The Immediate Need
thoughtful and patriotic Indian minds. I have had, myself, in the past, the strongest leaning towards this conservative and gradual ideal of progress.
But I would ask those who hold it,—How can you face the historical facts of an ever-increasing dependence, an ever-increasing deterioration, if the British imperial rule continues? How can you face these terrible sentences of Sir John Seeley which have been quoted above? Granted that the Reform Act has brought a certain measure of responsibility, does not the old fatal dependence on England still lurk beneath it? Is there any way of getting rid of the spirit of subjection, except by standing out unmistakably on the side of freedom? Can doles of Home Rule, meticulously meted out at the will of the rulers, create a new inner vital force? Even the British historian can hardly look forward to such a prospect.
This would be my own inner questioning of the conservative process, and the doubt in my own mind has been so great, that I
