bursting of which no sane man could doubt. They raised the standard for national independence, and anticipated that event at least two centuries before its time. We have to learn much before we ought to hazard such a leap. India can no longer be expected to relapse into the days of a Brahmin ascendency or a Mahratta government. The advent of the Anglo-Saxon race was not merely fortuitous, but had been fore-ordained in the wisdom of Providence. First of all, our efforts should be to shake off the fetters which a past age has forged for us; to effect our freedom from moral disabilities; and not to stake the well-being of the country on the result of a contest with veteran soldiers who have marched triumphant into Paris, Canton, and Candahar.”
Another Hindoo testimony is to the same effect, only stronger in its satisfaction with the results:
“The mutiny was a fatal error; it once more plunged the country into the misrule of past ages. It jeopardized the vital interest of India, and was to have proved suicidal of her fate. The exit of the English would have undone all the good that is slowly paving the way to her regeneration. Rightly understood, to own the government of the English is not so much to own the government of that nation, as to own the government of an enlightened legislation, of the science and civilization of the nineteenth century, of superior intelligence and genius, of knowledge itself. Under this view, no right-minded Hindoo ought to feel his national instinct offended, and his self-respect diminished by allegiance to a foreign rule. The regeneration of his country must be the dearest object to the heart of every enlightened Hindoo; and it must be perfectly evident to him that the best mode of attaining this end is by striving to raise himself to the level of his rulers. What can the most patriotic Hindoo wish for better than that his country should, until its education as a nation is further advanced, continue part of the greatest and most glorious of empires, under a sovereign of the purest Aryan blood?”
Baboo Chunder, in the first volume of his Travels of a Hindoo, having twice lately gone over the extent of Hindustan Proper,
