framing of the bill which contains that
clause. We are told that the time can never come when the natives of
India can be admitted to high civil and military office. We are told
that this is the condition on which we hold our power. We are told that
we are bound to confer on our subjects every benefit--which they
are capable of enjoying?--no;--which it is in our power to confer
on them?--no;--but which we can confer on them without hazard to the
perpetuity of our own domination. Against that proposition I solemnly
protest as inconsistent alike with sound policy and sound morality.

I am far, very far, from wishing to proceed hastily in this most
delicate matter. I feel that, for the good of India itself, the
admission of natives to high office must be effected by slow degrees.
But that, when the fulness of time is come, when the interest of India
requires the change, we ought to refuse to make that change lest we
should endanger our own power, this is a doctrine of which I cannot
think without indignation. Governments, like men, may buy existence too
dear. "Propter vitam vivendi perdere causas," is a despicable policy
both in individuals and in states. In the present case, such a policy
would be not only despicable, but absurd. The mere extent of empire
is not necessarily an advantage. To many governments it has been
cumbersome; to some it has been fatal. It will be allowed by every
statesman of our time that the prosperity of a community is made up of
the prosperity of those who compose the community, and that it is the
most childish ambition to covet dominion which adds to no man's comfort
or security. To the great trading nation, to the great manufacturing
nation, no progress which any portion of the human race can make in
knowledge, in taste for the conveniences of life, or in the wealth by
which those conveniences are produced, can be matter of indifference.
It is scarcely possible to calculate the benefits which we might derive
from the diffusion of European civilisation among the vast population of
the East. It would be, on the most selfish view of the case, far better
for us that the people of India were well governed and independent of
us, than ill governed and subject to us; that they were ruled by their
own kings, but wearing our broadcloth, and working with our cutlery,
than that they were performing their salams to English collectors and
English magistrates, but were too ignorant to value, or too poor to bu