y experienced heads of Indian Government. The other day I saw
a letter of instructions from a very eminent Lieutenant-Governor to
those of the next stage below him, as to the attitude that they were
to take to the new civilians when they arrived, and you 24 or 25
gentlemen will get the benefit of those instructions if you are going
to that province. I do not think there is any reason why I should
not mention his name--it was Sir Andrew Fraser, the retired
Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal--and those instructions as to the temper
that was to be inculcated upon newcomers, were marked by a force, a
fulness, and a first-hand aptitude that not even the keenest Secretary
of State could venture to approach. I know that exile is hard. It is
very easy for us here to preach. Exile is and must be hard, but I feel
confident that under the guidance of the high officers there, under
whom you will find yourselves, you will take care not to ignore the
Indian; not to hold apart and aloof from the Indian life and ways;
not to believe that you will not learn anything by conversation with
educated Indians. And while you are in India, and among Indians, and
responsible to Indians, because you are as responsible to them as you
are to us here, while you are in that position, gentlemen, do not live
in Europe all the time. Whether or not--if I may be quite candid--it
was a blessing either for India or for Great Britain that this great
responsibility fell upon us, whatever the ultimate destiny and end
of all this is to be, at any rate I know of no more imposing and
momentous transaction than the government of India by you and those
like you. I know of no more imposing and momentous transaction in the
vast scroll of the history of human government.

We have been within the past two years in a position of considerable
difficulty. But the difficulties of Indian government are not the
result--be sure of this--of any single incident or set of incidents.
You see it said that all the present difficulties arose from the
partition of Bengal. I have never believed that. I do not think well
of the operation, but that does not matter. I was turning the other
day to the history of the Oxford Mission to Calcutta. In 1899--the
partition of Bengal, as you know, was much later--what did they
say? "There exists at present"--at present in 1899--"an increasing
hostility to what is European and English among the educated classes."
"No one can have," this Oxford report g