an remove it from office, to provoke or face a conflict
of which the consequences would extend far beyond the walls of the
Legislature. This is a powerful lever of which Indians may quickly learn
the use.

In another important direction the first session of the Legislature bore
out Sir Thomas Munro's view, expressed, as we have already seen, a
hundred years ago, that in India as elsewhere liberal treatment will be
found the most effectual way of elevating the character of the people.
Nothing perhaps has tended more to alienate the sympathies of Englishmen
from the political aspirations which the founders of the Indian National
Congress were bent upon promoting than the subordination of social to
political reforms. There remained always some distinguished Indians who
ensued both--notably Mr. Gokhale, who founded the society of "the
Servants of India," dedicated chiefly to social reform, of which the
beneficent activities have expanded steadily throughout a decade of
political turmoil. His mantle fell on no unworthy shoulders, and it is a
good omen that his chief disciple, Mr. Srinivasa Sastri, has become the
leader of the Moderate party in the Council of State, as well as one of
the Indian representatives at the recent Imperial Conference in London.
A similar spirit informs the numerous associations that have addressed
themselves, though with perhaps less success so far, to the more glaring
evils of the Hindu religious social system, such as infant marriage, the
prohibition of re-marriage of widows, the rigidity of caste laws in
regard to inter-caste marriage, and to intercourse between the different
castes even at meals. Many interesting experiments have been made by
Indians for infusing into education a new moral tone and discipline on
Indian lines, and it is due to Indian effort no less than to the
encouragement of Government that female education has begun to bridge
over the intellectual gulf that tended to separate more and more the men
and the women of the Western-educated classes. In Madras, to quote only
one instance, there is to-day a high school for girls--almost
unthinkable two decades ago and only opened ten years ago--in which
high-caste Brahman girls live under the same roof and are taught in the
same class-rooms as not only Hindu girls of the non-Brahman castes, but
Mahomedan and native Christian and Eurasian girls from all parts of the
Presidency, and the only real difficulty now experienced is in the
tra