George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston Quotes

Ever since the great Civil War there has hardly been a rebellion or insurrection in any part of the world of a minority either suffering or fearing oppression which has not been encouraged by members of the Liberal Party in England. They have constituted themselves the international champions of the right of insurrection. They have made us the busybodies, and I suppose foreigners would say the political Pecksniffs, of the world. When Parliament and the Puritans rebelled against the King, when the American Colonies revolted, when the French Revolution broke out—in every case of an insurrectionary movement in the small States of Europe, whether it was Italy, or Greece, or Poland, or Hungary, or to go further afield, Armenia, or the Balkans, or the Sudan, always on the other side we have had sympathy with the minority which was rising against the majority, and we remember one case where a people were actually fighting against us, and we were told that they were persons rightly struggling to be free. Yet when Ulster proposes to do exactly the same thing, simply because it does not fit in with your policy, you accuse them of the wickedness of plunging the country into civil war.

The British Government are fortunately exempt from any such promptings, either of religious fanaticism, of restless vanity, or of dynastic and personal pride. But in proportion as they have been unassailed by such temptations, so is their responsibility the greater for inaugurating a new era and for displaying that tolerant and enlightened respect to the treasures of all which is one of the main lessons that the returning West has been able to teach to the East.

Never let it be forgotten that the result of the Mutiny was not merely an England victorious, but an India pacified, united, and started once more upon a wondrous career of advance and expansion.

India was "the land not only of romance but of obligation." Curzon told members of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce at a dinner in 1903, "If I thought it were all for nothing, and that you and I ... were simply writing inscriptions on the sand to be washed out by the next tide, if I felt that we were not working here for the good of India in obedience to a higher law and to a nobler aim, then I would see the link that holds England and India together severed without a sigh. But it is because I believe in the future of this country, and in the capacity of our own race to guide it to goals that it has never hitherto attained, that I keep courage and press forward."47

The entire civilized world is concerned in the preservation of the beauty-spots of England. Every year more and more the travelling public of Europe and America are drawn to this country. They come here, not merely for the pleasure of crossing the Channel and seeing the white cliffs of Kent, nor in order to visit the theatres and music-halls of London, or to lose their money at the Derby. They are tempted hither to see the beautiful old-time villages, the mediæval mansions, the little village churches, with their sacred tale of bygone history and romance. And, above all, they come to see the unequalled country scenery of England. Let us not sacrifice that which is so priceless a possession to the nation.

The race of India branched out and multiplied into that of the great Indo-European family. . . . The Aryans, at a period as yet undetermined, advanced towards and invaded the countries to the west and north- west of India, [and] conquered the various tribes who occupied the land... They must have imposed their religion, institutions, and language, which later obliterated nearly all the traces of the former non-Aryan language, or languages, of the conquered tribes.

Never sacrifice a subject interest—that is, the interest of a subject dependency or possession—to exclusively British interests. Do not force upon your dependencies a policy which may be distasteful or unsuitable to them, merely because it is advantageous to yourselves. The meaning of empire is not to impose on dependencies the will of the Mother Country or master power, but to effect a harmonious co-ordination of the interests of the whole.

I suppose that to the bulk of Englishmen present today the Indian Mutiny of 1857 is already a tradition, rather than a memory. It happened before many of us were born. Already it is receding into the dim corridors of the past, and is surrounded with an almost mystic halo as one of the great national epics of our race. But to all of us, young or old, it is one of the combined tragedies and glories of the British nation—a tragedy because there were concentrated into those terrible months the agony and the suffering almost of centuries; a glory because great names leaped to light, high and ennobling deeds were done, and best of all, and most enduring of all, there sprang from all that havoc and disaster the majestic fabric of an India united under a single Crown, governed as we have tried to govern it, and are still trying to govern it, by the principles of justice, truth, and righteousness—a spectacle which, if the entire Empire were to shrivel up to-morrow like a scroll in the fire, would still be a supreme vindication of its existence and its accomplishment in the history of mankind.

India must always remain a constellation rather than a country, a congeries of races rather than a single nation. But we are creating ties of unity among those widely diversified peoples, we are consolidating those vast and outspread territories, and, what is more important, we are going forward instead of backward. It is not a stationary, a retrograde, a downtrodden, or an impoverished India that I have been governing for the past five and a half years. Poverty there is in abundance. I defy any one to show me a great and populous city, where it does not exist. Misery and destitution there are. The question is not whether they exist, but whether they are growing more or growing less. In India, where you deal with so vast a canvas, I daresay the lights and shades of human experience are more vivid and more dramatic than elsewhere. But if you compare the India of today with the India of any previous period of history-the India of Alexander, of Asoka, of Akbar, or of Aurangzeb-you will find greater peace and tranquillity, more widely suffused comfort and contentment, superior justice and humanity, and higher standards of material well-being, than that great dependency has ever previously attained."

In our attitude towards birds we were not far removed from a barbarian age. We allowed our boys to despoil birds' nests of their eggs; we still kept captive most beautiful objects of God's creation which were never intended for imprisonment; and we allowed gamekeepers to kill owls and also the kingfisher, the most exquisite bird that could be seen on the streams of this country, because it was supposed to devour juvenile trout. If a rare bird, a bittern or a buzzard, appeared in any neighbourhood, no effort was made for its protection. On the contrary, it was slaughtered by a local sportsman, who wrote to the local journal to boast of his "glorious" achievement.

Above all we must remember that the ways of Orientals are not our ways, nor their thoughts our thoughts. Often when we think them backward and stupid, they think us meddlesome and absurd. The loom of time moves slowly with them, and they care not for high pressure and the roaring of the wheels. Our system may be good for us; but it is neither equally, nor altogether good for them. Satan found it better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven: and the normal Asiatic would sooner be misgoverned by Asiatics than well governed by Europeans.

How was it proposed to get rid of the existing majority of Mussulman inhabitants and to introduce the Jews in their place? How many would be willing to return and in what pursuits would they engage? To secure for the Jews already in Palestine equal civil and religious rights seemed to him a better policy than to aim at repatriation on a large scale. He regarded the latter as sentimental idealism, which would never be realised, and that His Majesty's Government should have nothing to do with.

It is not one, I think, of which we have any cause to be ashamed. We have endeavoured to exercise a steadying and moderating influence in the politics of the world, and I think and hope that we have conveyed not merely the impression, but the conviction that, whatever other Governments or countries may do, the British Government is never untrue to its word, is never disloyal to its colleagues or its allies, never does anything underhand or mean; and if this conviction be widespread, as I believe it to be, that is the real basis of the moral authority which the British Empire has long exerted and, I believe, will long continue to exert in the affairs of mankind.

It seems likely that 1914 will be the most momentous year in modern British politics. For, unless a solution of the Irish problem be found that is acceptable to both parties—and this, though all favour it in the abstract, may well be found impossible—we shall be confronted with the greatest catastrophe that will have befallen the United Kingdom for 250 years—viz., the prospect of civil war. We feel that the responsibility for this disaster will rest exclusively with those who have not yet consulted the people on their Irish proposals, and decline to do so now. Our duty, the duty of every Primrose Leaguer, is clear. It is to support those who are so bravely fighting the battle of the Union in Ireland, and to insist that the last word on the Home Rule Bill shall be spoken, as it always has been spoken before, by the British democracy.

I have said that the people are shamefully ill-educated. I have shown that they live in an atmosphere of corruption. Civilisation will not be popular until it is taught in the schools. Respect for law, regard for contract, or faith in honesty will not be generated until the institutions by which they can be safeguarded have been called into being. This will be a work of time; but in due time it will come.