Pity is it to lose a word of this ruler, who rules in fashion so
different from the law-giving of the usual bigwig. But space denies us
longer leave to delve in this rich mine of justice. It is a fine
picture--one that the world does not see enough of--this victorious old
soldier riding through the conquered land intent on justice, sparing
himself nothing to lift up the poor, to free the toiler, to unbind the
slave. A strong man, terrible only to the unjust, spreading everywhere
the one grand law of his life--"A privileged class cannot be permitted."
With him the quibbler, the _doctrinaire_, the political economist, has
no place. "Well did Napoleon say," he writes, "that the _doctrinaire_
and the political economist would ruin the most flourishing kingdom in
ten years. Well, they have no place yet in Scinde; there are no Whig
poor-laws here. Oh, it is glorious thus to crush Scindian Whiggism! and
don't I grind it till my heart dances? The poor fishermen who are now
making their lying howls of complaint at the door of my tent are right,
though I can't yet find the truth in the midst of their falsehoods." But
he stops by the shore of Lake Manchur until the truth is found out; and
then we read: "Marched this morning, having penetrated the mystery. The
collector has without my knowledge raised the taxation 40 per cent on
the very poorest class of the population. He is an amiable man, and so
religious that he would not cough on a Sunday, yet he has done a deed of
such cruelty as is enough to raise an insurrection. This discovery of
oppression is alone sufficient to repay the trouble of my journey." A
despot, you will say, reader, is this soldier judge, thus
Riding forth redressing human wrong.
Yes, a despot truly, and one who, if history had held more of them, we
might to-day have known a good deal less about human misery than we do.
And now with your permission we will proceed into the Cutchee Hills.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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