(To THE Enrros or eta " Speersroa."1
Sns,—The-article in your issue of December 20th entitled "The First Stage towards Indian Anarchy" ably expresses the thoughts of most Englishmen who have sufficient experience of India to foresee what Mr. Montagu's Act will inevitably lead to. That the Act sounds the death-knell of many fine Services is a comparatively minor consideration. That it will admittedly substitute for generations a weak and corrupt system of government for an efficient and honest administration Is of far more serious consequence. But even this fades into insignificance beside the object which the authors of the Montagu-Chelmsford Report, as a means to their end, deliberately aim at,.-viz., the disturbance of the present "pathetic contentment" of the Indian people. To the ordinary man it passes comprehension how two such high officials as the Secretary of State and the Viceroy can accept so vast a responsibility as this connotes, for History will certainly place the responsibility for what follows in India on them, and on them alone. Is-the contentment of a.great people so undesirable or so common in. these days, as to excite pity? What right, save the- right of might, has Mr. Montagu or the House of Commons to destroy it in one of the few countries where it is still to be found? It is, we are told, all a question of faith. We are asked to believe that the grant of representative govern,- ment justifies every evil it may bring in its train, even, it is presumed, a reproduction of the existing, conditions in Russia. Apart from the impossibility of securing any really representative government in India, this is a creed to which few sane men will subscribe when applied to an Oriental people in India's present stage of development. But the die is cast, and little remains for the British official in India but to give his loyal support to the "Reforms," though he knows that he is thereby contributing to the ruin of the country for which he has worked, and, incidentally, expediting his own. extinction, He may, however, at least be excused for refusing to join Mr. Montagu's apologists in giving-him credit for high courage in introdueing changes of so momentous and far-reaching a nature, since it requires no great degree of courage to gamble with the lives and happiness of others.—I. am, Sir, &c.,
S. Y. Z.
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