we may count upon the support of the Turks of Syria, of the Euphrates valley, and of India. To unite Irish Catholics and Orangemen in a religious crusade against the English would be an easy task by the side of that of uniting Sonnite and Shiite against India. Russia herself is not without her difficulties with the strictest and most fanatical Mohamedans. Now that she has conquered Bokhara, their most sacred land, they hate her as fiercely as they hate us. The crescentade, if she provokes it, may be upon our side, and British commanders in green turbans may yet summon the Faithful to arms, and invoke the Prophet.

It is to be remarked that men who have lived long in India think that our policy in the East has overwhelming claims on the attention of our home authorities. Not only is Eastern business to be performed, and Eastern intrigues watched carefully; but, according to these Indian flies, who think that their Eastern cart-wheel is the world, Oriental policy is to guide home policy, to dictate our European friendships, to cause our

'wars.

No Englishman in England can sympathise with the ridiculous inability to comprehend our real position in India which leads many Anglo-Indians to cry out that we must go to war with Russia to "keep up our prestige ;" and, on the other hand, it need hardly be shown that, apart from the extension of trade and the improvement of communication, we need not trouble ourselves with alliances to strengthen us in the East. Supported by the native population, we can maintain ourselves in India against the world; unsupported by it, our rule is morally indefensible, and therefore not long to be retained by force of arms.

The natives of India watch with great interest the advance of Russia; not that they believe that they would be any better off under her than under us, but that they would like, at all events, to see some one thrash us, even if in the end they lost by it; just as a boy likes to see a new bully thrash his former master, even though the later be also the severer tyrant. That the great body of the people of India watch with feverish excitement the advance of Russia is seen from the tone of the - native press, which is also of service to us in demonstrating that the mass of the Hindoos are incapable of appreciating the

benefits, and even of comprehending the character, of our rule. They can understand the strength which a steady purpose gives; they cannot grasp the principles which lie at the root of our half-mercantile, half-benevolent despotism.

No native believes that we shall permanently remain in India; no native really sympathised with us during the rebellion. To the people of India we English are a mystery. We profess to love them, and to be educating them for something they cannot comprehend, which we call freedom and self-government; in the meantime, while we do not plunder them, nor convert them forcibly, after the wont of the Mogul emperors, we kick and cuff them all round, and degrade the nobles by ameliorating the condition of humbler men.

No mere policy of disarmament or of oppression can be worth much as a system for securing lasting peace; for if our Irish constabulary cannot prevent the introduction of Fenian arms to Cork and Dublin, how doubly impossible must it be to guard a frontier of five or six thousand miles by means of a police force which itself cannot be trusted? That prolonged disarmament causes our subjects to forget the art of war is scarcely true, and if true would tell both ways. The question

is not one of disarmament, and suppression of rebellion: it is that of whether we can raise up in India a people that will support our rule; and if this is to be done, there must be an end of cuffing.

Were the Hindoos as capable of appreciating the best points of our government as they are of pointing out the worst, we should have nothing to fear in comparison with Russia. Were our rival that which she pretends to be,-a civilized European Power with a "mission" in the East; were she even, indeed, an enlightened commercial Power, with sufficiently benevolent instincts but with no policy outside her pocket, such as England was till lately in the East, and is still in the Pacific, we might find ourselves able to meet her with open arms, and to bring ourselves to believe that her advance into Southern Asia was a gain to mankind. As it is, the Russians form a barbarous horde, ruled by a German emperor and a German ministry, who, however, are as little able to suppress degrading drunkenness and shameless venality as they are

themselves desirous of promoting true enlightenment and education. "Talk of Russian civilization of the East!" an Egyptian once said to me: "Why, Russia is an organized barbarism; why-the Russians are why they are-whynearly as bad as we are!" It should be remembered, too, that Russia, being herself an Asiatic power, can never introduce European civilization into Asia. All the cry of "Russia! Russia!" all this magnifying of the Russian power, only means that the English, being the strong men most hated by the weak men of Southern Asia, the name of the next strongest is used to terrify them. The offensive strength of Russia has been grossly exaggerated by alarmists, who forget that, if Russia is to be strong in Bokhara and Khiva, it will be Bokharan and Khivan strength. In all our arguments we assume that with three-fourths of her power in Asia, and with her armies composed of Asiatics, Russia will remain a European Power. Whatever the composition of her forces, it may be doubted whether India is not a stronger empire than her new neighbour. The military expenditure of India is equal to that of Russia; the homogeneousness of the Northern Power is at the best inferior to that of India; India has twice the population of Russia, five times her trade, and as large a revenue. To the miserable military administration of Russia, Afghanistan would prove a second Caucasus, and by their conduct we see that the Afghans themselves are not terrified by her advance. The people with whom an Asiatic prince seeks alliances are not those whom he most fears. That the Afghans are continually intriguing with Russia against us, merely means that they fear us more than they fear Russia.†

Russia will one day find herself encountering the English or Americans in China, perhaps, but not upon the plains of Hindostan. Wherever and whenever the contest comes, it can have but one result. Whether upon India or on England falls the duty of defence, Russia must be beaten. A country that was fifty years conquering the Caucasus, and that could never

* She has not yet largely employed natives, but she has only 23,000 men in all her vast Central Asian dominions.

The direction of their fears and of their intrigues has now been changed.

place a field-force of 60,000 men in the Crimea, need give no fear to India, while her grandest offensive efforts would be ridiculed by America, or by the England of to-day. To meet Russia in the way that we are asked to meet her means to meet her by corruption, and a system of meddling Eastern diplomacy is proposed to us which is revolting to our English nature. Let us by all means go our own way, and let Russia go hers. If we try to meet the Russian Orientals with craft, we shall be defeated; let us meet them, therefore, with straightforwardness and friendship, but if necessary, in arms.*

It is not Russia that we need dread, but, by the destruction of the various nationalities in Hindostan by means of centralization and of railroads, we have created an India which we cannot fight. India herself, not Russia, is our danger, and our task is rather to conciliate than to conquer.

• Five journies to Russia since this chapter was written, have confirmed me in the views I took when I wrote it.

CHAPTER XIV.

NATIVE STATES.

QUITTING Lahore at night, I travelled to Moultan by a railway which has names for its stations such as India cannot match. Chunga-Munga, Wanrasharam, Cheechawutnee, and Chunnoo, follow one another in that order. During the night, when I looked out into the still moonlight, I saw only desert and trains of laden camels pacing noiselessly over the waste sands; but in the morning I found that the whole country within eyeshot was a howling wilderness. In every village, bagpipes were playing through the live-long night. There are many resemblances to the Gaelic races to be found in India; the Hindoo girl's saree is the plaid of the Galway peasantress, or of the Trongate fishwife; the hill tribes wear the kilt; but the Punjaubee pipes are like those of the Italian pfiferari rather than those of the Scotch Highlander.

The great sandy desert which lies between the Indus and Rajpootana has, perhaps, a future under British rule. Wherever snowy mountains are met with in warm countries, yearly floods, the product of the thaws, sweep down the rivers that take their rise in the glaciers of the chain, and the Indus is no exception to the rule. Were the fall less great, the stream less swift, Scinde would have been another Cambodia, another Egypt. As it is, the fertilizing floods pour through the deep river bed instead of covering the land, and the silt is wasted on the Arabian Gulf. No native State with narrow boundaries can deal with the great works required for irrigation on the scale that can alone succeed; but, possessing as we do the country from the defiles whence the five rivers escape into the plains to the sandy bars at which they lose themselves in the Indian