As may be surmised from this lengthy and extravagant title that ancient doctrine known as the divine right of kings was held in Burma out and out, without the slightest qualification or limit. Every subject was the king’s born slave, with no legal right to any property. The king was the absolute master of the lives, the liberties, the property, and the very labour of his subjects. There was little or no private ownership of land; the land belonged to the king. The cultivators were merely the king’s tenants, raising produce for his benefit, he graciously allowing them to have some of the produce for their own support. But there is a principle of compensation running through all human affairs, and even absolute monarchs cannot have things all their own way; and a throne is not always a bed of roses. The more grinding the despotism the greater the danger of revolution. Hence the only real limit to the power of the king was his dread of assassination, and this was a very real and well-grounded fear, especially in the case of a ruler like King Theebaw, with a faulty title and with no natural ability for wielding power. The King of Burma was little better than a prisoner in his own spacious palace and grounds, for he could scarcely ever leave them, for fear of the palace, and the arsenal close by, being seized in his absence by some pretender to the throne. If that should happen there was small chance of his recovering them. The chief cause of the king’s insecurity was the unbridled polygamy of the Burmese court. This resulted in crowds of queens, princes and princesses, all possible claimants to the throne, and it sometimes happened, as in the case of King Theebaw, that there was no rest for him till most of them were put to death.