10. The advantage, however, has not been all on one side. The connection with India has brought, and still brings, much grist to our own mill. It provides high salaries for about eight hundred of our most competent countrymen, acting as governors, magistrates, and high state officials; it offers employment for our engineers and land surveyors; it serves as an excellent training-ground for our officers and soldiers; and, above all, it opens up a splendid trade to our merchants and manufacturers. Were India to fall into the hands of a foreign power, like Russia, our merchants would probably find themselves, if not shut out entirely from the markets of India, much hampered in doing a profitable business. But with the government in our own hands we can make such regulations as tend to the mutual advantage of the two countries. So flourishing is the trade between them now that its annual value amounts to more than £50,000,000. 11. Such being the mutual advantages to India and Britain of our rule in that great country, it would be an indelible stain on our name and nation, if through indifference, or negligence, or faint-heartedness, we were to lose an empire built up by so much genius and heroism under the controlling hand of an unseen Power. "We sailed wherever ship could sail, We founded many a mighty state; Pray God our greatness may not fail Thro' craven fears of being great." (8) BARS TO PROGRESS (Australia). 1. To measure the progress that has been made by our kinsmen in Australia, we must know something of the country in its natural condition, and of the special difficulties they have had to contend with. One of these difficulties was of our own making, and that was the landing there of shiploads of our worst criminals, many of whom fled to the "bush," and preyed upon the lonely settlers, or committed outrages upon the natives, who naturally tried to take revenge upon any white men that came in their way. 2. The plants found in Australia by the early explorers had, with few exceptions, never been seen in any other parts of the world. Strange to say, no wheat or any other cereal grew there, and but few fruits or vegetables fit for human food, although both soil and climate are in many parts so favourable to their growth that, since their introduction, they have thriven as well as in most countries.