India, its administration & progress / Sir John Strachey.

  • John Strachey
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: India, its administration & progress / Sir John Strachey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    494/552 page 464
    Lytton, who was then Viceroy, and its truth has, in this case, received ample proof. No such gathering of chiefs and princes had been seen in India, in historical times, as that of January 1877 at Delhi, when, with a pomp such as the East alone can show, all the great chiefs of the Native States of India came to make the formal acknowledgment of their dependence on the British Empress. The 1st of January 1903 saw repeated at Delhi, on a far grander scale and with far greater splendour than that of 1877, the assemblage of ruling chiefs and nobles from all the States and Provinces of India, representatives, some of them, of countries as far apart as Iceland from Con- stantinople, summoned by Lord Curzon to celebrate the Coronation of Edward the Seventh as King and Emperor. No spectacle so magnificent can have been seen in Europe since the Triumphs of Ancient Rome, and it may be doubted whether, when Aurelian passed through the city with Zenobia and the spoils of Palmyra, and “ the arms and ensigns of conquered nations,” Rome itself witnessed a more splendid pageant than when the British Viceroy entered Delhi with the brother of the Emperor, or when he afterwards received in solemn Durbar the homage of the princes of India. The time has passed in which it was necessary to defend the policy of the measure which proclaimed the paramount sovereignty of the British Crown. No Indian states- man doubts its wisdom or the profound practical importance of its political results. It has given to the British power a position different from that which it held before; it has swept away old jealousies that were not extinct, and has made more loyal the ruler of every Native State in India. Not many years ago it would have been difficult to believe that
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image