Lords, I cannot but apprehend that discussion here--I mean in
Parliament--would be calculated to prejudice the reception in India
of the proposals that His Majesty's Government, in concert with the
Government of India, are now making. My Lords, I submit those are
three very essential reasons why discussion in my view, and I hope
in the view of this House, was to be deprecated. This afternoon your
Lordships will be presented with a very modest Blue-book of 100 or 150
pages, but I should like to promise noble Lords that to-morrow morning
there will be ready for them a series of Papers on the same subject,
of a size so enormous that the most voracious or even carnivorous
appetite for Blue-books will have ample food for augmenting the joys
of the Christmas holidays.

The observations that I shall ask your Lordships to allow me to make,
are the opening of a very important chapter in the history of the
relations of Great Britain and India; and I shall ask the indulgence
of the House if I take a little time, not so much in dissecting the
contents of the Papers, which the House will be able to do for itself
by and by, as in indicating the general spirit that animates His
Majesty's Government here, and my noble friend the Governor-General,
in making the proposals that I shall in a moment describe. I suppose,
like other Secretaries of State for India, I found my first, idea
was to have what they used to have in the old days--a Parliamentary
Committee to inquire into Indian Government. I see that a predecessor
of mine in the India Office, Lord Randolph Churchill--he was there for
too short a time--in 1885 had very strongly conceived that idea. On
the whole I think there is a great deal at the present day to be said
against it.

Therefore what we have done was in concert with the Government of