At the very outset of his career, John Stuart Mill's admiring sympathy for the youthful author of Greater Britain was specially called forth by chapters which made a natural appeal to the son of the historian of British India. More than twenty years later, Sir Charles, revising his work in the full maturity of his power and knowledge, emphasized again the first precept of his policy, which enjoined not only justice, but courtesy:
"Above all it is essential to the continuation of our rule under the changed conditions that the individual Englishman in India should behave towards the people as the best behave at present."
Into the question whether India would be better or worse off under some other system he never entered; British control was accepted by him as a fact; but, so accepting it, he insisted that justice should be done to the Crown's Asiatic subjects.
"Men who speak better English than most Englishmen; who conduct able newspapers in our tongue; who form the majority on town councils which admirably supervise the affairs of great cities; who, as Native Judges, have reached the highest judicial posts; who occupy seats in the Provincial, the Presidency, and the Viceregal Councils, or as powerful Ministers excellently rule vast Native States, can no longer be treated as hopelessly inferior to ourselves in governmental power. These men look upon the Queen's proclamations as their charters, and point out that, while there is no legal reason against their filling some proportion, at all events, of the highest executive posts, there are as a fact virtually no natives high up in the covenanted Civil Service."
Control of the military power, control of the Budget, must remain with the governing race. But "provided war and finance are in those single hands, autocratic or despotic if you will, which must exist for India as a whole, in the absence of any other authority, the less we interfere in the details of administration, to my mind, the better both for India and for ourselves." [Footnote: East and West, November, 1901.]
Local self-government would give to the leading natives more opportunity for a career, and to the governed a rule more closely in touch with their sympathies and traditions. But there could be no general formula. "Roughly speaking," he said, "my views are hostile to the treating of India as a single State, and favourable to a legislative recognition of the diversity of conditions which undoubtedly exist in India." He contemplated administration in some parts of India by hereditary chiefs and princes, in some cities by elective representatives of the municipalities, in other portions of the country by a mixed system. But, by whatever method, he was for recognizing the fact that in India we were at many points controlling a developed though a different civilization; that trained men were to be had in numbers; and that the educated natives' claim for an increased and increasing part in the task of government must be recognized.
There is a letter from him to Mr. Morley in 1897, when he thought that freedom for the Indian Press was threatened by "blind reaction" after the Poona murder: "The state of things in Poona has grown out of the Committee, under the man who was stabbed but is not dead, employing British privates (instead of employing native troops, as did General Gatacre at Bombay) to search the houses for plague patients." The whole position appeared to him "more dangerous than it has been at any time since the recall of Lytton in 1880."
A policy of repression would set back the progress of liberalizing Indian government. No one insisted more strongly on the maintenance of sufficient force to defend the Indian Empire; but he believed that there was a second "greatest duty" in learning "how to live with the development of that new India which we ourselves have created."
Speaking on July 13th, 1909, when the murder of Mr. A. M. T. Jackson at Nasik was fresh in all minds, he urged continued "measures of amnesty and appeasement," and deprecated the policy of deporting leading members of the National Congress. "If reform was dangerous," he said, "it was less dangerous than leaving things alone." Describing Lord Ripon, whose death had only just taken place, as "the Viceroy who more than any other had touched the imagination of the people of India," he added: "If our rule, excellent in intention, but rather wooden, is to be made acceptable, imagination must play its part."
This lifelong advocacy of generous principles was not unrecognized. In the last autumn of his life he was pressed in flattering terms to attend the twenty-fifth National Congress; and for some time he entertained the idea, which was specially urged on him by his friend and honorary agent for the Forest of Dean, Sir William Wedderburn, who was presiding over the Congress that year.