Lord Courtney of Penwith speaks to the House of Lords on the Government of India Bill of 1909, 24 February 1909

I DEPRECATE the division of the politicians of India into the three classes mentioned yesterday. I deprecate the habit of thinking of them in that fashion. I trust that the general effect of what my noble friend the Secretary of State has done will be a great reduction in the number of irreconcilables, though some, of course, will continue to exist-they exist everywhere-and the development of constitutional methods of procedure. I deprecate entirely pronouncements as to what may or may not be the outcome of all these changes in the distant future. It has taken a long time to come about, but my noble friend said last night and said truly, that what he is proposing to-day is the development of what Mr. James Mill wrote in 1833, and of what the Queen said in her proclamation to the people of India in 1858. It is a mere form of evolution of the principle that fitness is the sole qualification for office, and that no discrimination should be made, as far as possible, in respect of race and creed. What is proposed now is the development of what was said then. Yet it is probably true that Mr. Mill did not conceive then what is being proposed now, nor can we now say what will be the development fifty years hence of the beginnings we are making to-day.

I see no reason whatever for laying down the maxim that Colonial self-government can never, under any circumstances, come to pass in India. When we consider what has been done in the last thirty years in Japan and observe the movement in China, is it not rash to declare what may be the ultimate form of government fifty years hence in India? We have had government for the people in India. It is impossible to carry that on without proceeding to government through the people of India. By and by you will come more and more to government by the people. If it is done cautiously, as I have no doubt it will be done, there is no necessity to trouble much about the ultimate goal. There must be great changes, there will be great changes, and the mass of the people of India will be associated more and more with every branch of the administration and government of India from the highest to the lowest. I am content to watch and wait, and, if the act done to-day is good, to support it thoroughly, leaving to the future the working out of one of the greatest problems that ever befell statesmen or nation-the problem of gradually moderating the government of a whole subject people by an imported handful of persons of another race, another creed, and another training. It is wonderful, under such conditions, that the problem has been so successfully met as it had been up to this time. Not a few of the people of India think that the creed of the governing race is an impiety, that their lives are bestial, and their touch an abomination. We have to work all that down, and we shall only do it by great toleration of their ideals and by not attempting to circumscribe to-day what may come to pass hereafter.

From: A. Berriedale Keith, ed. Speeches and Documents on Indian Policy, 1750-1921. Vol. II. London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1922, 98-100.