nferences of Buddhism; and for centuries the
people have gathered at Pun, Hurdwar, Trimbak, and Benares in immense
numbers. A great meeting, what you call a mass meeting, is really one
of the oldest and most popular of Indian institutions In the case of
the Congress meetings, the only notable fact is that the priests of the
altar are British, not Buddhist, Jam or Brahmanical, and that the whole
thing is a British contrivance kept alive by the efforts of Messrs.
Hume, Eardley, Norton, and Digby."

"You mean to say, then, it s not a spontaneous movement?"

"What movement was ever spontaneous in any true sense of the word? This
seems to be more factitious than usual. You seem to know a great deal
about it; try it by the touchstone of subscriptions, a coarse but fairly
trustworthy criterion, and there is scarcely the color of money in it.
The delegates write from England that they are out of pocket for
working expenses, railway fares, and stationery--the mere pasteboard
and scaffolding of their show. It is, in fact, collapsing from mere
financial inanition."

"But you cannot deny that the people of India, who are, perhaps, too
poor to subscribe, are mentally and morally moved by the agitation,"
Pagett insisted.

"That is precisely what I do deny. The native side of the movement is
the work of a limited class, a microscopic minority, as Lord Dufferin
described it, when compared with the people proper, but still a very
interesting class, seeing that it is of our own creation. It is composed
almost entirely of those of the literary or clerkly castes who have
received an English education."

"Surely that s a very important class. Its members must be the ordained
leaders of popular thought."

"Anywhere else they might be leaders, but they have no social weight in
this topsy-turvy land, and though they have been employed in clerical
work for generations they have no practical knowledge of affairs. A
ship's clerk is a useful person, but he is scarcely the captain; and an
orderly-room writer, however smart he may be, is not the colonel. You
see, the writer class in India has never till now aspired to anything
like command. It wasn't allowed to. The Indian gentleman, for thousands
of years past, has resembled Victor Hugo's noble:

'Un vrai sire
Chatelain
Laisse ecrire
Le vilain.
Sa main digne
Quand il signe
Egratigne
Le velin.

And the little egralignures he most likes to make h