England and India : a Record of Progress During a
Hundred Years, 1785-1885. By Romesh C. Dutt, I.C.S., C.I.E. (Chatto and Windus.)—No one can read this admirably written little volume without feeling a high respect for the author. As a theorist Mr. Dutt is sometimes led very palpably astray, but the skill with which he marshalls his facts, and the generous spirit which inspires his Record, are deserving of warm praise. Within less than two hundred pages the author surveys the history of a century, so far as that history relates to popular progress. The book opens with the age of Pitt and Wellington. This is followed by the age of Canning and Grey, the age of Peel and Palmerston, and the age of Disraeli and Gladstone. Mr. Dutt's argument is that in proportion as political progress is made in England a corresponding progress should be allowed in India, and he fails to see, what history plainly shows, that the two countries do not stand upon the same footing. Great Britain is a nation in a very different sense from the nationality that can be claimed for the " vast and various populations," as he truly calls them, that comprise British India. A hundred years is a brief period in the history of a country, and this Mr. Dutt is apt to forget in claiming rights for India which the people are not yet qualified to receive. " Indian opinion," he writes, " seeks to be heard and is not heard ; Indian feeling seeks to be represented and is not represented,"— to which England's answer is that the time has not yet come for the freedom Mr. Dutt desires. That the country is not sufficiently advanced to receive without danger the privileges suggested by Mr. Dutt recent events have proved. Much, however, in the volume has a claim on the attention of every Englishman interested in our Indian Empire, and there is truth in the state- ment that "to try to read Indian history apart from English history would be an endeavour to understand a result without knowing the cause."
Previous page
