It is wisely provided in the constitution of our heart, that we should
interest ourselves in the fate of great personages. They are therefore
made everywhere the objects of tragedy, which addresses itself directly
to our passions and our feelings. And why? Because men of great place,
men of great rank, men of great hereditary authority, cannot fall
without a horrible crash upon all about them. Such towers cannot tumble
without ruining their dependent cottages.
The prosperity of a country, that has been distressed by a revolution
which has swept off its principal men, cannot be reestablished without
extreme difficulty. This man, therefore, who wantonly and wickedly
destroyed the existing government of Benares, was doubly bound to use
all possible care and caution in supplying the loss of those
institutions which he had destroyed, and of the men whom he had driven
into exile. This, I say, he ought to have done. Let us now see what he
really did do.
He set out by disposing of all the property of the country as if it was
his own. He first confiscated the whole estates of the _Baboos_, the
great nobility of the country, to the amount of six lacs of rupees. He
then distributed the lands and revenue of the country according to his
own pleasure; and as he had seized the lands without our knowing why or
wherefore, so the portion which he took away from some persons he gave
to others, in the same arbitrary manner, and without any assignable
reason.
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