I have considered the nature of the relation in which India stands to England and have tried to explain how this relation could spring up without a miracle. We may now advance a step and form some opinion on the question whether that relation can endure without a miracle, as it was created without one, or whether we ought to regard the government of India by the English as a kind of political tour de force, a matter of astonishment while it lasts, but certain not to last very long. For the great difficulty which the student has to contend with in studying Indian affairs is the dazzling effect of events so strange, so remote, and on a scale so large, by which he is led to think that ordinary causation is not to be expected in India, and that in that region all is miraculous. The rhetorical tone ordinarily adopted in history favours this illusion; historians are fond of parading all the strange and marvellous features of the Indian Empire, as if it were less their business to account for what happens than to make it seem more unaccountable than before.

Thus we come to think of our ascendancy in India as an exception to all ordinary rules, a standing miracle in politics, only to be explained by the heroic qualities of the English race and their natural genius for government.