passage, "before the eyes of the natives but an endless, hopeless
prospect of new flights of birds of prey and passage, with appetites
continually renewing for a food that is continually wasting." Sympathy
with the native, regard for his habits and wants, the Company's servants
failed to display. "The English youth in India drink the intoxicating
draught of authority and dominion before their heads are able to bear
it, and as they are full grown in fortune long before they are ripe in
principle, neither nature nor reason have any opportunity to exert
themselves for the excesses of their premature power. The consequences
of their conduct, which in good minds (and many of theirs are probably
such) might produce penitence or amendment, are unable to pursue the
rapidity of their flight. Their prey is lodged in England; and the cries
of India are given to seas and winds to be blown about in every breaking
up of the monsoon over a remote and unhearing ocean." More than a
century was to pass before the wisest of Burke's interpreters attempted
the translation of his maxims into statute. But there has never, in any
language, been drawn a clearer picture of the danger implicit in
imperial adventure. "The situation of man," said Burke, "is the
preceptor of his duty." He saw how a nation might become corrupted by
the spoils of other lands. He knew that cruelty abroad is the parent of
a later cruelty at home. Men will complain of their wrongdoing in the
remoter empire; and imperialism will employ the means Burke painted in
unforgettable terms in his picture of Paul Benfield. He denied that the
government of subject races can be regarded as a commercial transaction.
Its problem was not to secure dividends but to accomplish moral benefit.
He abhorred the politics of prestige. He knew the difficulties involved
in administering distant territories, the ignorance and apathy of the
public, the consequent erosion of responsibility, the chance that wrong
will fail of discovery. But he did not shrink from his conclusion. "Let
us do what we please," he said, "to put India from our thoughts, we can