As regards the laws of marriage and inheritance, no great change can be made until there is a real representative Assembly to make these changes, but even there something could be done. That fossilisation of custom described by Sir Henry Sumner Maine should stop. Because a High Court proved a hundred years ago that a certain custom existed there is no evidence that it does or should exist now. To establish precedents of this nature is to stop all progress of every kind; we have a vision different from the poet's Of bondage slowly narrowing down From precedent to precedent. Why should not fresh inquiries into custom be made from time to time, it being understood that any Court-ruling only applied to that time and place, and did not bind the future? Something must be done. Things cannot go on as they are. We reproach the Indians for want of progress, but we ourselves are the main cause of that stagnation. We bind them and they cannot move. As regards land policy there is this to be said, that fixed ideas are a mistake. In Bengal there was at one time a fixed idea that all land did and must belong to large land-owners, and so, partly out of sheer ignorance, partly out of prejudice, a race of Zemindars was created out of the tax-gatherers to the Mogul Empire. The result has been sad. Again in Burma the same idea prevailed for a while, and headmen were encouraged to annex communal waste as their private land. This was unfortunate. Then came a reaction, and all large estates were denounced as bad. There was to be a small tenantry holding direct from Government, forbidden to alienate their land, and all leasing of land to tenants was forbidden. This I understand to be the policy still. It is a policy of fixed ideas, and as applied to anything that has life, like land tenure, it is unfortunate, no matter what the fixed idea be. If there be one truth above another that is clear in studying land systems it is that no one permanent system is good. The cultivation of land, like all matters, undergoes evolution and change. What is good to-day may not be good to-morrow. The English system of large estates cultivated by tenants did, at one time in English history, produce the best farming in the world. English farming was held up as an example to all countries and was so admitted by them. The system of large estates allowed of the expenditure of capital, experiments in new cultivations and new breeds of cattle, and variety of crops. It suited its day well. And though its full day has passed, there will never be a time when some large estates will not be able to justify themselves. Even if, as apparently is the case now in England, _petite culture_ is that best adapted to the cultivation of the day and the needs of the people, yet there is still room for large estates. A dead uniformity of small holdings could not but be unfortunate for any country.