worst that has ever been known, I think, in India’s recorded annals.  Pestilence during the last nine months has stalked through the land, wasting her cities and villages, uncontrolled and uncontrollable, so far as we can tell, by human forethought or care.  When I read some of these figures in the House of Commons, a few perturbed cries of “Shame” accompanied them.  These cries came from the natural sympathy, horror, amazement, and commiseration, with which we all listen to such ghastly stories.  The shame does not lie with the Government.  If you see anything in your newspapers about these plague figures, remember that they are not like an epidemic here.  In trying to remedy plague, you have to encounter the habits and prejudices of hundreds of years.  Suppose you find plague is conveyed by a flea upon a rat, and suppose you are dealing with a population who object to the taking away of life.  You see for yourselves the difficulty?  The Government of India have applied themselves with great energy, with fresh activity, and they believe they have got the secret of this fell disaster.  They have laid down a large policy of medical, sanitary, and financial aid.  I am a hardened niggard of public money.  I watch the expenditure of Indian revenue as the ferocious dragon of the old mythology watched the golden apples.  I do not forget that I come from a constituency which, so far as I have known it, if it is most generous, is also most prudent.  Nevertheless, though I have to be thrifty, almost parsimonious, upon this matter, the Council of India and myself will, I am sure, not stint or grudge.  I can only say, in conclusion, that I think I have said enough to convince you that I am doing what I believe you would desire me to do—­conducting administration in the spirit which I believe you will approve; listening with impartiality to all I can learn; desirous to support all those who are toiling at arduous work in India; and that we shall not be deterred from pursuing to the end, a policy of firmness on the one hand, and of liberal and steady reform on the other.  We shall not see all the fruits of it in our day.  So be it.  We shall at least have made not only a beginning, but a marked advance both in order and progress, by resolute patience, and an unflagging spirit of conciliation.

III

AN AMENDMENT TO THE ADDRESS

(House of Commons. Jan. 31, 1908)

Dr. Rutherford (Middlesex, Brentford) rose to move as an Amendment to the Address, at the end to add,—­“But humbly submits that the present condition of affairs in India demands the immediate and serious attention of his Majesty’s Government; that the present proposals of the Government of India are inadequate to allay the existing and growing discontent; and that comprehensive measures of reform are imperatively necessary in the direction of giving the people of India control over their own affairs.”