398 COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION 



their ideas of administration. Our governments, to illustrate, are 

 based on the idea of individual responsibility to established author- 

 ity, and we should probably make a very poor display in attempt- 

 ing to apply, for example, a scheme of control under which a clan or 

 an association was found to be responsible for each of its individual 

 members. 



If this government, or any other enlightened government, assumes 

 to exercise authority over territory occupied by members of an alien 

 race, it may maintain temporarily the institutions and usages of 

 the adopted society, but ultimately it must stand for its own laws 

 and the acceptance of its own social ideas. It is not worth the while 

 to proceed practically as if the institutions and customs of the unde- 

 veloped peoples were to be permanently preserved. Their customs 

 and institutions are often their shackles which make it impossible 

 for them to run the course of progress. Nobody supposes that 

 the institution of caste and its attendant customs are anything but 

 a hindrance to the social progress of India. The spirit of many of 

 the institutions of the less developed races is the spirit of domination 

 and bondage. The spirit of civilization or enlightenment is liberty. 

 The undeveloped tribes or nations may be politically independent, 

 and yet in bondage to their traditions. If America has any mission 

 outside of her continental limits, it is not to preserve among less devel- 

 oped peoples such institutions and customs as make for bondage and 

 social stagnation, but to put in their place the ideas that have made 

 for freedom, and the laws by which this nation has been enabled to 

 preserve its freedom. 





