for it. Probably no public servant of
the Empire ever laboured in its service with more unstinted devotion and
a higher sense of duty. But good administration is not an adequate
substitute for knowledge of men, and that knowledge Lord Milner lacked.
He did no service to the British colonists of South Africa in telling
them that they had been shamefully betrayed by the Home Government in
1906. It would have been wiser to advise them to rely on themselves and
on the justice and wisdom of their Dutch fellow-citizens. His violent
speeches in 1906-1908 about the calamitous results of permitting Dutch
influences free play in South Africa--speeches breathing the essential
spirit of Fitzgibbonism--would have wrought incalculable mischief had
they coincided with effective British policy; while his view, as
expressed in the House of Lords,[38] that a preparatory regime of
benevolent despotism, showing "the obvious solicitude of the Government
for the welfare of the people," and taking shape "in a hundred and one
works of material advancement," would "win us friends and diminish our
enemies," evinces an ignorance of the ordinary motives influencing the
conduct of white men, which would be incredible if we had not Irish
experience before us. "Twenty years of resolute government," said Lord
Salisbury. "Home Rule will be killed by kindness," said many of his
successors. In later chapters I shall have to show what well-meant
kindness and resolute government have done for Ireland. If even at this
late hour Lord Milner would frankly acknowledge his error, I believe he
would enormously enhance his reputation in the eyes of the whole Empire.

As practical men, let us remember that the Constitutions of 1906 would
not have become law if, instead of being issued under Letters Patent,
they had had to pass through Parliament in the form of a Bill. The whole
Conservative party, following Lord Milner, was vehemently against the
Letters Patent. Those who witnessed the debate upon them in the House of
Commons will not forget the scene. I recall this fact without any desire
to entangle myself in the current controversy about the Upper House, but
with the strictly practical object of showing that because a Home Rule
Bill is defeated in Parliament, as the Irish Bills of 1886 and 1893 were
defeated, it does not necessarily follow that its policy is wrong. Nor
does it follow that its policy is wrong if that defeat in Parliament is
confirmed by a Genera