John Morley

We do not know how to leave India, and therefore let us see if we know how to govern it.

What we still want to acquire is moral strength--moral strength in guiding and controlling the people of India in the course on which time is launching them.

They hope to attract that good will which must, after all, be the real foundation of our prosperity and strength in India.

I propose at once, if Parliament agrees, to acquire powers to double the Executive Council in Bombay and Madras, and to appoint at least one Indian member in each of those cases, as well as in the Governor-General's Council.

Let me say further, on the Judicial Bench in India everybody recognises the enormous service that it is to have Indian members of abundant learning, and who add to that abundant learning a complete knowledge of the conditions and life of…

But this, at all events, must be common sense--for the Governor-General and the European members of his Council to have at their side a man who knows the country well, who belongs to the country and who can give him the point of view of an…

I find in it a chance of getting the Indian angle of vision, and I feel sometimes as if I were actually in the streets of Calcutta.

The great object, the main object, is that the merits of individuals are to be considered and to be decisive, irrespective and independent of race and colour.

All I want to say is that, if, during my tenure of office, there should be a vacancy on the Viceroy's Executive Council, I should feel it a duty to tender my advice to the King that an Indian member should be appointed.

The Secretary of State can, to-morrow, if he likes, if there be a vacancy on the Viceroy's Council, recommend His Majesty to appoint an Indian member.

The absence of an Indian member from the Viceroy's Executive Council can no longer, I think, be defended.

If my existence, either officially or corporeally, were prolonged twenty times longer than either of them is likely to be, a Parliamentary system in India is not at all the goal to which I would for one moment aspire.

If I were attempting to set up a Parliamentary system in India, or if it could be said that this chapter of reforms led directly or necessarily up to the establishment of a Parliamentary system in India, I, for one, would have nothing at…

Anybody can see how the system tends to throw the non-official member into an attitude of peevish, sulky, permanent opposition, and, therefore, has an injurious effect on the minds and characters of members of these Legislative Councils.

But anybody can see how directly, how palpably, how injuriously, an arrangement of this kind tends to weaken, and I think I may say even to deaden, the sense both of trust and responsibility in the non-official members of these councils.

It is a device by which the Governor-General, or the Governor of Bombay or Madras, may secure a majority in his Legislative Council by means of officials and nominees.

We shall propose to invest legislative Councils with power to discuss matters of public and general importance, and to pass recommendations or resolutions to the Indian Government.

We shall ask Parliament to repeal this prohibition.

But after such a policy had produced a mute, sullen, muzzled, lifeless India, we could hardly call it, as we do now the brightest jewel in the Imperial Crown.

You will have to shut up schools and colleges, for what would be the use of suppressing newspapers, if you do not shut the schools and colleges?

Supposing you abolish freedom of the Press or suspend it, that will not end the business.

A tremendous revolution may overtake us, originating in a free Press.

We are trying an experiment never yet tried in the world--maintaining a foreign dominion by means of a native army; and teaching that army, through a free Press, that they ought to expel us, and deliver their country.

For a man holding such a position to make such a statement at that moment, is all the corroboration that we need for persisting in our policy of reform.

Which would be the more flagrant sign of weakness--to go steadily on with your policy of reform in spite of bombs, or to let yourself openly be forced by bombs and murder clubs to drop your policy?