i 9 2 FAREWELL BANQUET 



promoting the progress of India and not retarding 

 it. India, with its age-long traditions and its 

 store-house of treasures to be preserved for man- 

 kind at large, is not like a small South American 

 Republic where a violent revolution is a kind of 

 hot- weather relaxation. Stability and settlement 

 in this country mean everything. India, with all 

 the memories of the pillage and rapine of the 

 eighteenth century behind her, cannot afford to 

 go back to a time of unsettlement and anarchy. 

 Every year of settlement and peace is a year to 

 the good: it makes for Indian unity, Indian soli- 

 darity, and Indian prosperity: it affords a means 

 by which India may give out her own great intel- 

 lectual and spiritual treasures to the world. 

 But let anarchy once come in; let hasty steps in 

 government be taken which may lead to anarchy : 

 let the present steady but slow progress be inter- 

 rupted, and then no one can tell in this vast 

 continent whether the spark once kindled may 

 not light a vast and awful conflagration. In 

 India we are not dealing with an insignificant 

 country where a false step or a hasty experiment 

 may be easily rectified. We are dealing with one- 

 fifth of the human race; and, therefore, for the 

 sake of the peace of mankind, for the sake of the 

 prosperity of mankind, for the sake of the higher 

 intellectual welfare of mankind we must move 

 slowly; we must give no countenance to anything 

 which will lead to anarchy or even to revolution; 

 we must set our hopes wholly and solely on steady 

 and ordered progress. 



For this reason, therefore, I believe with all 

 my heart that this quality of political circum- 

 spection in our rule, corresponding with our 

 somewhat English temperament, is a blessing 

 to India at the present time and not a curse. I 

 know how galling it must be at times to some of the 



