Page:Nil Durpan.djvu/211

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immediately at its close; but of which, until now, he has not felt himself at liberty to make use. But now that this interview is thus cited, Mr. Brett declares that Mr. Seton-Karr's memory has played him false, for no "regret that any passage whatever had appeared" was expressed by Mr. Seton-Karr. At that interview Mr. Seton-Karr must have had his first intimation of any knowledge of the appearance of the book in India, yet at that interview he declared his full acquaintance with the author's preface and the introduction by Mr. Long. When reminded of certain passages, and that they were neither dramatic nor fictitious in their tone or intention, he expressed his regret,—not that they had been published,—but that any public man should be so "thin-skinned" as to apply them; adding that "it should be remembered that very hard words had been used on either side"—a phrase so extraordinary, coming from a Government Secretary and Member of Council, that it determined his hearer on the course to which he has adhered—namely, to such an opposition by every available legal and constitutional means as shall teach officials of that genus that the makers and administrators of the Law can no longer in the young Empire set themselves above and beyond the law, whether written in the statutes or received by common consent, as rules of conduct in civilised communities among men, free by birth, and equal in social rights and privileges with themselves. We disavow, as broadly and as sincerely as Mr. Seton-Karr, any mingling of personal feeling whatever in this question; but we will yield no point in what we hold to be a phase of the great constitutional change which is passing over India, and in which the Government has shown to the non-official classes the imperative necessity of standing boldly and resolutely in their own defence—Englishman, July 29.

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