the work of Great Britain in India has been attended with a large
degree of success; it has lifted the land out of a condition of
semi-savagery and placed it among the civilized nations of the world. It
has cut it asunder from its anchorage to the past and brought it almost
abreast of the times. There is still much to be done and much to be
desired. We shall be glad to see the day when radical steps in progress
shall be taken voluntarily by the people and through the initiative of
their own leaders, rather than that they should wait to have them thrust
upon them, as in the past, by the progressiveness of the foreigner among
them.

The people, on the whole, appreciate the blessings of British supremacy in
the land. If they are not demonstratively loyal to the government, they
certainly do rest satisfied in the progress which has been achieved for
them.

The well known political leader of Bengal, Babu Surendra Nath Banerji,
recently expressed, in the following eloquent words, the sentiment of the
most thoughtful and influential natives of the country.

"Our allegiance to the British rule," he says, "is based upon the highest
considerations of practical expediency. As a representative of the
educated community of India--and I am entitled to speak on their behalf and
in their name,--I may say that we regard British rule in India as a
dispensation of Divine Providence. England is here for the highest and the
noblest purposes of history. She is here to rejuvenate an ancient people,
to infuse into them the vigour, the virility and the robustness of the
West, and so pay off the long-standing debt, accumulating since the
morning of the world, which the West owes to the East. We are anxious for
the permanence of British rule in India, not only as a guarantee for
stability and order, but because with it are bound up the best prospects
of our political advancement. To the English people has been entrusted in
the Councils of Providence the high function of teaching the nations of
the earth the great lesson of constitutional liberty, of securing the ends
of stable government, largely tempered by popular freedom. This glorious
work has been nobly begun in India. It has been resolutely carried on by a
succession of illustrious Anglo-Indian statesmen whose names are enshrined
in our grateful recollections. Marvellous as have been the industrial
achievements of the Victorian era in India, they sink into insignificance
when compared wi