RELIGIOUS RIOTS IN INDIA.

Apropos of the religious riots m Bou,b>y en Auguet 14th, the Daily Chronicle remarked that the imaginative races of the Kast are always combustible sooial material, and the very eeiious developments of the Bombay riots show how easily and m what unlikely placeß a flame may be kindled large enough to strain every rosouree of the Government to extinguish if. The coincidence of a Hindu festival with a Mussulman one was tho epark ; the sacrifice by Mussulmans of the cow, the Bacred beast of the Hindu* was the fanning wind, and a civil war m the city of Bombay, " hourly growing worao " m spite of the most vigorous efforts of the military and police authoritiew and the sarvioes of every available Regular and Voluntoer, is the conflagration. It is a tragic reminder of the difficulties nnder which the government of our Indian dependedcy is curried on, and to Borne extent of what would immediately happen if the hand of foreign control were lifted from the conglomerate of nationalities we oall Inah. Ihe well kuown boast of a hill ruler that if a British colonel who restrained him wouH only go away, and nc,ver come back, he wuuid descend to the plains nearest him, and m a fortnight there should not be a four-anna bit le i m the province is no doubt unduly picturesque, but a city composed of Hicdus and Mussulmans would certainly be m a state of perpetual expl«je;;n un'il t! o w taker was foroed to lha wull.ihere has apparently been much laxity m allowing the daughter of cows to be performed m places where it must infallibly give deadly offencs. These riots will be a severo lesson to the rulers if this has been the case, for a Borious danger to British rule m India may well spring from a much smaller cause than ia operative m Bombay today. It will be remembered, by the way, tbat one of tho skits of Mr Hudyard Kipling's " Black and Whito " tales describes m the most dramatic munner a religious riot exactly like this one.