their power.  They were quick to adapt themselves to new conditions and above all to avail themselves of the advantages of Western education.  Their great administrative abilities compelled recognition, and Chitpavans swarm to-day in every Government office of the Deccan as they did in the days of Nana Phadnavis.  They sit on the Bench, they dominate the Bar, they teach in the schools, they control the vernacular Press, they have furnished almost all the most conspicuous names in the modern literature and drama of Western India as well as in politics.  Of the higher appointments held by natives in the Presidency of Bombay, the last census tells us that the Hindus held 266 against 86 held by Parsees and 23 held by Mahomedans, and that out of those held by the Hindus, more than 72 per cent. were held by Brahmans, though the Brahmans form less than one-fourteenth of the total Hindu population of the province.  All Brahmans are not, of course, Chitpavans, but the Chitpavans supply an overwhelming majority of those Government officials, and their ascendency over every other Brahman sept in Maharashtra is undisputed.  From the Deccan, moreover, their influence has spread practically all over India and, especially, in the native States, which have recruited amongst the Chitpavans some of their ablest public servants.  Amongst Chitpavans are to be found many of the most enlightened and progressive Indians of our times and many have served the British Raj with unquestioned loyalty and integrity.  But amongst many others—­perhaps indeed amongst the great majority—­there has undoubtedly been preserved for the last hundred years from the time of the downfall of the Peshwa dominion to the present day, an unbroken tradition of hatred towards British rule, an undying hope that it might some day be subverted and their own ascendency restored.  Not to go back to the exploits of Nana Sahib, himself a Chitpavan, and his followers during the Mutiny, or to the Ramoshi rebellion round Poona in 1879, it was in Poona that the native Press, mainly conducted by Brahmans, first assumed that tone of virulent hostility towards British rule and British rulers which led to the Press Act of 1879, and some of the worst extracts quoted at that time by the Government of India in support of that measure were taken from Poona newspapers.  It was in Poona that some years later the assassination of two English officials by a young Chitpavan Brahman was the first outcome of a fresh campaign, leading directly to political murder.  It was by another Chitpavan Brahman that Mr. Jackson was murdered last December at Nasik; his accomplices were with one exception Chitpavan Brahmans, and to the same sept of Brahmans belong nearly all the defendants in the great conspiracy trial now proceeding at Bombay.