VISCOUNT MORLEY: I do not think that when the noble Marquess refers to the report of his speech he will find I have misrepresented him. At all events, he will, I do believe, gladly agree that, in dealing with sedition, I have on the whole given all the support the Government of India or anybody else concerned had a right to ask for.
I will now say a word about the Indian Civil Service. Three years ago, when we began these operations, I felt that a vital condition of success was that we should carry the Indian Civil Service with us, and that if we did not do this, we should fail. But human nature being what it is, and temperaments varying as they do, it is natural to expect a certain amount of criticism, minute criticism, and observation, I have had that, but will content myself with one quotation from the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, well known to the noble Lord opposite. What did he say, addressing the Legislative Council a few weeks ago?—
"I hold that a solemn duty rests upon the officers of Government in all branches, and more particularly upon the officers of the Civil Service, so to comport themselves in the inception and working of the new measures as to make the task of the people and their leaders easy. It is incumbent upon them loyally to accept the principle that these measures involve the surrender of some portion of the authority and control which they now exercise, and some modifications of the methods of administration. If that task is approached in a grudging or reluctant spirit, we shall be sowing the seeds of failure, and shall forfeit our claim to receive the friendly co-operation of the representatives of the people. We must be prepared to support, defend, and carry through the administrative policy, and in a certain degree even the executive acts of the Government in the Council, in much the same way as is now prescribed in regard to measures of legislation; and we must further be prepared to discharge this task without the aid of a standing majority behind us. We will have to resort to the more difficult arts of persuasion and conciliation, in the place of the easier methods of autocracy. This is no small demand to make on the resources of a service whose training and traditions have hitherto led its members rather to work for the people, than through the people or their representatives. But I am nevertheless confident that the demand will not be made in vain. For more than a hundred years, in the time of the Company and under the rule of the Crown, the Indian Civil Service has never failed to respond to whatever call has been made upon it or to adapt itself to the changing environment of the time. I feel no doubt that officers will be found who possess the natural gifts, the loyalty, the imagination, and the force of character which will be requisite for the conduct of the administration under the more advanced form of government to which we are about to succeed."
These words I commend to your Lordships. They breathe a fine and high spirit; they admirably express the feeling of a sincere man; and I do not believe anybody who is acquainted with the Service doubts that this spirit, so admirably expressed, will pervade the Service in the admittedly difficult task that now confronts them.
The Bill is a short one, and will speak for itself. I shall be brief in referring to it, for in December last I made what was practically a Second-Reading speech. I may point out that there are two rival schools, and that the noble Lord opposite (Lord Curzon) may be said to represent one of them. There are two rival schools, one of which believes that better government of India depends on efficiency, and that efficiency is in fact the main end of our rule in India. The other school, while not neglecting efficiency, looks also to what is called political concession. I think I am doing the noble Lord no injustice in saying that, during his remarkable Vice-royalty, he did not accept the necessity for political concession, but trusted to efficiency. I hope it will not be bad taste to say in the noble Lord's presence, that you will never send to India, and you have never sent to India, a Viceroy his superior, if, indeed, his equal, in force of mind, in unsparing and remorseless industry, in passionate and devoted interest in all that concerns the well-being of India, with an imagination fired by the grandeur of the political problem that India presents—you never sent a man with more of all these attributes than when you sent Lord Curzon. But splendidly designed as was his work from the point of view of efficiency, he still left in India a state of things, when we look back upon it, that could not be held a satisfactory crowning of a brilliant and ambitious career.
I am as much for efficiency as the noble Lord, but I do not believe—and this is the difference between him and myself—that you can now have true, solid, endurable efficiency without what are called political concessions. I know the risks. The late Lord Salisbury, speaking on the last Indian Councils Bill, spoke of the risk of applying occidental machinery in India. Well, we ought to have thought of that before we applied occidental education; we applied that, and a measure of occidental machinery must follow. Legislative Councils once called into existence, then it was inevitable that you would have gradually, in Lord Salisbury's own phrase, to popularise them, so as to bring them into harmony with the dominant sentiments of the people in India. The Bill of 1892 admittedly contained the elective principle, and our Bill to-day extends that principle. The noble Lord (Viscount Cross) will remember the Bill of 1892, of which he had charge in the House of Commons. I want the House to be good enough to follow the line taken by Mr. Gladstone, because I base myself on that. There was an amendment moved and it was going to a division, but Mr. Gladstone begged his friends not to divide, because, he said, it was very important that we should present a substantial unity to India. This is upon the question of either House considering a Bill like the Bill that is now on the Table—a mere skeleton of a Bill if you like. I see it has been called vague and sketchy. It cannot be anything else, on the broad principle set out by Mr. Gladstone—
"It is the intention of the Government [that is, the Conservative Government] that a serious effort shall be made to consider carefully those elements which India in its present condition may furnish, for the introduction into the Councils of India of the elective principle. If that effort is seriously to be made, by whom is it to be made? I do not think it can be made by this House, except through the medium of empowering provisions. The best course we could take would be to commend to the authorities of India what is a clear indication of the principles on which we desire them to proceed. It is not our business to devise machinery for the purpose of Indian Government. It is our business to give to those who represent Her Majesty in India ample information as to what we believe to be sound principles of Government: and it is, of course, the function of this House to comment upon any case in which we may think they have failed to give due effect to those principles."
I only allude to Mr. Gladstone's words, in order to let the House know that I am taking no unusual course in leaving the bulk of the work, the details of the work, to the Government of India. Discussion, therefore, in Parliament will necessarily not, and cannot, turn substantially upon details. But no doubt it is desirable that the main heads of the regulations, rules, and proclamations to be made by the Government of India under sanction of the India Office, should be more or less placed within the reach and knowledge of the House so far as they are complete. The principles of the Bill are in the Bill, and will be affirmed, if your Lordships are pleased to read it a second time. The Committee points, important as they are, can well be dealt with in Committee. The view of Mr. Gladstone was cheerfully accepted by the House of Commons then, and I hope it will be accepted by your Lordships to-day.
There is one very important chapter in these regulations, which I think now on the Second Reading of the Bill, without waiting for Committee, I ought to say a few words to your Lordships about—I mean the Mahomedans. That is a part of the Bill and scheme that has no doubt attracted a great deal of criticism, and excited a great deal of feeling in that important community. We suggested to the Government of India a certain plan. We did not prescribe it, we did not order it, but we suggested and recommended this plan for their consideration—no more than that. It was the plan of a mixed or composite electoral college, in which Mahomedans and Hindus should pool their votes, so to say. The wording of the recommendation in my despatch was, as I soon discovered, ambiguous—a grievous defect, of which I make bold to hope I am not very often in public business guilty. But, to the best of my belief, under any construction the plan of Hindus and Mahomedans voting together, in a mixed and composite electorate, would have secured to the Mahomedan electors, wherever they were so minded, the chance of returning their own representatives in their due proportion. The political idea at the bottom of this recommendation, which has found so little favour, was that such composite action would bring the two great communities more closely together, and this hope of promoting harmony was held by men of high Indian authority and experience who were among my advisers at the India Office. But the Mahomedans protested that the Hindus would elect a pro-Hindu upon it, just as I suppose in a mixed college of say seventy-five Catholics and twenty-five Protestants voting together, the Protestants might suspect that the Catholics voting for the Protestant would choose what is called a Romanising Protestant, and as a little of a Protestant as they could find. Suppose the other way. In Ireland there is an expression, a "shoneen" Catholic—that is to say, a Catholic who, though a Catholic, is too friendly with English Conservatism and other influences which the Nationalists dislike. And it might be said, if there were seventy-five Protestants against twenty-five Catholics, that the Protestants when giving a vote in the way of Catholic representation, would return "shoneens." I am not going to take your Lordships' time up by arguing this to-day. With regard to schemes of proportional representation, as Calvin said of another study, "Excessive study of the Apocalypse either finds a man mad, or makes him so." At any rate, the Government of India doubted whether our plan would work, and we have abandoned it. I do not think it was a bad plan, but it is no use, if you are making an earnest attempt in good faith at a general pacification, to let parental fondness for a clause interrupt that good process by sitting obstinately tight.
The Mahomedans demand three things. I had the pleasure of receiving a deputation from them, and I know very well what is in their minds. They demand the election of their own representatives to these councils in all the stages, just as in Cyprus, where I think, the Mahomedans vote by themselves. They have nine votes and the non-Mahomedans have three, or the other way about. So in Bohemia, where the Germans vote alone and have their own register. Therefore we are not without a precedent and a parallel, for the idea of a separate register. Secondly, they want a number of seats somewhat in excess of their numerical strength. Those two demands we are quite ready and intend to meet in full. There is a third demand that, if there is a Hindu on the Viceroy's Executive Council—a subject on which I will venture to say something to your Lordships before I sit down—there should be two Indian members on the Viceroy's Council and one should be a Mahomedan. Well, as I told them and as I now tell your Lordships, I see no chance whatever of meeting their views in that way.