soil. The English, rushing in where Akbar had feared to tread, met their reward in a general uprising. It is scarcely too much to assert that in the provinces I have mentioned the hand of almost every man was against us.
More than thirty years have elapsed since the Mutiny was crushed, and again we witness a persistent attempt to force Western ideas upon an Eastern people. The demands made by the new-fangled congresses for the introduction into India of representative institutions is a demand coming from the noisy and unwarlike races which hope to profit by the general corruption which such a system would engender. To the manly races of India, to the forty millions of Muhammadans, to the Sikhs of the Panjáb, to the warlike tribes on the frontier, to the Rohílás of Rohilkhand, to the Rájputs and Játs of Rájpútáná and Central India, such a system is utterly abhorrent. It is advocated by the adventurers and crochet-mongers of the two peoples. Started by the noisy Bengálís, a race which, under Muhammadan rule, was content to crouch and serve, it is encouraged by a class in this country, ignorant for the most part of the real people of India, whilst professing to be in their absolute confidence. The agitation would be worthy of contempt but for the element of danger which it contains. I would impress upon the rulers of India the necessity, whilst there is yet time, of profiting by the experience of the Mutiny. I would implore them to decline to yield to an agitation which is not countenanced by the real people of India. I entreat them to realise that the Western system of representation is hateful to the Eastern races which inhabit the continent of India; that it is foreign to their traditions, their habits, their modes of thought. The people of India are content with the system which Akbar founded, and on the principles of which the English have hitherto mainly
