Now to India.  I observed the other day that the Bishop of Lahore said—­and his words put in a very convenient form what is in the minds of those who think about Indian questions at all—­“It is my deep conviction that we have reached a point of the utmost gravity and of far-reaching effect in our continued relations with this land, and I most heartily wish there were more signs that this fact was clearly recognised by the bulk of Englishmen out here in India, or even by our rulers themselves.”  Now you and the democratic constituencies of this kingdom are the rulers of India.  It is to you, therefore, that I come to render my account.  Just let us see where we are.  Let us put the case.  When critics assail Indian policy or any given aspect of it, I want to know where we start from?  Some of you in Arbroath wrote to me, a year ago, and called upon me to defend the system of Indian Government and the policy for which I am responsible.  I declined, for reasons that I stated at the moment.  I am here to answer to-night, when the time makes it more fitting in anticipation all those difficulties which some excellent people, with whom in many ways I sympathise, feel.  Again, I say, let us see where we start from.  Does anybody want me to go to London to-morrow morning, and to send a telegram to Lord Kitchener, the Commander-in-Chief in India, and tell him that he is to disband the Indian army, to send home as fast as we can despatch transports, the British contingent of the army, and bring away the whole of the Civil servants?  Suppose it to be true, as some people in Arbroath seem to have thought—­I am not arguing the question—­that Great Britain loses more than she gains; supposing it to be true that India would have worked out her own salvation without us; supposing it to be true that the present Government of India has many defects—­supposing all that to be true, do you want me to send a telegram to Lord Kitchener to-morrow morning to clear out bag and baggage?  How should we look in the face of the civilised world if we had so turned our back upon our duty and sovereign task?  How should we bear the smarting stings of our own consciences, when, as assuredly we should, we heard through the dark distances the roar and scream of confusion and carnage in India?  Then people of this way of thinking say “That is not what we meant.”  Then what is it that is meant, gentlemen?  The outcome, the final outcome, of British rule in India may be a profitable topic for the musings of meditative minds.  But we are not here to muse.  We have the duty of the day to perform, we have the tasks of to-morrow spread out before us.  In the interests of India, to say nothing of our own national honour, in the name of duty and of common sense, our first and commanding task is to keep order and to quell violences among race and creed; sternly to insist on the impartial application of rules of justice, independent of European or of Indian.  We begin from that.  We have got somehow or other, whatever the details of policy and executive act may be, we are bound by the first law of human things to maintain order.