given for his resignation, or for its prompt acceptance by the Viceroy.  What I am concerned with is the effect produced by that incident.  It was immediate and disastrous.  The Bengalee leaders took heart.  They claimed Sir Bampfylde’s downfall as their triumph—­theirs and their allies’ at Westminster.  Those, on the other hand, who imagined that it was Sir Bampfylde’s methods that had intensified the agitation and that his removal would restore peace—­even the sort of half peace which had been so far maintained in Bengal proper under the milder sway of Sir Andrew Fraser—­were very soon undeceived.  For if for a short time Sir Bampfylde Fuller’s successor was spared, the Government of Eastern Bengal was compelled before long to take, more vigorous measures than he had ever contemplated, and the agitation, which had hitherto refrained from exhibiting its more violent aspects in Bengal proper, not only ceased to show any discrimination, but everywhere broadened and deepened.  The veteran leaders, who still posed as “moderates,” ceased to lead or, swept away by the forces they had helped to raise, were compelled to quicken their pace like the Communist leader in Paris who rushed after his men exclaiming:—­Je suis leur chef, il faut bien que je les suive.  The question of Partition itself receded into the background, and the issue, until then successfully veiled and now openly raised, was not whether Bengal should be one unpartitioned province or two partitioned provinces under British rule, but whether British rule itself was to endure in Bengal or, for the matter of that, anywhere in India.

The first phase of unrest in Bengal, at any rate in its outward manifestations, had been mainly political, and on the whole free from any open exhibition of disloyalty to the British Raj.  With the Partition of Bengal it passed into a second phase in which, new economic issues were superadded to the political issues, if they did not altogether overshadow them, and the Swadeshi movement and the boycott soon imported methods of violence and lawlessness which had hitherto been considered foreign to the Bengalee temperament.  This phase did not last for much more than a year after the Partition, for, when once started on the inclined plane of lawlessness, the agitation rapidly developed into a much wider and deeper revolt, in which Swadeshi held its place, but only in a subordinate position.  The revolt began rapidly to assume the revolutionary complexion, in the religious and social as well as in the political domain, which Tilak had for years past, as we have seen, laboured to impart to his propaganda in the Deccan, and, as far as his personal influence and counsels availed, in every part of India with which he was in contact.  The ground had already been prepared for this transformation by spadework in the Bengalee Press conducted by two of Tilak’s chief disciples in Bengal.  One was Mr. Bepin Chandra Pal, the bold exponent of Swaraj,