Page:Allan Octavian Hume, C.B.; Father of the Indian National Congress.djvu/61

  him for Home Member and a K.C.S.I., but this recommendation Lord Salisbury refused, on the ground that Mr. Hume was "stiffening Lord Northbrook" against the repeal of the cotton duties.

Had Mr. Hume accepted the Lieutenant-Governorship, we should have had a unique example of a one-man administration in full sympathy with the people. The people of his Province would have largely benefited. But it was well for the future of India that, at this critical time, he was set free from the absorbing labours of the supreme executive, and brought into the closest touch with the new forces which the world-spirit was generating among the Indian people.

THE INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS.

It was in 1882 that Mr. Hume retired from the public service; and we now approach the great work of his life—the national movement, of which the Indian National Congress was the political side. As he explained, the Congress organization was "only one outcome of the labours of a body of cultured men, mostly Indians, who bound themselves together to labour silently for the good of India." The fundamental objects of this national movement were threefold, and were recorded in the following terms: First, the fusion into one national whole of all the different elements that constitute the population of India; second, the gradual regeneration along all lines, spiritual, moral, social, and political, of the nation thus evolved; and third, the consolidation of the union between England and India, by securing the modification of such of its conditions as may be unjust or injurious. This, in simple language, sets forth his great scheme for restoring the ancient grandeur of India, 47