We ourselves are possibly stupid but at any rate honest
and consistent in our policy of leading India gradually on and up to the ideas of a more or less Western democracy. That is what we intend to go on doing, and we sometimes feel rewarded. That this Committee of native Indians should have made the report at all is really an encouraging sign of reasonableness. There is also every prospect of reason prevailing in Bardoli, where the trouble over the assessments for taxation has been reasonably handled on the part of the Government without any of the show of force that would formerly have been thought right and necessary. On the whole, we are confirmed in our belief that the Simon Commission will find in the autumn an easier and a very different " atmosphere " from that which surrounded their first visit.
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