Prince of India

“ CHAPTER I THE PALACE OF BLACHERNE
The Prince of India was not given to idle expectations. He might deceive others, but he seldom deceived himself. His experience served him prophetically in matters largely dependent on motives ordinarily influential with men. He was confident the Emperor would communicate with him, and soon.
The third day after the adventure at the White Castle, a stranger, mounted, armed, and showily caparisoned, appeared at the Prince's door under guidance of Uel. ”

“ While the Emperor was borne past, Lael received his notice more especially than her guardian; when they were out of hearing, he called the Acolyte to his side.
"Didst thou observe the young person yonder?" he asked.
"The coronet she wears certifies the Prince of India to be vastly rich," the other answered.
"Yes, the Princes of India, if we may judge by common report, are all rich; wherefore I thought not of that, but rather of the beauty of his daughter. She reminded me of the Madonna on the Panagia in the transept of our church at Blacherne." ”

“ This country is called the Rajputana--pronounced Raashpootana--and is composed of the most interesting of all the native states of India, twenty in number, with an area of 150,000 square miles and a population of more than 12,000,000. They are the only part of the empire where ancient political institutions and dynasties survive, and their preservation is due to the protection of the British authorities. Each prince is the hereditary chief of a military clan, the members of which are all descended from a common ancestor, and for centuries have been the lords of the soil. ”

“ This is indeed India! the land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendor and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of a hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of tradition, whose yesterdays bear date with the mouldering antiquities of the rest of the nations—the one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for alien prince and alien peasant, for lettered and ignorant, wise and fool, rich and poor, bond and free, the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the globe combined. Even now, after the lapse of a year, the delirium of those days in Bombay has not left me, and I hope never will. ”

“ It is most improbable that on the masses of India either the prince's visit, or the change in the sovereign's titles, can have any considerable effect. Indeed, to most of them these things are a seven days' wonder, and nothing more. They are naturally occupied with their own surroundings, and scarcely look beyond them. ”

“ The power of the Government is not the same all over India. In some parts of the country the title of the native princes has been quite extinguished, while in others they live almost as they did before the English went to India; they collect their taxes, maintain their armies, make their own laws, have their thrones, courts, and ceremonies, and do pretty much as they like. An English official, called a 'resident,' or political agent, lives near the prince, and when he thinks the latter is going too fast he gives a gentle hint to that effect. ”

“ The unhappy Prince who now received the name of Emperor, and who, after a life of misery and disaster, ended his days a pensioner of English merchants, never possessed a sufficient degree of power to consider himself for one moment as master of the throne." J. Mill, History of British India, book 3, chapter 4 (volume 2) . "The words 'wonderful,' 'strange,' are often applied to great historical events, and there is no event to which they have been applied more freely than to our [the English] conquest of India. ... ”

“ If any prince, after repeated warnings, fails to reform, he is replaced by another native, for Britain annexes no longer. On the other hand, a prince who does his duty and governs wisely, receives from the Emperor some mark of distinction or titular honour, nowhere in the world more valued than in India. ”

“ How shouldst thou see, strange-bred as thou art from the uttermost guile of India--this old, old India that was guileful long ages before thy island came into being? What canst thou or thy kind know of the bottomless deceits, the dregs of many years, the sediment of many men which must underlay the smooth levels of India? ”

“ After eight or ten years of quill driving in a stuffy room, one becomes a little more one's own master, and one's duties begin to be a little more varied and pleasant. One gets a chance of being sent up, occasionally, with goods; or on some message or other to one of the native princes, and then one gets treated like a prince, and sees that India is not necessarily so detestable as we have contrived to make it here. ”

“ Though not called upon, and indeed not allowed, to defend themselves from an external attack, the princes mostly have armies, more for show than use under ordinary circumstances; but then they must obtain permission to do this, and they must limit the numbers; and in some cases there is a stipulation that if the British be at war in India, the prince must lend his troops. It is in this sense that the independent princes of India are said to possess, collectively, an armed force of little less than four hundred thousand men: many of them available, according to treaty, for British service. ”

“ I think, also, that the official idea of converting the young Princes and Nobles of India into English gentlemen by means of English tutors and English studies should be carried out with great care and caution. It has not hitherto invariably succeeded, and the feeling in many States is strongly opposed to it. The danger of failure lies in the wholesome restraint of the tutor being suddenly removed, and in the young Prince being left at too early an age to select his advisers and companions. ”

“ India to-day is honoured by another distinguished guest—the most distinguished, indeed save only one, whom the citizens of the British Empire could welcome, namely, the heir to the Empire's Throne—His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. ”

“ Their progress, and their power of providing all that makes life comfortable and attractive, cannot, therefore, but be a matter of serious concern to us all. And, as regards India, the increasing knowledge of that vast Empire and the rapid and easy means of communication to all parts of it which now exist, render its remarkable and varied products and its social and political condition a source of yearly increasing interest and importance to us. ”

“ The sovereignty of the crown is everywhere unchallenged. Conversely, the duties and the services of the state are implicitly recognized, and, as a rule, faithfully discharged. It is this happy blend of authority with free will, of sentiment with self-interest, of duties with rights, that distinguishes the Indian Empire under the British crown from any other dominion of which we read in history. ”

“ It is for such objects that the servants of the Queen rule in India; and Providence will ever sustain the rulers who govern for the people's good.
'I am here only for a time. The able and earnest officers who surround me will, at no distant period, return to their English homes; but the Power which we represent will endure for ages. Hourly is this great Empire brought nearer and nearer to the throne of our Queen. The steam-vessel and the railroad enable England, year by year, to enfold India in a closer embrace. ”

“ His father's ambition for him was that he should be a great conqueror, that he should lead his troops against the neighbouring kings and overcome them, and in time make for himself a wide-stretching empire. India was in those days, as in many later ones, split up into little kingdoms, divided from each other by no natural boundary, overlooked by no sovereign power, and always at war. And the king, as fathers are, was full of dreams that this son of his should subdue all India to himself, and be the glory of his dynasty, and the founder of a great race. ”

“ There is no question that the Indian populations are possessed with a strong feeling of personal attachment for her Majesty the Queen, and while they grow yearly more and more estranged from their Anglo-Indian masters they yearly look with more and more hope to England and to her who sits upon the English throne. ”

“ Instigated by princes equally ambitious and less sagacious and more unscrupulous than he was, the people of India were persuaded that they might successfully rise against their English rulers, who had brought them out of a state of anarchy and constant warfare and misery, and had established peace and prosperity in their country. ”

“ Now their sympathies have expanded with their knowledge and their sense of responsibility; with the degree of confidence reposed in them. They recognize their obligations to their own states and their duty to the imperial throne. The British crown is no longer an impersonal abstraction, but a concrete and inspiring force. The political system of India is neither feudalism nor federation. It is embodied in no constitution; it does not rest upon treaty, and it bears no resemblance to a league. ”

“ While they are determined not much longer to lie prostrate beneath England’s feet, they would gladly stand by her side, arm in arm with her, firmly united for great ends of mutual welfare and mutual strength. An Anglo-Indian Empire is one of the splendid possibilities of the future, binding Britain and her colonies and her great Asiatic possession together into a powerful world-spanning federation of free peoples. Something like this is the dream of India’s greatest leaders, as it is also the dream of not a few of Britain’s most far-seeing minds. ”

“ For with the curious inconsistency which pervades all Indian speculations religious and political, though countless dynasties have fallen and countless rulers have come to a violent end in the chequered annals of Indian history, nothing has ever destroyed the ancient conception of royalty as partaking of the divine essence. The remoteness of the Western rulers under whose sceptre India had passed lent if anything an added mystery and majesty to the royalty they wielded. Even the avowed enemies of British rule seldom levelled their shafts at the Throne. ”

“ They are a mere drop in the ocean, though they possess the means of keeping themselves in the public eye and of having their trumpets blown and praises sung by the press and from the platform both in India and in England. The British too are interested in keeping them at the front, in parading their loyalty and devotion to the{90} empire, and in magnifying their importance and greatness.
There are few among the nobility of India who command any real respect either from the educated section of their countrymen in general, or even from their own subjects and dependents. ”

“ Most of the princes now have automobiles, which they look upon much as a child does its latest toy. The mass of the people depend upon the bullocks and horses to cart them about. There are now, also, in most parts of the empire, telephones and telegraphs: but they are such ancient systems and so unreliable that they are not to be compared with ours. India is through and through a lazy country, where nobody is in a hurry. ”

“ The loyalty that stimulates the feudatory Princes and brings them into closer union with the Empire of India, permeates their States, and is shared by their nobles and subjects—but it does more than that: it sets an example to the whole of India. It counteracts in a large measure the efforts of those who would seek to stir up discontent, and it emphasizes in the most unmistakable manner the advantages of an Empire founded on the confidence of the many tribes, castes, and religions of India as a whole. ”

“ I recognise the sons of my old allies, the Maharaja of Cashmere and Puttiala: the Sikh chiefs of Malwa and the Manjha; the Rajpût chiefs of the hills: the Mahommedan Mulliks of Peshawur and Kohat; the Sirdars of the Derajat, of Hazara, and of Delhi. All have gathered together to do honour to their old ruler. My friends! Let me tell you of the great interest which the illustrious Queen of England takes in all matters connected with the welfare, comfort and contentment of the people of India. ”

“ It is through the kingdom proper that advantage or disadvantage must accrue to the empire. If it can be said that India has been blessed by England--and indeed it has to a certain extent--then we have a parallel case. ”

“ For the first time in history she becomes a part of another empire. India to-day is not an empire by herself, but a part of the British Empire, as Britain once was a part of the Roman Empire. For the first time in history she has been reduced to the position of a dependency. For the first time in her history she is ruled from the outside. ”

“ By my presence with the Queen-Empress I am also anxious to show our affection for the loyal Princes and faithful Peoples of India, and how dear to our hearts is the welfare and happiness of the Indian Empire. ”

“ Your jewel shall pass to the future generations as an Imperial Heirloom, and shall always stand as the token of the first meeting of the English Queen with the ladies of India. I thank you for your congratulations and for the good wishes expressed by you towards the King-Emperor and myself, and join my prayers to yours for the strength, unity, and well- being of the Empire. ”