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among them by appointing, for instance, a Maratha, a Prabhu and a Brahmin to hold the reins of the three departments in the management of every one of his forts which formed the centres of administration in those days. I refer to these facts for two reasons. They indicate the existence of conditions similar to those that prevail to day around us and thus we, who are blamed for fomenting racial feeling whenever we talk of the claims of different communities, may feel sure that the conditions, necessitating such an insistance of particular claims are not of the making of our own leaders, stigmatised as selfish, but that they existed and were recognized in the golden days of the heroic Shivajee. These facts serve a still more useful purpose. They show us what kind of means such universally worshipped heroes as Shivajee and Akabar adopted with a view to reconcile the divergent interests that are troubling the Society even to-day. I believe no one will argue that efficiency was not the consideration of either of the two greatest of our statesmen in their choice of officers. Yet we have it on the authority of eminent historians, among whom the late Mr. Ranade was one, --that the aim of both and especially of Shivajee was to divide authority equally among the various powerful communities of the times. So, after all, Sir B. Fuller who expressed in a circular his intention of giving preference to Mohamedan candidates for office till they form a balance with the Hindu officers and who was on account of this howled against from one end of the Indian newspaper world to the other, was not the inventor of a diabolical measure to ruin the • Bengali nation.' So, again, H. H. the Shahu Chhatrapati Maharaja is only walking in the footsteps of his noble ancestor, Shivajee in reserving half the offices under him for the backward communities.
Perversion of Liberalism. But here I am afraid I shall be inet by a volley of terms and phrases drawn from the armoury of European
