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The rumour, I referred to in my last letter, about Ekbal Ali is confirmed by a local contemporary who says, "Mr. Justice Ekbal Ali has after all withdrawn his resignation and will return here in a few days." He has "withdrawn his resignation" no doubt in the hope of getting higher pay than that he was in receipt of as a Judge of the High Court. And we find for the second time within the last few months that resignation in the vocabulary of the rulers is not indicative of one's desire to retire from the service, but an application for increase of pay. I do not at all grudge Mr. Ekbal Ali the addition he expects to his former salary,—for what is it when compared with the large sums that regularly go to secure unscrupulous support and petty flattery? But I should like to know why it is that powerful men have been at such great pains to get him back? It is that the Government—that is they—cannot get on without him?
What has become of the Salar Jung Debt Commission? a friend asked me the other day. As I could not answer the question myself, I must request the powers-that-be to answer it pro bono publico. The last I heard of the commission was from the Nawab Vicar-ul-mulk himself. He told me more than seven months ago that the report of the Commission had been nearly ready and it would be published soon. If the report was nearly ready so long ago, it could certainly not be said that it is not ready now. What has become of the report then? What conclusions has the Commission come to as to the deliquents who have been under suspension for many months now? No answer is forthcoming. It is whispered that the object of those who called the Commission into existence was merely to annoy and humble some men who could not be got to play into their hands. And the extraordinary long delay there has been in the publishing of the results of the Commission's inquiry lends significance to this whisper.
Now and then a paragraph goes the rounds which has a history worth telling. The imagination, called into play by sheer necessity, of those active and ingenious benefactors
