suggested that by fairly rapid degrees the various populations of the Empire might attain substantial measures of self-government; and the larger vision of a British Empire, consisting in the main or altogether of a union of self-governing States, began to dazzle politicians.
Some persons – though a diminishing number – still entertain these notions and believe that we are gradually moulding the British Empire into a set of substantially self-governing States. Our position in India and in Egypt is justified, they think, by the training we are giving the natives in good government, and when they hear of “representative” elements in the government of Ceylon or of Jamaica they flatter themselves that the whole trend of imperial government is directed to this end. Admitting the facts regarding the small proportion of present political liberty throughout the Empire, they urge that this arises from the necessary regard we have to the mode of educating lower races: the vast majority of our subjects are “children” and must be trained slowly and carefully in the arts of responsible self-government.
Now such persons are suffering from a great and demonstrable delusion if they suppose