credit societies and a few coöperative rural banks for the benefit of the peasantry, but the reform is so belated and at present plays such an insignificant part in the rural economy of India that it seems hardly worth mentioning or discussing.[5] But even assuming that the official Government has so far done all that for the ryot, what reason is there to insinuate that the Government of the people will fail to do it for him in the future or will not do it so well as or even better, than has been heretofore done by the bureaucracy? It is quite a gratuitous assumption that in future he will be required to do all these things for himself. Even in the most advanced democracies in the world the peasantry or the masses of the people do not do these things for themselves. Most of these things are done by officials. The only difference is that in a responsible government the officials are the servants of the people while in an absolute government they are their masters. We are really surprised at the presumption of the British bureaucrat, in posing as the special friend of the Indian masses as against their own educated countrymen. The experience of the past does not support the claim and there is absolutely no reason to assume that it will be different in the future. A mere cursory glance at the resolutions of the Indian National Congress passed continuously for a period of thirty years, will show how persistently and earnestly the educated classes have been pleading _inter alia_ for (a) compulsory and free education, (b) for technical instruction in vocations, (c) for the reduction of the salt tax and the land tax, (d) for the raising of the minimum incomes liable to income tax, (e) for the provision of pasture lands, (f) for the comforts of the third-class railway travelling public, (g) for the milder administration of the forest laws, (h) for the reform of the Police, etc. All these years the bureaucracy did nothing for the ryot and now they pose as his special friends, whose continuance in power and in office is necessary for his protection from the politically minded middle classes. We are a friend neither of the landlord nor of the capitalist. We believe that the ryot and the working men in India as elsewhere are being exploited and robbed by the classes in possession of the means of production and distribution. We would wholeheartedly support any scheme which would open a way to a just and righteous distribution of wealth and land in India and which would insure the ryot and the working man his rightful place in the body politic. We would not mind the aid of the foreign bureaucracy toward that end if we could be sure that the bureaucracy would or could do it. But we have no doubts in the matter that it cannot be done. The bureaucracy has so far played into the hands of the plutocrat. They have served first their own capitalists and then the capitalists and landlords of India. Some among them have tried to do a