John Morley

One of the happy qualities of youth--and there is no pleasure greater than to see you in that blissful stage, for one who has passed beyond, long beyond it--is not to be, I think I am right, in a hurry, not to be too anxious either for the…

He may have to deal with a famine; he may have to deal with a riot; he may take a decision on which the lives of thousands of people may depend.

Well, I think that early call to responsibility, to a display of energy, to the exercise of individual decision and judgment is what makes the Indian Civil Service a grand career.

And that is what has produced an extraordinary proportion of remarkable men in that service.

What he knows is the particular officer who stands in front of him, and with whom he has dealings.

If the officer is harsh or overbearing or incompetent, the Government gets the discredit of it; the villager assumes that Government is also harsh, overbearing, and incompetent.

The great men of the service have always recognised this obligation, that official relations are not to be the beginning and the end of the duties of an Indian administrator.

I gather from them that one of the worst drawbacks of the modern speeding up of the huge wheels of the machine of Indian government is, that the Indian Civil servant has less time and less opportunity than he used to have of bringing…

The thing to aim at is--all civilians who write and speak say the same--to cultivate social amenities so far as you can, I do not mean in the towns, but in the local communities with which many of you are going to be concerned.

I saw the other day a letter from a lady, not, I fancy, particularly sentimental about the matter, and she said this: "There would be great improvement if only better social relations could be established with Indians personally.

I think each of us can see for himself the desirability of every one who goes out there, having certain ideas in his head as to his own relations with the people whom he is called upon to govern.

That is the mission with which we have to charge you, and it is as momentous a mission as was ever confided to any great military commander or admiral of the fleet--this mission of yours to place yourself in touch with the people whom you…

And while you are in India, and among Indians, and responsible to Indians, because you are as responsible to them as you are to us here, while you are in that position, gentlemen, do not live in Europe all the time.

I know of no more imposing and momentous transaction in the vast scroll of the history of human government.

But the difficulties of Indian government are not the result--be sure of this--of any single incident or set of incidents.

They thoroughly appreciate the benefits of our rule, they are bound to us by self-interest, but they do not like us." It is intelligible, but that is a result to be carefully guarded against by demeanour, by temper, by action--to be…

Every one would agree that anything like a decisive and permanent estrangement between the Indians and the Europeans would end in dire failure and an overwhelming catastrophe.

We have introduced and carried through Parliament a measure, as everybody will admit, of the highest order of importance.

I have never known a project discussed and conducted with such knowledge, and such a desire to avoid small, petty personal incidents.

It depends on the Civil Service, and it depends on the power of Indians with the sense and instincts of government, to control wilder spirits without the sense or the instincts of government.

There never was a more manful and admirable expression of the devotion of the service, than the promise of their cordial, whole-hearted, and laborious support of the policy which they have now got to carry through.

It needed some courage to do it, but it was done.

It means that nine Indian gentlemen on December 13 last were arrested and are now detained--arrested under a law which is as good a law as any law on our own statute-book.

Let us look at this seriously, because serious minds are exercised by deportation, and quite naturally.

I would use my best endeavours to make these States independent in matters of administration.