appreciate the benefits of our rule, they are bound to us by self-interest, but they do not like us.”  It is intelligible, but that is a result to be carefully guarded against by demeanour, by temper, by action—­to be guarded against at every turn.  Every one would agree that anything like a decisive and permanent estrangement between the Indians and the Europeans would end in dire failure and an overwhelming catastrophe.  I am coming to other ground.  The history of the last six months has been important, anxious, and trying.  Eight months ago there certainly was severe tension.  That tension has now relaxed, and the great responsible officials on the spot assure me that the position of the hour and the prospects are reassuring.  We have kept the word which was given by the Sovereign on November 1 last year in the message to the people of India commemorating the 50th anniversary of the assumption of the powers of government in India by the Crown, the transfer of the power from the old Company to the Crown.  We have kept our word.  We have introduced and carried through Parliament a measure, as everybody will admit, of the highest order of importance.  It was carried through both Houses with excellent deliberation.  I have been in Parliament a great many years.  I have never known a project discussed and conducted with such knowledge, and such a desire to avoid small, petty personal incidents.  The whole proceeding was worthy of the reputation of Parliament.

You are entering upon your duties at a stage of intense interest.  Sir Charles Elliott, who was Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, wrote the other day, that this is “the most momentous change ever effected by Parliament in the constitution of the Government of India since 1858.”  He goes on to say that no prudent man would prophesy.  No, and I do not prophesy.  How could I?  It depends upon two things.  It depends, first of all, upon the Civil Service.  It depends on the Civil Service, and it depends on the power of Indians with the sense and instincts of government, to control wilder spirits without the sense or the instincts of government.  As for the Civil Service, which is the other branch on which all depends, it is impossible not to be struck with the warmest admiration of the loyal and manful tone in which leading members of the Civil Service have expressed their resolution to face the new tasks that this legislation will impose upon them.  I have not got it with me now, but certain language was used by Sir Norman Baker, who is now the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal.  I think I quoted it in the House of Lords, and, if I could read it to you, it would be far better than any speech of mine in support of the toast I am going to propose to you.  There never was a more manful and admirable expression of the devotion of the service, than the promise of their cordial, whole-hearted, and laborious support of the policy which they have now got to carry through.  I am certain there is not one of you who will fall short, and I am speaking in the presence of those who are not probationers, but persons proved.  There is not one of you who, when the time comes, will not respond to the call, in the same spirit in which Sir Norman Baker responded.