I must say a single word about one episode, and it is with sincere regret I refer to it. It is called the Fuller episode. I have had the pleasure of many conversations with Sir Bampfylde Fuller since his return, and I recognise to the full his abilities, his good faith, and the dignity and self-control with which, during all this period of controversy, he has never for one moment attempted to defend himself, or to plunge into any sort of contest with the Viceroy or His Majesty's Government.[1] Conduct of that kind deserves our fullest recognition. I recognise to the full his gifts and his experience, but I am sure that if he were in this House, he would hardly quarrel with me for saying that those gifts were not altogether well adapted to the situation he had to face.

[Footnote 1: An unhappy lapse took place at a later date.]

What was the case? The Lieutenant-Governor suggested a certain course. The Government of India thought it was a mistake, and told him so. The Lieutenant-Governor thereupon said, "Very well, then I'm afraid I must resign." There was nothing in all that except what was perfectly honourable to Sir Bampfylde Fuller. But does anybody here take up this position, that if a Lieutenant-Governor says, "If I cannot have my own way I will resign," then the Government of India are bound to refuse to accept that resignation? All I can say is, and I do not care who the man may be, that if any gentleman in the Indian service says he will resign unless he can have his own way, then so far as I am concerned in the matter, his resignation shall be promptly and definitely accepted. It is said to-day that Sir Bampfylde Fuller recommended certain measures about education, and that the Government have now adopted them. But the circumstances are completely changed. What was thought by Lord Minto and his Council to be a rash and inexpedient course in those days, is not thought so now that the circumstances have changed. I will only mention one point. There was a statement the other day in a very important newspaper that the condition of anti-British feeling in Eastern Bengal had gained in virulence since Sir Bampfylde Fuller's resignation. This, the Viceroy assures me, is an absolute perversion of the facts. The whole atmosphere has changed for the better. When I say that Lord Minto was justified in the course he took, I say it without any prejudice to Sir Bampfylde Fuller, or the slightest wish to injure his future prospects.

Now I come to the subject of the disorders. I am extremely sorry to say that some disorder has broken out in the Punjab. I think I may assume that the House is aware of the general circumstances from Answers to Questions. Under the Regulation of 1818 (which is still alive), coercive measures were adopted. Here I would like to examine, so far as I can, the action taken to preserve the public interests. It would be quite wrong, in dealing with the unrest in the Punjab, not to mention the circumstances that provided the fuel for the agitation. There were ravages by the plague, and these ravages have been cruel. The seasons have not been favourable. A third cause was an Act then on the stocks, which was believed to be injurious to the condition of a large body of men. Those conditions affecting the Colonisation Act were greatly misrepresented. An Indian member of the Punjab Council pointed out how impolitic he thought it was; and, as I told the House about a week ago, the Viceroy, declining to be frightened by the foolish charge of pandering to agitation and so forth, refused assent to that proposal. But in the meantime the proposal of the colonisation law had become a weapon in the hands of the preachers of sedition. I suspect that the Member for East Nottingham will presently get up and say that this mischief connected with the Colonisation Act accounted for the disturbance. But I call attention to this fact, in order that the House may understand whether or not the Colonisation Act was the main cause of the disturbance. The authorities believe that it was not. There were twenty-eight meetings known to have been held by the leading agitators in the Punjab between 1st March, and 1st May. Of these five only related, even ostensibly, to agricultural grievances; the remaining twenty-three were all purely political. The figures seem to dispose of the contention that agrarian questions are at the root of the present unrest in the Punjab. On the contrary, it rather looks as if there was a deliberate heating of the public atmosphere preparatory to the agrarian meeting at Rawalpindi on the 21st April, which gave rise to the troubles. The Lieutenant-Governor visited twenty-seven out of twenty-nine districts. He said the situation was serious, and it was growing worse. In this agitation special attention, it is stated, has been paid to the Sikhs, who, as the House is aware, are among the best soldiers in India, and in the case of Lyallpur, to the military pensioners. Special efforts have been made to secure their attendance at meetings to enlist their sympathies and to inflame their passions. So far the active agitation has been virtually confined to the districts in which the Sikh element is predominant. Printed invitations and leaflets have been principally addressed to villages held by Sikhs; and at a public meeting at Ferozepore, at which disaffection was openly preached, the men of the Sikh regiments stationed there were specially invited to attend, and several hundreds of them acted upon the invitation. The Sikhs were told that it was by their aid, and owing to their willingness to shoot down their fellow countrymen in the Mutiny, that the Englishmen retained their hold upon India. And then a particularly odious line of appeal was adopted. It was asked, "How is it that the plague attacks the Indians and not the Europeans?" "The Government," said these men, "have mysterious means of spreading the plague; the Government spreads the plague by poisoning the streams and wells." In some villages the inhabitants have actually ceased to use the wells. I was informed only the other day by an officer, who was in the Punjab at that moment, that when visiting the settlements, he found the villagers disturbed in mind on this point. He said to his men: "Open up your kits, and let them see whether these horrible pills are in them." The men did as they were ordered, but the suspicion was so great that people insisted upon the glasses of the telescopes being unscrewed, in order to be quite sure that there was no pill behind them.

See the emergency and the risk. Suppose a single native regiment had sided with the rioters. It would have been absurd for us, knowing we had got a weapon there at our hands by law—not an exceptional law, but a standing law—and in the face of the risk of a conflagration, not to use that weapon; and I for one have no apology whatever to offer for using it. Nobody appreciates more intensely than I do the danger, the mischief, and a thousand times in history the iniquity of what is called "reason of State." I know all about that. It is full of mischief and full of danger; but so is sedition, and we should have incurred criminal responsibility if we had opposed the resort to this law.

I do not wish to detain the House with the story of events in Eastern Bengal and Assam. They are of a different character from those in the Punjab, and in consequence of these disturbances the Government of India, with my approval, have issued an Ordinance, which I am sure the House is familiar with, under the authority and in the terms of an Act of Parliament. The course of events in Eastern Bengal appears to have been mainly this—first, attempts to impose the boycott on Mahomedans by force; secondly, complaints by Hindus if the local officials stop them, and by Mahomedans if they do not try to stop them; thirdly, retaliation by Mahomedans; fourthly, complaints by Hindus that the local officials do not protect them from this retaliation; fifthly, general lawlessness of the lower classes on both sides, encouraged by the spectacle of the fighting among the higher classes; sixthly, more complaints against the officials. The result of the Ordinance has been that down to May 29th it had not been necessary to take action in any one of these districts.

I noticed an ironical look on the part of the right hon. Gentleman when I referred with perfect freedom to my assent to the resort to the weapon we had in the law against sedition. I have had communications from friends of mine that, in this assent, I am outraging the principles of a lifetime. I should be ashamed if I detained the House more than two minutes on anything so small as the consistency of my political life. That can very well take care of itself. I began by saying that this is the first time that British democracy in its full strength, as represented in this House, is face to face with the enormous difficulties of Indian Government. Some of my hon. friends look even more in sorrow than in anger upon this alleged backsliding of mine. Last year I told the House that India for a long time to come, so far as my imagination could reach, would be the theatre of absolute and personal government, and that raised some doubts. Reference has been made to my having resisted the Irish Crimes Act, as if there were a scandalous inconsistency between opposing the policy of that Act, and imposing this policy on the natives of India. That inconsistency can only be established by anyone who takes up the position that Ireland, a part of the United Kingdom, is exactly on the same footing as these 300,000,000 people—composite, heterogeneous, with different histories, of different races, different faiths. Does anybody contend that any political principle whatever is capable of application in every sort of circumstances without reference to conditions—in every place, and at every time? I, at all events, have never taken that view, and I would like to remind my hon. friends that in such ideas as I have about political principles, the leader of my generation was Mr. Mill. Mill was a great and benignant lamp of wisdom and humanity, and it was at that lamp I and others kindled our modest rushlights. What did Mill say about the government of India? Remember he was not merely that abject and despicable being, a philosopher. He was a man practised in government, and in what government? Why, he was responsible, experienced, and intimately concerned in the government of India. What did he say? If there is anybody who can be quoted as having been a champion of representative government it is Mill; and in his book, which, I take it, is still the classic book on that subject, this is what he says—

"Government by the dominant country is as legitimate as any other, if it is the one which, in the existing state of civilization of the subject people, most facilitates their transition to a higher state of civilization."

Then he says this—

"The ruling country ought to be able to do for its subjects all that could be done by a succession of absolute monarchs, guaranteed by irresistible force against the precariousness of tenure attendant on barbarous despotisms, and qualified by their genius to anticipate all that experience has taught to the more advanced nations. If we do not attempt to realize this ideal we are guilty of a dereliction of the highest moral trust that can devolve upon a nation."