Good illustrations of this quickening of the public conscience are found in England’s dealings with India and China. In the year 1813 a resolution declaring that England’s first duty in legislating for India was to promote the interests of the people of India was proposed in Parliament, but was defeated. Twenty years later (in 1833) this principle was definitely embodied in a Government of India Act.[773] In 1841–1842 England, at the end of what has been justly characterized as “one of the most dishonorable and detestable wars that ever stained her annals,” compelled China to keep her ports open to the iniquitous opium traffic. Two generations later (in 1906) the House of Commons by resolution unanimously declared the Indian opium trade with China to be “morally indefensible,” and requested the Government to bring it to a speedy end.[774] Five years later England entered into an agreement with China, according to the terms of which the importation of Indian opium into China will cease on or before 1917. This is a notable triumph of the new international conscience. Our dealings with the island of Cuba since its liberation--opinions may differ in regard to the rightness of our original act of intervention--affords another encouraging illustration of the progress the world has made in international morality. And the same is true of our dealings with the Filipinos, notwithstanding the utterly painful character of the earlier chapters of the story. There has been no responsible official utterance on this subject that has represented our task in our acquired dependency as other than a public trust, as a guardianship to be exercised solely in the interest of the Filipinos as the nation’s wards. The better moral feeling of the nation, intensified in many by deep compunction, has indignantly repudiated all those unofficial utterances which have cynically represented the islands as an inviting field for selfish exploitation by American capitalists, and has demanded that our government in the islands should be inspired and controlled by the spirit of unselfish service. And this ethical spirit has in general marked our administration of the affairs of the islanders. “I believe that I am speaking with historic accuracy and impartiality,” declares ex-President Roosevelt, “when I say that the American treatment of and attitude toward the Filipino people, in its combination of disinterested ethical purpose and sound common sense, marks a new and long stride forward in advance of all steps that have hitherto been taken along the path of wise and proper treatment of weaker by stronger races.” This ethical purpose is especially manifested in the sending out, in the early period of our rule, of five hundred young American teachers to carry to this deeply wronged people the best we have to give--a national act without a parallel in all the history of the past.