The Times last Saturday published the last of a series
of articles from its special, correspondent on the question of the partition of Bengal. The policy was a simple one of adminis- trative readjustment. In the Eastern district of the old province there were twenty-five million inhabitants, of whpm two-thirds, were Mohammedans. The rest of the province was Hindu, and by the centralisation of all administration •at Calcutta, and the consequent starving of the Eastern districts in the matter of local administration, the special interests of those parts were unavoidably neglected. Eastern Bengal possesses in Chittagong an excellent harbour, and the riches of the country are very great, and only await development. But Calcutta has hitherto absorbed most of the export trade, and an undue amount of the money allotted to public works was naturally spent in the district where the administrative centre was situated. In such circumstances, it was only common justice to give Eastern Bengal a separate capital and an administration of its own. The outcry against the measure was a Protectionist outcry raised, in Calcutta by the powerful interests, legal and mer- cantile, which dreaded the competition of Dacca and Chitta- gong. A certain degree of reasonable sentiment was excited, but the methods of the agitation, when the leaders incited schoolboys and undergraduates to fight their battles, show how weak was the case against the policy. The reading of the admirable articles in the Times has fully convinced us that Lord Curzon was wholly justified in the decision he took, and that Mr. Morley showed courage and statesmanship in refusing to reverse it.
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