Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 February 1896 — DIGGING ITS GRAVE. [ARTICLE]

DIGGING ITS GRAVE.

That's What Kngland Is Doing for Her Vast Indian Empire. After dwelling upon the extreme poverty of the people of India, A. .1. Wilson in discussing the affairs of that country says: I'pon this substructure of poverty has the magnificently extravagant imperial power of England in India been built up. It is a power that has meant well many a time, and which has done well in not a few instances; but all Its merits are eclipsed, by its abominable waste, and its end must be that of all empires which have preceded it. Should it not die from Internal convulsions, or from foreign wars, it will dwindle and perish from the exhaustion of the people it rules and sucks dry of their life’s substance, or it will collapse smothered in its debts. The mind cannot contemplate a future so full of risks and sinister probabilities winiout sadness. So much good has been meant to India, so much good done by its English masters, that we could hope still for the future were their ideals even now changed. AA'ere real economy to give place to the present system of pillage; were the interests of the people studied first and our own imperialist follies and vanities put out of sight forever; were the abuses of the India office in London and its hideous robberies abated or swept away; were the cost of the army brought down to the limits necessary to keep our present territory in order, and all conquests henceforth eschewed; were the internal administration opened more fully to natives, so that the swarms of Europeans now earing up the laud as officials or pensioners might be diminished; were the burdens of interest involved by the railways gradually diminished. and in all directions economy and retrenchment enforced —our sway over India might even now be consolidated and made enduring. But the refusal to take this path and the continuance of our present habits and policy mean that our power in India is digging its own grave. And all the glory of our mighty empire hangs by our prosperous continuance there.