'Why, Nawāb Sāhib, I am always very well pleased when I am free from pain, and can get my nostrils full of cool air, and my mouth full of cold water in this hot land of yours; and I think most of my countrymen are the same. Next to these, the thing we all admire most in India, Nawāb Sāhib, is the entire exemption which you and I and every other gentleman, native or European, enjoy from the taxes which press so heavily upon them in other countries.[12] In Kāshmīr, no midwife is allowed to attend a woman in her confinement till a heavy tax has been paid to Ranjīt Singh for the infant; and in England, a man cannot let the light of heaven into his house till he has paid a tax for the window.'[13]
'Nor keep a dog, nor shoot a partridge in the jungle, I am told,' said the Nawāb.
'Quite true, Nawāb Sāhib.'
'Hindustan, sir,' said he, 'is, after all, the best country in the world; the only thing wanted is a little more (rozgār) employment for the educated classes under Government.'
'True, Nawāb Sāhib, we might, no doubt, greatly multiply this employment to the advantage of those who got the places, but we should have to multiply at the same time the taxes, to the great disadvantage of those who did not get them.'
'True, very true, sir,' said my old friend.
Notes:
1. January, 1836.
2. Farīdpur is a mistake for Farīdābād, a small town sixteen miles from Delhi, founded in 1607 by Shaikh Farīd, treasurer of Jahāngīr, to protect the high road between Agra and Delhi.
3. The beds are dry in the cold season, but the streams, which flow from the hills to the south of Delhi, are torrents in the rainy season.