India. And then a particularly odious line of
appeal was adopted. It was asked, "How is it that the plague attacks
the Indians and not the Europeans?" "The Government," said these men,
"have mysterious means of spreading the plague; the Government spreads
the plague by poisoning the streams and wells." In some villages the
inhabitants have actually ceased to use the wells. I was informed only
the other day by an officer, who was in the Punjab at that moment,
that when visiting the settlements, he found the villagers disturbed
in mind on this point. He said to his men: "Open up your kits, and let
them see whether these horrible pills are in them." The men did as
they were ordered, but the suspicion was so great that people insisted
upon the glasses of the telescopes being unscrewed, in order to be
quite sure that there was no pill behind them.

See the emergency and the risk. Suppose a single native regiment had
sided with the rioters. It would have been absurd for us, knowing we
had got a weapon there at our hands by law--not an exceptional law,
but a standing law--and in the face of the risk of a conflagration,
not to use that weapon; and I for one have no apology whatever to
offer for using it. Nobody appreciates more intensely than I do the
danger, the mischief, and a thousand times in history the iniquity of
what is called "reason of State." I know all about that. It is full of
mischief and full of danger; but so is sedition, and we should have
incurred criminal responsibility if we had opposed the resort to this
law.

I do not wish to detain the House with the story of events in Eastern
Bengal and Assam. They are of a different character from those in the
Punjab, and in consequence of these disturbances the Government of
India, with my approval, have issued an Ordinance, which I am sure the
House is familiar with, under the authority and in the terms of an Act
of Parliament. The course of events in Eastern Bengal appears to have
been mainly this--first, attempts to impose the boycott on Mahomedans
by force; secondly, complaints by Hindus if the local officials stop
them, and by Mahomedans if they do not try to stop them; thirdly,
retaliation by Mahomedans; fourthly, complaints by Hindus that the
local officials do not protect them from this retaliation; fifthly,
general lawlessness of the lower classes on both sides, encouraged by
the spectacle of the fighting among the higher classes; sixthly, more
complaints ag