Although I am not in a position to criticize I do not doubt that in these pages the facts are accurately recorded, and I have sufficient reason to believe that the appreciation is just.
The subject of the sketch, Mr. Gandhi, has been denounced in this country, even by responsible persons, as an ordinary agitator; his acts have been misrepresented as mere vulgar defiance of the law; there have not even been wanting suggestions that his motives are those of self-interest and pecuniary profit.
A perusal of these pages ought to dispel any such notions from the mind of any fair man who has been misled into entertaining them. And with a better knowledge of the man there must come a better knowledge of the matter.
The Indian community in the Transvaal are struggling for the maintenance of a right and the removal of a degradation. Can we as Englishmen find fault with them for that? The only method of protest, except that of violence and disorder, which is open to them, who have neither votes nor representation, is that of passive resistance. Can we find fault with them for that? They are not selfishly resisting a tax or insidiously striving for new political
