THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1906.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8240, 19 September 1906, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1906.

Mr W. J. Bryan, who will contest the Presidency in 1908, returned recently to the United States. He visited India in bis travels, and has a very bad opinion of English rule in that oountry. In an article in an American paper be states that be studied the problem of India before his visit, and tbe more be read tbe more unjust English rule seemed, and bis visit simply deepened his impression of injustice. While not

bringing an indictment; against the English people, or questioning the motives of those in authority, be asserts that India is held and administered for England's benefit and aot for India's, nnd that the Government of India is as despotic and arbitrary as the Government of Russia ever was. Taxation is oearly twice as heavy as in England, and the poverty of the people is distressing in the extreme. While in Japan 90 per cent, of the people can read and write, in India less ( than 10 pec cent, uf the population I have been educated to this point. The progress of education is slow, and the number of schools "grossly inadequate." "It is not scarcity of money that delays the spread of education in India," he says, "but the deliberate misacpropriation of taxes collected, and the system which permits this disregard o? the welfare of the subjeots and the sub-ordination of their industries to the supposed advancement of another nation's trade, is as indefensible upon economic and political grounds as upon moral grounds." Mr Bryan oomplained that we refuse to give the natives a share in the government of their country in spite of the demands of the intellectual leaders of all the sects and elements of the Indian population. But not long after this article appeared Mr John Morley made his annual statement on the Indian Budget in the House of Commons, nnd it affords a telling answer to Mr Bryan's statements. Both Mr Morley and Mr Bryan may be oalled anti-Imperia!-ists, and both have a good deal in common. Their sympathies are with the native races. When Mr Morley delivered bin Budget to the House of Commons he proclaimed with no uncertain voice his faith in the value of our work in India. There was no sign of the Little Englander in his speech. "When I look at' the string of amendments on the paper," he said, "1 oannot but think that they mean, it they mean anything, that the government of India by tbie country is a bad failwre. I do not believe a word of it." He warned the Radicals that it was a "fantastic an J ludicrous dream" to think of transplanting British institutions into India, and / , for as long as he could forsee the ! Government of India must partake, in no small degree of the personal and absolute element. At the same i time, the Government was not insensible tu the new spirit in India, and the question of oonoeding some of it's demands was being considered. The necessary presenoe of the absolute element was no reason why they should not "try this great experiment of showing that you oan have a strong and effective administration along with free speech and free institutions, and being all the better and all the more effective because of free speech and free institutions."