So much, the better for you.  If I were still a member of the House of Commons, I should not mind for a moment going down to the House—­and I am sure that my colleagues will not mind—­to say that when you find these articles on the avowal of those concerned, expressly designed to promote murderous action, and when you find as a fact that murderous action has come about, it is moonshine to talk of the freedom of the Press.  There is no use in indulging in heroics.  They are not wanted.  But an incendiary article is part and parcel of the murderous act.  You may put picric acid in the ink and pen, just as much as in any steel bomb.  I have one or two extracts here with which I will not trouble you.  But when I am told that we should recognise it as one of the chief aims of good Government that there may be as much public discussion as possible, I read that sentence with proper edification; and then I turn to what I had telegraphed for from India—­extracts from Yugantar.  To talk of public discussion in connection with mischief of that kind is really pushing things intolerably far.

I will not be in a hurry to believe that there is not a great body in India of reasonable people, not only among the quiet, humble, law-abiding classes, but among the educated classes.  I do not care what they call themselves, or what organisation they may form themselves into.  But I will not be in a hurry to believe that there are no such people and that we can never depend on them.  When we believe this—­that we have no body of organised, reasonable people on our side in India—­when you gentlemen who know the country, say this—­then I say that, on the day when we believe that, we shall be confronted with as awkward, as embarrassing, and as hazardous a situation as has ever confronted the rulers of any of the most complex and gigantic States in human history.  I am confident that if the crisis comes, it will find us ready, but let us keep our minds clear in advance.  There have been many dark and ugly moments—­see gentlemen around me who have gone through dark and ugly dates—­in our relations with India before now.  We have a clouded moment before us now.  We shall get through it—­but only with self-command and without any quackery or cant whether it be the quackery of blind violence disguised as love of order, or the cant of unsound and misapplied sentiment, divorced from knowledge and untouched by any cool consideration of the facts.

V

ON PROPOSED REFORMS

(House of Lords.  December 17, 1908)