The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-07-01

I | turn, whose interests are in England l rather than in India and whose sympa 1 thies are naturally with the British rather than with the natives, canno be expected to view questions from tn I same standpoint as the Indians. Neith
 CT can these officials be expected t' know the needs of the people as wei
 as those who share their daily life anC | aspirations.
 It is not necessary to review tn,
 earlier rue under the East India com pany; that is sufficiently condemned by
 public record. The company was char tered for commercial purposes, and it. rule had no other thAn a pecuniary aim It secured control of state after state by helping one native prince against
 another where 1t did not actually instI-
 gate war between princes. The Erg- fish government finally took the col onv ever. confessedly because of the outrageous conduct of the company officials. No one now defends the rule of the East India Company, although Warren Hastings was finally acquitted by the House of Lords in spite of his
 crimes, out of consideration for his public service in extending English authority
 Is English rule in India just. as we
 find it today? Fortunately England
 permits free speech in England. all it in her colonies, and there has not
 been a public question under consider 5tion in England for a century which has not brought out independent opln- ion. It is the glory of England that she was an early champion of freedom of speech. and 1t s the glcry of Eng hshmen that they criticise their own IL a-N- During the American revolution Burke thundered his defense of the rights of the colonists, and WaIpole warned his countrymen that they could not de stroy American liberty without assert inG principles which, # .a-ried out. would destroy English liberty as well.
 During the recent war in South Af- rica the British had no more severe critics than were to be found among ment And 60 today British rule in India is as foreibly arrsigned by Eng lishmen as by the -ndians themselves. While Mir. Naoroji, an Indian. goes to England and secures from a meeting of radical club the adoption of a reso- lution reciting that as Britain has appropriated thousands Of millions of India's wealth for building up and maintaining her British Indian em- plr6 anu TOT uTdWlnB ulTeCtIS vast wealth to herself;" that as she Is con tinuing to drain about 3O.000, 900 pounds of Indians wealth every year unceas- ingly in a variety of ways" and that as she has thereby reduced the bulk of the Indian population to extreme poverty destitution and degradation; it is therefore her bounden duty in com mon justice and humanity to pay from her own exchequer the costs of all fam ines and diseases caused by such i'm poverishment" And further, that it is most humillating and disereditable to the British name that other coun tries should be appealed to or should have to come to Br!tains help for re- lief of Britain's own subjects. and af- ter and by her un-British rule of about l5O years
 While. I repeat. MT Naoroji was se- curing the unanimous adoption of the above resolution in England, Sir Henry Cotton. now a member of Parliament but for thirty-five years a member of the Indian civil service. was preparing his book. New India. in which he cour- ageously points out the injustice from which India now suffers. Neither he