Page:The Marquess of Dalhousie.djvu/134

126 dominion of native rulers. With the exception of the Rajput princes, these potentates are not generally of high rank or remote antiquity. Their possessions rest usually upon a title no better than our own, with this remarkable difference, that though their dominions like ours were won by the sword, that sword unlike ours is drawn to oppress, and not to defend. We have emancipated these pale and ineffectual pageants of royalty from the ordinary fate that awaits on an Oriental despotism.

'The history of Eastern monarchies, like everything else in Asia, is stereotyped and invariable. The founder of the dynasty, a brave soldier, is a desperate intriguer, and expels from the throne the feeble and degenerate scions of a more ancient house. His son may inherit some of the talent of the father; but in two or three generations luxury and indolence do their work, and the feeble inheritors of a great name are dethroned by some new adventurer, destined to bequeath a like misfortune to his degenerate descendants. Thus rebellion and deposition are the correctives of despotism, and thus, through the medium of periodical anarchy and civil war, was secured to the people of the East a recurrence, at fixed intervals, of able and vigorous princes.

'This advantage we have taken away from the inhabitants of the states of India still governed by native princes. It has been wel said, that we give