Charles Bradlaugh: a Record of His Life and Work, Volume 2 (of 2): With an Account of his Parliamentary Struggle, Politics and Teachings. Seventh EditionRobertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Religion
Charles Bradlaugh: a Record of His Life and Work, Volume 2 (of 2): With an Account of his Parliamentary Struggle, Politics and Teachings. Seventh Edition
Robertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Bradlaugh, Charles, 1833-1891
Bradlaugh, it may suffice to say, was under no delusions as to the
present political capacity of the Indian races. He perfectly recognised
their bias to rhetoric and their immaturity of character, as well as
the enormous difficulties in the way of their political amalgamation.
Hence his programme for them was an extremely gradual introduction
of the principle of self-rule. Nothing could be more judicious and
restrained than his brief address to the Congress on his brief visit
to India after his dangerous illness of 1889, within about a year of
his death. And the chances are that before a generation is over his
view of the case will be the accepted commonplace of Liberal politics;
while the notion of a perpetual domination of Englishmen in a country
where they cannot rear healthy children will be regarded as a crowning
flight of unscientific political sentiment. In any case, it implies no
great rashness to predict that an England which ignores the affairs of
its subjects as much as possible in Parliament will not long be able to
maintain a despotic rule over a people accessible to Western ideas. The
Home Rule principle, which was for Bradlaugh a principle of universal
virtue, however different the degree of its application to a given case
at a given moment, must in time be wrought out in India as elsewhere,
if only it goes forward in the West, and the West keeps up its growing
intercourse with the East. And it was one of his many political merits
to have been one of the first to see this not only abstractly but in
the concrete.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account