Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/404



disturbance of the public mind to admit of its being safely followed; and also to soften prejudices and allay apprehensions with respect to measures, which, emanating from a foreign race, by whom they are often conceived from a widely different standpoint to that of your fellow-countrymen, may well be regarded by the latter with a certain amount of honest though ill-founded suspicion.

In an education which ranges over a variety of subjects, that of constitutional government will not unuaturally have received some attention from you ; and your study of it will enable yon to exercise a beneficial influence upon a class of your countrymen, who condemn the system of government in India and demand that India should enjoy the freedom of England. Now your reading will enable you to comprehend that freedom in the sense in which it is so used is, for the most part, a set of results which in England have been brought about by the gradual efforts of several generations. Of some of the most important of these results you are already in the fullest enjoyment, as Equality before the Law, Liberty of Speech, Liberty of the Press. There is no country in Europe whose condition in these respects is in advance of that of India. But no nation can impose upon another a fully matured system of Representative Government. To be effective, it should be the fruit and outcome of a tendency, natural or acquired, by which the individuals of a nation identify themselves with surrounding 'interests and willingly take part in the duties and burdens of local affairs. Such institutions are not indigenous in this country. But if there is one more over-mastering determination of the national mind in England than any other, it is that everyone of her dependencies shall, as far as is consistent with good and orderly government, be placed in a position to enjoy the freedom she herself enjoys. The national determination finds expression in periodical movements. History shows that at certain intervals decided steps in advance are taken, always in the direction of improved government. What has from time to time been done in India is this. First of all provision was made for the collection of revenue, not for the purpose of putting the hard- earned gains of the poor into the coffers of the. wealthy and great, but to provide the means of guaranteeing the security of property, and for the purposes of orderly administration. Extortion, violation of the liberty of the person, and oppression of every kind had, by generations of misrule, come to be regarded as the normal exercise of authority. Slavery and various cruel and murderous practices existed in many parts of