It is true that "the district officer and his lieutenants" are in a position to know the difficulties that beset the ryot and his very human needs. But of what good is this knowledge of the district officer and his lieutenants to him if it has neither provided for the education of his children nor made any provision for his employment in occupations other than agriculture; nor saved him from the intricacies of the law; nor protected him from the ubiquitous salt tax; nor raised his wages proportionately to the increase of prices; nor yet put him in a position to assert his human rights and to obtain redress for his human, too human, wrongs. If we examine a little more carefully the merits of what is claimed to have been done for him so far by "an official Government," we will find that the claim is by no means established. We have no desire to deny that among the foreign officers of the British Government in India there are and have been a great many who were genuinely anxious to help the ryot and do all which is claimed to have been done for him in this paragraph, but that they have been unable to do anything worth mentioning will be admitted by every right-minded official.[3] The reasons for their failure were not of their making. The laws of the land made by the British legislators fresh from the Inns of Court, the spirit of the administration and the system of land taxation have effectively prevented them from doing many of the things which they might otherwise have liked to do. We are sorry that the eminent statesmen responsible for the report should have been the unconscious instruments of producing an entirely wrong impression by the statements in this paragraph. If the statements are true, India must be a veritable paradise and the lot of the Indian ryot enviable. But we know, and the authors of the Report knew it as well, and they have stated in so many words that it is not so. We can quote any number of authorities to show that the Indian ryot is the most pitiable figure in the whole length and breadth of India, if not in the whole world. This is not the place to quote the easily accessible opinions of eminently qualified and highly trustworthy British writers and administrators on the subject.[4] The English official Government has no doubt _professed_ to do all it claims to have done for the ryot, but how far it has benefited him in these directions is another story. To ask credit for having provided him with a system of law "simple, cheap and certain," or for having established schools and dispensaries within reasonable distance of his residence; or for even having looked after his cattle, by the provision of grazing lands; or for having supplied wood for his implements is to run violently in the face of facts to the contrary. These are verily his principal complaints against British rule. The official Government is certainly entitled to some credit for having started the coöperative