The worst of it is that he and his co-religionists, who are many, and the
landed proprietors, also, of Hindu race, are frightened and put out by this
election business and by the importance we have bestowed on lawyers, pleaders,
writers, and the like, who have, up to now, been in abject submission to them.
They say little, but after all they are the most important fagots in the great
bundle of communities, and all the glib bunkum in the world would not pay for
their estrangement. They have controlled the land."
"But I am assured that experience of local self-government in your
municipalities has been most satisfactory, and when once the principle is
accepted in your centres, don't you know, it is bound to spread, and these
important--ah--people of yours would learn it like the rest. I see no
difficulty at all," and the smooth lips closed with the complacent snap
habitual to Pagett, M.P., the "man of cheerful yesterdays and confident
tomorrows."
Orde looked at him with a dreary smile.
"The privilege of election has been most reluctantly withdrawn from scores of
municipalities, others have had to be summarily suppressed, and, outside the
Presidency towns, the actual work done has been badly performed. This is of
less moment, perhaps--it only sends up the local death-rates--than the fact
that the public interest in municipal elections, never very strong, has waned,
and is waning, in spite of careful nursing on the part of Government
servants.
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