g has gradually ripened
since then into a widespread and deep-rooted conviction--not the least
of the many deplorable results of a movement that claims to be called
"national."

It would be an evil day for the internal peace of India if a people
still so proud of their history, so jealous of their religion, and so
conscious of their virile superiority as the Mahomedans came to believe
that they could only trust to their own right hand, and no longer to the
authority and sense of justice of the British _Raj_, to avert the
dangers which they foresee in the future from the establishment of an
overt or covert Hindu ascendancy. Some may say that it would be an
equally evil day for the British _Raj_ if the Mahomedans came to believe
in the futility of unrequited loyalty and joined hands with its enemies
in the confident anticipation that, whatever welter might follow the
collapse of British rule, they could not fail sooner or later to fight
their way once more to the front. Certainly at no time since we have
ruled India has greater circumspection been needed in holding the
balance between the two communities. It would be as impolitic to forget
that the Mahomedans have held steadfastly aloof from the anti-British
movement of the last few years and represent on the whole a great
conservative force, as to create the impression amongst the Hindus at
large, of whom the vast majority are still our friends, that we are
disposed to visit upon them the disloyalty of what is after all a small
section of their community by unduly favouring the Mahomedans at their
expense.

CHAPTER X.

SOUTHERN INDIA.

Unrest in its most dangerous forms has hitherto been almost entirely
confined to the Deccan, Bengal, and the Punjab. It has spread to some
extent from the Bombay Presidency into the Central Provinces, which,
indeed, include part of the Deccan, and it has overflowed both from
Bengal and from the Punjab into some of the neighbouring districts of
the United Provinces. But thanks very largely to the firm and
experienced hands in which the administration of the Central Provinces
under their Commissioner, Mr. Craddock, and that of the United Provinces
under their Lieutenant-Governor, Sir John Hewett, have rested during
these troublous years, the situation there has never got seriously out
of hand. Except in Peshawar, where the political propaganda of a
somewhat militant colony of Bengalees has stimulated the latent
antagonism betwe