of the principles of Government, the habits of mind, and the vigour of character, which are essential for the task, and that the rule of India being a British rule and any other rule in the circumstances of the case being impossible, the tone and standard should be set by those who have created and are responsible for it. The second principle is that outside this Corps d'elite the Government shall, as far as possible, and as the improving standards of education and morals permit, employ the inhabitants of the country, both because its general policy is to restrict rather than to extend European agency and because it is desirable to enlist the best native intelligence and character in the service of the State. principle is qualified only by the fact that, in certain departments, where scientific or technical knowledge is required or where there is a call for the exercise of particular responsibility or for the possession of a high standard of physical endurance, it is necessary to maintain a strong admixture and sometimes even a great preponderance of the European element.

The Government of India thus lay down :

This

(1) That race, so far from being no disqualification, shall constitute in the case of all but a very few a conclusive disqualification for the higher offices of the State; (2) that this disqualification shall last as long as the British rule endures; (3) that in regard to other offices held at present by Europeans, they are so held because Indians qualified by education and morals are not either available, or where they are available, they are unfit for the exercise of particular responsibility.'

Now, my Lord, the equal treatment promised in regard to public employment by the Parliamentary Statute and the Queen's Proclamation may be nothing better than a legal fiction in practice, but it is a fiction which we have cherished as embodying an ideal for the future and representing the higher purpose of British rule in this land, and we cannot afford to see it so explicitly repudiated by the Government. Nothing to my mind is calculated to affect more disastrously the attitude of educated Indiansand their number is bound steadily to grow-towards British rule than a belief that under the rule their exclusion from the highest offices of the State is intended to be perpetual. As regards the question of education and morals being involved in our exclusion from most of the offices in the special departments, is it really intended to be conveyed that among the thousands and thousands of educated Indians who are ready to seek

employment under the State, even a few cannot be found possessing the necessary education and moral character or qualified to exercise the required degreeof responsibility? I am sure the question has only to be presented in this form to make the injustice of it clear to everybody. Why, my Lord, it is a matter of common knowledge that, in the case of the smaller appointments at all events, it is not the Indian but the European or Eurasian competitor, whose education and morals it would really be desirable sometimes carefully to investigate. However, I do not wish to pursue this argument any further on this occasion. My object to-day is to point out how inaccurate and misleading is the conclusion which the Government of India Resolution has recorded on this subject and which I have already quoted above, The Resolution claims (1) that the pledges given have on the whole been honestly and faithfully carried out, and (2) that there has been a progressive increase in the Indian element and a progressive decline in the European element in the service of the State. Before proceeding to show how unsupported by facts this twofold claim is, I must, in the first place, point out that in the statistical tables which accompany the Resolution the real issue has been obscured by the inclusion therein of posts as low as Rs. 75 a month. When we complain of our exclusion from high office, we do not refer to the lower grades of the Public Service-grades which carry salaries as low as Rs. 75 or 100 or even 200 rupees a month-though in some of the special departments, we are virtually shut out even from such petty appointments. When we make the complaint about exclusion, we refer to offices of trust and responsibility-say above Rs. 500 a month. I have compiled tables for the years 1897 and 1903 from the statistics published by the Government of India to show how we stand in regard to these appointments, and it will be seen from that the twofold claim of the Government of India already referred to is wholly untenable. I do not propose to read out these tables. They will appear as an appendix* to my speech in the report of these proceedings. It will

* Vide Appendix C.

be seen from them that they effectively dispose of the contention that we have so far been treated with unexampled liberality. They also show that most of the new posts, created between 1897 and 1903, have gone to either Europeans or Eurasians, which element certainly shows. no signs of declining, the Indian element even losing ground in some of the departments.

My Lord, this question of appointment to high office is to us something more than a mere question of careers. When all positions of power and of official trust and responsibility are the virtual monopoly of a class, those who are outside that class are constantly weighed down with a sense of their own inferior position, and the tallest of them have no option but to bend in order that the exigencies of the situation may be satisfied. Such a state of things, as a temporary arrangement, may be accepted as inevitable. As a permanent arrangement, it is impossible. This question thus is to us a question of national prestige and self-respect, and we feel that our future growth is bound up with a proper solution of it. My Lord, Your Lordship said on one occasion that to your mind efficiency of administration was synonymous with the contentment of the people. There is no question, of course, of the supreme importance of a high degree of efficiency in a country's Government. There is also no doubt that in this respect the present Administration has been the most strenuous and the most successful of any that the country has had for many years. But may I venture respectfully to point out that Your Lordship's proposition leaves out of account the special circumstances of India, that efficiency, though an object of paramount importance with us as elsewhere, is not the sole purpose of British rule in this land, and that for the contentment of the people to be real and enduring, something more is indispensable than mere efficiency, however high it may be? A succession of great statesmen, who in their day represented the highest thought and feeling of England, have declared that, in their opinion, England's greatest work in India is to associate the people of this country, slowly it may be, but steadily, with the work of their own

Government. To the extent to which this work is accomplished, will England's claim to our gratitude and attachment be real. If, on the other hand, this purpose is ever lost sight of or repudiated, much good work, which has been already done, will be destroyed, and a position created, which must fill all true well-wishers of both England and India with a feeling of deep anxiety.

BUDGET SPEECH, 1906.

[At a meeting of the Imperial Legislative Council, held on Wednesday the 28th March 1906, His Excellency Lord Minto presiding, the Hon'ble Mr. G. K. Gokhale made the following speech on the Financial Statement for 1906-07 presented by the Hon'ble Mr. E. N. Baker :—]

My Lord, for the second time, the Hon'ble Mr. Baker has laid before the Council a budget, which judged by the limits within which he was free to move, is an interesting and satisfactory statement, and which for lucidity of exposition will take high rank among the Financial Statements of the Government of India. I am particularly pleased to read what the Hon'ble Member writes about the effect of the recent reductions of salt duty on the consumption of that article. Time was, not so long ago, when it was the fashion, both in this Council and outside, to regard the burden imposed on the masses by a high salt duty as after all only a light one, and to deny that its rate could seriously affect consumption. If ever the Government of India finds itself driven to enhance the duty again, I hope the Finance Member of the future will remember the eloquent testimony of my Hon'ble friend on the results of recent reductions, and no one will again venture to contest the proposition that, in dealing with a prime necessary of life such as salt, the only right policy is to raise an expanding revenue on an expanding consumption under a diminishing scale of taxation. Even at present, the level of the duty-about 1,600 per cent. of the cost price-is much too high, and I earnestly trust that the Hon'ble Member will have, as I have no doubt he will be glad to have, another opportunity during his tenure of office as Finance Minister to effect a further reduction, thereby making the duty throughout India at least uniform with what it is in Burma, namely, Re. 1 a maund. The consumption in India, which was under 10 lbs. per head before these reductions, has now risen to about 11 lbs., but