The bureaucrat, like the Bourbons, learns nothing and forgets nothing, and it is not surprising that Lord Sydenham’s outburst on a “crisis” which exists only in the heated imaginations of the Anglo-Indian Press, should contain all the familiar ideas, hoary with age, with which the bureaucracy has been wont to combat the slightest suggestions for reform. As a retired provincial satrap with somewhat exaggerated ideas of his own abilities it was to be expected that Lord Sydenham would exhibit a strong faith in a paternalism, ostensibly benevolent but jealous only to maintain its authority, as a working principle of Government. What we did not expect even from a retired pro-consul was that he would so far surrender to his prejudices as to commit himself to the dishonest misrepresentations which do duty for arguments in the columns of the Anglo-Indian Press. Lord Sydenham shares in full with the shrieking fraternity that rancour against Indian politicians which is at the bottom of the present “crisis”. The fact that that crisis exists only in the morbid brains of those Anglo-Indians who, in their wounded self-love, have lashed themselves into a furious outburst of racial animosity, does not of course deter this honest retired bureaucrat from representing the country as on the verge of another mutiny or from comparing the conditions of India with that of Russia.