We have helped the Japanese to preserve their independence as a constitutional nation, and most Englishmen vaguely sympathise with the desire of the Chinese progressives both for national independence and internal reform.

Few of us, however, would be willing to give any definite advice to an individual Chinaman who asked whether he ought to throw himself into a movement for a representative parliament on European lines.
Within our own Empire this uncertainty as to the limitations of our political principles may at any moment produce actual disaster.

In Africa, for instance, the political relationship between the European inhabitants of our territories and the non-European majority of Kaffirs, Negroes, Hindoos, Copts, or Arabs is regulated on entirely different lines in Natal, Basutoland, Egypt, or East Africa.

In each case the constitutional difference is due not so much to the character of the local problem as to historical accident, and trouble may break out anywhere and at any time, either from the aggression of the Europeans upon the rights reserved by the Home Government to the non-Europeans, or from a revolt of the non-Europeans themselves.

Blacks and whites are equally irritated by the knowledge that there is one law in Nairobi and another in Durban.
This position is, of course, most dangerous in the case of India.