have no doubt as to the consequences. And what if India—irritated, mortified and humiliated—should become an unwilling and refractory partner in the great Imperial concern? Surely it would be the beginning of the end of the Empire.
These, briefly, are the reasons why this question of "the British indians in the Transvaal" is a great Imperial question and not one of mere internal administration of a self-governing Colony in which the Mother Country has neither right nor reason to interfere.
It is a matter which touches the honour of our race and affects the unity of the Empire as a whole: it therefore concerns every part of the Empire. Moreover, it is certain that any departure from principle, which may be sanctioned or ignored at the heart of the Empire, will operate as a mischievous example to other places inside and out, and then only by some rude shock to the whole system will the arrest of moral decay be possible.
The matter, therefore, concerns all who would "think Imperially," and it needs more "clear thinking" than it has hitherto received.
The question must be decided, not by methods of temporary expediency in which practice ignores
