[Sidenote: WHENCE IS IMPROVEMENT TO COME?]
All friends of India desire the improvement of its government, and the increasing welfare of its people. Whence is the improvement to come? We are told "nothing is to be hoped for from the Indian official class." From whom is anything to be hoped for? From the Home Government? The leaders of our political parties have passed measures beneficial to India, but they have again and again taken advantage of its helplessness to impose on it burdens to which it ought not to have been subjected. Are we to look to the people at home for relief? How difficult is it to secure attention to the subject, or to make them understand it when their attention is gained! Are we to look to the non-official class in India? I have nothing to say about the Ilbert Jurisdiction Bill, except that while officials have been divided about it, many of the most eminent being in its favour, non-officials almost to a man have been bitterly opposed to it. Where I have spent the greater part of my life, nothing has been more common than complaints by Europeans of injustice done to them by partiality shown to natives at their expense. Are we to look to the great landholders, bankers, merchants, shopkeepers, and well-to-do classes in the cities of Bengal and the North-West, who have benefited most by our rule? What may be expected from them is illustrated by the fact that when the finances were thrown by the Mutiny into confusion, many protested against an income tax, and some of high position proposed that the finances should be rectified by an increase of the salt-tax! In these influential classes there are high-minded and benevolent individuals, but if we look at them in their collective capacity we shall be disappointed. When we look at the long roll of distinguished Indian officials, mark their achievements, hear their protests against what they deemed hurtful measures, and their advocacy of beneficial changes, I think we find in them India's warmest friends, who have done it the most signal service, and from whom more can be expected than from any other class.
There are ample materials for arriving at correct views regarding the condition of India and the way in which it is governed. No Parliamentary Committee, no Royal Commission, is required to elicit the facts. The recently completed "Gazeteer" of India, in which Dr. Hunter and his assistants had been engaged for years, furnishes full and reliable information. The state of India is described in that imperial work with a frankness and fulness which leave nothing to be desired. If one of our great writers, who has secured the ears of our country, would set to the drawing up of a volume of moderate size, founded on the "Gazeteer," showing in a readable interesting form what has been done and what has been left undone, what has been done well and what has been done ill, and if the intelligent people of our country could be induced to give it a careful perusal, untold good would be done both to England and to India. Nothing would please Indian officials more than the eye of England being thus fixed on their doings and misdoings, that the whole truth might be known, and praise and censure be justly distributed, and still more that the changes most beneficial to the people might be effected.