Page:Ranjit Singh (Griffin).djvu/18

12 asking to be ruled, are the very foundations of their throne. A single mistake or a pungent epigram may cost the heir of an adventurer his crown; but the hereditary ruler can securely sit, like the Olympian gods, above the thunder. His mistakes are speedily forgotten, his follies are forgiven unto seventy times seven, and, if he falls, it is less from the waywardness of fortune than from his own determination to commit political suicide.

If this be the case in Europe, far more is it so in India, whose conservatism is intense, and where prescription and tradition and heredity outweigh, in popular estimation, any personal virtues of a ruler. In a country in which robbery and murder were honoured as hereditary occupations, and where dancing girls place their fragile virtue under the special protection of a deity, it will readily be understood that the splendid attributes of kingship gather around them a reverence and authority which are all but impregnable. Indian history, filled as it is with royal catastrophes and assassination and changing dynasties, does not, if read aright, conflict with the popular belief in the divine right of kings even to rule badly. India has had stormy experiences, and its rich provinces have been for many hundred years the coveted prize of successive hordes of invaders from the North-West, who have swept over the continent leaving ruin behind them, while the many hostile races and nations which make up its population have always been engaged in internecine strife. But the heart of