Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/19

Rh ment with indifference; they have no inveterate antipathy to the domination of foreigners. The Indian people were, from the beginning, so far from objecting to the English dominion in India that they co-operated willingly in promoting it.

Nevertheless, the existing relations between India and England constitute a political situation unprecedented in the world's history. The two countries are far distant from each other and in different continents; they present the strongest contrasts of race and religion. There is no previous example of the acquisition and successful government of such a dependency, so immense in extent and population, at such a distance from the central power. A state that is distinctly superior to its neighbours in the arts of war and government has often expanded into a great empire. In Europe the Romans once united under an extensive dominion and still wider ascendency a number of subject provinces, client kingdoms, protected allies, races, and tribes, by a system of conquest and an administrative organization that anticipated in many salient features our methods of governing India. But the Roman dominions were compact and well knit together by solid communications. The Romans were masters of the whole Mediterranean littoral, and their capital, whether at Rome or Constantinople, held a central and commanding position. Then at the present time we see Russia holding down Northern Europe with one foot, and Central Asia with the other. She is the first power that has succeeded so completely in throwing