406 COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION 



unforeseen consequences have resulted. Through the rigid enforce- 

 ment of contract the vast agricultural debtor class has been gradu- 

 ally enslaved to the money-lenders and is being ousted from its 

 ancestral holdings. As the government upholds the principle of 

 freedom of contract and will not fix the price of grain in times of 

 shortage, the calculating native capitalist is enabled to hold his 

 stock of food for higher prices regardless of the fact that people may 

 be dying of famine by the thousand in the neighborhood. The sci- 

 entific system of appeals favors the machinations of unscrupulous 

 native pleaders, who gain a livelihood by stirring up litigation and 

 making the most of judicial delays, with the result that the confidence 

 of the Indian population in the justice and efficiency of the law has 

 been impaired. The granting of representative government in 

 municipalities has led to the sharp accentuation of religious and 

 racial animosities, and has especially increased the bitter feeling 

 between Mohammedans and Hindus, the former of whom oppose 

 strongly any system of representation based upon numbers. The 

 same result has been brought about by the creation of a free press, 

 which uses its freedom not only for the purpose of constant agitation 

 against the British, but also to stir up and perpetuate the feeling of 

 mutual hatred between the various great religions of India. The 

 jury system has undermined the confidence of the natives in the 

 justice of the British, because no white jury can be found to con- 

 demn a white man for the murder of a native. And finally, the sys- 

 tem of higher literary education, conceived by Lord Macaulay for the 

 purpose of initiating the Oriental mind into the philosophy and 

 literature of the West, has resulted in the destruction of native 

 morale among the educated classes and in the creation of a literary 

 proletariat, hungry for public employment. The complete bearing 

 of these social changes deserves more careful study than we can here 

 give it, but the above brief indication may suffice to point out how 

 incalculable are the results of the importation of foreign institutions 

 into a native society. 



France is the classical land of assimilation. The colonies that 

 were left to France after the Napoleonic era were few and small. A 

 certain romantic and sentimental interest attached to Martinique 

 and Guadeloupe, and they became the spoiled children among colon- 

 ies. Most of the institutions of the mother country were extended 

 to them. When in the middle of the last century the colonial empire 

 of France again expanded, through the acquisition of territory in 

 Africa and Asia, the older principles of action were not abandoned. 

 The new territories were treated as regions within which French 

 civilization was to be forthwith established. The most radical belief 

 in constructive meliorism still governed French political thought. 

 The results of this policy are now before our eyes. Algeria has long 



