certain parts of India, of a party capable of resorting to
methods that are both reactionary and revolutionary, of men who offer
prayers and sacrifices to ferocious divinities and denounce the
Government by seditious journalism, preaching primitive superstition in
the very modern form of leading articles. The mixture of religion with
politics has always produced a highly explosive compound, especially in
Asia.

These agitations are in fact the symptoms of what are said by
Shakespeare to be the "cankers of a calm world"; they are the natural
outcome of artificial culture in an educational hothouse, among classes
who have had for generations no real training in rough or hazardous
politics. The outline of the present situation in India is that we have
been disseminating ideas of abstract political right, and the germs of
representative institutions, among a people that had for centuries been
governed autocratically, and in a country where local liberties and
habits of self-government had been long obliterated or had never
existed. At the same time we have been spreading modern education
broadcast throughout the land, where, before English rule, learning had
not advanced beyond the stage of Europe in the middle ages. These may
be taken to be the primary causes of the existing Unrest; and meanwhile
the administrative machine has been so efficiently organized, it has
run, hitherto, so easily and quietly, as to disguise from inexperienced
bystanders the long discipline and training in affairs of State that are
required for its management. Nor is it clearly perceived that the real
driving power lies in the forces held in reserve by the British nation
and in the respect which British guardianship everywhere commands. That
Indians should be liberally invited to share the responsibilities of
high office is now a recognized principle of public policy. But the
process of initiation must be gradual and tentative; and vague notions
of dissolving the British connexion only prove incompetence to realize
the whole situation, external and internal, of the country. Across the
frontiers of India are warlike nations, who are intent upon arming
themselves after the latest modern pattern, though for the other
benefits of Western science and learning they show, as yet, very little
taste or inclination. They would certainly be a serious menace to a weak
Government in the Indian plains, while their sympathy with a literary
class would be uncommon