But whilst we shall continue, as far as politics can foresee, to superintend the administration of India and to protect her from external attack, the danger is that our bureaucracy, always the slowest form of government to realize change, should ignore the new spirit arising in the country, or should seek to stifle rather than guide it. It is the conviction of many that India is now standing on the verge of a national renaissance—a new birth in intellect, social life, and the affairs of state. There are unmistakable evidences of this, not only among educated Hindus, but among educated Mohammedans; not only among the educated classes, but throughout the masses of the people. Many things have combined to create a new spirit, and we have ourselves contributed much. The long peace that has made development possible, the easy communication by railways, the wide distribution of newspapers, the visits of highly educated Indians to England, the use of English as a common tongue among educated people of all races and religions, the increasing knowledge of our history and our hard-won liberties, the increasing study of our great Liberal thinkers—all these admirable advantages we have ourselves contributed to the new spirit, and it is useless for startled reactionaries to think of withdrawing them now. We must also take into account the example set to all Oriental nationalities by Japan, and the awakened stirring of Liberalism in England herself, and, no matter how feeble its efforts and how bitter its failure, in Russia, Egypt, Persia, and Turkey. Most of these beneficent influences move slowly, with a deep and gradual force, and, whatever happens, they will continue to move, though to move slowly. But the outburst of the new spirit which we call the unrest in India was occasioned by a different order of things, for the most part, sudden, external, and pernicious. Such things were the contemptuous disregard of Indian feeling in the Partition of Bengal and Lord Curzon’s University speech upon Indian mendacity; the exclusion of fully qualified Indians from public positions, in contradiction to Queen Victoria’s Proclamation of 1858; several notorious cases of injustice in the law courts, where English criminals were involved; numerous instances of petty persecution for political opinions since 1905; the well-known measures for the suppression of personal liberty and freedom of speech in 1907 and 1908; the espionage of police and postal officials; and the increasing insolence of the vulgar among Anglo-Indians, as shown in ordinary behaviour and in the newspapers which represent their views.