We cannot leave out of account here the deadly harm done to England
herself by this un-English system of rule in India. Mr. Hobson has
pointed out:

As our free Self-Governing Colonies have furnished hope,
encouragement, and leading to the popular aspirations in Great
Britain, not merely by practical success in the art of
Self-Government, but by the wafting of a spirit of freedom and
equality, so our despotically ruled Dependencies have ever
served to damage the character of our people by feeding the
habits of snobbish subservience, the admiration of wealth and
rank, the corrupt survivals of the inequalities of
feudalism.... Cobden writing in 1860 of our Indian Empire, put
this pithy question: "Is it not just possible that we may
become corrupted at home by the reaction of arbitrary political
maxims in the East upon our domestic politics, just as Greece
and Rome were demoralised by their contact with Asia?" Not
merely is the reaction possible, it is inevitable. As the
despotic portion of our Empire, has grown in area, a large
number of men, trained in the temper and methods of autocracy,
as soldiers and civil officials in our Crown Colonies,
Protectorates and Indian Empire, reinforced by numbers of
merchants, planters, engineers, and overseers, whose lives have
been those of a superior caste living an artificial life
removed from all the healthy restraints of ordinary European
Society, have returned to this country, bringing back the
characters, sentiments and ideas imposed by this foreign
environment.