(4.) He was to retain his royal residences, the one in Delhi being regularly fortified, and occupying probably one fourth of the area of the city. And,
(5.) His imperial revenue was to be made sure, and punctually paid from the British Treasury.
He was asked how much that revenue must be? He replied, “Thirteen and a half lakhs of rupees annually”—$675,000 per annum. And as matters go in the East, where kings are supposed to own the soil, and can levy their own jumma (tax) upon every cultivated acre of it, this was not considered an unreasonable or unusual demand.
The terms were accepted, and the British moved their authority west of the Kurrumnasa, assumed the civil, political, and military control of Hindustan proper, and the Mogul Emperor resigned the heavy cares of State and went to house-keeping on his $675,000 per year. He assuredly might think that he had made a good bargain for himself and his family with his commercial patrons, the East India Company, while the whole resources of Great Britain were pledged to every item of the engagement—and he certainly might have done tolerably well under the circumstances. But one thing stood in the way. He and his outraged the laws of Heaven; the result was a ruin which in its completeness has had hardly a parallel in the history of any earthly dynasty.
With idleness and fullness of bread came mischief and vileness for three generations, increasing in their terrible tendencies, as the sins of the fathers were shared by, and visited upon, their children, until hideous ruin engulphed the whole concern, and left not a wreck behind.
To the American reader it must seem amazing to state that the $675,000 per annum proved utterly insufficient to enable the last Emperor to live and keep out of debt; yet so it was. He really could not “make ends meet” from year to year on this splendid allowance, paid to the day, and paid in gold. But the explanation is at hand.
Had the duality of the marriage relation been recognized at the
