Then there is the question, What are you going to do about the Hindu and the Mahomedan?  When Indians were first admitted to the High Courts, for a long time the Hindus were more fit and competent than the Mahomedans; but now I am told the Mahomedans have their full share.  The same sort of operation would go on in quinquennial periods in respect of the Viceroy’s Council.  Opinion amongst the great Anglo-Indian officers now at home is divided, but I know at least one, not at all behind Lord MacDonnell in experience or mental grasp, who is strongly in favour of this proposal.  One circumstance that cannot but strike your Lordships as remarkable, is the comparative absence of hostile criticism of this idea by the Anglo-Indian Press, and, as I am told, in Calcutta society.  I was apprehensive at one time that it might be otherwise.  I should like to give a concrete illustration of my case.  The noble Marquess opposite said the other day that there was going to be a vacancy in one of the posts on the Viceroy’s Executive Council—­that is, the legal member’s time would soon be up.  Now, suppose there were in Calcutta an Indian lawyer of large practice and great experience in his profession—­a man of unstained professional and personal repute, in close touch with European society, and much respected, and the actual holder of important legal office.  Am I to say to this man—­“In spite of all these excellent circumstances to your credit; in spite of your undisputed fitness; in spite of the emphatic declaration of 1833 that fitness is to be the criterion of eligibility; in spite of the noble promise in Queen Victoria’s Proclamation of 1858—­a promise of which every Englishman ought to be for ever proud if he tries to adhere to it, and ashamed if he tries to betray or to mock it—­in spite of all this, usage and prejudice are so strong, that I dare not appoint you, but must instead fish up a stranger to India from Lincoln’s Inn or the Temple?” Is there one of your Lordships who would envy the Secretary of State, who had to hold language of that kind to a meritorious candidate, one of the King’s equal subjects?  I press it on your Lordships in that concrete way.  Abstract general arguments are slippery.  I do not say there is no force in them, but there are deeper questions at issue to which both I and the Governor-General attach the greatest importance.  My Lords, I thank you for your attention, and I beg to move the Second Reading.

VIII

INDIAN PROBATIONERS

(OXFORD.  JUNE 13, 1909)

[The Vice Chancellor of Oxford University and the teachers of the Indian Civil Service probationers gave a dinner to the probationers on Saturday at the New Masonic Hall, Oxford, to meet the Secretary of State for India.  The Vice Chancellor was in the chair]