BY BIPIN CHANDRA PAL CALCUTTA : BANNERJEE, DAS & Co., BOOK-SELLERS & PUBLISHERS, All right reserved. Responsible Government. INDIA AND THE EMPIRE. (Delivered in the Rif-i-am, Lucknow on the 25th Oct. 1916, with Nawab Zulkadir Jung as president.) MR. CHAIRMAN, LADIES & GENTLEMEN, I thank you very much, Sir, for the very kind way in which you have introduced me to this meeting. It is nearly a quarter of a century since I last came to your historic city. In the fearful days of 1907 to 1909 you narrowly escaped a visitation from me. I came as far as Allahabad, was asked to come to Lucknow, but my engagements in Calcutta saved you then. On the present occasion, I came really on a strictly private visit; and when I left Calcutta, practically on a holiday tour, I did not expect that I would be honoured with so many invitations from different sections of the Lucknow public to address them upon different topics-least of all did I expect that you would ask me to address you upon a political subject. I thank you for the invitation, and I thank you, Sir, particularly for consenting to take the chair at this meeting. It, if I may say so, places the hall mark of respectable politics upon me. (laughter.) THE LATE MR. GANGAPRASAD VARMA. Thinking of Lucknow of 25,-strictly speaking, 23 years ago, I am reminded of one, whom you must miss almost from day to day in all your public activities. I refer to my dear friend, my old friend, Mr. Ganga Prasad Varma. I knew him as Mr. Ganga Prasad Varma and so I still like to call him Mr. Ganga Prasad instead of what he became later onRai Bahadur Ganga Prasad Varma. I have missed him very much almost every day that I have been here; one thing or another has called to my mind the recollections of the last yisit when I had the honour of being his guest, and we spent together, I think nearly a fortnight discussing various public questions, political, social, and religious. But in the will of Providence he has been taken away from you, but his work lives behind him and in the opening out of your congested city, in the many parks and, if I mistake not, so far as my information goes, in the model houses, the spirit, the enthusiasm, the civic idealism and the self-sacrifice of Mr. Ganga Prasad Varma still live in your minds. I hope and trust the younger generation will try to emulate his public spirit, his selfsacrifice, and follow the way that he has laid down. for the service of their city. JINGO-IMPERIALISM. Now, coming to the subject before us to-night— India and the Empire. The word empire was not a favoured word with radical politicians in England, not to mention the Independent labourites and socialists, who all fought shy of the word empire. In the 19th century, even during the closing years of it, we had an idea of empire presented to us which really could not appeal to broad-minded politicians, much less could it appeal to the lovers of universal humanity. The Imperialist ideal of the closing years of the 19th century-the imperialist ideal not only of the Toły politicians, but even of some of the Liberals in England, and even across the waters, in America, -the imperialism of the closing years of the 19th century, when they had the Spanish American war, and the annexation of the Phillipines, in America ; and when they had the Boer war in great Britain, and when there was growing up a new party even among British Liberals, who called themselves Liberal Imperialists, a party then of six, which dwindled to a party of two and three later on, and in those days the ideal of imperialism that seemed to have inspired these politicians on both sides of the Atlantic, did not commend itself to large-minded statesmen and |