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202 our hands. John Stuart Mill once wrote that our government in India is "not only one of the purest in intention, but one of the most beneficent in act ever known among mankind." So far as history can testify, no native government before our coming was pure in intention or beneficent in act at all. Misereor super turbam—this was what Asia never knew.

Into a world thus constituted came the Englishman. He offered trade—and the Indian traded; order—and the Indian was orderly; prosperity—and the Indian did not decline. But, though he would accept prosperity, he is still not satisfied.

The restless, far-thinking mind of the Asiatic had studied the Englishman very close. It suspected that in the English pharmacopeia was a much more valuable ingredient, some universal specific, some wonder-working potion, freedom. The Asiatic knew, or thought he knew, the Englishman to have made this freedom his divinity. For it appeared that, for the sake of freedom, he was ever losing the world that he had conquered, and was seemingly content to lose it. If India adopted that divinity, she might prosper mightily on the one hand, and, on the other, would be rid of the Englishman in due course. True, freedom is not in her pantheon, but in that countless company of godheads one more or less would not count.

Indian experts have sometimes contended that representative government, and elections, and constitutional procedure, and divisions, are utterly