of which cannot be foreseen.  ‘Indian gentlemen,’ it has been well said, ’may thoroughly allow that when the process has been completed, the nation will rise in intelligence, in character and in all the graces of life.  But they are none the less apprehensive that while the process of education is going on, while the lessons of emancipation are being learnt and stability has not yet been reached, while, in short, society is slowly struggling to adjust itself to the new conditions, the period of transition will be marked by the loosening of social ties, the upheaval of customary ways, and by prolonged and severe domestic embarrassment.’  There is, it is true, an advanced section of the community that is entirely out of sympathy with this view.  In abandoning child-marriage they have got rid of the chief obstacle to female education; and it is among them, consequently, that female education has made proportionately the greatest progress in quantity and still more in quality.  But outside this small and well-marked class, the demand for female education is much less active and spontaneous....  In fact the people at large encourage or tolerate the education of their girls only up to an age and up to a standard at which it can do little good, or, according to their point of view, little harm.”

NOTE 22

THE THEORY OF THE “DRAIN.”

The Master of Elibank, then Under-Secretary of State, included in his Indian Budget speech on Aug. 5, 1909, a brief but effective refutation of the “drain” theory:—­

“If the House will allow me, I wish to digress for a moment to deal with a charge that is constantly made, and has recently been repeated, to the effect that there is poverty in India which is largely due to the political and commercial drain on the country year by year, the political, it is asserted, amounting to L30,000,000 and the commercial to L40,000,000.  These figures have been placed even higher by those who wish to blacken the Indian Administration in order to bolster up a malicious agitation against this country.  I think it is incumbent upon the representative of the Indian Government in this House to deal with the statement.  I may at once say that it has no foundation in fact.  (Hear, hear.) Its origin is to be found, no doubt, in the fact that India makes annually considerable payments in England in return for services rendered, such as the loan of British capital; but there is no justification for describing these payments as a drain, and their amount is only a fraction of the figures which I have just quoted.  Let me deal first with the question of amount.  As the method by which India makes her payments in England is that she exports more than she imports, all calculations as to the amount of payments must necessarily be based on the returns of Indian trade, which show by how much the Indian exports exceed her imports.  If the trade returns are examined for 1904, 1906, and 1906, after