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and Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji, India’s Grand Old Man. In Bengal, the movement was represented by the British Indian Association, and found ardent advocates in men like Kristo Das Pal, Rajendra Lal Mitter, Romanath Tagore, Degumbar Mitter, and others.

But the ground was now to be shifted. A higher platform appeared in view, and a brighter vision presented itself to the gaze of educated India. There is evolution in all things, even in the slow movements of public life. The efforts of the last few years had stirred a strange and hitherto-unfelt awakening among our people, and had created new hopes and aspirations. It was not enough that we should have our full share of the higher offices, but we aspired to have a voice in the councils of the nation. There was the bureaucracy. For good or evil, it was there. We not only wanted to be members of the bureaucracy and to leaven it with the Indian element, but we looked forward to controlling it, and shaping and guiding its measures, and eventually bringing the entire administration under complete popular domination. It was a new departure hardly noticed at the time, but fraught with immense potentialities. Along with the development of the struggle for place and power to be secured to our countrymen, there came gradually but steadily to the forefront the idea that this was not enough, that it was part, but not even the most vital part, of the programme for the political elevation of our people. The pursuit of high ideals has an elevating effect upon the public mind. Great as is the gain when the object is attained, its indirect results, in the widening of our vision, in the strengthening of our moral fibre, in the all-round impulse that it communicates to national activities, are even more enduring, more pregnant with unseen and undreamt-of possibilities for the future. The demand for representative government was now definitely formulated, and it was but the natural and legitimate product of the public activities that had preceded it.