of our rule, they are bound to us
by self-interest, but they do not like us." It is intelligible, but
that is a result to be carefully guarded against by demeanour, by
temper, by action--to be guarded against at every turn. Every one
would agree that anything like a decisive and permanent estrangement
between the Indians and the Europeans would end in dire failure and an
overwhelming catastrophe. I am coming to other ground. The history of
the last six months has been important, anxious, and trying. Eight
months ago there certainly was severe tension. That tension has now
relaxed, and the great responsible officials on the spot assure me
that the position of the hour and the prospects are reassuring. We
have kept the word which was given by the Sovereign on November 1 last
year in the message to the people of India commemorating the 50th
anniversary of the assumption of the powers of government in India
by the Crown, the transfer of the power from the old Company to the
Crown. We have kept our word. We have introduced and carried through
Parliament a measure, as everybody will admit, of the highest order
of importance. It was carried through both Houses with excellent
deliberation. I have been in Parliament a great many years. I have
never known a project discussed and conducted with such knowledge,
and such a desire to avoid small, petty personal incidents. The whole
proceeding was worthy of the reputation of Parliament.
You are entering upon your duties at a stage of intense interest. Sir
Charles Elliott, who was Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, wrote the
other day, that this is "the most momentous change ever effected by
Parliament in the constitution of the Government of India since 1858."
He goes on to say that no prudent man would prophesy. No, and I do not
prophesy. How could I? It depends upon two things. It depends, first
of all, upon the Civil Service. It depends on the Civil Service, and
it depends on the power of Indians with the sense and instincts
of government, to control wilder spirits without the sense or the
instincts of government. As for the Civil Service, which is the other
branch on which all depends, it is impossible not to be struck with
the warmest admiration of the loyal and manful tone in which leading
members of the Civil Service have expressed their resolution to face
the new tasks that this legislation will impose upon them. I have not
got it with me now, but certain language was used by Sir Norman Baker,
who is now the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. I think I quoted it in
the House of Lords, and, if I could read it to you, it would be far
better than any speech of mine in support of the toast I am going to
propose to you. There never was a more manful and admirable expression
of the devotion of the service, than the promise of their cordial,
whole-hearted, and laborious support of the policy which they have now
got to carry through. I am certain there is not one of you who will
fall short, and I am speaking in the presence of those who are not
probationers, but persons proved. There is not one of you who, when
the time comes, will not respond to the call, in the same spirit in
which Sir Norman Baker responded.
I am now going to take you, if you will allow me, for a moment, to a
point of immediate and, I can almost say, personal interest. Everybody
will agree, as I say, that we have fulfilled within the last six or
eight months the pledges that were given by the Sovereign in November.
An Indian gentleman has been placed on the Council of the Viceroy--not
an everyday transaction. It needed some courage to do it, but it was
done. Before that, two Indians were placed on the Council of India
that sits in my own office at Whitehall. We have passed through
Parliament, as I have already described to you, the Councils Act.
Those are great things. But I am told great uneasiness is growing in
the House of Commons as to the matter of deportation. You know what
deportation means. It means that nine Indian gentlemen on December 13
last were arrested and are now detained--arrested under a law which is
as good a law as any law on our own statute-book. You will forgive me
for detaining you with this, but it is an actual and pressing point.
Some of the most respected members of my own party write a letter to
the Prime Minister protesting. A Bill has been brought in, and the
first reading of it was carried two or three days ago, of which I can
only say--with all responsibility for what I am saying--that it is
nothing less, if you consider the source from which it comes, and if
you consider the arguments by which it is supported, than a vote of
distinct censure on me and Lord Minto. The Bill is also supported by
a very clever and rising member of the Opposition. Now words of an
extraordinary character have been used in support of this severe
criticism of the policy of myself and Lord Minto. In a motion, not in
connection with the Bill, but earlier in the Session, words were read
from _Magna Charta_, with the insinuation that the present Secretary
of State is as dubious a character as the Sovereign against whom
_Magna Charta_ was directed. Gloomy references were actually made to
King Charles I., and it was shown that we were exercising powers that,
when attempted to be exercised by Charles I., led to the Civil War and
cost Charles I. his head. This was at the beginning of the present
Session. I doubt if they will get through to the end of the Session,
whenever that may be, without comparisons being instituted between the
Secretary of State, for example, and Strafford or even Cromwell in his
worst moments, as they would think. If Cromwell is mentioned, I shall
know where to point out how Cromwell was troubled by Fifth Monarchy
men, Praise-God Barebones, Venner, Saxby, and others. In historical
parallels I am fairly prepared for the worst. I will take my chance.
Let us look at this seriously, because serious minds are exercised by
deportation, and quite naturally. On December 13 nine Indians were
arrested under a certain Indian Regulation of the year 1818, and they
who reproach us with violating the glories of 1215 (which is Magna
Charta) and the Petition of Rights, complain that 1818 is far too
remote for us to be at all affected by anything that was then made
law. Now what is the Regulation? I will ask you to follow me pretty
closely for a minute or two. The Regulation of 1818 says:--"Reasons
of State occasionally render it necessary to place under personal
restraint individuals, against whom there may not be sufficient
grounds to institute any judicial proceedings, and the
Governor-General in Council is able for good and sufficient reasons to
determine that A.B. shall be placed under personal restraint." There
is no trial; there is no charge; there is no fixed limit of time of
detention; and in short it is equivalent to a suspension of _habeas
corpus_. That is a broad statement, but substantially that is what it
is. Now I do not deny for a moment that if proceedings of this kind,
such as took place on December 13 last year, were normal or frequent,
if they took place every day of the week or every week of the month,
it would be dangerous and in the highest degree discreditable to our
whole Government in India. It would be detestable and dangerous. But
is there to be no such thing as an Emergency power? I am not talking
about England, Scotland, or Ireland. I am talking about India. Is
there to be no such thing as an emergency power? My view is that the
powers given under the Regulation of 1818 do constitute an emergency
power, which, may be lawfully applied if an emergency presents itself.
Was there an emergency last December? The Government of India found in
December a movement that was a grave menace to the very foundations of
public peace and security. The list of crimes for twelve months
was formidable, showing the determined and daring character of the
supporters of this movement. The crimes were not all. Terrorism
prevented evidence. The ordinary process of law was no longer
adequate, and the fatal impression prevailed that the Government could
be defied with impunity. The Government of India did not need to pass
a new law. We found a law in the armoury and we applied it. Very
disagreeable, but still we should have been perfectly unworthy of
holding the position we do--I am speaking now of the Government of
India and myself--if we had not taken that weapon out of the armoury,
and used it against these evildoers.
It was vital that we should stamp out the impression that the
Government of India could be defied with impunity, not in matters of
opinion, mark you, but in matters affecting peace, order, life, and
property--that the Government in those elementary conditions of social
existence could be defied with impunity. I say, then--it was vital in
that week of December that these severe proceedings should be taken,
if there was to be any fair and reasonable chance for those reforms
which have since been laboriously hammered out, which had been for
very many months upon the anvil, and to which we looked, as we look
now, for a real pacification. It was not the first time that this
arbitrary power--for it is that, I never disguise it--was used. It was
used some years ago--I forget how many. I was talking the other day to
an officer who was greatly concerned in it in Poona, and he described
the conditions, and told me the effect was magical. I do not say the
effect of our proceedings the other day was magical. I do not say that
bombs and knives and pistols are at an end. None of the officers in
India think that we may not have some of these over again, but at any
rate for the moment, and, I believe, for much more than the moment,
we have secured order and tranquillity and acquiescence, and a warm
approval of, and interest in, our reforms. I have said we have had
acceptance of our reforms. What a curious thing it is that, after the
reforms were announced, and after the deportations had taken place,
still there came to Lord Minto deputations, and to me many telegrams,
conveying their appreciation and gratitude for the reforms, and other
things we have done. Our good friends who move a vote of censure upon
us, are better Indians than the Indians themselves. I cannot imagine a
more mistaken proceeding.
Let me say one more word about deportations. It is true that there is
no definite charge that could be produced in a court of law. That is
the very essence of the whole transaction. Then it is said--"Oh, but
you look to the police; you get all your evidence from the police."
That is not so. The Government of India get their information, not
evidence in a technical sense--that is the root of the matter--from
important district officers. But it is said then, "Who is to decide
the value of the information?" I heard that one gentleman in the
House of Commons said privately in ordinary talk, "If English country
gentlemen were to decide this, we would not mind." Who do decide? Do
you think this is done by a police sergeant in a box? On the contrary,
every one of these nine cases of deportation has been examined and
investigated--by whom? By Lord Minto, by the late Lieutenant-Governor
of Bengal, by the present Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, by two or
three members of the Viceroy's Executive Council. Are we to suppose
for a minute that men of this great station and authority and
responsibility are going to issue a _lettre de cachet_ for A.B., C.D.,
or E.F., without troubling themselves whether that _lettre de cachet_
is wisely issued or not? Then it is said of a man who is arrested
under this law, "Oh, he ought not to be harshly treated." He is not
harshly treated. If he is one of these nine deported men, he is not
put into contact with criminal persons. His family are looked after.
He subsists under conditions which are to an Indian perfectly
conformable to his social position, and to the ordinary comforts and
conveniences of his life. The greatest difference is drawn between
these nine men and other men against whom charges to be judicially
tried are brought. All these cases come up for reconsideration from
time to time. They will come up shortly, and that consideration will
be conducted with justice and with firmness. There can be no attempt
at all to look at this transaction of the nine deported men otherwise
than as a disagreeable measure, but one imposed upon us by a sense of
public duty and a measure that events justify. What did Mr. Gokhale,
who is a leader of a considerable body of important political
opinion in India, say? Did he move a vote of censure? He said in the
Legislative Council the other day in Calcutta, that Lord Minto and the
Secretary of State had saved India from drifting into chaos. I owe you
an apology, Mr. Vice-Chancellor and gentlemen, for pressing upon your
attention points suggested by criticisms from politicians of generous
but unbalanced impulse. But they are important, and I am glad you have
allowed me to say what I have said upon them.
APPENDIX
A
_Extract from the dispatch of the Board of Directors of the East India
Company to the Government of India, December 10, 1834, accompanying
the Government of India Act_, 1833.[1]
[Footnote 1: Tradition ascribes this piece to the pen of James Mill.
His son, J.S. Mill, was the author of the protest by the Company
against the transfer to the Crown in 1858.]
103. By clause 87 of the Act it is provided that no person, by reason
of his birth, creed, or colour, shall be disqualified from holding any
office in our service.
104. It is fitting that this important enactment should be understood
in order that its full spirit and intention may be transfused through
our whole system of administration.
105. You will observe that its object is not to ascertain
qualification, but to remove disqualification. It does not break down
or derange the scheme of our government as conducted principally
through the instrumentality of our regular servants, civil and
military. To do this would be to abolish or impair the rules which
the legislature has established for securing the fitness of the
functionaries in whose hands the main duties of Indian administration
are to be reposed--rules to which the present Act makes a material
addition in the provisions relating to the college at Haileybury. But
the meaning of the enactment we take to be that there shall be no
governing caste in British India; that whatever other tests of
qualification may be adopted, distinctions of race or religion shall
not be of the number; that no subject of the king, whether of Indian
or British or mixed descent, shall be excluded either from the posts
usually conferred on our uncovenanted servants in India, or from
the covenanted service itself, provided he be otherwise eligible
consistently with the rules and agreeably to the conditions observed
and exacted in the one case and in the other.