of fresh appointments, endeavour has consistently been made to share the privileges and responsibilities of office impartially between class and class." The Hon. Mr. Gokhale in a carefully compiled table appended to his speech delivered in the Viceregal Council in March 1905, exposed the fallacy of Lord Curzon's statements. As that table shows the utter disparity between the employment of Natives and the employment of Europeans and Eurasians in the High Offices of the State, I would append it at the end of this pamphlet. According to it the crumbs only go to the Natives, the thickly buttered slices to Europeans. This should not be the case. Lord George Hamilton, the late Secretary of State for India, once said at a meeting: "There are tens of millions of Indians with intellectual capacity fully equal, if not superior, to our own; and in the North are tens of millions equal in fighting power to the best European Nations." His Lordship is not known as a pro-Indian, but I think he spoke the literal truth. How can then such highly intellectual people be expected to bear with complacency their exclusion from the service of the Government of their own country? There is a tendency to disdain the educated Natives, and speak of them as a microscopic minority, who, it is alleged, think of none but themselves. But it is for

gotten that this microscopic minority, which counts over a million souls, possesses the strength of a Hercules and forms the nucleus of the great Indian nation, which, under the ægis of the British Rule, is bound to come into existence, if not to-day or to-morrow, half a century hence. The educated Natives are the warp and the weft in the magnificent texture of the British Rule in India, and on their durability will depend its permanence. Let them, therefore, be treated kindly, justly and generously. Very often tried and experienced Indians are passed over in favour of untried and inexperienced Europeans, even at the sacrifice of the efficiency of public service, and even when the liberty of the subjects is jeopardised as in the case of the appointment of raw Europeans as magistrates. Very often square men are placed in round holes, simply because they are Europeans. The Natives feel it, resent it, and brood over it. This is not a good thing for the State at all.

I may here refer to a universal belief in India that Lord Curzon issued a confidential circular for the exclusion of Natives from posts above Rs. 200. It exercised the native mind a great deal and spread dissatisfaction. It was an act of short-sighted and misguided statesmanship, to say nothing about its unjust, ungenerous and un-English character. May the

Government of Lord Minto remove this cancer of sore discontent by withdrawing the circular or by announcing to the public that the popular belief was erroneous.

Non-Recognition of Political Aspirations

of Indians.

Closely allied to the last subject is the non-recognition of the political aspirations of the educated Indians to take part in the Government of the country. A great statesman, I believe, Lord Cromer, said twenty years ago: "No one who watches the signs of the times in India with even moderate care can doubt that we have entered upon a period of change. The spread of education, the increasing influence of a free press, the substitution of legal for discretionary administration, the progress of railways and telegraphs, the easier communication with Europe and the more ready influx of European ideas are beginning to produce a marked effect upon the people. New ideas are springing up. New aspirations are being called forth. The power of public opinion is growing daily. Such a condition of affairs is one in which the task of Government, and especially of a despotic Government, is beset with difficulties of no light kind. To move too fast is dangerous but to lag behind is more dangerous still. The problem is how to deal with this new-born spirit of progress,

raw and superficial as in many respects it is, so as to direct it into the right course, and to derive from it all the benefits which its development is capable of ultimately conferring upon the country, and at the same time to prevent it from becoming, through blind indifference or stupid repression, a source of serious political danger." These are words of wisdom and are more true now than they were when spoken twenty years ago. The Indians cannot walk alone as some people fancy, but they have outgrown their long clothes long since, and have arrived at the state of adolescence. It is but natural that they should aspire to put their finger in the pie of the administration of their own country. They would be belieing human nature if they did otherwise. Englishmen ought to encourage rather than discourage their political aspirations, and take them into partnership with themselves in the great Imperial Firm of India. Sir William Hunter has written: cannot believe that a people numbering one-sixth of the whole inhabitants of the globe, and whose aspirations have been nourished from the earliest youth on the strong food of English liberty can be permanently denied a voice in the government of their country. I do not believe that races into whom we have instilled the maxim of no taxation without representation' as a fundamental right of a people can be permanently

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