Page:MKGandhi patriot.djvu/111

96 have sometimes arrived at untrue conclusions, imagining wrongs and slights when these were not intended. On the other hand, the initial treatment of Mr. Gandhi by the Asiatic Department had been their experience ever since. From such sowing, no harvest but one of suspicion and resentment could spring, and the end is not yet. The British Government in the Transvaal has given these men no reason to be other than suspicious and resentful.

Lord Milner's promise to them has been broken. His formal announcement, made while High Commissioner, speaking with all the authority with which his office invested him, was in the following terms:—

"I think that registration is a protection to them. To that registration there is attached a £3 tax. It is only asked for once; those who have paid it to the old Government have only to prove that they have done so, and they have not to pay it again. Again, once on the register, their position is established, and no further registration is necessary, nor is a fresh permit required. That registration gives them a right to be here and a right to come and go."

The recent prosecutions and imprisonment of numbers who relied on the word of the then High Commissioner, and re-registered voluntarily at that