control over their Governments. I may mention that the French Colonies send deputies to the French Chamber. These, ladies and gentlemen, are our immediate demands. Of course, these measures will have to be supplemented by a large amount of decentralization of authority in India, providing checks on the actions of the bureaucracy on the spot. But for this our agitation must be in India and not in England. I trust you are satisfied that we are aiming at nothing revolutionary and that what we are immediately asking for is only a small instalment in the direction of self-government. The time is more than ripe for such an instalment being conceded, and I trust our appeal to the Liberal Party of England for its sympathy and support in the matter will not have been addressed to it in vain.

INDIAN AFFAIRS

[On Tuesday, the 15th November 1905, the New Reform Club entertained Mr. Gokhale to a complimentary dinner at the Trocadero Restaurant, London. Sir Henry Cotton presided and proposed the toast of the evening, the health of "Our distinguished guest." The Hon. Mr. Gokhale made the following speech on the occasion:-]

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Sir Henry Cotton, ladies and gentlemen-It is difficult for me to find words to express in an adequate manner my sense of the great honour which the New Reform Club has done me this evening. I am sure my countrymen in India will be profoundly gratified to read the terms in which the invitation of this Club has been couched. The invitation states that this banquet is intended to be a mark of the Club's sense of the high Imperial responsibility of the people of the United Kingdom for the welfare of their Indian fellow-subjects. It was precisely to rouse the British people to a sense of this responsibility that I was charged by my countrymen to undertake this mission, and I have no doubt they will feel greatly encouraged when they see an important politica! body like the New Reform Club expressing in so signal a manner their sympathy with our aims and our work. You Sir, and those Englishmen who think with you, very often speak of the awakening of India. To my mind this banquet is a sign, a most gratifying and unmistakable sign, of another awakening-the awakening of England to the claims of India. I think it is time such an awakening took place. It was in 1833 that your Parliament announced to the people of India that the Government of the country would be so conducted that there would be no governing caste in that country, and that the rule would be one of equality for the two races in that land. Threefourths of a century have since elapsed, and still you not only find a governing caste in that land, but that caste is as

vigorous, as dominant, as exclusive as ever. It was, perhaps, inevitable that in the earlier years of your rule, when an administrative machinery of the Western type had to be introduced into India, that all power should be placed in the hands of English officials, who alone then understood Western standards of government. But now that the schools and colleges and universities have been doing their work for half a century and more, and a large class of educated men have grown up-men qualified to take a part in the government of the country, and desirous of taking such a part-there is no excuse whatever for maintaining the monopoly. For the last twenty years the Indian people have been agitating for a greater voice in the affairs of their country, through the Indian National Congress. The bureaucracy, however, pays little attention to what we say in India, and so my countrymen thought it desirable. that an appeal should now be addressed direct to the electors of this country. The natural evils inseparable from a foreign bureaucracy monopolising all power have, during the last ten years, been intensified by the reactionary policy of the Indian Government, and this reaction and repression has been the darkest during the last three years. You, Sir, have said, and I am glad you have said it, that my personal feeling towards Lord Curzon, on whom the chief responsibility for the repression of the last three years mainly rests, is one of respect. That is so. I have been in his Council now for four years. And nobody could come in contact with him without being profoundly impressed by his great ability, his indefatigable energy, high sense of duty, and his devotion to the interests of England as he understands them, Lord Curzon is a brilliant and gifted man, and he has striven hard as he could to promote, according to his lights, the interest of England in India. He has done several things for which he is entitled to great credit, but his main aim has been to strengthen the position of the Englishman in India, and weaken correspondingly the position of the Indian, so as to make it more and more difficult for the latter to urge his claim to that equality which has been promised him by the Parliament and the Sovereign, and which it is his legitimate ambition to attain. You will find-and I am anxious

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to be fair to Lord Curzon-that while he has done a great deal of good work in certain directions-giving larger grants to irrigation, to agricultural education, and to primary education, putting down assaults by Europeans on Indians, rousing local governments to greater energy, and so on-where he had to deal with the educated classes of the country and their legitimate position and aspirations, he has been reactionary, and even repressive. And it is this reaction and this repression that has driven my countrymen to a position bordering on despair. Let me explain my meaning to you in a few words. There are four fields in which the educated classes, that is to say, those who have received a Western education-for we have our own Eastern learning, and men who receive that education are among the most learned in certain fields; but I am speaking now of Western education, because that education inspires one with an appreciation of free institutions there are four fields in which the educated classes have been steadily making their influence felt, and in all those four fields the reactionary policy of recent years has In the first place, a little sought to put them back. local self-government was given us by Lord Ripon, and these educated classes naturally exercise much influence in that limited field. Secondly, they are able to exercise some influence in the spread of higher education. Thirdly, they have a powerful Press, which, in spite of defects inseparable from a state of transition, is steadily gaining in weight and importance, and its influence means the influence of educated Indians. Lastly, a few fairly high offices in the public service are held by Indians-almost everything worth having is monopolised by Englishmenbut a very few offices of some importance are allowed to be held by Indians, and appointments to these offices werehitherto made by means of an open competitive examination, with the result that men of ability who are usually also men of independence, had an opportunity of entering the public service. Now in all these fields, Lord Curzon has put the clock back. Moreover, it is not only his measures, but also the manner in which he has forced them on the country about which my countrymen feel most bitter. I think this has been the result of the limitations imposed upon him

by his temperament and his training. In Mr. Morely's" Life of Gladstone" one striking expression repeatedly occursit is what Mr. Gladstone calls "the profound principle of liberty." Mr. Gladstone says again and again that though Oxford had taught him many things, Oxford did not teach him an appreciation of the profound principle of liberty as a factor of human progress. Well, it seems other Oxford men, too, have not learnt how to appreciate that principle. Lord Curzon is no believer in free institutions, or in national aspirations. I believe if he were allowed a free hand he would hand the people of this country back to the rule of the aristocracy that governed here before 1832. Well, Lord Curzon sees that the educated classes of India are pressing forward more and more to be associated with the government of their own country, and he thinks it is not to the interest of England, as he understands that interest, that this should be so. He therefore has tried to put back these men in every one of the four fields of which I have spoken. He has tried to fetter the Press by his Official Secrets Act. In regard to higher education, he has transferred the control of it to the hands of the officials and of such Indians as will always agree with the officials. Then, as regards the few fairly high offices open to us in our own country, he has abolished competition, and made everything dependent upon the pleasure of the officials, thereby enormously increasing official patronage, and making it more difficult for able and independent Indians to enter the public service of their own country. Lastly, he has tried to take away, especially in Bengal, a portion of that self-government which had been given to the people a quarter of a century ago. As if all this retrogression were not sufficient, he ventured last year, in open Council, to explain away the Queen's Proclamation. Ladies and gentlemen, it is with difficulty that I can speak with due restraint of his offending of this. The Queen's Proclamation has hitherto been regarded, both for its contents and the circumstances connected with the issuing of it, with feelings of gratitude and satisfaction by the people of India. It was issued on the morrow of the dark Mutiny by a Royal woman, in the name of a mighty nation, to a people who had just suffered most dreadful