John Morley

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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…

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

But our duty, and it is a splendid duty, is to try.

Nothing strikes me much more than this, when I talk of the better mind of India--there are subtle elements, religious, spiritual, mystical, traditional, historical in what we may call for the moment the Indian mind, which are very hard for…

My warning may be wasted, but anybody who has a chance ought to try to appeal to the better, the riper, mind of educated India.

Then why should we be surprised that young Indians feel the same movement of mind, when they are made free of our own immortals.

Who can be surprised that educated Indians who read those high masters and teachers of ours, are intoxicated with the ideas of freedom, nationality, self-government, that breathes the breath of life in those inspiring and illuminating…

Surely it is a mistake in us not to realise that these masters should have mighty force and irresistible influence.

Much of this movement arises from the fact that there is now a large body of educated Indians who have been fed, at our example and our instigation, upon some of the great teachers and masters of this country, Milton, Burke, Macaulay…

It is the vagueness of the discontent, which is not universal--it is the vagueness that makes it harder to understand, harder to deal with.

Is India with all its heterogeneous populations--is it moving slowly and steadily to new and undreamt of unity?

Is it natural effervescence, or is it deadly fermentation?

Is it the result of natural order and wholesome growth in this vast community?

Is all that is called unrest in India mere froth?

It is the height of folly to refuse to rally sensible people, because we do not satisfy Extremists.

Let us, if we can, rally the Moderates, and if we are told that the policy will not satisfy the Extremists, so be it.

Yet we still hold that it would be the height of political folly for us at this moment to refuse to do all we can, with prudence and energy, to rally the Moderates to the cause of the Government, simply because the policy will not satisfy…

Anybody who has read history knows that the Extremist often beats the Moderate by his fire, his heated energy, his concentration, by his very narrowness.

Extremists are few, but they are active; their field is wide, their nets are far spread.