“Walter Pollen dined with us, and after dinner I went to an evening party at the India Club. This was started a year ago with the view of amalgamating Englishmen with Indians, but the bitterness of feeling is now so great that, with the exception of two or three secretaries in attendance on Indian princes, I believe I was the only Englishman present. The Catholic Archbishop, however, and Father Lafont were there, and I had some conversation with them about Cardinals Manning and Howard. Abd-el-Latif introduced me to a good many notables, the King of Oude’s brother, the Rajahs of Cutch Bahar and Tippara, and the Diwan of the Rajput Rajah of Ulwar. Tippara is a regular Chinaman in feature, and it needed no large amount of candour in him to repudiate the flattery of his courtiers when they told him he was a pure-bred Aryan. Cutch Bahar is a young man with an English education, who appears at race courses in a white hat, and is popular with the Anglo-Indians. He wore his own clothes here, but is uninteresting. The Diwan invited us to stay with him at Ulwar, and I shall certainly do so, as it will be a good opportunity of seeing a Rajput court. There were also an uncle of Nebbi-Ullah’s from Cawnpore and about two hundred other gentlemen of distinction from Calcutta and the provinces, all in their best clothes.
“_29th Dec._--The only visit this morning was from Delawar Huseyn, a deputy-magistrate and a sensible man, who gave the same melancholy account of the poverty of the Mohammedans in Bengal. I fear their case is nearly hopeless. In spite of their large population, they are without influence. The mass of them are extremely poor, mere peasants, or, in the town, day labourers. They have no commercial connection, and the sons of the few rich men are obliged to look to Government employment for a living, whereas the Hindus are rich and pushing. It is a struggle for existence, in which the Mohammedans are the weakest, and so are going to the wall. In the north-west, he tells me, it is not so.
“At twelve I went to the second meeting of the Conference, at which the Civil Service was again discussed; and I made a short speech, in answer to some complimentary remarks made with regard to my presence, in which I said that I was glad to have had the opportunity of being present at these the first meetings which had a national character in India, and which prefigured the parliament which they were all doubtless looking forward to. I said that I, too, looked forward to this, and to their complete self-government. I believed _all_ nations were fit for self-government, and few more so than the Indian, and I described the condition of Greece when it was first set to manage its own affairs, a conglomeration of robber chieftains, piratical seafarers and an absolutely uneducated peasant population. Yet, after fifty years, they had an orderly Government, with universal education, commercial prosperity, and a shipping which had driven every competitor out of the Levant. In view of such results, who should say that any nation was unfit for its own rule? This produced much cheering, and they all expressed themselves highly delighted with my sympathy. To-morrow Keay is to come to the meeting, and will speak about the rural distress.