develop her resources, it would retain her vast populations as the greatest market of the future for our manufactured goods, and at the same time it would remove, definitely and for ever, a very real and deeply-resented inequality."
Mr. Chamberlain's splendid and successful advocacy of Imperial Fiscal Reform has brought these proposals, which in 1896 seemed to many a counsel of perfection, into the region of practical politics. If India is ever to obtain such a fair share of real fiscal independence as is compatible with and demanded by her loyalty to the Empire at large, unshackled by the fetish-worship of pseudo-economic dogmas that are ridiculed as obsolete in every civilized country except England, now is the time for her well-wishers to speak out.
Speaking at Ealing the other day as an antiquated Cobdenite, Lord George Hamilton said:
"India itself is intensely Protectionist, but so long as Free Trade is the policy of this Empire we have a perfect right to say that India shall adopt that system."
As an old Indian officer who owes to India more than he can ever hope to repay, I desire to protest most warmly against this doctrine of the so-called Free Traders. We do not use this imperious tone, this sic volo, sic jubeo, to Australia and Canada. It seems to me monstrous that an ex-Secretary of State for India should use it to India, and I feel certain that Lord Curzon and Mr. Brodrick, if called upon, would absolutely repudiate it.
I contrast with these haughty, domineering words the language in which Mr. Chamberlain has approached the question of India's relation to his proposals—a question in regard to which the great apostle of Empire has evidently hitherto been placed at an absolute disadvantage by the jealous dog-in-the-manger attitude of the "man in possession," the late Secretary of State. For, just as the obstinate vanity of a very mediocre Chancellor of the Exchequer has transformed a vital fiscal reform, that was being quietly and easily carried through without any living soul