THE KING’S SPEECH.

The King commenced his speech. He began in those low, soft, musical tones which compel attention from a crowd.

He told his people of the delight it was to him to meet them; and how, in that vast assemblage of thoughtful men (and he should that day demand the utmost of their thought) he believed that there was not one single human being who was not a friend of his--who was not indeed devotedly attached to his person and his government.

He went into various details, which we need not recount here, to show what had been done during the past year; and he dwelt at some length upon the ever-increasing prosperity which had gladdened the streets of Abibah. He spoke of their improvements in manufacture, especially of the manufacture of iron, and pointed out to them how wise and how advantageous had been the policy which had made them the manufacturers of iron for all that part of the world. “See,” he said, “the fruits of a generous policy. Had we kept this art to ourselves, we might, it is true, have been almost supernaturally strong to resist invasion; but now we not only can defy invasion, but we have gained the goodwill of all the people both far and near, and, in the last three years, our city is doubled in extent.”

From all parts of the vast assemblage, at that and at other portions of the speech, the cries of “Maralah! maralah!”--“He has said it! He has said it!” (which corresponded to our “Hear, hear,”) were heard.

While the King was giving these details there was a gentle murmur of under-talk amongst the crowd, for neither civilized nor uncivilized men can long endure the narration of details, however interesting they may be, or rather however interesting they ought to be. But this murmur was entirely hushed into a supreme silence when the King changed the subject, and began to speak about the mock-fight.

This subject he touched upon with great skill and delicacy. He took all the blame upon himself, saying that he ought to have known that the Sheviri, even in play, could not bear to be defeated. He was glad that he had been one of the principal sufferers. With regard to those few poor men who had fallen, our good Queen, he said, had taken care to provide for their families.

When he ceased speaking on this topic, the crowd felt that a weight had been taken off them, and there was a general murmur of satisfaction, each man congratulating his neighbour that no evil thing had happened to them, and saying how good and kind the King was, so ill too as he looked from the effects of his wounds.

Realmah won many hearts by this part of his speech.

Then there came a long and elaborate story, or rather fable. Some such fable had always been told by Realmah on these occasions, and for this occasion it had cost him many a weary midnight hour to think over this fable and to prepare it. All the rest of his speech flowed from his heart, and was the gift of the moment; but the fable was a work of art. He was not so much in advance in thought of his fellow-countrymen as not to think these fables a most significant way of conveying ideas; and what to us would seem childish, was to him a great flight of imagination and of thoughtfulness.

The story was all about a crane and a serpent, and it told how the good crane was loved and favoured by everybody--brought good fortune wherever it alighted, and, in fact, was a sort of much-loved king. While, on the other hand, the serpent was hated by all living creatures; and even when it was innocent, and had left its poison behind it for the day, the remembrance of its treachery and its malignity made all creatures pitiless towards it, and anxious to destroy it.

The people did not quite perceive the drift of the story, which, however, was soon to be made manifest to them; but they applauded it, because any story about beasts, or birds, or reptiles, was very welcome to them.

The King then dwelt upon the various embassies which had reached the town of Abibah in the course of the preceding year, and showed his people what credit and what vast advantages had flowed from the commanding position which the Sheviri now occupied amongst the sons of men. “Is it not better,” he said, “to be called upon to arbitrate than to be deluded into a participation in their trumpery wars? Not that we fear war--all the nations know that; and there lives not a prince so daring as, even in his dreams, to contemplate a war with the Sheviri;” and all the people shouted again with renewed enthusiasm, “Maralah! maralah!”

“What,” Realmah continued, “could be said of the frenzy of those who should dare to attack the men by whose valour and sagacity alone the warlike nations of the North (now no longer dreaded) had been triumphantly beaten back to their inhospitable, ice-bound climes?”

And now he dexterously changed his mode of speech; he dwelt upon the beauty and the power possessed not only by himself, but by every one in that assemblage, even the meanest, of being as it were an arbiter of the fate of surrounding nations, of settling quarrels, of appeasing feuds, of being, if he might presume to say so, humble representatives upon earth of the great God whose name he did not dare to mention, who loved all men, and only wished that all mankind should be one brotherhood.

Here the exclamations of applause were redoubled, and the soft voices of women might also have been heard exclaiming “Maralah! maralah!”

Realmah then, with great tact, alluded to the labours of his Council; he was but the meanest of the servants of his people. What should he, a comparatively young man (here there was a smile on the faces of the whole assemblage, which each man and each woman strove to suppress), be, if he had not the guidance, the affectionate guidance, of their fathers, who had grown old in the service of the country, and who stood around him, a devoted band of trusty councillors, second to none upon this green earth?

He then, with the skill of an accomplished orator, affected to hesitate and to be overcome, while from the most distant outskirts of the vast assemblage there arose cries of the most endearing encouragement. They called upon the gods to bless him, to prosper all his doings, to preserve him to them for untold years; and even Realmah, who had meant the interlude as a mere artful point in oratory, was himself, for the moment, overcome by the vast display of real affection exhibited towards him by his people. He absolutely wept; but knowing how mistaken a thing it is for an orator to be really overcome by his feelings, he threw himself back upon the thought of the great work he had to undertake, and of the immense difficulty that it would be to overcome his people’s prejudices. He himself, however, scarcely recognised the effect he had produced,--that there was not a man in that vast assemblage who at that moment would not have thought it almost treason to presume to differ from their great King.

A little incident, too, succeeded in recovering Realmah more than almost anything else could have done. His eyes had fallen upon the critical Condore; and, to the King’s amazement, Condore, who by the way was always fascinated by oratory, was one of those who gesticulated most furiously, and made the most tempestuous exclamations of applause.

But Condore, true to his critical character, the moment he found the King’s eyes upon him, changed immediately, and began to move his head from right to left, in token of the severest disapproval. Realmah, who like most men of genius had the keenest sense of what was ridiculous, was amazingly tickled by Condore’s behaviour; and the good Condore probably at that moment unconsciously fulfilled his mission on the earth, for he succeeded in restoring the King, who had been nearly overcome by these outbursts of affection, to the full mastery of his usual cool, crafty, self-possessed nature.

Realmah resumed his oration, feeling that it was almost the supreme moment of his life. “What then have we gained, and how have we gained it? We have gained the affection of all the peoples who dwell within four hundred innesangs.[39] Now look,” he said, “what is it that governs? Is it force? Force lasts only as long as it is present, but the power of affection lasts for ever, speaks even out of the tomb. Most of us here present are men.--Are we ruled? Doubtless we are. By whom are we ruled? Is it by those who have strength to compel us, or is it by those whose weakness and whose delicacy contain their most undoubted strength? What man amongst us, from the king on his throne to the fisherman whose daily bread is precarious, will not own, if he be a man, to an infinite desire to win and to gratify those who are dearest to him in his household, his wives and his children?” (There was enormous shouting in the crowd, with loud bursts of laughter, in which the women did not join, and great cries of “Maralah! maralah!”)

Footnote 39:

Innesang, a measure in use with the Sheviri, being 400 times 4 feet, taking the average length of the human foot as the unit.

The King proceeded: “I have spoken, it may be jestingly, it may be that the most earnest thoughts that I have ever uttered underlie this playful speech. Do you think that the law of affection is confined to individual men and women alone? May there not be states that should feel towards one another a similar relation? And now I will tell you what I have felt from my youth upwards, and, if ever you have loved your King, you must listen to him when he seeks to persuade you of that which, from his earliest years, has been his deepest wish, and to which the endeavours of his years of maturity--years not passed without suffering, such as only a king can know--have been devoted. What has been the one thing which has long prevented our being supremely loved and admired by the nations around us; which has stood in the way of our being loved by them with the devotedness which a woman has for the lord of her household, her chief? It has been our possession of the great fortress of Ravala-Mamee. This, and this alone, has alienated the affections of the nations from us. When we were a weak people, it might have been well to preserve it; but now we are beyond all fears, and our rule will best be enlarged, maintained, and preserved, by our possessing the entire confidence and love of all the surrounding nations.

“I am for abandoning this fortress” (there were cries of “Maralah nevee”--“He has not spoken it!” The King disregarded them; he continued): “Is it much to confide in your king? There are not many times in a man’s life when it becomes him to say what he has done; but there are such times. Have not I--have not we” (turning to his councillors)--“raised you from a petty state to the most commanding nation known in this part of the world? Is it for ordinary men to measure the wisdom of chiefs? But I need not upbraid you. I see by your countenances that you are only too willing to believe in your king, who has led you on so often to victory; who has made each of you a conqueror; and who now seeks, with your aid, which you will not refuse your king, to place your dominion upon a basis which cannot be removed--the love, the affection, and the gratitude of all the surrounding nations, upon whose necks you might have trampled, but to whom you say, ‘Rise, and be one with us, who are the leaders of arts, of knowledge, and of policy--the indomitable Sheviri.’” The vast assemblage answered to the King’s noble words with corresponding enthusiasm, and there was but one cry, or if there was, the voices of dissentients were drowned by the predominant shout of “Maralah! maralah!”

The King, upon whose face there beamed the light of joy such as no man had yet seen upon it, resumed: “It is not I--who am I that I should guide your councils? It is your fathers, the venerable men who stand around me, who sanction all that I propose, and who, far superior to me, have overcome their attachment to a policy in which they were bred; which they have long maintained by arts and by arms; but which, with the greatness of minds open to conviction, they are now determined to supersede by a policy of wise and affectionate conciliation.” The surrounding members of the Council intimated, by expressive gestures, their consent, and the approving shouts of the whole assemblage were redoubled.

Realmah resumed his speech; and resolved, in one splendid peroration, long ago prepared in those midnight walks of his up and down the balcony, to fix upon the minds of his people his own prophetic ideas. I call them prophetic, for, alas! they were not to be realized in his time; but such ideas were to be for the guidance of nations to whom the very name of Realmah, of his nation, of his generation, would be entirely foreign, and to whom his wars, his alliances, and his suzerainties would be as utterly unknown as the battles of the kites and the crows, or any of the inferior animals.

Realmah resumed: “And now these are my last words to-day to all of you. And it may be that the King may not speak to you many more times, for he is feeble”--(from all parts of the assemblage arose shouts of “Long live the King!”)--“yes, he is feeble; and he knows, though he has sought to disguise it from you and from himself, that he is not the man he was. He would have you drink in these words as if indeed they were his last. He has sought to be a father to you; and all his own joys and sorrows have been put aside to fulfil to each one of you the loving relation of a father. And you have been good sons to him.

“What man amongst you is there that does not love Realmah?” (The audience were moved to an inexpressible degree.) “But I come back to my great subject. What is the highest power? What is the greatest force? What is the most unbounded dominion? Is it the power of the sword? Is it the force of arms? Is it the dominion gained by conquest? Lives there one amongst you, the most daring, the highest placed, whom Realmah could not, by a word, condemn to death? But what would the King gain by the loss of a loving subject? And so it is with each one of us, all of whom are kings. We will rule in the hearts of surrounding nations, and not diminish or destroy them. It shall be for ever said of the Sheviri that they were dauntless in battle, merciful in conquest, and good lords whom all men desired to live under, and whose beneficent sway spread out undivided, unresisted, unopposed, from where that bright luminary rises joyous in the strength of youth, to where, surrounded by his purple guards, he descends into the waters that receive him tenderly, and refresh him for the labours of the ensuing day.

“I say again, What is conquest? What is power? What is domination?” And here, strangely enough, Realmah concluded in a form of speech that was adopted on a similar occasion by one of our own greatest orators,[40] so true is it that the highest flights of oratory are alike in all nations, and under all circumstances. “To have found the peoples of this vast region sunk in barbarism,[41] living from day to day a mean, care-driven, hazardous life, each man set against his neighbour, each chief against his brother chief, each state against its neighbour state; their arms of defence and offence the weapons of children; their habitations, huts; their policy, only craft; their ambition, only self-interest; their mode of life, little better than that of the wild animals of the woods--to have raised all these people till they are men, statesmen, members of great nations--these are the triumphs of reason[42] over barbarism. This is the just, the only just, and God-rewarded conquest insured to us by our arts and our morals, by our divine policy and our heaven-descended laws.”

Footnote 40:

Lord Macaulay, in his Indian speech.

Footnote 41:

The word for barbarism is “_pralo-mi-mamee_,”--“only able to count 1, 2, 3.”

Footnote 42:

The word was a long compound, “sitting alone at night.”

The King ceased. The assemblage was moved to a degree that had never been known before, even at these high festivals. Upon their recovering from their emotion, they shouted with one voice, “Let it be as the King has said; we are his slaves,--long live Realmah.”

But, strange to say, the King, for a minute or two, moved not, but gazed at his people with a glassy stare, as if all intelligence had gone out of him. Then, recovering himself, he grasped at the balcony, afterwards, in a moment, at the arm of the faithful Omki, who was close to him. “Stay near me,” he muttered in strangely indistinct words, “guards, close around me: let the trumpets sound.”

The faithful Omki divined the coming danger. Leaning heavily upon Omki, and tottering down the steps, surrounded by his body-guard, and followed by the councillors, whose looks to one another betrayed their fears, the King was half led, half carried, to his palace, the populace remaining in profound ignorance of the sudden seizure by illness of their beloved sovereign.