By making this new Delhi the British capital of India, it is sought to impress the Oriental mind with Britain's claims to be supreme, while at the same time the old traditional prediction is evaded. Let us hope that the device will accomplish its purpose. The prosperity of India is bound up with the recognition by all races and parties of England's right to rule. I would not justify all the steps by which Britain has gained her power, nor would I ignore certain defects of her later administration. But there is no question as to the general justice of British rule, nor as to the fact that, without it, India's warring races and religions would now be the ruin of all peace and progress. When we remember that in this land of former famines the population has increased since 1858 by one hundred millions; that forty-six thousand miles of canals have been dug for irrigation, and more than twenty-two million acres have thereby been reclaimed; that trade has increased in the last half-century from three hundred millions to fourteen hundred millions; that the value of land is now larger by fifteen hundred millions than it was fifty years ago; that there are now thirty-two thousand miles of railway in operation and seventy-six thousand miles of telegraph; that the Indian Post Office now handles nine hundred millions of letters, newspapers, and other matter every year; we may well doubt whether any conquest of history has brought about so great or so beneficent results as have followed what we must regard as England's commercial absorption of India.