to work on the Englishmen's tea plantations in the far-off jungles of Assam. Reports of this kind were well calculated to alarm both the _Zemindars_, who had waxed fat on the Permanent Settlement, and the credulous _rayats_, whose labour is indispensable to the _zemindar_ squirarchy. In the towns, on the other hand, the masses were told that Partition was an insult to the "terrible goddess" Kali, the most popular of all Hindu deities in Bengal, and, in order to popularize the protest amongst the small townsfolk, amongst artisans and petty traders, the cry of _Swadeshi_ was coupled with that of _Bande Mataram_. The spirit of revolt against Western political authority had been for some time past spreading to the domain of economics. _Swadeshi_ in itself and so far as it means the intelligent encouragement of indigenous is perfectly legitimate, and in this sense the Government of India had practised _Swadeshi_ long before it was taken up for purposes of political agitation by those who look upon it primarily as an economic weapon against their rulers. It was now to receive a formidable development. _Swadeshi_ must strike at the flinty heart of the British people by cutting off the demand for British manufactured goods and substituting in their place the products of native labour. At the first great meeting held at the Calcutta Town Hall to protest against Partition, the building was to have been draped in black as a sign of "national" mourning, but the idea was ostentatiously renounced because the only materials available were of English manufacture. Not only did the painful circumstances of the hour forbid any self-respecting Bengalee from using foreign-made articles, but some means had to be found of compelling the lukewarm to take the same lofty view of their duties. So the cry of boycott was raised, and it is worth noting, as evidence of the close contact and co-operation between the forces of unrest in the Deccan and in Bengal, that at the same time as it was raised in Calcutta by Mr. Surendranath Banerjee it was raised also at Poona by Tilak who perhaps foresaw much more clearly the lawlessness to which it would lead. For, though the cry fell on deaf ears in Bombay, the boycott did not remain by any means an idle threat in Bengal. The movement was placed under the special patronage of Kali and vows were administered to large crowds in the forecourts of her great temple at Calcutta and in her various shrines all over Bengal. The religious character with which the leaders sought to invest the boycott propaganda showed how far removed was the _swadeshi_ which they preached from a mere innocent economic propaganda for the furtherance of native industries. For a description of the Tantric rites connected with _Shakti_ worship I must refer readers to M. Barth's learned work on "The religions of India," of which an English translation has been published by Messrs Truebner in their Oriental series. In its extreme forms