On Irish demand for pardon of Fenian convicts.

The root of the unrest, discontent, and sedition, so far as I can make out after constant communication with those who have better chances of knowing the problem at first hand, than I could have had--the root of the matter is racial and…

We stand by this position not in words alone; we have shown it in act and shall show it further.

Pestilence during the last nine months has stalked through the land, wasting her cities and villages, uncontrolled and uncontrollable, so far as we can tell, by human forethought or care.

In trying to remedy plague, you have to encounter the habits and prejudices of hundreds of years.

Suppose you find plague is conveyed by a flea upon a rat, and suppose you are dealing with a population who object to the taking away of life.

I watch the expenditure of Indian revenue as the ferocious dragon of the old mythology watched the golden apples.

I do not forget that I come from a constituency which, so far as I have known it, if it is most generous, is also most prudent.

We shall not see all the fruits of it in our day.

We shall at least have made not only a beginning, but a marked advance both in order and progress, by resolute patience, and an unflagging spirit of conciliation.

If there are no rains this month, the spectre of famine seems to be approaching, and nobody can blame us for that.

All we can say is that never before was the Government in all its branches and members found more ready than it is now, to do the very best to face the prospect.

Now, if that be so, I am very sorry for democracy.

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…

Bad manners, overbearing manners are disagreeable in all countries: India is the only country where bad and overbearing manners are a political crime.

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…

Surely that is not a very ripe idea of democracy.

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.

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.

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.

Now, when two men, singularly unlike in temperament and training, agreed as to the evil of centralisation on this large scale, it compels reflection.

So they are, in numbers; but it is fatally idle to say that this infinitesimal fraction does not count.

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