I have endeavoured to meet you as fairly as I possibly could.  I assure you again we are acting in earnest, with zeal and entire good faith; and any suggestion that any member of the Government, either in this office or the Government of India, has any prejudice whatever against Mahomedans, for the purposes of political administration in India, is one of the idlest and most wicked misapprehensions that could possibly enter into the political mind.  I am greatly encouraged by having met you.  I am sure that you speak in the name of important bodies of your own countrymen and of your own community.  I am sure that you are going to look at our proposals in a fair and reasonable spirit, and give us credit for a desire to do the best that we possibly can in the interests of all the communities in India, including also the interests of the British Government.  I can only tell you further, that if this action of ours fails, miscarries, and is wrecked, it will be a considerable time before another opportunity occurs.  You will never again—­I do not care whether the time be long or be short—­you will never again have the combination of a Secretary of State and a Viceroy, who are more thoroughly in earnest in their desire to improve Indian government, and to do full justice to every element of the Indian population.

VII

SECOND READING OF INDIAN COUNCILS BILL

(HOUSE OF LORDS, FEBRUARY 23, 1909)

MY LORDS.  I invite the House to take to-day the first definite and operative step in carrying out the policy that I had the honour of describing to your Lordships just before Christmas, and that has occupied the active consideration both of the Home Government and of the Government of India for very nearly three years.  The statement was awaited in India with an expectancy that with time became impatience, and it was received in India—­and that, after all, is the point to which I looked with the most anxiety—­with intense interest and attention and various degrees of approval, from warm enthusiasm to cool assent and acquiescence.

A few days after the arrival of my despatch, a deputation waited upon the Viceroy unique in its comprehensive character.  Both Hindus and Mahomedans were represented; and they waited upon the Viceroy to offer warm expressions of gratitude for the scheme that was unfolded before them.  A few days later at Madras the Congress met; they, too, expressed their thanks to the Home Government and to the Government of India.  The Moslem League met at Amritsar; they were warm in their approval of the policy which they took to be foreshadowed in the despatch, though they found fault with the defects they thought they had discovered in the scheme, and implored the Government, both in India and here, to remedy those defects.  So far as I know—­and I do beg your Lordships to note these details of the reception of our policy in India—­there has been no sign in any quarter, save in the irreconcilable camp, of anything like organised hostile opinion among either Indians or Anglo-Indians.