you and I were born. If such are the Catholics of Ireland; ill-natured and unjust people, from our own data, may be inclined not to think better of the Protestants of a soil which is supposed to infuse into its sects a kind of venom unknown in other places." 1

The sequel of the movement does not fall within Burke's period. As he lay dying, he could observe the tide of angry disaffection and confusion rising and swelling in his native country, until before he had been many months dead, it broke in a tumultuous rebellion that was signalized by horrors on the part of the victorious faction, compared with which the cruelties of his thrice execrated foes, the Jacobins, were almost pardonable. He must be deemed happy in having escaped the most hateful and atrocious episode in English history. The English Government had sown the wind, and it reaped the whirlwind. The process which hatched the Protestant monsters of Lord Cornwallis's time was simple. With the sword and the bayonet we founded a Church in robbery and injustice, we set up an aristocracy on spoils torn from the natives, and then we put into their hands a code of laws wicked enough to expel the last spark of virtue and benevolence from the nature of the very best man 1 Works, i. 557-560.

who should have to administer it, or to come within its sphere. If we reflect that this was the seed, we can barely wonder that the fruit has been, and yet remains for us, so passingly bitter.

III. Turning from Ireland to our great dependency in the East, it is easy to see how the circumstances which attended the establishment of English sovereignty in India would affect a statesman of Burke's natural sensibility, profound sympathies with the subjects of government, and active hatred of oppression, injustice, and disorder. Before entering upon a theme of this importance, involving, as it does, a conflict of principle that waxes daily more and more urgent for Englishmen, it is essential that we should settle two fundamental points, or at least, as the next best thing, recognise as clearly as we can that on each of them are held two diametrically opposed sets of views.

First, is it in the present stage of European civilization conducive to the general progress of mankind that any European power should assume the supreme government of a vast nation with traditions of which we are comparatively ignorant, with ancient institutions that it needs a philosopher to explain or to understand, with wants that we can hardly appreciate, with

deep and unalterable peculiarities of character, some of which revolt us, and none of which evoke our sympathy? If we were perfect in probity and virtue, and at the same time adequately armed with intellectual apprehension of the conditions of the problem, and of the means by which to satisfy them, there would be no difficulty in answering the question. It is impossible to conceive a powerful and enlightened people engaging in any nobler task than that of disinterestedly seeking to impart to a less fortunate and more backward race the acquisitions of their own long effort and experience, in all the moral and intellectual agencies for ameliorating human destiny. But as yet we are far removed from a state in which such conduct could be anticipated, and this makes it very much more difficult to strike the balance between the advantages and disadvantages of sovereign relations with inferior peoples. Our dealings with India, for example, originally and until Burke's time, so far from being marked with virtue and wisdom, were stained with every vice which can lower and deprave human character. How long will it take only to extirpate these traditions from the recollection of the natives? The more effectually their understandings are awakened by English efforts, the more vividly will they recognise,

and the more bitterly resent, the iniquities of our first connexion with them. Among other considerations pointing in the same direction are the distance of the actual governors of the country from the seat of that public opinion to which only they are responsible ; the consequent difficulty of contriving securities for their right conduct; the improbability of any public opinion existing in the sovereign country itself, at once active enough and well enough informed to operate with good effect; the small likelihood of the majority of a great body of public servants identifying themselves heartily and energetically with the interests of a country which they think of mostly as a temporary sojourning place on the road to their native country and a pension. Add to these the still graver drawbacks of an indispensable military occupation, and the corrupting effects upon the average representatives of the dominant nation of traditions of conquest, and a never-forgotten superiority of race.

There are, on the other hand, numerous and weighty considerations leading to an opposite conclusion. If we had not made ourselves masters of the country, the struggles for territory and supremacy, which followed upon the death of Aurungzebe and the feebleness of his successors in the Empire-circumstances which

have frequently and justly been compared to those of Europe after the death of Charlemagne-would have inflicted greater damage on the growth of India, than it suffered from the iniquitous rapacity of the Company in the earlier days of its power. Again, the improvement in public opinion since the beginning of the present century, both in keenness of interest and in rightness of judgment, has been so rapid and uniform as to justify us in anticipating the very best consequences from its increased operation. This, in turn, will affect the public servants whom we send out; and though it is not likely to inflame them with any ardent patriotism about India, it will lead them more and more to associate their ideas of self-respect and sense of duty with the good government of the people committed to them. Meanwhile, the infiltration of European enlightenment will be taking place by a gradual process, to the manifest advantage of the natives; always provided we can hold our position long enough, and prove its disinterestedness clearly enough, to be able in the end to dispense with an intrusive military force, and to rely simply on such moral sympathy and respect as we may by that time have earned. The final argument on this side, an argument which perhaps conclusively turns the scale, is the fact