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cordance with what we thought good for ourselves. 

 With our innovations, our exotic systems of land and 

 law, we have dissolved the bonds of society, we have 

 turned peace into war, we have arrayed every class 

 against that on which it was most dependent, capital- 

 ists against landholders, landlords against tenants, 

 every man almost against his fellow. 



There is not, I believe, a single wise and good native 

 of India who will not freely admit that, whatever the 

 failings and shortcomings of individual officers, the 

 motives and intentions of the British Grovernment, 

 where India is concerned, have, on the Avhole, been 

 pure and noble. But I fear that there is not one who 

 would not condemn, in terms stronger than I have the 

 heart to use, the cruel blunders into which our nar- 

 row-minded, though wholly benevolent, desire to re- 

 produce England in India has led us. 



We began by conferring proprietary rights (the 

 poor people, no ownership in the soil, mere serfs !) or, 

 where as in Bombay we stopped short of this, we gave 

 additional strength to occupancy rights, and made 

 these transferable. Every one knows the European 

 arguments about enhancing the value of rights by 

 making them transferable. Such a great thing to 

 enable them to be brought into the market ! Buying 

 and selling, as a wise writer once said, is an English- 

 man's idea of Paradise, and in the most unselfish spirit 

 we desired to introduce our native fellow-subjects into 

 this same Paradise. 



No one saw that the people were on the whole happy 

 and contented as they were, that their past sufferings, 

 where they had suffered, were due not to any defects 



