ed out, on account of their very virtues. It is because they are
sober, thrifty, industrious, more attentive to their business than the
white men that their presence in the Colonies is considered
intolerable." Educated Indians know how little hold the Mother Country
has over her Colonies in these matters. They know that both British and
Anglo-Indian statesmen have recognized their grievances without being
able to secure their redress, and it is interesting to note how warm
were the tributes paid in the Imperial Council to the energy with which
Lord Curzon had upheld their cause, by some of those who were most
bitterly opposed to him when he was in India. They know, on the other
hand, that though the British Labour Party can afford to profess great
sympathy for Indian political aspirations in India, it has never
tried--or, if it has tried, it has signally failed--to exercise the
slightest influence in favour of Indian claims to fair treatment with
its allies in the Colonies, where the Labour Party is always the most
uncompromising advocate of a policy of exclusion and oppression, and
they know the power which the Labour Party wields in all our Colonies.

They are, therefore, I believe, ready, to reckon with the realities of
the situation and to agree with Lord Curzon that "the common rights of
British citizenship cannot be held to override the rights of
self-protection conceded to self-governing Colonies"--rights which,
moreover, are often exercised to the detriment of immigrants from the
Mother Country itself. They will, on the other hand, urge the
withholding of Indian labour if the Colonies are unwilling to treat it
with fairness and humanity, and they argue rightly enough, that India,
to whom the emigration of tens of thousands of her people is not an
unmixed advantage, will lose far less than Colonies whose development
will be starved by the loss of labour they cannot themselves supply. An
influential Indian Member stated in Council that they have accepted the
view that complete freedom of immigration is beyond the pale of
practical politics, and is not to be pressed as things stand. All that
they ask, he added, in the Transvaal is for the old Indian residents to
be allowed to live peaceably, as in Cape Colony for instance, without
being treated like habitual criminals, and for men of education and
position to be allowed to come in, so that they may have teachers,
ministers of religion, and doctors for themselves and