Mutiny, succeeded by that of the Queen, the races of India received their magna charta of citizenship in the British empire in what is known as the Queen's Proclamation. Since then the administration has been governed by a higher view of duty than previously obtained. Our aim-though often too precipitately and unsympathetically pushed --is to fit our Indian fellow-subjects for that Imperial citizenship which the Proclamation of November 1858 conceded to them. With that object in view, the education of the masses is encouraged in town and village with almost as much persistent energy as it is in England. Unfortunately, Muhammadans and agriculturists generally have been slow to appreciate the boon of knowledge offered to them, whilst non-agriculturists, especially the Hindu trading classes, have valued it almost too highly. So successful have our efforts amongst the latter class been, that within the last decade we have conceded to towns, and to some extent to districts as well, a small measure of real self-government. Towns, districts, and even subdivisions of districts, have now each their self-governing corporations, of whose members at least two-thirds are elected. Their powers are of course still very restricted. restricted. Government decides what taxes may be imposed and what proportions of income shall be spent on police, education, conservancy, dispensaries, and the like. Children must learn to walk before they can run. In large municipalities, in which men of leisure, light, and leading are numerous, the measure of self government conceded is more real. In them the city fathers manage their own affairs, under the general control of the District Officer, with, on the whole, commendable circumspection. A further step towards the beginning of constitutional government was taken in 1893, by the introduction into the Viceregal and Provincial Legislative Councils of a certain number of elected non-official members. The liberty of the press in India-a liberty as much abused as it is in America-has long been exercised. As newspapers abound, and no censorship exists, the acts of Government and its officials are freely criticised. As a rule, the tone of the native press is hostile to Government, because the proprietors and editors are generally men of education who have failed to procure positions under Government, to which they think their abilities entitled them, and because in India not a single newspaper is in any way subsidised by Government-a fact probably unique in the Old World. Some think that in a country like India a free press is the safetyvalve of the Government engine. In it every grievance, real or imaginary, is ventilated. India there are believed to be as yet no secret societies, because there is no occasion for them. Every man does and says what he likes; and rich and poor-high English official and mean coolie— receive equal justice. Had Russia been as wisely governed since the time when, under Peter the Great, she emerged from her Asiatic isolation and became a leading factor in European politics, she In would to-day be a great nation, influencing the world as much by her enlightenment as by her force of armed numbers. Instead of that, she is still, through bad government, but a vast inert mass of ignorant humanity, powerful through weight and solidarity alone. under cannot use her strength. When she goes to war, she fights like an ill- Russia trained unwieldy giant, who does not know how despotism to make the most of his strength. If he wins, he owes his victory, not to skill or superior courage, but to physical preponderance alone. A consideration of the history of Russia's last two wars of aggression against moribund Turkey, and the enormous disproportion in numbers and resources between the combatants, will demonstrate the aptness of the above comparison. sons of the Turkish 1853-56 78. In 1853-54, after ten years of careful preparation, The lesRussia attacked Turkey and besieged Silistria with Russoan army of 80,000 men, but was defeated and driven wars of back across the Danube before France or England and 1877had put a soldier into the field. In 1877 Russia again invaded Turkey, but for the summer and autumn of that year was baffled and worsted on many bloody fields, both in Bulgaria and Armenia. In Europe the whole might of Russia was impotent from May to December to dislodge 45,000 Turks from the improvised defences of the open town of Plevna. In Asia the military incapacity of Turkey's ponderous enemy was as real but not so conspicuous as in Europe. Kars fell in November, after Mukhtiar Pasha with his ragged, poorly drilled, and famished soldiers had successfully for six months held at bay the army of the Caucasus, over 100,000 strong. In the first period of the 1853-56 war Turkey was encouraged by the certainty of soon receiving help from France and England. In the 1877-78 struggle she had no such hope. She was unaided, fighting amidst a hostile population; whereas Russia was strengthened by alliances or understandings with Roumania, Servia, Montenegro, and Greece, and by the whole peasantry of Bulgaria. The Sultan's army was raised from 16 million Musalman subjects; the Tzar's from his whole Christian population, numbering not less than 100 millions. Turkey was bankrupt when war was declared against her, and from the beginning to the end of the campaign her soldiers fought without pay, without proper food or clothing, and fully half of her troops had never been through a course of musketry, and were, in fact, raw peasants seized from the plough, who had never handled a breech - loader until the fighting began. When we remember how, only sixteen years ago, the manhood of 16 million Muhammadans, mostly Asiatics, single-handed waged a successful fight for many months against Russia and her allies, and only succumbed in winter when exhausted from want of food, warm clothing, and munitions of war, English Russophobists, fearful already for the safety of India, ought to be ashamed of their apprehensions. 93 CHAPTER VI. THE AFGHANS AND THEIR COUNTRY. BOUNDARIES OF AFGHANISTAN-MOUNTAINS AND RIVERS-THE HINDU ERN AFGHANISTAN. aries and area of Afghanis HAVING acquired some knowledge of Russia, whose Boundpersistent advance towards India is the cause of the Indo-Russian Question, we pass on to Afghanistan, tan. the country of rocks and stones, which has the misfortune of being now sandwiched between two great expanding European empires. Broadly stated, Russia bounds those regions on the north and north-west for 900 miles, the deserts of Persia and Baluchistan on the west and south for 800 miles, and India's fringe of independent Musalman tribes, now wholly within our sphere of influence, on the east for 600 miles. The Russo-Afghan and Indo-Afghan boundaries will alone require examination. The others, |