cities ? How is the peace maintained in so vast a country, and how is the public health preserved? The practical experience of every man will give rise to these and other similar questions, and if education is of any value it ought to assist him in giving correct answers to them.

9. Personal Duty. For the answer is not a matter in which we have no concern. Its character for good or evil depends to a large extent upon our own efforts. The human body cannot enjoy health if the several members do not work together for it. In the same way the government of a country cannot be carried on if the citizens do not take an active part in assisting it. It is not at all necessary that a man should be in the service of the State in order to fulfil his duty to the State. We hear sometimes complaints of the corruption of the police, of the miscarriage of justice, or of the spread of disease which can be prevented. But bribes would not be taken if they were not offered, false evidence must be given before justice is perverted, and disease would not spread if it were not first produced and diffused by neglect of proper precautions. The country has a right to expect that each citizen will use his best endeavours to promote the causes of justice and public health. Within the village community there used to be a spirit of mutual help and service for the common good. Although the sphere of our duties is enlarged, there is no reason why the same idea should not animate the residents of a province or a country. In an address delivered in Calcutta in December, 1896, the Honourable Mr. Justice Ranade, C.I.E., made these observations: "The State after all exists only to make individual members

composing it nobler, happier, richer, and more perfect in every attribute with which we are endowed and this perfection of our being can never be insured by any outside arrangement, however excellent, unless the individual member concerned is in himself prepared in his own private social sphere of duties to co-operate in his own well-being."

10. The Future. If Mr. Ranade's excellent advice were more generally followed, we might look forward to the future as described by an English poet, Lewis Morris,

"There shall come from out the noise of strife and groaning, A broader day, a juster brotherhood:

A deep equality of aim postponing

All selfish seeking to the general good.

There shall come a time when each shall to the other

Be as God would have him, brother to brother."

CHAPTER II.

THE CITY.

11. Towns. Before we proceed from the village to the district, we must learn something about the town or city. The population of the villages is called rural, and that of the towns urban. There are two points which should be noticed in dealing with the urban population of India. The first is that it is extremely small, as compared with what we find in England and in most other European countries. The other is, that it has greatly increased under British rule. In England and Wales, which cover only 58,309 square miles with about 29 millions of people, there are 185 towns, each containing more than 20,000 inhabitants, and all together counting an urban population of 151 millions. In the whole of India, including the native states, with its huge area of 1,560,160 square miles, there are 225 such towns, of which only 38 are in the native states. The population of these 225 towns was returned in 1891 at less than 14 millions. It may

be said that in one portion of the British Isles more than half the population lives in towns severally containing more than 20,000 inhabitants, while in

India not even a twentieth part resides in such towns. At the same time the urban population of British India has grown considerably in the last fifty years, and it is very much denser than in the native states.

12. Advantages of Towns. If any one should feel surprise at the small number of Indian towns, he will find an explanation of the fact in the state of the country before the arrival of the British. Three influences induce men to draw away from the villages and live together in large towns, namely, self-defence, trade, and the privileges of self-government which are generally granted to large towns and cities. One might have expected that in the centuries of invasion and civil war through which India has passed the people would have preferred towns to villages as affording to them a better protection. But the terrible fate which overtook Delhi and other cities warned the people that their frequent invaders, whose object was plunder and not government, would assuredly attack the wealthy city and not the poor village. Large towns attracted not merely the foreign foe, but also the cupidity of their rulers, and they were even liable to be moved from one place to another to please the whim or ambition of a prince. prince. The ruins of many cities of Delhi bear witness to this experience. The influence of self-defence, which has proved elsewhere so strong in the formation of town colonies, was greatly weakened in India by these considerations.

Trade could never flourish in India when the country was exposed to internal disorder and foreign invasion. The population barely sufficed to keep the villages populated and their lands tilled; and although

there were cities whose industries in copperware, silk fabrics, muslins, and lacquer work, obtained for them a reputation not confined to India, there was neither a large demand for these products of industry in the country, nor any safe means of exporting them to foreign countries. At present if the urban population of England shows signs of decrease, the inference is at once drawn that the foreign trade of Great Britain is falling off; but the trade which India carried on with other countries up to the establishment of British rule was a commerce in the produce of the land and the forests, and not in the products of skilled labour. India sent abroad her pepper, lac, fibres, ginger, and timber, and her trade stimulated the rural rather than the urban population. The value of Dacca 1 muslins exported in 1787 was thirty lakhs, but in 1813 it had fallen to less than four lakhs.

The third influence which leads men from the countryside to the town was unknown to India before British rule. Such small measure of self-government as the people enjoyed was confined to the village whose institutions were described in the last chapter. Even in the present day the progress of municipal life is slow, and such must be the case until the class of residents who possess wealth, education, and leisure is largely increased.

In the meanwhile, as the towns. increase under the influences of peace and trade, every opportunity is taken to entrust to the townsmen powers of self-government.

13. Municipal Towns. It is then to these towns that attention must be paid by those who wish to learn

1 The muslins of Dacca were famous in Roman and even Assyrian times.