the first things that struck me on my return to India this
year--and struck me most forcibly--was the universality and vehemence of
the demand for a new economic policy directed with energy and system to
the expansion of Indian trade and industry. It is a demand with which
the great majority of Anglo-Indian officials are in full sympathy, and
it is in fact largely the outcome of their own efforts to stimulate
Indian interest in the question. There is very little doubt that the
Government of India would be disposed to respond to it speedily and
heartily on the lines I have already briefly indicated. Will the
Imperial Government and the British democracy lend them a helping hand
or even leave a free hand to them? If not, we shall assuredly find
ourselves confronted with an equally universal and vehement demand for
Protection pure and simple by the erection of an Indian Tariff wall
against the competition of imported manufactures. I need hardly point
out how the rejection of such a demand would be exploited by the
political agitator or how it would rally to the side of active
disaffection some of the most conservative and influential classes in
India. For if, as those Englishmen who claim a monopoly of sympathy with
the people of India are continually preaching, we must be prepared to
sacrifice administrative efficiency to sympathy, how could we shelter
ourselves on an economic issue behind theories of the greater economic
efficiency of Free Trade? If we are to try "to govern India in
accordance with Indian ideas"--a principle with which I humbly but fully
agree--how could we justify the refusal to India, of the fiscal autonomy
for which there is a far more widespread and genuine demand than for
political autonomy?

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE POSITION OF INDIANS IN THE EMPIRE.

The problems of Indian administration are in themselves difficult enough
to solve, but even more difficult are some of the problems connected
with the relations of India and her peoples to the rest of the Empire.
One of these has assumed during the last few years a character of
extreme gravity, which neither the Imperial Government nor the British
public seems to have at all adequately grasped.

"I think," said Mr. Gokhale in moving his resolution for the prohibition
of Indian indentured labour for Natal, "I am stating the plain truth
when I say that no single question of our time has evoked more bitter
feelings throughout India--feelings in the