titution than it occurred to him to question the contemptible
inferiority of the race among whom he was living, and for whom he mainly
legislated. In his essay on Warren Hastings he wrote:

"A war of Bengalis against Englishmen was like a war of
sheep against wolves, of men against demons.... Courage,
independence, veracity, are qualities to which his constitution
and his situation are equally unfavourable.... All those arts
which are the natural defence of the weak are more familiar
to this subtle race than to the Ionian of the time of Juvenal,
or to the Jew of the Dark Ages. What the horns are to the
buffalo, what the paw is to the tiger, what the sting is to the
bee, what beauty, according to the old Greek song, is to woman,
deceit is to the Bengali."

And yet, impenetrable as Macaulay's own ignorance of the Indian peoples
remained, his Minute of 1835, "to promote English literature and
science," and to decree that "all funds appropriated for education
should be employed in English education alone," has marked in Indian
history an era from which the present situation of the country dates.

It is true that the education has not gone far. The Government spends
less than twopence per head upon it; less than a tenth of what it spends
on the army. Only ten per cent. of the males in India can write or
read; only seven per thousand of the females. But, thanks chiefly to
Macaulay's conviction that if everyone were like himself the world would
be happy and glorious, there are now about a million Indians (or one in
three hundred) who can to some extent communicate with each other in
English as a common tongue, and there are some thousands who have become
acquainted with the history of English liberties, and the writings of a
few political thinkers. Together with railways, the new common language
has increased the sense of unity; the study of our political thinkers
has created the sense of freedom, and the knowledge of our history has
shown how stern and prolonged a struggle may be required to win that
possession which our thinkers have usually regarded as priceless. "The
one great contribution of the West to the Indian Nationalist movement,"
writes Mr. Ramsay Macdonald with emphasis, "is its theory of political
liberty."

It is a contribution of which we may well be proud--we of whom
Wordsworth wrote that we must be free or die. Whatever the failures of
unsympathetic self-esteem, Macaulay's spirit could