Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/186

176 he chose to show his face in public, the royal salute of his “rank.” But the English had deliberately come to the conclusion that this was a foolish and ridiculous waste of the national powder, and ought to cease forever.

Thus the Court — Emperor Begums, Sultans and Sultanas, Shazadas, Eunuchs, and followers, all in a ferment of dissension and hatred of English rule—became a center to which all disaffected elements naturally tended.

These men became the life and soul of the great conspiracy for the overthrow of the English power and the expulsion of Christianity from India, and for the elevation once more of Mohammedan supremacy over the Hindoo nations. Yielding to their influence, and that of the Sepoys, as will be narrated in our next chapter, the old Emperor committed himself fully, without counting the cost, to the fearful struggle.

The reader can well understand what an “elephant” the English Government had here on its hands, and in what perplexity they were as to what they should do with it.

This “high-born” population thus pressed for the means of subsistence within these walls, instead of being required to shift for themselves and quietly sink among the crowd without. When the writer reached India, in 1856, this state of things was ripening to its natural consummation. The different members of the Emperor's great family circle were fast becoming rallying points for the dissatisfied and disaffected. Let loose upon the community, they were every-where disgusting people by their insolence and knavery, so that the English magistrates in Delhi had to stand between them and their victims. The prestige of their names was fast diminishing, and they were falling into utter insignificance and contempt. This was true even of the highest of them. It was these “idle hands” that Satan employed to do much of the “mischief” wrought during the fearful rebellion of 1857—an event which consummated their own ruin, and sent scores of them to the gallows.

In the “good old days” of their rule they had their own way of