Page:The Life of Lokamanya Tilak.djvu/286

 to passions, but always to reason. The average English man is a hard-headed man. Appeal to his common-sense and he is won over ; and Mr. Tilak's appeals were always directed to his head. It is not, therefore, surprising that Mr. Tilak's speeches created a favourable impression on those who heard him.

Mr. Saint Nihal Singh thus describes a speech by Mr. Tilak : —

"Of all these addresses, the one that I like best was the one that Mr. Tilak delivered at the Caxton HaU while sitting in a chair, because he had sprained his ankle. Mr. Tilak outlined the conditions existing in India in olden times, referring to the aceounts of the wealthy, prosperous enlightened India left by foreign travellers. He asked the audience particularly to note the vast extent of the Indian Empire ruled over by Asoka and Samudra Gupta. He went on to relate that our country in those days, not only possessed a wealth of religious and philosophical literature but was industrially great and self-sufficing in every respect, able to satisfy all her material and artistic wants.

"Passing from the pleasant picture of ancient India, Mr. Tilak gave a graphic description of India to-day, with her millions of sons and daughters who, because of appaling poverty, never know what it is to have the pangs of hunger stilled. He told how the East India Company had deliberately killed our industries, throwing the whole weight of population upon agriculture.

"Taking up the political question, Mr. Tilak assured the audience, that Indians were not anti-British, — they were only ' anti-Bureaucracy ' They desired the British connection to continue.