of India than any other Secretary of State.  In one passage in his well-known volume on Burke, he has spoken of his “vigorous grasp of masses of compressed detail, his wide illumination from great principles of human experience, the strong and masculine feeling for the two great political ends of Justice and Freedom, his large and generous interpretation of expediency, the morality, the vision, the noble temper.”  Writing of Burke’s three speeches on the American War, Lord Morley declares: 

“It is no exaggeration to say that they compose the most perfect manual in our literature, or in any literature, for one who approaches the study of public affairs, whether for knowledge or for practice.  They are an example without fault of all the qualities which the critic, whether a theorist or an actor, of great political situations should strive by night and day to possess.”

For political education, one could hardly go further than that.  “The most perfect manual in any literature”—­let us remember that decisive praise.  Or if it be said that students require style rather than politics, let us recall what Lord Morley has written of Burke’s style: 

  “A magnificence and elevation of expression place him
  among the highest masters of literature, in one of its highest
  and most commanding senses.”

But it is frequently asserted that what Indian students require is, not political knowledge, or literary power, but a strengthening of character, an austerity both of language and life, such as might counteract the natural softness, effeminacy, and the tendency to deception which Macaulay and Lord Curzon so freely informed them of.  For such strengthening and austerity, on Lord Morley’s showing, no teacher could be more serviceable than Burke: 

“The reader is speedily conscious,” he writes, “of the precedence in Burke of the facts of morality and conduct, of the many interwoven affinities of human affection and historical relation, over the unreal necessities of mere abstract logic....  Besides thus diffusing a strong light over the awful tides of human circumstance, Burke has the sacred gift of inspiring men to use a grave diligence in caring for high things, and in making their lives at once rich and austere.”

Here are the considered judgments of a man who, by political experience, by literary power, and the study of conduct, has made himself an unquestioned judge in the affairs of State, in letters, and in morality.  As examples of the justice of his eulogy let me quote a few sentences from those very speeches which Lord Morley thus extols—­the speeches on the American War of Independence.  Speaking on Conciliation with the Colonies in 1775, Burke said: 

“Permit me to observe that the use of force alone is but temporary.  It may subdue for a moment, but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again; and a nation is not governed which is perpetually to be conquered....  Terror is not always the effect of force, and an armament is not a victory.”

Speaking of the resistance of a subject race to the predominant power, Burke ironically suggested: