"I know you have been in India but from what you say I shouldn't suppose you knew where it was."
Lord Randolph would go on to point out what he thought Forbes's mistakes; then Forbes:
"Yes, you have ruled India but the real India is a sealed book to you."
And so on. Presently they discussed the Indian Civil Service and Mr. Chamberlain came to the front. In the new Civil Service lay, he thought, the hope of India. Appointments were no longer jobbed. A new class of men were brought into the service by examination, well taught, well trained, competent, and drawn from the whole people of England. Lord Randolph listened impatiently, interrupted now and then, but on the whole listened. When Mr. Chamberlain had finished Lord Randolph burst out:
"I have heard that before. No greater nonsense was ever talked. What is the Indian Civil Service; or rather, what was it? A boy of twenty went out as a clerk. From Calcutta he was sent up country, nominally in charge of a bureau, really to govern a district. He did govern it. He had passed no examination. Very likely he couldn't tell you the date of the battle of Plassey or the lineage of a native Prince. He had no mathematics, no Latin, and probably couldn't spell. But he had character. He knew how to govern because he came of a governing class. And he was a gentleman."
"Whereas now"—looking steadily at Chamberlain—"instead of gentlemen you get men from—Birmingham and God knows where."
Chamberlain, who seldom declined any contest to which he was invited, sat cool and smiling while Lord Randolph launched his shafts. When he had emptied his quiver the member for Birmingham, still cool and smiling, observed that he thought it was time for us to join the ladies; and we did. Instantly the sky cleared. India was forgotten. The two combatants walked upstairs arm in arm, and the storm was as if it had never been.
The little scene in which Lord Randolph Churchill was the chief actor brings that vivid personality once again vividly to mind. Indeed, it is never long absent from the general memory. He has left a mark on the public life of this country which will last as long as anything lasts. And he has left a portrait of himself in the memory of all who really knew him. Besides which, he has left a son who does not allow us long to forget his existence or his relation to the affairs of the moment. A great authority was quoted quite lately as saying, "Winston is an abler man even than his father." I asked him whether he said it. "No, I said cleverer, not abler," which seemed a very just distinction.
I have not really much to add to the account of Lord Randolph which I wrote in January, 1895, upon his death. I adhere to all I then said. The estimate seems to me fair, if not complete. The years that have passed take nothing from Lord Randolph's fame. If anything, they add to it. And for this reason: his conception of the political future of his country was a true conception. To him the year 1884, with its revolutionary enlargement of the suffrage, was the turning point of modern English history. The middle classes vacated the throne they had occupied since 1832. The working classes succeeded to their inheritance. Their power has steadily grown. They are two-thirds of the electorate to-day. They have, it is true, but 30 out of 670 Members of Parliament, but these figures are in no respect representative of their real authority. They and the Irish Nationalists hold the balance of power in the House of Commons. They returned fewer members to the House this year than in 1906, but that was because of an arrangement between them and the Liberals—for value received. And no man doubts that the power of the Labour Party will hereafter increase and not decrease. For the first time in the history of England they openly proclaim their purpose to legislate and to influence legislation in the interest of a single class and not in the interest of all classes and of the country as a whole. Their excuse is that they are a majority. But the day when a majority takes no account of the minority, or thinks a minority has no rights which the majority is bound to respect is a black day in the history of any country.