the roar and scream of
confusion and carnage in India? Then people of this way of thinking
say "That is not what we meant." Then what is it that is meant,
gentlemen? The outcome, the final outcome, of British rule in India
may be a profitable topic for the musings of meditative minds. But we
are not here to muse. We have the duty of the day to perform, we have
the tasks of to-morrow spread out before us. In the interests of
India, to say nothing of our own national honour, in the name of duty
and of common sense, our first and commanding task is to keep order
and to quell violences among race and creed; sternly to insist on the
impartial application of rules of justice, independent of European or
of Indian. We begin from that. We have got somehow or other, whatever
the details of policy and executive act may be, we are bound by the
first law of human things to maintain order.

There are plenty of difficulties in this immense task in England, and
I am not sure that I will exclude Scotland, but I said England in
order to save your feelings. One of the obstacles is the difficulty of
finding out for certain what actually happens. Scare headlines in the
bills of important journals are misleading. I am sure many of you must
know the kind of mirror that distorts features, elongates lines, makes
round what is lineal, and so forth. I assure you that a mirror of that
kind does not give you a more grotesque reproduction of the human
physiognomy, than some of these tremendous telegrams give you as to
what is happening in India. Another point is that the Press is very
often flooded with letters from Indians or ex-Indians--from _Indicus
olim_, and others--too oftened coloured with personal partisanship and
deep-dyed prepossessions. There is a spirit of caste outside the Hindu
sphere. There is a great deal of writing on the Indian Government by
men who have acquired the habit while they were in the Government,
and then unluckily retain the habit after they come home and live, or
ought to live, in peace and quietness among their friends here. That
is another of our difficulties. Still, when all such difficulties
are measured and taken account of, it is impossible to overrate the
courage, the patience and fidelity, with which the present House of
Commons faces what is not at all an easy moment in Indian Government.
You talk of democracy. People cry, "Oh! Democracy cannot govern remote
dependencies." I do not know; it is a hard question