ron
Huebner seems to have been struck with amazement at the phenomenon. 'This
is, indeed,' he exclaims, 'a curious and perhaps a unique spectacle--an
immense administration, managed according to doctrines which are
repudiated by the large majority of those who compose it.' The natives
who are educated in our schools and colleges emerge from them filled
with ideas of Socialism and Atheism. We break down their faith in their
own creeds, without succeeding in inducing them to adopt Christianity.
They find themselves free to construct a religion of their own, or to do
without any religion. As regards the Government, they are led to
believe that it ought not to be where it is, and that India should be
ruled by its own people. The native press is full of sedition. Let us
hear what Baron Huebner has to say upon this subject, for it is worth
attention:--

'Is there any public opinion in India? It is declared that
there is none. And yet people agree in saying that the
natives who have been educated in the State colleges have
become singularly importunate of late years, that they are
beginning to adopt a high tone, and that they take especial
delight in criticising the acts of the Government, who,
unwisely, as it seems to me, encourage if not provoke such
criticism. These baboos and their newspapers, I am told,
would only become dangerous at a crisis; and by a crisis is
understood a disastrous European war. But the life of
nations, like that of individuals, is nothing but a series
of successes and reverses. Looked at from this point of
view, the baboo is not such an insignificant being as he
appears to be considered.'

No doubt our Radicals would contend that the Austrian's notion, that it
is unwise on the part of the Government to encourage criticism directed
against itself, is worthy of a man who has seen the Napoleonic _regime_,
and who perhaps admires the 'one man' form of government. But what is
the English Radical party itself living under now? Was ever the 'one man
form of government' carried out in so relentless a fashion as we see it
now in Parliament? Is there not one man in the Government, surrounded by
a crowd of nonentities--the one man filling the exact position for which
the Americans have invented the significant word 'Boss'? All liberty of
thought or freedom of action is gone. The principle insisted upon is 'do
whatever our leader tells us;