I feel that I owe a very sincere apology to the House for the disturbance in the business arrangements of the House, of which I have been the cause, though the innocent cause.  It has been said that in the delays in bringing forward this subject, I have been anxious to burke discussion.  That is not in the least true.  The reasons that made it seem desirable to me that the discussion on this most important and far-reaching range of topics should be postponed, were—­I believe the House will agree with me—­reasons of common sense.  In the first place, discussion without anybody having seen the Papers to be discussed, would evidently have been ineffective.  In the second place it would have been impossible to discuss those Papers with good effect—­the Papers that I am going this afternoon to present to Parliament—­until we know, at all events in some degree, what their reception has been in the country most immediately concerned.  And then thirdly, my 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.