"Lord Ripon is a plain, manly man, whose character, head, and heart would have made him a great man even if he had been born in obscurity, but now he ranks as one of the highest, and is one of the wealthiest of the English nobles. He said, among other things, to me: 'I like America and her people very much. I was there on a commission which tended to make America and England better friends, and all such efforts are well worthy all men (he referred to the Alabama treaty, in which as Earl de Gray he was one of the commissioners). With American and English ideas of liberty it is hard to understand how to rule India. I would educate the natives,' said he, 'even if I believed that it would be dangerous to English power, because it would be right to do so; but I don't think it is dangerous. India has always had a few very able and highly-educated men, while the millions have been in utter ignorance and superstition, and such a condition is more dangerous to English rule than if all are raised in the scale of knowledge. My only object, and I think England's, in India, is to benefit India. Our schools and railroads are doing away with ignorance, and are fast destroying the _caste_ system. Considering the natives as enemies, we must put on a bold front and fear no danger, but be always on the guard.'" Afterward I became intimately acquainted with this truly noble man, and was proud and happy to be counted by him as one of his very few friends in India who stood by him when the powerful Anglo-Indian bureaucracy turned against him on account of his humane efforts to raise the natives socially and politically. Unfortunately for India, she has not had many British rulers like Lord Ripon, but most of them, in conjunction with the office-holding class, rule India, not for the good of India, but for their own interests.