Fifty years ago Francis Newman was urging with all the force in his power --and no one in his day was more farsighted in detecting just that social reform which would make more and more insistent demand for a hearing, as decade followed decade--that it was to our own interest as a nation, as well as the only honourable course open to us, to open up public offices in India to the educated native. It need not, he showed, be done otherwise than with caution, and gradually "many variations" were "imaginable; many different ways might succeed, if only the _right end in view_" was "steadily held up, namely, to introduce, fully and frankly, _into true equality with ourselves_" [Footnote: To "exclude natives from all high office," Sir Charles Napier said once emphatically, "is what debases a nation."] (again the italics are his) "as quickly as possible, and as many as possible, of the native Indians whose loyalty could be counted on.... Lord Grey and his coadjutors, in renewing the charter of 1833, understood most clearly that nothing but an abundance of black faces in the highest judicature, and intelligent Indians of good station in the high police, could administer India uprightly.... Every year that we delay evils become more inveterate and hatred accumulates. To train India into governing herself, until English advice is superfluous, would be to both countries a lasting benefit, to us a lasting glory." Now, what are the "evils" which "every year become more inveterate" in our method of government in India? Perhaps one of the most palpable is the strongly centralized bureaucracy. Another, is the constant change of men in chief office every five years. Another, is that all competitive examinations are held in London. Mr. Gokhale very rightly urges that it is a great deal to require of an Indian that he should have to come all the way to England for these examinations _on the chance_ of passing, and suggests their being held simultaneously in India and in England. Another, is that the field of law is the only officialdom open to the Indian, yet that there he is found capable of rising to the highest post. Another, that we have not pushed forward the education of the masses as far as we reasonably might if we had worked hand in hand with the educated classes. Mr. Gokhale tells us that to-day seven children out of eight are growing up in ignorance, and four villages out of five are as yet without a school-house.