March 5.
Our Indian correspondent whose letter appears in another column, to-day has indeed a gloomy account to give of the opening New Year. The list of anarchical crimes is cludes one bomb-throwing, one attempt to wreck the train. of the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, and two murders, both of them of men who were valuable and zealous servants of the Indian Government. The circumstance: which these outrages were perpetrated adds yet more to their unhappy significance. Within recent mooths there would appear to have arisen some feeling of optimism in high quarters in Calcutta os regards the state of seditious propaganda.—Notwithstanding the Bengal Police report on political crime for the year 1909, which recorded 329 murders within the twelve months and an alarming increase in general lawlessness, an impression was prevalent that the condition of things as a whole was beginning to improve. Against such optimism the murders of Mr. Jackson and of Police-Inspector Shams-ul-Alain stand out in 1g contrast. For this in particular is to be noted, that in both cases the assassin was actuated by a perfectly clear desire for revenge and to impede the execution of the law. The murder of Mr. Jackson, as his assassin boasted, was done in revenge for the recent conviction of a Brahmin sedition-monger, who kad been sent to penal servitude. Inspector Shams-ul-Alain was shot dead as he! left the High Court, from assisting. at the police inquiries into the Manicktollah bomb conspiracy, which he had been chiefly instramental in tracing to its source. He was regarded, we are told, as a most dangerous foe to terrorism; and the forces of Anarchy decided accordingly that he must be put out of their path. Other instances might be quoted to prove that con-spiraters la India aim at something more than the mere example to those in high places which is the conventional reason for political witable that the tragic death of Inspector Shams-ul-Alain should cast a gloom over the first mooting of the Imperial Legislative Council, which took place on the very day after the murder. To that inaagaration many people, both in the Indian Government and among, native loyalists, had eagerly been looking'forward. "I had hoped," said Lord Minto in his inaugural speech, to open this new Council
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.