Council, in much the same way as is now prescribed in regard to measures of legislation; and we must further be prepared to discharge this task without the aid of a standing majority behind us.  We will have to resort to the more difficult arts of persuasion and conciliation, in the place of the easier methods of autocracy.  This is no small demand to make on the resources of a service whose training and traditions have hitherto led its members rather to work for the people, than through the people or their representatives.  But I am nevertheless confident that the demand will not be made in vain.  For more than a hundred years, in the time of the Company and under the rule of the Crown, the Indian Civil Service has never failed to respond to whatever call has been made upon it or to adapt itself to the changing environment of the time.  I feel no doubt that officers will be found who possess the natural gifts, the loyalty, the imagination, and the force of character which will be requisite for the conduct of the administration under the more advanced form of government to which we are about to succeed.”

These words I commend to your Lordships.  They breathe a fine and high spirit; they admirably express the feeling of a sincere man; and I do not believe anybody who is acquainted with the Service doubts that this spirit, so admirably expressed, will pervade the Service in the admittedly difficult task that now confronts them.

The Bill is a short one, and will speak for itself.  I shall be brief in referring to it, for in December last I made what was practically a Second-Reading speech.  I may point out that there are two rival schools, and that the noble Lord opposite (Lord Curzon) may be said to represent one of them.  There are two rival schools, one of which believes that better government of India depends on efficiency, and that efficiency is in fact the main end of our rule in India.  The other school, while not neglecting efficiency, looks also to what is called political concession.  I think I am doing the noble Lord no injustice in saying that, during his remarkable Vice-royalty, he did not accept the necessity for political concession, but trusted to efficiency.  I hope it will not be bad taste to say in the noble Lord’s presence, that you will never send to India, and you have never sent to India, a Viceroy his superior, if, indeed, his equal, in force of mind, in unsparing and remorseless industry, in passionate and devoted interest in all that concerns the well-being of India, with an imagination fired by the grandeur of the political problem that India presents—­you never sent a man with more of all these attributes than when you sent Lord Curzon.  But splendidly designed as was his work from the point of view of efficiency, he still left in India a state of things, when we look back upon it, that could not be held a satisfactory crowning of a brilliant and ambitious career.