“As I said before, you are the salt of the land. _And if amongst even you, the élite, fifty men can not be found with sufficient power of self-sacrifice, sufficient love for and pride in their country, sufficient genuine and unselfish heartfelt patriotism to take the initiative, and if needs be, devote the rest of their lives to the cause, then there is no hope for India._ Her sons must and will remain mere humble and helpless instruments in the hands of foreign rulers, for ‘_they who would be free, themselves must strike the blow_.’ And if even the leaders of thought are all either such poor creatures, or so selfishly wedded to personal concerns, that they dare not or will not strike a blow for their country’s sake, then justly and rightly are they kept down and trampled on, for they deserve nothing better. _Every nation secures precisely as good a government as it merits._ If you, the picked men, the most highly educated of the nation, can not, scorning personal ease and selfish ends, _make a resolute struggle to secure freedom for yourselves and your country_, a more impartial administration, a larger share in the management of your own affairs, then we, your friends, are wrong, and our adversaries right; then are Lord Ripon’s aspirations for your good, fruitless and visionary; then, at present, at any rate, all hopes of progress are at an end, and India truly neither lacks nor deserves any better government than she now enjoys. Only, if this be so, let us hear no more factious, peevish complaints that you are kept in leading strings, and treated like children, for you will have proved yourselves such. _Men know how to act._ Let there be no more complaints of Englishmen being preferred to you in all important offices, for if you lack that public spirit, that highest form of altruistic devotion that leads men to subordinate private ease to the public weal, that true patriotism that has made Englishmen what they are, then rightly are these preferred to you, and rightly and inevitably have they become your rulers. And rulers and taskmasters they must continue, let the yoke gall your shoulders ever so sorely, until you realise and stand prepared to act upon the eternal truth, _whether in the case of individuals or nations, self-sacrifice and unselfishness are the only unfailing guides to freedom and happiness_.”