APPENDIX C.
THE STATE BANQUET.
At the State Banquet on January 1st, His Excellency the Viceroy entertained His Royal Highness the Duke of Connaught and a large and distinguished company. His Excellency, in proposing the toast of the King-Emperor, spoke as follows:—
Your Royal Highnesses, Your Excellencies, My Lords, and Gentlemen,—I rise to propose the health of His Majesty the King, Emperor of India. This after-noon we carried through, I hope with success (cheers), the great ceremony that had been devised for the celebration of His Majesty's Coronation in this country, and the spectacle was one that must have stirred the heart of every beholder. (Cheers.) It brought home to every European or Indian inhabitant of this land the vivid reality of the Constitution under which we live, and by which a far away and invisible mainspring guides with resistless energy and power every movement of this vast political machine; and I hope that it may also have impressed our various illustrious visitors and guests with the conviction that this Indian possession of His Majesty is no mere dead- weight tied on to the heels of the British Empire, but a Dominion, a Continent, an Empire by itself, rich in its own personality and memories, self-confident in its own strength, and aglow with abundant potentialities for the future. (Loud cheers.) To be King of the United Kingdom and of the British
