but to do what is needful, and do it at once,--do a lot of things, and
regularize your successes by later legislation. Now is the time, while
the Empire is white-hot. Our first need is not lawyers, but men who,
feeling friendly, know how to behave as friends do. They will not be
impeached if they go beyond the letter of the law. One act of faith is
worth a hundred arguments. This is a family affair; the habits of an
affectionate and united family are the only good model.

As for the Crown Colonies and India, the Dominions must share our
burden. It is objected, both here and in India, that life in the
Dominions is a very inadequate education for the sympathetic handling of
alien races and customs. So is life in many parts of this island. The
fact is that the process of learning to govern these alien peoples is
the best education in the world. The Indian Civil Service is a great
College, and it governs India. I can speak to this point, for I have
lived there and seen it at work. If India were really governed by the
ideas of the young novices who go out there fresh from their
examinations, she would be a distressful country. But the novice is
taken in hand at once by the older members of the service; he works
under the eye of the Collector and the Assistant Collector; they
shoulder him and instruct him as tame elephants shoulder and instruct
the wild; they are kind to him, and he lives in their company while his
prejudices and follies peel off him; so that within a few years he
becomes a tolerant, wise, and devoted civil servant, who speaks the
language of the College and is proud to belong to it. The success of the
Government of India is not to be credited to the classes from which the
Civil Service is recruited, but to the discipline of the Service itself,
a Service so high in tradition and so free from corruption that
advancement in it is to be gained only by intelligence and sympathy.
What I am saying is that I can imagine no finer raw material for the