The Review of Reviews. 



proclamation of the Emperor completed, was the 

 Monarchy revealed, armed cap-a-pie in all the mailed 

 panoply of absolute autocracy. The King-Emperor 

 was no sooner invested with all the paraphernalia of 

 luTipire than he announced his sovereign will to his 

 submissive subjects as follows : — 



1. Delhi replaces Calcutta as the capital of India. 



2. 'I'he partition of Bengal is annulled. 

 Bengal becomes a Presidency. 

 Behar, Chota, Nagpur, and Orissa are placed 



under a Lieutenant-Governor. 



Assam becomes a Chief Commissionership. 



Until the moment the fateful decree was launched 



no one outside the inner ring of the King's advisers 



had heard a whisper of the Royal decision. The 



4- 



5- 



triumph of the maladroit statesmanship of Lord 

 Cur/on, had been passionately demanded, and sternly 

 refused ever since Bengal was divided. The Bengalese 

 had lost hope of success. The decision of the India 

 Office had been regarded as finally adverse, when 

 hey presto ! up jumps Emperor George, who waves 

 his sceptre, and the partition is undone in the twinkling 

 of an eye. And not only is it undone, but its undoing 

 is immediately declared to be incapable of reversal. 

 Parliament itself cannot prevail against the King's 

 decree. Lord Lansdowne at once proclaimed in the 

 Housj of Lords " that the word of the King-Emperor 

 had been sooken, and that word is irrevocable." No- 



«^ 



Fhoto^raph by\ 



A Panoramic View of the Great Ceremony of the 



Imperial Parliament was no more consulted than was 

 the Municipality of Calcutta. Never was there a 

 more arrogant a.ssertion of royal power. It is quite 

 in the olden style, and recalls the familiar verse : 

 " I will divide Shechcm, and mete out the valley of 

 Succoth. Gilead is mine, and Manasseh is mine; 

 Ephraim also is the strength of mine head ; Judah is 

 my lawgiver ; Moab is my washpot ; over Edom will 

 I cast out my shoe." 



The bewildering thing about this 

 The transformation scene is that while 



Irrevocable Word, m, q^o was prepared for it, every- 

 body acquiesced in it. Tlic 

 annulling of the partition of I'.cngal, {hat .supreme 



body seems to have protested against that doctrine, 

 therefore needs must ; and so I, even if alone, as 

 Athanasius centra titiindian, protest against the notion 

 that t(ie King-Emperor possesses any prerogative or 

 power to utter " irrevocable " words. Are we back in 

 the days of the Mcdes and Persians forsooth, that the 

 writing which is written in the King's name, and 

 scaled with the King's ring, no man may reverse ? 

 Much as I rejoice at the undoing of the partition of 

 Bengal, I di.slike the manner of the undoing of it. 

 This magnification of the Sovereign is un-English 

 and undemocratic, an<l we may hereafter have to pay 

 for it dearly. 



