the assertion of the equality of men before the law in
1775 in the hanging of the brahman, Nandakumar, for forgery. Now,
looking back at the dissolving of the old ideas of artificial rank and
privileges, we may reckon also the equality of men in the great modern
professions, foremost in India being Law, as among the chief dissolving
agencies.

[Sidenote: Extent of English education.]

[Sidenote: English words naturalised.]

It is easy to give _figures_ at least for the vast agency now at work in
the spread of English education in India. Higher English education for
natives began with the founding of the Hindu College in Calcutta in
1817; in the year 1902 there were in India five Universities, the
examinations of which are conducted in English; and affiliated to these
examining Universities were 188 teaching colleges containing 23,009
undergraduates; and preparing for the Matriculation Examination (in the
year 1896-97) were 5267 Secondary Schools, containing 535,155 pupils.
From these Secondary Schools in the year 1901, 21,750 candidates
appeared at the Matriculation Examinations of the Universities
professing to be able to write their answers in English, and of these
nearly 8000 passed. That figure is a measure of the process of leavening
India with modern ideas through English education--8000 fresh recruits a
year. That is the measure of the confusion introduced into the old
social organism. A small number, no doubt, compared with the ten million
of unleavened youth born in the same year, and yet they are the pick of
the middle classes and must become the leaders of the masses. The masses
in China, it is alleged, would not be anti-foreign were it not for the
influence of their literati, and the thoughts of these Indian literati
must also become the thoughts of the Indian masses. It is the mind of
these literati, mainly, which we are trying to gauge. According to the
census of 1901 their total number approached one million, being those
who could read and write English. Descending below the English-reading
literati, I have noted about three hundred English words naturalised in
two of the chief vernaculars of India, an indication, if not a measure,
of the new influence among the masses.

[Sidenote: Too sanguine prophecies of progress.]

Yet having tabulated figures, once more, ere we proceed, we enjoin upon
ourselves and our readers a cautious estimate of the progress of ideas.
The European hood and gown of the Indi