, say
this--then I say that, on the day when we believe that, we shall
be confronted with as awkward, as embarrassing, and as hazardous a
situation as has ever confronted the rulers of any of the most complex
and gigantic States in human history. I am confident that if the
crisis comes, it will find us ready, but let us keep our minds clear
in advance. There have been many dark and ugly moments--see gentlemen
around me who have gone through dark and ugly dates--in our relations
with India before now. We have a clouded moment before us now. We
shall get through it--but only with self-command and without any
quackery or cant whether it be the quackery of blind violence
disguised as love of order, or the cant of unsound and misapplied
sentiment, divorced from knowledge and untouched by any cool
consideration of the facts.

V

ON PROPOSED REFORMS

(HOUSE OF LORDS. DECEMBER 17, 1908)

I feel that I owe a very sincere apology to the House for the
disturbance in the business arrangements of the House, of which I have
been the cause, though the innocent cause. It has been said that in
the delays in bringing forward this subject, I have been anxious to
burke discussion. That is not in the least true. The reasons that made
it seem desirable to me that the discussion on this most important and
far-reaching range of topics should be postponed, were--I believe the
House will agree with me--reasons of common sense. In the first place,
discussion without anybody having seen the Papers to be discussed,
would evidently have been ineffective. In the second place it would
have been impossible to discuss those Papers with good effect--the
Papers that I am going this afternoon to present to Parliament--until
we know, at all events in some degree, what their reception has been
in the country most immediately concerned. And then thirdly, my
Lords, I cannot but apprehend that discussion here--I mean in
Parliament--would be calculated to prejudice the reception in India
of the proposals that His Majesty's Government, in concert with the
Government of India, are now making. My Lords, I submit those are
three very essential reasons why discussion in my view, and I hope
in the view of this House, was to be deprecated. This afternoon your
Lordships will be presented with a very modest Blue-book of 100 or 150
pages, but I should like to promise noble Lords that to-morrow morning
there will be ready for them a series of Papers on the sa