to achieve their regeneration by copying the social and intellectual practices of Europe. But the leaders of the movement have no illusions as to the length of the road they must needs travel; they perceive that it is the decadence of the Muhammadan character which has brought about the decline of their material prosperity. Nawab Syed Husain Bilgrami once said plainly to his people:

'It is a grievous mistake to suppose that the Muhammadans lost their moral qualities when they lost their power. The lesson of history is quite the other way, and teaches us that we lost our power because we had lost all that preserves and perpetuates power ages before.'*

The reformers recognise that a deep-seated disease takes a long time to cure. Sir Syed Ahmad used to say that the Musalmans needed five hundred years of British rule in India in order to work out their regeneration without interruption; but, though they are aware that complete recovery must be slow, they are confident of the result. Of one thing they have no doubt, namely, that the true remedy is education. For this reason they concentrate all their energies upon education, and have of set purpose postponed political action to a later period. Education they want for their people in almost every form-primary and secondary, technical, industrial, and liberal; and, with a true insight into the needs of their community as a whole, they place the necessity of a liberal education before all others. They recognise that the education of barristers, doctors, engineers, merchants, and government servants will be valuable, inasmuch as it will restore to the community wealth and public esteem; but these professional men, however well trained for their particular callings, cannot be expected to do much to enrich Muhammadan thought; it is not from their ranks that can be expected the scholars and thinkers who will remove the reproach of intellectual sterility which has lain for so many centuries upon Muhammadan society. Their greatest immediate need, they say, is to place new ideals before their people, to foster the growth

*Presidential address at the Muhammadan Educational Conference, Rampur, December 1900.

of Muhammadan thought, and to raise the whole community into a higher intellectual plane.

This is the problem upon which they have been most intent in recent years; the solution they propose is the creation of a Muhammadan university. They have no ambition to add another to the examining Boards which, because they have a charter to confer degrees, go by the name of university in India, for these Boards have never stimulated intellectual development. The accepted programme of the Muhammadan reformers is to expand the Aligarh college so that it shall become

'an abode of learning which shall bring together in one place the best available masters of various branches of learning to teach and study their respective subjects, which shall provide them with laboratories and libraries and museums, and the journals of scientific societies all over the world.' *

It is argued that these teachers, living together in an atmosphere of thought and learning, will stimulate each other's mental activity, and will give birth to a body of ideas which will in time become the accepted opinion of the University of Aligarh and will ultimately be diffused throughout the Muhammadan world. The ambitions of enlightened Musalmans were well expressed by H.H. the Agha Khan at Delhi in 1903.

'We want to be able to give our Moslem youths, not merely the finest education that can be given in India, but a training equal to that which can be given in any country in the world. We do not wish that in future our Moslem youths should be obliged to go to England or Germany if they wish to attain real eminence in any branch of learning or scholarship, or in the higher branches of technical or industrial learning. No, we want Aligarh to be such a home of learning as to command the same respect of scholars as Berlin or Oxford, Leipsic or Paris. We want those branches of Moslem learning which are too fast passing into decay to be added by Moslem scholars to the stock of the world's knowledge. Above all, we want to create for our people an intellectual and moral capital, a city which shall be the home of elevated ideas and pure ideals, a centre from which light and guidance will be diffused among the Moslems of India, aye, and out of

* Presidential address at the Muhammadan Educational Conference, Lucknow, 1904.

India too, and which shall hold up to the world a noble standard of the justice and virtue and purity of our beloved faith.'

Thus the new school of Muhammadan thought, like the old, contemplates the continued existence of a separate Muhammadan community in India. The possibility of fusion with the Hindus, and the creation by this fusion of an Indian nationality, does not commend itself to Muhammadan sentiment. The idea has been brought forward only to be flouted; the pride of Muhammadans revolts at such a sacrifice of their historic individuality. On the other hand there are forces at work all over Asia with which, perhaps, the Musalmans have not sufficiently reckoned. The humiliating ascendency of Europe is emphasising to Asiatics the value of a new conception of nationality, which originated indeed in Europe, but which appears capable of thriving in Eastern soil. This conception is that the inhabitants of a given area, irrespective of race or creed, have a common interest and are bound together by ties stronger than any which connect them with persons living outside that area. The beginnings of such a national feeling are already signalised in China; a vehement demonstration of national spirit has recently been evoked in Bengal by the partition of the province; all over India Hindus are appealing for the recognition of an Indian nation.'

Will Muhammadans have to yield to this prevailing fashion of thought? Will the brotherhood of Islam go the way of the universal Church, and will its place be taken by territorial nationalities as yet unnamed?

T. MORISON.

* P. Rampur,

Art. XIII.-THE POLITICAL SITUATION.

THE general election of 1906 will certainly be always reckoned as one of the great events of parliamentary history. We believe that since parties existed in this country there has never been so large a transfer of parliamentary strength from one party to the other. A smaller transfer took place in 1832, notwithstanding the hecatomb of disfranchised boroughs; and even in the conflict of 1784, when Pitt triumphed over Fox and North, the Coalition lost fifty-five seats fewer than fell at the late election. The victories of 1832 and 1784 left uneffaceable marks on the constitution. In each case a political system was brought to an end. The election of 1784 finally destroyed the dominion of the great Whig oligarchy; that of 1832 ended George III's Toryism. Fox came back for a few months in 1806, Peel for a few years in 1841; but in neither case was there any restoration of the old fabric. The Ministry of all the Talents was no revival of the Coalition, and, had it been so, lasted only long enough to show how completely King George had become the master. Peel in 1841 led a new party skilfully built up by himself and buttressed by a small but valuable secession from the Whigs. The Unionists to-day have fallen from a greater height of power and been shattered not less completely than the party of Fox or the party of Wellington. Will it be written of them too that the old order passed away never to return?

The defeat of 1906 is the greatest in British parliamentary history. We have the grim satisfaction, dear to our sporting generation, of making a record.' But this unparalleled overthrow has had no congruous surroundings. It has not been accompanied by anything like the agitation of 1832, or even of 1784. Bristol is not in ruins ; and no duchess, so far as we are aware, has kissed any elector. It may be a revolution, but, if so, it is a tame one. Our tiger has the manners of a cat. No revolutionary bitterness has been displayed by the triumphant party. There has been no change in the balance of the constitution such as was involved in the victory of the king in 1784 or in the passage of the Reform Bill. Nor is the successful captain so impressive a figure as his fore

runners. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman is a sensible leader, but he is no rival of Pitt or Grey. Neither the actors nor the issues are on the heroic scale.

The calmness of the atmosphere and the lightness of the clouds amid which such a thunderbolt has fallen deserve attention not less than the magnitude of the damage done. Here has been nothing resembling the personal enthusiasm inspired by Pitt and King George, nor the political enthusiasm excited by the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill.' The feelings excited have been widespread but not intense. There was a good deal of disorder at Unionist meetings, but nothing that can be called a riot. And yet the result has been to inflict an unprecedented defeat. Not by a tempest and rough waves, but by a tide of smooth water, the Unionist party has been washed away.

About the causes of this phenomenon there is naturally much dispute. Some affirm that the activity of the Nonconformists and their bitter antagonism to the Education Act of 1902 was the chief force at work; others emphasise the Labour movement and the question of trades disputes; others believe that Chinese labour did the mischief, with its crop of unscrupulous placards and the cry, half philanthropic and half selfish, against 'yellow slavery' and cheap labour; others say that the victory was for free trade and no taxes on food; others, again, speak of the unpopularity of the tactics of the late Government and of the swing of the pendulum,' intensified by the unwise postponement of the dissolution. The truth, doubtless, is that all these causes contributed to the result. Some votes were lost by one antipathy, some by another; and the tremendous electoral movement was due to the aggregate of divers unpopularities.

But, while it is true that many grievances co-operated to make the Unionist party unpopular, it is also true that most of these different grievances had some common elements, so that they appeared to the electorate like various counts of a single indictment rather than a number of distinct charges. Thus the attack on Chinese labour, on Protection, and on the Taff Vale judgment, all formed part of an accusation of plutocratic conspiracy. Even the Education Act was represented as a victory for privilege, and so fell in with the general charge that