Nevertheless, Mr. Romesh Dutt'a aims and conclusions are sufficiently clear.
He is attempting, not without effect, to give a history of the Indian administration from the year 1835, with a criticism of the policy, internal and external, that has been adopted by the Governments in England and India in managing the affairs of his country. He lays stress on two principal errors and shortcomings that can be registered against British rule in the course of the gradual extension and establishment of a civilised dominion over a vast Asiatic country, an enterprise without precedent on a similar scale in the world's history. He contends that the Afghan wars, waged for the security of India's frontier, were rash and unnecessary; that Lord Dalbousie's annexations were unjust and impolitic ; that the match which fired the explosion of the Indian Mutiny was a grave blunder of the
olata cto'sAl. Econtro th!lsot7 Ity BollptttrIr,.d.Liarl:it.zdgojoz. Mr. Romesh Butt's book is written with commendable moderation, it deserves serious attention, and suggests many topics for reflection. That a work of this quality should have been produced by an Indian writer is a notable proof of India's intellectual advancement, and thereby adds weight to his arguments. It may be said that he exposes the defects of British rule in India without making sufficient allowance for the difficulties, that be expects too much and would push on too fast in the way of reforms, which must be carried out slowly and tentatively. Yet the policy for which he messes as the true remedy for administrative faults and
misunderstandings is not to be dismissed as impracticable, though the experiment will require very wary handling. He demands for the Indian people a larger share in the control of their own affairs ; and on this principle he would allot a much larger proportion of elected representatives to the Legislative Councils, he would place native members in the Executive Council of the Governor-General, and even in the Council of the Secretary of State at the India Office. We are by no means disposed to treat these proposals as beyond the range of reasonable anticipation; we are much more inclined to hold that their adoption is merely a question of time, and of finding men of proved ability and integrity in India. The accession, by degrees, of qualified natives to the highest offices of State would be an antidote to that natural jealousy of exclusive foreign domination which must grow among the educated Indians as they become familiar with modern ideas and institutions, and are affected by con- ceptions of nationality. The commonplace notion that the higher education has produced in India a class which has only assimilated superficially Western ideas, does not represent the people at large, and has no serious influence in practical politics must, in the opinion of the present writer at any rate, soon be abandoned. Trained intelli- gence, capacity, and culture are in every country re- stricted to a minority, but the select few become gradually the leaders of the many ; and in India the time is passing when we can disparage the claims or aspirations of a party that our own educational system has deliberately created. Nor is it wise to leave this class in the positiOn of irresponsible critics. The beat way of proving to them how prodigiously complicated is the art of governing India, how unavoidable have been failures and miscalculations, is to give them some kind of partnership in the management of the busi- ness, to try them occasionally on the Board of Directors. Nothing conduces more effectually to moderation of views and caution in reforms than practical experience and personal responsibility for results ; while the interests of Indian civilisation and progress are so closely identified with British rule that natives of light and leading can hardly desire to embarrass it. If a writer of Mr. Romesh Dutt's school were allowed to try his own hand at superior adminis- tration, be would soon find himself under the necessity of modifying his opinions and abstaining from rash censure ; and instead of attacking the errors of his predecessors, he would be quite sufficiently occupied in defending his own.
STONES FROM A GLASS HOUSE.*
Ix is quite an agreeable change from the everlasting, never- ending, and impossible task of keeping up with the stream of novels that issue from our groaning printing presses to read what a novelist has to say on the causes, developments, and tendencies of the movement of which they are the outcome. Miss Findlater's qualifications are certainly not those which Disraeli put into the month of one of his characters when he described the critics as those who had failed in art, for she has written more than one charming novel, to say nothing of many excellent short stories. Apartfrom that, she adduces one plausible reason in support of her paradoxical assertion that dwellers in glass houses are, by their very residence there, privileged to throw a few stones. " To have attempted to write fiction," she urges, "is to know its difficulties ; and a realisation of these gives at once more leniency and more severity to criticism." The novelist, she argues, will be more severe on faults of technique, which can be avoided by taking pains, but more lenient to faults of conception, from the knowledge that they are beyond the control of the writer. She also asserts, as a further excuse, that no one can write of novels with the same deep interest as the novelist : "The reader reads each book for its intrinsic interest or value ; the novelist reads it as forming part of a literary movement." This argument, it seems to us, is not so con- vincing as those which have preceded it—being possibly the result of generalising from a particular instance—and it raises the further question bow far it is the habit of, or desirable for, novelists to read the work of their contemporaries and rivals. Scott, as we know, read everything that came in his way, and was singularly generous in his estimate of his contemporaries.
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