At
present, these guarantees are not so. They have concentrated at the
capital all who subsist upon them, and surrounded the Sovereign and
his Court with an overgrown aristocracy, which tends to alienate him
more and more from his people. The people derive no benefit from, and
have no feeling or interest in common with, this city aristocracy,
which tends more and more to hide their Sovereign from their view,
and to render him less and less sensible of his duties and high
responsibilities; and what would be a blessing under a good, becomes
an evil under a bad system, such as that which has prevailed since
those guarantees began.
In this overgrown city there is a perpetual turmoil of processions,
illuminations, and festivities. The Sovereign spends all that he can
get in them, and has not the slightest wish to perpetuate his name by
the construction of any useful or ornamental work beyond its suburbs.
All the members of his family and of the city aristocracy follow his
example, and spend their means in the same way. Indifferent to the
feelings and opinions of the landed aristocracy and people of the
country, with whom they have no sympathy, they spend all that they
can spare for the public in gratifying the vitiated tastes of the
overgrown metropolis. Hardly any work calculated to benefit or
gratify the people of the country is formed or thought of by the
members of the royal family or aristocracy of Lucknow; and the only
one formed by the Sovereign for many years is, I believe, the
metalled road leading from Lucknow to Cawnpoor, on the Ganges.
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