ABSTRACT
The motive which led the British to set the freedom of India before themselves as a goal may perhaps best be described as a sense of decency. The cynic is without eyes. In the same individual opposite motives work. It is perhaps impossible to find any human virtue which has not some alloy of baser motive, and in the most degraded there may suddenly be shoots of strange and beautiful goodness. The mistake of Indians in supposing that the love of domination is a motive of British policy is easily understandable, because they do actually see this motive operative in a certain number of the less educated men and women of pure, or of mixed, British race to be met with in India. The self-regarding motives take the start and the moral motives lag behind, but it may well be with the moral motives that the ultimate victory lies.
