gifts, the loyalty, the
imagination, and the force of character which will be requisite
for the conduct of the administration under the more advanced form
of government to which we are about to succeed."

These words I commend to your Lordships. They breathe a fine and high
spirit; they admirably express the feeling of a sincere man; and I do
not believe anybody who is acquainted with the Service doubts that
this spirit, so admirably expressed, will pervade the Service in the
admittedly difficult task that now confronts them.

The Bill is a short one, and will speak for itself. I shall be brief
in referring to it, for in December last I made what was practically
a Second-Reading speech. I may point out that there are two rival
schools, and that the noble Lord opposite (Lord Curzon) may be said
to represent one of them. There are two rival schools, one of which
believes that better government of India depends on efficiency, and
that efficiency is in fact the main end of our rule in India. The
other school, while not neglecting efficiency, looks also to what is
called political concession. I think I am doing the noble Lord no
injustice in saying that, during his remarkable Vice-royalty, he did
not accept the necessity for political concession, but trusted to
efficiency. I hope it will not be bad taste to say in the noble Lord's
presence, that you will never send to India, and you have never sent
to India, a Viceroy his superior, if, indeed, his equal, in force of
mind, in unsparing and remorseless industry, in passionate and devoted
interest in all that concerns the well-being of India, with an
imagination fired by the grandeur of the political problem that India
presents--you never sent a man with more of all these attributes than
when you sent Lord Curzon. But splendidly designed as was his work
from the point of view of efficiency, he still left in India a state
of things, when we look back upon it, that could not be held a
satisfactory crowning of a brilliant and ambitious career.

I am as much for efficiency as the noble Lord, but I do not
believe--and this is the difference between him and myself--that you
can now have true, solid, endurable efficiency without what are called
political concessions. I know the risks. The late Lord Salisbury,
speaking on the last Indian Councils Bill, spoke of the risk of
applying occidental machinery in India. Well, we ought to have thought
of that before we applied o