the natives for the taxes they have to pay to the Government, we must say that the idea prevailing throughout all Europe that Great Britain is impoverishing India, and getting rich by it, is preposterous from beginning to end. If we take, for example, the data furnished by Sir Richard Temple, we shall find that the ordinary revenue and receipts amounted in 1880 to something like sixty-seven millions, whilst the ordinary expenditure has risen to sixty-seven and a half and sixty-six and three-quarter millions during the years 1879-80 and 1880-81. It is therefore ridiculous to surmise, as the enemies of England do, that the exchequer of the State gets annually a large surplus from the Indian finances. What England gets from India we shall speak of in the next chapter; but here we have only intended to draw a comparison between the ways and means the two representatives of our western culture in Asia have hitherto employed to spread the era of a better civilisation, and to diffuse amongst Orientals the idea that the result of our conquests, though based upon the superiority of material strength, is to confer upon mankind in the distant East the true blessings of our better civilisation, which we are so justly proud of. In Russia the people, also subdued by the superiority of strength, are either disappearing entirely, or linger in a miserable existence under the horrid

abuses, tyranny, and disorder of utterly corrupt Russian officials, and the dawn of a better era is still hidden in the far future; whilst "the mass of the teeming Indian population desire nothing so much as that sort of repose which they enjoy under the strong, mild, and just rule of England, where every man gathers in quiet the fruits of his toil, is not forced to render up his good against his will, sleeps without fear of violence, has redress for wrongs done to him by his neighbour, performs his religious rites, and follows his caste observances undisturbed, and lifts his eyes towards the State as to a father.'

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I ask, therefore, can any sober-minded, honest European still doubt as to whom he ought to give preference in the work of civilising Asia? and is it not a shame that the various nations of Europe, influenced by petty rivalries and national vanities, are often blinded to such an extent as to extol Russia at the expense of England?

Where the sacred cause of humanity is involved, there one's views ought not to be confined to national limits; they ought to soar beyond, and honestly try to lift themselves up to the mental and moral attitude which ensures the largest and broadest look-out. As long as the national idea is most forward in the struggle for civilisation, which I consider identical with humanity, it is worthy of the devotion of every

true man; but from the moment that, forgetful of its glorious task, the idea becomes pernicious, assailing the noble object of civilisation it once struggled for and defended, I exclaim-" Perish such an idea; let national lines be obliterated, if they are nought but barriers upon which unblushing egotism and unreasoning enmity between nation and nation are inscribed."

I allude, in speaking thus, to the ignominious behaviour of a certain portion of the German and French Press during the late differences between England and Russia in Central Asia-to certain writers who, forgetful of the glorious work hitherto done by England in Asia, were already exulting with triumph at the prospect of what they thought the near end of Great Britain, and, extolling semi-barbarous and despotic Russia, were ready to destroy the prestige of the very nation whose banner has always been, and is, the harbinger of a new and better world in the distant regions of the East, and whose shores have proved hitherto the safest asylum of Frenchmen and Germans persecuted for political ideas.

CHAPTER XII.

WHY OUGHT ENGLAND TO RETAIN INDIA?

FROM the comparison we drew in the foregoing chapter between the doings of Russia and Great Britain in Asia, it has become obviously patent that England's position in India must enlist the interest of every European from a humanitarian point of view, and it is, therefore, our duty to support, to the best of our abilities, that agency which most faithfully represents our Western culture, and which, as the real embodiment of what we call Europeanism, is best fitted for the onerous but glorious task of spreading in future also, the light of our Western civilisation, to which we intend to convert the masses of Asiatics who are still groaning under the yoke of an old and effete epoch. Moreover, I would bring home the conviction to all Englishmen that they have to persevere in the ambition of their forefathers, and are, so to say, in honour bound to retain India, the field of their civilising action during more than a hundred years.

T may be laughed at for speaking of a necessity at a time when the struggle for retention is in preparation. But my insinuation is not so groundless as it seems to be, for I had abundant cause to notice that, in spite of the zeal and enthusiasm for the national honour prevailing amongst a large portion of the British public, there still is a considerable fraction with whom the idea of the possession of India is a matter of utter indifference-a fraction which has invented the famous saying, "Perish India "—and which goes even so far as to be delighted to "see burst" that horrid beast called the British lion. The origin of this rather extraordinary sentiment—what I would style a mental aberration— may be easily discovered, if we view the extraordinary struggle for daily life going on in the denselypeopled island, where the division of wealth and property is so very uneven, and where the preponderating poorer classes are naturally led into such arguments as: What need they care about the prosperity, well-being, and enlightenment of distant races, when help and assistance are so urgently wanted at home; and, more than that, why should the taxes extorted from them be spent upon the prosecution of an imperial policy, by which, as they very unjustly remark, only the upper ten thousand are profiting? These arguments, the outflow of ultra-Liberal or Radical