interest in the retention of this “brightest jewel of the British crown,” for here was furnished the most splendid patronage that ever lay in the gift of a statesman. Hundreds of the cultured classes of England had careers of position and emolument as civil servants of the Government, under “covenants” that secured them munificent compensation, and which enabled them, when their legal term of service expired, to retire on pensions equal to about one half their splendid pay; so that Montgomery Martin estimates that the money remittances to Great Britain from India averaged five million sterling ($25,000,000) per annum for the past sixty years. Landed property in England has been largely enhanced in value by the investments of fortunes, the fruit of civil, military, and commercial success in Hindustan. A nation controlling the resources of such a dependency, with such a noble field in which to elicit and educate the genius of its youth and display the ability of its commanders, with the profitable employment of its mercantile shipping in the boundless imports and exports of such a country as India, could not lightly resign, or throw it away without a mighty struggle for its retention.
But, the man who would present no further reasons than these for British resolution to keep India in its control, would do injustice to the better section of English society, and to many of her noble representatives in the East. There is another and a better reason than what was measured by the pounds, shillings, and pence of mere worldly men, underlying the determination of England in this matter. The Christians of Britain hold firmly that, the Ruler of heaven and earth, in so wonderfully subjecting that great people to their rule, has done so for a higher than secular purpose; that he has given them a moral and evangelical mission to fulfill in that land for him; and that it is their high and solemn duty to maintain that responsibility until, by education and Christianity, they shall attach those millions by the tie of a common creed to the English throne, or fit them for assuming for themselves the responsibilities of self-government. For such men Montgomery Martin (one of their most voluminous Oriental writers) speaks
