The great bulk of the population, mostly a simple and ignorant peasantry whose horizon does not extend beyond their own village and the fields that surround it, accepted with more or less conscious gratitude the material benefits conferred upon them by alien rulers with whom they were seldom brought into actual contact save through the occasional presence of a District officer on tour, almost invariably humane and kindly and anxious to do even-handed justice to all. Another class of Indians, chiefly dwellers in large cities, infinitesimally small numerically but constantly increasing in numbers and still more rapidly in activity and influence, saw, however, in an autocratic form of government, of which it even questioned the efficiency, an insurmountable barrier to the aspirations which Western education had taught it to entertain. The list of graduates from Indian Universities lengthened every year, the number of schools and colleges in which young Indians acquired at least the rudiments of Western knowledge grew and multiplied in every province. Western-educated Indians flocked to the bar; they showed themselves qualified for most of the liberal professions; they filled every post that was open to them in the public services. But where, they asked with growing impatience, was the fulfilment of the hopes which they had founded on the Queen's Proclamation of 1858? There had been perhaps no departure from the letter of the Proclamation, but had its spirit been translated into effective practice? Was it never to be interpreted in the same generous sense in which a still earlier generation of British administrators had interpreted their mission as a means to train the Indians to protect and govern themselves?