Summary and Conclusion

CHAPTER XV

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

THE British conquest of India has no parallel in history. It is the most romantic and the most subtle of all political revolutions that have taken place in the world. It was never formally planned; it was never authoritatively resolved upon. Yet, paradoxical as it may seem, we cannot believe it was the blind accident that Professor Seeley characterises it. In the preface to the second volume of Sir William Hunter’s “History of British India,” the editor has said:

“As early as 1687 the Court of Directors hoped to lay the foundations of a large, well-founded, sure English dominion in India for all time to come.”

He inclines to think the British aimed at a commercial rather than a political supremacy, but the history of British acquisition in India conclusively proves that successful commercial ascendency is but the sure and inevitable prelude to political domination.

Of all forms of conquest, that which proceeds under the guise of commerce is most insidious, most prolonged and most devastating to the conquered. A military invasion, undertaken from frankly political motives, at least does not take the people unawares. The wars of olden times were short and swift, and their results certain. A change of despotisms mattered little to the people of East or West; in the long run, they adapted themselves to the change. The swift horrors of warfare, with its decisiveness of action and certainty of outcome, are inconceivably preferable to the slow tortures of a military invasion that comes cloaked under the guise of commercial enterprise. Had the British Government, in 1757, invaded India by force of arms and subjugated the country on the open field of battle, a century of incessant warfare, no less agonising because of its protracted nature, might have been spared her. But behind military and commercial exploitation skulked the lust for political dominion. Most of the misfortunes of India, from 1757 to 1857, are due to the manner in which she was subjugated. “To the victor belong the spoils” is a universal law of warfare, but martial law cannot last forever, and a more stable government under politicians and statesmen inevitably reasserts itself. But who is to call a halt on the plundering of commercial adventurers? Where is the limit to their greed and rapacity?

India was never conquered by the English sword — not by military valour, but by a subtle and cunning diplomacy. To have used more direct means, based upon an avowed determination to subdue the country by force of arms, would have roused the warring chiefs to a sense of mutual danger, and united them against the common enemy. When Clive, in 1765, offered to conquer Hindustan for Great Britain, Pitt refused, saying it was beyond the resources of the government. The conquest of India was accomplished in the only way England could afford to do it, at India’s expense. Lulled by professions of a purely commercial interest, the native chieftains vied with one another in extending opportunities of trade to the British, in return for military services rendered by these armed merchants in subduing local rivals. Too late they found that the mailed fist which encompassed the ruin of their enemies was turned with equal effectiveness against themselves!

The English policy was simple and consistent — to create schisms in the camps of the Nabobs and Rajahs, using one side against the other, for the furtherance of their own interest. Could the Nabob of Bengal have seen the finger of fate in the concessions to build forts and factories on his eastern coast, which he granted to the East Indian traders; could the Vizier of Oude have foreseen that the power whose help he invoked to ruin Benares and extirpate the Rohillas would in less than a century pension off his descendants as helpless parasites on its mercy and magnanimity; could the Grand Mogul have realised the significance of his grant of Dewani to Clive; had the Nabob of Karnatic had prophetic eyes to read the future ruin of his house when he obtained aid from the English to overcome the Mahrattas; if the Nabob of Surat and the Rajah of Tanjore might have read their twin fates in the stars — this petty warfare would have coalesced into a united stand against this alien foe, and cast him out of India. But what Indian prince could doubt the treaties of “eternal friendship” sworn to by these British traders, — or their solemn abjurations of all thoughts of territorial aggrandisement? A house divided against itself cannot stand, and betrayed by their own rivalry, they sold their country to a foreign power, whose servants, urged on by private greed and patriotic zeal, bought their undisputed sway over a continent.

Philip Francis, in an epigrammatic speech delivered on Indian affairs in 1787, describes the process thus:

“From factories to forts, from forts to fortifications, from fortifications to garrisons, from garrisons to armies, and from armies to conquests, the gradations were natural, and the results inevitable; where we could not find a danger we were determined to find a quarrel.”

The directors of the East India Company wanted money. That was the burden of their communications to Warren Hastings and his successors in the Presidency of Bengal. But their agents in India also wanted money for themselves. It was well said by one of them that when “more money could not be had by legitimate means, they took to the road.” Trade, external and internal, afforded too restricted and slow accumulations of wealth; political intrigues, backed up by military force, could alone secure desired results. The examples of Clive, Governor Vansittart, and Warren Hastings offered too strong an inducement of success to be resisted by men of human passions and human weaknesses undeterred by any check upon their fears. Governors and members of council, not to mention generals and commanders, all had their fixed share in the booty which every military exploit brought. In addition to the ordinary loot, secured in the sacking of towns after military conquests, every treaty entered into with a native prince was ratified by large grants of money made by the latter “to the officers concerned in settling the treaty.”¹

Every interest, private and public, personal and patriotic, drove the representatives of the East India Company to seek opportunities of exploitation through military operations and political intrigues. Most of the proceeds of prize money, booty and presents were appropriated by the company’s servants, the charges of administration and the maintenance of the army being met by the revenues proper. From time to time, the directors reiterated in solemn terms their freedom from territorial designs, but where treaties had been made, and lands acquired, they quietly confirmed the former and accepted the latter, often conferring signal honours on those instrumental in securing them.

India’s misfortunes were thus enhanced by the vacillating policies of the merchant masters of the company, whom Chatham once described as “the lofty Asiatic plunderers of Leadenhall Street.”

The traders of Leadenhall were not conquerors. They did not care for an empire. What they wanted was money, and they were quite happy when the military and political operations of their servants brought them substantial gains. But when the reverse was the case, they were equally ready to condemn and repudiate.² Between these conflicting policies, the Indian people were ground into the dust. The security of the native rulers was practically gone from the moment Warren Hastings confiscated the territories of the Rajah of Benares and assisted the Vizier of Oude to exterminate the Rohillas. Thus their own chiefs could not protect them from new ones whose wars of exploitation soon developed into wars of annexation. It was the Marquis of Wellesley who first saw the monstrosity of the dual system, and who determined by hook or crook to put an end to native rule. With the total lack of scruple characterising most empire builders, he pursued a policy of deception, telling deliberate lies in his public despatches, while availing himself of every pretence to make wars and snatch territories.³

Justice, honesty, fair play, and the wishes of the people never entered into the programme of Wellesley and his lieutenants, who entered wholeheartedly into his schemes. The only criterion was the chance of success for their enterprises. Arguing against immediate further conquest, the Marquis wrote to Munro:

“I agree with you that we ought to settle the Mahratta business and the Malabar Rajahs, but I am afraid that to extend ourselves will rather tend to delay settlement . . . as for the wishes of the people, I put them out of the question.”⁴ The italics are ours.

Munro was for out and out conquest, though he cautiously added, “we should not all at once attempt to extend ourselves so far, for it is beyond our power, but we should keep the object in view, though the accomplishment might require a long series of years. The dissensions and revolutions of the native governments will point out the time when it is proper for us to become actors.”⁵

Thus spoke the company’s representatives in India, the while they openly opposed territorial expansion and signed treaties sworn to endure till the sun and moon failed in their course. Native dissensions and revolutions not coming with sufficient speed, the servants of the company used every available means to hasten them, for the furtherance of their designs. Alliances were made, and broken; subsidies were demanded and exacted, and residents placed in native courts to sow the seeds of internal dissension and domestic revolution. Says Torrens:

“Lord Wellesley’s purpose in persuading the Native Governments to maintain within their confines bodies of English troops, instead of Native corps officered by Frenchmen, was too obvious to be misconceived. . . . It was obviously meant and felt, if not declared, to be a guarantee against the development of schemes hostile to English interests and the growth of English ascendency. . . . It was the glove of mail courteously but undisguisedly laid upon the shoulder of Native rule, with an irresistible but patronising air, felt to be a little heavy and hard at first, but soon destined to become habitual.

“Its financial scope was conceived and executed with the same pitiless and inexorable purpose. The permanent appropriation of revenue for the maintenance of the subsidiary force was calculated mainly with the inability of the State to bear it. . . . The opening of a running account of deficiencies, arrears, balance cleared off from time to time by new concessions, became inevitable. Arriving at ultimate supremacy, the means taken were called by the subject race, perfidiously wicked,—by the conquering race, profoundly wise.”⁶

Besides bodies of English troops stationed at native courts, there were the active efforts of the Residents, “everywhere feared and hated as the symbol of humiliation,” employed in corrupting ministries, spying on chiefs, and seeking provocation to disrupt and disorganise the government in which they played the rôle of dictator.⁷

Glimpses of these Machiavellian policies may be found in the contemporary records of the great actors themselves, a glance at which will amply repay the reader who desires first hand knowledge. Enough has been said to illustrate the point taken, that the British subjugation of India was a long process of military and economic exhaustion, a sort of killing by inches, which took a century to complete. Many a noble-minded Englishman tried, as best he could, to alleviate the sufferings of the people of India. Some of these attempted to persuade their masters at home to adopt a more humane policy towards the country which they were exploiting to its ultimate ruin. But they failed. There were periods of comparative peace, when some constructive upbuilding was attempted, but on the whole, the century was one of destruction and exploitation. People died by millions; the country was drained of wealth; fields were devastated and manufactures ruined; the seal of poverty, hopeless, unmitigated, unredeemed, was set upon the land once fabled for its riches.

Lord Dalhousie, so lauded by English historians for his high-minded justice, may be regarded most charitably as the unintentional and involuntary instrument of Providence which brought India’s long agony of civil strife and bloodshed to a close. His unjustifiable and piratical acts exasperated both people and princes, and drove them to open rebellion. The British were now determined to make an empire from East to West, and as early as 1816 had decided to “annihilate all powerful native Governments.”⁸ So the criminal breaches of trust and acts of high-handedness in regard to the Punjab, Oude, Jhansi, Nagpur, Satara and Scinde but hastened the annexation which at best could only have been deferred a few years longer. Up to 1858, India was British by courtesy only. After the mutiny, the British Government took over the direct administration of its affairs. Queen Victoria started the new régime auspiciously with a proclamation guaranteeing equal treatment of natives and English,—promises so far honoured more in the breach than in fulfilment. The reason is obvious. Under the Crown, as under the Company, there is the same clash of interests between Indian democracy and British plutocracy — under the new system, as under the old, England still battens on India’s wealth, which is drained off in a golden stream, bearing her life blood with it. During the last fifty-seven years, the fiscal policy in regard to the Great Dependency was laid down in Whitehall, and no English Cabinet dared to sacrifice the interests of the British merchant class for a mere consideration of Indian well-being.

As the prosperity of Britain is grounded on manufactures and trade, British interests demand that India live, toil and have her being to the end of British prosperity, by sending grist to the mill and buying the flour. Hers is the double rôle of supplying the raw material and purchasing the finished product. A self-governing India would never submit to play this part, hence she remains a dependency under pressure.

A distinguished Indian economist said recently: “India’s misfortunes are due to the fact that she is economically passive; what she needs is to be economically active.”

It is futile for Indians or English to talk of India’s economic development until she is free to lay down her own fiscal policy in her own interests. This can never be until the Indian Government is so transformed as to make it responsible, not to the India Office in London, but to the people of India themselves. The present Administration has neglected everything upon which her prosperity as a nation could be built. There is virtually no provision there for producing skilled labour of the higher order; education, both general and technical, is shockingly neglected. In all the length and breadth of India, there is but one technological institute, and this owes its existence to private munificence. Even now its usefulness in promoting the development of Indian industries is virtually nil, so hedged about with restrictions is its management.

The principal industry of India is agriculture, yet before 1907 there was not a single agricultural college in the whole country. A privately-endowed commercial college has been opened recently in Bombay, but even this institution rests under the suspicion of being a reserve for third-class men from England.

For a number of years, Indians have been crying for a definite Government policy towards native industries. This agitation reached its climax during the present war. The successful entry of Japan as a competitor has forced the hand of the Administration, and a commission has been appointed to inquire and report upon the industrial situation. The questions of tariff and fiscal policy are declared to be outside its scope, and already the independent Indian mind suspects the appointment of this body a mere sop to public opinion. The Hon. D. E. Wacha, Member of the Supreme Legislative Council, a recognised authority on Indian finance, declared he had no reason to think this Commission likely to be different from others of which we have had such bitter experience in the past. “In the long run,” he says, “their recommendations are akin to a change from Tweedledum to Tweedledee.”

The economic situation of India to-day was very tersely summed up by the able young publicist, the Hon. C. Y. Chintamani, in his address to the Provincial Conference at Jhansi, Oct. 8, 1916:

“The mass of the population is poor, very poor. A state of destitution, accompanied by disease and debt, is the normal condition of the bulk of the people. A comparative study of the aggregate annual national income, expenditure and savings of the peoples of different countries, would reveal a painful state of things in India. John Bright said that if a country possessing a most fertile soil and capable of bearing every variety of production, found the people in an extreme state of suffering and destitution, there was some fundamental error in the government. The observation was made of India. The Duke of Argyll, Secretary of State for India under Gladstone, recorded his opinion, ‘of chronic poverty and permanent reduction to the lowest level of subsistence such as prevail among the vast population of rural India, we have no example in the Western world.’ In a paper on the wealth of the Empire, read before the British Association in 1903, the aggregate annual income of the United Kingdom (whose population is less than our United Provinces) was put at 1,750,000,000 pounds and that of India at 600,000,000 pounds, roughly, 30 rupees per head per annum. The general survey of the Empire led Sir Robert Giffen to consider ‘how vast must be the economic gulf separating the people of the United Kingdom from India when we find that 42,000,000 of people in the United Kingdom consume in food and drink alone an amount equal to the whole income of 300,000,000 Indians. Unless relieved from their state of semi-starvation, the Indian problem and difficulty remain untouched.’ He further pointed out the anomaly of Britain requiring of India and India alone, a substantial military expenditure, though the wealth of the self-governing colonies is so enormously greater than that of India. This though the Indian army is freely used for imperial and general purposes, and is not employed exclusively for local defence.

“Agriculture is our one national industry, but it is in a depressed state. We are told that the increased cultivation of exportable crops such as jute, cotton and oil seeds, and the higher level of prices have brought greater prosperity to India — but all things considered, their state is hardly better than before, and the oft-recurring famines, each one meaning, besides intense suffering, enormous loss of wealth; the growing pressure of the revenue demand; and the higher cost of living have made their condition worse. The output per acre is smaller in India than elsewhere, because the cultivator cannot afford to adopt costlier methods. The magnitude of agricultural indebtedness is appalling, nor is it due to the extravagance of the ryots. The land revenue system has an intimate bearing on the condition of the agricultural population, and Mr. J. E. O’Connor recommended a general reduction of 33 per cent. in the Government demand, a plea as ineffectual as the repeated resolutions of the Indian National Congress and the efforts of Mr. R. C. Dutt have been.

“Manufacturing industries are a second source of national wealth. India was not a stranger to them in the past, but what was euphemistically described as ’the tide of circumstance’ deprived her of them. Mr. Justice Ranade’s impressive description of our industrial helplessness is not out of date: ‘The country is fed, clothed, warmed, washed, lighted, helped and comforted generally by a thousand arts and industries in the manipulation of which its sons have every day a decreasing share. This dependency has come to be regarded as a plantation, growing raw products to be shipped by British agents in British ships, to be worked into fabrics by British skill and capital, and to be re-exported to India by British merchants to their British shops there and elsewhere. Stagnation and dependence, depression and poverty — these are written in broad characters on the face of the land and its people.’ The recent Government efforts at industrial development hardly touch the fringe of the problem.

“A third source of wealth, — foreign trade, does not contribute to the prosperity of Indians, being mainly in the hands of Europeans whose home is away from India, besides the drain of wealth due to political causes.”

Indian public opinion is thus practically unanimous on the following points :

(a) British policy in India is responsible for the destruction of Indian industries.

(b) The British Government in India has so far failed in a duty which is recognised by all national governments to revive indigenous industries and establish new ones.

(c) The fiscal policy of the Indian Government has been dictated from Whitehall mainly in the interest of British trade, in opposition to, and often in defiance of the best Anglo-Indian administrators.

(d) India has suffered from a constant drain of her national wealth, which has enriched England to India’s cost.

(e) While free trade has been profitable to England, it has been ruinous to India, with its doctrine of laissez-faire.

(f) Railway construction, by means of foreign loans, interest on which was guaranteed by the Government to be paid from Indian revenues, has been ruinous to Indian finance. Up to 1899–1900 it brought no return to the taxpayer.

(g) The railways discriminate against Indian industries and internal trade in their freight rates.⁹

(h) The governmental neglect of education, general, commercial and technical, retards the growth of modern industries in India, as it results in lack of skilled labour.

(i) In view of India’s impoverished condition, there can be no justification for the system of costly administration in force for the past 150 years, as it is maintained at the expense of native economic, industrial and educational development. Far too much money has been spent on the military.

(j) India’s resources have been squandered in military expeditions in which she had no interest. A policy of Imperial expansion has been followed at the cost of India.

(k) The only effective remedy for these crying evils is “self-government,” with “fiscal autonomy.”

In the language of one of our most conservative leaders of public thought, the Hon. Mr. D. E. Wacha, already quoted above:

“If Indian poverty is to be reasonably reduced, if the standard of living of the teeming masses is to be satisfactorily raised; if education and sanitation are to be greatly accelerated, the first and fundamental assumption is a well-devised scheme of fiscal autonomy. Unless the people are allowed full freedom to work out their own economic destiny, it is hopeless to foresee a prosperous India.”

Thus we see that not only the left wing of Indian Nationalists, but conservative native opinion as well, sees in self-government the only potent remedy for the Indian Problem.

English opinion on the subject is widely divided. The number willing to concede India her rights is painfully limited. A few intellectuals favour the idea, as well as a scattering of radical thinkers, writers and Members of Parliament. Those statesmen who are at the helm preserve an ominous silence. In the meantime, the proposal to make the colonies partners in the Empire has created consternation in India. Indian opinion on the point was correctly voiced by the Hon. C. Y. Chintamani when he remarked:—

“Brother-delegates, the war has brought the supreme question of India’s political status to the front. What is to be her future position in the Empire, and what the system of internal government? The fervid utterances of British statesmen, the even warmer utterances of politicians and the British press, during the early months of the war, must be still fresh in your minds. England went to war for the practical assertion of the rights of nations to freedom, and India was not to be denied. The British Empire, of which India comprises the largest single whole, was to be a really free empire. India was not for long to remain a mere dependency,— she was to be recognised as a partner. Imperialism was no longer to stand for the aggrandisement of the white peoples at the expense of the coloured races, so-termed. Indians were no longer to be mere subjects of exploitation for the benefit of His Majesty’s colourless subjects. Even the colonists of the self-governing dominions seemed to be thinking kindly of us. We have always asserted our indefeasible right to absolute equality of status, and these first signs of recognition gave us fresh hope to claim what we have always been entitled to as our just right, and not a favour. The Prime Minister and other eminent British statesmen have made repeated public declarations that the constitution of the Empire will undergo a change upon the war’s termination. But in the whole of the discussions very little reference to India is found. The Secretary of State, our ‘Grand Mogul at Westminster,’ has had scarcely a cheering word to utter. He has found time to put through Parliament two such uncalled-for and retrograde measures as the Indian Civil Service Act and the Government of India Act — the Prime Minister has spared parliamentary time for their passage through both houses; but the annual debate on Indian affairs has been suspended during the last three years, and there has been no authoritative statement on the policy of His Majesty’s Government in relation to India. In India itself, the ’new angle of vision’ has manifested itself in the form of internments and prohibitions under the ‘Defence of India’ Act; a too free employment of the arbitrary ‘Press Act,’ with controversial legislation, increased police expenditure (particularly the C. I. D. branch) and a reduced outlay on education.

“But a far worse menace confronts us. It has been given out that the present self-governing dominions are to be admitted into partnership with England in governance of the Empire; the Crown Colonies, India among them, will be subjected to a further degradation of their already low political status, subject to the politicians of Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Why should any one think of inflicting such a grievous wrong upon India? What are these colonies of yesterday by the side of this hallowed land of ours, which stretches in its sublime past to the beginnings of humanity, with a culture and a civilization which will for all time shed lustre on the human race; with qualities of heart and head in respect to which her children need fear no comparison with any people in any country; and looking forward with confidence, to a future not unworthy of her ancient past? Why should they be our rulers,—why should we suffer them to be? We mean to insist with greater determination that there shall be no governing caste in India,—no rulers and ruled, but equal subjects with common rights and obligations, living on terms of manly comradeship. How galling to contemplate subjection to the colonies whose superior title in any respect we see no reason to acknowledge. It is our imperative duty to make it known to all concerned that India’s position in the Empire shall, in all respects, be identical with that of the present self-governing dominions. To compromise is to commit political suicide as a nation and a race.”¹⁰

English opinion on the economic effects of British rule in India may be divided into three classes:

First: Men such as Hyndman, Digby, Martin, Wilson and others, who frankly admit the economic harm done to India by British rule, and express their regret therefor.

Second: Men who do not admit the economic exploitation of India by England, but maintain that England’s management has made India more prosperous than ever before in her history. To this class belong men of the Strachey school.

Third: Men who honestly admit the fact of India’s exploitation for England’s profit, but who justify it by the right of conquest. They maintain, and rightly, that India was acquired for the purpose of commercial gain, and should be administered on that basis. This is the Morning Post school, and thoroughly to be commended for the absence of hypocrisy, which governs the utterances of diplomats and political apologists. Grandiloquent bursts of rhetoric are inconsistent with British bluntness and do no credit to her national candour. If Englishmen have exploited India, it can be justified on the only tenable ground of India’s having allowed herself to be so exploited. One nation does not conquer another out of philanthropy, and at its best, the rule of one people over another can be but “benevolent despotism.” Domination is always dictated by self-interest, justified by the right of might. The crime of India was her weakness, and she expiates it under the heel of Imperialism. Let her grow strong or perish — the world gives no place to senility.

Such is the creed of the twentieth century, worked out in the bloody struggles of the past, and in the law of the survival of the fittest. But in expounding the law, let us not prate of ethics. Exploitation and conquest may have peculiar ethical value in the vast economy of Nature, but for that, credit and a sanctimonious justification is not given to the exploiter and the conqueror. Let me not rob a weaker brother, and cry “holier than thou” as an added claim to his possessions. It profanes the might of right.

It lies within the reader’s judgment, based on the facts here stated, to decide how benevolent is England’s despotism in India. British rule in India has its brighter side. Young India has drunk deep from the springs of liberty and the rights of man, as embodied in English history and literature; it has imbibed the spirit of modern civilisation, epitomised in the activity and energy of the West; it is learning that fundamental law of nations, “self-preservation is the law of life.” From her own standpoint, England has not been an unmixed blessing to India, and from ours, she has not proved an unmixed curse. She has taught us the blessings of the wealth she has deprived us of; she has awakened the need for the education she has not given; she has proven the value of the power she dares not bestow. The West has not knocked at the door of the East without response,— we are learning to answer it in kind. Patriotism, Nationalism, Human Brotherhood and the Rights of Man echo around the world to-day, but before these sacred sentiments become truths no less sacred, they must be won, it seems, by right of might.

England says that she had ruled India to India’s own best interests, and that we should never have been so prosperous or happy as a nation, as under British rule. Imperial Britain would imply that Englishmen are angels, dwelling in an Utopian dream. Where is the human being above self-interest and greed? Where is the man who will not wield his power to his own ends? One may meet such individuals, though they are rare; but to seek for a nation so disinterested as to rule another in the best interests of the latter, is futile. It is time England, as well as India, faced the situation squarely and accepted it for what it is, or make a better one.¹¹ There has never been sincerity in the relationship of foreign ruler and native ruled. The farce of paternalistic dominance must end, and some clear adjudication be made of respective rights and obligations, else a grim tragedy will be enacted. Under the existing system, a thin stratum of government officials, drawing princely salaries,—lawyers, bankers, constructors and stock-exchange traders,—may ignore the humiliation of their position, and consider themselves benefited by British rule. But the majority of them are sullen and discontented, feeling themselves for what they are—parasites, battening on the vitals of their motherland. The masses, whether traders, agriculturists or labourers, are being crushed beneath the weight of this pitiless Western Juggernaut. From one-third to one-fifth are insufficiently fed, housed and clothed; ninety per cent. are illiterate; truly, if “to be weak is miserable,” their helplessness makes them most wretched. The very efforts of Englishmen themselves to succour them have failed, under the present inexorable régime.¹² The attempt of Lord Crewe to carry his India Council Reform Bill of 1914; the attempt to obtain an Executive Council for the United Provinces under the Government of Lord Hardinge; the effort to repeal the countervailing excise duties on Indian cotton goods, all ended in failure, and demonstrate the hopelessness of ameliorating the system. There is but one panacea for Indian ills; the road may lie rough before us, the march long and dangerous, but the goal lies clear ahead as the summum bonum of our national existence: Home Rule, Self Government, Autonomy. This is the end for which we must live, putting our soul’s salvation upon the attainment of Liberty, the spiritual heritage of man. Woe to us if we fail! Eternal glory if we succeed!

Footnotes