and the cruel bars that cramp their energies and exertions; but while reserving that for some future occasion, to be dealt with at sufficient length and according to its intrinsic importance, it is considered advisable here to touch on the subject in a cursory manner.

"Young India," the name whereby the rising generation of this country has been designated, is an expression of such ambiguity and vagueness that some use it sneeringly of the enlightened generation, as expressive of the low habits and tastes which are to be seen in a certain class of our young countrymen ; while others, in their application of it, connote some of those bright traits of mental and moral worth associated with the character of the rising generation. Used so differently, it has been a matter of doubt whether the name is expressive of contempt or praise. The fact, however, is, "Young India," instead of being one class, comprehensible under one description, consists of two grand classes, as distinct from each other as they could be wished or made. These classes have nothing common in them save their young age, which is neither's work, while in character and bearing, they stand so distinct as to answer nicely the contrariety of interpre

"YOUNG INDIA" ANALYSED.

23

tation. There is the young gentleman of good education and morals, and there is the young gentleman of the insolent and fast-going race; there is the young generation with diplomas and medals from colleges and universities, and there is the young generation with only impudence to surpass its ignorance; there is the "Young India" of books and work, and there is the "Young India" of the bottle and dice; and were a distinction so wide always maintained, neither would the one class be unmeritedly censured, nor the other unnecessarily praised.

The first class certainly presents a bright picture for India; for if he has any fault, it is perhaps in his acquiring too great a preference of English taste and feelings. It is well that it is so; and Young India would ere long have occupied his proper position under a more liberal and enlightened Government. At present, however, while he acquires all the essentials of action, his ambition is cribbed, cabined and confined within a narrow sphere after an anomalous fashion. For what is all education but the means of preparing for a sphere of action; and where is the sphere of action for Young India? Government patronage is so exclusive and mean, that he is debarred from

rising by any high attainments or distinguished merit beyond a certain rank in the public service and that rank below what even the veriest dunce of a civil or uncovenanted servant may in the commencement of his career generally attain. Government may admit frankly enough the learning, efficiency, and even good faith of Young India, but they would not raise him to the rank of exercising this learning, efficiency, and good faith, lest little Johnny or Tommy, now dandling in his mamma's arms, or in the play-ground at home, remain unprovided for in future, and have, Iago-like, to grin

"The lusty Moor hath jumped into my seat!"

And the mercantile communities-both Native and European,-composed for the most part of men who have learnt arithmetic well enough to calculate the highest percentage of profit with the least possible distribution, have the selfishness of Government before them to exclude Young India from rising to their own level of wealth and importance. Thus excluded on all sides, Young India finds his education and intelligence "fust" in subordinate spheres of usefulness, which neither excite his ambition nor feed his intellect. And thus some are

POSITION OF NATIVE YOUTH.

25

engaged as schoolmasters, drudging life through in a wearisome and unremunerative task; some are employed as editors, reporters, and writers of pamphlets and books, disseminating Western civilisation, with pockets empty of the last rupee and minds full of the most recent ideas; some manage their own or paternal small farms and estates, with notions formed and matured on state-policy and government; many are bankers and petty dealers of commerce; and many more are sunk in the drudgery of clerkship, plodding through life on a salary of Rs. 50 or 80 a month-with heads full of Bacon and conic sections! A position like this is but a temptation to Young India to pervert his education, to misrepresent the Government, if not actually to resist it. As the German proverb runs-"The school is good, the world is bad"; -the school affords an ample field to Young India for the exercise of his natural acumen, but when he is out of it, the world at once blunts it, and this is as doubly heart-rending to him as losing what one has once laboured to acquire and perfect. Had the Native mind been curbed after the fashion of an Austrian or Papal Government, it would have been one thing, and the British Government would have

seemed consistent with the meanness of Native exclusion from posts of emolument and dignity; but after having educated the Young Indian, and then to deny him all exercise of his education, is to inflict a cruel wrong, which is excusable neither on the score of justice and fair dealing nor that of evil consistency. One of the witnesses of the troubles of 1857, in his evidence before the Parliament, stated, "I found it to be a general rule, that where you had an OFFICIAL well educated at our English colleges, and conversant with our English tongue, there you had a friend, upon whom reliance could be placed.”* And yet there is a line of complete demarcation established in all British India, as dangerous and demeaning as that in France before the Revolution. We have here, in one sense, the defective position of only two classes, without the intermediate one to serve as a connecting-link between them; it is the recurrence of the old order of patricians and plebeians of the Roman world-English sojourners and even Eurasian members playing the first, and the entire mass of the Indian people the unfortunate other. It was this distinction which proved too dangerous to the Romans to be tolerated longer than barely

* C. Raikes, Judge of the Chief Court of Agra.