ing that I have not the privilege to be Indian-born,
but come from that little island in the northern seas which has been, in
the West, the builder-up of free institutions. The Aryan emigrants, who
spread over the lands of Europe, carried with them the seeds of liberty
sown in their blood in their Asian cradle-land. Western historians trace
the self-rule of the Saxon villages to their earlier prototypes in the
East, and see the growth of English liberty as up-springing from the
Aryan root of the free and self-contained village communities.

Its growth was crippled by Norman feudalism there, as its
millennia-nourished security here was smothered by the East India
Company. But in England it burst its shackles and nurtured a
liberty-loving people and a free Commons' House. Here, it similarly
bourgeoned out into the Congress activities, and more recently into
those of the Muslim League, now together blossoming into Home Rule for
India. The England of Milton, Cromwell, Sydney, Burke, Paine, Shelley,
Wilberforce, Gladstone; the England that sheltered Mazzini, Kossuth,
Kropotkin, Stepniak, and that welcomed Garibaldi; the England that is
the enemy of tyranny, the foe of autocracy, the lover of freedom, that
is the England I would fain here represent to you to-day. To-day, when
India stands erect, no suppliant people, but a Nation, self-conscious,
self-respecting, determined to be free; when she stretches out her hand
to Britain and offers friendship not subservience; co-operation not
obedience; to-day let me: western-born but in spirit eastern, cradled in
England but Indian by choice and adoption: let me stand as the symbol of
union between Great Britain and India: a union of hearts and free
choice, not of compulsion: and therefore of a tie which cannot be
broken, a tie of love and of mutual helpfulness, beneficial to both
Nations and blessed by God.

GONE TO THE PEACE.

India's great leader, Dadabhai Naoroji, has left his mortal body and is
now one of the company of the Immortals, who watch over and aid India's
progress. He is with V.C. Bonnerjee, and Ranade, and A.O. Hume, and
Henry Cotton, and Pherozeshah Mehta, and Gopal Krishna Gokhale: the
great men who, in Swinburne's noble verse, are the stars which lead us
to Liberty's altar:

These, O men, shall ye honour,
Liberty only and these.
For thy sake and for all men's and mine,
Brother, the crowns of them shine,
Lighting the way to her shrine,