But self-governing institutions do tend to remove them. In the village communal life they are to a considerable extent ignored. The organism of the village, when healthy and free, forces men to disregard artificial barriers of this sort and meet on common ground for common business. Solidarity comes from the sense of the necessity for solidarity in order to get on. Its possibility is soon manifest. But where in India is there any influence tending towards this end? The barriers of caste increase and grow, as naturally they must do. There is no _rapprochement_ between Hindu and Mohammedan, but on the contrary the gulf is widened. It must be so. And if Government makes the fatal error of adopting the motto "_Divide et impera_," if it in ever so slight a fashion identifies itself with one caste, race, or religion above another, then it is near the end of all things. But to the development of self-government the effacement of these divisions would be necessary, and in the pursuit of an eagerly coveted ideal they could pass and disappear. No other influence can do it. Again history shows this clearly. It was this influence in England that rendered Catholic emancipation possible and had brought creeds politically together. Did we in England live still under an aristocracy as we did a hundred years ago the divisions between Catholic and Protestant, Churchman and Dissenter, Christian and Agnostic, would still be as sharp as they were. These artificial barriers of creed and race give way only under the pressure of a stream of national life. That is beginning already to flow in India; be ours the task to help it flow in true and widening channels so that it may become a great river, fertilising all things. Now the main idea seems to be to dam it up, and so cause it to flood and to destroy. I hope that what I say will not be misunderstood. I do not for a moment mean that political organisms should or could be used for social reform. That is quite impossible. Any such attempt would wreck the organism, which, as an organism, must pursue only its legitimate ends. But I say, and all history is at one with me, that suitable free institutions do cultivate and bring out the faculty for freedom, and demonstrate that in all matters it is necessary.