invasion began in the sixteenth century,
and has continued till our own day. The underlying motive was not
economic necessity, nor religious enthusiasm, but sheer lust of gain.

In 1498 Vasco da Gama discovered an all-sea route to India, thus
opening the fabulous riches of Asia to hungry Europe. Portuguese,
Dutch, French and English adventurers embarked in a struggle for
Indian commerce, in which our ancestors were victorious because they
obtained the command of the sea, and had the whole resources of the
mother-country at their back.

Westerners are so imbued with the profit-making instinct that they
mentally open, a ledger account in order to prove that India gains
more than she loses by dependence on the people of these islands. It
cannot be denied that the fabric of English administration is a
noble monument of the civil skill and military prowess developed by
our race. We have given the peninsula railways and canals, postal
and telegraph systems, a code of laws which is far in advance of our
own. Profound peace broods over the empire, famine and pestilence are
fought with the weapons of science. It would be easy to pile up items
on the debit side of our imaginary cash-book. Free trade has destroyed
indigenous crafts wholesale, and quartered the castes who pursued
them on an over-taxed soil. Incalculable is the waste of human life
and inherited skill caused by the shifting of productive energy from
India to Great Britain, Germany and America. It cannot be said that
the oversea commerce, which amounted in 1907-8 to L241,000,000, is an
unmixed benefit. The empire exports food and raw materials, robbing
the soil of priceless constituents, and buys manufactured goods which
ought to be produced at home. Foreign commerce is stimulated by the
home charges, which average L18,000,000, and it received an indirect
bounty by the closure of the mints in 1893. The textile industry of
Lancashire was built upon a prohibition of Indian muslins: it now
exports yarn and piece goods to the tune of L32,000,000, and this
trade was unjustly favoured at the expense of local mills under the
Customs Tariff of 1895. But there are forces in play for good or evil
which cannot be appraised in money. From a material point of view
our Government is the best and most honest in existence. If it fails
to satisfy the psychical cravings of India there are shortcomings on
both sides; and some of them are revealed by Mr. Banerjea's tales.

Caste.--As