Page:Allan Octavian Hume, C.B.; Father of the Indian National Congress.djvu/78

 Apart from the fact that any one putting his hand out to such a gigantic task had need to have Mr. Hume's commanding and magnetic personality, even if an Indian had possessed such a personality and had come forward to start such a movement embracing all India, the officials in India would not have allowed the movement to come into existence. If the founder of the Congress had not been a great Englishman and a distinguished ex-official, such was the official distrust of political agitation in those days that the authorities would have at once found some way or other to suppress the movement." This conclusion was no doubt correct; and it is certain that, from the time when the propaganda was addressed to the masses, the official attitude, which till then had been one of more or less friendly neutrality, became distinctly antagonistic. Mr. Hume himself realized this, and said, "Friends come with solemn faces and say in grave voices : You mean well, but you are stirring up feelings, you are exciting passions, the issues of which you cannot foresee; you are letting loose forces that you cannot control." And he took occasion to explain his position, and put forward his Apologia, in a speech at a great meeting at Allahabad on the 30th of April 1888, which was published under the title of "A Speech on the Indian National Congress, its Origin, Aims, and Objects." Speaking of the spirit which it was desired to inculcate among the people, he quoted what had been placed on record at the inception of the Congress, "since this record embodies, not merely the ideas of one or two men, but the harmonized views of a very large number of the ablest, best, and most advanced thinkers of the nation." The record declares that the Congress was intended "to foster a wider altruism and a more genuine public spirit, by concentrating the most strenuous efforts on great national problems, and diminishing the absorp-