and a powerful and perfectly organized militarism permeates the whole fabric, that she has been able to make such advance as a world power since she became an empire at Versailles. There is no time here to elaborate these propositions, but they are obviously true.

Our government, on the other hand, is designedly weak in the executive and strong in the legislative department. When we broke away, at the beginning of our history, from a monarchy and from a monarch who was impatient of legislative interference, the pendulum swang to the other side, carrying us to the opposite extreme. We safeguarded ourselves against the possibility of a central power of overweening strength. And all our history has been the history of a powerful legislative and a comparatively weak executive. To us bureaucracy is hateful. We protest as a people against an office-holding class. Every citizen feels that he too may become an office-holder—is looking forward, possibly, to that consummation. This may explain the indulgence with which we regard the faults of those actually in office. If at the end of its term in office an administration is able to account in some way for all the money it has handled, no further questions are asked. As to the quality of the service rendered for the money, that is a matter not to be dwelt upon with painful emphasis.

Such laxity will hardly suffice for the administration of colonies planted amidst remote peoples of another race, requiring delicate handling and the tactful management which can come only from special knowledge and training. Nor is such special knowledge to be gained in the brief term of one administration's power. Much less can the matter be left to the national luck or even the national cleverness. "There are some difficulties," said one of our public men recently, "that do not yield to mere enthusiasm." We must have a strong administrative arm to the government, and the question is, how such an adjunct is to be fitted upon the existing institutions, theories and traditions of our government. I do not doubt that it will be; simply point out that here is a matter for profound thought and honest endeavor along new lines. "There is no form of government," said Dr. Franklin to his colleagues in the federal convention, "that may not be a blessing if it is well administered." There is no legitimate task or emergency to which our government may not prove adequate if wisely and liberally directed. We cannot throw overboard the wisdom of our fathers, but we are bound to construe the precepts they laid down in the light of new emergencies as they arise. The words of Lincoln, uttered in 1860 at Cooper Union, when the extension or repression of slavery was before the country as an issue, are equally applicable to the issue which confronts us now:

"I do not say that we are bound to follow implicitly in whatever our fathers did. To do that would be to discard the lights of current experience, to reject all progress, all improvement. What I do say is that if we would supplant the opinions and policy of the fathers in any case, we should do so on evidence so conclusive that even their great authority, fairly considered and weighed, cannot stand."

I firmly believe that we shall be able to develop for our new colonies an administrative branch sufficiently strong for the successful conduct of their affairs and yet preserve all the essentials of republican government.

It may be conceded that the viceregal office, with its regal functions and authority, is essential to British rule in India. Yet, properly considered, England is as truly a democracy as the United States.

Indeed, there is both education and inspiration for us in the study of the British rule in India. Not by any means that it is perfect—what human institution is perfect? Man is selfish, thoughtless, cruel. The opium traffic, both in India and China, and the introduction of the whiskey "peg" among a "heathen" race, which, with all its faults, preserved for so many centuries the virtue of temperance—these are blots—big, dark, indelible blots—on the good name of England. Nor is it wholly without reason that the complaint is so often made that legislation for India is too often inspired by the desires of Birmingham and Manchester, rather than by the needs of Hindustan.

But there are spots on the sun of a splendid performance. There are seven thousand miles of "black water" between the British Isles and Hindustan. The population of the former is thirty-five millions; of the latter, two hundred and fifty millions—one-fifth of the human race. Yet this vast peninsular is held in absolute subjection by the people of those "tight little isles" so far away. In the whole civil and military establishment of British India there are but one hundred thousand whites, as against nearly twice that number of natives. How small a numerical force to rule those teeming millions! And yet, year by year the British element grows smaller and the native element larger and more potent in the government of India. "The English," says Mr. G. W. Steevens in a recent letter to the London Mail, "are still the dominant race, but the real ruler of India is the Babu."

If the natives were a peaceful, intelligent, or even a homogeneous race, the story would still read like a fairy tale. Far from it. Three-fourths of the number are Hindus of many races, sects and schools, but there are sixty million Mohammedans (more than the total population of the Sultan's domain), besides Sikhs, Janis, Parsees, etc.,—a score or more races of more or less turbulent savages, many of them ready at a moment's notice to cut the throat of any white man, if they only dared.

The climate, at least during the hot season, is almost death to white men, and certain death to white children. The English accordingly send their children "home" to be educated and spend their tender years. This means not only the anguish of separation but also a heavy expense, which, in the present depreciated state of the rupee, is hardly borne.

The native princes, great and small, ignorant for the most part, idle, bigoted, superstitious, and naturally jealous of white rule, do what they can to block the wheels of progress and embarrass the government. Herein they have the eager co-operation of the priests, who are jealous of foreign influence and often able to inflame the people into open resistance to the most wholesome orders and regulations. Popular ignorance and superstition lend themselves readily to such mischievous designs. A mutiny may be started by a government order to build a sewer or to vaccinate the inhabitants of a village. It is easy for the priests to persuade their docile charges that vaccination is witchcraft and an instrument of the devil. The policy of the government is tender of native sensibilities, and humors religious and caste distinctions; but the smallest accident or mistake may precipitate a riot or undo the good work of years.

Those who have read Kipling's stories of native Indian life have a picture more than photographically accurate of "paternal government" under difficulties. Nor is it inconsistent with perverse human nature that much of the government's trouble comes from the well-meant but pernicious interference of globe-trotting M. P.'s and parochial statesmen who have solved the problem from afar and come out to India to fan the discontent of pampered natives or aggravate the perplexities of overworked civil servants, held up to execration as the "overpaid and aristocratic favorites of a wasteful government." England, as well as America, has her