15 FEBRUARY 1930, Page 12

A Hundred Years Ago

THE " SPECTATOR," FEBRUARY 13TH, 1830.

INDIA.

The question of India is one of great complexity. The power of the Company there has grown up in the lapse of one hundred and seventy years, from a grain of mustard-seed to a tree that covers the earth with its branches.- Its ramifications are so numerous and so extended, that much and long and minute attention is required to trace only a few of them. India calls for the attention of the legislator and the politician even more imperatively than of the economist. We are not merely to determine m -what manner our commercial operations in that vast peninsula may be most successfully carried on, but by what means the welfare and liberties of one hundred millions of people, 'differing from ourselves in habits and institutions and religion, even more than in complexion, may be most effectually served ; how far those forms of procedure and those checks of opinion, our juries and our press, may be rendered available on the Ganges for the same purposes as they are on the Thames ; in a word, hoiv the superior wisdom and policy of Europe can be copied out in Asia, with a view not to the pecuniary benefit of one nation, but to the joint advantage of two great integral portions of a mighty empire. It is quite evident, that before a satisfactory conclusion can be come to on a complicated question like this, so many facts are to be investigated, so many opposing arguments are to be balanced, that not one committee, nor one session, nor one parliament, but many, may elapse.

REMARKS ON A PUBLIC SCHOOL.

" I was deeply impressed by the unamiable character of the boys : regarding the general colour of their society, and not individual instances, I saw that its leading features were insolence and injustice, brutality and baseness. Those who possessed the advantages of years and physical strength, tyrannized over the young and feeble, who, in the various methods which they employed to guard against, or conciliate their tyrants, exhibited the same mean and contemptible Spirit. The ingenious secured theil exemption from maltreatment by performing the tasks of their less-pfted superiors ; others eluded abuse by flattery and sub- mission ; and even the more bold, who ventured to disobey, 01 yielded unwillingly, were moved only by the more impatient desire of obtaining that power against which they remonstrated- .

, and exercising it in the manner which they resisted when practiced upon themselves."