The underlying motive was not
economic necessity, nor religious enthusiasm, but sheer lust of gain.
In 1498 Vasco da Gama discovered an all-sea route to India, thus
opening the fabulous riches of Asia to hungry Europe. Portuguese,
Dutch, French and English adventurers embarked in a struggle for
Indian commerce, in which our ancestors were victorious because they
obtained the command of the sea, and had the whole resources of the
mother-country at their back.
Westerners are so imbued with the profit-making instinct that they
mentally open, a ledger account in order to prove that India gains
more than she loses by dependence on the people of these islands. It
cannot be denied that the fabric of English administration is a
noble monument of the civil skill and military prowess developed by
our race. We have given the peninsula railways and canals, postal
and telegraph systems, a code of laws which is far in advance of our
own. Profound peace broods over the empire, famine and pestilence are
fought with the weapons of science. It would be easy to pile up items
on the debit side of our imaginary cash-book. Free trade has destroyed
indigenous crafts wholesale, and quartered the castes who pursued
them on an over-taxed soil. Incalculable is the waste of human life
and inherited skill caused by the shifting of productive energy from
India to Great Britain, Germany and America.
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