LORD STANLEY OF ALDERLEYMy Lords, I desire to ask the Under Secretary for the Colonies whether the Ceylon Government has dismissed Mr. Ramanathan from the office of Solicitor-General, or has ordered the prosecution for libel of the newspaper which accused him of fraud. In March last I suggested to Her Majesty's Government that it was incumbent upon the Ceylon Government either to dismiss Mr. Ramanathan or prosecute the newspaper which had accused him of fraud. No Government which respects itself can allow an officer holding so high a position as that of Solicitor-General to be accused of fraud. It will not be a sufficient answer for the noble Earl to say that the newspaper was an insignificant one, and was not worth notice, because the Ceylon Government, through its Attorney-General, prosecuted the same paper a short time ago on account of libelling the daughters of a police court clerk at Galle. The Indian Government either prosecutes, or orders its officials to prosecute, and pays the costs, in one case I know of, where the official lost the suit. In the case of Mr. Ramanathan there is an accumulation of offences. Since March last he has published a book which he might have dedicated to the Secretary of State, but which, if it had been dedicated to the Under Secretary, would have been a gross insult. It is entitled "A Commentary on St. Matthew." The Madras Standard calls it a Travesty of St. Matthew. Mr. Ramanathan speaks of Christ as a Yogi—he probably used the word in its spiritual sense only, which means a person who seeks Yoga, or communion with the Deity. But as a Hindu he ought to have known that a Yogi is a person who goes about with hardly any clothes, with his hair matted down his back, and his body covered with ashes. Anglo-Indians who have seen them would think this term highly disrespectful to Christ, and I think, as a matter of taste only, it is not fitting that a Solicitor-General of a Christian Government should, whilst in office, write a book of that kind. I cannot conceive how the noble Earl the Under Secretary can refrain from either insisting upon Mr. 962 Ramanathan's dismissal, or else parting company from the Colonial Office.
§ THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (The Earl of SELBORNE)My Lords, the Secretary of State has received no information from the Acting Governor of Ceylon respecting Mr. Ramanathan of the nature indicated, and that gentleman could not in any case be dismissed from office without the authority of the Secretary of State. Mr. Chamberlain's attention has been called to articles in a Ceylon newspaper, in which Mr. Ramanathan is accused, not of fraud, but of champerty, and I will ask for a report on the subject. So much for the answer to the exact question asked by the noble Lord, but I cannot let the matter drop there. Mr. Ramanathan is a distinguished Tamil gentleman who occupies the important and honourable position of Her Majesty's Solicitor-General in Ceylon. I wonder if the noble Lord who put this question on the Paper has thought what the feeling of that responsible gentleman will be when he sees that the journals of your Lordships' House have been used to convey such gross insinuations against his character. It does not seem to me to be a fair use of Parliamentary questions to put on the Paper a notice containing such imputations merely on information picked up, I know not where or how, and without there being a shadow of foundation for them. On behalf of the office which I have the honour to represent, and which is the guardian of the interests of Her Majesty's servants serving in the colonies, I altogether protest against such use of the privilege of Parliamentary questions.