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A great deal, indeed, depends upon the personality of the Secretary of State for India. The policy pursued in relation to India is dominated by his personal character and his personal sympathies, and is only partially moulded by the general drift of the policy of the party to which he belongs. Each minister is more or less supreme in his department, subject to the public opinion of the country as reflected in the prevailing tendencies of Parliament. That is our reading of the situation. It was Lord Derby, a Conservative Secretary of State, who gave us the great Proclamation of 1858. It was Sir Stafford Northcote (afterwards Earl Iddesleigh) who founded the State scholarships for the encouragement of Indian students seeking to complete their education in England. It was again a Liberal Secretary of State, the Duke of Argyll, who abolished them. It was a Conservative ministry that laid the beginnings of popular representation by giving us the reformed and expanded Legislative Councils under the Parliamentary Statute of 1892. Latterly, however, the Liberal party have really tried to be more or less true to their principles in the Government of India, and the most notable illustration of this view is afforded by Lord Morley’s Reform Scheme of 1909, the modification of the Partition of Bengal, and the pledge of provincial autonomy given by the Despatch of August 25, 1911.

Lord Salisbury’s regime as Secretary of State for India was distinctly reactionary. He was responsible for sending out to India as Viceroy, Lord Lytton, of whom the Marquis of Hartington (afterwards Duke of Devonshire) said, from his place in Parliament, that he was the very reverse of what an Indian Viceroy should be. His son, however, the present Lord Lytton, Governor of Bengal, is a ruler of a different type. Professing to be a Conservative, he is really an advanced Democrat, with genuine sympathy for Indian aspirations. Many years later, in the nineties of the last century, Lord Salisbury, when Prime Minister, sent out Lord Curzon, and the story of his viceroyalty is one that all the ingenuity of Mr. Lovat Fraser of The Times has failed to whitewash.

But I am, perhaps, anticipating coming events. I have already referred to the reduction of the limit of age for the Indian Civil Service and the agitation to which it gave rise. Lord Salisbury’s Viceroy, Lord Lytton, gagged the Vernacular Press, and disarmed the population of British India. These two measures, the Arms Act and the Vernacular Press Act provoked widespread agitation, in which I took my humble share.