Page:Allan Octavian Hume, C.B.; Father of the Indian National Congress.djvu/177



You ask me what I think of the Government Resolution.

I think it a capital one — all you could possibly desire in the present position of the question and more than you could, I think, have expected.

The entire question has been thoroughly thrashed out all over the whole Empire. All that can be said upon the question has now been put on record, either in the papers collected by the Government of India from all the several Provinces, which they are now about to publish, or in the many letters which you have elicited from all sorts and conditions of men, which you doubtless will also soon publish. There will no longer be, for any one who will study the exhaustive all-sided discussion of the case embodied in these two "collections," any possibility of doubt as to the facts. Action will be no longer fettered by the fear that there may lurk unknown difficulties.

The whole thing has been made clear — exaggerations of both sides brought thus face to face will neutralize each other, and the sober facts of the case will stand out clear and simple.

That two of the most, complicated and controverted problems of social reform, which for at least a quarter of a century have engaged in a desultory fashion the minds of the public, should thus in three short years have been