Indian speeches (1907-1909) | Page 8

is to override
local authority, and to force administration to run in official grooves.
For my own part I would spare no pains to improve our relations with
native Governments, and more and more these relations may become of

potential value to the Government of India. I would use my best
endeavours to make these States independent in matters of
administration. Yet all evidence tends to show we are rather making
administration less personal, though evidence also tends to show that
the Indian people are peculiarly responsive to sympathy and personal
influence. Do not let us waste ourselves in controversy, here or
elsewhere, or in mere anger; let us try to draw to our side the men who
now influence the people. We have every good reason to believe that
most of the people of India are on our side. I do not say for a moment
that they like us. It does not come easy, in west or east, to like foreign
rule. But in their hearts they know that their solid interest is bound up
with the law and order that we preserve.
There is a Motion on the Paper for an inquiry by means of a
Parliamentary Committee or Royal Commission into the causes at the
root of the dissatisfaction. Now, I have often thought, while at the India
Office, whether it would be a good thing to have the old-fashioned
parliamentary inquiry by committee or commission. I have considered
this, I have discussed it with others; and I have come to the conclusion
that such inquiry would not produce any of the advantages such as were
gained in the old days of old committees, and certainly would be
attended by many drawbacks. But I have determined, after consulting
with the Viceroy, that considerable advantage might be gained by a
Royal Commission to examine, with the experience we have gained
over many years, into this great mischief--for all the people in India
who have any responsibility know that it is a great mischief--of
over-centralisation. It seemed a great mischief to so acute a man as Sir
Henry Maine, who, after many years' experience, wrote expressing
agreement with what Mr. Bright said just before or just after the
Mutiny, that the centralised government of India was too much power
for any one man to work. Now, when two men, singularly unlike in
temperament and training, agreed as to the evil of centralisation on this
large scale, it compels reflection. I will not undertake at the present
time to refer to the Commission the large questions that were spoken of
by Maine and Bright, but I think that much might be gained by an
inquiry on the spot into the working of centralisation of government in
India, and how in the opinions of trained men here and in India, the
mischief might be alleviated. That, however, is not a question before us

now.
You often hear people talk of the educated section of the people of
India as a mere handful, an infinitesimal fraction. So they are, in
numbers; but it is fatally idle to say that this infinitesimal fraction does
not count. This educated section is making and will make all the
difference. That they would sharply criticise the British system of
government has been long known. It was inevitable. There need be no
surprise in the fact that they want a share in political influence, and
want a share in the emoluments of administration. Their means--many
of them--are scanty; they have little to lose and much to gain from
far-reaching changes. They see that the British hand works the State
machine surely and smoothly, and they think, having no fear of race
animosities, that their hand could work the machine as surely and as
smoothly as the British hand.
And now I come to my last point. Last autumn the Governor-General
appointed a Committee of the Executive Council to consider the
development of the administrative machinery, and at the end of March
last he publicly informed his Legislative Council that he had sent home
a despatch to the Secretary of State proposing suggestions for a move
in advance. The Viceroy with a liberal and courageous mind entered
deliberately on the path of improvement. The public in India were
aware of it. They waited, and are now waiting the result with the
liveliest interest and curiosity. Meanwhile the riots happened in
Rawalpindi, in Lahore. After these riots broke out, what was the course
we ought to take? Some in this country lean to the opinion--and it is
excusable--that riots ought to suspend all suggestions and talk of
reform. Sir, His Majesty's Government considered this view, and in the
end they took, very determinedly, the opposite view. They held that
such a withdrawal would, of course, have been construed as a