Arabia alone, being girdled by deserts, can keep herself free from such contact, for the present at least. She may preserve her originality and follow her own rude way for sometime to come. The Bedouin Arabs may continue to be the free lances of southwestern Asia. Other Arabs are fond of migrating temporarily to civilized regions for trade and for service. They keep up their connection with their wild home in the Arabian uplands. If they live to return to it, they doubtless rejoice to find it unimproved, and unaffected by the civilization that is going on in the world around.

But the other Muhammadan nations cannot follow this course with any success at all. They often try to do so, but the attempt generally ends in disaster to themselves. Their geographical situation is such as to render their isolation impossible. Their people will be passing over in numbers to the neighbouring nations of Europe. Similarly the Europeans will be passing over to them. It is obvious that in these days men will be running to and fro on the earth. This constant migration backwards and forwards must involve certain consequences. Muhammadans who have resided abroad will often return to their own country, bringing with them new ideas. These ideas will relate to education, to good government, even to freedom. Europeans residing in Muhammadan countries will introduce ideas of the same character. There will further be more solid changes. Industrial enterprise will push its way to the inviting regions of Muhammadanism, and sometimes even to the uninviting ones. Capital, accumulated in European countries, will be seeking investment in Muhammadan quarters as in other foreign quarters. This will occur as surely as water rises to its proper level. Indeed, this must happen according to the laws of modern society. Whether the Muhammadans like it or not, they are powerless to prevent it. The Europeans could not prevent it if they would, but in fact there is no reason why they should wish to do so.

This inevitable process produces certain consequences which

CHAP. XIV.

EUROPEAN RESIDENTS IN EGYPT.

335

the Muhammadans must face. If they fail herein, they must fall sooner or later. These consequences are that there must be a respectable administration for their own people, and an ordinary degree of protection for the foreigners who are carrying on trade or managing industrial concerns. But Muhammadan administration, instead of improving with the times, has become weaker than it used to be in former ages, and is often unequal to the task of dealing with the new interests which are springing up within its borders.

If, on the other hand, a Muhammadan Government succeeds in governing well, according to the requirements of the nineteenth century, it will certainly receive the sympathy of England, and probably of other European nations also.

Muhammadans are apt to deceive themselves by reason of the facility with which money in vast sums has been borrowed by them in the European money markets. They may fail to pay the interest of the debt; they may even repudiate a part of the principal. Yet there may be no political consequences to follow. The foreign Governments may not feel justified in interfering by force on behalf of those who have chosen to lend their money.

But the case is practically different with those who have established interests and laid out capital in Muhammadan countries. If these concerns are injured, either from violence of misrule, the case then becomes one of police management. Every Government in all parts of the world is expected to answer for order. If the subjects of any nation are specially maltreated abroad, if, as it were, a set is violently made against them, a remonstrance from their own Government is sure to follow. If, for instance, the British residents in any part of southern Europe, say at Odessa, or at Athens, or at Brindisi, or at Barcelona, had been suddenly maltreated or outraged, as the British were at Alexandria in the summer of 1882, serious political consequences would have ensued. This should be remembered as one of the many reasons which exist to justify the vigorous action which the British Government took in Egypt.

It is the part of true kindness, then, for Britain to do her best in bringing these truths home to the Muhammadan mind. She may do this in a conciliatory manner, so as not to wound the pride of Muhammadans. Let them feel that she has no selfish ambition; that she does not wish to annex them; that, on the contrary, she desires to see them independent and prosperous. She will in every sense wish them well; but her good wishes will be of little avail to them unless they, of their own accord, improve themselves.*

*The observations in this chapter regarding the Turks have recently been verified by me during a visit to Turkey.-R. T.

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CHAPTER XV.

THE MAHRATTA NATIONALITY.

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[Reprinted from the Encyclopædia Britannica,' New Edition, 1883.]

Native region of the Mahrattas Originally mountaineers of the hill ranges along the western coast of India Their physical characteristics - Their sturdy and patriotic temper - Their agricultural industry - Their landed tenures Their condition under British rule Greatness of their past history-Predatory foundation of their power-Unimproving character of their rule- Establishment of the Mahratta confederation - The Peshwas, or Brahman princes - Leading Mahratta States - Their military contests with the British power-Their incorporation into the British empire.

THE Mahrattas inhabit that portion of India which is known by the ancient name of Mahàrâshtra (Sanskrit for the great kingdom or region). This large tract, extending from the Arabian Sea on the west to the Sâtpura mountains in the north, comprises a good part of western and central India, including the modern provinces of the Konkan, Khandesh, Berar, the British Deccan, part of Nagpur, and about half the Nizam's Deccan. Its area amounts to about 120,000 square miles, and its population to about twelve millions of souls, or 100 to the square mile. The population has increased greatly in the nineteenth century under British rule; but there had been much decrease during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries owing to war and devastation. Frightful depopulation occurred from the famine which was at its height in 1400 A.D., and was called the Durga Déví or the goddess of destruction. Much mortality was also caused by famine between 1801 and 1803. There was probably a period

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of high prosperity during the first centuries of the Christian era, under a number of petty indigenous sovereigns, among whom these wide territories had become parcelled out before the first invasion of the Deccan by the Moslems about 1100.

The etymology of the word Mahratta (or Marhatta, as it is written in the vernacular) is uncertain. The name does not indicate a social caste, or a religious sect; it is not even tribal. It embraces the people of all races who dwell in the region of Maharashtra, both high-caste and low-caste Hindus; it is applied, of course, to Hindus only. Thus there are Mahratta Brahmans, next Mahratta Kumbis or cultivators, and Mahratta Rajputs or warriors, though the latter have but a small infusion of real Rajput blood. The Mahrattas, then, are essentially Hindus in religion and in caste ordinances, not differing in these respects from the Hindus in other parts of India. They have a language of their own, called the Mahratti, a dialect of the Sanskrit, and this Mahratti is a copious, flexible, and sonorous tongue.

But the Mahrattas have always formed a separate nation or people, and still regard themselves as such, though nowadays they are almost all under British or Muhammadan jurisdiction; that is, they belong either to British India or to the Nizam's Dominions. A few states or principalities purely Mahratta,— such as Kolhapur and some lesser states clustering round it in the southern Deccan,-still survive, but they are under close supervision on the part of the British Government. There are indeed still three large native states nominally Mahratta, namely, that of Sindhia near the borders of Hindustan in the north, that of Holkar in Malwa in the heart of the Indian continent, and that of the Gaekwar in Gujerat on the western coast. But in these states the prince, his relatives, and some of his ministers or employés only are Mahrattas; the nobility and the mass of the people are not Mahrattas at all, but belong to other sections of the Hindu race. These states then are not to be included in the Mahratta nation, though they have a share in the Mahratta