Page:Allan Octavian Hume, C.B.; Father of the Indian National Congress.djvu/79

 tion in local or purely selfish interests—to educate all who took part in it, not merely in the arts of public speaking and debate, developing the faculty of thinking out clearly opinions, and expressing them lucidly to others, not merely in habits of accuracy and research, but also in the practice of self-control, moderation and willingness to give and take—to educate them in fact into what has been described as a genuine Parliamentary frame of mind—to familiarize the country with the methods and working of representative institutions on a large scale, and thus, as this familiarity grew, to demonstrate to the Government and people of England that India was already ripe for some measure of those institutions to which the entire intelligence of the country so earnestly aspires."

Having thus made clear what was the inner spirit of the movement, he proceeded to show that there was no cause for fearing political danger from Congress teaching : "The people are taught to recognize the many benefits that they owe to British rule, as also the fact that on the peaceful continuance of that rule depend all hopes for the peace and prosperity of the country. They are taught that the many hardships and disabilities of which they complain are after all, though real enough, small in comparison with the blessings they enjoy, but that all these grievances may be and will be redressed if they all join to press their views and wishes unanimously, but temperately, on the Government here and on the Government and people of England. The sin of illegal or anarchical proceedings is brought home to them, and the conviction is engendered that by united, patient, constitutional agitation they are certain ultimately to obtain all they can reasonably or justly ask for, while by any recourse to hasty or violent action they must inevitably ruin their cause and entail endless misery on