s Viceroy and as
representing the King convey to His Majesty's Indian troops
my thanks for the contempt with which they have received the
disgraceful overtures which I know have been made to them. The
seeds of sedition have been unscrupulously scattered throughout
India, even amongst the hills of the frontier tribes. We are
grateful that they have fallen on much barren ground, but we can
no longer allow their dissemination."

Will anybody say, that in view of the possible danger pointed to in
that language of the Viceroy two or three months ago, we did wrong in
using the regulation which applied to the case? No one can say what
mischief might have followed, if we had taken any other course than
that which we actually took.

Let me beseech my hon. friends at least to try for some sense of
balanced proportion, instead of allowing their wrath at one particular
incident of policy to blot out from their vision all the wide and
durable operations, to which we have set firm and persistent hands.
After all, this absence of a sense of proportion is what, more than
any other one thing, makes a man a wretched politician.

Now as to the reforms that are mentioned in my hon. friend's
Amendment. It is an extraordinary Amendment. It--

"submits that the present condition of affairs in India demands
the immediate and serious attention of His Majesty's Government."

I could cordially vote for that, only remarking that the hon. member
must think the Secretary of State, and the Viceroy, and other persons
immediately concerned in the Government of India, very curious people
if he supposes that the state of affairs in India does not always
demand their immediate and very serious attention. Then the Amendment
says--

"The present proposals of the Government of India are inadequate
to allay the existing and growing discontent."

I hope it is not presumptuous to say so, but I should have expected a
definition from my hon. friend of what he guesses these proposals are.
I should like to set a little examination paper to my hon. friend. I
have studied them for many months, yet would rather not be examined
for chapter and verse. But my hon. friend after his famous six weeks
of travel knows all about them, and the state of affairs for which our
plans are the inadequate remedy. I do not want to hold him up as a
formidable example: but in his speech to-day he went over--and it
does credit to his in