Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/346

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that in the management of her colonies and dependencies England has in the long run admitted the aborigines and the conquered to a larger share of political liberty, commercial equality, and public rights than any other State. In periods of tranquillity and social development there is, indeed, in the minds of the English people a kindly, almost a precipitate desire to raise the subjugated nations to like privileges with themselves. I call upon you therefore, Administrators, Magistrates, Physicians, Engineers of the future, to prepare yourselves for increased responsibilities and more honorable employments. The field of promotion will expand at least as fast as the qualifications to fill it. I have stated before that in my humble judgment it is only through native channels, enlightened by European education, that complete and correct views of native science, arts, manners, and institutions can be conveyed to Europe. Be faithful interpreters. I now affirm with the same conviction that it is only by native hands that the full benefits of European civilization can be naturalized in India among the vast mysterious numbers who live and suffer and labour under our benevolent but often blind and helpless sway. I have seen an old experienced and earnest member of the Civil Service closing his official career with the complaint, that he was leaving the land on which he had expended the strength of his hands and the warmth of his heart, leaving it still dark, undiscovered, impenetrable. We need the native to reach the native. Remember then, gentlemen, that you, the adopted children of European civilization, are the interpreters between the stranger and the Indian, between the Government and the subject, between the great and the small, between the strong and the weak ; that you walk armed with a two-fold knowledge between two nations that do not know each other, that cannot know each other, except through you. Will you carry a faithful or deceitful message? If you are the ingenuous and careful representatives of England's good-will to India and of India's claims on England, then you will put your talent to a noble use; if, on the other hand, you hesitate, misconstrue, conceal, if you show the Government in false colours to the country, and the country in false colours to the Government, then you do a double wrong, a wrong to England and a wrong to India, you widen what you ought to close,

you alienate where you ought to reconcile, you continue distrust and perpetuate misconception where it is your mission to spread mutual confidence and mutual light. I charge you to lay this feature in your position particularly to heart. Be true English-men to Indians; be true Indians to Englishmen, with rectitude and single-mindedness as becomes faithful interpreters.