Indian speeches (1907-1909) · Chapter 4III
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DR. RUTHERFORD (Middlesex, Brentford) rose to move as an Amendment to the Address, 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."
MR. DEPUTY-SPEAKER, I think the House will allow me in the remarks that I wish to make, to refer to a communication that 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, that 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 to-morrow." 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 shown by the Transvaal Government.
In reference to the Amendment now before the House, I have listened to the debate with keen, lively, and close interest. I am not one of those who have usually complained of these grave topics being raised, when fair opportunity offered in this House. On the whole, looking back over my Parliamentary lifetime, which is now pretty long, I think there has been too little Indian discussion. Before I came here there were powerful minds like Mr. Fawcett and Mr. Bradlaugh and others, who constantly raised Indian questions in a truly 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 must submit that His Majesty's present Government in the Indian department has the confidence both of the House and of the country. I believe we have. An 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. 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, yet I also perceive serious disadvantages. In the old days they were able to command the services on the Indian committees, of ex-Ministers, of members of this House and members of another place, who had had much experience of Indian administration, and I am doubtful, considering the preoccupations of public men, whether we should now be able to call a large body of experienced administrators, with the necessary balance between the two Houses, to sit on one of these committees. And then I would point out another disadvantage. You would have to call away from the performance of their duties in India a large body of men whose duties ought to occupy, and I believe do occupy, all their minds and all their time. Still it is an idea, and I will only say that I do not entirely banish it from my own mind. Two interesting speeches, and 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 raise a really important issue. My hon. friend the Member for Leeds said that democracy was entirely opposed to, and would resist, the doctrine of the settled fact.[1] My hon. friend tells you democracy will have nothing to do with settled facts, though he did not quite put it as plainly 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 powerful and responsible Departmental office, on condition that I made short work of settled facts, hurried on with my catalogue of first principles, and arranged on those principles the whole duties of government. Then my hon. friend the Member for Brentford 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 millennial future, and I do not quarrel with him for making his speech. 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 long weeks. He polished off the Indian population at the heroic rate of sixty millions a week, and this makes him our especially competent instructor. His Imperial Duma was to be elected, as I understood, by universal suffrage.
[Footnote 1: The Secretary of State had on an earlier occasion spoken of the Petition of Bengal as a settled fact.]
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. Surely that is not a very ripe idea of democracy. My hon. friend visited the State of Baroda, and thought it well governed. Well, there is no Duma of his sort there. I will state frankly my own opinion even though I have not spent one single week-end in India. 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 politics—namely, that you can cut out, frame, and shape one 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 standardised 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 regard that as a most fatal and mischievous fallacy, and I need not say more. I am bound, after what I have said, to add 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, Mazzini, 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 holds 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 just as true for the Punjab and the United Provinces and Bengal?
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, when in 1858 the Government of India was transferred to the Crown. 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 a Viceroy's shoulder a load that no man of whatever powers, however gigantic they might be, could be expected effectively to support. 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 must even say that I do not think I have anything to learn of the principles or maxims or the practice of Liberal doctrines even from my hon. friend. You are bound to look at the whole mass of the 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 that quarter, in the midst of a shower of reproach, for what I regard, in all its direct and indirect results and bearings, as one of the most important moves that have been made in connection with the relations between Great Britain and India for a long time—I mean, 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. 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 perturbed time; we did not find balmy breezes and smooth waters. It is notorious that we came into enormous difficulties, which we had not created. How they were created is a long story that has nothing whatever to do with the present discussion. But what I submit with the utmost confidence is that the situation to-day is a considerable improvement on the situation that we found, when we assumed power 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 to some extent dispersed. I am not so unwise as to say that the clouds will never come back again; 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 complain, 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 step that, 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, anyone who knows the Punjab, would agree that, whatever may happen at some remote period, its state is comparatively quiet and satisfactory. I am not going to repeat my justification of that 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 about the circumstances with which we had to deal. 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 actually took.
Let me beseech my hon. friends at least to try for some sense of balanced proportion, instead of allowing their wrath at one particular incident of policy to blot out from their vision all the wide and durable operations, to which we have set firm and persistent hands. After all, this absence of a sense of proportion is what, more than any other one thing, makes a man a wretched politician.
Now as to the reforms that are mentioned in my hon. friend's Amendment. It is 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 could 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 people 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 guesses these proposals are. I should like to set a little examination paper to my hon. friend. I have studied them for many months, yet would rather not be examined for chapter and verse. But my hon. friend after his famous six weeks of travel knows all about them, and the state of affairs for which our plans 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 tell you how far this is wrong and exactly what ought to be done to put what is wrong right." I think I have got from him twenty ipse dixits on all these topics on which we slow dull people at the India Office are wearing ourselves to pieces. When it is said, as I often hear it said, that I, for example, am falling into the hands of my officials, it should be remembered that those gentlemen who go to India also get into the hands of other people.
Dr. RUTHERFORD: I was in the hands both of officials and of Indians.
Mr. MORLEY: Then let me assure him, perhaps to his amazement, that 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. 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 learn what the general view was at which the Government of India had themselves arrived upon the plans, with all their complexities and 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. Sir Henry Cotton made a speech that interested 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 living problems of India. I can only assure my hon. friend that that is engaging our attention both in India and here.
Another 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. In this we are making a marked advance in humanity and common sense,—which is itself a kind of humanity.
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? It is a great machine in India, yes 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 failure, and do all that I can to remedy it? Although the Government of India is complicated and intricate, they cannot suppose that I shall fail for one moment in doing all in my power to demonstrate that we are moved by a kindly, a sympathetic, a friendly, an energetic, and what I will call a governing spirit, in the highest form and sense of that sovereign and inspiring word.
GENTLEMEN,—I have first of all to thank you for what I understand is a rare honour—and an honour it assuredly is—of being invited to be your guest to-night. The position of a Secretary of State in the presence of the Indian Civil Service is not an entirely simple one. You, Gentlemen, who are still in the Service, and the veterans I see around me who have been in that great Service, naturally and properly look first of all, and almost altogether, upon India. A Secretary of State has to look also upon Great Britain and upon Parliament—and that is not always a perfectly easy situation to adjust. I forget who it was that said about the rulers of India in India:—"It is no easy thing for a man to keep his watch in two longitudes at once at the same time." That is the case of the Secretary of State. It is not the business of the Secretary of State to look exclusively at India, though I will confess to you for myself that during the moderately short time I have held my present office, I have kept my eye upon India constantly, steadfastly, and with every desire to learn the whole truth upon every situation as it arose.
But there must be a thorough comprehension in the mind of the Secretary of State of two things—first of all, of the Indian point of view; and, secondly, the point of view as it appears to those who are the masters of me and of you. Do not forget that adjustment has to be made. It would be impertinent of me to pay compliments to the Civil Service, to whom I propose this toast—"The Health of the Indian Civil Service." You might think for a moment, that it was an amateur proposing prosperity and success to experts. I have had in my days a good deal to do with experts of one kind and another, and I assure you that I do not think an expert is at all the worse when he gets a candid-minded and reasonably well trained amateur.
Now, this year is a memorable anniversary. It is fifty years within a month or two, since the Crown took over the Government of India from the old East India Company. Whether that was a good move or a bad move, it would not become me to discuss. The move was made. (A voice, "It was a good move.") My veteran friend says that it was a good move. I hope so. But at the end of fifty years we are at rather a critical moment. I read in The Times the other day that the present Viceroy and Secretary of State had to deal with conditions such as the British in India never before were called upon to face. (A voice, "That is so.") Now, many of you sitting around me at this table are far better able to test the weight of that statement, than I can pretend to be. Is it true that at the end of fifty years since the transfer to the Crown, we have to deal with conditions such as the British in India never before were called upon to face? ("Yes.") I cannot undertake to measure that; but what is clear is that decidedly heavy clouds have suddenly risen in our horizon, and are darkly sailing over our Indian skies. That cannot be denied. But, gentlemen, having paid the utmost attention that a man can in office, with access to all the papers, and seeing all the observers he is able to see, I do not feel for a moment that this discovery of a secret society or a secret organisation involves any question of an earthquake. I prefer to look upon it, to revert to my own figure, as clouds sailing through the sky. I do not say you will not have to take pretty strong measures of one sort and another. Yes, but strong measures in the right direction, and with the right qualifications. I think any man who lays down a firm proposition that all is well, or any man who says that all is ill—either of those two men is probably wrong. Now this room is filled, and genially filled, with men who have had enormous experience, vast and wide experience, and, not merely passive experience, but that splendid active experience which is the real training and education of men in responsibility. This room is full of gentlemen with these qualifications. And I will venture to say that the theories and explanations that could be heard in the palace of truth from all of you gentlemen here, would be countless in their differences. I hear explanations of the present state of things all day long. I like to hear them. You think it may become monotonous. No: not at all; because there is so much, I will not say of random variety, but there is so much independent use of mind upon the facts that we have to deal with, that I listen with endless edification and instruction. But, I think, and I wish I could think otherwise with all my heart—that to sum up all these theories and explanations of the state of things with which we have to deal, you can hardly resist a painful impression that there is now astir in some quarters a certain estrangement and alienation of races. ("No no.") Gentlemen, bear with me patiently. It is our share in the Asiatic question.
I am trying to feel my way through the most difficult problem, the most difficult situation that a responsible Government can have to face. Of course, I am dependent upon information. But as I read it, as I listen to serious Indian experts with large experience, it all sounds estrangement and alienation even though it be no worse than superficial. Now that is the problem that we have to deal with. Gentlemen, I should very badly repay your kindness in asking me to come among you to-night, if I were to attempt for a minute to analyse or to prove all the conditions that have led to this state of things. It would need hours and days. This is not, I think, the occasion, nor the moment. Our first duty—the first duty of any Government—is to keep order. But just remember this. It would be idle to deny, and I am not sure that any of you gentlemen would deny, that there is at this moment, and there has been for some little time past, and very likely there will be for some time to come, a living movement in the mind of the peoples for whom you are responsible. A living movement, and a movement for what? A movement for objects which we ourselves have all taught them to think desirable objects. And unless we somehow or other can reconcile order with satisfaction of those ideas and aspirations, gentlemen, the fault will not be theirs. It will be ours. It will mark the breakdown of what has never yet broken down in any part of the world—the breakdown of British statesmanship. That is what it will do. Now I do not believe anybody—either in this room or out of this room—believes that we can now enter upon an era of pure repression. You cannot enter at this date and with English public opinion, mind you, watching you, upon an era of pure repression, and I do not believe really that anybody desires any such thing. I do not believe so. Gentlemen, we have seen attempts, in the lifetime of some of us here to-night, attempts in Continental Europe, to govern by pure repression. Has one of them really succeeded? They have all failed. There may be now and again a spurious semblance of success, but in truth they have all failed. Whether we with our enormous power and resolution should fail, I do not know. But I do not believe anybody in this room representing so powerfully as you do dominant sentiments that are not always felt in England—that in this room there is anybody who is for an era of pure repression. Gentlemen, I would just digress for a moment if I am not tiring you. ("Go on,") About the same time as the transfer, about fifty years ago, of the Government of India from the old East India Company to the Crown, another very important step was taken, a step which I have often thought since I have been concerned with the Government of India was far more momentous, one almost deeper than the transfer to the Crown. And what do you think that was? That was the first establishment—I think I am right in my date—of Universities. We in this country are so accustomed to look upon political changes as the only important changes, that we very often forget such a change as the establishment of Universities. And if any of you are inclined to prophesy, I should like to read to you something that was written by that great and famous man, Lord Macaulay, in the year 1836, long before the Universities were thought of. What did he say? What a warning it is, gentlemen. He wrote, in the year 1836:—"At the single town of Hooghly 1,400 boys are learning English. The effect of this education on the Hindus is prodigious…. It is my firm belief that if our plans of education are followed up, there will not be a single idolater among the respectable classes in Bengal thirty years hence. And this will be effected merely by the natural operation of knowledge and reflection." Ah, gentlemen, the natural operation of knowledge and reflection carries men of a different structure of mind, different beliefs, different habits and customs of life—it carries them into strange and unexpected paths. I am not going to embark you to-night upon these vast controversies, but when we talk about education, are we not getting very near the root of the case? Now to-night we are not in the humour—I am sure you are not, I certainly am not—for philosophising. Somebody is glad of it. I will tell you what I think of—as I have for a good many months past—I think first of the burden of responsibility weighing on the governing men at Calcutta and Simla and the other main centres of power and of labour. We think of the anxieties of those in India, and in England as well, who have relatives in remote places and under conditions that are very familiar to you all. I have a great admiration for the self-command, for the freedom from anything like panic, which has hitherto marked the attitude of the European population of Calcutta and some other places, and I confess I have said to myself that if they had found here, in London, bombs in the railway carriages, bombs under the Prime Minister's House, and so forth, we should have had tremendous scare headlines and all the other phenomena of excitement and panic. So far as I am informed, though very serious in Calcutta—the feeling is serious, how could it be anything else?—they have exercised the great and noble virtue, in all ranks and classes, of self-command. Now the Government—if you will allow me for a very few moments to say a word on behalf of the Government, not here alone but at Simla—we and they, for after all we are one—have been assailed for a certain want of courage and what is called, often grossly miscalled, vigour.
We were told the other day—and this brings us to the root of policy—that there had been a momentary flash of courage in the Government, a momentary flash of courage when the Government of India and we here assented to the deportation of two men, and it is made a matter of complaint that they were released immediately. Well, they were not released immediately, but after six or eight months—I forget exactly how many months—of detention. They were there with no charge, no trial, nor intention of bringing them to trial. How long were we to keep them there? Not a day, I answer, nor one hour, after the specific and particular mischief, with a view to which this drastic proceeding was adopted, had abated. Specific mischief, mind you. I will not go into that argument to-night: another day I will. I will only say one thing. To strain the meaning and the spirit of an exceptional law like the old Regulation of the year 1818 in such a fashion as this, what would it do? Such a strain, pressed upon us in the perverse imagination of headstrong men, is no better than a suggestion for provoking lawless and criminal reprisals. ("No.") You may not agree with me. You are kindly allowing me as your guest to say things with which perhaps you do not agree. (Cries of "Go on.") After all, we understand one another—we speak the same language, and I tell you that a proceeding of that kind, indefinite detention, is a thing that would not be endured in this country. (A voice of "Disorder.") Yes, if there were great and clear connection between the detention and the outbreak of disorder, certainly; but as the disorder had abated it would have been intolerable for us to continue the incarceration.
Last Monday, what is called a Press Act, was passed by the Government of India, in connection with, and simultaneously with, an Explosives Act which ought to have been passed, I should think, twenty years ago. What is the purport of the Press Act? I do not attempt to give it in technical language. Where the Local Government finds a newspaper article inciting to murder and violence, or resort to explosives for the purposes of murder or violence, that Local Government may apply to a Magistrate of a certain status to issue an order for the seizure of the Press by which that incitement has been printed; and if the owner of the Press feels himself aggrieved, he may within fifteen days ask the High Court to reverse the order, and direct the restoration of the Press. That is a statement of the law that has been passed in India, and to which I do not doubt we shall give our assent. There has been the usual outcry raised—usual in all these cases. Certain people say, "Oh, you are too late." Others say, "You are too early." I will say to you first of all, and to any other audience afterwards, that I have no apology to make for being a party to the passing of this law now; and I have no apology to make for not passing it before. I do not believe in short cuts, and I believe that the Government in these difficult circumstances is wise not to be in too great a hurry. I have no apology to make for introducing executive action into what would normally be a judicial process. Neither, on the other hand, have I any apology to make for tempering executive action with judicial elements; and I am very glad to say that an evening newspaper last night, which is not of the politics to which I belong, entirely approves of that. It says: "You must show that you are not afraid of referring your semi-executive, semi-judicial action to the High Court." This Act meddles with no criticism, however strong, of Government measures. It discourages the advocacy of no practical policy, social, political, or economic. Yet I see, to my great regret and astonishment, that this Act is described as an Act for judging cases of seditious libel without a Jury. It is contended by some—and I respect the contention—that the Imperial Parliament ought to have been consulted before this Act was passed, and ought to be consulted now. (Cries of "No, no.") My veteran friends lived before the days of household suffrage. Well, it is said that the voice of Parliament ought to be heard in so grave a matter as this. But the principles of the proposals were fully considered, as was quite right, not only by the Secretary of State in Council, but by the Cabinet. It was a matter of public urgency. I stand by it. But it is perfectly natural to ask: Should the Imperial Parliament have no voice? I have directed the Government of India to report to the Secretary of State all the proceedings taken under this Act; and I undertake, as long as I hold the office of Secretary of State, to present to Parliament from time to time the reports of the proceedings taken under this somewhat drastic Act.
When I am told that an Act of this kind is a restriction on the freedom of the Press, I do not accept it for a moment. I do not believe that there is a man in England who is more jealous of the freedom of the Press than I am. But let us see what we mean. It is said, "Oh, these incendiary articles"—for they are incendiary and murderous—"are mere froth." Yes, they are froth; but they are froth stained with bloodshed. When you have men admitting that they deliberately write these articles and promote these newspapers with a view of furthering murderous action, to talk of the freedom of the Press in connection with that is wicked moonshine. We have now got a very Radical House of Commons. So much, the better for you. If I were still a member of the House of Commons, I should not mind for a moment going down to the House—and I am sure that my colleagues will not mind—to say that when you find these articles on the avowal of those concerned, expressly designed to promote murderous action, and when you find as a fact that murderous action has come about, it is moonshine to talk of the freedom of the Press. There is no use in indulging in heroics. They are not wanted. But an incendiary article is part and parcel of the murderous act. You may put picric acid in the ink and pen, just as much as in any steel bomb. I have one or two extracts here with which I will not trouble you. But when I am told that we should recognise it as one of the chief aims of good Government that there may be as much public discussion as possible, I read that sentence with proper edification; and then I turn to what I had telegraphed for from India—extracts from Yugantar. To talk of public discussion in connection with mischief of that kind is really pushing things intolerably far.
I will not be in a hurry to believe that there is not a great body in India of reasonable people, not only among the quiet, humble, law-abiding classes, but among the educated classes. I do not care what they call themselves, or what organisation they may form themselves into. But I will not be in a hurry to believe that there are no such people and that we can never depend on them. When we believe this—that we have no body of organised, reasonable people on our side in India—when you gentlemen who know the country, say this—then I say that, on the day when we believe that, we shall be confronted with as awkward, as embarrassing, and as hazardous a situation as has ever confronted the rulers of any of the most complex and gigantic States in human history. I am confident that if the crisis comes, it will find us ready, but let us keep our minds clear in advance. There have been many dark and ugly moments—see gentlemen around me who have gone through dark and ugly dates—in our relations with India before now. We have a clouded moment before us now. We shall get through it—but only with self-command and without any quackery or cant whether it be the quackery of blind violence disguised as love of order, or the cant of unsound and misapplied sentiment, divorced from knowledge and untouched by any cool consideration of the facts.