During the examination of Lord Woleeley before the Corn.
mission on the military and civil expenditure of India at the India Office on Wednesday, there was a very curious collision of opinion on the relation of India to England between Lord Wolseley and Mr. Naoroji (one of the Commissioners). Lord Wolseley said that "India never existed as India at all until we went there. It was a conglomeration of fighting States where Mahommedans were cutting the throats of Hindoos, and everything that is worth having by India has been derived from English rule." Mr. Naoroji takes a precisely opposite view. In his opinion "India has made England the most powerful, the richest, and the greatest country in the world ; and I further say that England has done the greatest possible material injury to India." That was hardly a dis- cussion appropriate to a Commission on "Indian civil and military expenditure," and Lord Welby very rightly stopped it. But we do not think that if England proposed to cancel -" the greatest possible material injury" that she inflicts on India by withdrawing, that India would exult in the break up of the peace which our rule there has imposed. Mr. Naoroji's view is certainly paradoxical, and indeed extra- vagant. If it might be maintained, as most things may be maintained, that it would have been happier for India to go on with its endless internal fends, there is at least a good deal to be said on the per contra side.
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