French and English adventurers embarked in a struggle for Indian commerce, in which our ancestors were victorious because they obtained the command of the sea, and had the whole resources of the mother-country at their back.

Westerners are so imbued with the profit-making instinct that they mentally open, a ledger account in order to prove that India gains more than she loses by dependence on the people of these islands. It cannot be denied that the fabric of English administration is a noble monument of the civil skill and military prowess developed by our race. We have given the peninsula railways and canals, postal and telegraph systems, a code of laws which is far in advance of our own. Profound peace broods over the empire, famine and pestilence are fought with the weapons of science. It would be easy to pile up items on the debit side of our imaginary cash-book. Free trade has destroyed indigenous crafts wholesale, and quartered the castes who pursued them on an over-taxed soil. Incalculable is the waste of human life and inherited skill caused by the shifting of productive energy from India to Great Britain, Germany and America. It cannot be said that the oversea commerce, which amounted in 1907–8 to £241,000,000, is an unmixed benefit. The empire exports food and raw materials, robbing the soil of priceless constituents, and buys manufactured goods which ought to be produced at home. Foreign commerce is stimulated by the home charges, which average £18,000,000, and it received an indirect bounty by the closure of the mints in 1893. The textile industry of Lancashire was built upon a prohibition of Indian muslins: it now exports yarn and piece goods to the tune of £32,000,000, and this trade was unjustly favoured at the expense of local mills under the Customs Tariff of 1895. But there are forces in play for good or evil which cannot be appraised in money. From a material point of view our Government is the best and most honest in existence. If it fails to satisfy the psychical cravings of India there are shortcomings on both sides; and some of them are revealed by Mr. Banerjea’s tales.

Caste.—As a Kulin, or pedigreed Brahmin, he is naturally prone to magnify the prestige of his order. It has been sapped by incidents of foreign rule and the spread of mysticism. Pandits find their stupendous lore of less account than the literary baggage of a university graduate. Brahmin pride is outraged by the advancement of men belonging to inferior castes. The priesthood’s dream is to regain the ascendancy usurped by a race of Mlecchas (barbarians); and it keeps orthodox Hindus in a state of suppressed revolt. One centre of the insidious agitation is the fell goddess Káli’s shrine near Calcutta; another is Puna, which has for centuries been a stronghold of the clannish Máráthá Brahmans. Railways have given a mighty impetus to religion by facilitating access to places of pilgrimage; the post office keeps disaffected elements in touch; and English has become a lingua franca.

While Brahminism, if it dared, could proclaim a religious war, it has powerful enemies within the hierarchy. A desire for social recognition is universal. It was the Patricians’ refusal to intermarry with Plebeians that caused the great constitutional struggles of Ancient Rome. Many of the lowest castes are rebelling against Brahmin arrogance. They have waxed rich by growing lucrative staples, and a strong minority are highly educated. Mystical sects have already thrown off the priestly yoke. But caste is by no means confined to races of Indian blood. What is the snobbery which degrades our English character but the Indo-German Sudra’s reverence for his Brahmin? The Europeans constitute a caste which possesses some solidarity against “natives,” and they have spontaneously adopted these anti-social