pital to be engaged in
the development of Indian resources, as it is now engaged.
We would not grant any right to British capitalists to dig
up the mineral wealth of the land and carry it to their own
isles. We shall want foreign capital. But we shall apply
for foreign loans in the open market of the whole world,
guaranteeing the credit of the Indian Government, the
Indian nation, for the repayment of the loan, just as America
has done and is doing, just as Russia is doing now, just as
Japan has been doing of late. And England's commercial
interests would not be furthered in the way these are being
furthered now, under the conditions of popular self-government,
though it might be within the Empire. But what
would it mean within the Empire? It would mean that
England would have to enter into some arrangement with
us for some preferential tariff. England would have to come
to our markets on the conditions that we would impose
upon her for the purpose, if she wanted an open door in
India, and after a while, when we have developed our resources
a little and organized our industrial life, we would want the
open door not only to England, but to every part of the
British Empire. And do you think it is possible for a small
country like England with a handful of population, although
she might be enormously wealthy, to compete on fair and
equitable terms with a mighty continent like India, with
immense natural resources, with her teeming populations,
the soberest and most abstemious populations known to any
part of the world?

If we have really self-government within the Empire, if
we have the rights of freedom of the Empire as Australia
has, as Canada has, as England has to-day, if we, 300 millions
of people, have that freedom of the Empire, the Empire
would cease to be British. It would be the Indian Empire,
and the alliance between England and India would be absolutely
an unequal alliance. That would be, if we had really
self-government within the Empire, exactly the relation as
co-partners in a co-British or anti-British Empire of the
future; and if the day comes when England will be reduced
to the alternative of having us as an absolutely independent
people or a co-partner with her in the Empire, she would
prefer to have us, like the Japanese, as an ally and no longer
a co-partner, because we are bo