What does he really think of the Congress after
all, and of the elective system?"
"Hates it all like poison. When you are sure of a majority, election
is a fine system; but you can scarcely expect the Mahommedans,
the mast mas terful and powerful minority in the country, to
contemplate their own extinction with joy. 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
electiop 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, hut 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'm 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 to-morrows."
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"The privilege of election has been most reluctantly withdrawn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.
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