I will now ask the attention of the House for a moment while I examine a group of communications from officers of the Indian Government, and if the House will allow me I will tell them what to my mind is the result of all these communications as to the general feeling in India. That, after all, is what most concerns us. For this unrest in the Punjab and Bengal sooner or later—and sooner, rather than later, I hope—will pass away. What is the situation of India generally in the view of these experienced officers at this moment? Even now when we are passing through all the stress and anxiety, it is a mistake not to look at things rather largely. They all admit that there is a fall in the influence of European officers over the population. They all, or nearly all, admit that there is estrangement—I ought to say, perhaps, refrigeration—between officers and people. There is less sympathy between the Government and the people. For the last few years—and this is a very important point—the doctrine of administrative efficiency has been pressed too hard. The wheels of the huge machine have been driven too fast. Our administration—so shrewd observers and very experienced observers assure me—would be a great deal more popular if it was a trifle less efficient, a trifle more elastic generally. We ought not to put mechanical efficiency at the head of our ideas. I am leading up to a practical point. The district officers representing British rule to the majority of the people of India, are overloaded with work in their official relations, and I know there are highly experienced gentlemen who say that a little of the looseness of earlier days is better fitted than the regular system of latter days, to win and to keep personal influence, and that we are in danger of creating a pure bureaucracy. Honourable, faithful, and industrious the servants of the State in India are and will be, but if the present system is persisted in, there is a risk of its becoming rather mechanical, perhaps I might even say rather soulless; and attention to this is urgently demanded. Perfectly efficient administration, I need not tell the House, has a tendency to lead to over-centralisation. It is inevitable. The tendency in India is to override local authority, and to force administration to run in official grooves. For my own part I would spare no pains to improve our relations with native Governments, and more and more these relations may become of potential value to the Government of India. I would use my best endeavours to make these States independent in matters of administration. Yet all evidence tends to show we are rather making administration less personal, though evidence also tends to show that the Indian people are peculiarly responsive to sympathy and personal influence. Do not let us waste ourselves in controversy, here or elsewhere, or in mere anger; let us try to draw to our side the men who now influence the people. We have every good reason to believe that most of the people of India are on our side. I do not say for a moment that they like us. It does not come easy, in west or east, to like foreign rule. But in their hearts they know that their solid interest is bound up with the law and order that we preserve.
There is a Motion on the Paper for an inquiry by means of a Parliamentary Committee or Royal Commission into the causes at the root of the dissatisfaction. Now, I have often thought, while at the India Office, whether it would be a good thing to have the old-fashioned parliamentary inquiry by committee or commission. I have considered this, I have discussed it with others; and I have come to the conclusion that such inquiry would not produce any of the advantages such as were gained in the old days of old committees, and certainly would be attended by many drawbacks. But I have determined, after consulting with the Viceroy, that considerable advantage might be gained by a Royal Commission to examine, with the experience we have gained over many years, into this great mischief—for all the people in India who have any responsibility know that it is a great mischief—of over-centralisation. It seemed a great mischief to so acute a man as Sir Henry Maine, who, after many years' experience, wrote expressing agreement with what Mr. Bright said just before or just after the Mutiny, that the centralised government of India was too much power for any one man to work. Now, when two men, singularly unlike in temperament and training, agreed as to the evil of centralisation on this large scale, it compels reflection. I will not undertake at the present time to refer to the Commission the large questions that were spoken of by Maine and Bright, but I think that much might be gained by an inquiry on the spot into the working of centralisation of government in India, and how in the opinions of trained men here and in India, the mischief might be alleviated. That, however, is not a question before us now.
You often hear people talk of the educated section of the people of India as a mere handful, an infinitesimal fraction. So they are, in numbers; but it is fatally idle to say that this infinitesimal fraction does not count. This educated section is making and will make all the difference. That they would sharply criticise the British system of government has been long known. It was inevitable. There need be no surprise in the fact that they want a share in political influence, and want a share in the emoluments of administration. Their means—many of them—are scanty; they have little to lose and much to gain from far-reaching changes. They see that the British hand works the State machine surely and smoothly, and they think, having no fear of race animosities, that their hand could work the machine as surely and as smoothly as the British hand.
And now I come to my last point. Last autumn the Governor-General appointed a Committee of the Executive Council to consider the development of the administrative machinery, and at the end of March last he publicly informed his Legislative Council that he had sent home a despatch to the Secretary of State proposing suggestions for a move in advance. The Viceroy with a liberal and courageous mind entered deliberately on the path of improvement. The public in India were aware of it. They waited, and are now waiting the result with the liveliest interest and curiosity. Meanwhile the riots happened in Rawalpindi, in Lahore. After these riots broke out, what was the course we ought to take? Some in this country lean to the opinion—and it is excusable—that riots ought to suspend all suggestions and talk of reform. Sir, His Majesty's Government considered this view, and in the end they took, very determinedly, the opposite view. They held that such a withdrawal would, of course, have been construed as a triumph for the party of sedition. They held that, to draw back on account of local and sporadic disturbances, however serious, anxious, and troublesome they might be, would have been a really grave humiliation. To hesitate to make a beginning with our own policy of improving the administrative machinery of the Indian Government, would have been taken as a sign of nervousness, trepidation, and fear; and fear, that is always unworthy in any Government, is in the Indian Government, not only unworthy, but extremely dangerous. I hope the House concurs with His Majesty's Government.
In answer to a Question the other day, I warned one or two of my hon. friends that, in resisting the employment of powers to suppress disturbances, under the Regulation of 1818 or by any other lawful weapon we could find, they were promoting the success of that disorder, which would be fatal to the very projects with which they sympathise. The despatch from India reached us in due course. It was considered by the Council of India and by His Majesty's Government, and our reply was sent about a fortnight ago. Someone will ask—Are you going to lay these two despatches on the Table to-day? I hope the House will not take it amiss if I say that at this stage—perhaps at all stages—it would be wholly disadvantageous to lay the despatches on the Table. We are in the middle of the discussion to-day, and it would break up steady continuity if we had a premature discussion coram populo. Everyone will understand that discussions of this kind must be very delicate, and it is of the utmost importance that they should be conducted with entire freedom. But, to employ a word that I do not often use, I might adumbrate the proposals. This is how the case stands. The despatch reached His Majesty's Government, who considered it. We then set out our views upon the points raised in the despatch. The Government of India will now frame what is called a Resolution. That draft Resolution, when framed by them in conformity with the instructions of His Majesty's Government, will in due course be sent here. We shall consider that draft, and then it will be my duty to present it to this House if legislation is necessary, as it will be; and it will be published in India to be discussed there by all those concerned….
The main proposal is the acceptance of the general principle of a substantial enlargement of Legislative Councils, both the Governor-General's Legislative Council and the Provincial Legislative Councils. Details of this reform have to be further discussed in consultation with the local Governments in India, but so far it is thought best in India that an official majority must be maintained. Again, in the discussion of the Budget in the Viceroy's Council the subjects are to be grouped and explained severally by the members of Council in charge of the Departments, and longer time is to be allowed for this detailed discussion and for general debate. One more suggestion. The Secretary of State has the privilege of recommending to the Crown members of the Council of India. I think that the time has now come when the Secretary of State may safely, wisely, and justly recommend at any rate one Indian member. I will not discuss the question now. I may have to argue it in Parliament at a later stage, but I think it is right to say what is my intention, realising as we all do how few opportunities the governing bodies have of hearing the voice of Indians.
I believe I have defended myself from ignoring the principle that there is a difference between the Western European and the Indian Asiatic. There is vital difference, and it is infatuation to ignore it. But there is another vital fact—namely, that the Indian Asiatic is a man with very vivid susceptibilities of all kinds, and with living traditions of a civilisation of his own; and we are bound to treat him with the same kind of respect and kindness and sympathy that we should expect to be treated with ourselves. Only the other day I saw a letter from General Gordon to a friend of mine. He wrote—
"To govern men, there is but one way, and it is eternal truth. Get into their skins. Try to realize their feelings. That is the true secret of government."
That is not only a great ethical, but a great political law, and we shall reap a sour and sorry harvest if it is forgotten. It would be folly to pretend to any dogmatic assurance—and I certainly do not—as to the course of the future in India. But for to-day anybody who takes part in the rule of India, whether as a Minister or as a Member of the House of Commons, participating in the discussion on affairs in India—anyone who wants to take a fruitful part in such discussions, if he does his duty will found himself on the assumption that the British rule will continue, ought to continue, and must continue. There is, I know, a school,—I do not think it has representatives in this House—who say that we might wisely walk out of India, and that the Indians would manage their own affairs better than we can manage affairs for them. Anybody who pictures to himself the anarchy, the bloody chaos, that would follow from any such deplorable step, must shrink from that sinister decision. We, at all events—Ministers and Members of this House—are bound to take a completely different view. The Government, and the House in all its parties and groups, is determined that we ought to face all these mischiefs and difficulties and dangers of which I have been speaking with a clear purpose. We know that we are not doing it for our own interest alone, or our own fame in the history of the civilised world alone, but for the interest of the millions committed to us. We ought to face it with sympathy, with kindness, with firmness, with a love of justice, and, whether the weather be fair or foul, in a valiant and manful spirit.