To begin with, our death rate's five times higher
than yours--I speak now for the brutal bureaucrat--and we work on the refuse
of worked-out cities and exhausted civilizations, among the bones of the dead.
In the case of the Congress meetings, the only notable fact is that the
priests of the altar are British, not Buddhist, Jain or Brahminical, and that
the whole thing is a British contrivance kept alive by the efforts of Messrs.
Hume, Eardley, Norton, and Digby."
"You mean to say, then, it's not a spontaneous movement?"
"What movement was ever spontaneous in any true sense of the word? This seems
to be more factitious than usual. You seem to know a great deal about it; try
it by the touchstone of subscriptions, a coarse but fairly trustworthy
criterion, and there is scarcely the color of money in it. The delegates write
from England that they are out of pocket for working expenses, railway fares,
and stationery--the mere pasteboard and scaffolding of their show. It is, in
fact, collapsing from mere financial inanition."
"But you cannot deny that the people of India, who are, perhaps, too poor to
subscribe, are mentally and morally moved by the agitation," Pagett insisted.
"That is precisely what I do deny.
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