ive
society.

That the task must be one of prodigious difficulty, not always free from
danger, has been long known to those who watched the experiment with
some accurate foresight of the conditions attending it. Yet the recent
symptoms of virulent disease in some parts of the body politic, though
confined to certain provinces of India, have taken the British nation by
surprise. Mr. Chirol's book has now exhibited the present state and
prospect of the adventure; he has examined the causes and the
consequences of the prevailing unrest; he has collected ample evidence,
and he has consulted all the best authorities, Indian and European, on
the subject. His masterly analysis of all this material shows wide
acquaintance with the facts, and rare insight into the character and
motives, the aims and methods, of those who are engaged in stirring up
the spirit of revolt against the British Government. He has pointed to
instances where the best intentions of the administrators have led them
wrong; his whole narrative illustrates the perils that beset a
Government necessarily pledged to moral and material reform, which finds
its own principles perverted against its efforts, and its foremost
opponents among the class that has been the first to profit by the
benefits which that Government has conferred upon them.

The nineteenth century had been pre-eminently an era of the development
of rapid and easy communication between distant parts of the world,
particularly between Europe and Asia. So long as these two continents
remained far apart the condition of Asia was unchanged and stationary;
if there was any change it had been latterly retrogressive, for in
India at any rate the eighteenth century was a period of abnormal and
extensive political confusion. In Europe, on the other hand, national
wealth, scientific discoveries, the arts of war and peace, had made
extraordinary progress. Population had increased and multiplied; and
partly by territorial conquests, partly by pacific penetration, the
Western nations overflowed politically into Asia during the nineteenth
century. They brought with them larger knowledge, novel ideas and
manners, which have opened the Asiatic mind to new influences and
aspirations, to the sense of needs and grievances not previously felt or
even imagined. The effect, as can now be clearly perceived, has been to
produce an abrupt transition from old to new ways, from the antique
order of society towards fresh