ill-will against any single administrator, much less can I have any disaffection towards the King’s person.  But I hold it to be a virtue to be disaffected towards a Government which in its totality has done more harm to India than any previous system.  India is less manly under the British rule than she ever was before.  Holding such a belief, I consider it to be a sin to have affection for the system.  And it has been a precious privilege for me to be able to write what I have in the various articles tendered in evidence against me.

In fact I believe that I have rendered a service to India and England by showing in non-co-operation the way out of the unnatural state in which both are living.  In my humble opinion, non-co-operation with evil is as much a duty as is co-operation with good.  But in the past, non-co-operation has been deliberately expressed in violence to the evil doer.  I am endeavouring to show to my countrymen that violent non-co-operation only multiplies evil and that as evil can only be sustained by violence, withdrawal of support of evil requires complete abstention from violence.  Non-violent implies voluntary submission to the penalty for non-co-operation with evil.  I am here, therefore, to invite and submit cheerfully to the highest penalty that can he inflicted upon me for what in law is a deliberate crime and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen.  The only course open to you, the Judge and the Assessors, is either to resign your posts and thus dissociate yourselves from evil if you feel that the law you are called upon to administer is an evil and that in reality I am innocent, or to inflict on me the severest penalty if you believe that the system and the law you are assisting to administer are good for the people of this country and that my activity is therefore injurious to the public weal.

M. K. GHANDI.