depend upon the
reasonable and practical use which members make of these novel
opportunities, for, to quote Mr. Iyengar again, "the progress of
constitutional government is not dependent so much upon what is
expressly declared to be constitutional rights as upon what is silently
built up in the form of constitutional conventions."

In the great speech in which Lord Morley gave the House of Lords the
first outline of his Indian reforms scheme there was one singularly
pregnant passage. "We at any rate," he said, "have no choice or option.
As an illustrious member of this House once said, we are watching a
great and stupendous process, the reconstruction of a decomposed
society. What we found was described as a parallel to Europe in the
fifth century, and we have now, as it were, before us in that vast
congeries of people we call India, a long, slow march in uneven stages
through all the centuries from the fifth to the twentieth. Stupendous
indeed, and to guide that transition with sympathy, political wisdom,
and courage, with a sense of humanity, duty, and national honour, may
well be called a glorious mission." Whether we succeed in that mission
must depend largely upon the loyal assistance we receive from those
Indians who claim, in virtue of their superior education, to represent
this twentieth century. Lord Morley has fulfilled in no niggardly spirit
his pledge to associate the people of India with the Government far more
closely than has hitherto been the case in the work of actual day-to-day
administration as well as in the more complex problems of legislation.
It rests now with the Indian representatives both in the Executive and
Legislative Councils to justify Lord Morley's expectations by using the
new machinery which he has placed in their hands not for purposes of
mere destructive criticism and malevolent obstruction, but for
intelligent and constructive co-operation with the British rulers of
India, to whom alone, whatever may be their shortcomings, India owes it
that the spirit of the twentieth century has spread to her shores.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE DEPRESSED CASTES.

The only classes in British India for whom no real representation has
been devised in the enlarged Indian Councils are the millions of humble
toilers who constitute what are known as the "depressed castes." Under
present social conditions in India, this was probably inevitable.
Though, rather unreasonably, the vast majority of them go