ongress, more especially as those who
know but very little of India may confound it with the kind of assembly we
have in Mysore, and which I have suggested for adoption in other parts of
India.

When I was passing through Poona in the year 1879, I was called upon by
seven leading members of the native community who knew of the interest I
had taken in Indian affairs, and in the course of our conversation they
made some remarks on the desire of the educated natives for some share of
political power. I then explained to them that, as it was clear that India
was entirely unfit for representative institutions, the only result would
be that power would be transferred from a limited class of Englishmen to a
very limited class of natives, which would be of no advantage to the
country whatever. My remarks were followed by a dead silence which was
broken by one of them saying, in a desponding tone, "you have educated us,
and you have made us discontented accordingly," thus illustrating very
forcibly what I suppose Solomon meant when he said, "He that increaseth
knowledge increaseth sorrow." But, however that may be, the utterance of
the native in question explains the origin of the Indian Congress which
was started in 1885 by a small number of the educated classes who began to
climb the political tree with considerable vigour, illustrating as they
did so the native proverb which tells us that "The higher the monkey
climbs the more he shows his tail." And, in fact, the members of the
Congress showed theirs so completely when they climbed to the top of their
political tree at Madras in 1887, that their proceedings would be hardly
worth noticing were it not that they might be the means of prejudicing the
proper claims of the natives to consultative assemblies like the one we
have in Mysore. With people less advanced as regards common sense than the
natives of India, and also less suspicious of the educated classes, the
Congress wallahs, as they are sometimes called, might have done some
mischief, but the only harm they have really done, and I consider it no
small harm, is to lower the educated natives in general in the ideas of
those who have not had an opportunity of knowing the best of them, and so
appreciating their admirable abilities and calm common sense. For when the
public knows, as all those who have paid any attention to the subject do
know, that the members of the Congress are now selling pamphlets which are
intended to br