Indian speeches (1907-1909) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 149 pages of information about Indian speeches (1907-1909).

Indian speeches (1907-1909) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 149 pages of information about Indian speeches (1907-1909).

Mr. Morley:  I am afraid I must traverse my hon. friend’s description of Mr. Bright’s view, with which, I think, I am pretty well acquainted.  Mr. Bright was, I believe, on the right track at the time, when in 1858 the Government of India was transferred to the Crown.  He was not in favour of universal suffrage—­he was rather old-fashioned—­but Mr. Bright’s proposal was perfectly different from that of my hon. friend.  Sir Henry Maine, and others who had been concerned with Indian affairs, came to the conclusion that Mr. Bright’s idea was right—­that to put one man, a Viceroy, assisted as he might be with an effective Executive Council, in charge of such an area as India and its 300 millions of population, with all its different races, creeds, modes of thought, was to put on a Viceroy’s shoulder a load that no man of whatever powers, however gigantic they might be, could be expected effectively to support.  My hon. friend and others who sometimes favour me with criticisms in the same sense, seem to suggest that I am a false brother, that I do not know what Liberalism is.  I think I do, and I must even say that I do not think I have anything to learn of the principles or maxims or the practice of Liberal doctrines even from my hon. friend.  You are bound to look at the whole mass of the difficulties and perplexing problems connected with India, from a common-sense plane, and it is not common sense, if I may say so without discourtesy, to talk of Imperial Dumas.  I have not had a word of thanks from that quarter, in the midst of a shower of reproach, for what I regard, in all its direct and indirect results and bearings, as one of the most important moves that have been made in connection with the relations between Great Britain and India for a long time—­I mean, the admission of two Indian gentlemen to the Council of the Secretary of State.  An hon. friend wants me to appoint an Indian gentleman to the Viceroy’s Executive Council.  Well, that is a different thing; but I am perfectly sure that, if an occasion offers, neither Lord Minto nor I would fall short of some such application of democratic principles.  In itself it is something that we have a Viceroy and a Secretary of State thoroughly alive to the great change in temperature and atmosphere that has been going on in India for the last five or six years, and I do not think we ought to be too impatiently judged.  We came in at a perturbed time; we did not find balmy breezes and smooth waters.  It is notorious that we came into enormous difficulties, which we had not created.  How they were created is a long story that has nothing whatever to do with the present discussion.  But what I submit with the utmost confidence is that the situation to-day is a considerable improvement on the situation that we found, when we assumed power two years ago.  There have been heavy and black clouds over the Indian horizon during those two years.  By our policy those clouds have been to some extent dispersed.  I am not so unwise as to say that the clouds will never come back again; but what has been done by us has been justified, in my opinion, by the event.

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Indian speeches (1907-1909) from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.