The Changing Public Opinion in India.

ONE decisive test of the speed with which public opinion in India has been moving towards its Heaven-appointed destiny is the rapidity with which the Anglo-Indian Press has been reconciling itself to each new development, the moment we are ourselves leaving it behind. There are men still in our midst who remember in what light Kristo Das Pal and his organ, the Hindu Patriot, used to be looked upon in their day. With the advent of the new school represented by the Congress, Kristo Das Pal at once came to be regarded as a moderate, and the Anglo-Indian Press got into the habit of holding him up to the new generation as a model and an exemplar. No language was at that time thought too strong to be applied to such men as Babu Surendranath Banerjea in Bengal and Sir, then Mr., Pherozeshah Mehta in Bombay. Even Mr. Gokhale, whose sweet reasonableness was partially recognised in his lifetime, came in for hard knocks at times. Well, a few years passed, less than two decades anyway, when with the advent of a newer party, a party of which the most eminent representative was Mr. Tilak, Babu Surendranath Banerjea and Mr. Pherozeshah Mehta themselves became moderates, and as for Mr. Gokhale, there is not an Anglo-Indian journal which, during the short time that has elapsed since his death, has not again and again sighed for him. Every imaginable virtue has been attributed to him, and sometimes his new and posthumous admirers have discovered merits in him the existence of which they never suspected during his lifetime. Everybody remembers how in the days of Lord Curzon, Mr. Gokhale was repeatedly cried down as a politician with extreme views.