span in your long annals, yet this half century that ends to-day will stand amid the floods of your historic ages, a far-shining landmark.  The proclamation of the direct supremacy of the Crown sealed the unity of Indian Government and opened a new era.  The journey was arduous, and the advance may have sometimes seemed slow; but the incorporation of many strangely diversified communities, and of some three hundred millions of the human race, under British guidance and control has proceeded steadfastly and without pause.  We survey our labours of the past half century with clear gaze and good conscience.

Difficulties such as attend all human rule in every age and place, have risen up from day to day.  They have been faced by the servants of the British Crown with toil and courage and patience, with deep counsel and a resolution that has never faltered nor shaken.  If errors have occurred, the agents of my government have spared no pains and no self-sacrifice to correct them; if abuses have been proved, vigorous hands have laboured to apply a remedy.

No secret of empire can avert the scourge of drought and plague, but experienced administrators have done all that skill and devotion are capable of doing, to mitigate those dire calamities of Nature.  For a longer period than was ever known in your land before, you have escaped the dire calamities of War within your borders.  Internal peace has been unbroken.

In the great charter of 1858 Queen Victoria gave you noble assurance of her earnest desire to stimulate the peaceful industry of India, to promote works of public utility and improvement, and to administer the government for the benefit of all resident therein.  The schemes that have been diligently framed and executed for promoting your material convenience and advance—­schemes unsurpassed in their magnitude and their boldness—­bear witness before the world to the zeal with which that benignant promise has been fulfilled.

The rights and privileges of the Feudatory Princes and Ruling Chiefs have been respected, preserved, and guarded; and the loyalty of their allegiance has been unswerving.  No man among my subjects has been favoured, molested, or disquieted, by reason of his religious belief or worship.  All men have enjoyed protection of the law.  The law itself has been administered without disrespect to creed or caste, or to usages and ideas rooted in your civilisation.  It has been simplified in form, and its machinery adjusted to the requirements of ancient communities slowly entering a new world.

The charge confided to my Government concerns the destinies of countless multitudes of men now and for ages to come; and it is a paramount duty to repress with a stern arm guilty conspiracies that have no just cause and no serious aim.  These conspiracies I know to be abhorrent to the loyal and faithful character of the vast hosts of my Indian subjects, and I will not suffer them to turn me aside from my task of building up the fabric of security and order.