rightly advocate giving the people a greater share in the government of the country. But I know of no one with such an intimate knowledge of present India as Sir John Malcolm possessed of India a century ago, even advocating, as he did, that we should deliberately work towards setting up an independent India ruled by Indians. And, as a matter of hard fact, we find that the tie between India and England, instead of loosening during the last century, has year by year become closer. And with the increasing pressure of Europe upon Asia, and the competition for its markets, it seems impossible to look forward to a time when India could, with advantage to the Indians or anyone else, be left to govern itself. Say that in a fit of sentimentality we were tomorrow to announce that in ten years' time we would withdraw, and leave the people of India to rule themselves, and defend their country as best they could, not only by land but by sea, which, I ask, would be the most unhappy, the heterogeneous races of India, who would have to settle all differences of religion, of race, and of character, so as to present a united front against the avarice of the Afghan and Afridi tribesmen, and the pressure of European nations urged on by the rivalry of competition—these, or the unfortunate Foreign Ministers in Europe, who could only look on this new object of rivalry as furnishing one more risk of igniting a general European conflagration?
I do not think anyone who is conversant with the conditions at present prevailing in India could conceive that, even if we were to leave, the people would be able to hold themselves together. Three hundred millions is a large number for such cohesion. These three hundred millions are composed of races of various religions, and more different from one another than Spaniards are from Highlanders. We cannot imagine the Hindu majority consenting to be ruled by the Mohammedan minority, and still less can we imagine the masterful Mohammedans sitting down peacefully under Hindu rulers. A very prominent Indian Moham-
