And while you are in India, and among Indians, and responsible to Indians, because you are as responsible to them as you are to us here, while you are in that position, gentlemen, do not live in Europe all the time. Whether or not--if I may be quite candid--it was a blessing either for India or for Great Britain that this great responsibility fell upon us, whatever the ultimate destiny and end of all this is to be, at any rate I know of no more imposing and momentous transaction than the government of India by you and those like you. I know of no more imposing and momentous transaction in the vast scroll of the history of human government. We have been within the past two years in a position of considerable difficulty. But the difficulties of Indian government are not the result--be sure of this--of any single incident or set of incidents. You see it said that all the present difficulties arose from the partition of Bengal. I have never believed that. I do not think well of the operation, but that does not matter. I was turning the other day to the history of the Oxford Mission to Calcutta. In 1899--the partition of Bengal, as you know, was much later--what did they say? "There exists at present"--at present in 1899--"an increasing hostility to what is European and English among the educated classes." "No one can have," this Oxford report goes on, "any real knowledge of India without a deep sense of the splendid work done by the Indian Civil Service. The work is recognised by the Indian people. They thoroughly appreciate the benefits of our rule, they are bound to us by self-interest, but they do not like us." It is intelligible, but that is a result to be carefully guarded against by demeanour, by temper, by action--to be guarded against at every turn. Every one would agree that anything like a decisive and permanent estrangement between the Indians and the Europeans would end in dire failure and an overwhelming catastrophe. I am coming to other ground. The history of the last six months has been important, anxious, and trying. Eight months ago there certainly was severe tension. That tension has now relaxed, and the great responsible officials on the spot assure me that the position of the hour and the prospects are reassuring. We have kept the word which was given by the Sovereign on November 1 last year in the message to the people of India commemorating the 50th anniversary of the assumption of the powers of government in India by the Crown, the transfer of the power from the old Company to the Crown. We have kept our word. We have introduced and carried through Parliament a measure, as everybody will admit, of the highest order of importance. It was carried through both Houses with excellent deliberation. I have been in Parliament a great many years. I have never known a project discussed and conducted with such knowledge, and such a desire to avoid small, petty personal incidents. The whole