Controversy and fault-finding are to be deprecated. But reform is only possible after a due consideration of what has been accomplished up to date by British rule in India, and of the flaws and faults in the existing constitution. It will be seen from the first chapter, that the British traders of the seventeenth century, who established factories, built fortresses, and created manufacturing towns, also attempted to introduce representative and municipal government into the East India Company's once famous city of Madras. The second chapter reveals the fact that the acquisition of Bengal in the eighteenth century was not the work of ambition, but an act of self-preservation. The third chapter shows that the peace of India could not have been maintained in any possible way except by the establishment of British supremacy as the paramount power. The fourth chapter proves that the first Afghan war, needless as it turned out to be at the time, was the outcome of Russian ambition which dates back to the times of Peter the Great and Nadir Shah. The story of the sepoy mutinies of 1857 occupies a considerable space in the present volume. It is not a mere narrative of military revolt, but a revelation of Asiatic nature; a lesson which every Anglo-Indian statesman must study, if he would avoid defeat or failure. The masses in the British Isles may read Biblical accounts of rebellion and massacre, or the story in Josephus of the atrocities of Herod the Great; but very few seem to realise the fact that they are reading Asiatic history, which has no reflex in Europe, nor in any country under European rule except British India. The horrible intrigues and murders in the household of Herod; his frantic passion for the fair Mariamne; the malicious lies of Salome; the assassination of Mariamne by her jealous and infuriated husband; the alternations in the mind of Herod as regards Cleopatra, whether to accept her love or murder her;--find no parallels in European history, excepting perhaps in Turkey, or in the Russian court of the last century. The last chapter in the present volume is devoted to the constitutional changes in the government of India, and in the local governments, since the mutinies. The author has not indulged in the hope of raising Asiatics to the level of Europeans by the premature introduction of representative government. He considers that such a scheme would for the present be as much out of place in Asia as a republic of boys for the control of schoolmasters. British India is treated as a political school for Asiatics, in which Europeans are the teachers; and so long as that theory of government is upheld, constitutional reforms in India are practical and possible. In conclusion, the author has to express his obligations to Professor Terrien de Lacouperie of the London University College, and to his own son, Owen E. Wheeler of the Leicestershire Regiment, for revising the proofs of the present work, and for many valuable suggestions.