in the maintenance of our rule in India, and their chiefs deserve all the sympathy and all the support they receive from our Government. I will only here repeat that their present attitude is one of absolute loyalty, in spite of attempts made to awaken them to what the reformers are pleased to call a dignified sense of their wrongs.' They have wrongs and grievances, of course; who has not? But they are not making a lever of these by sulking at a moment when their declared support is of consequence to the Government.

In Lord Morley we have a statesman who kept his head throughout the crisis now no longer acute. Lord Minto very wisely submitted himself to the orders of his chief and loyally seconded him throughout. To Lord Morley and Lord Minto are due the recent concessions, which have come none too soon. But it must not for a moment be supposed that the nominations of one or two Indians to the Viceroy's Executive Council, or the elections of an unofficial majority to the local legislative bodies will slake the educated native's thirst for office. The measures announced by Lord Morley on the 17th of December are gratifying to the small group of loyal men of note who will be invited to lend a hand at the helm; and their presence will have a steadying effect on those who believe that the Government has lately wavered from the only true course-that of gradual inclusion within the administration of men of the Soil who are fitted for more than mere spadework. But we must look forward before long to a generous sharing with Indians of the higher posts now monopolised by members of the Civil Service. I would suggest that at least one-quarter of the annual recruitment for this service be made by nomination in each Province of educated local men of good social position belonging, as far as possible, to well-known families whose members have stood by us when there was trouble in the past. This will not content the agitators,' who spring for the most part from the money-lending and socially lower classes; but the measure will be popular with the landowners, whose support in an agricultural country is politically far more valuable. To these young men I would give every opportunity of becoming fitted eventually for the highest posts in the administration. I would place them, in the first instance, under selected officers who would teach them their work, and by degrees they should be entrusted with offices of responsibility. In the end they must sink or swim by the reputation they may have made for themselves in the course of their service. If the experiment prove a success, then all the better for us. If a failure, we shall at least be credited with having done our honest best to give the Indian a chance of sharing in the government of his own country. When the agitation has died out (and I believe this will happen very soon) I would introduce an element of competition for these appointments, safeguarding, as far as possible, the interests of the Sikhs and Mohammedans and other races who are not so quickwitted as the Hindu of the commercial class.

I fear I may have given the stay-at-home Englishman an impression that the civil administration is only recruited from two bodies, namely, the higher Civil Servants proper and the lower clerical establishments already alluded to as beginning their career on £12 per annum. There are several very important intermediate branches known broadly as the Uncovenanted Service, whose members rise through many grades in judicial and executive posts to a fairly comfortable competence. But they rarely, in pay or position, reach the top rungs of the ladder. These appointments are freely shared in by the Indians, who are appointed by nomination or competition. I have not in these notes made reference to positions in various other departments, such as Medical, Education, Public Works, Forests, Railways, Customs, Surveys, Posts and Telegraphs, in the higher branches of which the Englishman is usually seated. I take it as granted that all these posts will likewise be more generously shared with Indians once the Covenanted Civil Service consents to surrender some of its own particular primeurs. Always, of course, on condition that good men and true are to be found for the posts. On this point I shall not be contradicted when I assert that every Englishman of experience in India can put his finger on at least half-a-dozen Indian fellow-workers who are intellectually able to administer in the departments in which they have been trained. The only doubt is as to their partiality in dealing with their countrymen, the tendency being to lean towards people of their own caste or creed. But there are many brilliant exceptions, and I personally know some Indians whose fairmindedness is absolute and who have worked without prejudice throughout their service. This high quality will become more common as time goes on. Let us consider, in mitigation of the partiality habit, the difficulty we ourselves often feel when we are called on to punish a white man for an offence against a black.

I have still some impressions to note regarding two matters of absorbing interest, namely, our relations with the feudatory States and our present military position in India. These I will reserve for future notice. My present notes embody the kernels of many conversations and of much inquiry lately made with Indians of various shades of political ideas, from the declared loyalist to the most suspected of the so-called rebels; also with Englishmen holding important offices in the country. My readers have my assurance, for what it is worth, that the recent measures of repression will deal a death-blow to open agitation, provided they are freely made use of, and without hesitation or delay, in any portion of India showing symptoms of getting out of hand. I do not think there were at any time deep-laid plans (except in Bengal) for the upsetting of the administration. The discontented were fairly astonished at the commotion they created pour si peu de chose. But they now know their power, and only if checked in good time will they refrain from starting another scare.

Hence the importance of the repressive measures. We have a rod ready for the malefactors. But the Morley concessions will also help enormously towards keeping the peace, and no intelligent agitatorthe leaders are all intelligent-will for a moment regard them as wrung from us by force or conceded through fear. The internal peace of India will be disturbed only if a religious cry be started. The masses will never move merely for the sake of lifting the educated denizens of the towns into high administrative office.

Mr. Buchanan has recently announced in the House of Commons that the Home Government are considering the question of controlling the preparation in this country of printed matter which may incite our subjects in India to rebellion and murder. It is to be hoped that the offenders will be made liable to some punishment more repressive than the mere confiscation of their literature. Unfortunately if England is purged of their presence, the anarchists will still have an uncontrolled field of operations on the Continent and in America, whence they have no difficulty in transporting the offensive literature to India. A more thorough system of supervising imported seditious publications might perhaps be instituted in India itself. It is comparatively easy to pass an enabling Act in that country, if the existing provisions of the Post Office Act do not authorize the Executive to exercise sufficient control.

6

As an instance of the literature that does harm, the Times of the 20th of February gives prominence to the views of an Extremist, who proclaims that the Indian Nationalists are prepared to shake off at all costs the oppressive foreign yoke.' We may conclude from the tone of his letter that this gentleman approves of assassination as a means of securing the independence of his country. He merely sets forth for the benefit of the British public what is patent to every man of experience in India, that we are cordially hated by a certain section of the Indian educated classes, as already pointed out in this article: and that the Extremists will, unless the Executive is strong, always find human instruments to execute their purposes. Witness a recent case in which the hired assassin declared that his price was a revolver and twenty rupees. But I again repeat that the propagandists of assassination are in no way countenanced or supported by the vast majority of the Nationalists, whose aims are defeated by violent measures, calculated only to estrange from them the sympathies of many Englishmen who are quite prepared to give to Indians fitted for it a fair share in the government of their own country. To the Government they look for the putting down of violent crime; and in their ranks are men of the right stamp who will assist in this if called upon. The assassin ation danger can best be met by extending to affected localities the provisions of the Frontier Crimes Act, under which the fanatical murderer is summarily tried and hanged within a few hours of his capture. At present, under the ordinary operation of the law, trials

for political crimes are dragged out for months and have not the deterrent effect which accompanies speedy retribution. The Executive is already armed with the power to arrest, deport, and detain the instigators, whose work is to bargain with semi-fanatics for the doing of the actual deed. Arm your Executive with every power to meet the emergency promptly, and this class of crime, absolutely novel in India, will in a very short time die out, as did the fanatical murders on our Afghan border in the early days of annexation.

CHARLES FRANCIS MASSY."

SCOTTISH ORDERS AND CATHOLIC

REUNION

BEYOND question, the subject of Church reunion-or, shall we say, the scandal of religious strife-lies heavily upon the conscience of the Christian world at the present time. That it has come much to the front among the English-speaking peoples has been made evident by many recent conferences and discussions in London, in Scotland, in Australia, and elsewhere. For us who are of the Scottish race, a nearer problem than that of the larger reunion-that, namely, of the reunion of the various fragments of Scottish Presbyterianism—no doubt presents itself most urgently of all. But Scotsmen are not in the habit of allowing the engrossments of local statecraft to blind their eyes to the wider issues which claim the attention and tax the ingenuity of mankind.

Two hundred and fifty years ago, it is true, Scotland read herself a lesson in the fatuity of ill-judged schemes of reunion which she is not likely to forget. That lesson may well have taught her caution. The ignominious burning, by the common hangman, of the Solemn League and Covenant' in London on the 22nd of May 1661 marked the humiliating termination of an altogether ill-starred attempt to impose a uniform Presbyterianism on England and Scotland. Through her alliance for this purpose with the forces of Cromwellian Nonconformity, the Church of Scotland sacrificed much in the traditions of her worship, which even to-day she has but partially regained: she bartered much that she held dear for the chimera of mechanical uniformity. The lesson cost us dearly. But there is a danger lest we forget the cause of this episode of failure whilst remembering the failure itself. The cause lay in the ambitious delusion that spiritual unanimity can be achieved by the method of external uniformity. This was the delusion of Laud and the Episcopalians in 1637; it was the delusion of Alexander Henderson and the Presbyterians in 1643. Non tali auxilio,' we may well exclaim, as we survey at this calm distance the methods alike of Laudians and Solemn Leaguers. Not by such aid.'

The question of Presbyterian reunion in Scotland only enters in