Page:Allan Octavian Hume, C.B.; Father of the Indian National Congress.djvu/16

 feelings, and grievances of the people. There was therefore a great gulf fixed between the foreign bureaucracy, self-centred on the heights of Simla, and the millions painfully toiling in the plains below. And about the years 1878 and 1879, economic, in combination with political, troubles were actively at work throughout India ; the physical suffering of the many, acted on by the intellectual discontent of the few, was rapidly bringing popular unrest to the danger point. For the masses of the peasantry, scourged by poverty, famine, and pestilence, were beginning to give way to despair ; they could not make their voices heard, and they saw no hope of relief ; while, in the schools and colleges, the leaven of Western education was working among the intellectuals, teaching lessons of political history, and showing them how it was only through storm and stress that the British people had won for themselves the blessings of freedom. Hence the mind of the younger generation was stirred by vague dreams of revolutionary, and even violent, change. This critical condition of affairs was clearly understood by Mr. Hume. He had exceptional knowledge of what was going on below the surface ; and he knew that there was imminent risk of a popular outbreak, destructive of that peaceful progress upon which the welfare of India depends. The new wine was fermenting in the old bottles, and at any moment the bottles might burst and the wine be spilled. ; What was to be done ? Happily the solution of this fateful problem was ready to his hand. It was to be found in the simple formula of "Trust in the People." The Indian people, intelligent, law-abiding, the heirs of an ancient civilization, are worthy of the fullest trust; and his urgent message to the British nation was this, that the path of safety lies in trusting them, and in associating them in the management of their own affairs.