Some of them were of that earnest type of self-righteousness which loves to smell out unrighteousness in their fellow countrymen, especially in those who are serving their country abroad; some were hypnotized by the old shibboleths of freedom, even when freedom merely stands for licence; some were retired Anglo-Indians, whose experience in the public service in India would have carried greater weight had not the peculiar acerbity of their language seemed to betray the bitterness of personal disappointment.

Every invention or exaggeration of the Bengalee Press found its way into the list of questions to be asked of the Secretary of State, who, with less knowledge than he has since acquired, doubtless considered himself bound to pass them on for inquiry to the Government of India.

A large proportion of these questions were aimed at Sir Bampfylde Fuller, who, as the first Lieutenant-Governor of the new province of Eastern Bengal, had been singled out for every form of vituperation and calumny, and no subject figured more prominently amongst them than the disciplinary treatment of turbulent schoolboys and students.

It is so easy to appeal to the generous sentiments of the British public in favour of poor boys, supposed to be of tender years, dragged into police courts by harsh bureaucrats for some hasty action prompted by the generous, if foolish, exuberance of youth, especially when the British public is quite unaware that in India most students and many schoolboys are more or less full-grown and often already married.

Every one of these questions was duly advertised in the columns of the Bengalee Press, and their cumulative effect was to produce the impression that the British Parliament was following events in Bengal with feverish interest and with overwhelming sympathy for the poor oppressed Bengalee.
Nevertheless, there came a moment when the first feverish excitement seemed to wane.