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most exacting, and, be it added, one of the most lucrative, of professions, he had not, in his early days, the time nor perhaps the inclination, to turn to public affairs. But the Ilbert Bill controversy was to him, as to many others, an eye-opener, and revealed, in its grim nakedness, our real political status. No self-respecting Indian could sit idle under the fierce light of that revelation. It was a call to a high patriotic duty to those who understood its significance; and Mr. W. C. Bonnerjea enthusiastically responded to the call. He had closely identified himself with the Congress since its birth, and the Bar felt the impulse of his lead in this matter. As a speaker he was perhaps outdistanced by some of his contemporaries; in point of enthusiasm some of his colleagues might be said to have been fired with the warmth of apostolic fervour; but in the calm, clear recognition of the situation, in the adaptation of means for a given end, in wise and statesmanlike counsel and guidance, he was without a peer amongst those whose privilege it was to work with him. His place in the Bar as a public leader to-day remains void. Mirabeau is dead. There is none to fill his chair; and Bengal mourns in silence the loss of one of the worthiest of her sons. The death of such a man was a heavy loss to the country, and especially at a time when Bengal was in the throes of the greatest agitation that convulsed the province since the establishment of British rule.

The year 1906 was a year of heavy misfortune for Bengal and India. W. C. Bonnerjea, Budruddin Tyabji, Ananda Mohan Bose, and Nalin Behari Sircar, followed one another in close succession to that land from whose bourne no traveller returns; and Bengal was then in mourning over the partition of the province.