And yet we were only sixteen miles from the capital, and on one of the main roads of the province.  He was, too, a man of fair intelligence and, though we conversed in Kanarese, he told me that he knew some English, which proved that he was a man of a certain degree of education.  On my return to my estates I found that, though the natives had heard of the Assembly (probably because the native representative lived within a few miles of my house), no one seemed to take any interest in its proceedings, and I do not remember having been asked a single question with reference to it.  The explanation, of course, of this state of things is that the people are perfectly contented, and satisfied with the steady progress they see going on around them.  There is therefore no demand[14] for representative institutions, or the acquisition of power by the people, for while they see abundant signs of progress, there is no oppression, and therefore there are no real grievances.  But, though there is no such demand, I must caution the reader against supposing that I do not attach much importance to the Assembly as a highly valuable means of bringing the people and their rulers into friendly touch with each other, and as a most useful means of inter-communication regarding every fact that it is important for the ruler and the ruled to know.  Such an assembly is indeed of the highest value, and I have no doubt that a similar kind of assembly would be valuable in many parts of India.  And such assemblies will in the future be far more necessary and valuable than such institutions would have been in the past, because, in former times, the rulers, not being nearly so much burdened with office and desk-work as they now are, had far more leisure time to mix with the people, and hear from them the expression of their wants or grievances.

I have alluded previously to the lying and seditious pamphlets which have been circulated by the so-called Indian National Congress (and I say so-called because, as we shall see, there is really nothing national about it), and allude to them again partly in order to point out that they are a most cheering evidence of the universal good government in India, because, had it been really ill governed, there would have been no occasion to issue the pamphlets in question.  The fact is, that the agitators of the Congress found it necessary to create a case as a ground-work for demanding representative institutions for India, and began by imitating the action of the Irish agitators.  And here, for the benefit of those who have not had time to study Indian affairs, it may be as well to give a brief description of the Indian Congress, more especially as those who know but very little of India may confound it with the kind of assembly we have in Mysore, and which I have suggested for adoption in other parts of India.