they occur they warrant resistance and rebellion as a moral duty. But when power is not thus abused, when life and property are guarded and the means of prosperity and comfort not destroyed, rebellion is the maddest of enterprises and sedition the meanest of crimes. Concurrence, co-operation, and a generous rational advocacy of every good cause in due season, within the bounds of zealous loyalty and devotion to the state--these are the duties of the patriotic citizen, the true and most effectual means of progress, the virtues which bring their own certain reward.

A true member of a state must be fitted by opinion and feeling the discipline of his moral nature-for association with others like minded in accomplishing the ends of the state. If its central idea is religion he must hold its creed. If economical he must accept the pursuit of gain as the proper aim of a citizengain of material wealth in some shape, either for himself or for others within the state. If an intense sense of nationality-a tribal identification of each citizen with all and of all with each in relation to outsidersif a close patriotism like this be the governing sentiment of a community, the central idea which makes or marks the soul of the aggregate, then the citizen who is to be truly such, who is to live in the life of the state while he contributes to it, must be substantially of the same stuff as his fellows. The centripetal force, the total constitution which makes him instinctively move and act with the mass of the nation in all matters that affect its higher interests, must completely overcome the centrifugal forces of selfishness, and the counter attractions of minor social interests. Of any great historical community it may be said as of nature, Non vincitur nisi parendo. The man of alien race who hopes to affect the convictions, will, and aims of the British people must first become at least quasi-British himself. He must cast aside some so-called religious

notions, many deep-seated prejudices, all that in his caste or class isolates him from the mass of humanity, or even from the mass of English-speaking people, before he can become a living part of the body in which he claims membership. And asserting his existence and influence as part of an organism, he must subordinate his own immediate advantage to the interest and the volition of the whole. That is the imperial spirit.

OUR GREAT DEPENDENCY:

A GENERAL VIEW OF INDIA AND ITS PEOPLE

By J. A. BAINES, C.S.I.

(Late Census Commissioner)

THE first and main object of this paper, which deals with a subject of almost unlimited scope and variety, is to present a general view of Indian civilisation in some of its leading features, more especially those in which our Dependency differs most widely from the conditions with which we are familiar in our own country. In some respects, no doubt, long experience is, for the task in question, a drawback rather than a qualification, because impressions which were vivid enough when first received get deadened or obliterated in the course of detailed and comparatively intimate acquaintance. The points of contrast which would be most striking to a stranger become, after a quarter of a century, a matter of course to the man living in their midst, so that the much-abused globe-trotter, provided he maintains a modest reserve as to what lies below the surface, is in a position to bring the scene before his fellow-countrymen in the same colours and perspective as it might have appeared to their own eyes. An endeavour to emulate his treatment of the subject will accordingly be apparent in what follows this prologue.

Of all the general features of India the most striking is not its size or even its vast population. Its area is scarcely greater than that of Arabia. Comparing it

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with a standard with which we are familiar, we may call it about twenty-five times that of England and Wales, a mere speck on the map by the side of the great peninsulas of Africa or South America. More respect is due, certainly, to its population, which is not less than a fifth of the estimated number of inhabitants of the world, and ten times that of this country. But in this respect, again, what is most worth notice is not the mass, but the extraordinary variety found within the country. Looking at the range of climate, the different geographical features, the number of different races inhabiting India and the Babel of languages they speak, we can well say that India is not so much a country as a small continent. As regards physical differences, though all India is either tropical or sub-tropical, in the south and along the coasts the people are certain of a hot but equable climate, with a more or less heavy rainfall once or at most twice a year. In the north, on the other hand, there is a fiercely hot season divided from a piercingly cold one by a few months of rain of uncertain intensity and duration. One part of India consists of vast plains of rice, another of small patches of arable land cleared out of the forest or terraced out of the steep hillside. Here, we find acre after acre of wheat, there, long stretches of prairie upland producing little but scanty crops of millet. In one tract nothing will come up except under canal irrigation; in another, canal water brings to the surface latent stores of alkaline matter which sterilise the soil. The life and customs of the people vary accordingly. In the matter of race, too, we range from the comparatively high type represented by the martial tribes of Upper India and by the Brahmans and chieftains of the central tracts, to the dark-coloured denizens of the hills and forests which divide the continental part of the country from the peninsula. All along the mountain belt, again, which