tion and an opportunity to furnish more sons for the army.

Will it pay?

BRITISH RULE IN INDIA.

In the discussion of a colonial policy for the United States frequent references will be made to England's government of India. The imperialists are already declaring that Great Britain's policy has resulted in profit to herself and benefit to her Asiatic subjects.

The opponents of imperialism, on the other hand, find in India's experience a warning against a policy. which places one nation under the control of another and distant nation.

In 1600 the first East India company was organized. Its charter was for fifteen years, but a new and perpetual charter was granted in 1609. Under the reign of Charles II. the company obtained another charter which continued former privileges and added authority "to make peace or war with any prince or people (in India) not being Christian."

The affairs of the company were managed with an eye single to gain, and intervention in the quarrels of native princes resulted in the gradual extension of its influence. Money was the object, and the means employed would not always bear scrutiny. There was, however, no hypocritical mingling of an imaginary "philanthropy" with an actual "five per cent."

In 1757 Lord Clive, by the battle of Plassey, made the company the dominant power in Indian politics, and under Clive and Hastings the income of the East India Company reached enormous proportions.

The history of the century, beginning with the bat

tle of Plassey and ending with the Sepoy mutiny in 1857, was written under headlines like the following: "The First War with Hyder Ali," "The Rohilla War," "The Second War with Hyder Ali," "The War with Tippoo Saib," "The War with the Mahrattas," "Suppression of the Pindaris," "The Last of the Peshwas," "The First Burmese War," "The First Afghan War," "The Conquest of Scinde," "The Sekh Wars,” “The Conquest of Punjab," "The Annexation of Pegu," "The Annexation of Oudh," "The Outbreak of Meerut," "The Seizure of Delhi," "The Siege of Lucknow," etc., etc.

This brief review is not given because it is interesting, but to acquaint the reader with the imperialistic plan of solving the problem of civilization by the elimination of unruly factors.

In 1858 Parliament, by an act entitled an act "for the better government of India," confessed that the management of Indian affairs could be improved and placed the control in the hands of a Secretary of State for India and a Council.

In 1877 Queen Victoria assumed the title, Empress of India.

Even if it could be shown that England's sovereignty over India had brought blessings to the Indian people and advantage to the inhabitants of Great Britain, we could not afford to adopt the policy. A monarchy can engage in work which a republic dare not undertake. A monarchy is constructed upon the theory that authority descends from the king and that privileges are granted by the crown to the subjects. Of course the ruling power recognizes that it owes a duty to the people, but while the obligation is binding upon the conscience of the sovereign it cannot be enforced by the subject.

Webster presented this idea with great force in his

speech on the Greek revolution. After setting forth the agreement between the Allied Powers, he said: "The first of these principles is, that all popular or constitutional rights are holden no otherwise than as grants from the crown. Society, upon this principle, has no rights of its own; it takes good government, when it gets it, as a boon and a concession, but can demand nothing. It is to live in that favor which emanates from royal authority, and if it have the misfortune to lose that favor, there is nothing to protect it against any degree of injustice and oppression. It can rightfully make no endeavor for a change, by itself; its whole privilege is to receive the favors that may be dispensed by the sovereign power, and all its duty is described in the single word, submission. This is the plain result of the principal continental state papers; indeed, it is nearly the identical text of some of them."

The English people have from time to time forced the crown to recognize certain rights, but the principle of monarchy still exists. The sovereign has a veto upon all legislation; the fact that this veto has not been used of late does not change the governmental theory and, in India, the application of the theory has deprived the Indian people of participation in the control of their own affairs.

A nation which denies the principle that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed can give self-government to one colony and deny it to another; it can give it to colonies strong enough to exact it by force and deny it to weaker ones; but a nation which recognizes the people as the only sovereigns, and regards those temporarily in authority merely as public servants, is not at liberty to apply the principle to one section of the country and refuse it to another.

But, so far from supporting the contention of the imperialists, British rule in India really enforces every argument that can be made against a colonial system of government. In the first place, to authorize a commercial company "to make peace or war with any prince or people (not Christian)," according to its pleasure, was to place the pecuniary interests of a few stockholders above the rights of those with whom they had dealings. Clive and Hastings seem to have acted upon this authority. When the former was called to account he confessed that he had forged a treaty and his conduct was such that Parliament was compelled to vote that he "had abused his powers and set an evil example to the servants of the public," but, as he had increased the power of England in India, his condemnation was accompanied by the declaration that he had, "at the same time, rendered great and meritorious services to his country."

The prosecution of Hastings for wrongs inflicted upon the people of India occupies a conspicuous place among the political trials of history. The speeches made against him recall the orations of Cicero against Verres, who, by the way, was also charged with plundering a colony.

Cicero said that Verres relied for his hope of escape upon his ability to corrupt the judges of his day, and it appears that the East India Company was also accused of polluting the stream of justice only a century ago.

In his speech on the Nabob of Arcot's debts, Burke said: "Let no man hereafter talk of the decaying energies of nature. All the acts and monuments in the records of peculation; the consolidated corruption of ages; the pattern of exemplary plunder in the heroic times of Roman iniquity, never equalled the gigantic corruption of this single act. Never did Nero, in all