nd the patterns for the chairs. We planted it and it
grew--monstrous as a banian. Now we are choked by the roots of it
spreading so thickly in this fat soil of Bengal. The speaker continues.
Bit by bit we builded this dome, visible and invisible, the crown of
Writers' Buildings, as we have built and peopled the buildings. Now we
have gone too far to retreat, being "tied and bound with the chain of
our own sins." The speech continues. We made that florid sentence. That
torrent of verbiage is Ours. We taught him what was constitutional and
what was unconstitutional in the days when Calcutta smelt. Calcutta
smells still, but We must listen to all that he has to say about the
plurality of votes and the threshing of wind and the weaving of ropes of
sand. It is Our own fault.

The speech ends, and there rises a grey Englishman in a black
frock-coat. He looks a strong man, and a worldly. Surely he will say,
"Yes, Lala Sahib, all this may be true talk, but there's a vile smell in
this place, and everything must be cleaned in a week, or the Deputy
Commissioner will not take any notice of you in _durbar_." He says
nothing of the kind. This is a Legislative Council, where they call each
other "Honourable So-and-So's." The Englishman in the frock-coat begs
all to remember that "we are discussing principles, and no consideration
of the details ought to influence the verdict on the principles." Is he
then like the rest? How does this strange thing come about? Perhaps
these so English office fittings are responsible for the warp. The
Council Chamber might be a London Board-room. Perhaps after long years
among the pens and papers its occupants grew to think that it really is,
and in this belief give _resumes_ of the history of Local
Self-Government in England.

The black frock-coat, emphasising his points with his spectacle-case, is
telling his friends how the parish was first the unit of
self-government. He then explains how burgesses were elected, and in
tones of deep fervour announces, "Commissioners of Sewers are elected in
the same way." Whereunto all this lecture? Is he trying to run a motion
through under cover of a cloud of words, essaying the well-known
"cuttle-fish trick" of the West?

He abandons England for a while, and _now_ we get a glimpse of the
cloven hoof in a casual reference to Hindus and Mahometans. The Hindus
will lose nothing by the complete establishment of plurality of votes.
They will have the control of th