trying to pull out the peg 'from a half-sawed beam,'" Now the _Kesari_
was Tilak's own paper, and he was convicted on two seditious articles
that had appeared in its columns, but the _Kal_, another Poona sheet,
also maintained that everything was done on a prearranged plan. "There
is no sense in saying that Mr. Tilak was sentenced according to law.
There was mockery of justice, not justice." It added that "if the Hindus
are to suppose Mr. Tilak guilty because an English Court of Justice had
condemned him, Christians will have to forswear Christ because He was
crucified by a Roman Court." The _Karnatak Vaibhau_ recalled the story
of the notorious washerman who, by scandalizing Rama, had been
immortalized in the Ramayana. In the same way the names of Strachey--who
sentenced Tilak at his first trial in 1897--and Davar would be
remembered as long as history endured.

Quotations could be multiplied _ad infinitum_ and _ad nauseam_ from the
same papers--I have given only one from each--and from scores of others.
These will suffice to show what the freedom of the Press stood for in
India, in a country where there is an almost superstitious reverence
for, and faith in, the printed word, where the influence of the Press is
in proportion to the ignorance of the vast majority of its readers, and
where, unfortunately the more violent and scurrilous a newspaper
becomes, the more its popularity grows among the very classes that boast
of their education. They are by no means obscure papers, and some of
them, such as the _Kal_ the _Hind Swarajya_, and especially the
_Yugantar,_ which became at one time a real power in Bengal, achieved a
circulation hitherto unknown to the Indian Press. Can any Englishman,
however fervent his faith in liberty, regret that some at least of these
papers have now disappeared either as the result of prosecutions under
the Indian Criminal Code or from the operation of the new Press Law? The
mischief they have done still lives and will not be easily eradicated.