e Japanese to preserve their
independence as a constitutional nation, and most Englishmen vaguely
sympathise with the desire of the Chinese progressives both for national
independence and internal reform. Few of us, however, would be willing
to give any definite advice to an individual Chinaman who asked whether
he ought to throw himself into a movement for a representative
parliament on European lines.

Within our own Empire this uncertainty as to the limitations of our
political principles may at any moment produce actual disaster. In
Africa, for instance, the political relationship between the European
inhabitants of our territories and the non-European majority of Kaffirs,
Negroes, Hindoos, Copts, or Arabs is regulated on entirely different
lines in Natal, Basutoland, Egypt, or East Africa. In each case the
constitutional difference is due not so much to the character of the
local problem as to historical accident, and trouble may break out
anywhere and at any time, either from the aggression of the Europeans
upon the rights reserved by the Home Government to the non-Europeans, or
from a revolt of the non-Europeans themselves. Blacks and whites are
equally irritated by the knowledge that there is one law in Nairobi and
another in Durban.

This position is, of course, most dangerous in the case of India. For
two or three generations the ordinary English Liberal postponed any
decision on Indian politics, because he believed that we were educating
the inhabitants for self-government, and that in due time they would all
have a vote for an Indian parliament. Now he is becoming aware that
there are many races in India, and that some of the most important
differences between those races among themselves, and between any of
them and ourselves, are not such as can be obliterated by education. He
is told by men whom he respects that this fact makes it certain that
the representative system which is suitable for England will never be
suitable for India, and therefore he remains uneasily responsible for
the permanent autocratic government of three hundred million people,
remembering from time to time that some of those people or their
neighbours may have much more definite political ideas than his own, and
that he ultimately may have to fight for a power which he hardly desires
to retain.

Meanwhile, the existence of the Indian problem loosens half-consciously
his grip upon democratic principle in matters nearer home. Newspa