ABSTRACT
Look at the facts of the case. Western nations as soon as they emerge into history show the beginnings of those capacities for self-government, not always associated, I grant, with all the virtues or all the merits, but still having merits of their own. Nations of the West have shown those virtues from their beginning, from the very tribal origin of which we have first knowledge. You may look through the whole history of the Orientals in what is called, broadly speaking, the East, and you never find traces of self-government. All their great centuries-and they have been very greathave been passed under despotisms, under absolute government. All their great contributions to civilisation-and they have been greathave been made under that form of government. Conqueror has succeeded conqueror; one domination has followed another; but never in all the revolutions of fate and fortune have you seen one of those nations of its own motion establish what we, from a Western point of view, call selfgovernment. That is the fact. It is not a question of superiority or inferiority. I suppose a true Eastern sage would say that the working government which we have taken upon ourselves in Egypt and elsewhere is not a work worthy of a philosopherthat it is the dirty work, the inferior work, of carrying on the necessary labour. Do let us put this
question of superiority and inferiority out of our minds. It is wholly out of place. [. . .]
The point I am trying to press on the House is this. We have got, as I think, to deal with nations who, as far as our knowledge goes, have always been governed in the manner we call absolute, and have never had what we are accustomed to call free institutions or self-government. They have never had it; they have never, apparently, desired it. There is no evidence that until we indoctrinated them with the political philosophy, not always very profound, which has been in fashion in this country, they ever had the desire or the ambition which the hon[orable] Member opposite very naturally and properly wishes that they should have. The time may come when they will adopt, not merely our superficial philosophy, but our genuine practice. But after 3,000, 4,000, or 5,000 years of known history, and unlimited centuries of unknown history have been passed by these nations under a different system, it is not thirty years of British rule which is going to alter the character bred into them by this immemorial tradition.
