The Indian Civil Service I will speak of very shortly.  I will pass them by for the moment.  Lord Lansdowne said truly the other night that when I spoke at the end of December, I used the words “formidable and obscure” as describing the situation, and he desired to know whether I thought the situation was still obscure and formidable.  I will not abandon the words, but I think the situation is less formidable and less obscure.  Neither repression on the one hand, nor reform on the other, could possibly be expected to cut the roots of anarchical crime in a few weeks.  But with unfaltering repression on the one hand, and vigour and good faith in reform on the other, we see solid reason to hope that we shall weaken, even if we cannot destroy, those baleful forces.

There are, I take it, three classes of people that we have to consider in dealing with a scheme of this kind.  There are the extremists, who nurse fantastic dreams that some day they will drive us out of India.  In this group there are academic extremists and physical force extremists, and I have seen it stated on a certain authority—­it cannot be more than a guess—­that they do not number, whether academic or physical force extremists, more than one-tenth, or even three per cent. of what are called the educated class in India.  The second group nourish no hopes of this sort; they hope for autonomy or self-government of the colonial species and pattern.  The third section in this classification ask for no more than to be admitted to co-operation in our administration, and to find a free and effective voice in expressing the interests and needs of their people.  I believe the effect of the reforms has been, is being, and will be, to draw the second class, who hope for colonial autonomy, into the ranks of the third class, who will be content with admission to a fair and workable co-operation.  A correspondent wrote to me the other day and said:—­

    “We seem to have caught many discontented people on the rebound,
    and to have given them an excuse for a loyalty which they have
    badly wanted.”

In spite of all this, it is a difficult and critical situation.  Still, by almost universal admission it has lost the tension that strained India two or three months ago, and public feeling is tranquillised, certainly beyond any expectation that either I or the Viceroy ventured to entertain.

The atmosphere has changed from dark and sullen to hopeful, and I am sure your Lordships will allow me to be equally confident that nothing will be done at Westminster to overcloud that promising sky.  The noble Marquess the other day said—­and I was delighted to hear it—­that he, at all events, would give us, with all the reservations that examination of the scheme might demand from him, a whole-hearted support here, and his best encouragement to the men in India.  I accept that, and I lean upon it, because if anything were done at Westminster, either by delay or otherwise, to show a breach in what