ose is generally noble, and its wisdom, both in the framing of laws
and in general administration, has been most marked. The occasion of most
of its failings and weaknesses is the poverty of the people whereby the
government has, at times, been driven to subterfuges to avoid bankruptcy.

8. The Mission of Great Britain in India.

The British people are only today beginning to realize fully the wonderful
mission which, under God's providence, they are called to fulfill in that
great land of the Vedas. For nearly a century the commercial motive was
not only paramount but was practically the only motive which impelled the
Anglo-Saxon in his contact with India. Everything Indian had value in his
eyes in proportion as it added to his revenues. For many years he excluded
the Missionary of the Cross from his domains in the East, lest that good
man should, by teaching the people, disturb the revenue of the Honourable
East India Company. As the domains of this great company extended and its
powers multiplied, the English nation gradually came to realize their own
responsibility as a people to the land; and the Indians thus were brought
within their influence. This contact and communion of interests became to
them the voice of responsibility and of obligation to impart their
blessings to them as well as to take their material resources from them.
The dawn of the new altruistic sense towards its subject people, though
long deferred, rapidly grew into full daylight; and Great Britain today
feels, as no country has felt before, its privilege and duty to bestow
upon its dependency in the East the highest and best which it can furnish.

The difficulty of England's mission in India is greatly enhanced by the
difference which amounts almost to a contrast between her own people and
the inhabitants of India. The striking difference of type and character
existing between the Anglo-Saxon and the Hindu facilitates all sorts of
misunderstanding between them, and aids perceptibly in making the path of
the British Raj a very thorny one in the land. It would perhaps be
impossible to find two peoples who are farther removed from each other in
temperament and training--whose nature and antecedents are more
irreconcilable at all points. While the Anglo-Indian is bold, frank and
just, even to harshness, the Hindu is subtle, affable, practiced to
dissimulation, with ready susceptibilities to temporize and to barter
justice for expediency. On