a Member of
the House of Commons, participating in the discussion on affairs in
India--anyone who wants to take a fruitful part in such discussions,
if he does his duty will found himself on the assumption that the
British rule will continue, ought to continue, and must continue.
There is, I know, a school,--I do not think it has representatives in
this House--who say that we might wisely walk out of India, and that
the Indians would manage their own affairs better than we can manage
affairs for them. Anybody who pictures to himself the anarchy, the
bloody chaos, that would follow from any such deplorable step, must
shrink from that sinister decision. We, at all events--Ministers and
Members of this House--are bound to take a completely different view.
The Government, and the House in all its parties and groups, is
determined that we ought to face all these mischiefs and difficulties
and dangers of which I have been speaking with a clear purpose. We
know that we are not doing it for our own interest alone, or our own
fame in the history of the civilised world alone, but for the interest
of the millions committed to us. We ought to face it with sympathy,
with kindness, with firmness, with a love of justice, and, whether the
weather be fair or foul, in a valiant and manful spirit.

II

TO CONSTITUENTS

(ARBROATH. OCTOBER 21, 1907)

It is an enormous satisfaction to me to find myself here once more,
the first time since the polling, and since the splendid majority that
these burghs were good enough to give me. I value very much what the
Provost has said, when he told you that I have never, though I have
had pretty heavy burdens, neglected the local business of Arbroath and
the other burghs. The Provost truly said that I hold an important and
responsible office under the Crown; and I hope that fact will be the
excuse, if excuse be needed, for my confining myself to-night to a
single topic. When I spoke to a friend of mine in London the other day
he said, "What are you going to speak about?", and I told him. He is a
very experienced man and he said, "It is a most unattractive subject,
India." At any rate, this is the last place where any apology is
needed for speaking about India, because it is you who are responsible
for my being the Indian Minister. If your 2,500 majority had been
2,500 the other way, I should have been no longer the Indian Minister.
There is something that strikes the imagination, something t