to utilise Indian experience for the solution of Indian problems.

The

The distinction between Hindu and Muhammadan represents one of the major fissures in Indian society; but, besides these two communities, there are many others which have not yet learned to make their voices heard, and whose political ambitions have not yet appeared above the horizon. The Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis Muhammadans, Christians, and Animists—the principal heads into which the census divides the population-do not by any means exhaust the category of divisions. The great Hindu community itself is split through and through into separate castes and sub-castes. Rajputs, for instance, are a distinct community with special interests of their own; they are warriors by righ: of birth, and do not by any means see eye to eye with Hindus of the clerkly castes. Below these twice-born aristocrats is a mass of lowly humanity, from whose hands no well-born Hindu will drink water; there are others lower still, whose mere touch pollutes; and again others, still more degraded, whose very presence, without contact, pollutes their high-caste fellows. In southern India these degrees of impurity have been classified in s sort of table of precedence; some of these poor people are esteemed to pollute at a distance of twelve feet others at thirty-six; and the unhappy outcast Pariah is believed to transmit his uncleanness from a distance of sixty-four feet. Mr Gokhale, who (to his lasting honour has always denounced the indignities heaped upon these depressed castes, recently estimated their number at fifty millions, or one-fifth of the whole Hindu population. It is difficult to believe that even the long-suffering Paris will always consent to be numbered among the politi followers of the Brahman who compels him to kee distance of sixty-four feet between the wind and h nobility. As education spreads, carrying with it the levelling ideas of Europe, these different sections of the Hindu polity will begin to assert their right to an inde pendent political existence; they will create caste organi sations for education and social reform, and eventually for political representation. This has been the history of all social reform in the last fifty years. The reforming movement has never embraced the whole population

even of one locality, but has wakened to conscious corporate life first one caste and community and then another; and it is inevitable that political development will follow the same course.

To those who hoped that nature in India could be persuaded to make a leap, it is no doubt discouraging to find that the first results of political awakening must be increased diversity and division. The creation of a vigorous corporate life in each separate community is an inevitable phase of the long process by which, we may hope, the unity of India will eventually be attained. We must accept it, with what complacency we can, as an illustration of Herbert Spencer's law that the integration of the organism necessarily begins with the formation of small groups and advances by compounding and recompounding them.' The unification of India, or the formation of homogeneous provinces in a federal India, is the ultimate goal which is now set before us. Without unity or homogeneity the parliamentary institutions of which Lord Morley has planted the seed are impossible; and the work of unification ought to be the principal subject of the new chapter of Indian history which he opened in last December.

In that task of nation-making the people themselves must play by far the largest part. Lord Minto said that the destinies of the people of India were now in their own hands; and this is true, not only in the obvious, but also in the profoundest, sense of the words. In proportion as they succeed in schooling themselves to mutual trust and forbearance in place of suspicion, to cooperation in place of rivalry, they will hasten the arrival of the time when a larger share of self-government will be possible. A great responsibility is laid upon their political leaders; it rests with them to inaugurate the new era in Indian politics; henceforward they should bury out of sight and out of memory those sectarian ideals by which they have hitherto inflamed the perfervid and partisan zeal of their followers. Mr Ali Imam, in speaking to the Muhammadans at Amritsar last Christmas, had the courage to show the way, and to urge his own community to abandon a narrow and sectarian view of their responsibilities to India. Hitherto the Musalmans, proud of their great Islamic heritage, have been too

prone to speak of themselves as aliens sojourning in a foreign country. That view, so prejudicial to Indian unity, Mr Ali Imam put resolutely aside.

'We, the educated Musalmans of India' (he said) 'have no less love for the land of our birth than the members of other communities inhabiting the country. India is not only the land of our birth; we are tied to her by the sacred associations of ages. We yield to none in veneration and affection for our motherland.'

Perhaps few English readers will perceive what an epoch is marked by that last sentence. The Musalman not only accepts but claims an Indian nationality; this is a step towards unity the significance and importance of which it is impossible to overestimate. But Mr Ali | Imam was certainly justified in asking for reciprocity. It is impossible not to sympathise with him when he says later:

'When I find the most advanced province of India put forward the sectarian cry of "Bande Mataram" as the national cry, the sectarian worship of Shivaji as the national hero-worship, and the sectarian Rákhibandhan as a national observance, my heart is filled with despair and disappointment.'

It is true, indeed, that these war-cries of militant Hinduism only serve to kindle the anger of other communities and ought to be hushed. But the Hindu community contains many men of influence who have never approved of this extreme sectarianism; and we may hope that they will in future set their faces inexorably against a spirit so alien to the genius of Hindu civilisation.

All the leading communities of India are called up to play a difficult and rather exacting part, if the r reforms are to work smoothly; but of no community's so hard and yet so honourable a part demanded as of the Englishmen in the service of the Indian Government. Hitherto it has been their boast that they have provided the people of India with the most efficient administration in the world. Henceforward they will have to add to their exacting duties the delicate task of introducing political institutions into India, of developing the capacity of the people to work them, and above all, of promoting that concord and mutual forbearance without which

even the beginnings of self-government are impossible. The Indian civilian must, to some extent, abandon the conspicuous part he has hitherto played in the administration; his duty in future will be to suggest, to advise, and to guide. To others will belong the credit which comes from the wisdom of his suggestions; his reward will be in the smooth working of Councils and local Boards, on which he will have persuaded men to give up partisan advantage and forgo the luxury of revenge. The Civil Service has great traditions, and it has before now been called upon to make great sacrifices which it has never refused; but it is some measure of the boundless confidence which is reposed in that historic service that it should be asked to surrender the last infirmity of noble minds.

Before we at home had quite perceived how much we were asking, the Civil Service had proclaimed its loyal readiness to make this great surrender. The report of Lord Morley's speech which introduced the reforms cannot have been two weeks in India before Sir Norman Baker, the head of the civil servants in Bengal, proclaimed their acceptance of the new conditions under which they will in future have to serve:

'I hold' (he said) 'that a solemn duty rests upon the officers of Government in all its branches, and more particularly upon the officers of the Civil Service, so to comport themselves in the inception and working of the new measures as to make the task of the people and their leaders easy. It is incumbent upon them to accept the principle that these measures involve the surrender of some portion of the authority and control which they now exercise, and some modification of the methods of administration.'

The trials to which civilians have been exposed recently have been considerable; the difficulty of administration has been greatly increased by seditious agitation; and they have been maligned in the House of Commons by people who ought to know better. The speech of Sir Norman Baker gives the lie to those calumnies and is the best augury for the success of the new scheme.

Art. 17.-UNION IN SOUTH AFRICA.

1. Report of the South African National Convention, with Draft South Africa Act annexed. 1909.

2. The Constitution of Canada. By J. E. C. Munro. Car bridge University Press, 1899.

3. The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Austral By W. Harrison Moore. London: Murray, 1902. THE Convention of South African statesmen, whi assembled at Durban in October last to consider pr posals for the union of the South African colonies, h after an adjournment to Cape Town, brought its deliber tions to a close. The outcome of nearly four months labour is a draft Constitution presented in the form of Bill for introduction into the Imperial Parliament, where after submission to the Legislatures of the four colonis concerned, it may be expected eventually to make it appearance. The proceedings of the Convention hav not been made public, and they are wisely withheld; bu enough is known to show that it was only by the ex penditure of much patience and effort that agreement was finally reached; that during the debates there were many moments of anxiety, not to say of crisis; and the the success of the Convention must be ascribed to the presence among the delegates of a spirit that does then honour, a spirit of compromise in the best and highes sense that readiness to sacrifice the part to the whole, forget the smaller aim in the pursuit of the greater, whit is the essential condition of all constructive work in state manship. Compromise is written in every line of draft Constitution; but nothing, we are assured, has b carried by a majority over the heads of an unwil minority. In the case of every disputed point, howe reluctantly the minority may have acquiesced, the fir decision of the Convention has been accepted wit practical unanimity; a fact which, more perhaps than any other, gives ground for a sanguine hope that the labours of the Convention will bear immediate fruit, and that the Constitution it has drafted will at no distant date become in all essentials the duly legalised instrument of a South African Union.

To any one at all familiar-and which of us is not