try. When they were few, isolated, and scattered, they were constrained by the force of circumstances to associate with the men and women of the subject race. Now, in proportion as they are able to find companions among their own kinsfolk, they shrink from all avoidable communication with others; and their ignorance of the natives which results therefrom insensibly increases the bitterness of race feeling. Even the most narrow-minded members of the AngloIndian community do not dislike the natives with whom they are intimately associated, but those only with whom they have little or no acquaintance.

Other influences are also at work. The official mind is embittered by memories of the mutiny, and the increased worry of administering new taxes, and of yielding vastly more work under more arduous conditions. The abuse of power, which has always been dangerously stimulated by the peculiarities of our position, is now restrained by the expression of public criticism which has, as it were, sprung suddenly into existence, and officials who have hitherto been practically irresponsible are irritated by the curtailment of their authority, and in many cases by its delegation to local boards and committees. It is a common complaint that officials nowadays have less consideration

for the feelings of native gentlemen than in former times. Fresh from their studies, placed almost at once in a position calling for the exercise of a statesman's qualifications, with no knowledge of men or the habits of Indian social life, often without the smallest amount of tact for ruling or leading men, they surrender themselves habitually, when in the society of natives, to an insolent demeanour of assumed superiority. A young magistrate who can maintain the dignity of his office with courtesy and conciliation is always respected; and in such a case it will invariably be found that the administration of local interests by means of native co-operation is a marked success. But in the majority of cases—and unfortunately they are the majority-the proceedings of committees, benevolently designed by Government to bring together Europeans and natives as much as possible for the management of business, are conducted throughout with hectoring language and in a bullying tone; and a native commissioner who ventures to evince any independence of character, or to oppose an opinion of the chairman, may consider himself lucky if he escapes without personal contumely or insult. Native gentlemen go away silently; they rarely say what they feel; they would be horrified at anything like a scene, but they think and talk

among themselves, and their feelings, we may be sure, are the reverse of respectful to our vaunted rule. At the same time we find in private life an almost universal use of irritating expressions in regard to natives, which are not the less offensive when they proceed from persons who hold an official position, and have in other respects the outward seeming of English gentlemen. Among women, who are more rapidly demoralised than men, the abuse of 'those horrid natives' is almost universal. Among men, how often do we hear the term nigger' applied, without any indication of anger or intentional contempt, but as though it were the proper designation of the people of the country! Even with those who are too wellinformed to use this term, the sentiment that prompts its use is not wholly set aside.

It is a grave symptom that the official body has now succumbed as completely as the nonofficial to anti-native prejudices. The nonofficial community is naturally, instinctively as it were, placed in a position of antagonism to the people of the soil. This fact is well brought out by Mr. John Stuart Mill, who writes,'

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' Chapter xviii. of 'Considerations on Representative Government,' which treats of the government of dependencies by a free state' (p. 135 of the People's Edition, Longmans, 1865).

If there be a fact to which all experience testifies, it is that when a country holds another in subjection, the individuals of the ruling people who resort to the foreign country to make their fortunes are, of all others, those who most need to be held under powerful restraint. They are always one of the chief difficulties of the Government. Armed with the prestige, and filled with the scornful overbearingness of the conquering nation, they have the feelings inspired by absolute power without its sense of responsibility. Among a people like that of India, the utmost efforts of the public authorities are not enough for the effectual protection of the weak against the strong; and of all the strong the European settlers are the strongest. Wherever the demoralising effect of the situation is not in a most remarkable degree corrected by the personal character of the individual, they think the people of the country mere dirt under their feet; it seems to them monstrous that any rights of the natives should stand in the way of their smallest pretensions; the simplest act of protection to the inhabitants against any act of power on their part, which they may consider useful to their commercial objects, they denounce, and sincerely regard as an injury. So natural is this state of feeling in a situation like theirs, that even under the discouragement, which it has hitherto met with from the ruling authorities, it is impossible that more or less of the spirit should not perpetually break out. The Government itself, free from this spirit, is never able sufficiently to keep it down in the young and raw even of its own civil and military officers, over whom it has so much more control than over the independent residents.

In former times the civilian element in India was the consistent champion of native rights, and the people of the country always felt that the members of the Civil Service might be relied on to protect them from oppression at the hands of the English settlers. During the agitation which accompanied the passing of the so-called Black Act fifty years ago, when the whole non-official world was banded together to prevent what it conceived to be the injustice of allowing native judges to exercise civil jurisdiction over British-born subjects, the Civil Service as a body remained firm and supported the Government. During the indigo disturbances a quarter of a century ago the civilians were the staunch friends and protectors of the natives against the indigo planters, and incurred thereby an extraordinary amount of odium and obloquy. In those days it was the practice to blackball an official at the Bengal Club, whither men connected with indigo do most resort, merely because he was an official. There was little prospect then of the amalgamation of the two classes of Europeans, or of any identity of interests which would induce them both to combine in a spirit of self-protection against the natives. This is a change which it has been reserved for the spread of English education among the natives to produce. The natives