Note 324 — Chapter XXVI
Reading edition
We forget that all our concessions to these people are interpreted into weakness; that they who cannot live on an amicable equality with one another, cannot be expected to do so with us; that all our talk of power and resources are mere boasts to habitual bullies, so long as we do not exert ourselves in the correction of premeditated insults. No Government can be more tolerant, more sincerely desirous of peace, and more anxious to confine its sway within its own limits than that of India, but it can only continue at peace by demanding respect, and the punctilious enforcement of even the most trifling terms in the treaties it makes with Indo-Chinese.