speak of England as she now is.  We scarcely ever think of going back beyond the Reformation, and we are apt to regard every foreign nation as ignorant and uncivilised, whose state of government does not in some degree approximate to our own, even should it be higher than our own was at no distant date.

We should look upon India not as a temporary possession but as one to be maintained permanently until the natives shall in some future age have abandoned most of their superstitions and prejudices and become sufficiently enlightened to frame a regular government for themselves and to conduct and preserve it.  Whenever such a time shall arrive it will probably be best for both countries that the British control over India should be gradually withdrawn.  That the desirable change contemplated may in some after age be effected in India there is no cause to despair.  Such a change was at one time in Britain itself at least as hopeless as it is here.  When we reflect how much the character of nations has always been influenced by that of governments, and that some, once the most cultivated, have sunk into barbarism, while others, formerly the rudest, have attained the highest point of civilisation, we shall see no reason to doubt that if we pursue steadily the proper measures, we shall in time so far improve the character of our Indian subjects as to enable them to govern and protect themselves.

It was a splendid vision for a great British administrator to have entertained nearly one hundred years ago, though, with no self-governing Dominions in those days to point a better way, the only possibility that could occur to Munro’s mind in the event of its fulfilment was an amicable but complete severance of our connection with India; and it is well to be reminded of the faith that was already in him and not a few other experienced and broad-minded Englishmen in India as well as at home, now that many of us are inclined to contemplate only with scepticism and apprehension an approach to its fulfilment on the new lines which the evolution of the British Empire and of democratic government throughout all its component parts, neither of which could then be foreseen, have in the meantime suggested.

Indians were at that time already employed in large numbers in the Company’s services, but only in subordinate posts, for which in most cases their educational backwardness alone fitted them, and only as an act of grace on the part of their British rulers.  Parliament had recognised the right of the Indian people to expect from us the benefits of good and honest government—­perhaps as a duty which we owed to ourselves as much as to them—­but it had not yet risen to a recognition of their right to any active share in the government of their country.