But just because executive self-government is inconceivable in India so long as British rule is maintained, we must recognize the special responsibility that consequently devolves upon us not only to do many things for India which we do not attempt to do for our self-governing Dominions, but, above all, not to force upon India things which we should not dream of forcing upon them, and especially in matters in which British material interests may appear to be closely concerned.  We must continue to govern India as the greatest of the dependencies of the British Crown, but we must do our utmost to satisfy Indians of all classes and castes and beliefs that we govern them as none of their race could govern them, with an equal and absolutely impartial regard for all law-abiding communities, with an intelligent appreciation of their peculiar interests, and with genuine consideration for all their ideas, so long as those ideas are compatible with the maintenance and security of British rule.

* * * * *

The retirement of Lord Morley has been announced just as these last pages are going to press.  The announcement has been received with genuine and widespread regret at home, where criticism of certain details and aspects of his administration has never detracted from a genuine recognition of the lofty sense of duty and broad and courageous statesmanship which he has displayed throughout a very critical period in the history of our Indian Empire.  It will assuredly be received with the same feeling in India by all those who have at heart the destinies of the British Raj and the interests of the countless peoples committed to our charge.  Lord Morley’s tenure of office will remain for all times memorable in Anglo-Indian annals.  He has set for the Indian ship of State a new course upon which she will be kept with increasing confidence in the future if we keep steadily before us the wise words which, with his own singular felicity of speech, he addressed two years ago to the Indian Civil Service:—­“We have a clouded moment before us now.  We shall get through it—­but only with self-command and without any quackery or cant, whether it be the quackery of blind violence disguised as love of order, or the cant of unsound and misapplied sentiment, divorced from knowledge and untouched by any cool consideration of facts.”

NOTES

NOTE 1.

THE NATIVE PRESS.

Not a single Indian member of the Imperial Council made any serious attempt to controvert the following description given by Sir Herbert Risley of the demoralization of the native Press when he introduced the new Press Bill on February 4, 1910:—­We see the most influential and widely-read portion of the Indian Press incessantly occupied in rendering the Government by law established odious in the sight of the Indian people.  The Government is foreign, and therefore selfish and tyrannical.  It drains the country