not be destroyed, it
is eternal and ever young. Nor can it be persuaded to exchange its
birthright for any mess of efficiency-pottage at the hands of the
bureaucracy.

Stunting the Race.

Coming closer to the daily life of the people as individuals, we see
that the character of each man, woman and child is degraded and weakened
by a foreign administration, and this is most keenly felt by the best
Indians. Speaking on the employment of Indians in the Public Services,
Gopal Krishna Gokhale said:

A kind of dwarfing or stunting of the Indian race is going on
under the present system. We must live all the days of our life
in an atmosphere of inferiority, and the tallest of us must
bend, in order that the exigencies of the system may be
satisfied. The upward impulse, if I may use such an expression,
which every schoolboy at Eton or Harrow may feel that he may
one day be a Gladstone, a Nelson, or a Wellington, and which
may draw forth the best efforts of which he is capable, that is
denied to us. The full height to which our manhood is capable
of rising can never be reached by us under the present system.
The moral elevation which every Self-governing people feel
cannot be felt by us. Our administrative and military talents
must gradually disappear owing to sheer disuse, till at last
our lot, as hewers of wood and drawers of water in our own
country, is stereotyped.

The Hon. Mr. Bhupendranath Basu has spoken on similar lines:

A bureaucratic administration, conducted by an imported agency,
and centring all power in its hands, and undertaking all
responsibility, has acted as a dead weight on the Soul of
India, stifling in us all sense of initiative, for the lack of
which we are condemned, atrophying the nerves of action and,
what is more serious, necessarily dwarfing in us all feeling of
self-respect.

In this connexion the warning of Lord Salisbury to Cooper's Hill
students is significant:

No system of Government can be permanently safe where there is
a feeling of inferiority or of mortification affecting the
relations between the governing and the governed. There is
nothing I would more earnestly wish to impress upon all who
leave this country for the purpose of governing India than
that, if they choose to be so, they are the only enemies
England has to fear. They are t