metimes seemed slow; but the incorporation of
many strangely diversified communities, and of some three hundred
millions of the human race, under British guidance and control has
proceeded steadfastly and without pause. We survey our labours of the
past half century with clear gaze and good conscience.

Difficulties such as attend all human rule in every age and place,
have risen up from day to day. They have been faced by the servants
of the British Crown with toil and courage and patience, with deep
counsel and a resolution that has never faltered nor shaken. If errors
have occurred, the agents of my government have spared no pains and no
self-sacrifice to correct them; if abuses have been proved, vigorous
hands have laboured to apply a remedy.

No secret of empire can avert the scourge of drought and plague, but
experienced administrators have done all that skill and devotion are
capable of doing, to mitigate those dire calamities of Nature. For
a longer period than was ever known in your land before, you have
escaped the dire calamities of War within your borders. Internal peace
has been unbroken.

In the great charter of 1858 Queen Victoria gave you noble assurance
of her earnest desire to stimulate the peaceful industry of India, to
promote works of public utility and improvement, and to administer the
government for the benefit of all resident therein. The schemes that
have been diligently framed and executed for promoting your material
convenience and advance--schemes unsurpassed in their magnitude and
their boldness--bear witness before the world to the zeal with which
that benignant promise has been fulfilled.

The rights and privileges of the Feudatory Princes and Ruling Chiefs
have been respected, preserved, and guarded; and the loyalty of their
allegiance has been unswerving. No man among my subjects has been
favoured, molested, or disquieted, by reason of his religious belief
or worship. All men have enjoyed protection of the law. The law itself
has been administered without disrespect to creed or caste, or to
usages and ideas rooted in your civilisation. It has been simplified
in form, and its machinery adjusted to the requirements of ancient
communities slowly entering a new world.

The charge confided to my Government concerns the destinies of
countless multitudes of men now and for ages to come; and it is a
paramount duty to repress with a stern arm guilty conspiracies that
have no just cause and