of rupees (five hundred and fifty millions sterling)
of buried capital in India; and he might have added the easily
ascertainable fact that the sum is yearly being added to. The
anti-British idea was put forward in 1885 by the late Mr. William Digby,
an ardent supporter of the Congress; the Congress adopted it in one of
its resolutions in 1896, and the idea has lamentably caught on. In 1897
a Conference of Indians resident in London did not mince their language.
In their opinion, "of all the evils and terrible misery that India has
been suffering for a century and a half, and of which the latest
developments are the most deplorable famine and plague arising from
ever-increasing poverty,... the main cause is the unrighteous and
un-British system of Government, which produces an unceasing and ever
increasing bleeding of the country," etc. etc.[43] Such language, such
ideas, do not call for refutation, here at least; they are symptoms only
of a state of mind now prevailing, out of which educated India must
surely grow.

Nor need it be forgotten that the rise of the anti-British feeling was
foreseen and political danger apprehended when the question of English
education for natives of India was under discussion. A former
Governor-General, Lord Ellenborough, declared to a committee of the
House of Commons in 1852, that England must not expect to retain her
hold on India if English ideas were imparted to the people. "No
_intelligent_ people would submit to our Government," were his words--a
sentiment repudiated with indignation by the learned Bengali, the late
Rev. Dr. K.M. Banerjea. In the same spirit, apparently, Sir Alfred Lyall
still contemplates with some fear the rapid reformation of religious
beliefs under modern influences. He sees that the old deities and ideas
are being dethroned, and that the responsibility for famines, formerly
imputed to the gods, is being cast upon the British Government. "The
British Government," he says, "having thrown aside these lightning
conductors [the old theocratic system], is much more exposed than a
native ruler would be to shocks from famines or other wide-spread
misfortunes." "Where no other authority is recognised, the visible ruler
becomes responsible for everything."[44] Fortunately, "policy" of that
sort has not prevailed with Indian statesmen in the past, and Britain
can still retain self-respect as enlightener and ruler of India.

[Sidenote: Championing of things Indian.]