I listened to nearly all the speeches delivered in this Debate yesterday—the exceedingly eloquent appeal by the hon. and gallant Member for Chertsey (Sir A. Boyd-Carpenter) who is heard far too seldom within these walls nowadays; the very brilliant reply by my noble Friend the Member for Horsham (Earl Winterton); the interesting speech, as his speeches always are, of the hon. and gallant Member for Bournemouth (Sir H. Croft); the speech, as interesting as it was modest and excellent, from the hon. Member for Morpeth (Mr. G. Nicholson), and finally the very able answer to all the points which had been raised—all too short for want of time but a perfectly admirable summary—by the Under-Secretary of State for India. I think everyone who heard those speeches will agree that they were worthy of a great occasion. Indeed, this occasion is a great one. We have before us a Measure of first-class magnitude. It confers complete freedom and self-government on the great Provinces of India in all the ordinary affairs of life in normal circumstances. It sets up a Federal Government for all India giving a great measure of responsibility at the Centre. It is going to influence immensely the development of Indian administration and of India itself in the future. It is going to affect also the whole future of the British Empire. This is therefore, as I have said, a great occasion and a great Measure and to-day I wish to confine myself to the central and main issue which lies before us, namely: Is this Measure the best step which can be taken at the present time and under present conditions?

That is the great question before us. A Bill of this kind raises a large number of other individual questions many of which are of great importance but are yet secondary to the main issue. There are such questions, for instance, as the method of election of representatives to the Federal Assembly from the Provinces. These are important but secondary, and I ask the House this morning to concentrate on the main issue. Is this Measure the right step to take now? These other questions, however important they may be, whatever may be the answer to them, however they may be settled will not change the vote of any hon. Member from "Aye" to "No" or from "No" to "Aye." In approaching the consideration of the great main question at issue here, we must ask ourselves first what is the crux of the problem. It lies in gauging rightly what is and what is going to be the mentality of the Indians themselves in regard to this matter, in India generally and primarily in the great Provinces of British India. How are political leaders thinking and how are they going to think when, for the first time, they get complete freedom in all affairs of ordinary life under normal conditions? How is the development of the people of India going to progress and what will be the reaction of that development on the political leaders themselves? Whether we like it or not that is the question on which we really are intent. It is that which is going to affect the future and which ought to govern our decisions upon the Bill.

I have not had the advantages which were enjoyed by my noble Friend the Member for Horsham. I was not a Member of any of the Committees which dealt with this question or of the Round Table Conference. I read all their Reports and a great deal of the evidence, but I had not the advantage of hearing that evidence. My approach to this question is from a rather different angle. I was born in India and brought up in the Anglo-Indian tradition. I lived for a great many years in a completely Anglo-Indian atmosphere. What was being said and being done from day to day in regard to different administrations in different parts of India was the subject of the ordinary talk which I heard, much more than the differences and the problems of politics at home. In that respect I experience both an advantage and a disadvantage. It has this advantage, that there is imprinted on one's mind clearly the immense greatness and diversity of the different parts of India so that one is a little chary of generalising. But at the present time one has to make generalisations in order to pass judgment on the Bill. On the other hand, one has heard so much of the individual facts of one kind or another of Indian life that one approaches the question with those actual day-to-day facts in mind asking one's self what are the inferences which can be drawn from them and what are the conclusions to which they lead.

If one is to generalise, one must ask the question: How are the minds of the political leaders in India actually working? What is influencing them? Obviously, it is a mixture of considerations. I think anyone who knows India, either by personal experience, or by the talk of friends and relations who come home, or by study here, will agree that there is a great deal of very genuine feeling by which they are actuated, and that at the same time they are influenced also by a considerable measure of make-belief, which uses their own genuine feeling for individual purposes and ends. If that be so—and I think everyone will agree with it—it is not, of course, a unique phenomenon at all. It is true of politicians in all countries. In individual cases the proportions of the ingredients of genuineness and make-belief differ from one man to another, but it is true of politicians generally and of other people as well. If I were to talk to hon. Members opposite and ask them, they know quite well that leaders of employers and leaders of trade unions express in public opinions that are far more violent than the sentiments which they hold in private, and it is obvious that that is often the case.

That, I believe, is part of the great fact that one has to realise at present in trying to gauge how Indian politicians and others are thinking in India. I believe, from all I hear, that the feeling that they have on nationality with regard to India as a whole is very genuine and very real. The feeling of irksomeness which some of them have, the feeling of being restricted in their own freedom of action by the controls that are put upon them under the present system of dyarchy, is very real indeed. How could it be otherwise? And when one thinks of the spread of education in India, the establishment of schools, the establishment of higher education and of universities, why, of course, the tendency to resist any inequality of status becomes increased. When one thinks too of the hundreds of Indians that come over here to British schools and universities, where they are treated exactly on an equality with every white British subject in this country, when one thinks of those whom one has known oneself—I remember up at Oxford two people who were very popular indeed among all the other undergraduates, and one of them had a very distinguished career afterwards in India—can one expect that when they go back you will not have in an increasing degree a genuine resistance against control being put over them by those whom they regard as nothing more than their equals? I think those feelings are very genuine. Yet at the same time there is no question whatsoever that, like other people in other lands, they are vying with one another at this time in denouncing British restrictions, in order that, by so doing, they may get kudos or at least preserve their position among their own fellows.

I do not think anyone would disagree with that brief statement, and yet what does it account for? It accounts for one thing for the reception of this Bill. Great play has been made in one or two quarters with the vote which has been given in India against this Measure. Does anybody, when he really thinks of it, conceive that anything else could happen under present conditions out there? It is absurd to imagine that, the present conditions of India being what they are, you could get anyone to come out in the Provinces—I am not talking of the Indian States—among the politicians, and say he was whole-heartedly in favour of this Measure because he thought it was a great advance in the direction that he wished. It is too much to expect of the courage of most politicians in any country. Therefore I cannot believe that the people who say they are affected by a hostile vote that is given in India with regard to the Bill can believe that their statement is a representation of their genuine belief that it is an honest rejection of the Bill.

I say that this state of mind accounts for that, and it accounts for something else. It accounts for what has made dyarchy work not so well as it might have done, and it accounts for the impossible demands and suggestions that are sometimes made in the Indian Legislature. Let me give an instance of what I mean, because it is one of those practical cases which illustrate the point. In one of the Indian Provinces a great question arose about the opium traffic. It was agreed among the Indians that they ought to make a demonstration against what was being done with regard to opium. So they threw out the Vote for the whole of the local provincial Excise, including the salaries of the Excise officers. They were confident that, as the existence of these Excise officers was necessary, the Governor would reinstate their salaries. Then they heard, what was perfectly true, that the Governor had said that in the circumstances he was not going to reinstate them. That caused a flutter in the dove-cots. They had a second meeting, and when they found what was going to be the real consequence of their action, they passed the Budget, reinstating the salaries, and all went well afterwards. That is the kind of thing that occurs. In that case the bluff happened to be called; they had to face the consequences of their own action, and they took an entirely different line from that which had been embodied in their impossible demands.

I think that most people out there would say this: In themselves, Political leaders are anxious to get good government. You find Hindu and Moslem working together in order to try to get decent administration, where they are not swayed and perverted by the need for agitation against British rule, and they are ready, I believe, if the circumstances need it, to show immense courage. Some think they will not show it, but I will take an instance to show what will happen when they have to act under a real sense of responsibility. Here and throughout I can give chapter and verse for every case that I mention. I am thinking now of a case in one of the Eastern Provinces which I know, where a riot was imminent. A Mohammedan mob was there, ready to break out at any moment into an active riot and conflagration. They were faced by a Mohammedan magistrate, who told the ringleader that he would count 30, and that if they did not begin to disperse by the time he had finished counting 30 he would give the order, which meant that the troops would fire. By the time he had got to 15 or 16 they began to disperse, and the affair passed off peacefully.

You get among the magistrates, the Indian magistrates, a willingness to face up to their responsibilities, showing the need for courage. Of course, I do not say that you get it to the same degree in every case or that they are all alike. There are differences from one place to another and from one individual to another. There must be. But in the circumstances in which responsibility is put upon them, to say that they will not try to work for a decent government, that at least I cannot accept, because I think it is contrary to the inferences that could be drawn from the facts of everyday life as they are seen out there.

Let me pass to another aspect of the matter, and that is the people. We hear a great deal about the Indian peasant, and when I think of the Indian peasant and of what I have heard from my own relations and friends who have come back from there, it seems to me that it is impossible to generalise simply about the Indian peasant, when he differs, as everyone is aware, from the Punjab right down to the South of India and from the Far East to the Far West. Even in the Ganges Valley and along its tributaries, he differs enormously from one part to another; from the closely grouped villages in the Punjab not far from where I was born and where my uncle went on tour as a Commissioner, to the scattered bamboo huts in the Brahmapootra Valley. In some cases, I have not the least doubt that the peasant is, as people say, poor, ignorant and powerless, but in some cases he is not. In some parts there is no question of the feeling that is stirring. It is a feeling of two kinds, as far as one can make out. On the one hand, there is a feeling which is vague and unanalysed, the feeling which set them in a glowing fervour about Gandhi when he first came forward as a saint and mystic. On the other hand, there is a stirring of a very practical kind in some places when it comes to matters that affect conditions of ordinary life.

Once again, an ounce of fact is worth a pound of theory, and I will give one or two instances. In one little Indian municipality the ordinary people were divided into two parties, much as they might be here. They called themselves the Clean party and the Dirty party. The Clean party were the people in favour of a system of drainage and sanitation which it was proposed to introduce, and the Dirty party were the people who opposed it because of the cost and the burden of taxation that it would bring upon them. It was not very different from what might happen in some parts of this country, and strife waxed keen between them. I remember another case. A very influential member of the legislature in one of the provinces lost his seat. Everyone was amazed, and they asked one another why he should have lost his seat. When they went to the villagers they were told, and they found the reason was quite simple. He had promised a lot of schools and they did not get them, so they put him out. I take yet another case, which may interest the Front bench opposite. There was a landowner who had been in the legislature for some time, and it occurred to the peasants that he was not suiting their interests particularly well. They ran one of their own people against him and put him in. I do not say that that is going to happen in every place. Of course it is not, and I am not suggesting that it will. But it does mean that things are stirring in a way that people often forget to realise.

It is said that we ought to give self-government in order that the Indian people may be able to deal with social reform, which it is not so easy for Europeans to deal with because they affect religions and other matters that go right down to the fibre of their being. The quickening of local interest is going to be speeded up when you get to reforms that involve religion, such as the better enforcement of the laws against child marriage or to reforms in the towns which deal with the conditions of work and wages. Let no one think that some of the leaders of the workpeople in the towns, who are not heard at present, will not be ready to make their voice heard in the future. When reforms of this kind are proposed, there will be a general awakening of interest; and it is developing fastest in those parts of India, and particularly in the great Ganges Valley where political leaders are most active and their influence upon politics more powerful. If that be the case, what will be the reaction on the politicians of an active interest by villagers or town workers in reforms which vitally affect their day-to-day life?

If, on the one hand, the politicians and the political leaders get complete freedom, as they will, of self-government in the ordinary day to day affairs in normal times, and if, on the other hand, they are beginning to find that even their constituents are becoming more and more interested in these subjects, cannot we believe that the natural and likely line of development is that their attention will become concentrated more and more on the kind of problems that are before them, and which are concerned with the actualities of life, and less and less on mere agitation if there is no control that really galls them in the matter of constitutional government? I put this forward for the consideration of my friends. I believe the right thing is to go forward, not from the defeatist point of view, but because we are following what is the natural and safe development.

I am entitled to ask again what the alternatives are. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition advocated in his broadcast speech immediate Dominion Status. I know that there is that school of thought. It asks why there should be safeguards if we trust the people of India, and why we should not go further and trust them entirely. I would ask the right hon. Gentlemen to consider this. I beg the party opposite before they inscribe the gift of immediate Dominion Status irrevocably on their policy to realise the effect that it may have on India. If a mistake is made here about some matter of domestic policy, it does not matter much. The party opposite may, when they are in Opposition, put upon their programme some measure which, when they come into office, they may find they are not able to carry out. I give as an instance from the past the old Washington Hours Convention. When they were in opposition the Labour party said they would ratify it. After they came into office and looked into it, they said they could not do it without revision—a tribute to their good sense and their sense of reality and responsibility. That did no harm, but, while no harm may be done in regard to a domestic issue, the effect may be very different if immediate Dominion Status for India is inscribed at once as part of their policy. If they came to power and did not carry it out, it might be considered a breach of a pledge, and not unnaturally, it might lead to an agitation in India which would have been perfectly unnecessary.

I am ready to go forward, but I do recognise—I say this freely, and friends of mine who take the opposite view about India may smile at my doing so, but one has to be frank—that in India and in all the countries of the world there are always elements of conflagration. There are the elements of conflagration on religious subjects, and, if it should break out under the regime that we propose, there is a need to have the safeguard of British power to help in putting it out. It is not only in religious subjects. It is also in racial questions. We all know that in India they have the non-fighting races and the fighting races. In England it is not so. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition belongs as much to the general English fairly-combative but good-natured stock as his opponent on the north-east frontier just over in Epping. There is not much difference among the English, but in India there is a great difference between the fighting races and the non-fighting races, and there is no question as to what the trouble may be if we let go the helm and the fighting races should get loose.

May I give a practical instance? My brother had a soldier servant in India who asked for and was given 10 days' holiday. When he came back my brother said "What sort of a time did you have?" and the reply was "First class, I bagged two of them,"—referring to two men in a part of the tribe against which he had a vendetta. Take another case. Just before a cousin of mine who was in the Central Indian Horse came back from India an old Sikh came to him and said—it has been said generally, and it was said in this particular case—"General, can you tell me whether it is true that the British are going to leave India?". My cousin said, "No, of course it is not true." "Are you quite sure?" further inquired the Sikh; "I hear so much talk about it." My cousin again replied, "No, it is not true." "Well," said the Sikh. "You know that I have been an old friend of yours, and I hope, if it should prove to be true, that you will really do the work of a friend and give me early word of it, so that I may be certain to be in at the looting." That is a quite definite instance.

And this is a speech in support of the Bill.

As my right hon. Friend says, it is a speech in support of the Bill, and it is in support of the Safeguards. If I turn to the other alternative, which is that of my right hon. Friend the member for Epping, I would ask "What is his policy as the other alternative?" Are he and his friends going to take the Simon Report as the basis of their policy, or are they going to take the Montagu-Chelmsford settlement? Are they going to give law and order, or try to stand by things as they are. If one tries to stand by things as they are, what does it really mean? Dyarchy was not a success, and it will become increasingly not a success, as time goes on. If we try to maintain it now we shall begin to alienate the best friends we have out there, people who are not always vocal but who exercise an influence. We may in the end begin to affect the very services by which we can carry out our administration. We have a loyal police and a loyal Indian Army, and yet we cannot prevent the feelings that are spreading right throughout the whole people from, in the end, having an effect upon them too. I say the other alternative seems to me to be unthinkable when one studies the real facts of the case.

We were asked by the hon. Member for Chertsey whether we were going to leave India and throw away the brightest jewel in the Crown—were going to leave India out of fear, he said. It is unthinkable that he should put any question like that to some of us. I happen to have been born in India. My father was in the Indian Army and died on service out there, and my step-father commanded the Guides and the Frontier Force. My grandfather was out there and many of us—half our relations—have been there on service. We are not going to leave India out of fear. Not for a single moment should we think of doing that. It is almost an insult to suggest it. On the other hand, if he says "You are going to lose India by this step," and then states that America is no illustration in point, I reply that it is a very real illustration. It proves the broad main general truth that if we try to maintain restrictions on another people which goad and which irk them, and which in the end we cannot maintain except by sheer force, we are much more likely to lose India than we should be under any other system—much more, certainly, than under this Bill.

We have got to face the facts. This situation has not arisen now. It is not caused by the Simon Report, nor by the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms. The origin of it was not even under the Morley-Minto reforms. It goes back farther. It did not come even from Lord Ripon and the freedom given to the vernacular press. The seeds of the present situation were sown when we put into India the two greatest solvents that any one could put into an old-established civilisation—education and commerce. They are two solvents which were bound to cause a change. About 35 or 40 years ago some of the young men who went out to India in the Civil Service wrote home asking what was the ultimate aim to be when they were applying this solvent to that old civilisation. They got no answer, otherwise, they could have guided Indian development and the situation to-day need not have been half so difficult as it is. No policy was outlined to them. It is no good trying to put back the clock now. When anybody says, as the hon. Member for Chertsey said, "Leave it to an open vote," I reply that I would withdraw my support from the Government if they did so. We know quite well that if his appeal were granted my hon. Friend would at once turn round on the Government and say, "You have not got a policy of your own in which you believe." I cannot say that I go forward without any apprehension at all. No one can look upon the future without anxiety and no one should under-estimate the difficulties. I have got anxiety; but it is in a spirit neither of wavering nor of pessimism that I support the Bill and ask all my hon. Friends to do the same.

11.53 a.m.

With the remarks of the right hon. Gentleman just now about the position of the peasants I feel a good deal of agreement, and I will say something about them in a moment, but when he went on to say that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and my right hon. Friend the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill) were almost exactly the same type of person, and then immediately followed that up by telling a story of a gentleman who went out with a rifle and said "I have bagged two of them", he was making a suggestion which I should think the House would find it difficult to support, because I should say that those are two right hon. Gentlemen whom the House would wish to preserve. But his speech did illustrate one thing, that the welfare of India is the common concern of every Party in this House. We are all on common ground there. Although on ordinary subjects I am a strong party man I have never been able to see that the question of India is a party question at all. Personally I feel, and my view may be shared by some people, that I am working in semi-darkness towards the unknown. I feel very uncertain of the future. The question is a complex and difficult one. Nobody would say that this gigantic Bill is the Bill which any one of us, if we had a free hand and the Godlike power to draw up an ideal Constitution for India would produce. But, as the Secretary of State very rightly said, we have not got a free hand. We are not writing upon a clean sheet of paper. He pointed out, in a speech, which I think he made at Oxford, that we are writing on a palimpsest written over by the writings and the blottings of previous generations, and writing in the light of hard facts of the present day.

Therefore, I feel that we should regard this problem rather as a scientist trying to discover some solution to a very difficult and complex problem than as a political swashbuckler leading a cavalry charge upon the baggage-train of the enemy. When I hear the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill) asserting with great certainty that the result of this Measure will be destruction in India, I remember reading in a book the authorship of which I do not think the right hon. Gentleman will dispute, that he was just as certain how India should be governed on the day when, a young subaltern, he first landed in Bombay and on the very same night told the Governor of Bombay exactly what he ought to do. When I listen to the oratory of the right hon. Gentleman and consider what its effects on India may be, I feel I must parody a rather famous verse:

When I addressed the House a few weeks ago, it was to put forward a certain proposition which we think ought to be embodied in the Bill. All that has passed since then has amply proved that we were correct in what we suggested. Let us take this very important question—it is not merely a verbal question—of inserting the words "Dominion Status" in the Preamble of the Bill, and not merely doing it in a declaration as the Secretary of State made it on Wed- nesday in this House. This is a matter to which the Indian people and those who are to work this Constitution, the Indian political classes, attach the greatest importance. From the cablegrams that we have had from India since then, we learn that a great many influential bodies have stated that they will refuse to work this Constitution. The last to say that was, I believe, the Council of the Central Provinces, and the reason for that was chiefly based on the fact that Dominion Status was not inserted in the Bill. We hear that that great friend of this country, His Highness the Aga Khan, Mr. Ghuznavi, the Moslem leader in Bengal, friends of England and of India, and even such a staunch supporter of the Government as Sir John Thompson have expressed very grave concern because that phrase has not been inserted in the Preamble.

If the correspondent in India of the "Observer" is correct, those feelings are shared in more exalted quarters still. This is what appeared in the "Observer" of 6th January, from their Calcutta correspondent: tive people and feel that their honour and self-respect and their "izzat" are involved, that I beseech the Government again to reconsider the question which I believe, according to the "Times", they have already considered, of inserting those words in the Preamble.

If I may take the time of the House for a minute or two longer I would ask how it is that this question has arisen, or rather why it is so important. In the years 1928 and 1929, the position in India was critical. The Simon Commission were touring India and there was a feeling against them of dissatisfaction in regard to the wishes and intentions of the British Government. Congress had met and had boycotted the Commission, and even the well-known charm of the Foreign Secretary failed to soften the hearts of Indian statesmen. Congress was even threatening open non-co-operation and refusal to pay taxes. In December, 1928, Sir Chimanlal Setalvad, the chairman of the Indian Liberal Federation, appealed to the Government to make a bold effort to regain the good will of Indian public opinion. In January, 1929, Lord Irwin, the present Lord Halifax, speaking at the opening of the Assembly at Simla, said: He then left India to come home here, which in itself was an almost unprecedented thing at that time for a Viceroy to do during his term of office. He consulted the Government, and on his return he made, on the 31st October, the statement, which has so often been repeated in this House, on the authority of the Cabinet, that it was

Yes.

All I can say is that the then Secretary of State for India, Mr. Wedgwood Benn, said so definitely in this House. Referring to the fact that doubts had arisen in India as to the sincerity of British intentions in the matter of the Montagu policy he said,

"The Viceroy said that these doubts existed and that for the removal of these doubts it was necessary to issue a clear declaration of existing policy … He said 'The Statutory Commission is going to report, and we want if we can to make a good atmosphere for the Report. We want to have an atmosphere of good will, and that will be better secured if we can clear up the doubts which exist in the minds of Indians who have been assisting the British Government and co-operating with us and helping the work of the Montagu schemes, and remove the webs of distrust which it is necessary to clear away'".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 7th November, 1929; cols. 1326–7; Vol. 231.]

Surely it is clear that one of the reasons for that statement was to create a good atmosphere for the reception of the Statutory Commission—

Actually, its effect was almost to invalidate that Report, and it was felt deeply by the Commission at that time that this declaration should have been made, bringing in the question of Dominion status, which the Statutory Commission had decided not to mention.

I am not speaking of the effects; I am talking about the intentions, and I am pointing out that the then Secretary of State definitely said that it was done in order to create a good atmosphere for the Report. For the time being that effect was created. Anyhow, it was said to have been done for that purpose, and for the time beings—for a brief period—it did create a very good atmosphere, because even Congress passed a resolution thanking the Viceroy for that statement and, expressing their satisfaction and their belief in its good faith and sincerity.

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but he is trying to set out the facts. Should it not be remembered that, within two months of Lord Irwin's declaration on Dominion status, the Congress party, in their Conference at Lahore, pulled down the Union Jack, replaced it by the Congress flag, and declared for the complete independence of India?

That may be so, and, as I said before the Noble Lady rose, the improvement was only for a brief period but the reason for this was that Congress had got the view that that statement really meant that Dominion status would be granted almost immediately, but when Mr. Gandhi interviewed the Viceroy he was informed that that was not the case. There were many debates in England at that time which caused a great deal of mistrust again to develop, and, as a result, the atmosphere which had been cleared for the time being, darkened again. That statement was deliberately made, and in their recent book on "The Rise and Development of British India" Messrs. Thompson and Garrett state that it entirely altered the view of the Indian people. They considered that their status had been changed, and that is why that change should be recorded in the Bill.

That declaration was made as a deliberate act of State policy, for a certain purpose. Whether it was mistaken or not is not for me to say, but we cannot go back on it now. Any attempt to go away from it, or even appear to go away from it, would be very discreditable, and a thing which the House of Commons could not tolerate for a moment. Our honour and our "izzat" are involved. Therefore, I feel that the Government should again consider putting it in the Preamble. I am very grateful to the Secretary of State for what he said in this House on that subject, but we must remember that many constitutional authorities have said quite recently—it was stated in this House by the hon. Member who, I believe, is the Chairman of the Conservative India Committee, and by the hon. and gallant Member for Bournemouth (Sir H. Croft) yesterday—that no declaration of a Secretary of State, or a Viceroy, ar even the King Emperor himself, is binding on Parliament, but only the words of an Act of Parliament.

Do I understand the hon. Member to argue as a constitutional proposition that the words of an Act of Parliament are binding upon future Parliaments?

No, I did not say that, but they are binding as long as they remain on the Statute Book. For that reason, although I am very grateful for the declaration of the Secretary of State, I say that it is not enough, and that the Government should go a little further and embody the words in the Statute.

Is my hon. Friend aware that the Statute will be binding on all future Parliaments? This, however, is a question of the Preamble.

I do not know to which Statute the right hon. and gallant Gentleman is referring. The Bill, which he has in his mind, is not binding, for it has not been embodied in legislation. When it is passed, it will be binding until it is repealed. I am anxious to find out what are the objections to embodying these words in the Bill. I have very carefully considered them as far as I have heard them, and I have come to the conclusion that they are chiefly pedantic, and based on the fact that it is difficult to define exactly what Dominion status means. A similar objection, which was very satisfactorily disposed of by the Secretary of State, was made to the Federation of India. The right hon. Gentleman pointed out early on that people said, "We have never heard of a Federation like this, of different bodies having different powers." He disposed of that by saying that there had been many kinds of Federation. Taking the example of Germany, he instanced the case of Bavaria, which kept its own duty on beer. But it did not prevent federation, and he said something like this—that there was no need for a neat and exact uniformity running through all the units. There is no need, either, at the present time to define Dominion status with any meticulous exactitude. Just as there are very different types of federation, so there are different types of Dominion status. In the "Manchester Guardian" there was a very interesting article by Professor Berriedale Keith pointing out that the position to-day in New Zealand and Australia is not exactly the same as in the Union of South Africa, the Irish Free State, or Canada, and undoubtedly in India, when we have the Princes coming in with a special kind of treatment, the position will be still more different. At the meeting of the Joint Select Committee the representative of the Chamber of Princes said that the Princes whom he represented would

I want to pass very quickly to other points. I was rather criticised last time by the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetlands (Sir R. Hamilton) for saying that this constitution did not contain in itself the seeds of growth, that it was too rigid and the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for India himself said on Wednesday that it was a rigid constitution. No one is going to deny that if this constitution works, the result will be a great growth in experience and authority on the part of Indian Ministers. That will have a great educational effect on the whole of India. No one disputes that, but our point is that the constitutions of Dominions in the past have been varied from time to time by altering the Letters of Instruction—not by altering the words of the Statute. That has been done, as I understand, on the authority of the Government alone. But under this Bill that cannot be done. It can only be done by any alteration of the Letters of Instructions being laid before both Houses of Parliament and passed by both Houses of Parliament, by means of an Address. It means that the future development of India, as long as another place exists, if it is not swept away by an indignant British democracy, lies entirely in the hands of the party opposite. They alone control the growth and development of the Indian Constitution. It may be a very pleasant feeling to them, but Members on this side and people in India cannot be expected to regard it with the same kind of pleasure and equanimity.

The Indians actually asked for this procedure.

I do not quite know whom the right hon. Gentleman means.

The Indian representatives at the Round Table Conference attached a great deal of importance to the Instrument of Instructions, so much so that they said it was essential there should be Parliamentary sanction.

I accept what the right hon. Gentleman has said, and I am sorry that in the course of the two years I was on the Select Committee I was not aware of that. It shows that some of those at the Round Table Conference were not animated by the same kind of feeling we have. After all, if there are 20 or 30 of that opinion, they are a small number out of 300,000,000 people. Whatever the Indian representatives on the Round Table Conference said it means the development of the Constitution of India can only be advanced when the right hon. Gentleman and his friends are in power, and not when we are in power. In the same way that Royalty used to imagine that foreign affairs were their particular affair, so it seems that the Conservative party still regard India as their own concern, and nobody else's. I do hot want to add anything to what I have said upon the reactionary machinery which is being set up. We are going to say a good deal about it on the Committee stage. But I would like to ask the House to consider that things like mines, factories, workmen's compensation, trade unions, industrial and labour disputes, health insurance, old age pensions are all on the Concurrent List, and can be dealt with by an indirectly elected body with a council of State which will be—although I do not want to use exaggerated language—the most reactionary body that will exist in the whole world. Therefore, I do not think the House will blame us if we say that we are going to fight tooth and nail against that machinery, and that we shall try to improve it.

The Noble Lord the Member for Horsham (Earl Winterton) attacked us yesterday. I am sorry he is not here; he fired his ringing shot and passed. He said that our attitude towards the Bill was that we did not object to the Constitution except on the ground that Indians would not work it in the way the Labour party would like to see it worked. All I can say is that I sat on the Select Committee for nearly two years with the Noble Lord, and not only sat there with him, but next to him. It was said by a hostile critic of the late Joseph Chamberlain that his mind was rather like his face—he thought very little, but very clearly. I do not say that I agree with that, but I would say of myself, that although I may not think very much, I try to think clearly and do not try to conceal vacuity of thought in a mist of hazy words. Therefore, I do not think I shall ever become a Prime Minister. I am very surprised that in all that period the Noble Lord has not ascertained what our objection is. I do not think it is due to us. It must be due to him. Our objection is not that the Indians will not work it as we should like them to work it, but that we are not giving the masses of the people sufficient representation and that we are weighting the Constitution in favour of wealth. I am afraid the Noble Lord must be like those to whom the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Darwen (Sir H. Samuel) referred, who only hear what they say themselves.

Then we had yesterday from the hon. Member for Chertsey (Sir A-. Boyd-Carpenter) a speech which I very much admired for its passion and sincerity. He rebuked the Lord President unfairly, as I thought, for suggesting that, when we have finished our trusteeship, our régime will come to an end. Surely that is not an unreasonable thing to say. If we are in India in the position of trustees or guardians, when that work is accomplished, when the child has grown up to manhood, there is no further reason why we should keep on our trusteeship. He said something also which I thought extraordinarily surprising coming from one of his name and family. He said there was no alternative to death. I thought there was. I thought the alternative to death was eternal life. [HON. MEMBERS: "After death!"] Not after death at all. The alternative to death is eternal life and, provided we act wisely, there is no reason why our association with India should ever be broken. Although the hon Gentleman was sincere, I felt that his speech was animated by the spirit of ascendancy. We could tell that by his reference to Egypt, when he said how much better the Egyptians were when we were there. What right had we to be in Egypt at all? We only went there to defend the interest of the bondholders. He asked why we should leave India after all the sacrifices we have made. I quite agree with him as to the fine work that has been done by Civil servants such as Mr. Darling and Mr. Brayne, but for anyone to say that we went to India purely for the benefit of the Indians—

Does not their work benefit the Indians?

I said so, but, if you read the history of the last century, we went to India merely for plunder, and we remained because India is valuable to us. We have large investments there. There is a good market for us. Does anyone believe that, if the Government of India cost the country £100,000,000 in taxation, we should be very keen to stay there? I think not. Although we are doing good service there, the hon. Member's speech, sincere as it was, was really animated by the spirit of black hypocrisy which makes this country hated and detested in other countries.

We are all anxious for the welfare of the masses of India. It is mentioned not only in our Amendment but in that of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping and his friends. Therefore, I expect their support when we move our Amendments on that part of the Bill. I believe it is one of the principles of democracy that it is better to govern yourself inefficiently than to be governed efficiently by someone else. I accept that principle, though I admit that if it is carried out in every detail and in every condition great hardships may sometimes be involved. I do not suppose the Romanised Britons felt very gratified when the last departing Roman centurion said: "We will leave you to the mercy of the barbarians from Germany." I doubt whether the inhabitants of Uriconium, the "white city in the woods" thought much of self-government when the roof-beams crashed above their heads and fire and slaughter ended everything. I do not suppose the ryots of India will feel very pleased when we tell them that they have been given self-government and that they are to be handed over to oppressors of their own race. Not that they have much protection now, but surely, if you are going to have a new Constitution, you must give them all the powers you can and let them defend themselves by the power of the vote.

Industrial conditions in India are not of a Very high standard. I am very anxious not to use exaggerated language, and I shall deal with official figures. If you read the Report of the Labour Commission, you find some very ghastly information. There are not very many statistics in that book, which in itself is a criticism of industrial legislation in India. In a coalfield in Behar and Orissa the wages of a coal cutter are 15s. to 22s. 6d. a month. When you find that in Bombay, as the Simon Commission says, 70 per cent. of the tenements are one-roomed tenements with over four people in each room, you will admit that there is need for reform and legislative protection there. Then there are the women, the flower of India's future. Thousands of women still work underground in the mines. Two hundred thousand women die every year in child-birth. Out of every 1,000 children 179 die before they are one year of age. Surely there is need to give the Indian women the power to protect themselves and to alter those conditions. Lastly there is the peasant in his 500,000 villages, the much-administered man, who as the "Manchester Guardian" says,

It has been said by an hon. and gallant Friend behind that the peasant is illiterate. As the Simon Commission and the hon. Member for South-West Hull (Mr. Law) say, he is not without shrewdness. He has the deep wisdom of the ages, and I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping will appreciate that. He has the patient wisdom of the man who works near the surface of the earth, and the practical common sense of people who work with their hands, although he may be illiterate and cannot read papers in India of the standard of the "Daily Mail."

Or the "Daily Herald?"

I do not know the favourite paper of the right hon. Gentleman. As Mr. Darling says, although the peasant as a whole may be indifferent to politics yet questions of Land Revenue and Water Rate arouse universal interest, they are the things which affect his own interests. Therefore, if he is given the vote, the people who are to get his vote will have to do something for him. We ought to extend the franchise to all these three classes further than the proposal of the Government, and, when we propose this Amendment, I expect support from every Member in this House.

No one can predict the future. The Secretary of State talks about the launching of this gigantic ship which it has taken seven years to construct. We do not know what will happen. It may settle down in the ooze, or be lifted on the ordered tides of liberty and sail the seas of the future. I ask the Government, before the ship is launched, to give the Indian people some more tangible proof of their good will in order that the ship may be launched in an auspicious atmosphere. I ask them to reflect upon the views which I am putting forward on behalf of our party and on behalf of millions of people in India, and to give them support. And then perhaps the Government will have their reward. I believe that the Indian people, admitted into a free alliance with us, will bring to us those great gifts of intellect and of spiritual understanding which they possess, and will work out with us, as equal partners, the social and economic problems of the future, and indeed be ready to hold their part of the continent of Asia for the British Commonwealth of freedom-loving nations and for the twin causes of the progress and peace of the world.

12.38 p.m.

I hope that the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Mr. Cocks) will not think that I am casting any reflection upon his very interesting speech when I say that the trouble about these four days' Debates in the House is that hon. Members sometimes tend to make their speeches four times as long. In making this tribute to brevity at the beginning of my speech, I hope that it will not be a tribute merely of lip-service. I should as a Liberal at the outset like to congratulate, if I can do so without presumption, the Conservative leaders on the way in which, with peculiar and powerful temptations to the contrary, they have stood by the main structure of self-government to India. I can speak for a Party who know something about Party splits, and we know what disastrous affects they have on Party fortunes. The Conservative party are de- serving of the thanks of two continents for having gone forward with this policy so boldly even at the risk of a split in their own ranks.

My only substantial objection to the policy of the Government is their conversion, after some vicissitudes, to the principle of indirect election. I cannot think that the proposals that the members of the Central Legislature should be elected by a handful from the Provincial Legislatures will make for democratic or for efficient government. Will not those narrow electorates open the door to that very corruption which even the best friends of India fear may accrue from the new Constitution? We have an example in our own history. It was when constituencies were small that British politics were most corrupt, and it was only with our extension of the franchise until finally we had manhood suffrage that personal corruption was completely rooted out. I suggest that there is a real danger if the Government persist in indirect election that we may be turning new Delhi into Old Sarum.

May I ask the hon. Gentleman if he considers, that personal corruption went on in this country until 1923?

I think that personal corruption went on until 1918. However, that is a question we need not discuss.

It was during the Liberal epoch.

The right hon. Gentleman knows a good deal about the Liberal epoch, because he derived very great benefit from it, and benefit which Members to-day are not likely to get. I was very glad that the Under-Secretary promised his sympathetic consideration to the views which those in favour of direct election may desire to put forward on the Committee stage. The essential thing is that there has been no retreat by the Government on this central structure of responsible government. Where there have been concessions, they have been inv the direction of conciliation at the Centre, and not in the direction of conciliation at the right. Where there is retreat it seems to be from the opponents of these proposals. Where do they stand? It is very difficult to get an answer from them. I believe that my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedford (Mr. Lennox-Boyd) will be speaking later, and I hope that he will deal very clearly with this point: whether they believe in democracy or whether they do not; whether they are prepared to go forward with provincial autonomy or not; whether they are in favour of provincial autonomy as recommended by the Simon Commission, or whether they make important reservations? It is difficult to find out where the Die-hards stand on this question, as it was, last week, to find out whether the Labour party was or was not in favour of flats. The Die-hards simply will not say.

The Die-hards are flats.

Sometimes they appear to go forward, sometimes it appears they wish to stand still, and sometimes that they wish to go backward. The hon. Baronet the Member for Bournemouth (Sir H. Croft) is apparently in favour of reversing the engine. He pleaded yesterday that we ought to go back beyond 1920 and that we ought to take away from India its power of fiscal autonomy. I hope that we shall hear on Monday the views of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill) on that question, because I think he was a prominent Member of the Government that gave that fiscal autonomy in 1920, and it will be very interesting to hear if he now proposes to take it away. I cannot imagine a policy more likely to produce an explosion than the policy of ruling India in the interests of Great Britain and of Lancashire. It is a policy of selfishness, naked and unashamed. That is cheered loudly. In the next sentence they say that we are wantonly sacrificing Indian people, and that it is cheered loudly. Where do we stand? Are we in India for India's good or for our own? You cannot have the one without the other. You cannot say that you were there for India's good when at the same time you are doing your utmost to remove from India the power to protect her industries as she desires. There is no answer to that.

Does the hon. Member suggest that it is necessary for the maintenance of an agricultural and pastoral community of 300,000,000 in India that they should have a high protective tariff for the benefit of the millowners of Bombay?

Not at all, but I think the best judges of India's economic interests are the Indians themselves. They have to make up their minds, and if they think it is for India's good, then we have no right to exploit India's trade for our own economic interests. The very eloquent speeches which are made about the plight of the Indian peasant reveal to my mind an extraordinary confusion. The hon. Baronet the Member for Chertsey (Sir A. Boyd-Carpenter); in his eloquent speech yesterday, said that the lot of the peasant would be worse in future than it has been in the past. Then, why do the opponents of the Government scheme propose provincial autonomy? If popular government in India is against democracy, why are the opponents of the Bill proposing an extension of it? If the policy of the Government is so bad for the Indian peasant, why extend it? I entirely fail to understand the argument of those opponents of the Bill who say that we are delivering the dumb millions of Indians over to the Indian politician. That is precisely what they are going to do if they are in favour of provincial autonomy. In regard to the government of the dumb millions, drainage, sanitation, social reform and taxation are all provincial subjects and will come under the exclusive purview of the Indian politicians. The only logical position that the opponents of the Government scheme ought to take up is to have no extension at all, no democracy at all, but that is a position which they are afraid to take up.

We are warned that to go forward with this Bill exposes us to the gravest dangers. Here, there is another confusion in the attack, because at one moment we are told that we are embarking on a bold and reckless experiment and the next moment we are told that we are the victims of craven fear. Dangers! Do the opponents of the scheme ever consider for a moment the dangers inherent in their policy? There is quiet in India now. Civil disobedience is for the moment dead. Why? Because the Indian politicians believe that we mean to stand by our pledges. What would happen if we went back on our pledges now? There would be an outbreak of civil disobedience of a character that would make the last outbreak a picnic in comparison. I saw something of the last civil disturbance movement, but if ever a supporter of the Bill says that he has had experience of that movement in India there is always a shout of Paget M.P. It is better, surely, to have been in India for six months recently than not to have been at all, or not to have been there since 1898?

It was extraordinarily difficult for the Government to deal with the civil disobedience movement. I remember one day in Bombay when Congress decided to hold up the whole of the traffic. It was done by getting their female supporters to lie down in front of the trams. That brought traffic to a standstill. As fast as the police came along and removed a woman from the front of one tram other women ran up the street and lay down in front of another tram. It is an appalling business dealing with passive resistance. The hon. and gallant baronet the Member for Bournemouth said yesterday that force had never been used in India except in the case of a communal riot. That is not true. On many of these occasions it was necessary to fire on the mob. I do not say that the police were not justified in doing so, because they were, but it is a horrible and ugly business and something which this country is very unlikely to tolerate.

I think the hon. Member misrepresents me. What I said was that we never used force except to keep peace.

The hon. baronet said: have to suspend the right of public meeting, to stifle free speech, to suspend all Parliamentary institutions and to establish concentration camps from one end of India to the other. The Government would be forced to adopt measures which would repel and disgust the electors of this country; methods that no Government would willingly take up, not even a Conservative Government. If Labour got into power they would never stand for such a policy, and we should have that disastrous alternation of coercion and conciliation which produced such a terrible state of affairs in Ireland.

The opponents of the Bill talk of the dangers of the Government's policy. Those dangers are nothing compared with the dangers of their policy. The right hon. Member for Epping talks of the insecurity of India. There would be no country in the world more insecure than India if the right hon. Gentleman had his way, unless perhaps it were Fascist Austria. A great deal is made of the wild utterances of the Congress party. What are the opponents of the Government's scheme going to do with the Congress party? Exterminate it? Are they going to Copenhagen it, to destroy it as Nelson destroyed the Danish fleet? That seems to be the only alternative. Indian politicians may make wild speeches now, but I suggest that it will be very different when they are in responsible positions. Responsibility has a tremendous sobering effect. We have seen the effect of responsibility on the Party opposite. What the Labour party say in Opposition is very different from what they do when in office.

What about the Liberals?

We always do exactly the same thing in office as in Opposition. That is why we had our great triumph before the War. We have not had a chance since. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition said at the Wavertree by-election; "I am an out and out Pacifist." But that will not prevent the right hon. Gentleman when he is in power voting for all the Army, Navy and Air Force Estimates and for any cruisers that happen to be wanted by the Admiralty. We see what a sobering effect responsibility has upon the right hon. Member for Epping. What the right hon. Gentleman says when he is sitting on the Front Bench is completely different from what he says when he is sitting, fortunately for the welfare of the country, on this bench. I think it is fortunate that the right hon. Gentleman is sitting in his corner seat and not on the Treasury Bench.

I do not think that the politicians will refuse to work the Constitution. I remember when I was in Delhi at the time of the Gandhi Pact that Mr. Gandhi accepted in writing the main principles of this Constitution—Federation, Provincial Autonomy, Responsibility and Safeguards. I admit that there was a proviso that the safeguards should be in the interests of India, and I submit that the safeguards in the Bill are in the interests of India and will never become operative as long as Indian politicians show that they are able to work self government. Self-government is a certainty; the safeguards are mere contingencies. Is it too much to hope that the people of India will not recognise this for the great and generous gift it is? When they read this Debate they may get the impression that our attention is concentrated on the safeguards. That is not so. The great central body of opinion in this country, which is always in power whatever Government is in office, is in favour of taking this step in no mean and niggardly spirit, and its future depends on how the great central body of opinion in India is prepared to accept the gift.

The Government of India Bill is an attempt at a final settlement, an attempt to create conditions by which India can in the end obtain the status of a Dominion. We who support the Bill are sometimes attacked for the apologetic tone we use in its support. I do not use any apologetic tone. I never felt more certain about anything, in all the nicely calculated balance of advantage and disadvantage that shrouds so many of the political problems which we have to decide in this House, than that the Government were taking the right and only course. Diehard proposals in the past have always proved disastrous. They have been proved disastrous by that tribunal from which there is no appeal, the inexorable logic of events. They have been wrong in every problem they have touched throughout history. They were wrong in the case of the American Colonies. They were wrong in the case of Ireland. They were wrong in the case of Ireland most of all. The shadow of Ireland is now over all our debates. It presents the most terrible "if" of history. If only there had been a little generosity in 1886 and 1893 there would have been no surrender in 1921.

What makes the situation so different to-day, and of such hopeful augury for the future of India, is that the great bulk of the Conservative party, instead of being against self-government, is in favour of it. One of its most foremost supporters is the right hon. Member for West Birmingham (Sir A. Chamberlain) whose father took such a decisive part in the rejection of Home Rule over 40 years ago. The right hon. Member for West Birmingham has had the courage to look at what has happened since and to say that if he had one vote which he would undo it is the vote he gave against Home Rule for Ireland. I recall, in closing, the words of Mr. Gladstone when moving the first Home Rule Bill in 1886, when with a prophetic instinct he looked down the vista of the years and said:

1.1 p.m.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Bristol (Mr. Bernays) is always interesting. It is always a pleasure to listen to him and his performance this morning has been no exception to the rule. It is some 10 years ago since my hon. Friend and I first crossed swords in the Oxford University Union on questions of not quite the magnitude we are discussing to-day but questions which, nevertheless, at the time appeared to us to be of great importance. My hon. Friend congratulated the Government on the courage with which they are concentrating on their proposals and running the risk of splitting their own party. I must pay him this compliment, that he himself, despite some personal disadvantage and a break with the party to which he was affiliated, has taken in this House a singularly patriotic and courageous line. But having paid him that compliment I cannot allow him to imagine that I accept without question and denial the various assumptions he has drawn and the various charges he has made against the diehard element in this House. I am not going to attempt to recapitulate the many times in our history when a warning from the Right has been disregarded to the nation's great disadvantage, but I would most earnestly ask him to read again in the pages of the "National Review" what that Prince of Die-Hards and Scholars, Leo Maxse, wrote in warning this country as to what would happen if the German menace was not met and conquered. We emphatically deny that Ireland is not an example which we can cite in support of our case.

My hon. Friend asked where we stood. I have one or two observations to make of a rather novel kind and I do not wish to be drawn into an argument which I had not intended to develop, but I would refer my hon. Friend to the Minority Report issued under the signatures of various members of the Select Committee and ask him to accept from me our view that, with certain slight alterations of detail, it represents the view of those on whose behalf I am speaking. We are democrats in that we accept the democratic sytsem as being the most suitable to the genius of the British people. We are Parliamentarians in that we believe that this country which first fashioned Parliament shows an ability to work it even in the distressing circumstances of the modern world. But, we are neither democrats nor Parliamentarians when we approach the problem of India until the Indian people, by a sense of responsibility, have proved to us that Western institutions of this kind are suitable also to the genius of the East. It is in no sense a reflection on the Indian people. They are not inferior to us. They have a civilisation far older than ours, going back some 4,000 years, and no sensible Indian should regard it as a reflection on his self respect if some of us hold the view that they have not yet established the case that they can work Parliamentary institutions. The speech of my hon. Friend would have been well enough if there was agreement in India on the proposals, but it falls to the ground completely when we read the daily denial, not only on behalf of the Congress party but of Liberals as well, of any intention to work the Constitution in the spirit of partners.

These remarks bring me inevitably to the speech of the right hon. Member for Tamworth (Sir A. Steel-Maitland) who referred to the Anglo-Indian tradition. I feel some hesitation in referring to my right hon. Friend because I was brought up at Oxford in what I hope the Rules of Order will allow me to call the Steel-Maitland tradition. Anybody who has played some part in that university has been confronted on almost every occasion by the athletic, political and academic record of the right hon. Member which it was impossible to emulate. My right hon. Friend said that the test we ought to apply is what is going to be the mentality of the Indian people. Now we are fully prepared to accept that test. We consider that in 1919 an opportunity was given to men of good will in India to prove whether they could work Parliamentary institutions. We had no bias at all against democracy in the East. If they showed ability to work it and a readiness to give and take which is inseparable from Parliamentry life, if there emerged a great body of middle opinion in India essential to Parliamentary institutions, we would be the first to recognise that our fears are groundless and that the Parliamentary institutions of this country are suited to India as well.

The hon. Member for Broxtowe (Mr. Cocks) in a very long speech—it was almost as lengthy as the Bill itself—made some reference to the question of Dominion Status. I am not going to take that up except to say that we do hope very much that the Chancellor of the Duchy, who I understand is to wind up the Debate to-day, will make some statement clearing up the doubts in our mind as to the exact legal implications of this phrase Dominion Status, in the light not only of the Statute of Westminster, but, just as imperative and far more recent, in the light of the observations made by the Secretary of State two days ago. I wish very much that this vital point should be cleared up. While we have no desire whatever to impede the swift progress of Parliamentary business, we are determined to know exactly where we stand before we facilitate any Clauses in the Bill.

We have heard a great many generalisations on the subject of the Government of India Bill, and in the country as a whole, by means of the broadcast, an attempt has been made to educate public opinion. I should be very glad if the Chancellor of the Duchy would answer certain question that I am now going to put to him bearing on a very remarkable broadcast made by Sir George Schuster on the subject of finance in India. Sir George Schuster desired—it was a perfectly proper desire—to show that financial considerations would not prevent Provincial Autonomy and Federation being set up at the same time, but in the course of that speech the late Finance Member made one or two observations, some of which are not strictly accurate and most of which are very incomplete. He started by saying, as a proof of the situation in India: And he added:

The Finance Member when speaking in India deplored discussions on finance being conducted in at atmosphere of unreality. Yet when he came over here and addressed an audience of some millions through the wireless, we claim that he dealt with this matter in an atmosphere of unreality. How differently he spoke in India. There he said: implement all these proposals until the financial position has improved. We should consider those two observations, for they are very significant indeed. It is true that India is resilient. It will be a misfortune if she is not, seeing that her exports have dropped from £245,000,000 on a 10 years' average to £100,000,000. But it is undeniable that most of the central revenue of India is derived from Customs. I would ask the Chancellor of the Duchy how he proposes that a revenue system based in the main on Customs duties can be adapted to a policy of economic nationalism. Sir Malcolm Hailey is perfectly frank about it. He did his best to warn the Committee that they could not count on a very great increase from Customs duties. Secondly, the Secretary of State says, We do not intend to implement these proposals until the financial position has improved. I suggest in all humility to this House that there can be nothing more fatal than to put on the Statute Book a Bill of this magnitude and then to hold it up for purely financial reasons. You will have the fury of politicians in India, who will claim that they have been betrayed, that we are manipulating the financial situation for our advantage.

I suppose that what would probably happen, should this Government unhappily give place at some future date to another, is that that Government will take the risk and will carry out the proposals even if the financial situation has not really improved. They will say to themselves? We cannot afford to stand the bitterness that we seem to have aroused in India; let us hope that everything will smooth out well. These are some of the anomolies inseparable from a federal system. If the Provinces must start financially independent—as they must—and if the revenue of the Provinces is inelastic, where are they to look for fresh money?

I would draw the attention of the House most earnestly to the position of the Army in India. Before I make some brief references to the financial side of the Army in India I would like to say that I imagine a very large number of Members have received private letters from soldiers serving in India, many of them in high commands, deploring the fact that they are generally associated en bloc with the Government's proposals—even by the Lord President of the Council. They maintain, "We are, after all, plain soldiers sent out here to do our duty. We are told to carry out the orders of the Government. We in no sense associate ourselves with these proposals but we have our careers to think of and our responsibility to our families and we cannot, out here, make a public stand against proposals which we deplore."

The Army Estimates in the 1933–34 Budget were about £34,000,000. The total Budget of the whole centre in that year was £58,000,000. The pensions account was £2,500,000; debt interest and reduction represented nearly £12,000,000 so that some £49,000,000 out of the centre Budget of £58,000,000 will be outside the purview of the native Ministers. Many of us have been profoundly impressed by the argument of the Foreign Secretary that you cannot have provincial autonomy without allowing law and order to pass under Indian control. We have accepted willingly the view that if you leave law and order in the hands of a non-elected Minister, you will then concentrate opposition on that reserved department. How much more does that argument apply to the Army under the proposed new Constitution? No less than £49,000,000 out of the £58,000,000 with which the Centre Budget deals may be outside the control of the Indian Ministers.

Is it seriously believed that they are going to facilitate the collection of such large revenues over the spending of which they have no control? It is perfectly obvious that the inevitable result will be non-co-operation at the centre. Though the graphic illustration of non-co-operation given just now by my hon. Friend cannot actually be repeated by the Indian Chancellor, the same result will be achieved on the central stage. In proportion as you reduce the number of reserved subjects you increase the opposition to such subjects as remain reserved. Cannot hon. Members imagine in a few years time, if it has not been possible for the Centre to make a grant, the Indian politician answerable to his electorate saying, "The Noble Lord the Member for Hastings said we wanted £10,000,000 from the Centre to get the Provinces going comfortably but we cannot have that £10,000,000 because they are still spending £34,000,000 on their Army"?

Not £10,000,000.

I apologise to my Noble Friend if I am wrong but I understood that his report was to the effect that £5,000,000 more for the Provinces would enable them to start but that to be really comfortable they would need that increased to some £10,000,000.

No, I reported that I thought 5 crores was the minimum, but that if 7½ crores could be distributed, then the distribution could be on a logical basis. That is rather different from what the hon. Member has said.

I agree with my noble Friend that it is different and I assure him that I am making no attempt to deceive the House but evidently I had fallen into a mistake about the figures. None the less I think he would agree—and I accept his figure—that to enable the Provinces to work comfortably 7½ crores ought to be added to the Provincial income.

What I reported was that if you were to get a scheme of automatic distribution of income it would only work automatically on the basis of 7½ crores. That does not mean to say that I thought that sum necessary for the working of the Provinces as a whole. I do not—at least I did not at that time.

I, of course, accept at once the statement of the noble lord. If the Army is strong enough—and at the moment the Army in India is cut to the bone—to withstand the attacks of the politicians who have collected the revenues for it but are not allowed to control the expenditure, the only other possible new source of income will be taxes in the Provinces and this brings me to my last point. In some ways the most remarkable observation in the broadcast speech of Sir George Schuster was this:

"It is wrong to create the impression that every outlet for expansion is closed and that the only hope is to deprive the Centre of taxes on income."

These may just have been comfortable words designed to allay the growing feeling of alarm among certain sections in this country but, if they mean anything they mean that the Provinces can provide by taxation greatly increased sums of revenue. I think by noble Friend the Member for Hastings will not dispute that after a very full survey he came to the conclusion that the excise on matches was about the only feasible plan at the moment.

That was Federal not Provincial. We came to quite a different conclusion about the Provincial taxes.

The Finance Member when he broadcast that speech threw over the warning put forward by Sir Malcolm Hailey and went back to the very exaggerated statements made before the crisis by Sir Walter Layton at the time of the Simon Report. Sir Walter Layton spoke about a sum of no less than £21,000,000 coming from Provincial taxes for Provincial social services. My hon. Friend who spoke just now quoted very appositely from the writings of Mr. Darling and I am glad to feel that there are some people in his party who have read the works of that excellent civil servant and admirable writer. If more of the people who support the Bill took the trouble to read the words of the rank and file of the Indian Civil Service who are in daily and intimate touch with the peasantry of India I venture to think that they would come to a different conclusion on the subject of Indian Constitutional Reform. It will be remembered that Mr. Darling presented in the form of a diary the results of tours which he made among the peasantry of the Punjab. We often hear it said that this weighty Bill is a reward for military services rendered during the War. My hon. Friend will remember no doubt the chapter in the Simon Report dealing with that question. In the year during which the Foreign Secretary's Commission went out, the Punjab sent 86,000 men to serve in the Army and Bengal did not send a single man.

When we are asked to take account of the contributions which were made during the Great War we should remember that out of a population of 45,000,000 the vast Province of Bengal sent 7,000 soldiers while the Punjab out of a population of 20,000,000 sent a contribution of 350,000 men. I suggest that when we talk about rewards for loyal service to the British Crown in an hour of crisis we ought to remember these relative contributions. Does the hon. Gentleman who referred to Mr. Darling's book recall those passages occurring on almost every page in which Mr. Darling describes what happened when he spoke even to literate Indians and asked them questions as to where they thought Government resided and how scarcely one in fifty went further than to say that it was in the local officers? Does he remember how they spoke to Mr. Darling about the difficulty of selling wheat at 11s. 6d. a quarter and paying 36 per cent. to the moneylenders when they wanted to raise money for local weddings? They killed 34 moneylenders in that Province in one year but there will be plenty left to take over when we withdraw oar own authority.

I earnestly ask Members of the House to read the reports of the 1919 Measure, and particularly some observations made by a right hon. Gentleman who is now in the Cabinet, on that Act. He summed it up in the phrase "Putting the rich man to rule the poor man." In the Punjab Mr. Darling found scarcely anybody who had even heard of the Round Table Conference, and when they were asked about Mr. Gandhi, they said, "It is Gandhi's fault that this great cheapness has come." The Lord President of the Council told us the average Indian goes to his own race for help and advice, but that was answered, I think, yesterday by the hon. Member for Chertsey (Sir A. Boyd-Carpenter). I think there are countless officials in India who, if they had the literary skill, could write books as admirable as that of Mr. Darling which would entirely disprove what I believe to be an unsound fallacy. Burke, who has often been quoted in Indian Debate, once said: had heard of it or knew anything about it, and even they said: "Big men have gone to England for their advantage; for us poor wretches there will be trouble."

It used to be written on the back of Government of India Bills, in the old days before the Conservative party accepted the view that good government is no substitute for self-government:

1.27 p.m.

It is clear that there are many Members of this House who speak with great knowledge and experience of India and its affairs and people. At one time I felt that the discussion of the Second Reading of this Bill should be left to them, but on reflection I have thought that that was not the right one, and I say that for this reason, that every Member of this House must be prepared to share in the responsibility which will attach either to the passage or to the rejection of the Bill and the incalculable consequences which will ensue in either event. Therefore, although I cannot claim any of that exceptional knowledge which is generally, although sometimes erroneously, attributed to specialists, I want to explain my attitude to the Bill and to justify my vote, which will be in favour of the Second Reading. The trouble that confronts the ordinary Member, in so far as any Member of this House can be said to be ordinary, like myself, is that the experts themselves disagree. The experts are not confined to the Conservative party, nor indeed are they confined to this country. They also exist in India. It is true that there are many people here who claim to know India, and it is also true that India claims to know many people here. Unfortunately the people happen to be the same crowd very often, and it is also unfortunate that that claimed knowledge seems to have created suspicion rather than to have aroused sympathy.

There were two considerations with which I approached this Bill. One was the consideration whether this Bill proposed anything which departed from its pledges in a direction which involved unfairness or danger to any of the interests, national, Imperial, or even world interests, which this House might legitimately be expected to protect. As far as the pledges are concerned, there is no doubt about them. They are incorporated in the Preamble to the Bill. I agree that too much importance should not always be associated with the Preamble to a Bill. It is, what it describes itself as being, a Preamble. It might be compared with a Motion to suspend the Eleven o'Clock Rule, or that the Chairman should report Progress and ask leave to sit again, but sometimes importance attaches even to such a Motion. As far as the Act of 1919 is concerned, I remember hearing many of the debates on that Measure, and I can say that special significance attached to the Preamble of that particular Act. In that Act Great Britain, not a mere Government, committed itself to the policy of proceeding towards self-government in India by gradual stages, and that is a pledge which I think this Parliament is bound to honour.

In view of the findings of the Simon Commission and subsequently of the Joint Select Committee, there is no doubt that we have no option but to face the fact that we must take some steps in order to implement that pledge. I gather that even those who oppose this Measure do not quarrel with that statement, and are themselves prepared to admit that a certain degree of provincial autonomy must be granted. If that be true, it seems to me that a great deal of the weight which one would attach to their arguments disappears, because if provincial autonomy is to be granted, two things follow. One is that provincial autonomy must be real, and the second is that if it is to be real, it cannot be granted without some measure of control at the Centre as well. It seems to me that that is the logical conclusion. The noble Lord the Member for Alder-shot (Viscount Wolmer), in a speech which he made last December on these proposals, himself agreed that provincial autonomy must be taken as a step, but he did not agree that the step involved many of the implications which are included in this Bill. It seems to me, however, that the logical conclusion of granting provincial autonomy is that there must be responsibility at the Centre in that respect.

I would like to reinforce the appeals which have been made by speakers from this bench, and by my hon. Friend the Member for North Bristol (Mr. Bernays), that the Government shall reconsider the question of elections. I do not think the provisions which are contained in the Bill with regard to indirect election really fulfil what is required by the logic of the establishment of Provincial Legislatures. I think they ought to face the fact that this system of indirect election does not really meet the situation, and they ought to be prepared to make a change in that respect.

The other question or consideration with which I approached this Bill was: "Is there anything in it which imperils interests which the House ought to protect?" One thing which concerned me very much was the question of the control of the police. I had gathered from speeches which I have read and observations which I have heard that this Measure proposed to hand over the police to a body of subversive influences and destructive control, but I cannot find that in the Bill, and I think the opponents of the Measure have failed to distinguish between control of the police and maintenance of law and order. It is obvious that you cannot set up any Government with legislative powers, if it is to be anything, more than mere machinery of local administration, without giving that Government a great deal of power with regard to the maintenance of law and order. I think that the Bill does that in regard to the future Legislatures but it does not hand over the police to a subversive authority.

The other question which has struck me is that of Lancashire, not because I am in any way associated with that county, but because I was impressed by the arguments that have been adduced by several speakers in regard to conditions which prevail in that county. I cannot find, however, that this Bill has anything to do with the complaints which they put forward. The grievances from which Lancashire is suffering are those which have occurred under the present regime, and I cannot find anything in the Bill which will of necessity add to the economic, financial and industrial difficulties which are facing Lancashire at the present time.

I am rather disappointed at the very scanty reference which is made to education in either the Report of the Joint Select Committee or this Bill. A complaint has often been made that the Indian people have not shown many gifts of either legislation or administration. If there be any truth in that complaint, one of the questions to which the Government should direct their attention is that of education. As far as I can gather from this Bill, that is entirely left for the moment to the Provincial Legislatures, and I think that, with a view to improving the general state of mind and capacity of the masses of India it might be advisable for the Government to include that subject in the appropriate Schedule in order that they may be able to provide for a co-ordination of the essential educational services of the country.

I am not much interested in the dissent that exists in the Conservative party on this Bill. I try to approach it from the point of one who has no prejudices or preconceived ideas in the matter. Having examined it from that point of view with the assistance of the Reports of the Simon Commission and the Joint Select Committee—documents which deserve to be accounted two of the most important State documents that have ever been published in this country—I have definitely come to the conclusion that this is a Bill which we must support in its main essentials. I am not interested in its effects upon a particular party, but I think it is a Bill which everyone who wants to maintain the position and prestige which Great Britain has attained in India ought to support. In view of the commitments which have been made in the past, commitments not based on individual statements of Secretaries of State or Viceroys, but commitments based upon the declared policy of successive Governments of this country, it seems to me that we have no option but to cast our bread upon the waters in this respect. I believe it will return after days, which may be many in number, but which will represent only a very short chapter in a nation's story.

1.40 p.m.

The hon. Member for Broxtowe (Mr. Cocks) said towards the end of his remarks that he should claim on the Committee stage the support of all Members who took the view that I do on some of the proposals, because in our Amendment on the Paper we refer to the welfare of the masses, and that they are referred to in the Amendment of the Opposition which the House is now considering. It is argued by the Opposition that this Bill is wrong, because it would give insufficient opportunity to the mass of the people in India to look after their rights and advancement and would not give them enough votes. If the object of the Amendments to which the hon. Member referred is to extend the franchise among the illiterate peasants of India, I should not agree for a moment that that would be the way in which their rights and advantages were likely to be protected. You cannot get that close association between the Member and the constituency which is necessary to the work of a democratic western form of Parliamentary Government under conditions as they are in India, and we are not likely to do it in the course of many generations.

The principal point to which I want to devote myself is the question of the responsible Federal Government at the Centre. In the Amendment which I and my friends have placed on the Paper that is mentioned as one of the reasons why we should not support the Second Reading of the Bill. It appears in these words, that we are on proof that it is in the interests of the heterogeneous parts that you propose to federate. The second condition is the one that we lay down in our Amendment, that the success of responsible government in the Provinces proves that that form of government at the Centre is a safe experiment. The third is that a workable plan can be devised for recruiting the Central Legislature which will fairly represent the federated parts. None of these three conditions are met in the terms of this Bill. The Secretary of State said in the previous Debate on 10th December, when we were discussing the Motion on Indian Constitutional reform, that the parts it was proposed to federate, that is to say, the Indian States and Provinces in India were no more diverse than those constituting the German Empire. The hon. Member for Broxstowe has already referred to that speech. The right hon. Gentleman added:

The contention of Western Australia is that her pastoral areas, with low population, are swamped by the towns. I venture to think that is exactly what will happen in India. In Clause 6 of the Bill the conditions under which the States are to enter the Federation are very clearly laid down, but so far as my researches into the Bill and the information I have received from those who sat on the Joint Select Committee have carried me, I find no provision for their getting out of the federation. The members of another federation in the British Empire are having to seek a special Act from this Parliament to enable them to secede. Surely we should be wise to put some provisions in this Bill for the States who come in and do not like the experiment to get out. As the Bill is drafted it is not an experiment or a venture in which they are asked to join, but an irrevocable step which they are asked to take.

The next point to which I wish to call attention is that under democracy the majority rules, but under the proposals of the Bill—in Clause 18—the Indian States are to be in a permanent minority both in the Council of State and the Federal Assembly, a minority of 3 to 2 and 2 to 1 respectively. At first the minority in the Council of State may be as great as 3 to 1, which would happen if the States deciding to enter the Federation were only the minimum number to entitle them to 52 seats instead of 104. I would call attention to the fact that all the great cities and the centres of population and all the great industries are centred in British India. We are told that by increasing the voters and by giving this population the forms of western government, the interests of the agricultural population will be looked after. I come to exactly the opposite conclusion. The whole of the power will be given to those who will want to work the taxation, the revenue, the import duties and everything of that kind entirely from the point of view of the centres of the industrial population and not from the point of view of the country at all. Self-government cannot be a reality unless you have nationalities to whom, as an ideal, it has some meaning and who are capable of understanding it and desiring it. It is entirely contrary to the conception of government or Raj in the minds of at least 300,000,000 of the population of British India and the Indian States. To them the Raj is something powerful and remote. They desire it to be just and condusive to their safety and prosperity, and that the representatives of Government in their various district should be friendly to their interests and just.

Sub-section (2) of paragraph 741 of the Summary of the case for Western Australian Secession puts this point extraordinarily clearly. It says:

If the House will permit me, I would like to tell very shortly a most enlightening experience which happend to me only three years ago when I visited one of the Indian States. I do not think there is any harm in saying that it was the State of Cutch. I was driving through the second principal town of that State with the Maharaja, and I asked him what was the division of population in the State between the Hindus and the Moslems. He told me that it was about three Hindus to two Moslems. I said: "How do they get on together? Is there any trouble here?" We had been hearing about communal trouble and riots all over India. He said: "Oh no, not at all. When there is a subject of congratulation they visit each others homes, and in the case of a death or anything of that kind they offer their condolences. I said: "To what do you attribute that peaceful state of affairs?" His answer was "Why not there are no votes here" If you try to give India more votes you will not help matters.

It has been said that there is no comparison with Ireland to be drawn in connection with the present proposals relating to India. Those of us who spent the major part of our political life in fighting Home Rule for Ireland are entitled to remind the House that all the time the Opposition Benches were crowded with, I think it was, 85 representatives from Ireland under the leadership of Mr. John Redmond, when we talked about separa- tion from this country and about republicanism and the rest of it being what we should ultimately have to face, we were always told that we were wrong and that it was merely a neglible minority who were in favour of separation. That was true, yet it has come to pass that the dreads which we expressed at that time were perfectly justified.

We are doing this now, and the only organised party in India is out for complete independence. We have been told to-day that all the trouble about refusing to work the Constitution is simply because we have left out the words "Dominion status" from the Preamble of the Bill. Why do they attach importance to that? Because they believe it gives them the power immediately to secede from the Empire and become independent. If it were not for that, they would not attach any special importance to those words or concentrate the whole of their attention upon them. We are offering this enormous advantage, including a Federation of the vast continent of India, to those heterogeneous bodies, so different from the autocratically governed States and from the great Provinces of British India, and there is no disguising that the very people who are to be asked to work the machine in India are out for complete separation and that the only organised body of political opinion in that country will stop at nothing short of that.

I would now ask the House to consider for a moment the question of the defence of India by British troops under those conditions. What right have you, if you are going to do that, to ask British troops to go to India? What are you going to ask men to fight for when you have already handed over to Indian politicians the whole of the government of India and have said, as the Secretary of State said, that as soon as certain conditions are fulfilled—it may be a matter of opinion as to whether they are not very difficult conditions to fulfil and therefore indicate a very remote period—Dominion status will come, but in the meantime we are to ask our troops not only to defend the frontiers of India but to hold themselves in readiness to risk their lives in order to settle communal disturbances, and matters of that kind, in any part of India. It seems that the position of the British Army in India, with the co-operation only of an Indian- ised native army dependent on posts, railways, telegraphs, roads, communications and police entirely controlled by Indians, and all under the control of the Indian politically-minded classes who are bent on complete separation, is impossible, both in the event of internal disturbance and of invasion.

Some of my hon. Friends may say that we are not going as far as that at present because there are safeguards which give special responsibilities to the Viceroy and the Governor. When I view these safeguards as a whole, and the position of the Viceroy as it will be under this Measure, I am reminded of the simile of an old stage coach. The driver is on the box at the start of a long and difficult hill, and you take the reins away from him and say: "It will be all right, because you have always the brake. You can jam that on if anything goes wrong." The fate of that vehicle with four horses galloping down the hill would be as nothing compared with the attempt on the part of the Governor suddenly to reverse the whole thing, jam on the brake, take this immense power into his hands and, in a moment, convert the government of India from a democracy into an autocracy. I do not believe for one moment that this part of the scheme will bring peace and prosperity to the Indian masses; if I did, I would vote for it. I would remind the House that federation did not prevent civil war in the United States of America on the very question of the right to secede. I think that really the Secretary of State if he wants the great illiterate masses of the Indian people to understand the nature of the gift that he is offering to them in this Bill when it becomes an Act of Parliament, should stamp the Act of Parliament with the figure of the Hindu Goddess Kali—Kali the Destroyer, Kali the Goddess with the sword dripping with blood. I believe that then these illiterate voters would understand the nature of the gift you are offering when you propose to withdraw British control from the Government of India.

2.6 p.m.

In so long a Debate upon so vast a subject, perhaps the best contribution that I can make is to strike at the outset a personal note. I was for 18 years in the harness of the Government of India from 1902. When the then Secretary of State for India—the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham (Sir A. Chamberlain)—resigned his office in 1917, we learned the news with dismay; but had we known the indirect consequences of that act we should have felt the loss even more keenly. In 1919—the next key date in my memory—the Government of India Bill was published, and we in Mesopotamia, where I held a position of some responsibility, followed very closely every move and every instalment of the proceedings and the debates.

We regarded with real alarm, which was shared by the vast majority of our colleagues in India, the steps that were being taken to introduce Western democratic systems into India and the repercussions which they must have in Mesopotamia. I felt bound to oppose the introduction of representative government into the country for which, for the time being, I was responsible. Looking back after 15 years, I now see clearly that, while the system did not give the fruits that its sponsors hoped for, it has not had the evil results which I then prophesied. It has not been followed by the bloodshed which I anticipated would follow; it has not broken down. It has become an oligarchy with, indeed, certain undesirable features, but it has withstood grave strains. It withstood the death of the distinguished monarch under whom it began, and the accession of his son, a young Prince of whom we have high hopes. I feel entitled to draw the moral that those who prophesy woe in India with such certainty are perhaps not on very sound ground.

I recant nothing of what I have said upon the dangers and inconveniences of introducing Western democratic methods into the East, but I am compelled to admit that secular changes and trends of events have occurred of which we are bound to take cognisance. A realistic outlook upon the scene in India must take into consideration a public opinion which has been taught by us to regard these western democratic systems as desirable. There is much in this Bill to afford profound misgiving, but provided that it is regarded as something definite and final, and that it will be the task of the future Government of India to devote itself, not to further political discussions, but to the social reforms which are so urgently needed, I feel, on balance, that these proposals are worth supporting earnestly and with all the influence we can bring to bear to make them a success.

I do not under-estimate the opposition which the Bill itself is incurring in India, but I have seen the very same opposition in Egypt, in Turkey, in Persia, in Mesopotamia, and in other Eastern countries, to constitutions which are now working fairly well. That opposition is bound to arise, and it is apt to be magnified. I do not attach anything like the same importance to Reuter's telegrams announcing differences of opinion in the Congress that I do to those announcing improvements in the crops. We should not discuss this Bill in too great detail or too long. Once we have decided on our course on Second Reading, we had best get through with it quickly.

The following letter was read in this House on the 5th June, 1919, when the other and greater Bill was being discussed: my office in Baghdad, it went far to convince me that we should do well in Mesopotamia, as in India, to go with the stream, and to try to guide events rather than oppose them.

Exactly six months later, on the 5th December, 1919, this House took a decision far more vital even than that which it is asked to take now. The Measure was irrevocable, and, whatever might be said in the Preamble, we knew, as every officer of the Government of India knew, that there could be no turning back. We were bound to go forward from that time on a course to which, however much we might dislike it, we were committed by our own acts.

In view of the very interesting personal statement that the hon. and gallant Gentleman has made, could he tell us why, less than two years ago, he applied for the paid post of chief organiser to the India Defence League, and what it was that caused him to change his opinion in the last two or three months?

I will deal with that question, if I may, in two or three minutes' time. In the meantime, may I continue my argument? Kings who abdicate may be wise or foolish, but there can be no question as to the folly of those who, having abdicated, seek to resume the sceptre. I do not, however, admit that we have abdicated. We are seeking to transfer power into hands—Indian hands—which I believe will prove worthy. The whole question is whether the Bill will enable us to do so. That Indians are capable of exercising the firmness to govern as well as the grace to obey, I have no doubt. I have seen too much of the East not to believe that we may, under a wise system, put power into worthy hands.

But I must sound a note of warning. When the Bill of 1919 was being discussed on Third Reading—and the Debate only occupied one day—the right hon. Gentleman who is now Minister of Agriculture made a speech the words of which I have almost by heart. He said that we were handing over the poor men of India to the rich men, and we must be careful lest we in this House abrogated the powers which we already had to protect the poor against the rich. He went on to say:

I turn now to the Amendment on the Order Paper in the name of the right hon. Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill) and his followers. I do so, first, in no discourtesy to the front Opposition bench, and to their invisible followers—at the moment invisible—but for a personal reason. The hon. and gallant Member for Wycombe (Sir A. Knox) has asked me, without any notice, a question. I will reply. He asked me why, two years ago, I applied for a paid post as Secretary of the India Defence League. The answer is that I did not apply for a paid post. I was asked whether I would care to consider it. I have no records, papers or letters, but I can say that I attended by invitation a meeting at the House of Commons at which certain members of the India Defence League were present. I was asked whether I was prepared to accept the post. I said that I would consider it. The question of pay was not mentioned. I explained at that meeting that while I had considerable sympathy with and confidence in Lord Lloyd, who was present, I should find it difficult to accept the guidance or to follow the views of the right hon. Member for Epping. The matter was carried no further.

May I suggest that no such question ever arose? The right hon. Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill) was most friendly towards the hon. and gallant Member, and himself suggested that he should fight North Hertfordshire.

May, I also intervene as I was present? My recollection exactly follows that of the hon. and gallant Member for Bournemouth (Sir H. Croft).

I can only say that, to the best of my knowledge, that was what I said, and that the question was not, in fact, pursued further. So far as the suggestion that I should apply for a constituency was concerned—and I apologise for being compelled in a Debate on the better government of India to have to discuss such matters—I can only refer the right hon. Gentleman and his followers to a letter which appeared in the "Times" from the Chairman of the Hitchin Conservative Association, in which he assured the public, as he had already assured me, that he had received no references whatever as to my credentials or suitability from the India Defence League from which he had not, in fact, heard, that his Committee had considered my name along with that of other persons, and that I was selected, as he was good enough to assure me, upon the merits of the case, and, as I am free to say now, with an earnest hope that I might not finally commit myself in the matter of India.

Might I ask the hon. and gallant Gentleman whether he ever considered the constituency of North Hertfordshire until I suggested it to him, also with Lord Lloyd's consent?

Again I must apologise to the House. I have no recollection whatever of having had any conversation with the hon. and gallant Member, whom I had not met before. The actual suggestion came from another quarter, and I was entirely in the hands of fate. I can only say this—and with reluctance—that before preparing my election address and my adoption address, I was at pains to show the text to two Members of the India Defence Committee, and to secure their approbation of those documents, explaining I was not prepared to go further. I think the text of the election and adoption addresses must be regarded as excluding any previous communings. With your permission I will leave the matter there. I should be very glad to pursue it elsewhere, should those immediately concerned so desire.

To revert to the question before us. After sitting 18 months in this House listening attentively to the right hon. Gentleman, the Member for Epping and his followers, I realised for the first time that the right hon. Gentleman was no longer the man whom I had so admired, whose career I had followed with such intense interest from the moment I left school. He was not the man who in December, 1905, preferred not to accept Cabinet rank but to take a subordinate position as Under-Secretary for the Colonies in order that he might take a part in the pacification of South Africa. He was not the man who had shown vision and courage at the Admiralty, and with whom, as the Secretary of State for Air, I had been associated, in a subordinate capacity, in devising a system of air control for the Middle East. He was not the man whom I met at Cairo, who, as Secretary of State for the Colonies, was handling Palestine and the Zionist problem with such courage, foresight and vision. I realised as I listened to him that he had suffered a sea change, and it might fairly be said of him as was said of another great orator of this House, that he was one opposed by men of the greatest ability, brilliant writers who found no lack of followers to cry in the streets, "Give us back our eleven days." The head of the opposition was Joseph Scaliger. We have forgotten his objections, but we remember his brilliance, and I hope in time to come we shall remember the right hon. Member for Epping, not for his opposition to this Bill, but for his brilliant achievements in other spheres. I sometimes think, when listening to him that he has been so busy making and writing history that he has had no time to read it.

May I now turn to the Bill itself. Clause 171 is an exceedingly bad example of legislation by reference. It says that a subject may sue the Federation or a Province to the same extent as the Secretary of State might be sued if this Act had not been passed. I look back and find that he may sue and be sued as if the Act of 1858 had not been passed. When I ask distinguished and eminent lawyers what that means, I am told that they do not know. It is not right, in imposing a Constitution on India, to be quite so vague as to the rights of the subject against the Crown.

On a point of Order. Is not that rather a Committee point?

I do not think it is a Committee point, because the whole principle of whether we are or are not to apply the English principle that The King can do no wrong or whether we are to apply the older Oriental rule that every subject may have the right to sue the Crown in the courts. It is a matter of first-class importance and I hope it may be tackled by constitutional lawyers. The number of agents of the Crown in India is greater by far in proportion to the population than in any other eastern country. They are all agents of the Crown and a subject should be able to sue them to a greater extent even than at present. John Milton in his essay "Against Prelaty" likens that Royal prerogative to Samson's locks falling about his God-like shoulders: to give some protection to the subject against them.

The second point must be dealt with in detail in Committee. I do not think that science has at all an adequate status under the Bill. Scientific research is going to do more for India than the Constitution. Scientific research is the very basis of all secular progress, and I am by no means satisfied that in the Bill as it stands, or even in the Report of the Joint Select Committee, there is adequate provision for the co-ordination of research and for the exchange of really first-class men as between this country and India. Research is constantly moving forward on a broad front, and I should like to see some statutory liaison between the federated Government and the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research under the Lord President of the Council. We have a branch of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research in Australia. I should like to see one with interchangeable staffs in India as well.

The third point has relation to the status, the emoluments and pensions of Governors under the new scheme. The Governors will have responsibilities even greater than those that they have at present. They will be men of as great responsibility as the Prime Minister of this country, and it is essential that we should make quite sure their emoluments and their expenses and all the attendant circumstances of their appointment should be such as to make it possible to select men, without regard to their private means, who have been eminent, whether in government or in business or in this House or elsewhere, so as to be able to select the best men without the constant reference to res angusta domi.

I have urged the need for speed. May I urge right hon. Gentlemen on the Opposition bench to consider carefully whether they should not withdraw their opposition to the Bill and let it go through without opposition on Second Reading. Never before in the past hundred years has this House divided upon an India Bill on Second Reading. I have listened to—or read—with the greatest attention every word that has fallen from the lips of Opposition speakers. There is nothing that they desire for the masses that the whole House does not desire. Our first consideration is the welfare of the masses, and we have earnestly striven to improve their lot. No one on these benches would wish to place the masses of India in a less favourable position in the future than in the past. I believe the Bill will do as much for them as any Bill can do.

The only hope for India is the development and the spread of science through education and otherwise, and, finally, a period of rest from politics in which Indians can get down to their own problems. I urge speed. I believe that every month that we spend otherwise than in discussion of the first order will be wasted. In the words of Burke to his constituents in 1788

2.33 p.m.

The House always listens with respect to my hon. Friend who has had such great experience in the East. He talked very much about the scientific point of view. The full purport of that will probably dawn on me later. I do not quite see what it has to do with the situation at present. I was getting rather sorry for him for the personal note that was interjected into the early part of his speech, but that was completely neutralised by his attack on the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill). What the majority of those who support the Government would do without the right hon. Gentleman I do not know. The Secretary of State never starts a speech of any description, whether in this House or elsewhere, without bringing in the right hon. Gentleman, who can take it and who can hand it out, and I am sorry that he is not here now.

I should like to say something about my own position. I believe in the present Government, and it is with the utmost regret that I shall vote against them, as I shall have to do on the Second Reading of the Bill. In great matters like this personal considerations must be subordinated to what we think our national duty. There are Members of the Front Bench who are held in the deepest respect, including the Lord President of the Council, who have appreciated that fact. I have analysed my own feelings from day to day, almost from hour to hour, trying to persuade myself to support the Government. But there is much in the Bill that leaves me in such a position that I could not honestly do so, because I do not feel it to be in the best interests of India or of this country. I believe we are right in mentioning Dominion status as the ultimate goal. In my delves into history—I have not had the advantage of a historical education as so many Members have who speak so eloquently, but I do my bit of reading on quiet nights and find out things—I was very much struck by a statement by Lord Shaftesbury in 1876. He said that the time may come—the Secretary of State will not like tlhis—when:

Just after the War the big step was taken, and, whether we like it or not, it was the commencement of what we may call the present era; the continuation of that education of India to which we set out hands. It beats me why we should be told that this great step should be taken, now, at this moment, not next year or the year after or in two or three years, but now, and that if it is not done at this moment India will be lost and the whole Empire disrupted. I do not see it in that way. I try hard to find out. I hear the opinions of all parties. I listened during recess to all the speeches on the ether—extraordinary speeches, but very few of them about India. One was from the hon. Gentleman for Bodmin (Mr. Isaac Foot). That was a grand speech. He left out the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping, but went for Lord Lloyd, and arrived at a certain moment, when, needless to say—it is hardly necessary for me to tell the House—he brought in Cromwell of all people. I should have thought that Cromwell would have been the last person to bring in to any dispute, question, or arrangement between England, the Colonies or the Dominions. Even now the shadow of Cromwell stands between us and happy feelings with the South of Ireland. He went on, after finishing with Cromwell, to read a sort of sermon which, in a most ingenious manner got rather merged into the marriage service. We were told that this was the opinion of the Liberal party. I said to my wife, "No wonder the Liberal party are three to a thousand. No wonder the Liberal candidates forfeit their deposits if this is the Liberal view." I also listened to the right hon. Member the Leader of the Opposition. There we were rather intrigued as to whether he had not got mixed up with the housing problem. He is always so popular and everybody appreciates him so much. I know that his intentions are always the same and that he wished to do the best he could for the masses of India. I would not criticise him on that score.

I will refer a little more in detail to what I do not like in this Bill. I will not say much about the Princes coming into the Federation, because whether we like it or not they have to make up their own minds. Really what we ought to be doing, instead of wasting so much time on discussion, is to find out whether the Princes will come in or not. Great exception has been taken to the suggestion that any pressure has been put on the Princes, but when you some to such words as "cajolery" and "coercion" it simply means what definition you give these words. There may be a form of moral pressure put on which is not pressure from one point of view but is great pressure on the Princes from the other. The Princes are some of the most firm and loyal adherents of the Crown the Empire possesses, and that despite the fact that many reprimands and disciplinary actions have been neces- sary against individual Princes. The King Emperor has no more loyal servants than the Princes, but the Princes think of the King Emperor through the King Emperor's Government. When that Government gives its opinion it has a very great moral pressure on those Princes. They would have the utmost difficulty in not carrying out the wishes of the King Emperor's Government because I put loyalty first with the Princes as I think everybody would. But surely the second consideration is self-preservation.

Let the House and those who have not studied the question realise in what position we stand with regard to the Princes. Years ago contracts were made—I use the ordinary commercial word which is easier than so many other words—individually with all the Princes and the principal point of the contracts were: First, that we should secure the safety of their frontiers; no more war for the Princes; and, second, that we should secure the legal succession of their heirs, in the East one of the most important things to every ruling Prince. In other words, the two troubles which used to worry the life of most Princes are entirely provided for. If things are not going well in his State we send a Minister to help and even to rule his country. At the present moment there is one Prince who has been sent away from his Dominion for a couple of years. He does not care; he is living on velvet. We send a Minister into the territory to administer it and send him the takings because all the revenue from the state belongs to the Prince and nobody else. He can go away and have a good time and come back in due course. Why should the Princes want to surrender themselves. They would only desire it or agree to surrender if they thought that that same security was not to be forthcoming in the future as it has been in the past.

The third reason on the list why they should come into the Federation is that it will be for the good of India as a whole. I do not think it is necessary to base too much on this claim. India is so vast a country that really the thing is too impossible. Why do we always talk about India. The proper word is the Indian Empire. We discuss the Provinces as if they were Cornwall, Leicestershire or Wiltshire. These are enormous territories and together as big as Europe. We do not talk of Germany and Italy and so on as provinces. There are countries in India just the same as there are in Europe. To say that anyone is coming into the Federation apart from the preservation of his own rights for the sake of the good of the whole of. India, well if hon. Members believe that they will believe anything.

I pass on to the great and most important section of all and that is the question of how the masses are to fare under this proposed new legislation. Nine out of every ten men in India are the peasants living as their ancestors have lived for 10,000 years in India and carrying on in practically the same way with their crude agricultural implements, their cooking pots, and a little cheap cloth with which to clothe themselves. Those are the only things they have to buy, and yet the whole income of India is saddled with taxation on these few things. Therefore, whatever we do in India, it will have to be paid for by these people. The Lord President of the Council made a statement—though I suppose in private conversation we would not differ in the slightest degree—about the native mind turning to persons of their own colour. I think that he might turn to his own colour when it was a question of his domestic life or religion. Naturally he would. In his domestic life and religion there comes a sort of veil which no European can penetrate. When it comes to greater matters, his security and prosperity, I think that the Lord President of the Council has not quite got hold of the right end of the stick. There is every evidence and everything shows that he goes to the nearest white man, white magistrate or white police officer.

I am emboldened in my feelings in this matter by a gentleman, who, I believe, is a relative of the Lord President of the Council, Mr. Rudyard Kipling. I suppose that up to the time of the War the people of this country had taken his evidence as to the ordinary life of the peasant and his relations between what he calls the British Raj in preference to anyone else in the world. Nowadays he is to a certain extent forgotten. I have not heard his name quoted. It is very difficult to put one's thoughts into a few concise, effective words, but I believe that all those stories were right about the simple Indian peasant, when he was in trouble, seeking the district magistrate or the nearest white man, or the nearest police officer, believing that through him he was reaching the King-Emperor or, as it was in those days, the Queen Empress, the mother and ruler of the whole of his destiny. How is the peasant going to fare under the Bill? He has to pay, but is the electoral freedom that he is going to get worth the sacrifice that he will have to make? In my opinion, the greater the electoral freedom he gets, the less his personal freedom will be. Certainly, to the greater extent the native Minister gets power over him, the more will he relax back into a state of slavery and drudgery.

The next point is that of the franchise. One's natural instinct is to say give him the vote, but people must be educated up to the vote. How are they to be educated up to the vote? The first instinct of every native when he gets a vote will be to ask what he will get for it; what is it worth to him as a tangible asset. He must learn if he puts certain people into power what the repercussions are. He must learn that if he returns a good Minister he will get benefits. To get him to realise that several elections will be necessary. He must be able to elect one Minister if he sees good results or to choose another Minister if he realises that the results are not so good. By that means gradually the masses can be educated as to the value of their votes.

We seem to be increasing the number of people who are to get the vote without any suggestion at all as to their qualifications. That is a very dangerous thing. Then we come to the Ministers themselves. The Secretary of State keeps repeating the word "responsibility". I am with him there. There is no one more than myself who values responsibility and what responsibility brings with it. It brings forth traits in a man that one would never have suspected, because one has not given him the opportunity to show them. I realise that, and I agree with the right hon. Gentleman. Where I think a mistake is being made is that the Government do not fully realise that responsibility does not necessarily bring ability with it. You do not choose a man for a responsible post unless he has graduated in other posts and has shown that he can carry himself properly, with a full sense of his duties, and that he can carry out his duties efficiently. My suggestion would be to restrict, if necessary, the sphere of the Minister's duties, and when you have done that, to give him real responsibility, not cloaked responsibility, when every moment other people may step in and over-ride what he is doing. It is rather like a man learning to fly and having alongside him a pilot who has charge of the controls, and he goes all through his life knowing that at any stage the other person can take charge. That is not responsibility. Our policy is to work up slowly and to let the Ministers be educated until they can show that they are capable of carrying out very important tasks.

What would be the position—I think this is very important—if the Princes do not come in? From the Parliamentary point of view that would be very interesting, because the whole of the Bill would go by the board. The Secretary of State says that if the Princes do not come in there will be no Federation. If there is no Federation there cannot be provincial autonomy. If the Princes do not come in we shall have this extraordinary arrangement that it is the Government's policy that will be the standstill do-nothing policy, while the policy of myself and my friends will be, I suppose, the fatuous rushing on to things which would be so dangerous to posterity. The Simon Commission were not asked to consider Federation or any other system of Government from the point of view of bringing the Princes in. Remember what they did say. They said: of the whole House, he had devoted a little time to try and understand our point of view. If he would only do that and realise that the questions that keep us apart are not really so considerable as he imagines, it would be well. It is the absolute blank wall and the absolute failure to realise what we want, that make it necessary for us to oppose the Bill.

We really all want the same thing. It is just a question of how much we should advance, how far we should go. To say that we propose standing still and that we do not propose any measure of advance, is a complete misunderstanding of our position. It is far better that this Bill should eventually go out as the unanimous opinion of these Houses of Parliament, but we have not arrived at that stage yet. We are coming to a very difficult time, the Committee stage, and the Secretary of State has not started off too well. When he made his broadcast he ended by throwing the greatest doubts on our bona-fides in this matter. He deplored the fact that we should take up so much time in the House that might be devoted to other things. In regard to this enormous Bill, which is bigger, I understand, than anything that has ever been put before us previously, he definitely suggested that we were going beyond the ordinary limits in demanding time to discuss every detail.

When the Committee stage comes we shall have a great many Amendments to move, but I can assure the House, so far as I am concerned, and I think I can speak for others in the same group as myself, there will be no Amendments that are obstructive or wrecking. There will not be one Amendment introduced otherwise than for the purpose of strengthening the Bill and helping it in every possible way. I hope that the Amendments will be met in a much kinder spirit than our general situation has been met. It is my most earnest desire, that when we reach the Third Reading, the Bill will have emerged in such a form that, whatever misgivings we may have had, it will go out to India and the world as the considered opinion of all parties and persons in the House.

2.54 p.m.

I have listened to most of the Debate on this Bill and I, like others, hesitate very much to pass any comment on our relations with India. Some of the Members have had the advantage of living in India; some say that they have been born there. I have never been east of Suez and, therefore, I know nothing about India except what I have heard and read. I have, however, no hesitation in supporting the Amendment placed on the Order Paper by the Official Labour Opposition, and I shall endeavour to show that this Bill, in our view, does not meet the situation. The hon. and gallant Member who spoke last has delivered himself of the philosophy of the India Defence League. He said that we should educate people how to vote before giving them the franchise. How on earth can you teach a child to swim without allowing it to enter the water? How are the millions of India to learn how to vote unless you give them the franchise?

It is curious to note how the critics of the Bill show great concern for the welfare of the masses of the Indian people. The amazing argument is put forward, it has been put forward by the hon. and gallant Member, that the Bill, and especially the proposals of the Labour party, will throw the masses of the working classes and peasants into the hands of the rich men of India. As a matter of fact, they have always done their best to keep the political machine of this country in the hands of the rich and, therefore, cannot very well condemn a proposition of that kind. If hon. Members who are talking in this way were Indians themselves they would I am sure prefer to be exploited by their own nationals rather than by foreigners. If I am to be whipped I would prefer to be whipped by my own people rather than by an alien. It seems to me that those who support the policy of the India Defence League are missing one or two important points of this kind.

I am somewhat in agreement with the hon. and gallant Member on the point as to the Princes coming into Federation. We on this side have no illusion as to what may happen when they do. Whilst we agree that the Indian people should govern themselves, should learn the art of government by experience, should learn how to vote by being granted the franchise, the essence of democracy is that nations learn to do right by sometimes doing wrong. It is quite possible that the Indian people, if they secure home rule as we propose, would make many mistakes, but in making mistakes they would learn how to avoid them in the future, as all nations with a democratic system of government have done. With regard to the Princes coming into Federation, we conceive that this might very well prevent the onward march of the masses of the people to a higher standard of life. The Princes, in a Federal Parliament, would naturally not desire to see a higher standard of life among the working people in the Provinces lest they might be compelled to do something to uplift their own workers within their own States.

Let me turn now to the main argument I want to put forward. I repeat that I speak with a great deal of humility on this subject because of my ignorance of India itself. I notice that so far four hon. Members from the County of Lancashire have taken part in the Debate, and although one-tenth of the membership of this House comes from Lancashire it is very surprising to find that the people who have shown the greatest concern about the welfare of the county and its staple cotton industry are the representatives of Epping, Bournemouth, Eastbourne and Chertsey. That is a most amazing thing. Representatives of the South Coast of England at last have begun to take a very deep interest in the welfare of the textile operatives of Lancashire. They might as well know what their organisation is dubbed in Lancashire—it is called "The India Pretence League"—I will repeat—the India Pretence League. The Lancashire textile manufacturers and employés know that they are being used just as a pawn in the quarrel among the Tory party. But their organisation is not making any headway among the hard-headed people of Lancashire, whom I represent.

After all, any hon. Member from the County of Lancashire must be interested in this Indian problem because the textile industry, its prosperity or otherwise, is irretrievably bound up with this Measure. I know of no other commodity of commerce which can be affected for good or ill by this Bill and its contents to such an extent as the textile industry of Lancashire.

Whatever may be thought of the Indianisation of the Army, the Civil Service in India, the powers of the Secretary of State, the Provincial Governors, or the franchise, all these big problems, as far as Lancashire is concerned, fall into insignificance by comparison with what is going to be the outcome of the trade relations between India and Lancashire. That is the point of view of the County of Lancashire, leaving Wavertree out of account for the moment. This comes about because of the very unhappy experience of Lancashire trade in connection with India in the past. It is well known that the export of textile goods from Lancashire to India declined by the year 1930 to about 25 per cent. from the peak period. The silent looms of Lancashire were witness to that, the textile operatives were walking the streets, and then the India Defence League comes along and says, "We must remedy this." They suggest one remedy; we propose another. The hon. Member for Prestwich (Sir N. Sandeman) speaking yesterday let fall a remark which amazed me. He said that we could only get people to buy our commodities if we compelled their respect, meaning by that, I suppose, that the only way to increase the textile export trade of Lancashire is to compel the Indians at the point of the sword to respect our power. I am happy to think that his views as a representative of one of the Lancashire constituencies are the views of an hon. Member crying in the wilderness. I have yet to learn that you can sell any commodity of any kind in any part of the world unless the purchaser of that commodity wants to buy it. You cannot force Indians to purchase Lancashire commodities, although they may be the best in the world.

The remarkable thing about the attitude of those who speak about the trading relationship of Lancashire and India is this. The Customs duties imposed on Lancashire commodities by the Indian Government are imposed by right. It is said that there has been discrimination against us, against our commodities. I should imagine that the Lord President of the Council has been wide enough awake to understand that any discrimination imposed against Lancashire textile goods going into India was employed in a measure in order to wring from this country greater freedom and greater home rule for the Indians themselves. I confess that if I were born and bred in India I would do exactly the same thing, and I should be astonished if any members of the India Defence League would not also follow suit had they been born and bred in India.

Let me pass to another point that ought to be mentioned. We remember, of course, the agitation of Mr. Gandhi. It had a terrible effect on the county of Lancashire. Indeed the effects of the Gandhi agitation and the handloom home production and all its accompaniments are felt in the towns of Lancashire even now. It was a great campaign with disastrous results. But one strange thing transpired, and it ought to be remembered. Even Mr. Gandhi's campaign could not withstand the product of the textile factories in India. The strangest thing of all was that Lancashire textile machine manufacturers and mill-owners not only sent their money and their machinery to Bombay in order to defeat Mr. Gandhi and his agitation, but in some cases they stripped their own mills in Lancashire of machinery and sent it to Bombay and destroyed the trade of Lancashire by manufacturing on the spot the very commodities that Lancashire used to export to India. Consequently they must not blame the Indians for all these dire results.

There are some things that are above party and this is one of them: I am happy to believe that the trade between India and Lancashire is now improving gradually. Unless I am mistaken, the improvement in that trade has come about because the mass of the people in India have been expecting a large step forward by this country granting them greater freedom in self-government. If I understand human nature at all I would say that if the policy of the India Defence League were adopted by this Parliament, or if the Secretary of State accepted the plea just made by an hon. and gallant Gentleman for modification of the Bill on the lines of the India Defence League policy, the next thing would be an automatic decline once again in the exports of textile goods from Lancashire to India.

As a Labour party we are not only interested in trading relationships. We have had Labour Governments here and there may be a Labour Government in India some day. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] That is what the forefathers of hon. Members said about this country a century or so ago. They thought that it was impossible that there should ever be a Labour Government here. We are interested too in the human aspect of this problem—whether the provisions of this Bill will give to the Indian people the means and the methods which they ought to possess in order to raise their standard of life. Let me put the case in this way. It is common knowledge that 90 per cent. of the people of India are illiterate. I have travelled a little and I have met many people who are illiterate. I used to think that the man who could not read and write was necessarily ignorant, but I do not think so now. It is better, of course, that he should be able to read and write. It is better still if he can read and write and speak my native language because that shows him to be a very intelligent man indeed. But it does not follow that a man lacks the power of comprehension and of thinking, merely because he is unable to read or write, and I would not be surprised to find that these millions in India, if they got the vote could exercise it just as intelligently as the British electorate did in 1931!

After all what do we find in this country? We have seen how 25,000,000 enlightened Britishers, all able to read and write, including a very large percentage who have passed through the universities and the secondary schools, can be fooled by hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite. Why then complain about the intelligence of the Indians? Hon. Members who put forward the policy of the India Defence League bemoan the fact that the Indian masses are illiterate. Who is responsible for that? If Germany owned a colony in Africa and if such conditions prevailed in that German colony as are to be found in India I am sure that hon. Members would blame the German Government for the ignorance of the people of that colony. I have heard them taking that view more than once. I am not going to deny that British rule has given the Indians better roads and railways, telegraphs and telephones and all the rest of it, but it does not matter what a Government gives to a people in that way, if a man at the end of it all is expected to work for 9d. a day and keep a family on that. Railways and telephones do not count for much in the lives of people living under those conditions, although they are expected to pay for all these modern facilities.

Let us see what our rule in India has done. I approach the problem from this angle. Whatever the character or political colour of the British Government may be, in the end the people of India must redeem themselves and in redeeming themselves it is probable that they will have to fight their way up to a higher standard, not only against British rule but against the rich men of their own country. That has had to be done in every country in the world, and there is no reason to suppose that it will not have to be done in India as well. Our complaint is that this Bill does not provide for the Indian masses the weapons to enable them to fight, even people of their own nationality if necessary, in order to improve their standards of life. Let me give one illustration. In the Province of Bengal, we are told, only 6d. per head of the population is spent on education, as compared with 4s. 7d. per head on military and police. That is under British rule. In voting for the Amendment which we have placed upon the Paper, I shall be voting in order to give the Indians the opportunity of reversing that figure and, if necessary, of spending 4s. 7d. on education and 6d. on the military and police. Why should that expenditure be in the proportions I have indicated?

Then let us see how Indians and Anglo-Indians fare within this British territory. Two friends of mine, who went to India to inquire into these problems, issued a report. They went on behalf of the Trades Union Congress, and although they thought, as I did, that they knew a lot about the position in India, they did not know that you can have an Indian and a white man from this country working on the railway side by side, doing exactly the same job, working exactly the same number of hours, and turning out exactly the same amount of work, and to and behold, the Indian, because he is an Indian, gets about one-third the wages of the Englishman. If I were an Indian workman, treated in that way, I do not think I would stand that for long, and there is no man in this House, whatever his political colour, who would silently endure those conditions. I am told, too, that on the railways in India, for Englishmen doing exactly the same work as Indians, for the same number of hours, grants-in-aid are made from the Indian Exchequer to educate the children of white people, but not the children of the Indians; and all that under British rule. I say, therefore, that some of us are not at all happy to have it thrown at us that we are responsible for this sort of thing. If those conditions are to be, if they must be, if the Arab is to be paid less than the Jew in Palestine, or the ryot in India is to be paid less than the Englishman, let the responsibility for these differences lie at the doors of the people themselves on the spot. We should not carry it.

I wish the hon. member for Chertsey (Sir A. Boyd-Carpenter) was in his place, because for sheer eloquence I thought that his was the best speech I have heard in the House of Commons for some time. He put forward two or three very remarkable propositions. He said that this Bill means handing over the political machine to a few rich Indians, who are likely to exploit their own kith and kin. How familiar all that sounds in our own land. As a matter of fact, if it were not that we have 65 years of compulsory elementary education behind us and a strong and powerful trade union movement, exactly the same thing about which the hon. member complains in India would still prevail here. When I was a boy in an agricultural community all that the hon. Gentleman said would happen in India was in operation there, and if the hon. Gentleman and his friends had the power and, if I might say so, greater wit and the intelligence, they would still continue to do the same thing to-day within those shores.

Then, he said, that the fellah in Egypt is worse off since we left Egypt to the Egyptians. It was news to me that we had ever left Egypt at all. I was in Egypt twelve months ago, and, just to show the House that the hon. Gentleman is not quite as well informed as he himself thinks, the complaint on all hands was that the Egyptian Government can do absolutely nothing, even for the fellahin, without consulting the British Residency. John Bull has got his hands so tightly on Egypt that we might as well have taken it over and made it into a colony.

Another argument has been employed against Labour's policy. It is a strange one, and I want the House to note it. It is that we should not grant these wide powers because of the political disagreements which prevail among the Indians. That is very remarkable after Wavertree. I would like to see an Indian reading the "Liverpool Post" or the "Manchester Guardian" far away in Delhi trying to find out what happened to the Tory party there. It would be a mental achievement for an Indian to understand exactly what happened at Wavertree and how the right hon. member for Epping can support the National Government here and attack it in the country. The other argument employed is that we cannot give home rule to India because of their religious differences. I have had the privilege of visiting the United States twice. I do not care how many religions there are in India or any other country, I venture to say that there are twice as many in the United States.

But only one language.

They make new religions in the United States almost every week and come over here and expect us to accept them. Every race, creed, caste and religion known to the human race can be found in the United States, and a few additional ones too. That argument will not avail, therefore. Then somebody said that the great continent of India is the brightest jewel in the British Crown. That, of course, means in other language that it is the biggest coin in the Englishman's pocket.

Whatever may be the outcome of this Measure, one thing above all is certain, and I do not think it has been mentioned in this Debate yet. Our Government in 1914 called upon thousands of men in India to come over to Europe for the first time to fight our battles and defeat the Germans. From that stage onwards, there was nothing to prevent Great Britain being compelled sooner or later, to grant that freedom to the Indian people which ought to have been theirs long, long ago.

3.25 p.m.

In an amusing passage in the admirable speech which the Noble Lord the Member for Horsham (Earl Winterton) delivered yesterday, he cast me for the part of a Trappist monk who was about to break his vow of silence this afternoon. It is perfectly true that I have not yet taken part in any Debate during the present Parliament, but I do not feel at all akin to a monk. I feel much more like a man who after a long spell in the tropics finds himself at the Lido which bears the name of my right hon. Friend opposite on a cold January or February morning, longing to swim but forced to break the ice, and I trust that if I am clumsy in my swimming hon. Members will forgive me. I want and have wanted to speak on India for two reasons. First, I have a tale to tell which, in all modesty, I believe that no one else can tell in the House. With my colleagues, none of whom are now in the House, I spent five months on the Indian States Inquiry Commission travelling 10,000 miles through the Indian States, sitting with the Princes and their Ministers and durbars, in consultation, in examination of their financial problems, and therefore I do feel that perhaps I can shed a little light on the circumstances of the States. My second reason is that after the experiences I had in India, after sitting at the Round Table Conference and after sitting with the other pygmies on the Joint Select Committee, I have formed opinions based on convictions just as sincere, held just as sincerely, as those of any other Member in the House, and later I want to make a confession of faith on the Indian problem.

In Clauses 6 and 143 to 147 of the Bill there are set out the methods of accession of the Indian States and the financial provisions which, in effect, carry out the recommendations of the Commission of which I had the honour to be Chairman, which recommendations were fortunately accepted both by British India, by the States, by the Round Table Conference and by the Joint Select Committee and now find themselves in this Bill. The Bill expresses conclusions which have been reached in discussions over a term of years with which the Princes have been associated, and the Princes are not unnaturally interested in the drafting of the Bill, particularly those earlier Clauses—including Clause 6, to which I have referred—which would especially concern them on the question of accession. The Parliamentary programme will, no doubt, necessitate an early discussion in Committee, and I am assuming therefore, and I have no doubt that the States will also assume, that some opportunity will be given, even by delaying the Amendments, for considering the points of substance which the Princes may wish to raise in connection with the Committee stage of the Bill.

I do not believe that anyone in the House, especially any Member sitting on the Conservative Benches, can really approach the question of the future Government of India, unless he takes some account of the historical picture which India presents. For over 100 years the British Government have been pursuing a dual policy; a policy of settlement and administration of British India has gone hand in hand with a policy of closer alliance with the Indian States, until the day came, in 1857, when Lord Canning was able to say:

Hon. Members will understand that in those days the economic development of India had scarcely begun. Only a few hundred miles of railway, to take one example, ran through India; to-day there are 40,000 miles of railway running through India. If a study be made of the map, it will be realised that not only is that true of the great Provinces of India, but that railways are interlaced with the yellow of the Indian States. Going from Bombay to Delhi, one passes through 28 jurisdictions. Every day and every year that has passed, the relations between British India and the States have been growing more close as economic development has continued. The States have given free grants of land to the railways and have ceded jurisdiction, civil and criminal, over the land on which the railways have run. They have taken part in public utility undertakings, such as roads and telegraphs. Therefore, it is clear that in many aspects, especially in the economic life of India, a federal system is almost in being. That is one of the chief things which must strike one about India.

Secondly I would ask this: Is it surprising that the States, and the Indian Princes who have been gradually going through a process of greater association with British India, should feel that they ought to have some voice in deciding the policies upon which the great undertakings have been settled in the past? India changed from a Free Trade country to a tariff country without any real consultation with the Princes, who had no say, though the interests of the internal States like those of the internal Provinces have been gravely jeopardised. The Prince who looked to his population for a comparatively low level of taxation has discovered that the taxable capacity of his subjects has been greatly decreased by the increased cost of living due to the increased price of imported commodities, but he has had no say in the economic policy. Travelling through India and talking in council with Ministers and with the Princes themselves, one found a genuine feeling that the time had arrived—and this is no doubt one of the reasons which led the Princes to make that famous declaration at the Round Table Conference—when, if there was to be a Federation, they must have some responsibility in the shaping of an All-India economic policy.

I wish I had the vocabulary of the right hon. Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill). I should then be able to give a picture of Indian India, through which I had the pleasure and honour of travelling, which would bring to the House, if I could only do it, a far better realisation of the situation in India than I shall be able to do. There seems to be, in certain sections of the House and outside, a desire to use terms almost of superciliousness or patronage in connection with the great Princes of India. Words like "blackmail" and "bribery" are used much too freely in connection with men who are governing their States, and whose ancestors before them were governing their States long before this country had emerged into civilisation. Those men may be different from us, their methods may be different from ours, and you cannot compare one Indian State with another. The loose way in which people talk of the States as though they were a class, and throw them on one side, is all wrong.

I travelled right through India, and visited States of every dynasty. My hon. Friend the Member for Barnstaple (Sir B. Peto) has referred to Travancore. A picture is drawn of Travancore which refers to that State as a backward tract. Why, it had votes for women long before we had them in this country. It has a far higher percentage of literacy than many other parts of the country. It has no communal troubles; there are nearly 3,000,000 Christians out of a population of 5,000,000, and they live a happy, contented, and well educated life. I visited co-educational schools and colleges; I saw the finest women's hospital I have ever seen, staffed entirely by Indian women except for a British matron. To refer to the States as though they were wild, backward tracts is really most offensive, and I should like to enter my protest, as having had the honour of visiting them, against the kind of insinuations which have been far too widely used.

My right hon. Friend does not infer that I made any disparaging remarks with regard to Travancore?

Far from it; I was calling my hon. Friend to my aid.

Would the right hon. Gentleman be good enough to give us a corresponding picture of the conditions that he found in Patiala, Alwar, and Kashmir?

I am perfectly prepared to admit, as I said at the beginning of this part of my speech, that you cannot compare one State with another, but to class all States and throw them on one side as though they were backward places is most unfair.

I am sure that nobody who represents our movement would ever do that.

It was really to those who are associated with the hon. and gallant Member that I was referring. Certain advice has been tendered in the Press, by a Noble Peer and by a collection of people, to the Indian Princes, as to where their duty and their interest lay. Having stayed with them and talked with them, I consider that that is an extremely offensive and impertinent thing to do. They are quite capable of deciding their own destinies without any advice from anyone else.

Including the Viceroy?

The Viceroy is the representative of the Crown, and is guide, philosopher and friend to the Princes, and he is quite entitled, if he holds a view in the position he occupies, to convey that view to them.

Including the Viceroy?

If you were Viceroy, would you refuse it?

The point is whether it was ever legitimate to tender them advice. That was the point to which the right hon. Gentlman was referring, and it is admitted that advice has been freely tendered to them from the most authoritative quarter.

From a quarter and an authority which was based on knowing all the conditions of India, and as a friend and adviser, duly appointed by the Crown. No wonder the Maharaja of Bikaner in his speech used these words the other day:

If I may turn for one moment to the general principles of this Debate, and also give my impressions in regard to this Bill, I may say that I went to India and came back from India, and worked at the Bound Table Conference and the Select Committee, feeling very much in the beginning like many of my hon. Friends in this House, that caution was essential; but I came definitely to the view that the policy which they are now urging upon the House is by far the most dangerous policy that could be suggested for the future government of India. I can quite understand hon. Members, especially the hon. Member for Wycombe (Sir A. Knox), feeling that Parliamentary institutions are a failure in the East, and saying: "Let us go back to the days when we were the father and mother of the people when we governed them." I can quite imagine that. That is a logical policy, but to say that they are prepared to give greater responsibility in the Provinces and leave the Centre unreformed, is to set forces at work in India which would lead to its breaking up altogether. You would be creating the worst of all dyarchies—responsibility at the perimeter and irresponsibility at the centre.

I firmly believe that it is essential for the future of India that Federation should be set up. It is essential for the future of India that the Princes should play their part. We hope, I believe, there is nothing that they have said to lead us to suppose anything else. What was a long view of the picture at the time of the Simon Commission is now a close-up and, when the time comes, I am certain that the Princes will play an inestimable part in the future government of India. They are Indians. We talk of the Princes, quite rightly, as the greatest friends of the Crown. In peace and war their loyalty has never been questioned. Over and above that, they have not only a material interest but a cultural interest in the success of their own people, and when I hear the kind of criticism directed against some Indian States that one hears from Members on the Labour benches, I feel that happiness is not always measured by material prosperity. If they had seen the scenes that I did in the Indian States, they would have realised that, much as we on this side of the world may feel that low wages under our present economic system are a bad thing, there are people in India who would prefer to live under their father and mother as they call their Prince than earn big money under a system which they have never understood. You see it by the migration into the States and the very little emigration out of them.

I believe that the future of British India is simply this. You cannot go back. Even the right hon. Gentleman and his friends say you must go forward. If you are to go forward, go forward with the safety of leaving the Princes to come in in the Centre and do not let the British Indian Provinces create for themselves, as they have already done to a large extent, a national feeling which will become so strong that a weak Centre will never be able to be able to prevent centrifugal force working and India flying to pieces. I say this with great earnestness. I repudiate the suggestion which has been too often made, that it is a bad bargain for British India if the States come into the Federation. It is not, even financially. This is something that the House ought to remember. Many States now are paying for their military forces which are available for internal security and also, through the Customs, for the general defence of India. They are paying twice over. I hope that will be taken into consideration by some Members in the House.

Perhaps I may give some little description of the complications which undoubtedly surround the Princes' entry into Federation. Some States have immunities. Under treaties with the Crown they are enabled to do things which other States are not. They can manufacture salt or enjoy a free issue of some in return for (having suppressed their own manufacture. They have postal immunities, coinage immunities, and various things of that kind. On the other hand, there are States which pay large or small tributes or have ceded territories in return for military protection. I am sure that every hon. Member will agree that it is impossible to set off the immunities of one State against the liabilities of another. Therefore, it was stated in our report that a balance should be struck for each State; that the liability side should be balanced against the credit side, and whichever was the greater the State should have the benefit. That was a simple, and, I believe, a just method of getting justice both for the States, and eventually, if they federated, for the Federal Budget. That is the basis of the Clauses of the Bill to which I have referred.

Before the right hon. Gentleman sits down, may I venture most respectfully to ask him to tell us when an answer will be given on the legal aspects of the Statute of Westminster and Dominion status?

I understand on Monday.

Will the right hon. Gentleman answer one or two of the points put forward from the Opposition?

That is not done in these Debates.

As far as the right hon. Gentleman is concerned, I believe that the Attorney-General is going to deal with it early on Monday. There were several points raised by the Opposition, but, if the hon. Member will excuse me, I ask his indulgence on this occasion. I shall be more effective next time. I have to conclude my observations. To return for a moment to the States, I should like the House to appreciate that the Indian States really represent Indian interests. Out of the States, British India was carved, and when critics outside and inside the House refer to the fact that the Indian States are backward and that their civilisation is not up to the level of British India, they must not forget that they have an indigenous form of Government in India.

May I make this appeal to my hon. Friends who differ from us on this side. I have put forward my case, perhaps very inadequately, but I feel most sincerely and deeply at heart. I have come to the view which I have expressed of the vital necessity of a strong central Government out of a conviction and from prolonged study of the question, both in India and here. I do not pretend to be an advocate or to practice the art of advocacy, but I feel most sincerely that if we are to keep India we must give freedom with safeguards. We must associate the Indian Princes with an All-India Federation, because without them nobody can talk of a united India. That unity is probably the greatest gift we have given. A national consciousness has arisen not only in British India, but in the States. If we are to lead that consciousness down the right road within the Empire, with all India taking part in an All-India policy of the regeneration and uplifting of the people, there is no possible hope in the adoption of the policy of my hon. Friends, but only the one certainty, and that is that India will be lost to us in a generation.

3.55 p.m.

The right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down apologised to the House for the inadequacy of his presentation of his case. I think the House will agree with me that such apology was quite unnecessary, and that he need have offered no apology to the House except for the silence which he, the Trappist, has so long observed. Nothing could be more false or mischievous than the idea that we are under some pledge to establish in India the system of government that is contained in this Bill. Men talk as though the proposed system were something deserved by India, or some gift that we have promised to her. For the prevalence of this idea I believe that in great part Ministers are themselves responsible. They have habitually used language of great inaccuracy that has produced a confusion of ideas, which has been fostered both in India and in this country by interested persons in order to obtain approval of their own proposals. The Round Table Conference itself has much to answer for. There arguments were overborn by speeches and rhetoric. Perorations were elevated to the rank of declarations of State policy. Mr. Gandhi himself said, in the Conference:

"We have never really come to grips. I have felt, 'Why are we not coming nearer and nearer together and why are we wasting our time in eloquence, in oratory, in debating, and in scoring points?'"

When the Round Table Conference began Parliament had not expressed its mind in regard to the form that constitutional development in India would take in its next stage. And yet from the beginning of the Conference language was used which carried the widest implications, but which Parliament had had no opportunity to consider, and which in the constitutional point of view was of no force or effect whatever. We seem to have forgotten that we are dealing in great part with Hindus, men of infinite subtlety of mind, men who will extract the utmost meaning from every syllable that a man uses, and will hold him to the performance of the last particle of that meaning. There is no question here of pledges, or of promises, but only of policy. In the Preamble to the Act of 1919 the word "policy" occurs twice, but the word "pledge" does not appear at all. A pledge is a promise; a declaration of policy is not a promise, but a statement of opinion. A promise is morally binding: an opinion is not so. One affects the will, the other the mind. You cannot break a promise without breach of faith. There is no breach of faith in a change of opinion. I insist upon this distinction, not because it is the desire of my hon. Friends and myself to advocate any change of policy. We desire not that Parliament should abandon the policy laid down in the Preamble to the Act—

It being Four of the Clock, the Debate stood adjourned.

Debate to be resumed upon Monday next.

The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.

Whereupon Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House, without Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 2.

Adjourned at One Minute after Four o'Clock until Monday next, 11th February.