KING'S SPEECH (MOTION FOR AN ADDRESS).

HC Deb 31 January 1908 vol 183 cc375-432

Order read, for resuming Adjourned Debate on Main Question [29th January], "That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty, as followeth:—

"Most Gracious Sovereign,

We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer our humble thanks to Your Majesty for the Gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament."(—Mr. Lehmann.)

Question again proposed.

DR. RUTHERFORD (Middlesex, Brentford)

rose to move as an Amendment at the end to add:—"But humbly submits that the present condition of affairs in India demands the immediate and serious attention of his Majesty's Government; that the present proposals of the Government of India are inadequate to allay the existing and growing discontent; and that comprehensive measures of reform are imperatively necessary in the direction of giving the people of India control over their own affairs." While confessing his inability to do justice to the great subject of India, he said his desire was to bring about a happier relationship between that country and Great Britain. He presumed the House would admit that outside the United Kingdom the great problem demanding solution was the Indian one, and that until they had satisfactorily solved it they would have failed in their duty. It was an Imperial problem, one worthy of the highest and best conceptions and noblest efforts of that House, yet he was sorry to have to add that in the past the House had treated India too much with the cold shoulder and had subjected it to a great deal of contumely and contempt. But now they had a democratic Parliament and a Secretary of State from which and from whom India was anticipating great and glorious things. Indians had appreciated the noble service which the Secretary of State had rendered in the past to the cause of progress and freedom, and they had expected that under his régime the reign of terror and reaction which prevailed under Lord Curzon would be reversed, and that an era of reform and progress would be inaugurated. But instead of that, India had been met with coercive and repressive measures, and now was driven to despair. India for the time being had lost confidence in the justice of British rule. It was hardly necessary for him to do more than briefly recapitulate some of the chief causes of unrest and discontent. Among these causes was the partition of Bengal, carried out under Lord Curzon's rule, in direct opposition to the will of the people—an act which had created great racial animosity, had caused riots, especially in Bengal, and had aroused a deep sense of injustice throughout the length and breadth of India. Secondly, there was the non-fulfilment of the pledges solemnly made by the late Queen Victoria in 1858 in that proclamation which Indians looked on as their Magna Charta of justice and liberty. We in this country had failed to carry out that charter; we had failed to give an extended system of self-government and to grant Indians a just share in the administration of their own affairs. Then there had been the contemptuous treatment of Indians by Europeans. They could not ignore the hostile attitude of the Press, especially the Anglo-Indian Press in India and a large portion of the British Press at home. The Bishop of Lahore had made a courageous stand against that, and he himself must say he looked upon it as a crime that those who boasted a higher civilisation should throw at the heads of a subject race foul and dishonest epithets. Then there had been the repressive measures indulged in by the Secretary of State for India, who appeared to have overlooked the fact recently stated by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in regard to Ireland that resort to a policy of coercion for the preservation of order and the repression of crime did not bring any nearer a solution of the problem of discontent. Those words applied equally to India and to Ireland. Human nature was very similar in India, in Ireland, and in other parts of the world. The series of repressive measures introduced with regard to public meetings, the Press, and the liberty of the subject had all contributed to the unrest and discontent. He, however, was glad to congratulate the Secretary of State on the release of Lajpat Rai and Ajit Singh, which had brought about a healthier and happier state of feeling throughout India. The misfortune was that these men were arrested and deported without trial under an obsolete Act of 1818 which should be repealed without the slightest hesitation by this great nation. With regard to the treatment of British Indians in South Africa, he believed that was to be the subject of a special Amendment to the Address, and he would not therefore dwell upon it; he would content himself with saying there was not the slightest doubt that the feeling in India was one of deep resentment at the unjust treatment meted out to their fellow Indians in South Africa. Then he came to the question of the tyranny of the police, and he would leave it to hon. Members to realise how that tended to create bad blood between the governors and the governed. And, last of all, the national awakening had proved a permanent cause of unrest, which would never be removed until it was properly recognised and treated. That national awakening embraced all races and all creeds—all sections of the community—in fact practically the whole of the people of India. With regard to the partition of Bengal, the Prime Minister promised that any new facts that might arise should have full consideration. He submitted there were new facts which justified the reconsideration of the decision of the Government. He had found wherever he went in India that the unrest caused by the partition still continued, that the policy of repression to allay the unrest was still being enforced, that the bad blood arising from the partition continued to exist between Hindoos and Mohammedans, and that the hatred of British rule on account of the injustice of this Act was deepening and hardening day by day. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would realise the seriousness of the danger and remedy the evil without any further delay. Then there was the financial grievance. Some influential gentlemen alleged that the difference between the exports and imports represented an annual drain on the resources of India to the extent of something like twenty millions sterling. As he was not a financial expert he would express no opinion on the point, but he held that there was a financial drain, due to what was the most costly system of government in the world, due to the pension scheme and the military expenditure which was continually increasing. All that undoubtedly constituted a severe drain on the finances of India. He would not discuss the merits or demerits of the Anglo-Russian Convention, but if it was worth anything at all then the Army of India ought to be reduced. India must be saved this terrible tax upon her financial resources. What was the raison d'être of the Indian Army? Now that the bogey of Russian invasion was laid it was evidently to hold India. To keep India down, to keep her in subjection, gave rise to suspicion, and that suspicion passed through the whole of India, and excited resentment. If we could not govern India on trust, then he had to ask what right we had to seek to govern her on any other basis whatever. They were told that the Army was the safeguard of British interests in India. That was to say that we were governing India with the British Army for Imperial purposes. If we did that, surely it was right that we should pay a fair share of the cost of the Indian Army. The Indians felt this to be a deep injustice. We paid nothing towards the cost of the Indian Army, or practically nothing, yet we used it for Imperial purposes in China, Somaliland, South Africa, and other portions of the world. Further, we used India as the training ground of the British soldier. If we used the force in these various ways for Imperial and British purposes, then it was our bounden duty to see that we paid a reasonable share of its cost. He maintained that we should pay at least one-third if not one-half of the cost. There had been some unrest in the Punjab among the Army. He did not know the depth or the extent of the unrest, but it appeared that it had reference to Acts passed by the Punjab Government which affected relatives and friends of members of the Indian section of the Army. He did not say that the members of the Indian Army were not influenced by agitators or political speakers, still the root cause among the Indian section of the Army was that their friends had been badly treated by the Punjab Government, and naturally there was a certain amount of unrest. That was temporary, and the cause had been removed by the Punjab Government, who saw the unwisdom of the Acts and repealed them. They had also reduced the rates on the canals and on other things which had caused unrest.

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (Mr. MORLEY,) Montrose Burghs

The Acts were never assented to.

DR. RUTHERFORD

They were passed by the Provincial Legislature. But it is quite true that they were never assented to by the Secretary of State nor by the Government of India. Fortunately that had had a considerable effect in restoring confidence in the Indian section of the British Army. But there was a permanent cause of unrest in India in respect of the difference of pay between the Indian and British sections of the Indian Army. Then there was the difference of pay between the Indian Civil servants and men in the Indian Army. Another cause of still deeper resentment was that the men of the Indian section of the Indian Army could not rise to the highest appointments in the Army. They felt that there was a permanent colour bar to their rising to the highest rank. This was a source of sore discontent He had had the privilege of discussing this question with one of our chief generals in India, who said that it was an injustice and that it was deeply felt; that it was an injustice that we must remedy; we must trust the Indians, and allow them to rise to the highest commands in the Army. He gave that as the authoritative statement of one of the best commanders that we had in India today. There was also the feeling among gentlemen in India that there was no career for them in the Indian Army. We could not get the best men, why? Because there was no career for anyone above the rank, he believed, of subadar-major. The same thing was true of all departments of the State. In the Civil Service no Indians could rise to the highest appointments. There was not a single Indian on the Executive Council, nor one holding a high, distinguished, or responsible office in the Civil Service. The case was a shade better in regard to the law. Among the High Court Judges there was only about one Indian Judge to every six European Judges, and this caused a deep sense of injustice among the legal profession. It was the same with the medical profession, to which he had the honour to belong. The Indians could not get the highest medical appointments in that country. The appointments to the hospitals and colleges, and all the best sanitary appointments in the country, were kept in the hands of Europeans, and again they saw the colour bar established. The same practice prevailed on the railways and other public services throughout India. The Chief Secretary said the other day that it was almost impossible for him to rule Ireland against the wishes of the people. That was also true of India. It was almost impossible for us as aliens to govern India wisely and well, and according to the opinions, and reasoned opinions, of our Indian fellow-subjects. Then there was the excise on cotton. That was passed in 1877, when Lord Salisbury was in power. It was passed in the interests of Lancashire, and directly against the interests of the people of India. That excise duty, which stood to day, had been a great source of irritation throughout India. He had asked the highest of the British Civil officials in India what the feeling was with regard to this tax They said it was true that it was an intolerable injustice to India, and they had asked him to use his influence in that House in order to have it removed. Indian justice was handicapped by the British rulers, who sought, not the highest interests of India, but the financial interests of this country. In the long run he did not think that it was to the financial interests of this country, because there was such a thing as retaliation, and that spirit was already abroad in India. As regarded justice, it was very difficult for a foreign Power to govern another country on the highest and truest lines of justice, and he thought that recently, however we might have erred in the past, we had lost the confidence of the Indian people so far as British justice was concerned—British justice as between Europeans and Indians and as between Mohammedans and Hindoos. A European killed his bearer in the Punjab, and for that dastardly and murderous assault he only got six months.

MR. MORLEY

Name?

DR. RUTHERFORD

I have forgotten the name for the moment. Continuing, the hon. Member said that some Europeans at Rawal Pindi raped an Indian woman, but were acquitted. In the same city a number of leading barristers and pleaders accused, as it turned out, altogether falsely of fomenting a riot, were refused bail and kept in imprisonment for nearly five months. Then there was the Comilla case which almost stood on a par with the Denshawai incident in its effect upon the public mind. There a Mohammedan was shot in a riot, and three Hindoos were brought before the magistrate and condemned, one of them to death, and two to transportation for life. The High Court quashed the judgment. With the permission of the House he would quote two statements made at the trial. Mr. Jackson, the English barrister, appearing for the defence addressing the Judges, said— I submit there cannot be the slightest doubt that I am entitled to an acquittal. Every sentence of the whole evidence on the record is stamped with unmistakable marks of concoction. The whole case has been got up from start to finish. There is no time limit for a prosecution by Government, and it is shameful that such a prosecution as the present should have been rushed up without any evidence, worth the name, to support it. My Lords, apart from the great miscarriage of justice consequent upon such prosecutions, a prosecution like this cannot but fail to bring the whole of the administration of the Courts of Justice in this country into contempt. Then the two Judges, one British and the other Indian, made this indictment of the judgment of the Court below with which they were dealing— The method of the learned Judge in dealing with the testimony of the witnesses by dividing them into two classes—Hindoos and Mussulmans—and accepting the evidence of one class and rejecting that of the other, is open to severe criticism. The learned Judge ought to have directed his mind solely to the evidence which had been given before him, and to have excluded from his consideration all preconceived sympathies with either section of the population. This case had caused a serious feeling of injustice right throughout India. He would take another Department in order to show how difficult it was for Europeans to govern India wisely and well and in the interests of India. The land revenue had gone up steadily for various reasons—some of them proper reasons, where there was more land brought into cultivation, or where it was subjected to irrigation. Still, the assessment was frequently felt to be a very serious injustice. One of the great difficulties in India was famine, and one of the causes of famine was the heavy taxes which the ryot had to pay. The amount was such that he was unable to accumulate profits or to make provision for a rainy day. Famine really came from the poverty of the peasant proprietor far more than from scarcity of food. Their chief effort should be to reduce taxation. In his opinion far too little money was being spent upon irrigation, and they had yet to realise that what they had done so wisely in Egypt they should also do in India. Egypt had practically been converted into a garden by great irrigation schemes. It was true they had had great irrigation schemes in India, but they had not spent anything like adequate sums of money in this direction to meet the requirements of the case. Again, the education problem was a great source of trouble and trial to India. Education was the first need of any country, and it was the first need in India. Education was all the more essential to India because she was an agricultural country and required to be taught to use her soil to the best advantage, which could only be done by education. Education entered essentially into the methods of dealing effectively with the plague, and technical education was also necessary for the proper development of the industries of the country. To preserve law and order they must educate the people, but they wanted education most of all to improve the national character of the people. Upon this subject of education what did they find? In ten years the expenditure upon education in India had been less than the expenditure upon the Army in a single year. India could not be satisfactorily governed until they saw that every village and every child had the opportunity of getting a reasonable and proper education. The small expenditure upon education in India was an appalling scandal and a terrible reflection upon British rule. The root evil in India was the system of Government, which created a spirit of despotism and tyranny in those who carried it on, however good the intentions might be with which they entered upon their task. The difficulties by which they were surrounded were absolutely insuperable. They were inherent in the system. The danger to-day was the bureaucracy. That was what they had to face, and he hoped they would face it with courage. The officials had resisted every effort made by Lord Ripon to bring about a reasonable and proper system of Government, and they had frustrated all his efforts. The officials had captured the Universities, the municipalities, the district, provincial and imperial councils, and, in fact, every public institution, and they had deprived the people of India of the opportunity of taking advantage of the great effort made by Lord Ripon. The right hon. Gentleman himself had said— It is remarkable how the Government know so little of the mind of the people and it is just as deplorable that the people know so little of the mind of the Government. In that statement the right hon. Gentleman acknowledged the case he was trying to make out. It was not his contention that the Government of India had been a dead failure, but that it had been a comparative failure. Some good and noble things had been done, but he desired still better things. The only means by which the Government could get to know the mind of the people was through directly elected representatives. The Secretary for India said the situation was not at all dangerous but required serious and urgent attention. Perhaps it was not dangerous if they looked at it from the point of view of an armed rebellion, but from the point of view of alienating the people from British rule it was extremely serious. Some 150 years ago India sustained a fracture, and she was put in British splints, but we kept them on much too long, and to-day they were causing friction, irritation, and even laceration. It was time they were taken off, and any wise surgeon would remove them without delay. A few years ago half-measures might have sufficed to meet the situation, but that was now no longer the case. The Indians had seen how Japan had risen to a great nation, and they had seen the inhabitants of the Transvaal and the Orange River territory receive their freedom. We were face to face either with great reforms or with a revolution, and he trusted the Government would have sufficient sense of duty and justice to give them those reforms which were necessary to avoid a revolution. He would like to say a few words with regard to the proposals of the Indian Government for satisfying the demands of India—contained in the White Paper, a few extracts from which would suffice. With regard to the Imperial Advisory Council there occurred the following passage— The establishment and recognition of a determined body of advisers who, while requiring no legislative recognition, and possessing in themselves no formal powers of initiative, would be consulted individually by the Governor-General, and would occasionally be called together, either in whole or in part, for the purpose of collective deliberation, and would be entitled, when so summoned, to offer their counsel on matters affecting the welfare of the people, would, in the opinion of the Government of India, be a marked step in constitutional progress. He would now quote a passage from the same document showing how this Imperial Advisory Council was to be formed— (2) That all the members should be appointed by the Viceroy and should receive the title 'Imperial Councillors.' (3) That the council should consist of about sixty members for the whole of India, including about twenty ruling chiefs, and a suitable number of the territorial magnates of every province where landholders of sufficient dignity and status are to be found. We who were burdened with a House of Lords proposed to establish what was virtually an advisory House of Lords in India. He hoped the House would not consent to such a measure. And now with regard to the proposals for the enlargement of the legislative councils. Paragraph 9 said— In the case of provincial councils it is admitted that the results have not justified the expectations formed. The District Boards in particular have conspicuously failed to fulfil the expectation that they would represent the landed interest. The objection was that the barristers and pleaders had been selected by the people to represent them in preference to the landholders, the great magnates and the Tilling chiefs. With regard to the Imperial Legislative Council it was proposed to keep the control in the hands of the official majority, and to introduce a system of special Mahomedan representation.

It would introduce a vicious principle, not only in relation to the ruling class, but also because it differentiated between Hindoos and Mahomedans. That, he believed, was one of the greatest blots on the proposals. The same was true practically of the provincial Legislative Councils, as they were to be re-constituted. He might summarise what he considered to be the blots on the proposals of the Indian Government. They were (1) the maintenance of the official majority; (2) the introduction of class and religious preferences; and (3) the swamping of the popular element in the council. He considered these proposals unjust and unworthy of the present House of Commons. He trustod that they had not the approval of the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for India. He could not imagine for a moment that they had his approval, and he trusted that they would hear no more of them. The only thing of real value in the proposals was the acknowledgment on the part of the Government of India that the present state of the administration of India was not satisfactory. The right hon. Gentleman said that Lord Lytton set up an Advisory Council of Notables of the kind now proposed in 1887, and admitted that it was a complete failure. Why should we expect that under Lord Minto or any other Viceroy, it should again be anything else than a complete failure? He himself believed that it would become a great danger to British rule, and that it would land us in difficulties insuperable. He asked the House to allow him to lay before them some of the questions to which he thought they should address themselves. He did not think that the Decentralisation Commission would be of much service; it would not save the situation. It might supplant imperial despots by parochial despots, but it would not give the Indians what they required, namely, a form of national Government. The Indian demand was not for the tinsel, the pageantry, or extravagances of Durbars, but for self-government under the British flag on colonial lines. They declined to submit any longer to personal and bureaucratic government. What he thought would meet the case was, first of all, provincial Parliaments; and, secondly, an imperial Duma. The imperial Duma should be representative of the whole community, including the native states as well as British India. The principle involved in these proposals was already in existence in the form of legislative councils. But the people should have direct representation, and the councils should be free from official control. The idea Englishmen should aim at should be a federation of free states in India under the British flag. The governors of the respective provinces would still have the right of veto over the decisions of the provincial Parliaments, and the Viceroy, of course, would have the right of veto over the decisions of the Imperial assembly. The Civil Service would have to learn that they were servants and not masters as they were to-day. The members of all these assemblies, whether imperial or provincial, should be appointed by direct election and not by nomination; there should be no religious or racial preferences; and there should be no second chamber. The Secretary of State in a speech at Arbroath said that some of them were impatient idealists. If they were impatient idealists they had the right hon. Gentleman to thank. They had sat at his feet, and a great portion of their idealism they had learned from him. He himself was not impatient with his ideals; he had faith, and hope, and courage. He believed that the Indians were capable of working out their own salvation on the lines he had suggested, and he hoped the House would have sufficient courage to give them a fair trial. The right hon. Gentleman had said that most of the disasters in human history had been due to impatient idealists. On the contrary, he thought that most of the tragic miscarriages in human history had been due to autocracy and bureaucracy. Why were the Government stricken with a craven fear in regard to India? They were not stricken with a craven fear in dealing with South Africa. There they had a policy, and they had carried it out, and to-day South Africa extended to us the right hand of fellowship. In South Africa there was a true union of hearts. There should be a true union of hearts with India as well. If they were afraid of the idea of an imperial Duma, he hoped the Government would try the experiment of provincial Parliaments in Bombay, Bengal, Madras, and the Punjab. If the other provinces would be patient their turn would come. It had been said that India was a museum of races and religious creeds. The truth was that most of them could be put in one or two cases. The only practical difficulty, so far as religion was concerned, was really in connection with Mahomedans and Hindus. They lived happily together in all portions not directly under British rule. He did not think they need be alarmed at any difficulty with respect to the religious side of the question. Then there were several reforms which should be carried out at home. One of these was the abolition of the Indian Council. It was of no service, so far as he could see, to this House. In fact, he rather thought it was an insult to the House. He trusted that the right hon. Gentleman would be able to get rid of that Council, and that he would appoint instead a Standing Committee of the House if he desired assistance. Further, it was absolutely necessary that the Secretary of State's salary should be placed on the British Estimates, as it was in the case of the Secretary of State for the Colonies. It might be urged with regard to the suggestions he had made that they were premature. He did not think that that objection should hold good. Mr. Bright more than fifty years ago laid before the House a plan not altogether dissimilar to that which he had stated for getting rid of central government. The Secretary of State objected to universal suffrage in India. He did not propose that there should be universal suffrage. There were two systems under which the franchise might be given—one, educational, by ability to read and write, and the other, financial, by payment of lam tax, income-tax, or any other taxes. He did not propose to suggest any system of universal suffrage. All he submitted was that the present method of government was out of date and unsatisfactory and needed reform The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for India had faith in Mr. Mill—so had he and those who agreed with him. The right hon. Gentleman had reminded them during the last debate on the Indian Budget that Mr. Mill had said "Government by the dominant country is as legitimate as any other if it is the one which in the existing state of civilisation of the subject people, most facilitates that transition to our state of civilisation." Very well, but if the object of Great Britain as the dominant State, was to impose its civilization on India, the best way to effect that object was to give our political institutions to India. If, in the words of the Secretary of State, they wanted to inculcate and transplant "the spirit, the temper, the principles, and the maxims of the British Constitution" to India, the best way to do it was to give them something like the British Constitution, without the House of Lords The right hon. Gentleman said that he was not frightened of the National Congress, neither was Mr. Nevinson nor himself, who had been present at the last session. There had been a great deal of exaggeration and misconception in this country with regard to the National Congress. What had occurred at the last Congress was simply due to the fact that the extremists or Radicals differed so greatly from the Moderates or Tories that they lost their temper.

MR. MOBLEY

Do you call Mr. Lajpat Rai a Tory?

DR. RUTHERFORD

No, he might be called a Conservative of a reasonable and moderate type. He had not joined the Extremists yet. He himself had interviewed Mr. Lajpat Rai, and he could assure the right hon. Gentleman that that gentleman was a man of the type of Dr. Spence Watson, a perfectly reasonable man, who was the President for many years of the National Liberal Federation. All that was trumped up against Mr. Lajpat Rai was due to false and frivolous reports of ignorant police. As for the National Congress, all that had happened there was that the Extremists had lost their heads and charged the platform because they wanted their own man to be the chief and leader of that great assembly. He understood that the Imperialists were making great capital out of this incident, and were declaring that Indians were not capable of self-government. But that sort of thing had happened sometimes in this country also. He himself had had experience of it. Along with his right hon. friend the Member for Morpeth, he was present at a peace meeting at Newcastle-on-Tyne during the late war when the platform was attacked by the Tories. The speakers were not allowed to say a word, and the meeting was broken up. He had yet to learn that in consequence of that the Tories of Newcastle were unfit to govern their city; and to govern India. He would ask the President of the Board of Trade what experience he had had in Birmingham? How did he get on in that city? Had Birmingham been disfranchised yet for the way he had been treated in the town hall at the time of the late war? The Extremists in India owed their strength to the folly of Lord Curzon and to the policy of the repressive measures which had been followed up to the present time. If there had been no Lord Curzon in India there would be no Extremists in India to day. He could assure the Secretary of State for India that the proposals of reform made by the Government of India were inadequate, and would drive these men to extremes which might lead to disastrous consequences. There was no foundation for the objection that Indians were unfit to govern themselves. Self-government already existed in large portions of India, outside British territory. The Native States in India were responsible for something like seventy millions of people. He had had the advantage of visiting Baroda, and he would say that in many respects it formed a pattern which might be followed with advantage by the British Government. Parliamentary institutions had been granted to Greece, Bulgaria, and Servia, but were any of these places fit for representative government when it was conceded to them? Were the people of England fit for self-government when Simon de Montfort created the Mother of Parliaments? Were the working classes of this country fit for the exercise of the vote when the franchise was given to them? He would leave it to his friends on the Labour Benches to answer that question. He knew that it was stated that while the people of India might be intellectually fit for self-government, they were not morally fit, but he-maintained that they had no right to indict a whole nation in that way. There were other serious considerations which the House should take into account in approaching this great subject. There was first the duty Englishmen owed to themselves. The burden of arms was crushing our people, and that burden was largely due to our possession of India. Then there was the duty they owed to Egypt. Egypt was the gateway to India, and until our Indian house was set in order, Egyptian emancipation would be delayed. Lastly, there was the duty they owed to India and to the world at large. The present system of government in India was crushing all that was best in a very noble people who had a magnificent past, and who had made magnificent contributions towards the progress and well-being of humanity. Our mission in India was threefold. In the first place it was for us to organise free and representative institutions by which India could be governed according to Indian ideas. In the second place, our mission was to keep the peace within, and in the third place to protect India from any external foe until she was able to protect herself. No nobler service could be rendered by a great nation to a weak nation "rightly struggling to be free" than that, and he trusted that we would rise to the height of this glorious opportunity. He begged to move.

SIR H. COTTON (Nottingham, E.)

said he did not rise to second the Amendment to the Address moved by his hon. friend with the same feeling of hope with which he had risen on a similar occasion two years ago. During the intervening period many things had happened in India which were certainly not of a very encouraging nature to those who were deeply interested in the welfare of the people. When he left India a few years ago there was no unrest or discontent to speak of. The condition of things in a general way continued to resemble that which had existed during the previous generation. He left India towards the close of Lord Curzon's first term of office. The irritation which was sensibly growing during the latter part of Lord Curzon's régime had since come to a head. What was that due to? It was due simply and solely to administering the affairs of India in a spirit regardless and contemptuous of the feelings of the people. It was that policy which had created the difficult position in which the Secretary of State for India now found himself and with which he had to deal. The policy of Lord Curzon culminated in the accursed partitioning of Bengal. He was obliged to say that it was in the power of the right hon. Gentleman to have re-opened that question. The partition was effected in October, and the right hon. Gentleman was in power in December, when he might have re-opened the question with the greatest ease, and, with the help of those who were friendly to India in his own Council and out of it, he might have devised a scheme which would have resulted in averting many of the troubles which had since arisen in India. He could not help attributing to the right hon. Gentleman very serious blame for his inaction. There were other matters of temporary importance of which they had heard, such as the disturbances in the Punjab; but that was not unrest of a permanent character, it was due entirely to injudicious measures taken by the Punjab Government. Those disturbances were magnified by telegrams, and indeed an impression was created that another mutiny was about to occur in India. A panic arose in India and a corresponding panic followed in England. He did not think the right hon. Gentleman ever grasped what the real position in the Punjab at that time was. It was a very small matter which could have been adequately dealt with by the removal of the causes which led to the discontent. The Punjab was now a quiet and peaceful province. He was not aware that there was any exceptional discontent remaining there. And why? Because the causes of the temporary discontent had been removed, and this notwithstanding the fact that a policy was followed in that province of the most rigorous and in- tolerabl repression. The extraordinary measure of deporting gentlemen without charge and without trial was resorted to, and that was an action which met with an indignant protest throughout the whole of India. That deportation was a blunder. He was thankful that that blunder too had been redressed, so far as that the gentlemen concerned had been restored to their liberty and their homes. But the sore remained; the injustice was done, and the effect produced on Indian opinion had to be specially deplored. There was now a feeling of unrest and discontent in India, which it would be idle to describe as otherwise than very serious. He thought the right hon. Gentleman recognised that fact. It was due in the first instance to Lord Curzon's policy, and he was obliged to add it was aggravated by the policy of repress on and coercion which had been maintained in India since Lord Curzon left the country. If Lord Curzon sowed the seeds of discontent, which he certainly did, the growth of the plant had been most carefully fostered and nurtured by the Government since his time. They could, he believed, however, deal with these matters satisfactorily only by taking the people of India into their confidence, and by making some serious attempt to remedy grievances and redress wrong. The greatest difficulty in India, from which all their troubles arose, was the system of government. It was a bureaucratic, autocratic, and despotic form of government. That system, as represented by the Indian Civil Service, had remained practically unchanged for 120 years, and the people were beginning to say that it was time there should be some change and that instead of a continental system, instead of a system of prefects and officials placed over them in charge of defined localities, there should be some method of procedure under which the people of the locality should be themselves entrusted with a share of power and should exercise, in a measure, the functions which foreign officials were now appointed to discharge. There was also a feeling, which was universal throughout India, that this body of foreign officials were singularly unfit and incompetent to discharge the judicial functions with which they were entrusted. The feeling in India was the same as in this country, that those were best qualified to discharge judicial functions who had been trained in the profession of the law. If we had done one thing in India more than another, it had been to encourage the study of the law, and to establish in the minds of the people of India the idea that the country was administered under the rule and authority of the law. But we still retained in the hands of those civil servants all important judicial powers and there was no recognition of the people of the country. All the sessions Judges were civilians, who none of them had received legal training and none of them were trained in the exercise of judicial functions. The consequence was, the terrible miscarriages of justice which were so common. How common they were was shown by the fact that the highest court of judicature in the country was continually employed in releasing unfortunate men who had been unjustly sentenced, it might be to capital punishment, or it might be to a long term of imprisonment. It was the tendency of all executive officers—and the judicial officers in India were all executive Magistrates and Judges—it was the tendency of all these Judges to be harsh in their decisions and if the right hon. Gentleman looked into the matter he would find that there was an invariable tendency in India to pass what we in this country, with our humaner ideals, would call excessive sentences. For similar offences in this country and in India there was no comparison between the sentences. For instance, for stealing two pumpkins an unfortunate boy was ordered to be punished by receiving twenty stripes. That happened a short time ago in Calcutta. Would an outrage of that kind be tolerated in this country? No! the papers would be ringing with it and there would be appeals to the Home Secretary. He complained of the constitution of the legal system, and said that the people of India looked to a Liberal Government and to a Secretary of State so exceptionally accomplished as the right hon. Gentleman to initiate measures which should lead to a substantial modification in the existing form of the Civil Service and to popularising administrative institutions in India. That was a large question and undoubtedly it was not an easy one to solve. It was a question of modifying the constitution of the Civil Service with a view to rendering the administration of the country more popu- lar and representative. That, he thought, was one of the most crucial and urgent matters affecting the welfare of India. He appreciated that it had difficulties, but it became no easier by delay. They would never get suggestions from India in this direction, for no privileged body ever took steps to abolish itself or to deprive itself of any of the privileges it enjoyed. If they wanted to improve the composition of the House of Lords they did not expect that the House of Lords would do it for themselves, and if they expected the constitution of the Indian Civil Service to be reformed they must not expect that those reforms would be initiated in India. If they left it to the Government there to take the initiative they might wait for ever. He did not intend to trouble the House with any further remarks upon this or other questions, but he desired particularly to impress upon the right hon. Gentleman the importance of taking up this question of reconstituting the system of Indian administration. He was aware that it was not to be done in a day, but the time had come to do it, and the longer it was delayed the more difficult they would find it. The Amendment which had been moved by his hon. friend was, he thought, a just and fair one. It had been moved to enable the right hon. Gentleman to make a statement which the people of India would recognise as kindly, friendly, and sympathetic to all classes, and if he was able to make such a statement, even without definitely pledging himself to further action—if he was only able to-assure our fellow-subjects in India that his heart was with them and that he was strongly and keenly desirous of helping them in the difficult position in which they were placed—if he sympathised with them in the growth of that nationality which was the most marked feature of popular feeling in India at the present time—if he was able to address them in that sense he would have rendered a public service for which the people of India would be grateful. He begged to second.

Amendment proposed— At the end of the Question, to add the words, 'But humbly submits that the present condition of affairs in India demands the immediate and serious attention of His Majesty's Government; that the present proposals of the Government of India are inadequate to allay the existing and growing discontent; and that comprehensive measures of reform are imperatively necessary in the direction of giving the people of India control over their own affairs.'"—(Dr. Rutherford.)

Question proposed, "That those words be there added."

MR. HART DAVIES (Hackney, N.)

said he supposed that they were agreed that the position of India at the present moment was entirely unsatisfactory, but he thought that the growth of the evils which were now apparent went back to a much earlier date than most hon. Members believed. They began at least some twenty five years ago. He did not think any people were more easy to govern than the people of India. He had lived among them for many years and he loved them. They were the kindest people in the world to associate with. The question was, what particular steps ought the Government to take to improve the condition of things in India? He thought that they ought to begin with local self government, and thus give an ambitious man a career in his own province or district. People complained that the native members took no interest in the work of the district boards. He was not surprised. These boards had to control large tracts of country and the money given to them was not adequate for their purposes, and was not even under their control when it was given, because the boards were composed of Mahomedan members or of officials. These boards ought to be giving the control of the affairs in which they were concerned, and the control taken away from the district officer, who would then have much more time to study and to know the people in his district than he now possessed. It would be a good thing both for the district officer and for the administration. The only way in which the natives could learn to govern themselves was from their own experience, and if they were given larger funds from Government sources, and greater control over the local business in which they were concerned, it would give the people a larger voice in their administration and afford a counter-attraction to the political career which was now the only one open to an ambitious man. The reforms which had been adumbrated by the right hon. Gentleman did not go very far, but he believed that if he took this particular step and added to the power of district boards, and if he could ensure that all positions in the Civil Service that could be held by natives should be held by them and so give them a larger control in the government of their country, the present discontent would have a tendency to die out. No doubt it would be a good many years before the ideal of one hon. Member, of local parliaments all over the country, could be arrived at but in the matter of local self-government, by adopting such a suggestion as he proposed, the people of India might be trained to govern themselves far better than they were being governed now; and he certainly thought that his suggestion was one which might be taken into favourable consideration by the right hon. Gentleman. He hoped that India would be taken seriously in hand. It was a disgrace to the Empire that this state of unrest should continue. The House ought to make up their minds to the fact that a new departure in the government of the country was necessary, and, in order to secure the new spirit which was necessary, there ought to be a Parliamentary Committee to consider the affairs of India generally. In the old days, when the government of India was in the hands of the Chartered Company, every time the charter was renewed a Parliamentary Committee was appointed to consider the whole question of the government of India. He thought a Parliamentary Committee should be appointed now in order to bring fresh ideas to bear. In appointing such a Committee he believed the right hon. Gentleman would be justified by the result of its deliberations and would crown his career with a step which must be for the good of India and the Empire at large.

MR. O'GRADY (Leeds, E.)

said the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down had asked for the serious consideration of this question by the House, but the condition of the benches at the present moment did not indicate a very burning interest in Indian affairs. The only purpose of his intervention was to supplement what had been said by hon. gentlemen opposite. His position was well known. He was in the first place a democrat, and for good or for evil he had been returned as a Member of the House. He took, and intended to take, great interest in the important question of the good government of India. The hon. Member who moved the Amendment had referred to the grave discontent which animated India at the present time, and had further said that the Government of India were not acting in a proper spirit. He (Mr. O'Grady) expressed the opinion that the overwhelming cause of unrest in India arose largely from the fact that the government of that country was unsympathetic. In that view he was supported by some of the highest of the Indian Civil servants. He was however, more concerned with the fact that India was the most poverty-stricken country that existed. Although we had governed that country for a large number of years, the prosperity of the people of India so far as he could gather from statistics and reading had in no sense increased in the aggregate. The very first reform that ought to be made was the institution of a system of free and compulsory education. Twopence halfpenny per head per annum was the total amount spent on the education of India today. That being so, we had not justified our existence there. India was not only poverty-stricken but ignorant, and for the ignorance that existed we were responsible. He knew there had been difficulties in the way of education; that we were met by the barriers of race and creed, but taking that for granted, all sane social reformers of to-day moved along the line of least resistance; and no Member of the House who had considered the question seriously could but come to the conclusion that the people of India would in fifteen or twenty years from the time when we instituted full, free, and compulsory education be ripe for this representative institution which had been recommended by his hon. friend who had lately travelled in that country. Nobody could object to a proposal of that character, and, that being so, it ought to be in the power of the House so to order matters that that reform should take place immediately. It might be said that it would be met with the opposition of persons who had been described as "Sun-dried bureaucrats," but he for one did not believe that they would oppose such a proposal. He trusted that the right hon. Gentlemen responsible for the present government of India would seriously take into consideration the opinions repeatedly expressed in the House that the question of primary education in India should be tackled at once. The broader question of technical education had also been referred to by the mover of the Amendment, especially its necessity in connection with agriculture. The agricultural methods obtaining in India were centuries old and absolutely obsolete, and the people were unable to make the best of their own country. When he came to consider the fact that a very small number of institutions existed in India which gave the ryot on the land or the artisan in the big towns an opportunity of acquiring knowledge, in the first case of improved methods of cultivation and in the second of plans for developing the industries of India, he was forced to the conclusion that the shame for the neglect rested not on the shoulders of the Indian people at all, but on our own shoulders. Reference had been made to the mischief caused by the partition of Bengal. There could not be a shadow of doubt that the existing discontent was largely due to the maladministration of the late Viceroy of India. He wished to emphasise the statement made by his hon. friend that the partition of Bengal was carried out for reasons other than those publicly advanced. The fact was, the Bengalis in particular had become a thorn in the side of the system of government which prevailed in India. They had been claiming not only for themselves, but for the people of India generally, that they should have a larger share in the government of their own country and that their country should be governed according to Indian ideas. Lord Curzon acted on the principle of "divide the people and you will rule," and he took care so to draw the line as to separate the people into religions. All the Mahomedans were on one side of the line which divided the province, and all the Hindoos on the other. He was not going to suggest that the geographical line was thus drawn in order to foment strife between these two sections of the people, but the fact remained that these people flew at each others' throats, and Lord Curzon came down with his military and armed police and broke the heads of both Mahomedans and Hindus. That was the way he thought he had settled the difficulty, but Lord Curzon overlooked the fact that the people of this province would in the ordinary course of things become aware of the purpose of this policy, and once again unite on a common platform. That they had done so was the one outstanding fact of the present agitation in Bengal. The present Secretary for India had practically accepted the position thus created in Bengal, and had adhered to what he called the "settled fact" policy as ending the matter. As a democrat, he strongly protested against that policy of the "settled fact." Where would it logically lead them? Tyranny might be committed prior to a given date; was it to be allowed to continue because it was a settled fact? Was wrong to remain, was injustice to continue simply because it had been committed? He was unable to reconcile the convictions of the right hon. Gentleman in respect of this line of policy. Surely someone could suggest to the right hon. Gentleman a way out of this unfortunate difficulty. Perhaps the policy of the "settled fact" had been adopted because of the panic that existed in India, and the petty squabbles that subsequently arose. All the incidents in connection with the partition of Bengal were largely of a panic character; but sane men had smiled at the suggestion of the danger of another Mutiny developing in India. It was his unfortunate duty last year to be constantly questioning the right hon. Gentleman with regard to the lying and vindictive statements sent over to this country from India by so-called organs of public opinion, which to-day, as always, had been doing their best to bolster up iniquity and injustice in all parts of the world. Before the session ended there was a compact entered into with one of these infamous organs which had been repeatedly sending lying telegrams to this country about the development of sedition and mutiny. He challenged the right, hon. Gentleman to deny that a sum of £1,200 drawn from Indian taxation—the money of the poverty-stricken people of India—had been used to subsidise an "organ" sending these lying telegrams in order that the policy of coercion and repression might be continued with all its vindictiveness. He could not be patient with the attitude they were taking up in India. In his opinion a wider and broader view should be taken than that of merely keeping a strong hand on the people. After all, the Indians were the most docile people in the world. They were patient—in his judgment too patient—from the point of view of suffering poverty and famine; in being content to remain ignorant; in being content to salaam and to bow and abase themselves to the European. While he agreed that British rule had achieved splendid results for India, he asserted that there was the other view which ought to be taken. Only recently the British Indians in South Africa, who had admittedly proved themselves to be honest, industrious, sober and just, had been allowed to be treated by the Colonists as a mere inferior race, and not as British subjects ought to be treated. Had they been the subjects of some Foreign Power who had been thus treated—the subjects of Germany or of France, for instance—we should have been willing to go almost to the verge of war in order to protect them. He referred to this because in respect of the whole Indian race—whether in India or in the Transvaal—it seemed to him the British Government had allowed itself to pursue an absolutely unsympathetic system of government. Now he came to the arrest and deportation of Lajpat Rai and Agit Singh. Of course these gentlemen had been released, but the position he and others had taken up was that there was no proof that Lajpat Rai had preached sedition; he was merely an ordinary land reformer, and having read a verbatim report of the speech at Lahore, for which the arrest was made, he asserted that there was not in it a single word which justified the charge of preaching sedition. The Indian Government dared not at the present time give Lajpat Rai a trial before a jury or in an open Court. He challenged the right hon. Gentleman to take such a course of action. It might be said there were reasons why the trial should not take place, but the gentleman concerned and the people of India would not be satisfied with that explanation. Either Lajpat Rai was properly arrested for preaching sedition or an enormous blunder had been committed. Let them find out where they stood in this matter. In respect to the treatment of Indians when appearing before the Courts, referred to by his hon. friend who seconded the Amendment, time after time last session questions were put to the right hon. Gentleman showing the absolute absurdity, apart from the severity, of the sentences passed in the Courts on boys for the mere act of stealing little things and upon men for acts which in this country would only be deemed to call for censure from the bench. Yet imprisonment up to two years and flogging was inflicted on the natives! He was glad to admit that so far as flogging was concerned the right hon. Gentleman had done really good work and had acted very humanely, and he thanked him for it. But the fact remained that the administration of justice in India displayed the same unsympathetic spirit as characterised the ordinary administration of Indian affairs. He agreed with his hon. friend who moved the Amendment that the difficulties in the way of the bureaucracy were very considerable, but the real necessity for granting India some measure of self-government was to be found in the fact that the work of the European official had so largely increased. As an alien he was dumped down in the midst of a large population and every one had to go to him for redress. The result was that he got in the habit of brushing things aside, not with any desire to be contemptuous, but nevertheless redress in the majority of cases was impossible in such circumstances, and if we wanted to safeguard our position in India and to justify our remaining there we certainly should have to do something along the lines suggested by the hon. Member for the Brentford Division. With him he was profoundly dissatisfied with the suggested reforms submitted to the House by the Secretary of State. Let them take one point. The two native gentlemen who had been put on the Indian Council had no weight because they were carefully selected and were not representative, and he hoped that when the occasion arose for placing two natives on the Indian Council at home, care would be taken to secure representative men. The whole trouble was that the dominant element was always official and not representative of the people of India. If the right hon. Gentleman would only get information from those who were well known to speak for the people as well as from the officials, a betterment would take place immediately. Some years ago H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, at the Guildhall, after his Indian tour, said— What India requires is sympathy. But since those historic words were spoken at the Guildhall we had continued to govern India with the iron hand, by the sword, by oppression, by coercion, by mismanagement, by an unsympathetic bureaucracy, and the danger was crowing. There had been developing in India during the last ten years an expression of a national life, a national ideal, which was breaking down all barriers of caste and religion. If some loophole were given for this sentiment to realise itself and work in harmony with the present government, we should justify our existence in India and gain the grateful thanks of the Indian people.

MR. SMEATON (Stirlingshire),

said he was thankful that the later speakers had come down from the clouds and from the rare atmosphere—an atmosphere in which he had found it difficult to breathe—into which the hon. Member for Brentford had carried them; he trusted that his hon. friend would not press his Motion to a division for the simple reason, as he was probably very well aware, that the right hon. Gentleman had indicated his full sympathy with the aspirations of the people of India, and were proceeding towards real reform on right lines. The right hon. Gentleman's proceedings were taken in a cautious manner, and he hoped that no undue pressure would be put upon the Minister by a division at the present moment. There were certain improvements and reforms which the right hon. Gentleman had adumbrated, and in regard to them there was one matter to which he wished to draw the attention of the House; it had reference to what was described in the speech of the mover as "the great national awakening." The mover of the Amendment had said that the present unrest in India was a great national awakening. There was no doubt that at the present moment there was an awakening—a great national movement—a great impulse. How had it been created? How was it that it had grown so rapidly to such dimensions? It was very important to know where they were, and to trace the causes and motives to their source. He recollected that about the year 1898–9 the Indian Congress was the embodiment of advanced Indian opinion, and it proceeded in the advocacy of reform on purely constitutional lines, and with great moderation. There was no attempt to use or to suggest either physical force or undue moral force. Since 1898–9, and during the incumbency of the late Viceroy of India the Congress was ignored, and all suggestions for its recognition met with haughty rebuff: and no doubt a tremendous stimulus had been given by this attitude of the late Administration to the aspirations for freedom among the people of India—freedom from the bureaucratic system which that Administration, more than any other during the last fifty years had riveted on the people. What had brought that about? He entirely agreed with every word said by the mover, seconder, and supporters of the Amendment in regard to what he ventured to call the guilt of the late Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon. The other day the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wimbledon was reported to have said that the Chief Secretary for Ireland should be impeached. Why? Because he had been endeavouring to govern Ireland with sympathy, and to enlist the co-operation of the Irish people; and this, forsooth, was a deadly sin in the eyes of the right hon. Member for Wimbledon and his friends! If there was any Member of either House of Parliament who deserved impeachment, it was the late Viceroy of India, who, instead of having a seat in the House of Lords as a member of that body, ought to be indicted at the bar of that House. The whole of the present unrest and the craving for freedom from the present bureaucratic system of government was due almost entirely not only to the reactionary policy which the late Viceroy adopted, but also to his personal audacity and unfair treatment of the people of India. Other causes there undoubtedly were: the victory of the Japanese over the Russian armies; the entry of the Japanese nation into the sacred circle of the great Powers; the struggles of Persia towards representative institutions. There was one other moving cause, not perhaps known to many in this House, but of which he had the evidence of eye-witnesses; he referred to a propaganda in progress in India by a league of young Japanese whose watchword was "Asia for the Asiatics," "India for the Indians." All these causes united to maintain and stimulate what the mover of the Amendment described—and correctly described—as "the great national awakening"; but they equally showed that the impulse was feverish, and therefore abnormal. This was the point which he wished to make—the present condition was, to a great extent, abnormal, was due to causes some of which had, happily, been removed, and would gradually improve under the sympathetic and statesman-like administration of the present Viceroy, Lord Minto. What he would like to impress upon the right hon. Gentleman was that he ought to treat the present acute unrest as transient, and rather direct his mind to the necessity of reforms on quiet and cautious lines than to meet this extraordinary impulse by any extraordinary measures. He thought that the Advisory Council should be made more of a popular assembly than was contemplated. The improvement he would suggest was that the Council should have a considerable leaven of the popular element, and that it should have more weight than was at present intended to be given to it. It should not be merely a body to be consulted individually, but it should have extended powers, and become part of the Constitution of the Indian Government. The advisory body ought to be stiffened and strengthened by the incorporation of a number of commoners of the country. He was quite of opinion also that the Government of India would be greatly strengthened if a representative Indian gentleman were appointed to the Executive Council of the Viceroy. He really thought that it would go far to mitigate the present unrest, because then there would be the feeling among the people that there was somebody to represent them and to influence the Administration on their behalf. The feeling that they were now isolated from the governing body would be dissipated. Finally, he agreed with his hon. friend on the subject of the district boards. He thought that there should be an extension of the powers of those boards, and that the local collector and the magistrate should hand over to them certain powers which they now exercised. This would show a desire on the part of the Government of India to gradually enfranchise the people and to encourage them to manage their own affairs. He was of opinion that the reforms suggested would go very far to mitigate what he thought was the present abnormal condition of the country.

MR. HERBERT ROBERTS (Denbighshire, W.)

said he did not think that anyone who knew the present condition of India could be surprised at this Motion. Ever since he had come into the House he had been struck by the inadequacy of the opportunities for discussing Indian affairs within those walls. In the present condition of India it was very natural that they should grasp at every available opportunity of calling the attention of the House of Commons to the existing condition of things. He was surprised that there was such a small attendance in the House that day, and they could not be regarded as Imperialists in the true sense of the word until they recognised the importance of Indian affairs and thought it necessary to be present to take part in their discussion. As regarded the Motion, he was sure that everyone who knew his hon. friend, the mover, would recognise his sincerity in what he had done that day, and he was quite sure that his right hon. friend would consider carefully some of the important points which the hon. Gentle-had laid before the House. The first point made in the Motion was that the condition of India now seriously demanded the immediate attention of Parliament, and even the most superficial knowledge of Indian affairs would convince anybody of the serious need there was that the House of Commons should consider the present situation in India. No one doubted that in India at the present time there was much unrest, and a considerable amount of irritation and dissatisfaction. And to his mind one of the most essential conditions of removing these causes of irritation and discontent was the provision of machinery by which the mind of the House of Commons could be brought more directly into touch with Indian life and government. Personally he would like to emphasise the importance of the suggestion which had already been made in the debate, that a very useful purpose would be served if a Parliamentary Committee were appointed, to consist of Members drawn from each side of the House, with a view to their keeping in constant touch with the events and affairs of India and Indian life. In that way they would be able to render very real service in guiding the House of Commons in its deliberations with regard to India. In the opinion of those who supported the Motion, the proposed reforms which had recently been made by the Government of India, although very useful in their way and within their sphere of operation, were not adequate, indeed were totally inadequate, to meet the present situation. He for one desired to express his appreciation of those reforms, and of the leading part which the Secretary of State had taken in order to ensure that they should become of effect in Indian Government. All he wished to say was that they did not go far enough, and he hoped that the right hon. Gentleman in his speech would be able to say that it was his intention to consider whether a more definite advance could not be made along the road of giving the Indian people greater control over their own affairs. The last point referred to in the Motion was the necessity of going forward in the direction of local self - government in India. They could not remain where they were in regard to the government of India. They must go forward, as anyone knew who was aware of the constitutional party in India. They knew that the demands put forward were not unreasonable. It was not asked that they should at one step give full power of self-government. No one who knew India would imagine that such a step was possible under existing circumstances. All they asked was that they should be given a greater share in, and brought into closer association with, the local government and local control of their own affairs. He trusted that not only in the highest interests of India, but in the interests of this country and of the whole British Empire, the Secretary of State would be able to make some declaration which would give hope to those who at the present time were feeling considerable uneasiness at the condition of India. Let him say one word with regard to the Indian National Congress. Since the unhappy incident which took place at the last meeting, and which one certainly deplored, he noticed that in certain directions the Press of this country were condemning the institution of the Congress. He was one of those who believed that the movement behind the Congress in India had rendered, and would render, distinguished services to the State. It had been in the past not only instrumental in getting Indian opinion expressed upon constitutional lines in regard to progress on matters of government, but it had also been a safety valve, a moderating influence, in agitation for reform in many directions. He hoped that his right hon. friend that afternoon would be able to say something which would strengthen the constitutional party of progress in India, for it would help them in the future on the old road of legitimate reform. Nothing would alter his conviction that it was possible to make India in relation to this country not only the proudest gem in Britain's "orient diadem," but to strengthen the foundations of that Empire. He supported the resolution.

MR. MOBLEY (who was very indistinctly heard)

Mr. Deputy-Speaker, I think the House will allow me in the remarks which I wish to make, to refer to a communication which I had received, namely, the decision arrived at by the Transvaal Government in respect to the question of Asiatics. Everybody in the House is aware of the enormous interest, even passionate interest which has been taken in this subject, especially in India, and for very good reasons. Without further preface let me say, this is the statement received by Lord Elgin from the Government of the Transvaal last night:—"Gandhi and other leaders of the Indian and Chinese communities have offered voluntary registration in a body within three months, provided signatures only are taken of educated, propertied, or well-known Asiatics, and finger-prints of the others, and that no question against which Asiatics have religious objections be pressed. The Transvaal Government have accepted this offer, and undertaken, pending registration, not to enforce the penalties under the Act against all those who register. The sentences of all Asiatics in prison will be remitted tomorrow." Lord Selborne adds "This course was agreed to by both political parties." I am sure that everybody in the House will think that very welcome news. I do not like to let the matter drop without saying a word—I am sure Lord Elgin would like me to say it—in recognition of the good spirit which the Transvaal Government has shown from the beginning in this very troublesome and difficult episode, and the good end which they have accelerated. In reference to the Amendment now before the House, I have listened to the debate with very keen, lively, and close interest. I am not one of those who have ever complained of these grave topics being raised whenever opportunity offered in this House. On the whole, looking back over my Parliamentary lifetime, which is now pretty long, I think there has been far too little Indian discussion. Before I came there were powerful minds like Mr. Fawcett and Mr. Bradlaugh and others who did raise Indian questions in a very serious and practical way, though I do not at all commit myself to the various points of view that were then adopted. But, of course, this is a vote of confidence. I am not going to ask members to vote for the Government on that ground. But I do submit that His Majesty's present Government in the Indian department has the confidence both of this House and of the country. I think we have. A very important suggestion was made by my hon. friend now sitting below the gangway that a Parliamentary Committee should sit—I presume a joint committee of the two Houses—and my hon. friend who spoke last said that the fact of the existence of that committee would bring Parliament into closer contact with the mind of India. Well, ever since I have been at the India Office I have rather inclined in the direction of one of the old Parliamentary Committees, but I will not argue the question now. I can only assure my hon. friend that the question has been considered by me, and I see what its advantages might be, but I also perceive very serious disadvantages that there might also be. In those old days they were able to command the services on those Indian committees of ex-Ministers, of members of this House and members of another place who had I had great experience of administration of one sort and another, and I am doubtful, considering the preoccupations of public men, whether we should now be able to call a large body of experienced administrators to sit on one of those committees. And then I would point out another disadvantage. You would have to call away from the performance of their duties in India a great body of men whose duties ought to occupy, and I believe do occupy, all their minds and all their time. But it is an idea, and I do not entirely banish it from my own mind. Two very interesting speeches, very significant speeches, have been made this afternoon. One was made by my hon. friend the mover, and the other by the hon. Member for East Leeds. Those two speeches, in my respectful judgment, raise a very important issue. I will explain my meaning. My hon. friend the Member for Leeds said that democracy was entirely opposed to, and would resist, the doctrine of the settled fact. My hon. friend says democracy will have nothing to do with settled facts, though he did not quite put it as broadly as that. Now, if that be so, I am very sorry for democracy. I do not agree with my hon. friend. I think democracy will be just as reasonable as any other sensible form of government, and I do not believe democracy will for a moment think that you are to rip up a settlement of an administrative or constitutional question because it jars with some abstract a priori idea. I for one certainly say that I would not remain at the India Office, or any other great and responsible Departmental office, on condition that I made short work of settled facts, and brought in my catalogue of first principles, and arranged the duties of government on those principles. No; nothing would induce me to do it; I would cut off my right hand rather than I would go into any administrative office on any such principles. Then there is my hon. friend the Member for Brentford. My hon. friend quoted an expression of mine used in a speech in the country about the impatient idealists, and he reproved me for saying that some of the worst tragedies of history had been wrought by the impatient idealists. He was kind enough to say that it was I, among other people, who had made him an idealist, and therefore I ought not to be ashamed of my spiritual and intellectual progeny I certainly have no right whatever to say that I am ashamed of my hon. friend, who made a speech full of interesting views, full of visions of a possible future, and I do not quarrel with him for making that speech. I thought it very interesting, and I believe—I will make my hon. friend a present of this—that those views are not at all without support among the people of this country. My hon. friend said that he was for an Imperial Duma. The hon. Gentleman has had the advantage of a visit to India, which I have never had. I think he was there for six whole weeks. His Imperial Duma was to be elected, as I understood, by universal suffrage.

DR. RUTHERFORD

No, not universal suffrage. I said educational suffrage, and also pecuniary suffrage—taxpayers and ratepayers.

MR. MORLEY

In the same speech the hon. Gentleman made a great charge against our system of education in India—that we had not educated them at all; therefore, he excludes at once an enormous part of the population. The Imperial Duma, as I understood from my hon. friend, was to be subject to the veto of the Viceroy. That is not democracy. We are to send out from Great Britain once in five years a Viceroy who is to be confronted by an Imperial Duma, just as the Tsar is confronted by the Duma in Russia. Well, that is not my idea of a democracy. My hon. friend visited the State of Baroda, and thought it well governed. Well, there is no Duma there. I will speak quite frankly my own opinion. If I had to frame a new system of government for India, I declare I would multiply the Baroda system of government rather than have an Imperial Duma and universal suffrage. The speech of my hon. friend with whom I am sorry to find myself, not in collision, but in difference, illustrates what is to my mind one of the grossest of all the fallacies in practical polities—namely, that you can cut out, frame, and shape a system of government for communities with absolutely different sets of social, religious, and economic conditions—that you can cut them all out by a sort of standardized pattern and say that what is good for us here, the point of view, the line of argument, the method of solution—that all these things are to be applied right off to a community like India. I must tell my hon. friend that I think that is a most fatal and mischievous fallacy, and I need not say more. I am bound, after what I have said, to say that I do not think that it is at all involved in Liberalism. I have had the great good fortune and honour and privilege to have known some of the great Liberals of my time, and there was not one of those great men, Gambetta, Bright, Gladstone, anybody you like, who would have accepted for one single moment the doctrine on which my hon. friend really bases his visionary proposition for a Duma. Is there any rational man who says that if you can lay down political principles and maxims of government that apply equally to Scotland or to England, or to Ireland, or to France, or to Spain, therefore they must be true for the Punjab and the United Provinces?

DR. RUTHERFORD

I quoted Mr. Bright as making the very proposal I have made, with the exception of the Duma—namely, Provincial Parliaments.

MR. MORLEY

I am afraid I must traverse my hon. friend's description of Mr. Bright's view, with which, I think, I am pretty well acquainted. Mr. Bright was, I believe, on the right track at the time in 1858 when the Government of India was transferred to the Crown; but I do not think he was a man very much for Imperial Dumas. He was not in favour of universal suffrage—he was rather old-fashioned—but Mr. Bright's proposal was perfectly different from that of my hon. friend. Sir Henry Maine and others who had been concerned with Indian affairs came to the conclusion that Mr. Bright's idea was right—that to put one man, a Viceroy, assisted as he might be with an effective Executive Council, in charge of such an area as India and its 300 millions of population, with all its different races, creeds, modes of thought, was to put on one man's shoulder a load which no man, of whatever powers, however gigantic they might be, could be expected effectively to deal with. My hon. friend and others who sometimes favour me with criticisms in the same sense seem to suggest that I am a false brother, that I do not know what Liberalism is. I think I do, and I will even say that I do not think I have anything to learn of the principles or maxims, aye, or of the practice, of Liberal doctrines even from my hon. friend. You have got to look at the whole mass of the great difficulties and perplexing problems connected with India from a common-sense plane, and it is not common sense, if I may say so without discourtesy, to talk of Imperial Dumas. I have not had a word of thanks from anybody, in the midst of the present shower of reproach, for what I regard, in all its direct and indirect results and bearings, as one of the most important moves that has been made in connection with the relations between Great Britain and India for a long time—namely, the admission of two Indian gentlemen, to the Council of the Secretary of State. An hon. friend wants me to appoint an Indian gentleman to the Viceroy's Executive Council. Well, that is a different thing; but I am perfectly sure that, if an occasion offers, neither Lord Minto nor I would fall short of some such application of democratic principles. The Viceroy I have found as eager for reform and improvement, as acute in reading the situation which has been described so eloquently by some of my hon. friends to-night, as any of us. In itself it is something that we have a Viceroy and a Secretary of State thoroughly alive to the great change in temperature and atmosphere that has been going on in India for the last five or six years, and I do not think we ought to be too impatiently judged. We came in at a rather perturbed time; we did not come into-perfectly smooth waters. It is notorious-that we came into enormous difficulties which we had not created. How they were created is a long story which has nothing whatever to do with the present discussion. But what I submit with the utmost confidence is that the situation to-day is an enormous and extraordinary improvement on the situation which we found when we came into office two years ago. There have been heavy and black clouds over the Indian horizon during those two years. By our policy those clouds have been gradually dispersed. I am not so unwise as to say that the clouds will never come back again. Nobody who has ever thought at close quarters of the relations between India and this country would over say that we will never have great banks of cloud again. It cannot be otherwise; but what has been done by us has been justified, in my opinion, by the event.

Some fault was found, and I do not in the least wonder at it, with the deportation of two native gentlemen. I do not quarrel with the man who finds fault with that proceeding. To take anybody and deport him without bringing any charge against him, and with no intention of bringing him to trial is a thing which, I think, the House is perfectly justified in calling me to account for. I have done my best to account for it, and to-day, any one who knows the Punjab, would agree that, whatever may happen at some remote period, its state is exceedingly quiet and satisfactory. I am not going to repeat my justification of that very strong measure of deportation, but I should like to read to the House the words of the Viceroy in the Legislative Council in November last, when he was talking to the Legislative Council about those circumstances. He said, addressing Lord Kitchener— I hope that your Excellency will on my behalf as Viceroy and as representing the King convey to His Majesty's Indian troops my thanks for the contempt with which they have received the disgraceful overtures which I know have been made to them. The seeds of sedition have been unscrupulously scattered throughout India, even amongst the hills of the frontier tribes. We are grateful that they have fallen on much barren ground, but we can no longer allow their dissemination. Will anybody say that, in view of the possible danger pointed to in that language of the Viceroy two or three months ago, we did wrong in using the regulation which applied to the case? No one can say what mischief might have followed if we had taken any other course than that which we took.

Now as to the reforms that are mentioned in my hon. friend's Amendment. It is rather an extraordinary Amendment. It— submits that the present condition of affairs in India demands the immediate and serious attention of His Majesty's Government. I can cordially vote for that, only remarking that the hon. Member must think the Secretary of State, and the Viceroy, and other persons immediately concerned in the Government of India very curious persons if he supposes that the state of affairs in India does not always demand their immediate and very serious attention. Then the Amendment says— The present proposals of the Government of India are inadequate to allay the existing and growing discontent. I hope it is not presumptuous to say so, but I should have expected a definition from my hon. friend of what he thinks these proposals are. I should like to set a little examination paper to my hon. friend. I have studied them a great deal, but would rather not be examined for chapter and verse; but my hon. friend after his travels of six weeks knows all about them and the state of affairs for which they are the inadequate remedy. I do not want to hold him up as a formidable example; but in his speech to-day he went over—and it does credit to his industry—every single one of the most burning and controversial questions of the whole system of Indian Government and seemed to say, "I will declare how far this is wrong and what ought to be done with so-and-so." I think I have got from him twenty ipse dixits on all these topics on which we at the India Office are wearing ourselves to pieces. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that in dealing with India you will fare very ill if you do not listen to the experts. When it is said, as I often hear it said, that I, for example, am falling into the hands of our officials, it should be remembered that those gentlemen who go to India get into the hands of other people.

DR. RUTHERFORD

I was in the hands both of officials and of Indians.

MR. MORLEY

Then he came out of the hands of both of them still with something to learn. I wonder whether, when this House is asked to condemn the present proposals of the Government of India as being inadequate to allay the existing and growing discontent, it is realised exactly how the case stands. I will repeat what I said in the debate on the Indian Budget as to how the case stands. The Government of India sent over to the India Office their proposals—their various schemes for advisory councils and so forth. We at the India Office subjected them to a careful scrutiny and laborious examination. As a result of this careful scrutiny and examination, they were sent back to the Government of India with the request that they would submit them to discussion in various quarters. The instruction to the Government of India was that by the end of March the India Office was to hear what the general view was at which the Government of India had themselves arrived upon all those plans, complexities, and important variations. We wanted to know what they would tell us. It will be for us to consider how far the report so arrived at, how far these proposals ripened by Indian opinion, carried out the policy which His Majesty's Government had in view. Surely that is a reasonable and simple way of proceeding? When you have to deal with complex communities of varied races, and all the other peculiarities of India, you have to think out how your proposals will work. Democracies do not always think how things will work. My hon. friend the Member for East Nottinghamshire made a speech which interested me and struck me by its moderation and reasonableness. He made a number of remarks in perfect good faith about officials which I received in a chastened spirit, for he has been for a very long time a very distinguished official himself. Therefore, he knows all about it. He went on to talk of the great problem of the separation of the executive and judicial functions, which is one of the vital problems of India. I can only assure my hon. friend that that is engaging our attention both in India and here. It may fall to my lot at some future time to speak of it. One of the subjects to which the attention of the Indian Government has been specifically directed has regard to the mitigation of flogging, the restriction of civil flogging, and the limitation of military flogging to specific cases. My hon. friend appeals to me saying that all will be well in India if the Secretary of State will make a statement which will show the Indian people that, in his relations with them, his hopes for them, and his efforts for them, he is moved by a kindly, sympathetic, and friendly feeling, showing them that his heart is with them. All I have got to say is that I have never shown myself anything else. My heart is with them. What is bureaucracy to me? To me it is a great machine in India, rather a splendid machine, for performing the most difficult task that ever was committed to the charge of any nation. But show me where it fails—that it is perfect in every respect no sensible man would contend for a moment—but show me at any point, let any of my hon. friends show me from day to day as this session passes, where this bureaucracy, as they call it, has been at fault. Do they suppose it possible that I will not show my recognition of that fault and do all that I can to remedy it? Although the Government of India is very complicated and intricate, they cannot suppose that I shall fail for one moment in doing all in my power to demonstrate to those who live in India that I am moved by a kindly, a sympathetic, and a friendly spirit.

SIR J. JARDINE (Roxburghshire)

said it was satisfactory to know that the suggestion for a Committee on Indian affairs was still before the mind of his right hon. friend, and he hoped that until this matter was settled opportunity would be afforded as often as possible for the discussion in the House of subjects relating to India. This was the more necessary in view of the great intellectual and social changes of recent years. He was sure he was speaking the views of his colleagues connected with India, whether as officials or in other pursuits, when he cordially thanked the Secretary of State for appointing two native gentle men from India, one a Hindu, the other a Mussulman to be members of his advisory council at Westminster. He thought hon. Members ought to be grateful for what had been done in regard to the abolition of flogging. That change was brought about by the right hon. Gentleman soon after he came into office. After the statement of the Secretary of State, he would not go into other matters raised by the Amendment. In regard to the deportations, it was to be remembered that this mild action under the Regulation of 1818, was action taken in due course of law, not by arbitrary suspension of ordinary law, nor as sometimes happened, by proclaiming martial law, to over-ride the ordinary law in districts where the peace was undisturbed. India was not to be conssidered merely as one country; it was an empire containing many countries, as diverse as Sweden, Greece and Spain, and there was always some unrest, disquiet and discontent with which the Regulation could deal, and it was a method of avoiding greater danger arising from the action of nervous local authorities who sometimes, as after the Kuka rebellion in the Punjab resorted to bloodshed without any warrant of law, a procedure strongly censured at the time by the Government of Lord Mayo.

MR. C. J. O'DONNELL (Newington, Walworth)

said he sincerely congratulated the right hon. Gentleman on the result of the course taken by the Government when a great wrong was done to Indians in the Transvaal, but he could not but remember that the difficulty had continued for six months. The partition of Bengal was only two months old when the Government came into office, and it certainly would not have interfered with the progress of administration had the new ministry dealt with the subject at once. He entirely agreed with the Secretary of State for India that a Duma, or any form of representative government, was impossible at present in India. He desired, however, to say that he wished to see Indians introduced more and more into the Government. What the principles of Liberalism involved was good government, and, above all, the removal of real grievances. There were two great grievances which had been causing trouble in India during the past three years. One was the partition of Bengal, and the right hon. Gentleman had steadily and firmly refused to approach that question. There was abundant evidence that the partition of Bengal was radically bad, both from native and official points of view. As to the Punjab, it was true that there had been a trivial attempt to interfere with the Sikh regiments, but the real reason for interfering was that the peasantry, who were principally concerned, were Sikh peasantry and that there had been a great increase in the taxation on land and in the rates for irrigation. What was the result? Six barristers were in prison for five months on a charge of sedition, and at last they had got out. The court which dealt with the case had declared that the evidence against the men was untrustworthy and malicious. They should be proud that there was a court in India which could tell the Government that it had based its action on evidence which was untrustworthy. He could assure the right hon. Gentleman that he had his sincerest sympathy in the difficult task he had before him; but he begged him not to worry himself about changes in the Council here, or about a new Legislative Assembly. Let the right hon. Gentleman get to the real grievances of the people and reform them, and he would find that his administration of India would be remembered with gratitude by the people of that great country and of England.

DR. RUTHERFORD

asked leave to withdraw his Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Main Question again proposed.

MR. J. M. ROBERTSON (Northumberland, Tyneside)

said that the Amendment which stood in his name in reference to Constitutional Reform in Egypt raised a subject very closely connected in theory, and to a certain extent in practice, with the resolution which had just been under discussion, and he could not help looking at it in the light of the impressive remarks made during that debate by his right hon. friend the Secretary of State for India. That right hon. Gentleman had declared very justly that it was impossible to lay down the principle that the system of government which ruled in this country or other States of Europe, was also good for Asiatics or countries of various stages in civilisation. But, he ventured to suggest that while that was so, the right government for an Asiatic or any other State not on our level of civilisation, was not to be settled by rule of thumb by the bureaucracy of the moment, or by the convenience of the administrators of the moment, but should be adjusted on the principles of right and wrong and political science, whatever these might be. It was not for him to lecture Liberal Ministers on Liberalism, but he hoped right hon. Gentlemen would admit that there never was an extension of political rights and political freedom made to any people in the world by the mere spontaneous goodwill of the ruling class for the time being; and when a bureaucracy took the place of the ruling class the same egotistic Conservatism was sure to be exhibited, and could only be met by the natural pressure and free play of the opinion of the people who demanded their rights. What he wanted to know was, what were the principles and ideals of the Government with regard to Egypt or any other Oriental country He did but ask the Government to accede to the very respectful demands of the Egyptian General Assembly for the adoption of constitutional reforms, which had been forecasted twenty times by His Majesty's representatives in Egypt or by their predecessors. They knew that the British Consul-General had expressed himself in explicit terms as to its being the duty of the British Government to prepare the Egyptians for self-government. He naturally welcomed such a declaration as that, but he remembered that similar declarations, though not so pronounced, were made by Lord Cromer for a long series of years without any single step whatever being taken to give effect to these proposals and ideas. The government of Egypt remained practically where it was when Lord Cromer took it up so far as any constitutional reform was concerned. The steps suggested by the General Assembly had always been guarded and moderate, but never had there been an answer to these appeals. Commenting on some remarks made by the hon. Member for Brentford in a discussion in August last, the Foreign Secretary laid down two propositions, viz., that there was nothing more difficult to teach than the art of self-government, and that it was impossible to teach the art of self-government. Those two propositions were a little odd coming together. He might readily assent to both; but did the right hon. Gentleman realise the consequences which flowed from these two general propositions? If it were impossible to teach self-government to any people the corollary was that you should let them learn. There was plainly no other way; and if the right hon. Gentleman would not allow the Egyptians to learn the art of self-government he was taking up a position irreconcilable with the principles of Liberalism. If the right hon. Gentleman meant that no people could make rapid progress in the art of self-government—that our race itself made very slow progress—that was true enough. But other races, like ourselves, should be allowed to evolve. If a child could not be taught to swim on the land let it, with proper precaution, got into the water. That was the whole question in regard to Egypt. The unfortunate thing-was that while under the able administration of Lord Cromer the people of Egypt had been well managed and had been relieved of certain forms of mis-government, they were not being led along the line or in the direction of self-government. One or two main facts would make his contention clear. In the Report of the year before last it was declared and lamented that crime was extending in Egypt. Some gentlemen who made a passing visit as tourists resented the statement, which, however, was made officially, and Captain Machel went on to explain that the increase of crime in Egypt was due to the prosperity of the people, which was one of the things for which we claimed special credit. Was there anyone in the House who would admit that real progress was made by any people if they were not advancing morally as well as materially? It had been said that "where there is no vision the people perish." That was a maxim of universal experience; and would the fact that the material prosperity of Egypt had increased be a vindication of a Government which did not promote its moral advancement as well? According to all accounts progress was being made in education, but there was an increase in crime, and that under a régime which claimed to be the best the people ever had. He did not deny the material advantages which the people of Egypt had derived from our rule, as regarded freedom from old forms of tyranny, and the increase of material prosperity. On the other hand, the death-rate was increasing, and sanitary progress was deplorably slow. He wished to press the point that Great Britain was committed by a whole series of declarations to the principle that there should be some gradual, guarded, and reasonable progress towards self-government in Egypt; but his objection was that no progress was yet being made in that direction, and it seemed to him that that was due to the uncalculating confidence of the people of this country in the administration of Lord Cromer. They cared so much more for finance than anything else that they took it for granted that a Minister who was so capable in finance was as capable in everything else. That was a most fallacious assumption. The opponents of Mr. Gladstone, whose quasi-infallibility in finance was admitted, would never for a moment concede that he could be trusted fully to administer in other directions. The discovery had been made by tariff reformers that Lord Cromer, since he had entered into home politics and had given his opinions in regard to free trade, was not infallible, and the same discovery had been made by free traders in regard to his opinions on old age pensions. It was found that after all Lord Cromer was only a British politician. Questions put to Ministers on the Front Bench constantly took it for granted that it was impossible to trust a single Minister a single day to carry on the work of his office without the supervision of Parliament, and the power of questioning and cross-questioning. He remembered on the opening days of last session that hon. Members opposite dealt with the Home Secretary on the plain assumption that he could not be trusted to do justice in the case of a foreign person without being sharply cross-questioned; and the suggestion was made that he was equivocating when he gave his answers. Members implied by questions that no Minister could be trusted, no matter what his antecedents and reputation, without vigorous and rigorous and constant interpellation; and yet when the humblest Minister went to a country like Egypt he could be trusted to any extent! He could not be trusted in England, but when he was put to govern a race whose language he might not know—he admitted that Sir Eldon Gorst knew the language of the Egyptians—with whose religion and other institutions he had no sympathy, and whose society he never entered, it was taken for granted that he would do justice all round to the people over whom he was set. He maintained that this was an attitude of profound insincerity. Either they were pretending to a lack of confidence in their own Ministers which they did not feel, or they had no right to give carte blanche to govern aliens without the power of criticism. These two attitudes were irreconcilable. The right hon. Gentleman the Foreign Secretary had more than once indicated his opinion in regard to the administration of Egypt, that they should take care to choose a good man as Governor or administrator, and then leave him a free hand. Of course he recognised the difficulties of the right hon. Gentleman's position. He might well plead that our officials might make mistakes, and he trusted that the right hon. Gentleman would admit that they were not infallible. Further, if the British control was imperfectly fitted to govern Egypt, the Foreign Office was certainly less fitted still. His contention was that the Foreign Office was not as well fitted to govern Egypt as the Egyptians themselves, and that the Intelligence Department for these purposes was not well qualified. If that were so, it was another argument for setting up some other form of control, and letting the people of Egypt have some say in the management of their own affair;. He did not propose the immediate concession of full Parliamentary institutions, but, if they were really to extend the powers of the people to control the Government, they ought to give them some powers of initiation. As to what might be said in regard to the fitness of the people of Egypt for self government, no hesitation had been felt in giving such powers to the people of Greece, Bulgaria, Servia, nor had these been denied to the people of Persia. All that was asked was that the institutions already existing in Egypt should be so expanded as to involve some real power of control, and that they should not remain mere figureheads. In this connection he wished to put another point. It was a maxim current throughout Egypt, and indeed in all bureaucracies, that what was needed above all things in the people was character. He agreed; but how was character to be developed in any nation except by some measure of self government? Every empire which went to ruin was under the power of "experts," and that would continue to be the ease unless they could get experts in human nature, and he did not know where they existed. In the absence of such, they must take the universal way. On the ground that we ought to do what we could to develope character in Egypt—and the same thing might be said of India—he made the appeal to the right hon. Gentleman to urge upon the British Consul-General in Egypt the great expediency of meeting the moderate demands of the General Assembly in Egypt, with a view to developing gradually and prudently in the people of Egypt that capacity for self-government which alone could make a nation worth consideration in human affairs. He begged to move.

MR. HIGHAM (Yorkshire, W.R., Sowerby)

seconded the Amendment, and said that for twenty-five years we had had the management of the affairs of Egypt, and both our Consul-Generals had told us that we were not there primarily to govern Egypt, but to teach Egypt to govern itself. And yet, after twenty-five years, we found that self-government by Egyptians was, indeed, even further away now than it was at the beginning. In 1883 Lord Dufferin himself said the best, and probably the only, training to fit a man in Egypt for national government was local government, and yet he thought a score of years had passed before any effort was made to give the Egyptians that training in local government in order to fit them for national government. Nobody could read the history of Egypt for the last twenty-five years without knowing that we had brought enormous wealth into the country. We had made vast improvements, and our finest engineers had gone there and had by their work greatly increased the resources of the country. We had made land twenty times the value that it was before, and yet Lord Cromer told us that the men, the landowners, who had become wealthy were selected by the working people and others to be delegates, and upon these delegates devolved the responsibility of electing the provincial and national councils. But these delegates were ignorant to day, were not educated, and we were no nearer to the solving of the problem of local self-government in Egypt than we were before. Ever since the loss of our American Colonies and ever since we had recognised the way in which we had treated Ireland, we had realised that we ought not to take out of our Colonies a profit for ourselves; and if he were to hold up to the Secretary of State an example of what we could do in Egypt, he would refer him to the West Coast of Africa, to Southern Nigeria. There, we were lifting up the natives by educating them, and we were adapting our teaching and training to native customs and habits, which was the only way we could properly manage these native countries. But we had not been doing that in Egypt and with the native population of Egypt. If local government was a first necessity for national government, and if, as Lord Cromer said again, education was a first necessity for local government, then we ought in twenty-five years to have done infinitely more to advance education in order to assist the people to undertake local government. In the Report last year, the Consul-General stated that the main vote for education must be subsidiary to the general Budget of the country. He thought that was the wrong way to look at education. We had got beyond it in this country, and we ought to go beyond it in our dependencies. With so prosperous a Budget as Egypt now had, he thought that a much larger sum than £374,000 should be spent upon the education of the people. It was recognised to-day that some of the-best men who came into this House, had come from a training progressively in parish councils, district councils, city councils, and from the municipal life of the country, and he agreed with Lord Dufferin that that was the way that these men must come into the national life of Egypt. But we were not giving them a chance, and that was the complaint he had to make of the administration of Egypt. He recognised that there had been an improvement of the fellaheen and that the corvee had been abolished, and that now we only employed forced labour in Egypt in time of plague and pestilence. But these matters were still in the hands of ignorant people. We had given wealth to that country but we had not given the knowledge of how to use it, without which wealth was not a blessing but did more harm than good. He begged to second the Amendment.

Amendment proposed— At end to add the words, 'But we regret that, while views favourable to constitutional reform in Egypt have been expressed by the British Consul-General there, your Majesty's Ministers have not enjoined upon him the duty of granting the respectful demand of the General Assembly that former forecasts of such reform by your Majesty's representatives should now be fulfilled.' "—[Mr. J. M. Robertson.]

Question proposed, "That those words-be there added."

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Sir EDWARD GRKY,) Northumberland, Berwick

The hon. Member who moved the Amendment; criticised a speech of mine made some time ago for what he held was a contradiction contained in it. The speech was made without previous preparation, and I have not read a report of it since it was delivered. I am quite prepared to admit that there may have been a verbal contradiction in that speech. The hon. Member said I stated that it was a difficult thing to teach the art of self-government, and that I also said it was impossible. I do not dispute the accuracy of the report if the hon. Member tolls me if is so. Of course, all I intended to say was that you cannot teach the art of self-government in the same sense as you can teach arithmetic or a definite piece of knowledge which you can test by examination afterwards. I am entirely at one with the hon. Member if the point which he wishes to make is that the art of self-government is not something which can be taught out of a book, or taught in a day, a week, or a month, but something the growth of which can be fostered by the spirit of the Government and institutions of a country. The hon. Member for Tyneside devoted some attention to what he called the imperfections of the administration in Egypt, and he attributed them, I think, to the shortcomings of the bureaucracy and officials. If the point he desires to make is that the bureaucracy and officials are not infallible, we must all agree with him, as we should agree that no other class of people are infallible. But what I do say on their behalf is that they are people through whom the government of the country has to be carried on; that they have to contend with very great difficulties; and that, if you get into the habit of imputing to them that they are invariably wrong, or that they are ill-disposed, you will, unless the balance is redressed from the Government Bench or by whoever is responsible for the acts of officials, soon create such a spirit in the public service that no self-respecting man will enter it. The question is not, therefore, whether officials are infallible or not. We know perfectly well that the play of public opinion, the debates in this House—if those debates are reasonable in tone and informed by knowledge—have a valuable effect; but I do plead, that when you say there are imperfections of administration, very sympathetic allowance should be made for the great difficulties under which administration has to be carried on. By what standard is it fair to judge an administration? Certainly not by the European standard. I think the fair standard to judge by is, in the first instance, the enormous improvement which has been made since the European occupation. Comparing that with the standard of what existed in Egypt before we went there, everyone will admit that the improvement is enormous. In the next place, the Government of Egypt is hampered by conditions connected with the capitulations such as no white Government in the world labours under, and which, I think, are more severe in the case of Egypt than in the case of any Oriental Government. And till you have made allowance for all these difficulties, until you have taken into account what was the starting point of the British occupation, the state of things the British occupation had to deal with which they found existing in Egypt—till you have compared the present and the past and made the proper and necessary allowances, you cannot form a fair opinion of the very great success which has been achieved under the British occupation. Lord Cromer at the very first took sound finance as the basis of future reforms. Twenty-five years from the time when Egypt was on the point of bankruptcy is not a very long time, and if the hon. Member is dissatisfied with the amount now spent upon education, I am cordially with him in desiring that the amount should be increased; but I ask him to recollect that the necessities of Egypt have to be borne in mind, from more than one point of view, and I hope he will accept the fact that an increase has been made in the amount spent upon education as an evidence of the importance attached by the Government of Egypt to the subject, and of its desire, if the financial situation admits of it, to increase that amount. And now as regards the larger point of principle. I agree with the hon. Member for Tyneside that there is great similarity as regards the complex principle of self government between Egypt and India, and much of what my right hon. friend the Secretary for India said really might have been just as appropriate to the amendment we are now discussing. Now to apply an a priori doctrine without special regard to the peculiar conditions of a country is certain to lead to one of the gravest mistakes that can occur in the art of government; and when I say "without special regard to the peculiar conditions of a country," I mean not only the geographical features but the race which inhabits the country and its present state. Representative institutions in European countries have produced, no doubt, admirable results, but even so they have taken time to do it, and they have produced those results by slow growth. Truth, justice, honesty, moral courage, self-respect, all that goes to make up what we call character, I think we are right in attributing what we value most in national life today to the growth of self-government in our country. But it does not follow that if you at once equip an Oriental country with representative institutions like our own, the same results will follow when you apply them to another country, another race, in another stage of development altogether. And in regard to the people of Egypt, the stage of development from which they have just emerged is very different from that of our country. The past government of Egypt, for which you have to go back twenty five years, was such as was necessarily calculated to crush out every quality in the race which is most essential to the exercise of self-government, and if you try to apply too rapidly to a race which has been crushed, as the Egyptian race was before the British occupation, your principles of self-government, the result may very well be that you will produce not the effects we attribute to self-government in this country, but corruption, confusion, disorder, and oppression. Take for instance Lord Cromer's administration. One of the things to which Lord Cromer devoted the greatest care was that the increase of the material prosperity of Egypt should not get into the hands of a few, but should be distributed amongst the cultivators of the country. No one was more careful than Lord Cromer to ensure that in the development of Egypt it should not be possible for the speculator to exploit the wealth of the country to the disadvantage of the occupying cultivator. I doubt if material prosperity in Egypt would have advanced under representative institutions as it has done under the administration of Lord Cromer; and I am sure the speculator who would have exploited the resources of the country would have done far more mischief than he found it possible to do under the wise and careful administration of Lord Cromer. While representative institutions are exceedingly good for those who are able to take care of themselves, there is a real danger in applying them to a peasantry who by education and training have not yet had any opportunities of acquiring the qualities which will enable them to make use of self-government to protect themselves. If the hon. member contends that the time has come when Parliamentary institutions and representative government should be granted in Egypt—

MR. J. M. ROBERTSON

All I said had reference to the demand of the General Assembly.

Sir EDWARD GREY

I am trying to find out where the difference lies between us.

MR. J. M. ROBERTSON

May I point out that the terms of the amendment suggest that the demand of the General Assembly should be favourably considered?

SIR EDWARD GREY

The hon. Member admits that the time for Parliamentary institutions has not come.

MR. J. M. ROBERTSON

I have always said that the time for the establishment of our system of representative institutions has not yet come, and it seems to me that much of the argument to the contrary is unnecessary. I never dreamt that our British system should be applied to Egypt straight away.

Sir EDWARD GREY

Then, if that be so, the difference of opinion which exists between the Government and the hon. Member is only a difference of degree. And now I come to what the actual situation is under Sir Eldon Gorst. Let me say at once that Sir Eldon Gorst, who went out to Egypt to continue Lord Cromer's policy, has given justification for saying that he promises to realise in the fullest degree what were the hopes and confidence shared by Lord Cromer, He has been in the country some nine months, he has had to acquaint himself during that time, not only with Egypt, but with the Sudan; and, when you reflect that during those nine months he has had to fill the gap left by the great personality of Lord Cromer and all that that means, surely nine months is not a very long time in which to come to important decisions. The hon. Member pressed upon me many points connected with the Egyptian administration. If when Sir Eldon Gorst went to Egypt with the task before him of taking up Lord Cromer's work I had burdened him with all the points raised by the hon. Member, it would have made it absolutely impossible for him to attend to the large affairs of the country. Some of the points so raised have, I know, occupied the attention of Sir Eldon Gorst. But I deliberately have not pressed him with instructions during the time he has been in Egypt because I want his opinion and advice to be formed impartially and with such leisure as he can get. I expect to get that opinion in the report, which will be laid before Parliament at the usual time within the year. As far as I am concerned I should be entirely unworthy of the position I occupy if I had attempted to enforce a decision with regard to any new departure without waiting till Sir Eldon Gorst had had a fair opportunity of forming his own opinions, and I had had the benefit of those opinions. One of the first things that. Sir Eldon Gorst will have to form a considered opinion upon is the working of the existing representative institutions. They must be the starting point, and I should like to have that opinion first before we are com- mitted to further steps. I admit that we occupy Egypt in trust for the future of the country, and a part of the trust is to develop the aptitude, abilities, and character of the people so as to fit them, not only to make good use of their material prosperity, but to take in the course of years, their share in the government of their own country, to train them in respect of the institutions of the country, in every possible way to develop the natural faculties that they have. But the first point to which we have to address ourselves is to start with the working of existing representative institutions; and, in my opinion we must begin from below. If the hon. Gentleman desires an assurance that treated from that point of view the subject is occupying the attention of the Egyptian Government—I am quite willing to give it to him. But I warn the House that in the case of Egypt progress must be slow. We shall hold to the trust which devolves upon us to develop the prosperity and the moral welfare of Egypt, but progress must necessarily be slow. If you go too fast it can only end in confusion, and you will check progress for many years to come. That is the object to appreciate, and in the meanwhile progress must be slow, or we must lose all the British influence which ensures that the Government of Egypt, though administered by a bureaucracy, is administered in a just, kind, and humane manner.

MR. MORTON (Sutherlandshire)

said he admitted that his right hon. friend had made a very important statement with regard to the government of Egypt, but he would like to point out that it was the same sort of statement which came from all Governments with regard to the governing of foreign peoples. They seemed to pat each other on the back and say, "see what fine follows we are at governing other peoples." He would prefer to see the Government governing our own people better, and he would like to see them do something for Ireland. Until they could show that they could govern Ireland, he for one, would not have much faith in their government of Egypt. It must be remembered that we did not go to Egypt for the benefit of the Egyptian people. We went to get the Egyptian bonds paid. [Laughter.] Hon. Gentlemen laughed; perhaps they had some of those lucky bonds. There were many millions of Egyptian bonds, more than half of which had been stolen from the Egyptian people, and we went to Egypt in the first place to save that money, and to make the poor Egyptians pay the bonds in full, although they had had little for them. He could not for the life of him see that we had been successful in Egypt except in paying those bonds, which meant robbing the Egyptian people. If the Government had intended to make an honest attempt to teach the Egyptians self-government they should have commenced by giving them some measure of local self-government in the large towns. He quite agreed that we could not expect the Egyptians to be qualified to work a Parliamentary system such as obtained in this country, but they never would be able to do so until a commencement was made to train them by means of local self-government in their own country. He could not see that we were in any better position now in Egypt than we were when we went there twenty-five years ago. To summarise the position: we went to Egypt twenty-five years ago, not to help the people—that was not even pretended—we went there to make the poor Egyptians pay the unjust bonds in full, and we had done it. That was our success in self-government, and after twenty-five years' trial we ended with the Denshawai incident—a cruel method of barbarism which would be a lasting disgrace to Lord Cromer and to this country. And we said that that was the only way to govern the people of Egypt. He would like to know whether the Government intended to make a bona fide effort to set up self-government in Egypt. We had no moral right to interfere there at all, we were there merely because we were the stronger, and the people of Egypt had a right to say what the people of this country had said before, they had a right at all events to govern themselves in their own way. So far as he could see there had been no attempt whatever to teach the Egyptians to govern themselves. The Government had always been what was known as "Downing Street government." Now "Downing Street government" for hundreds of years had always been a failure, and in every one of our Colonies where it had been done away with, even in Canada, it was always spoken of with the greatest contempt. The Britisher could govern himself wherever he might be placed, but British Governments could not, and they had been a failure at all times unless they represented the people. He did not wish to detain the House at greater length, but he trusted that the Liberal Government would as soon as possible in all countries with which they had anything to do, give the people an opportunity to govern themselves. He therefore hoped his right hon. friend would take such steps as would give to the Egyptian people that local self-government to which so far as their particular local affairs were concerned they were entitled to have.

MR. J. M. ROBERTSON

said in view of the assurance given by the right hon. Gentleman he desired to withdraw his Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Main Question again proposed.

Motion made, and Question, "That the debate be now adjourned,"—(Sir E. Carson,)—put, and agreed to.

Debate to be resumed upon Monday next.

Whereupon, Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 3.

Adjourned at twenty minutes before Five o'clock till Monday next.