ed.
If indeed I were the absolute monarch of Mysore I could certainly, I feel
sure, create Parliamentary Institutions, but only in one way that I can
think of. I should misgovern the country and worry and oppress the people,
and at the same time keep the Assembly going, and after a time I should
thus create a desire on the part of the representatives to have some means
of keeping me in check. But at present there is no one to keep in check.
The Government is really too good for the creation of any desire for
change. For the ruler of Mysore is not only desirous of meeting the people
half way, but even of anticipating their wants, and the people have a
ready means of making their wants known. And, when making known these
wants, their representatives are not only free from the expense and
annoyances to which Members of Parliament are exposed, but have a most
enjoyable time of it as well, for the Assembly is held at the time of the
great annual festival of the Dassara, when there are wonderfully
picturesque processions, illuminations, and displays of fireworks. In
fact, were it not for these attractions, I feel sure that it would be a
difficult matter to get the representatives together, because, though they
are of course easily able to find many wants, there are no grievances so
real as to make the people generally take much, or indeed any, interest in
the proceedings of the Assembly, and in this connection I may mention the
following confirmatory facts.

On the morning following the breaking up of the Assembly I left Mysore to
make a tour in Coorg to visit the plantations in that district, and drove
first of all sixteen miles to breakfast at a Travellers' Bungalow on the
main road. While breakfast was being prepared I went for a stroll, and
fell into conversation with the first native I met, who, I found, was,
with the aid of a number of labourers, working a plantation of palms and
fruit-trees at a short distance from the bungalow. I expressed a wish to
see the plantation, and, when on our way there, told him that I had just
been attending the Representative Assembly at Mysore. Just imagine my
feelings, when he told me that he had never heard of it, nor indeed when
he did hear of it did he ask me a single question about it. 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 s