rejection of such a demand would be exploited by the political agitator or how it would rally to the side of active disaffection some of the most conservative and influential classes in India.  For if, as those Englishmen who claim a monopoly of sympathy with the people of India are continually preaching, we must be prepared to sacrifice administrative efficiency to sympathy, how could we shelter ourselves on an economic issue behind theories of the greater economic efficiency of Free Trade?  If we are to try “to govern India in accordance with Indian ideas”—­a principle with which I humbly but fully agree—­how could we justify the refusal to India, of the fiscal autonomy for which there is a far more widespread and genuine demand than for political autonomy?

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE POSITION OF INDIANS IN THE EMPIRE.

The problems of Indian administration are in themselves difficult enough to solve, but even more difficult are some of the problems connected with the relations of India and her peoples to the rest of the Empire.  One of these has assumed during the last few years a character of extreme gravity, which neither the Imperial Government nor the British public seems to have at all adequately grasped.

“I think,” said Mr. Gokhale in moving his resolution for the prohibition of Indian indentured labour for Natal, “I am stating the plain truth when I say that no single question of our time has evoked more bitter feelings throughout India—­feelings in the presence of which the best friends of British rule have had to remain helpless—­than the continued ill-treatment of Indians in South Africa.”

Every Indian member of the Viceroy’s Legislative Council who spoke during that debate, whatever race or creed or caste he represented, endorsed the truth of Mr. Gokhale’s statement, and had a vote been taken on the resolution it would have had what no other resolution moved during the whole session would have secured—­the unanimous support of the whole body of Indian members and the sympathy of every English member, official as well as unofficial.  The Government of India wisely averted a division by accepting the resolution.  Not a single attempt was made either by the Viceroy in the chair or by other representatives of Government to controvert either Mr. Gokhale’s statement or the overwhelming array of facts showing the nature and extent of the ill-treatment of Indians in South Africa, which was presented by the mover of the resolution and by every Indian speaker who followed him.  The whole tone of the debate was extremely dignified and self-restrained, but no Englishman can have listened to it without a deep sense of humiliation.  For the first time in history the Government of India had to sit dumb whilst judgment was pronounced in default against the Imperial Government upon a question which has stirred the resentment of every single community of our Indian