on the one hand, that India, and especially Maharashtra, the land of the
Mahrattas, had been happier and better and more prosperous under a Hindu
_raj_ than it had ever been or could ever be under the rule of alien
"demons"; and that if the British _raj_ had at one time served some
useful purpose in introducing India to the scientific achievements of
Western civilisation, it had done so at ruinous cost, both material and
moral, to the Indians whose wealth it had drained and whose social and
religious institutions it had undermined, and on the other hand he held
out to them the prospect that, if power were once restored to the
Brahmans, who had already learnt all that there was of good to be
learnt from the English, the golden age would return for gods and men.
That Tilak himself hardly believed in the possibility of overthrowing
British rule is more than probable, but what some Indians who knew him
well tell me he did believe was that the British could be driven or
wearied by a ceaseless and menacing agitation into gradually
surrendering to the Brahmans the reality of power, as did the later
Peshwas, and remaining content with the mere shadow of sovereignty. As
one of his organs blurted it out:--"If the British yield all power to us
and retain only nominal control, we may yet be friends."

Such was the position when, on June 24, 1908, Tilak was arrested in
Bombay on charges connected with the publication in the _Kesari_ of
articles containing inflammatory comments on the Muzafferpur outrage, in
which Mrs. and Miss Kennedy had been killed by a bomb--the first of a
long list of similar outrages in Bengal. Not in the moment of first
excitement, but weeks afterwards, the _Kesari_ had commented on this
crime in terms which the Parsee Judge, Mr. Justice Davar, described in
his summing up as follows:--"They are seething with sedition; they
preach violence; they speak of murders with approval; and the cowardly
and atrocious act of committing murders with bombs not only meets with
your approval, but you hail the advent of the bomb into India as if
something had come to India for its good." The bomb was extolled in
these articles as "a kind of witchcraft, a charm, an amulet," and the
_Kesari_ delighted in showing that neither the "supervision of the
police" nor "swarms of detectives" could stop "these simple playful
sports of science," Whilst professing to deprecate such methods, it
threw the responsibility upon Government, which