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The terms of the resolution on the subject adopted at the Town Hall meeting demonstrated their anxiety to proceed with caution and care, and to offend no interest that might be enlisted in their favour. I was commissioned to consult some English friends as to whether they would advise such a resolution and what should be its form. As the communications were confidential, it would not be right to disclose their names even at this distance of time. But, one and all without a single exception, they advised the adoption of the course that had been suggested. A final conference was held at the house of Maharaja Surya Kanto Acharya of Mymensingh, when it was definitely decided to accept the following resolution:

'That this meeting fully sympathizes with the resolution adopted at many meetings held in the mofussil to abstain from the purchase of British manufactures so long as the Partition Resolution is not withdrawn, as a protest against the indifference of the British public in regard to Indian affairs and the consequent disregard of Indian public opinion by the present Government.'

It will thus be seen that the boycott was a temporary measure adopted for a particular object, and was to be given up as soon as that object was attained. Its only aim and purpose was to call the attention of the British public to Bengal's great grievance, and, when the partition was modified and the grievance was removed, the boycott was to cease. That pledge was redeemed.

That the boycott sometimes led to excesses no one will dispute; but all constitutional movements suffer from this inherent weakness, which springs from the defects of our common human nature. All causes—the purest and the noblest—will have their moderates and their extremists. But the excesses, more or less incidental to all constitutional movements, have never been held as an argument against the adoption of constitutional methods for the redress of public grievances. If such a view were held, some of the noblest chapters of human history would have been left unwritten, and we should have been without the inspiration of self-sacrifice and patriotic devotion, which have so often been associated with the struggle for constitutional freedom. Who will say that because there is unhappily a revolutionary propaganda in Bengal, undoub- tedly limited and insignificant in the circle of its influence, all constitutional efforts should be given up? The enemies of Indian advancement would wish for nothing better. The friends of Indian progress would view it as a calamity.