character of the people?" The following
passage in that remarkable document may be commended to our
faint-hearted doubters of to-day:

Liberal treatment has always been found the most effectual way of
elevating the character of any people, and we may be sure that it
will produce a similar effect on that of the people of India. The
change will no doubt be slow, but that is the very reason why no
time should be lost in commencing the work. We should not be
discouraged by difficulties, nor, because little progress may be
made in our own time, abandon the enterprise as hopeless, and
charge upon the obstinacy and bigotry of the nations the failure
occasioned by our own fickleness in not pursuing steadily the only
line of conduct on which any hope of success can be reasonably
founded. We should make the same allowances for the Hindus as for
other nations and consider how slow the progress of improvement has
been among the nations of Europe and through what a long course of
barbarous ages they had to pass before they attained their present
state. When we compare other countries with England, we usually
speak of England as she now is. We scarcely ever think of going
back beyond the Reformation, and we are apt to regard every foreign
nation as ignorant and uncivilised, whose state of government does
not in some degree approximate to our own, even should it be higher
than our own was at no distant date.

We should look upon India not as a temporary possession but as one
to be maintained permanently until the natives shall in some future
age have abandoned most of their superstitions and prejudices and
become sufficiently enlightened to frame a regular government for
themselves and to conduct and preserve it. Whenever such a time
shall arrive it will probably be best for both countries that the
British control over India should be gradually withdrawn. That the
desirable change contemplated may in some after age be effected in
India there is no cause to despair. Such a change was at one time
in Britain itself at least as hopeless as it is here. When we
reflect how much the character of nations has always been
influenced by that of governments, and that some, once the most
cultivated, have sunk into barbarism, while others, formerly the
rudest, have attained the hi