of unlawful meetings, means nothing more cruel or oppressive than the application of surgery to diseased growths which threaten to infect the whole organism—­and especially so immature and sensitive an organism as the semi-Westernized, semi-educated section of Indian society to-day represents.  This surgical treatment will probably also have to be patient and sustained, for here too we have to deal with evils of no sudden growth, though some of their worst outward manifestations have come suddenly upon us.  Even if the improvement be more rapid than we have any right to expect, do not let us throw away our surgical instruments, but rather preserve them against any possible relapse.  We have to remember not only what we owe to ourselves, but what we owe equally to the many well-meaning but timid Indians who look to us for protection against the insidious forms of terrorism to which the disaffected minority can subject them[24].  The number of our active enemies may be few, but great is the number of our friends who are of opinion that we are more anxious to conciliate the one sinner who may or may not repent than to encourage the 99 just who persevere.

We want the Western-educated Indian.  We have made him, and we cannot unmake him if we would.  But we must see that he is a genuine product of the best that Western education can give, and not merely an Indian who can speak English and adapt his speech to English ears in order to lend plausibility to the revival in new forms of ancient religious or social tyrannies.  We must remember also that even the best type of Western-educated Indian only speaks at present for a minute section of the population of India, and that, when he does not speak, as he often naturally does, merely in the interests of the small class which he represents, he has not yet by any means proved his title to speak for the scores of millions of his fellow-countrymen who are still living in the undisturbed atmosphere of the Indian Middle Ages.  One of the dangers we have to guard against is that, because the Western-educated Indian is to the stay-at-home Englishman, and even to the Englishman whose superficial knowledge of India is confined to brief visits to the chief cities of India, the most, and indeed the only, articulate Indian, we should regard him as the only or the most authoritative mouthpiece of the needs and wishes of other classes or of the great mass of his fellow-countrymen with whom he is often in many ways in less close touch than the Englishman who lives in their midst.

The weak point of the recent political reforms is that they were intended to benefit, not wholly, but mainly, that particular class.  In so far as they may help to satisfy the legitimate aspirations of the moderate Indian politician they deserve praise; and in that respect, as far as one can judge at this very early stage, they are not without promise.  In effect they have also helped to give other important interests opportunities of organization and expression.