Page:Malabari, Behramji M. - Gujarat and the Gujaratis (1882).djvu/95

Rh unacquainted with the concerns of rural life in Gujarát, but destitute of all sympathy with the people. The sure and short road to popularity at head-quarters is increase of revenue. To the unscrupulous official nothing is impossible in this direction. The Bombay papers have reported many instances of oppressive taxation introduced on frivolous pretexts, and various taxes of the kind are still levied, although the nominal reasons for them no longer exist. Sir Mádav Row has sense enough to see that, with the people arrayed against his administration, he has no chance of ultimate and permanent success. Intelligent and beneficent as that administration has been, as compared with the state of things which preceded it, there is yet lacking in it, as in its "Imperial" model, many of the qualities essential to efficiency.

Popular disaffection is already finding vent in newspaper articles and in anonymous pamphlets, in which the writers accuse Sir Mádav Row and his co-adjutors of crimes the most repulsive and hateful. These may be all—no doubt some of them are—a tissue of malicious fabrications, but they augur no good to the now very much-embarrassed ministry.