actual fighting with the people whom they afterwards so successfully governed. In the development of the human race the use of force seems inevitable. But the fact that we have had in the past to use force in India will make us all the more ready and determined in the present and future to insure that the good the Indians will receive from us will in the end far outweigh the injury done. To benefit the people is the inspiring thought of every British Administrator in India.
But in working out this idea we must be careful not to let our old virility evaporate into washy sentimentality. Really to help the people is a difficult, anxious, and often thankless task, and requires deep study, wide experience, and delicate sympathy. I have already said that the noble ideal of teaching Indians to govern themselves, which men like Sir John Malcolm held a century ago, is not one which nowadays would be either practicable or beneficial. But we can at least train the Indians up to take a larger share in the administration, and this is what we are doing.
During the last century there has been a steady tendency to admit Indians more and more into the government of the country. A hundred years ago the employment of natives of India in any of the highly administrative posts was unknown. They were simply used as clerks. But in 1888 it was enacted that no native of India should, by reason only of his religion, place of birth, descent, or colour, be disabled from holding any place under the Company—the old East India Company—and Indians were then for the first time employed by the British authorities in positions of trust and responsibility. Greater attention was now given to the education of the people. Universities were later on established in each of the Presidency towns, and, as more and more educated men became available, a still larger share in the administration was given to the people, and when, in 1858, the Government of India by the East India Company was transferred to the Crown, a proclamation was issued declaring it to be the will of
