There are great harshnesses in our rule, there is a rigidity and exactitude of procedure which is often distasteful to native opinion, there are patent defects arising out of our attempts to administer justice, there is great irritation at our constant and often ill-conceived experiments in legislation, there is real danger in the fresh burdens we lay upon the people in our desire to carry out apparently laudable reforms. But with all these blemishes, which have only to be distinctly perceived to be removed from our administrative system, the educated native feels that he is gradually acquiring the position of a freeman, and he would not exchange it for that which Mr. Hyndman appears to desiderate.
E. Perry, in Nineteenth Century.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] This rock on its eastern face contains the decrees of Asoka, who began to reign 263 b.c.; on the western face is the inscription of Rudradáman, one of the Satrap-rulers under an Indian Greek dynasty, circa 90 b.c.; and the northern face presents the inscription of Skandagupta, 240 a.d.
[2] Preface to Vishnu Purana.
[3] Elphinstone, History of India, vol. i. p. 511.
[4] See Aitcheson, Treaties, vol. vi. p. 18.
[5] A Hindu Gentleman's Reflections. Spiers, London, 1878.
[6] Widow-burning.
[7] The swing-sacrifice.