Disposition and Attitude of the Natives towards us and our rule.

I confess that in travelling through Southern India it seemed to me that there is even less social fusion between the rulers and the ruled in Madras than in Bombay and Calcutta. Doubtless there are faults on both sides. The longer we continue to hold the country, the more its condition before we took it in hand is forgotten. In those parts of the Madras Presidency which have been longest under our rule, the people having had no personal experience of the evils from which their fathers were delivered through our intervention, are unable to cherish a due sense of gratitude towards us. I fear that Englishmen, unless they are plainly and sensibly benefactors, are not otherwise liked for their personal qualities. They are thought to be proud, cold, and reserved. Very much the same, however, might be justly said by us of the natives of India. The Hindus, we might fairly allege, are even more exclusive than we are. They have little sympathy with any one outside their own caste. The impenetrable barrier with which they surround their homes and their refusal to sit at meat with Europeans are fatal to mutual friendliness and sociability. On the other hand, Englishmen, by reason of a concurrence of changed conditions, are certainly living in India more like strangers and pilgrims who have no abiding resting-place there. Increased facilities of communication between Europe and Asia, which ought to have drawn the two races closer together, have only tended to widen the separation between them. In former days it was not uncommon for a civilian or military officer to remain a quarter of a century in India without going home. He had then time and opportunity to identify himself with the people, and interest himself in their interests to form friendships among them and win their affection. Now, if he has only three months' leave, he rushes to England, via Brindisi, in three weeks, and

undergoes inordinate fatigue, that he may spend six weeks in the old country, and then rush as quickly back to the land of his exile.

The competitive system, too, has had a bad effect in severing some of the ties which once bound the two races together. It has deprived India of the successive generations of Outrams, Prinseps, Macnaghtens, and other old families who were drawn towards it by a long train of inherited associations, who were inspired with goodwill towards its people by the examples of their forefathers, and who imbibed Indian tastes, ideas, and predilections with their earliest education.

Let no one, however, from this time forward, accuse us of want of sympathy with our Indian fellow-subjects in their hour of trial and affliction. There may be increasing raceantagonism, less social blending, and more frequent misunderstandings between the governing and the governed in India, but the best practical proof has now been given of our disinterested desire for the well-being of the great country committed to our charge. The voluntary subscription of more than half a million pounds sterling in a few months for the relief of the famine-stricken districts, and the self-sacrificing courage, zeal, and energy displayed by every one of the Queen's officers, from the Viceroy downwards, in their efforts to alleviate the sufferings of the people, have for ever wiped away the reproach that the attitude of Great Britain towards its Eastern Dependency is cold and unsympathetic. I believe there have been no less than four Indian famines during the past ten years, and these have finally culminated in a period of distress the like of which has not afflicted the land since 1833. Yet this last famine, however deplorable in the present suffering it is causing, will have effected a great benefit, if it opens our eyes to India's needs and to our own shortcomings; if it convinces our Indian subjects of England's devotion to their welfare; if it evokes feelings of gratitude in return for the active sympathy displayed; if it helps to

draw the rulers and the ruled closer together by bonds of mutual kindliness, confidence, and cordiality.

one.

Let me, in conclusion, point out one or two causes of discontent which, so soon as the remembrance of our present efforts for the relief of the country has passed away, will most surely bring our rule into increasing disfavour with certain classes of the population. One cause is the constant necessity we are under of revising the land assessment. On the acquirement of any new territory, we have been obliged, of course, to settle the land revenue, and the first settlement has always been, very judiciously, a mild At the end of thirty years a new assessment has generally been made, and the necessary increase in the rate of payment has been demanded from the cultivators. Very naturally, this has always caused an outbreak of great discontent. Of late years a still more microscopic and, perhaps, occasionally vexatious revision of the assessment has led to still further irritation. The cultivators cannot be made to understand that with an increase in the value of land a higher rate of tax is justly due, and they will not be convinced that the Government is not breaking faith with them. There can be no doubt that Lord Cornwallis's permanent settlement of the Government demand in Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, though it has proved a lamentable loss to the Indian revenue, has had its advantages, and nothing would tend to conciliate the whole population of India more than the application of a similar principle everywhere. This, however, in present circumstances, is, I fear, almost an impossibility.

Another source of dissatisfaction is now looming in the horizon. The maximum age for competing for the Indian Civil Service will be fixed in 1878 at nineteen, and the minimum at seventeen. Many Indians have complained to me that this lowering of the age will practically exclude natives from the competition. How can we send mere boys,' say they, 'on a long voyage at a great expense to a place like London to prepare for an examination of such

difficulty? The risks will be too great. A certain number of appointments ought to be set aside for India-say six every year-and the printed questions might then be sent out under seal to the local Governments, who would appoint examining committees.' There is, doubtless, much justice in this proposal, and I hope it will receive due consideration. If it is eventually adopted, all selected native candidates ought to be positively compelled to go to England for two years' probation. I fervently hope, too, that the Government scholarships which were formerly founded to enable deserving young Indians to complete their education in England, but which were for some inscrutable reason abolished before they were fully tried, will be re-established. In this regard our Government ought to follow the example so wisely set by Sir Sālār Jung. Let the residence of Indians among us be encouraged by all means, and let them return to India-not, indeed, denationalized-but imbued with some of our most refining and purifying home influences, elevated by intercourse with some of our best men and women, and penetrated with an earnest desire to aid in the regeneration of their country by assimilating, as far as possible, its social institutions to those of England.

INDIAN AND EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION IN

THEIR RELATION TO EACH OTHER AND

IN THEIR EFFECT ON THE PROGRESS
OF CHRISTIANITY.

THE kind of civilization to which I shall first advert is not that which we Englishmen have introduced into India, but that which has existed in India for at least three thousand years.

Of course very different ideas may be attached to the word civilization, and some may doubt whether, if religion is an ingredient of civilization, the Hindus have ever possessed any true civilization at all. But when a people have a refined language, an extensive literature, an organized social system, fixed forms of government, with elaborate religious and philosophical systems, however false such systems may be, and have, moreover, made some progress in the arts and sciences, they may surely be called civilized, though their civilization may be very different in kind from that of other ancient peoples, or from that of modern Europe.

Doubtless every civilized nation is inclined to pride itself on its own institutions and to despise other countries. The Chinese, for example, look down with contempt on Europeans, and distinguish Englishmen in particular by epithets equivalent to foreign devils and uncivilized barbarians. Similarly, the Greeks called all other nations barbarians, and in the same way the Indians call us Mletchas. This was originally a contemptuous term applied by the Indo-Aryans to those who could not pro

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