ack of the Mutiny
scored some success. The Proclamation issued by Queen Victoria on her
assumption of "the government of the territories in India heretofore
administered in trust for us by the Honourable East India Company," was
a solemn and earnest renewal of all the pledges already given to the
princes and people of India. It emphasised the determination of the
Crown to abstain from all interference with their religious belief or
worship. It reiterated the assurance that "as far as may be," her
subjects "of whatever race or creed" would be freely and impartially
admitted to offices in the service of the Crown, "the duties of which
they may be qualified by their education, ability, and integrity duly to
discharge," and that, "generally in framing and administering the law,
due regard be paid to the ancient rights, usages, and customs of India."
It promised the wide exercise of her royal clemency to all offenders
save those actually guilty of murder during the recent outbreak. It
closed with a fine expression of her confidence and affection towards
her Indian subjects. "In their prosperity will be our strength, in their
contentment our security, and in their gratitude our best reward." But
no Proclamation, however generous and sincere, could undo the moral harm
done by the Mutiny. The horrors which accompanied the rising and the
sternness of the repression left terrible memories behind them on both
sides, and this legacy of racial hatred acted as a blight on the growth
of the spirit of mutual understanding and co-operation between Indians
and Englishmen in India which two generations of broad-minded Englishmen
and progressive Indians had sedulously and successfully cultivated.

If we look back upon the half-century after the Mutiny and before the
Partition of Bengal, which may be regarded as closing that long period
of paternal but autocratic government, it was one of internal peace and
of material progress which the large annual output of eloquent
statistics may be left to demonstrate. In 1857 there were not 200 miles
of railways in India, in 1905 there was a network of railways amounting
to over 28,000 miles, and the telegraph system expanded during the same
period from 4500 to 60,000 miles. The development of a great system of
irrigation canals added large new tracts of hitherto barren wastes to
the cultivable area of the country, and an elaborate machinery of
precautionary measures and relief works was created to mit