_Methods of Consolidation of British India._ Policies (fiscal, industrial, religious, educational) were all discussed and formulated from one point of view, viz., the establishing of British authority, the consolidation of British rule, and pecuniary gain to the East India Company. If one were to pile up “scraps of paper” which the British destroyed or disregarded in the making of their Indian empire, one could fill a decent sized box therewith. The administrations of Wellesley and Dalhousie alone would furnish sufficient material for the purpose. We do not know of anything in Indian history which could be compared with the deeds of this century. It was a century of consistent, prolonged, and deliberate spoliation, subtle and scientific sometimes, in the pursuance of which all laws of morality, humanity, and fairness were tossed aside, and the object in view was persistently and doggedly kept in view and achieved. It was not the doing of this man or that man, but, with some noble exceptions, of the whole body of Administrators sent by the East India Company to manage their affairs in the East. The policies and doings of the various rulers that were sent from England to administer the affairs of India differed in degree only. _British Public Ignorant of Facts._ It is true that the British people as a whole had no notion of what was going on in India. They were as ignorant of it, then, as they are to-day of the doings of their countrymen in that vast “continent.” It sufficed for them to know that their countrymen were carving an empire there, conquering provinces and bringing millions of alien people under British rule; as it suffices for them to know to-day that they have an empire in India. India brought them wealth and material prosperity. Individuals became fabulously rich and their wealth filtered downward and filled the whole British nation. The nation became rich by the dividends of the East India Company, and by the enormous profits which British manufacturers and British traders made by the fact of British supremacy in India. That was enough for the nation. Even when their moral sense was at times shocked by certain disclosures, which by chance found their way into the press or into the literature of the country, it was soon calmed and set at rest by the speeches made by the statesmen at the helm of affairs, who explained them away, excused their authors on political grounds, and laid down in high, grandiloquent terms that the general aim of British rule in India was beneficent, and that this aim was steadily being pursued. The impeachment of Warren Hastings by Burke should have opened the eyes of the British public as to what was happening in India; but the eventual acquittal of that famous pro-consul set matters at rest. And Warren Hastings was by no means the worst offender. What happened then is happening every day in India, only in a different way and on a different scale.