Tilak's emissaries, mostly Brahmans of the Deccan, brought, moreover, to their nefarious work the added prestige of a caste which seldom condescends to rub shoulders with those whose mere contact may involve "pollution." In this, as in many other cases, politics were closely mixed up with philanthropy, for the conditions of labour in India are by no means wholly satisfactory, and it would be unfair to deny to many of Tilak's followers a genuine desire to mitigate the evils and hardships to which their humbler fellow-creatures were exposed.

Prominent amongst such evils was the growth of drunkenness, and it would have been all to his honour that Tilak hastened to take up the cause of temperance, had he not perverted it, as he perverted everything else, to the promotion of race-hatred.

His primary motives may have been excellent, but he subordinated all things to his ruling anti-British passion, whilst the fervour of his philanthropic professions won for him the sympathy and co-operation of many law-abiding citizens who would otherwise have turned a deaf ear to his political doctrines.

He must have had a considerable command of funds for the purposes of his propaganda, and though he doubtless had not a few willing and generous supporters, many subscribed from fear of the lash which he knew how to apply through the Press to the tepid and the recalcitrant, just as his gymnastic societies sometimes resolved themselves into juvenile bands of dacoities to swell the coffers of _Swaraj_.

Not even Mr.Gokhale with all his moral and intellectual force could stem the flowing tide of Tilak's popularity in the Deccan; and in order not to be swept under he was perhaps often compelled like many other Moderates to go further than his own judgment can have approved.