to-day, in its more extreme forms at any
rate, it does not represent an irreconcilable reaction against all that
not only British rule but Western civilization stands for.

I will not stop at present to discuss how far the lamentable
deficiencies of the system of education which we have ourselves
introduced into India have contributed to the Indian unrest. That that
system has been productive of much good few will deny, but few also can
be so blind as to ignore the fact that it tends on the one hand to
create a semi-educated proletariate, unemployed and largely
unemployable, and on the other hand, even where failure is less
complete, to produce dangerous hybrids, more or less superficially
imbued with Western ideas, and at the same time more or less completely
divorced from the realities of Indian life. Many other circumstances
also which have helped the promoters of disaffection I must reserve for
subsequent discussion. Some of them are economic, such as the remarkable
rise in prices during the last decade. This has seriously enhanced the
cost of living in India and has specially affected the very classes
amongst whom disaffection is most widespread. The clerk, the teacher,
the petty Government official, whose exiguous salaries have remained the
same, find themselves to-day relatively, and in many cases actually,
worse off than the artisan or even the labourer, whose wages have in
many cases risen in proportion to the increased cost of living. Plague,
which in the course of the last 14 years has carried off over 6,000,000
people, and two terrible visitations of famine have caused in different
parts of the country untold misery and consequent bitterness. On the
other hand, the growth of commerce and industry and the growing interest
taken by all classes in commercial and industrial questions have led to
a corresponding resentment of the fiscal restraints placed upon India by
the Imperial Government for the selfish benefit, as it is contended, of
the British manufacturer and trader. Much bad blood has undoubtedly been
created by the treatment of British Indians in South Africa and the
attitude adopted in British Colonies generally towards Asiatic
immigrants. The social relations between the two races in India
itself--always a problem of infinite difficulty--have certainly not been
improved by the large influx of a lower class of Europeans which the
development of railways and telegraphs and other industries requiring
te