strength in India.  We believe that this admission of the Indians to a larger and more direct share in the government of their country and in all the affairs of their country, without for a moment taking from the central power its authority, will fortify the foundations of our position.  It will require great steadiness, constant pursuit of the same objects, and the maintenance of our authority, which will be all the more effective if we have, along with our authority, the aid and assistance, in responsible circumstances, of the Indians themselves.

Military strength, material strength, we have in abundance.  What we still want to acquire is moral strength—­moral strength in guiding and controlling the people of India in the course on which time is launching them.  I should like to read a few lines from a great orator about India.  It was a speech delivered by Mr. Bright in 1858, when the Government of India Bill was in another place.  Mr. Bright said—­

“We do not know how to leave India, and therefore let us see if we know how to govern it.  Let us abandon all that system of calumny against natives of India which has lately prevailed.  Had that people not been docile, the most governable race in the world, how could you have maintained your power there for 100 years?  Are they not industrious, are they not intelligent, are they not, upon the evidence of the most distinguished men the Indian service ever produced, endowed with many qualities which make them respected by all Englishmen who mix with them?...  I would not permit any man in my presence without rebuke to indulge in the calumnies and expressions of contempt which I have recently heard poured forth without measure upon the whole population of India....  The people of India do not like us, but they would scarcely know where to turn if we left them.  They are sheep, literally without a shepherd.”

However, that may be, we at least at Westminster here have no choice and no option.  As an illustrious Member of this House wrote—­

    “We found a society in a state of decomposition, and we have
    undertaken the serious and stupendous process of reconstructing
    it.”

Macaulay, for it was he, said—­

    “India now is like Europe in the fifth century.”

Yes, a stupendous process indeed.  The process has gone on with marvellous success, and if we all, according to our various lights, are true to our colours, that process will go on.  Whatever is said, I for one—­though I am not what is commonly called an Imperialist—­so far from denying, I most emphatically affirm, that for us to preside over this transition from the fifth European century in some parts, in slow, uneven stages, up to the twentieth—­so that you have before you all the centuries at once as it were—­for us to preside over that, and to be the guide of peoples in that condition, is, if conducted with humanity and sympathy, with wisdom, with political courage, not only a human duty, but what has been often and most truly called one of the most glorious tasks ever confided to any powerful State in the history of civilised mankind.