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POLITICAL ACTIVITIES
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Day, are flowing out, into the hearts of two hundred millions. The greatest blunder which can possibly be made is to suppose that the effect of our dealing with the educated natives can be made to begin and end with that class.'

In similar terms Sir Henry Harrison wrote in the Quarterly Review when he went home in 1886. 'Repress', said he, 'the educated natives, their ambitions and their aspirations and you turn them into a solid phalanx of opposition against the Govern- ment. Gratify their ambitions, and you make them the allies of the Government.

Such was Sir Henry Harrison, one of the finest Englishmen I have set eyes upon, one whose friendship, terminated by an early death, it was my proud privilege to enjoy.

As I was entrusted by him to look after the arrangements in connexion with the delegates who had been invited to the Queen's Jubilee from the mofussil municipalities, I was resolved to make the most of the situation. I thought it was a splendid opportunity to put in the forefront that which I considered the problem of problems at that time, namely, the reform and reconstitution of the Legislative Councils on a popular basis. The mofussil municipalities were each to present an address. I took care that every one of these addresses should contain a prayer for the reform and enlargement of the Councils. I addressed a circular to the mofussil municipalities on the subject and met with a cordial response. I reproduce a passage from one of these addresses (they all followed the same lines):

'Through the wise initiation of the late Viceroy, a system of local self-government has been established throughout the country; and it has, on the whole, been attended with such a measure of success that a feeling has been universally expressed in favour of a further extension of the principles embodied in these local institutions; and on this auspicious occasion of the Jubilee we may be permitted to express the hope that it may be the high privilege of the people of India to witness, under the auspices of Your Majesty's bencficert and glorious reign, the birth, though it may be only in a partial form, of those representative institutions which have always followed in the train of English civilization, and which have constituted the noblest monument of English rule.'

Lord Dufferin gave a suitable reply. 'Glad and happy should I be', said he, 'if during my sojourn among them (the people of India), circumstances permitted me to extend, and to place upon a wide and more logical footing, the political status which was so