Wacha, but
members can refer to his excellent speech.
Mr. Fawcett once remarked that when the East India Company was abolished
the English people became directly responsible for the
Government of India. It cannot, I think, be denied that this
responsibility has been so imperfectly discharged that in many
respects the new system of Government compares unfavourably
with the old.... There was at that time an independent control
of expenditure which now seems to be almost entirely wanting.
Shortly after the Crown assumed the rule of India, Mr. Disraeli asked
the House of Commons to regard India as "a great and solemn trust
committed to it by an all-wise and inscrutable Providence." Mr. George
Yule, in the Fourth Congress, remarked on this: "The 650 odd members had
thrown the trust back upon the hands of Providence, to be looked after
as Providence itself thinks best." Perhaps it is time that India should
remember that Providence helps those who help themselves.
Year after year the Congress continued to remonstrate against the cost
of the army, until in 1902, after all the futile protests of the
intervening years, it condemned an increase of pay to British soldiers
in India which placed an additional burden on the Indian revenues of
L786,000 a year, and pointed out that the British garrison was
unnecessarily numerous, as was shown by the withdrawal of large bodies
of British soldiers for service in South Africa and China.
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