The upward impulse, if I may use such an expression,
which every schoolboy at Eton or Harrow may feel that he may
one day be a Gladstone, a Nelson, or a Wellington, and which
may draw forth the best efforts of which he is capable, that is
denied to us. The full height to which our manhood is capable
of rising can never be reached by us under the present system.
The moral elevation which every Self-governing people feel
cannot be felt by us. Our administrative and military talents
must gradually disappear owing to sheer disuse, till at last
our lot, as hewers of wood and drawers of water in our own
country, is stereotyped.
The Hon. Mr. Bhupendranath Basu has spoken on similar lines:
A bureaucratic administration, conducted by an imported agency,
and centring all power in its hands, and undertaking all
responsibility, has acted as a dead weight on the Soul of
India, stifling in us all sense of initiative, for the lack of
which we are condemned, atrophying the nerves of action and,
what is more serious, necessarily dwarfing in us all feeling of
self-respect.
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