him on tour. Their clothing was of the scantiest; shelter there was none for them, and during the night one, or both men were frozen to death."

An Indian paper published in Lahore, the Punjabi, commenting on the case, called attention to the fact that even when Indians were murdered the punishment meted out to Europeans was very slight, and cited several instances in support of the statement. This was held to be rank sedition, and the editor and publisher were tried and convicted for this offence. On the day when they were being taken to prison after conviction a number of their fellow-townsmen, by whom they were known and respected, turned out to witness their removal. The day was wet; the horses employed to draw the carriage in which were the prisoners were of poor quality, and in consequence progress was slow. Meanwhile the crowd of sympathisers kept augmenting and cheering until the horses refused to go further, and the wretched cavalcade came to a standstill in the mud, whilst the prisoners were transferred from the carriage in which they were to one better equipped with horses.

Let it be noted that at this stage no attempt was made by the crowd to rescue the prisoners, which, in the mind of the authorities, was the object for which the crowd had gathered. During the course of the day some horse-play took place, which was called a riot, and for which ten men were arrested, of whom seven were convicted. An appeal was taken to the High Court, when four of the convicted men were liberated and three of the

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convictions upheld, although in one case the sentence was reduced. The High Court held that there had been no riot, but only a case of simple assault. Among others who had taken part in the agitation on behalf of the peasants was Lala Lajpat Rai, a local gentleman of spotless character, high aim, and self-sacrificing disposition. There was no crime which was not imputed to this man, even including intrigue with the Ameer of Cabul by the vitriolic Anglo-Indian Press.

When I received the Mohammedan deputation at Lahore, its spokesman, a gentleman occupying a good educational position in the town, went out of his way to assure me that while he was strongly opposed to Lala Lajpat Rai's methods of religious controversy, he still regarded him as a man of the highest character and noble aims, and that his deportation was a grave miscarriage of justice. It is alleged with what degree of truth I know not -that Lord Kitchener threatened to resign unless an example was made of Lala Rajpat Rai. The authorities, however, had nothing against him, save that he was an agitator who voiced the grievance of the heavily-burdened peasants, and so, as he had broken no law and could not be convicted in any court of justice, the only thing left was to order his deportation without trial, which was accordingly done. He was sent to Burma, where he was kept a prisoner for six months. So much for sedition and riot in Lahore!

At Rawalpindi the peasants' agitation against the heavy increase in rent, 33 per cent., was very strong,

and there, also, a number of educated Indian gentlemen were lending the weight of their influence to assist the ryots to obtain redress. The local magistrate, a hot-headed, tactless sort of man, thought he would like to try the effect of prosecution on some of his tormentors, and so he summoned them to meet him in the court-house on a certain day, to show cause why they should not be tried for sedition. This act of his would be ludicrous, but for what ensued. The Government, when notified of what he had done, refused to sanction his insane procedure, and ordered him to desist. He did not notify his intended victims of this fact, but on the appointed day proceeded to the court-house, where the gentlemen accused sent him a polite intimation that they refused to countenance his illegal procedure and did not intend to recognise his summons. The high-handed action of the magistrate had set both the town of Rawalpindi and the surrounding district in a ferment, and on the day on which the illegallysummoned champions of popular rights were to appear before the magistrate the peasants gathered in great force to stand by their friends. During the course of the day there were several cases of street broils, in which a mission station was set fire to, but no one was arrested. Ten or twelve days after these events fifty of the leading citizens of the town, including the gentlemen above referred to whom the magistrate had wanted to try for sedition, were suddenly seized by the police and cast into prison. These men, all of them of good social standing and position, educated, and leading

lights in Rawalpindi society, applied for bail, which was refused, and for four and a half months they were kept in prison, awaiting trial.

Fortunately for them, the magistrate sent down by the Government to try the case was able to rise above local prejudice, and in the end he acquitted all the accused, characterised the evidence against them as having been fabricated, and frankly charged the prosecuting witnesses with perjury. The Viceroy, Lord Minto, on learning the effect which the Colonisation Bill above referred to was having upon the colonists and their relations in the army, promptly vetoed it, with the full concurrence of his Government. At the same time the proposal to increase the irrigation water charges was postponed for a year, and thereupon the entire "seditious" agitation subsided. The peasants had won, and naturally settled down into their wonted attitude of peaceful cultivation of the soil. The version of the authorities is that the deportation of Lala Lajpat Rai and the apprehension of the rebellious lawyers at Rawalpindi brought peace; whereas, as a matter of fact, peace came when the causes which had led to the agitation -to wit, the doubling of the municipal assessment at Delhi, the confiscatory canal colony legislation, and the increase of the already heavy water charges -were abandoned.

These, then, are the true facts of the "Sedition in the North" of which such distorted accounts appeared in the Press at the time, and which is still believed in by that section of Anglo-Indian society

at home whose prejudice against everything affecting the life and happiness of the people of India is invulnerable. Part of the charges levelled against Lala Lajpat Rai and his co-patriots was that they were spreading sedition in the army. That the army was affected, is, I think, extremely probable, remembering that it is from this part of India that the army is chiefly recruited, and that those who were the victims of the Government's oppressive policy were the fathers, sons, and brothers of the men who compose the army. It was the Government of the Punjab, not the agitators, who were responsible for the unrest in the army. The Punjabi soldier, drawn from the peasant class to which he would one day again return, naturally sympathised with his own people in their day of trouble. Had the army been recruited to any extent from the districts of Eastern Bengal, the partition would have effected it in the same way, and would in all likelihood have been withdrawn, as were the Canal Colonisation Bill and the excessive water charges. The moral is obvious. The Government of India did not come to the rescue of the peasantry out of any sense of justice, but simply through the fear that if the injustice were persisted in dire results might accrue to the Indian Army.