any vital questions an attitude of increased
independence towards the Imperial Government. The more we are determined
to govern India in accordance with Indian ideas and with Indian
interests, the more we must rely upon a strong, intelligent, and
self-reliant Government of India. The peculiar conditions of India
exclude the possibility of Indian self-government on colonial lines, but
what we may, and probably must, look forward to at no distant date is
that, with the larger share in legislation and administration secured to
Indians by such measures as the Indian Councils Act, the Government of
India will speak with growing authority as the exponent of the best
Indian opinion within the limits compatible with the maintenance of
British rule, and that its voice will therefore ultimately carry
scarcely less weight at home in the determination of Indian policy than
the voice of our self-governing Dominions already carries in all
questions concerning their internal development.

The future of India lies in the greatest possible decentralization in
India subject to the general, but unmeddlesome, control of the
Governor-General in Council, and in the greatest possible freedom of the
Government of India from all interference from home, except in regard to
those broad principles of policy which it must always rest with the
Imperial Government, represented by the Secretary of State in Council,
to determine. It is only in that way that, to use one of Mr. Montagu's
phrases, we can hope successfully to "yoke" to our own "democratic"
system "a Government so complex and irresponsible to the peoples which
it governs as the Government of India."

CHAPTER XXVII.

CONCLUSIONS.

No Viceroy has for fifty years gone out to India at so critical a moment
as that at which Lord Hardinge of Penshurst is about to take up the
reins of government. In one respect only is he more favoured than most
of his predecessors. The Anglo-Russian agreement, of which he himself
helped to lay the foundations when he was Ambassador at St. Petersburg,
has removed the greatest of all the dangers that threatened the external
security of India and the peace of Central Asia during the greater part
of the nineteenth century. It does not, however, follow that the
Government of India can look forward with absolute confidence to
continued immunity from all external troubles. Save for the Tibetan
expedition and one or two small punitive expeditions against Patha