ABSTRACT
There are, I suppose, not many reflecting persons who will maintain that our occupation of India, as we hold it, can be of a permanent, character. The emancipation of India has become inevitable ever since a system of English education was established and the principle of political equality accepted. The great upheaval which has revolutionised all departments of Indian thought, inspired the aspirations of diverse communities, and infused the sense of nationality throughout a vast and surging empire, can only find its peaceful fulfilment in the wise and prescient recognition of changes imminent in the situation which the British Government itself has created. The Right Honourable Mountstuart Elphinstone wrote, as long ago as 1850:—
I conceive that the administration of all the departments of a great country by a small number of 211foreign visitors, in a state of isolation produced by a difference in religion, ideas, and manners, which cuts them off from all intimate communion with the people, can never be contemplated as a permanent state of things. I conceive also that the progress of education among the natives renders such a scheme impracticable, even if it were otherwise free from objection. It might, perhaps, have once been possible to have retained the natives in a subordinate condition (at the expense of national justice and honour) by studiously repressing their spirit and discouraging their progress in knowledge; but we are now doing our best to raise them in all mental qualities to a level with ourselves, and to instil into them the liberal opinions in government and policy which have long prevailed in this country, and it is vain to endeavour to rule them on principles only suited to a slavish and ignorant population.
