hold that every congregation should
manage its own affairs, and elect its own officers independent of all
authority save that of Christ; they profess to derive all rules of faith
and practice from the Scriptures, and are closely akin to Presbyterians
in doctrine. Numerous as early as Queen Elizabeth's time, they suffered
persecution then; many fled or were banished to Holland, whence the
_Mayflower_ conveyed the Pilgrim Fathers to New England in 1620.
Regaining ascendency under Cromwell, they again suffered at the
Restoration; but political disabilities then imposed have gradually been
removed, and now they are the most vigorous Dissenting body in England.
The congregations in the English Union (a union for common purposes and
mutual help) number 4700, those in the Scottish Union 100.

INDEX EXPURGATORIUS, a list of books issued by the Church of Rome,
which, as hostile to her teaching, are placed under her ban, and are
under penalties forbidden to be read. The first list published was by
Pope Paul IV. in 1557, and in 1562 the Council of Trent appointed a
committee whose special business it should be to draw up a complete list
of obnoxious writings, a work which it fell to Paul IV. to finish after
the sittings of the Council came to a close in an index issued in 1564.

INDIA (287,223), British dependency, consisting of the great
peninsula in the S. of Asia, which has the Bay of Bengal on the E. and
the Arabian Sea on the W., and is separated from the mainland by the
Hindu-Kush and the Himalaya Mountains; politically the name includes
besides the Punjab in the N. and Burma in the E.; the centre of the
peninsula is a great plateau called the Deccan, between which and the
snow-clad Himalaya stretch the great fertile basins of the Ganges, the
Thar Desert, and the arid wastes of the Indus Valley; great varieties of
climate are of course met with, but the temperature is prevailingly high,
and the monsoons of the Indian Ocean determine the regularity of the
rainy season, which occurs from June to October; the country generally is
insalubrious; the vegetation is correspondingly varied, but largely
tropical; rice, cereal crops, sugar, and tobacco are generally grown;
cotton in Bombay and the Central Provinces, opium in the Ganges Valley,
jute in Eastern Bengal, and indigo in Behar; coffee and tea are raised by
Europeans in the hill country on virgin soil; the chief mineral deposits
are extensive coal-fields between the Ganges