give up a settled government; to alter a policy that has welded the
conflicting elements of Hindustan into one stable whole; to throw up
our title of conqueror, and disintegrate a mighty empire. For what? A
sprinkling of thinly-veneered, half-educated natives, want a share of
the loaves and fishes in political scrambling, and a few inane people
of the 'man and brother' type, cry out at home to let them have their
way.

No. Give the Hindoo education, equal laws, protection to life and
property; develop the resources of the country; foster all the virtues
you can find in the native mind; but till you can give him the energy,
the integrity, the singleness of purpose, the manly, honourable
straightforwardness of the Anglo-Saxon; his scorn of meanness,
trickery, and fraud; his loyal single-heartedness to do right; his
contempt for oppression of the weak; his self-dependence; his probity.
But why go on? When you make Hindoos honest, truthful, God-fearing
Englishmen, you can let them govern themselves; but as soon 'may the
leopard change his spots,' as the Hindoo his character. He is wholly
unfit for self-government; utterly opposed to honest, truthful, stable
government at all. Time brings strange changes, but the wisdom which
has governed the country hitherto, will surely be able to meet the new
demand that may be made upon it in the immediate present, or in the
far distant future.




CHAPTER XV.