were not born in Europe, and have more or less “native” blood in their veins. In justice to the conceptions of humanity in India, I hasten to add that, however sharp the line which in social life is drawn between the two classes of persons who for the natives bear equally the name of Hollander, this division is in no way marked by the barbaric character which is found in the American distinction of status. I cannot deny that even so there is still much in the mutual relation which is unjust and painful, and that the word lip-lap (half-caste) has often sounded in my ear as proof of the distance which as yet separates many a non-half-caste, or “white” person, from true civilization. It is true that the half-caste is only in exceptional cases admitted into European company, and that usually, if I may here adopt a very familiar expression, he is not accepted as full-blown, but not many people would represent and defend such exclusion or contempt as a just principle. Everyone is of course at liberty to choose his own entourage and company, and one cannot rightly blame the complete European for preferring intercourse with people of his own breeding to that with persons who—leaving alone their greater or lesser value from a moral or intellectual point of view—do not share his impressions and ideas, or—and this, in a presumed difference of culture, is perhaps very often the chief thing—whose prejudices have taken another direction than his own.
A lip-lap—to be more polite I suppose I should have to say a “so-called native child”; but I beg leave to adhere to the idiom which seems to be born of alliteration; I mean nothing offensive by its use: why should it be offensive?—a lip-lap may have many good qualities. The European also may have many good qualities. Both have many that are bad, and in this also they resemble each other. But the good and the bad qualities of both are too divergent to permit of their intercourse being as a rule mutually satisfactory. Besides—and for this the Government is largely responsible—the lip-lap is often badly educated. Now the point is not what the European would be like if his mental development had been
