social evils?  How many of them are entirely free from it themselves, or, if free, have the courage to act up to their opinions?  At one time—­before the Congress gave precedence to political reforms—­social reform did find many enthusiastic supporters amongst the best class of Western-educated Indians, but the gradual disappearance of men of that type may be said almost to coincide with the growth of political agitation.  There have been, and there still are, some notable and admirable exceptions, but they are seldom to be found amongst the men who claim to be the tribunes of the Indian people.  It is on these grounds—­moral rather than political—­that we claim to be still the best judges of our duties as trustees for the people of India.”

This was perhaps the most forcible of the British administrator’s arguments, and it was an honest one.  Another was that the Western-educated Indians were mainly drawn from the towns and from a narrow circle of professional classes in the towns, who could not therefore speak on behalf of and still less control the destinies of a vast population, overwhelmingly agricultural, regarding whose interests they had hitherto shown themselves both ignorant and indifferent, and from whom the very education which constituted their main title to consideration had tended to separate and estrange them.  The land-owning gentry and the peasantry had so far scarcely been touched by this political agitation.  The peasantry knew little or nothing of its existence.  The land-owners feared it, for, having themselves for the most part kept aloof from modern education, and shrinking instinctively from the limelight of political controversies and such electioneering competitions as they had already been drawn into for municipal and local government purposes, they felt themselves hopelessly handicapped in a struggle that threatened their traditional prestige and authority as well as their material interests.  What they dreaded most of all was the ascendancy of the lawyer class in this new political movement—­the Vakil-Raj, as they called it—­for they had in many instances already been made to feel how heavy the hand of the lawyer could be upon them in a country so prone to litigation as India, and endowed with so costly and complicated a system of jurisprudence and procedure, if they ventured to place themselves in opposition to the political aspirations of ambitious lawyers.  Above all, the British administrator, who rightly held the maintenance of a strict balance between the different creeds and communities of India to be an essential part of his mission, felt strong in the undivided support which his conception of his responsibilities and duties received from the Mahomedans of India.  Then, and almost into the second decade of this century, a community forming a fifth of the whole population professed itself absolutely opposed to any surrender of British authority which, it was convinced, would enure solely to the benefit of its hated Hindu rivals, far more supple and far more advanced in all knowledge of the West, including political agitation.  The Mahomedans had held aloof from the Congress.  They still had no definite political organisation of their own; they were content with the British raj and wanted nothing else.