procedure. So far as the substantive law went, their regard for native prejudices was extreme. The magistrate of Gorakhpur, hearing of a case of infanticide, summoned the offender. The man at once admitted the charge; in fact, the native law officer certified that in that family it was the proper thing to kill the female infants. The puzzled magistrate referred the matter to the Supreme Court; and the Supreme Court wigged him for his pains, and forbade him ever again to meddle with native usages.

But the criminal procedure introduced by the English was unintelligible and distasteful to the natives. Native justice was always summary, and punishment immediate. Our formalities, our delays, our demands for evidence, and the dragging in of witnesses unconcerned with the issue, formed a startling contrast, and our administration of criminal justice has never been popular. Moreover, we started by a blunder: we separated the executive and the judicial branches. Thirty years' experience convinced us of our error, and the superintendence of the police, the control of the magistracy, and the charge of the revenue are now concentrated in one person. Indeed the present tendency is to unite more and more all the threads of the local administration in the hands of the district officer, making him a Lieutenant-Governor in miniature.

The Mutiny of 1857 forms a landmark in the history of the province; it is the demarcating line between the old and the new. In 1857 the province was garrisoned almost entirely by native troops, scattered, according to the old native fashion, in single regiments or fractions of regiments at the headquarters of each district. They were therefore masters of the situation, and when they mutinied the whole province was in a blaze. With the military aspect of the Mutiny I have nothing to do. Among

the civil population the more turbulent characters naturally rose. Goojars and Rangars fought against the English, and the Jats, whom they attacked, took the English side. There were also adventurers who tried to establish principalities for themselves. But the mass of the people remained indifferent. They had their own feuds, suppressed but not forgotten, to fight out, village against village. Everywhere the old proprietors who had lost their estates strove to eject the moneyed men who had supplanted them.

The suppression of the Mutiny was followed by the disarmament of the population and the purgation of its more lawless elements an inestimable blessing. But the Mutiny is a creative era to date from on account of two things.

First. It has been followed by an immense development of material prosperity. The reform of the currency, the multiplication or rather the creation of roads, and the development of the river navigation, had laid the foundations of material prosperity in the first half of the century. The two great canals of the Upper Doab had also been constructed. But since the Mutiny an immense amount of capital has poured into the country. Railways now traverse almost every district in the province, a network of roads connects them with every village of importance, new manufactures have been introduced, new trade centres have sprung up, and canals irrigate the greater part of the Doab and large parts of Bundelkhand and Rohilkhand. The increase of wealth, the movements of the population, travel, and education are putting an end to local isolation and ignorance and prejudice; and new wants, ideas, and ideals are fermenting in the popular mind.

Second. There has been a corresponding increase in the power of the Government. It has become much more centralised, much more able to bring its power to bear at any given point. Along with this there has

gone a corresponding increase in the administration of details. Every little village is looked after in a fashion scarcely known outside a petty German principality.

Perhaps few of the other provinces could have combated the famine of 1897 with so little dislocation of the administrative organism. But with all this there has necessarily gone a decline of personal rule. The district officer's initiative is as great as ever, but the impression of his personality has vanished. The heroes of popular tradition are the first founders of our rule, Duncan in Benares, Trail in Kumaon, Metcalfe in Delhi, Bird in Gorakhpur.

Who can say whither these things will tend? But some points are evident.

First. The older communities were based on a collective resistance to external pressure. We have substituted individualism for it: the clash of personal interests and the antagonism of classes are disintegrating the former fabric of society. It is true that caste remains untouched, and in some cases it has shown a wonderful power of adaptation; but the horizon is widened, new ideas and new interests are springing up, and caste is being relegated to a secondary place— it is becoming a mere matter of marriage, and of kinship and of food.

Second. The growth of individualism favours the growth of nationality. The feeling of nationality is only beginning to awake. Among the Hindus it chiefly shows itself in extravagant laudations of a golden age that never was, in exaltation of everything especially Hindu, and in antagonism to the Mohamedans and the English. The rivalry between Hindus and Mohamedans is by no means dead: it is accentuated rather, for it is passing from the lower to the upper classes.

The spirit world embraces the Hindu upon every side; the gods are innumerable, and they are strong.

Religion attends upon every act; it is the basis of the family, of caste, of society. The influence of Western thought upon Hindu belief is immense, but it is confused and blind. All attempts at a conscious reconstruction have been based upon imitations of the West, whether friendly or hostile. They have taken the Vedas for their Bible, but the Vedic religion. died long ages ago, and these attempts are necessarily failures. None the less is felt the influence of the Western ideas. They make in a blind way for spirituality and morality. Hinduism has always had an ample provision for esoteric religion, and within its genial fold it is ready to include almost every manner of belief. The enlightened may attain a purer faith, the vulgar become more superstitious, but the signs are not yet visible.

The East lies buffeted and overwhelmed by the arms, the science, the ideas, the unconscious insolence of the West. It cannot renounce itself; it cannot merely imitate, even if imitation were possible or desirable. That way lies death. But the Oriental genius has always been adaptive rather than creative. If a breathing space be granted, it will reconstruct itself. What forms it will put on, what Avatar it will assume, these things are hidden in the womb of Time.

THE PUNJAB

BY SIR JAMES BROADWOOD LYALL, K.C.S.I., G.C.I.E.

(Lieut.-Governor of Punjab, 1887-92)

WHEN I tell my readers that the subject of my paper is a country about three times the size of England, excluding Wales, and that it has a population of twenty-five millions, they will understand that within the space at my disposal I can only deal with it in a very incomplete way. The Punjab is one of the five great Indian provinces which have local governments for the civil administration of their territories, and for the political control of Native States attached to them. At the head of these local governments is an officer appointed by the Queen, with the rank of Governor or Lieutenant-Governor. He is assisted by a very large

staff of officers, English and native, including judges and magistrates of various grades, secretaries and heads of departments, commissioners and collectors of revenue and excise, engineers of public works of all kinds, medical officers, police officers, forest officers, sanitary inspectors, &c.

In the towns there are municipal committees, and in the districts, which answer to our counties, district boards; these are mainly composed of non-official persons appointed by popular election to assist in the management of local business.

The boundary of the province is shown in the map by a dotted line. Beluchistan and Afghanistan border it to the west, Kashmir and Chinese Tibet to the north, other provinces of India to east and south.