Dickens view that the new revolutionary produced the new oppressors but then has not Dickens seen the 20th century with prescience and clarity? Dickens own view of humanity was that education and morality taught at a young age would cure much of society problems. He was not interested in uprooting English society but merely to change its heart.

In a Christmas Carol, Scrooge is presented as a man whose own present was created by his past as oppose to a man responsible for his action. And Dickens believes in redemption. Just as Gandhi believed that non-violence could change people, so too does Dickens believe in the power of second chances. The book centers on Scrooge own salvation. Interesting enough, within Scrooge salvation comes life. Instead of dying within a year as predicted if he did not change his way, Scrooge goes on to live and become like a second father to Tiny Tim, whose life is also extended through Scrooge salvation. Human nature is changeable and all can be saved, even the worse of us.

Dickens feared tyranny and in many ways, saw life through his middle-class settings. He hated aristocrats, big landowners, nationalists and even peasants but why? Orwell answered, "A first sight, a list beginning with kings and ending with peasants looks like a mere omnium gatherum, but in reality all these people have a common factor. All of them are archaic types, people who governed by tradition and whose eyes are turned towards the past- the opposite of the rising bourgeois who has put his money on the future and sees the past as a dead hand."

So what can we gather? Orwell writes of Gandhi as a man who understood his opponent, the British. Maybe Gandhi viewed England as a nation of Charles Dickens, men who believed that with education and little spiritual change, all could be made right with the world. The Dickens of the world feared revolution and believed in evolutionary change within the hearts of men and Gandhi counted on that to free the Indians from the British. Sentimentality can be a curse or a blessing and in the case of Gandhi, he used the sentimentality of the British to advance his cause. Of course, he was lucky to pick an opponent who actually had some sentimentality. There are many in this world that sentimentality is weakness to be avoided. Thus we see nations whose leaders snatch their political opponents away in the middle of the night. For such nations, sentimentality is a vice not a virtue.

Orwell on Kipling

George Orwell was the classic anti-imperialist. Rudyard Kipling was the classic defender of British imperialism. Dickens believed in redeeming England through education and moral teaching at home, Kipling believed in changing the world in the image of Great Britain. Kipling viewed imperialism as a sort of forcible evangelizing as Orwell noted, "You turn a Gatling gun on a mob of unarmed 'natives' and then you establish the Law," which includes roads, railways and a court-house."