| | | | | | | | | | ----------+------------+-----------+--------------+-----------+--------- Appendix C. LETTER TO LORD GEORGE HAMILTON. The following is the full text of the letter of retractation which Lady Henry Somerset addressed to Lord George Hamilton, January 27, as it appeared in the London daily papers of February 8, 1898:-- EASTNOR CASTLE, LEDBURY, _Jan. 27, 1898_. DEAR LORD GEORGE HAMILTON,--Your lordship invited me ten months ago to give you my view of the dispatch that has been addressed to the Government of India on the health of the army, and in a letter in which I did so I ventured to suggest some methods, moral and disciplinary, which seemed to me the only ones likely to succeed, because they had at least the merit of being logical. I was led to do so by two considerations: first, the dispatch in question seemed to imply that the Government would give every encouragement to every form of elevating agency, and so emphasize the altered spirit in which the subject was approached, and that such suggested supervision would only affect an incorrigible minimum; and second, that the system I had in mind would be so drastic and penal in its nature as to make State interference odious and finally impossible. That was ten months ago; and in that time nothing has been done of which the public has heard to strengthen the forces that make for moral improvement. What has been done, viz., the repeal of the Indian Acts of 1895, which prohibited inspection, has been in a direction exactly opposite. It seems to have been the object of the Government to obtain the maximum of impunity, with the minimum of protest, from those who desire to see the State shape its actions according to Christian views of ethics. I need not tell your lordship I am not writing to say how strongly I am still opposed to the course which the Government has taken; but I find that my letter to your lordship of last year has been taken by many to mean that I am on the side of the accepted view of State regulation, and I am from time to time quoted as a sympathizer with such views. I am therefore writing to withdraw any proposals made in that letter for this reason--that the events of the past year have convinced me of the inadvisability and extreme danger of the system that in April last I thought might be instituted.