Mr. Seaton was a very good and a very wise man.
Our European governors of the present day are not at all the same
kind of thing. I asked Mr. B., a judge, the same question many years
afterwards, and he told me that he thought the rupees were the best
things he had found in India. I asked Mr. T., the Commissioner, and
he told me that he thought the tobacco which he smoked in his hookah
was the best thing. And pray, sir, what do you think the best thing?'
'Why, Nawab Sahib, 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, Nawab Sahib, 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 Kashmir, no
midwife is allowed to attend a woman in her confinement till a heavy
tax has been paid to Ranjit 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.
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