TO CONSTITUENTS
(ARBROATH. OCTOBER 21, 1907)
It is an enormous satisfaction to me to find myself here once more, the first time since the polling, and since the splendid majority that these burghs were good enough to give me. I value very much what the Provost has said, when he told you that I have never, though I have had pretty heavy burdens, neglected the local business of Arbroath and the other burghs. The Provost truly said that I hold an important and responsible office under the Crown; and I hope that fact will be the excuse, if excuse be needed, for my confining myself to-night to a single topic. When I spoke to a friend of mine in London the other day he said, "What are you going to speak about?", and I told him. He is a very experienced man and he said, "It is a most unattractive subject, India." At any rate, this is the last place where any apology is needed for speaking about India, because it is you who are responsible for my being the Indian Minister. If your 2,500 majority had been 2,500 the other way, I should have been no longer the Indian Minister. There is something that strikes the imagination, something that awakens a feeling of the bonds of mankind, in the thought that you here and in the other burghs—(shipmen, artificers, craftsmen, and shopkeepers living here)—are brought through me, and through your responsibility in electing me, into contact with all these hundreds of millions across the seas. Therefore it is that I will not make any apology to you for my choice of a subject to-night. Let me say this, not only to you gentlemen here, but to all British constituencies—that it is well you should have patience enough to listen to a speech about India; because it is no secret to anybody who understands, that if the Government were to make a certain kind of bad blunder in India—which I do not at all expect them to make—there would be short work for a long time to come, with many of those schemes, upon which you have set your heart. Do not dream, if any mishap of a certain kind were to come to pass in India that you can go on with that programme of social reforms, all costing money and absorbing attention, in the spirit in which you are now about to pursue it.
I am not particularly fond of talking of myself, but there is one single personal word that I would like to say, and my constituency is the only place in which I should not be ashamed to say that word. You, after all, are concerned in the consistency of your representative. Now I think a public man who spends overmuch time in vindicating his consistency, makes a mistake. I will confess to you in friendly confidence, that I have winced when I read of lifelong friends of mine saying that I have, in certain Indian transactions, shelved the principles of a lifetime. One of your countrymen said that, like the Python—that fabulous animal who had the largest swallow that any creature ever enjoyed—I have swallowed all my principles. I am a little disappointed at such clatter as this. When a man has laboured for more years than I care to count, for Liberal principles and Liberal causes, and thinks he may possibly have accumulated a little credit in the bank of public opinion—and in the opinion of his party and his friends—it is a most extraordinary and unwelcome surprise to him, when he draws a very small cheque indeed upon that capital, to find the cheque returned with the uncomfortable and ill-omened words, "No effects." I am not going to defend myself. A long time ago a journalistic colleague, who was a little uneasy at some line I took upon this question or that, comforted himself by saying. "Well, well, the ship (speaking of me) swings on the tide, but the anchor holds." Yes, gentlemen, I am no Pharisee, but I do believe that my anchor holds, and your cheers show that you believe it too.
Now to India. I observed the other day that the Bishop of Lahore said—and his words put in a very convenient form what is in the minds of those who think about Indian questions at all—"It is my deep conviction that we have reached a point of the utmost gravity and of far-reaching effect in our continued relations with this land, and I most heartily wish there were more signs that this fact was clearly recognised by the bulk of Englishmen out here in India, or even by our rulers themselves." Now you and the democratic constituencies of this kingdom are the rulers of India. It is to you, therefore, that I come to render my account. Just let us see where we are. Let us put the case. When critics assail Indian policy or any given aspect of it, I want to know where we start from? Some of you in Arbroath wrote to me, a year ago, and called upon me to defend the system of Indian Government and the policy for which I am responsible. I declined, for reasons that I stated at the moment. I am here to answer to-night, when the time makes it more fitting in anticipation all those difficulties which some excellent people, with whom in many ways I sympathise, feel. Again, I say, let us see where we start from. Does anybody want me to go to London to-morrow morning, and to send a telegram to Lord Kitchener, the Commander-in-Chief in India, and tell him that he is to disband the Indian army, to send home as fast as we can despatch transports, the British contingent of the army, and bring away the whole of the Civil servants? Suppose it to be true, as some people in Arbroath seem to have thought—I am not arguing the question—that Great Britain loses more than she gains; supposing it to be true that India would have worked out her own salvation without us; supposing it to be true that the present Government of India has many defects—supposing all that to be true, do you want me to send a telegram to Lord Kitchener to-morrow morning to clear out bag and baggage? How should we look in the face of the civilised world if we had so turned our back upon our duty and sovereign task? How should we bear the smarting stings of our own consciences, when, as assuredly we should, we heard through the dark distances the roar and scream of confusion and carnage in India? Then people of this way of thinking say "That is not what we meant." Then what is it that is meant, gentlemen? The outcome, the final outcome, of British rule in India may be a profitable topic for the musings of meditative minds. But we are not here to muse. We have the duty of the day to perform, we have the tasks of to-morrow spread out before us. In the interests of India, to say nothing of our own national honour, in the name of duty and of common sense, our first and commanding task is to keep order and to quell violences among race and creed; sternly to insist on the impartial application of rules of justice, independent of European or of Indian. We begin from that. We have got somehow or other, whatever the details of policy and executive act may be, we are bound by the first law of human things to maintain order.
There are plenty of difficulties in this immense task in England, and I am not sure that I will exclude Scotland, but I said England in order to save your feelings. One of the obstacles is the difficulty of finding out for certain what actually happens. Scare headlines in the bills of important journals are misleading. I am sure many of you must know the kind of mirror that distorts features, elongates lines, makes round what is lineal, and so forth. I assure you that a mirror of that kind does not give you a more grotesque reproduction of the human physiognomy, than some of these tremendous telegrams give you as to what is happening in India. Another point is that the Press is very often flooded with letters from Indians or ex-Indians—from Indicus olim, and others—too oftened coloured with personal partisanship and deep-dyed prepossessions. There is a spirit of caste outside the Hindu sphere. There is a great deal of writing on the Indian Government by men who have acquired the habit while they were in the Government, and then unluckily retain the habit after they come home and live, or ought to live, in peace and quietness among their friends here. That is another of our difficulties. Still, when all such difficulties are measured and taken account of, it is impossible to overrate the courage, the patience and fidelity, with which the present House of Commons faces what is not at all an easy moment in Indian Government. You talk of democracy. People cry, "Oh! Democracy cannot govern remote dependencies." I do not know; it is a hard question. So far, after one Session of the most Liberal Parliament that has ever sat in Great Britain, this most democratic Parliament so far at all events, has safely rounded an extremely difficult angle. It is quite true that in reference to a certain Indian a Conservative member rashly called out one night in the House of Commons "Why don't you shoot him?" The whole House, Tories, Radicals, and Labour men, they all revolted against any such doctrine as that; and I augur from the proceedings of the last Session—with courage, patience, good sense, and willingness to learn, that democracy, in this case at all events, has shown, and I think is going to show, its capacity for facing all our problems.
Now, I sometimes say to friends of mine in the House, and I venture respectfully to say it to you—there is one tremendous fallacy which it is indispensable for you to banish from your minds, taking the point of view of a British Liberal, when you think of India. It was said the other day—no, I beg your pardon, it was alleged to have been said—by a British Member of Parliament now travelling in India—That whatever is good in the way of self-government for Canada, must be good for India. In my view that is the most concise statement that I can imagine, of the grossest fallacy in all politics. It is a thoroughly dangerous fallacy. I think it is the hollowest and, I am sorry to say, the commonest, of all the fallacies in the history of the world in all stages of civilisation. Because a particular policy or principle is true and expedient and vital in certain definite circumstances, therefore it must be equally true and vital in a completely different set of circumstances. What sophism can be more gross and dangerous? You might just as well say that, because a fur coat in Canada at certain times of the year is a truly comfortable garment, therefore a fur coat in the Deccan is just the very garment that you would be delighted to wear. I only throw it out to you as an example and an illustration. Where the historical traditions, the religious beliefs, the racial conditions, are all different—there to transfer by mere untempered and cast-iron logic all the conclusions that you apply in one case to the other, is the height of political folly, and I trust that neither you nor I will ever lend ourselves to any extravagant doctrine of that species.
You may say, Ah, you are laying down very different rules of policy in India from those which for the best part of your life you laid down for Ireland. Yes, but that reproach will only have a sting in it, if you persuade me that Ireland with its history, the history of the Rebellion, Union and all the other chapters of that dismal tale, is exactly analogous to the 300 millions of people in India. I am not at all afraid of facing your test. I cannot but remember that in speaking to you, I may be speaking to people many thousands of miles away, but all the same I shall speak to you and to them perfectly frankly. I don't myself believe in artful diplomacy; I have no gift for it. There are two sets of people you have got to consider. First of all, I hope that the Government of India, so long as I am connected with it and responsible for it to Parliament and to the country, will not be hurried by the anger of the impatient idealist. The impatient idealist—you know him. I know him. I like him, I have been one myself. He says, "You admit that so and so is right; why don't you do it—why don't you do it now?" Whether he is an Indian idealist or a British idealist I sympathise with him. Ah! gentlemen, how many of the most tragic miscarriages in human history have been due to the impatience of the idealist! (Loud cheers.) I should like to ask the Indian idealist, whether it is a good way of procuring what everybody desires, a reduction of Military expenditure, for example, whether it is a good way of doing that, to foment a spirit of strife in India which makes reduction of Military forces difficult, which makes the maintenance of Military force indispensable? Is it a good way to help reformers like Lord Minto and myself, in carrying through political reform, to inflame the minds of those who listen to such teachers, to inflame their minds with the idea that our proposals and projects are shams? Assuredly it is not.
And I will say this, gentlemen. Do not think there is a single responsible leader of the reform party in India, who does not deplore the outbreak of disorder that we have had to do our best to put down; who does not agree that disorder, whatever your ultimate policy may be—must be with a firm hand put down. If India to-morrow became a self-governing Colony—disorder would still have to be put down with an iron hand; I do not know and I do not care, to whom these gentlemen propose to hand over the charge of governing India. Whoever they might be, depend upon it that the maintenance of order is the foundation of anything like future progress. If any of you hear unfavourable language applied to me as your representative, do me the justice to remember considerations of that kind. To nobody in this world, by habit, by education, by experience, by views expressed in political affairs for a great many years past, to nobody is exceptional repression, more distasteful than it is to me. After all, gentlemen, you would not have me see men try to set the prairie on fire without arresting the hand. You would not blame me when I saw men smoking their pipes near powder magazines, you would not blame me, you would not call me an arch coercionist, if I said, "Away with the men and away with the pipes." We have not allowed ourselves—I speak of the Indian Government—to be hurried into the policy of repression. I say this to what I would call the idealist party. Then I would say something to those who talk nonsense about apathy and supineness. We will not be hurried into repression, any more than we will be hurried into the other direction. This party, which is very vocal in this country, say:—Oh! we are astonished, and India is astonished, and amazed at the licence that you extend to newspapers and to speakers; why don't you stop it? Orientals, they say, do not understand it. Yes, but just let us look at that. We are not Orientals; that is the root of the matter. We are in India. We English, Scotch, and Irish, are in India because we are not Orientals. We are representatives, not of Oriental civilisation, but of Western civilisation, of its methods, its principles, its practices; and I for one will not be hurried into an excessive haste for repression, by the argument that Orientals do not understand patience or toleration.
You will want to know how the situation is viewed at this moment in India itself, by those who are responsible for the Government of India. This view is not a new view at all. It is that the situation is not gravely dangerous, but it requires serious and urgent attention. That seems for the moment to be the verdict. Extremists are few, but they are active; their field is wide, their nets are far spread. Anybody who has read history knows that the Extremist often beats the Moderate by his fire, his heated energy, his concentration, by his very narrowness. So be it; we remember it; we watch it all, with that lesson of historic experience full in our minds. Yet we still hold that it would be the height of political folly for us at this moment to refuse to do all we can, with prudence and energy, to rally the Moderates to the cause of the Government, simply because the policy will not satisfy the Extremists. Let us, if we can, rally the Moderates, and if we are told that the policy will not satisfy the Extremists, so be it. Our line will remain the same. It is the height of folly to refuse to rally sensible people, because we do not satisfy Extremists. I am detaining you unmercifully, but I doubt whether—and do not think I say it because it happens to be my department—of all the questions that are to be discussed perhaps for years to come, any question can be in all its actual foundations, and all its prospective bearings, more important than the question of India. There are many aspects of it which it is not possible for me to go into, as, for example, some of its Military aspects. I repeat my doubt whether there is any question more commanding at this moment, and for many a day to come, than the one which I am impressing upon you to-night. Is all that is called unrest in India mere froth? Or is it a deep rolling flood? Is it the result of natural order and wholesome growth in this vast community? Is it natural effervescence, or is it deadly fermentation? Is India with all its heterogeneous populations—is it moving slowly and steadily to new and undreamt of unity? It is the vagueness of the discontent, which is not universal—it is the vagueness that makes it harder to understand, harder to deal with. Some of them are angry with me. Why? Because I have not been able to give them the moon. I have got no moon, and if I had I would not part with it. I will give the moon, when I know who lives there, and what kind of conditions prevail there.