are more frequent and severe than in former dynasties,
is the outstanding instance of the rank growth.
Neither the allegation of greater poverty nor the
causes of the acknowledged low standard of living
have been studied except in the fashion of party politicians.
Another of the ideas, as widely current, is that every
ton of rice or wheat exported is an injury to the
poor. A third is that the payments made in Britain
by the Government of India are virtually tribute,
meanly exacted, instead of honest payment for cash
received and for services rendered. Again, what
can be the remedy? In the early part of the nineteenth
century, the Foreign Mission Committee of the Church
of Scotland objected to Dr. Duff, their missionary,
teaching Political Economy in the Church’s Mission
College, the General Assembly’s Institution,
Calcutta. They feared lest the East India Company
would deem it an interference in politics.[46] In
1897, after the Tilak case already referred to, the
writer on Indian affairs in The Times complained
of the teaching of historical half-truths and untruths
in Indian schools and colleges, instancing the partisan
writings of Burke and Macaulay, and many Indian text-books
full of glaring historical perversions. The remedy
for such erroneous ideas is certainly not to withhold
the present dole of knowledge, but to teach the whole
truth. The recent History of India and Political
Economy with reference to India should be compulsory
subjects for every student in an Indian University.
It ought to be the policy of Government to select the
ablest men for professors and teachers of such subjects.
If, along with that remedy, more Anglo-Indians would
take a high view of their mission to India, and of
their residence in that country, much of that regrettable
bias and bitterness on the part of Indians would surely
pass away. If instead of adopting the attitude
of exiles, thinking only of the termination of the
exile and how to while away the interval, Anglo-Indians
would take some interest in something Indian outside
their business, much would be gained! The best
Anglo-Indians are eager to promote intercourse between
Europeans and Indians, but many Anglo-Indians, whatever
the cause, seem incapable of friendly intercourse.
On the matters that should interest both them and their
fellow-citizens in India, they have in them nothing
save unreasoned feelings. These form the numerous
class, of whom Sir Henry Cotton spoke in an address
in London in February 1904, to whom it is an offence
to travel in the same railway-carriage with Indians.
These are the corrupters of good feeling between Britons
and Indians, as sympathetic men are the salt that
preserves what good feeling may still exist. In
every Indian sphere the men of the latter class are
well known to the native community, and are always
spoken of with cordiality. The writer remembers
trying to have a talk with a British soldier about
the generals of the army, and how the man seemed unable