Tae future of the British rale in India is a very difficult question, and one the consideration of which cannot be deferred much longer. The condition of India has changed so enormously of late years, that the present system must be gradually modified; with railways and telegraphs, education and vernacular newspapers, permeating the peninsula from one end to the other, it will be hopeless to endeavour to maintain for many years more the military vale, benevolent though it may be, which at resent keeps India in the grasp of the ritish Raj. As long as India was divided against itself into kingdoms of different sizes with scanty means of communication, with rulers mutually hostile, and with different languages and religions, a small number of Bri soldiers and officials could govern it by maintaining the divisions and playing off ove tribe or kingdom against auother. It was a matter of little practical concern to the mass of the population whether it was an Englishman or a Mahratta who conquered and taxed them: they were used to being oppressed by an outsider of some kind, and the Englishman was the lasa oppressive of the two. Having once conquered India, our officials there trasted that the immobility of Oriental iustitutions, and the readiness of all Orientals to accept accomplished facts, would be the great security of our rule: and then with western recklessness and energy they set to work to break down the barriers which guavauteed their security. We are doing our best to spread among the people of Hindostan the civilisation and the language of the West, and to educate them in the duties and responsibilities of self-governmen and we must not be surprised to discover that we are creating a monster, which we may find it very difficalt to control. In an earnest if somewhat exaggerated little book, entitled, New India, ov India in transition Mr. H. Y. 8. Cotton, of the Bengal Civil Service, discusses this important _question; and though the author is himself a member of the almost irresponsible bureaucracy which governs thebrightest jewel in Victoria's crown, his book urges, as absolutely necessary, the early concession of a large measure of poli cal liberty to the people of Indi view is that the existing situation is almost intolerable. On the one hand the British administration, keeping much less touch of the feelings of the natives than it did in the old days vhen the officials spent the best parts of their lives in the country, has become more centralized and despotic than it used to be; and on the other hand, the education with which we have endowed them has filled the energetic, able and aspiring portion of the population with new ideas and opinions, and caused them to complain as they never did before, of the injustice which they imagine is done them by the imposition of an alien despotism. The quick-witted Indian learns very fast; and we havenotonly given him new political ideas and methods of language, bnt we have united the various peoples of the peninsula by providing them with common language. In former days the confusion of tongues was an insuperable obstacle to unity; now, in Mr. Cotton's words, "the English language is established as the channel through which the fire-worshippers of Bombay and the Baboos of Bengal, the Brahmins of Madras and the Mahrattas of Poona, the Pathans and Rajpoots of Upper India, and the Tamil and Teluga-speaking races of the other extreme and of the peninsula, are able to meet on one common platform, and to give express sion to their common interests and aspirations. A quarter of a century ago there was no trace of this."
Mr, Cotton recommends our Government to be wise in time. At present the educated natives, as they showed Inst year when war with Russia was imminent, are not anxious to overthrow our rule; and they certainly are rot anxious to supplant it by that of any other foreign power, But they will not long consent to be the taxed and unrepresented subjects of the Empress of India. We have trained, educated and equipped their intellect and their ambition; they are not like inese on whom western culture ion impress themselves very slowly, and affect with difficulty habits of thought that are the result of centuries of isolation. The natives of Indi are of similar race with ourselves they have a similar if different activity and ncnteness of mind, and they readily assimilate the lessons that we have taught them, Our Government is said to consist ofa ruling caste of foreigners endowed with an almost complete monopoly of place and power, and an impassiveness not easily stirred by ism; bat if England should once yet into serious trouble in Europe, il is much to be feared that the natives whom we have educated in India would take advantage of the opportunity to assert their right to a much greater share in the government of the country than they now enjoy. When the Queen took over from the East India Company the Government of Hindostan, a promise was made to the people that the service of the State should be thrown open to all British subjects without regard to their race, colour or religion; the history of the bill for which Mr. Tlbert—who only brought it forward in his official capacity—was so unjustly abused, is a proof how difficult it is to get the English residents in India to carry out sympathetically the Queen's proclamation. The educated natives are not at present anxious to gain their demands by revolution; but jit is the basines of the Parliament and the government at home not to shut their eyes to the fact that these demands exist and grow stronger daily, and that if concessions are not granted from the outside they will sooner or later be enforced from inside. Mr. Cotton farther says that we should set to work to endue India with a commencement at any rate of self-government, and he seems to be unaware of the large advance which English rulers in India have already made on that direction. The ultimate result is to be a federation of independent states cemented together by the power of England, which is an Abbé de Sieyes sort of way of arranging the world without taking into account the nature of the peoples inhabiting it. No political education will change the nature of men, make for instance the Mabratta forget his masterful, turbulent ways, or the mild Hindu forget this subtleness. The characters of the different Indian peoples are ingrained in them by the action of thousands of years, and the teachings of England will not effect such changes as will bring the dreams of such speculators as Mr. Cotton within the widest range of politics which there would be any use in considering. This in Mr. Cotton's own words is what we should Took forward to:—" Yenrs must elapse, generations may pass away, before we can expect the consummation of the policy advocate. But it is a policy which we should always keep before our eyes, to which all our efforts should converge. Sooner or later India must again take her old rank among the nations of the East, and all our action should be devoted to facilitating her progress to freedom. Not in mere vague talk, but strenuously and of sot purpose, it should be the principal, object of our Indian Government to address ito to the peaceful lqnidation of its concerns, and the recoustraction of native administrations in ita own place."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.