bills of important journals are misleading. I am sure many of you must
know the kind of mirror that distorts features, elongates lines, makes
round what is lineal, and so forth. I assure you that a mirror of that
kind does not give you a more grotesque reproduction of the human
physiognomy, than some of these tremendous telegrams give you as to
what is happening in India. Another point is that the Press is very
often flooded with letters from Indians or ex-Indians--from _Indicus
olim_, and others--too oftened coloured with personal partisanship and
deep-dyed prepossessions. There is a spirit of caste outside the Hindu
sphere. There is a great deal of writing on the Indian Government by
men who have acquired the habit while they were in the Government,
and then unluckily retain the habit after they come home and live, or
ought to live, in peace and quietness among their friends here. That
is another of our difficulties. Still, when all such difficulties
are measured and taken account of, it is impossible to overrate the
courage, the patience and fidelity, with which the present House of
Commons faces what is not at all an easy moment in Indian Government.
You talk of democracy. People cry, "Oh! Democracy cannot govern remote
dependencies." I do not know; it is a hard question. So far, after
one Session of the most Liberal Parliament that has ever sat in Great
Britain, this most democratic Parliament so far at all events, has
safely rounded an extremely difficult angle. It is quite true that in
reference to a certain Indian a Conservative member rashly called out
one night in the House of Commons "Why don't you shoot him?" The whole
House, Tories, Radicals, and Labour men, they all revolted against any
such doctrine as that; and I augur from the proceedings of the last
Session--with courage, patience, good sense, and willingness to learn,
that democracy, in this case at all events, has shown, and I think is
going to show, its capacity for facing all our problems.