It
is composed almost entirely of those of the literary or clerkly
castes who have received an English education."
"Surely that s a very important class. Its members must be the
ordained leaders of popular thought."
"Anywhere else they might he leaders, but they have no social
weight in this topsy-turvy land, and though they have been
employed in clerical work for generations they have no prac. tical
knowledge of affairs. A ship's clerk is a useful person, but he it
scarcely the captain; and an orderly-room writer, however smart he
may be, is not the colonel. You see, the writer class in India has
never till now aspired to anything like command. It wasn t allowed
to. The Indian gentleman, for thousands of years past, has
resembled Victor Hugo's noble:
'Un vrai sire
Chatelain
Laisse ecrire
Le vilain.
Sa main digne
Quand il signe
Egratigne
Le velin.
And the little egralignures he most likes to make have been scored
pretty deeply by the sword."
"But this is childish and medheval nonsense!"
"Precisely; and from your, or rather our, point of view the pen is
mightier than the sword. In this country it's otherwise. The fault
lies in our Indian balances, not yet adjusted to civilized weights
and measures."
"Well, at all events, this literary class represent the natural
aspirations and wishes of the people at large, though it may not
exactly lead them, and, in spite of all you say, Orde, I defy you to
find a really sound English Radical who would not sympathize
with those aspirations.
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