s gathered together by them.(3) Though these
communities are largely drawn from the lowest outcasts, yet they compare
favourably, in their educational equipment, with the highest classes. This
is a significant indication of their present, and a bright promise for
their future, position among the people of India.

6. The Political Situation.

India today is politically a subject country. Though in one sense England
did not directly subjugate India, it is nevertheless true that its
inhabitants, though treated with large consideration, are today a subject
people--ruled by a foreign nation 7,000 miles away. Hence, it might be
expected that political rights and privileges would not prevail there as
among a self-governing, entirely independent, people. The existence of an
army of about 75,000 Britons in that land today is significant of the
situation and partly reveals one grip with which Great Britain holds India
and makes it a part of her great empire. I do not wish to minimize the
moral power with which also, and increasingly, Great Britain draws India
by sweet compulsion to herself; of this I shall speak later.

It should also be remembered that the genius of the Orient is not for
self-government; in the East, people have little taste for free
institutions; they have always craved, and found their greatest happiness
and chief welfare in, a strong paternal government. The ordinary Hindu
seeks for himself nothing higher than a government which, while not asking
for his opinion concerning its policy and acts, will at least dispense a
fair modicum of justice to him and his.

Notwithstanding all this, the Indian government has bestowed upon the
people a wonderfully large meed of power and privilege. Political progress
in the land is one of the marvels of the past century. Before the British
entered India that land had never enjoyed the first taste of
representative institutions. Today the query which arises in the mind of
disinterested persons who know and love India is, whether political rights
and liberties have not, of late years, been conferred too rapidly upon
them. It should not be expected that a people who, by instinct and
unbroken heritage, are the children of the worst kind of autocratic and
absolute government, should acquire, in one age or century, wisdom or
aptitude to rule themselves. The mass of Hindus love to be led and they
follow easily.

But there is a small and growing party of the soil who have