There is something that strikes the imagination, something that awakens a feeling of the bonds of mankind, in the thought that you here and in the other burghs—­(shipmen, artificers, craftsmen, and shopkeepers living here)—­are brought through me, and through your responsibility in electing me, into contact with all these hundreds of millions across the seas.  Therefore it is that I will not make any apology to you for my choice of a subject to-night.  Let me say this, not only to you gentlemen here, but to all British constituencies—­that it is well you should have patience enough to listen to a speech about India; because it is no secret to anybody who understands, that if the Government were to make a certain kind of bad blunder in India—­which I do not at all expect them to make—­there would be short work for a long time to come, with many of those schemes, upon which you have set your heart.  Do not dream, if any mishap of a certain kind were to come to pass in India that you can go on with that programme of social reforms, all costing money and absorbing attention, in the spirit in which you are now about to pursue it.

I am not particularly fond of talking of myself, but there is one single personal word that I would like to say, and my constituency is the only place in which I should not be ashamed to say that word.  You, after all, are concerned in the consistency of your representative.  Now I think a public man who spends overmuch time in vindicating his consistency, makes a mistake.  I will confess to you in friendly confidence, that I have winced when I read of lifelong friends of mine saying that I have, in certain Indian transactions, shelved the principles of a lifetime.  One of your countrymen said that, like the Python—­that fabulous animal who had the largest swallow that any creature ever enjoyed—­I have swallowed all my principles.  I am a little disappointed at such clatter as this.  When a man has laboured for more years than I care to count, for Liberal principles and Liberal causes, and thinks he may possibly have accumulated a little credit in the bank of public opinion—­and in the opinion of his party and his friends—­it is a most extraordinary and unwelcome surprise to him, when he draws a very small cheque indeed upon that capital, to find the cheque returned with the uncomfortable and ill-omened words, “No effects.”  I am not going to defend myself.  A long time ago a journalistic colleague, who was a little uneasy at some line I took upon this question or that, comforted himself by saying.  “Well, well, the ship (speaking of me) swings on the tide, but the anchor holds.”  Yes, gentlemen, I am no Pharisee, but I do believe that my anchor holds, and your cheers show that you believe it too.