The next Board day, accordingly, Empson appeared, and it soon became evident that Blunt was to have his vote.
Fotheringham was calm, passive, and behaved throughout with the air of a man who thought it due to his colleagues to go patiently through with the discussion, but whose mind was thoroughly made up. The fight soon waxed vehement.
'Look,' said Blunt, 'at the case of cotton in the Kutchpurwanee District.'
'Really,' said Fotheringham, 'I fail to see the analogy between cotton and salt.' This was one of Fotheringham's stupid remarks, which exasperated both Empson and Blunt and made them flash looks of intelligence across the table at each other.
'Then,' Blunt said with emphasis, 'I'll explain the analogy. Cotton was twopence-halfpenny per pound and hard to get at that. What did we do? We laid out ten lakhs in irrigation, another five lakhs in roads, a vast deal more in introducing European machinery and supervision; raised the whole sum by an average rate on cotton cultivation--and what is the result? Why, last year the outcome was more than double what it was before, and the price a halfpenny a pound lower at least.'
'And what does that prove?' asked Fotheringham, who never could be made to see anything that he chose not to see; 'As I said before, where is the analogy?' Blunt gave a cough which meant that he was uttering execrations internally, and took a large pinch of snuff. Fotheringham looked round with the satisfied air of a man who had given a clencher to his argument, and whose opponents could not with decency profess any longer to be unconvinced.
'I am against it,' said Cockshaw, 'because I am against everything. We are over-governing the country. The one thing that India wants is to be let alone. We should take a leaf out of the books of our predecessors--collect our revenue, as small an one as possible, shun all changes like the devil--and let the people be.'
'That is out of the question,' said Empson, whom thirty years of officialdom had still left an enthusiast at heart; '"Rest for India" is the worst of all the false cries which beset and bewilder us; it means, for one thing, a famine every ten years at least; and famines, you know, mean death to them and insolvency to us.'