N.B. Although our Report begins with the landing on 26th January, the arrival of the H. M. S. "Bacchante" and "Cleopatra" at Colombo, actually took place on the 25th January, or two days before their time. ERRATA. P. 4. Mr. W. Mitchell, Railway Department, has to be added to the list of those on Wharf landing-place. P. 15.-For Jubemes, read, Jubemus. P. 16.-For "Mrs." read "Miss" Onslow-Deane. THE GRAND TOUR" OF THE BRITISH PRINCES: THE VISIT OF THEIR ROYAL HIGHNESSES TO CEYLON: (From the Ceylon Observer, January 26, 1882.) Only one hundred and sixty-eight years have elapsed since it was really news that "Queen Anne is dead," the weak sovereign referred to being she, during whose reign. "Great praise the Duke of Marlborough got, And our good Prince Eugene," for numerous "glorious victories," over which we are less exultant than were our ancestors, who then, as well as their successors, again, in the time of the so-called "Great" Napoleon, had to battle for political existence against the overshadowing power of the French Monarchy in the one case and the French Empire in the other. "Great Britain' was not the least amongst the nations when the Protestant Elector George of Hanover-the " wee, wee German Lairdie" of the Scotch Jacobites-was called to the throne to the exclusion of the direct line of the Papist Stuarts. There have been vast changes in sentiment as well as circumstances since that epoch. The once dreaded Pope of Rome (Bunyan's toothless giant) has ceased to be a power in the world, and the personal influence of the British sovereign has been so circumscribed, that, with the disappearance of all vestiges of an established church, the coronation oath will be, ere long, dispensed with, and when (at a date which, we pray, may be long postponed), it comes to the turn of the Royal lad now amongst us to assume the crown and sceptre of the vast Empire 66 on which the sun never sets," he will not be asked what his religious opinions are, any more than was Lord Ripon when he became the "Catholic" Viceroy of a Protestant Empress. Worse even than this may happen, and a sovereign of the British Empire may, like two successive Presidents of the great North American Republic, Garfield and Arthur, belong to "sect" which does not practise infant baptism because they cannot find evidence for it in the New Testament. There are many good people, no doubt, who would regard the one result as only less dreadful than the other, and, perhaps, we ought to apologize for shocking their feelings by anticipating the inevitable. It may be more pleasant for all of us to glance at the vast material progress made by the British Empire since " George the First was King," in the interval between that essentially German George, and the George who is now a amongst us, the latter a type of English manliness tempered by the gentle graces derived from his Scandinavian mother. We have alluded to the great North American Republic which has taken the place of the few struggling colonies which existed when the Elector of Hanover succeeded Queen Anne. The probably inevitable change was precipitated by the obstinate folly of the last King of England who was permitted personally to have a potent voice in politics, even to the extent of having a "King's party" in Parliament. George the Fourth made some faint efforts to follow in the footsteps of his privately estimable but politically bigoted and stupid father; and it was this "most religious and gracious King" (as the established Church Clergy, with hideous hypocrisy, continually termed the "cold-blooded voluptuary," in their addresses to the throne of Infinite Purity), -it was the model Established-ProtestantChurch-Christian, whose conscience would not allow him for a considerable time to give the royal sanction to the bill which conceded Catholic Emancipation and so saved Britain from a civil war. It was in the time of this sovereign that the poet of like passions and practices, but who, like poor Burns, admired the life which he conld not live;-it was in the time of George the Fourth that Byron, after addressing "A Lady Weeping," with the words "Weep daughter of a royal line added A sire's disgrace, a realm's decay!" "Methinks I hear a little bird that sings, The people, by and bye, will be the stronger." This came to pass in the days of "the Sailor King," William the Fourth, and since the passage of the Reform Bill of 1832 and subsequent measures of a like character, our kings have reigned but have not governed. We do not mean to say that the royal branch of our constitution is a non-entity. The high personal character of the late Prince Consort, indeed, made Queen Victoria, while his valuable life was preserved to her and to us, a second Elizabeth without the faults, personal and political, of the masculine Tudor Queen. But, after all, in the special case of the Russian War, the royal influence prevailed because the Court reflected the opinions of Lord Palmerston, and because the glamour of old, plucky "Civis Romanus sum" took popular opinion captive; and so blood was shed like water and treasure of the stamp we take them to be, they will not fail to benefit and so be able to benefit others, by what they have seen, heard and reflected on, during their truly "Grand Tour round the world. Wherever they have gone, from the so-called "Indies" of the West to the true India of the East, and in the still further "Far East" of China and Japan, they have been welcomed generally in British possessions and always, even in Shanghai and the capital of Japan, by loyal subjects of their royal grandmother, who sincerely pray "God bless the Queen," because, as wife, mother, woman and Queen, Victoria has earned the affection and devotion of her people and of all peoples: witness Her Majesty's touching letters of sympathy to the widows of Presidents of the United States, and the warm response from all-and that is the vast majority-that is good and sympathetic and human in the highest sense amongst our American brethren. Canada and the United States, where their royal father, as a young man, was so enthusiastically received, the young princes have not visited. Continental India, where the Prince of Wales, amidst "barbaric pearl and gold," marble monuments of dynasties great but departed, temples of faiths equally doomed to depart, and an almost bewildering variety of races from fair to dusky, destined to indefinite improvement under the firm but benevolent sway of Britain, not to speak of the pleasures of scenes of pomp and festivity and the excitement of the hunt and the chase,-fulfilled "the dream of his life," is also, as yet, a terra incognita to his sons. But in their visit to this, in a military and naval sense, "the key of India” as it is in natural beauty "the Eden of the Eastern wave," the royal lads can trace the footsteps of their father, and like him they will, probably, here shoot their first elephant and carry away the trophy of a wiry-haired tail. In any case they will see the monarchs of our forest" kraaled," and they will be treated to the excitement of elk hunting, many recollections of that which may be equally pleasant, but much better and more instructive, we trust they may carry from our shores, after a visit to our grand mountain system wasted by millions, in order a little longer to preserve the anomalous and effete Moslem rule over some of the fairest portions of Europe. Popular opinion has become better educated as well as stronger since then, aud, if it is still true that the Sovereign is supreme in questions of peace and war, and in the granting of such charters as that which has added a "New Ceylon" to the British Possessions in those "Gardens of the Sun," whence our royal and gallant visitors have just come; it is equally true that the sovereign prerogative can now only be exercised through a Prime Minister who enjoys public confidence,-at this moment so thoroughly a man of the people as William Ewart Gladstone ; a man who acts on a sense of responsibility not only to the sovereign and the people of Britain, but to a Power higher, infinitely than either. We do not say that Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Bright and their coadjutors are faultless; but so long as our now very limited monarchy secures to us the rule of God-fearing, conscientious, unselfish men, of talent equal to their moral principle, even those of us who may be theoretically republicans, while we may insist on many still needed reforms, will be the first to deprecate revolutionary change. The ultra loyalty of the grand "Dominion in North America which still adheres to the British Crown shews that close acquaintance with such results as have followed republicanism in the United States are not calculated to render free Britishers enamoured of "Mob Rule," which is a very different thing to the rule of the people through their best men. We do not forget how largely the abstention of the talent and virtue of the United States from participation in political life is due to the corrupting influence of a foreign element, especially that rowdy Irish element which is as much a curse and a blight on one side of the Atlantic as on the other. But the immediate and indiscriminate concession of the franchise to such objectionable "men of the people" (men of the mire rather) is the natural result of republicanism carried to its logical results, and the only republic we desire to is one in which the virtue as well as the talent of the community shall be chosen to rule. This Where Europe amid Asia smiles presupposes a state of things in which the and where there exists, spread out minimum of government will suffice. As even hills and valleys which were not long ago wilderin the United Kingdom there is a vast mass nesses of forest, evidences of the application of of the morally anarchical constituents (witness unhappy Ireland under the influence of unprincipled demagogues) which must be sternly repressed with the iron hand, there is, we believe, no fear that in our time, or the time of our visitor who is in the direct line of succession to the throne, the question of a republic will be seriously mooted. The best service the young princes can render to royalty as well as to the State is to imitate their good and lamented grandfather and their estimable uncle Prince Leopold in their public appearances. If they are see over British energy, enterprise and capital employed to redeem the land from the reign of the elephant, the bear, the leopard, and the elk, to the use of human kind. Those who have effected a change so great and so marvellous in what was once the mysterious but unproductive kingdom of Kandy will not be deemed the less but the more entitled to admiration and sympathy, because for some years back the planters, and the large proportion of the community dependent on them, have had to struggle with natural influences, due to the very luxuriance of growth 66 produced by our tropical climate of an adverse character. As is the wont of true Britishers, the planters are fighting on, doing their best to drive the enemy from their old staple and ransacking the world for new products" suited to the soil and climate. Such men and their work are worthy the respectful regard of our royai and gallant visitors, and we trust they will shew more interest in their work, and in the educational operations of government and especially the missionaries than in barbaric processions and the exhibition of an osseous imposture connected with an atheistic system of so-called religion." True sympathy with and a sincere desire for the elevation of the natives does not involve sympathy with beliefs or customs, such as Buddhism, heathenism, and demon worshlp, which are still, as they have been for long centuries, sources only of degradation: physical, mental, and moral. We suppose the temple of the tooth must be visited and "the tooth," socalled, duly inspected; but we trust the Princes and our other visitors will take care so to act as not to leave the impression behind themas has been too frequently the result in similar cises-that much and approving sympathy is felt with existing error and none with the efforts made to promulgate that TRUTH which alone makes FREE: free from the bondage of superstition and sin. To Kandy and Matale on the one hand, and to Nawaapitiya on the other, existing railway lines will enable the princes to travel, and it is not our fault or that of the planters that equal facilities do not exist for a visit to the grand Principality of Uva, of which view will be obtained from below Nuwara Eliya. Of course the princes and other visitors will take equal interest in native industries, such as emerald green rice fields, gracefully waving coconut groves and the appliances (lines and nets, ballams and graceful outrigged canoes) used to secure the "harvest of the sea." In this climate of combined moisture (almost perpetual) with heat, our visitors will see nature in another and a richer a garb than was visible in the vast colonies (future empire of the far south) from King George's Sound to Adelaide; from Adelaide to Melbourne and Hobson's Bay; from Melbourne to the transcendent Sydney Cove; thence to semi-tropical Moreton Bay and Brisbane; away to "the Britain of the South," New Zealand, and finally to Fiji, which on a small scale would suggest what Ceylon is to a much larger and more varied extent. In having visited those wonderful Southern lands of vast distances and great contrasts of luxuriant forests, rich grassy plains, and terrible arid deserts of rock and spinifex, lands of grand promise as well as accomplishment in mineral, pastoral, agricultural and horticultural wealth, the sons of the Prince of Wales have had the advantage of their royal father though not of their royal uncle, the Duke of Edinburgh. The raising against the latter of the hand of a would-be assassin shewed how intense the loyalty of the Australians was, and we know how cordial was the reception all over Australia of those who have now come to visit Ceylon on their homeward route. As Ceylon will be the last of the more important possessions of Britain which the sons of the Prince of Wales and the grandsons of Her Majesty the Queen will visit in the course of the truly "Grand Tour," let us hope that their report will be "though last not least in cordial hospitality and warm loyalty to the British throne." All here will do their best to deserve such a report. THE LANDING OF THE PRINCES. From the Ceylon Observer January 26, 1882. We were enabled to issue the following as an "extraordinary" at noon today : Official Programme : (Thursday.) His Excellency the Governor will reTheir Highnesses will land at 3-30 p. m. today ceive them at the landing-place. Guards of Honour in attendance : Fusiliers at Wharf, Volunteers at Queen's House. The Princes will dine at Queen's House and attend the Dance at the Club afterwards. On Friday the Princes will visit the Museum, &c., and dine at Queen's House. [The Volunteer Guard was afterwards countermanded.] At 3.25 His Excellency the Governor, accompanied by Sir Edwin Johnson, Capt. Hayne, A. D. C., and Mr. Adrian Hope, P. S. arrived and was saluted by the guard of honour. At 3 30 p m., an immense concourse of people, of all races resident in Ceylon, had assembled at the Wharf and were eagerly awaiting the arrival of the "Bacchante's" boat with the Princes. The Royal Dublin Fusiliers' guard of honour was drawn up in line upon the jetty. Capt Donnan had most successfully co-operated with the Mudaliyars (H. L. Dassenaike Mudaliyar of Hapitigam korale and Peter de Saram, Mudaliyar of Alutkuru korale) in fitting up the landing stage, the roof of which had been hidden by white ceiling cloth and the sides of which were most profusely and artistically decorated with various fruits, flowers and foliage. characteristic of the island. Of course we cannot give the names of all the as possible. Among those present were :influential personages present, but we give as full a list Hon. Major-General Wilby, C.B. W. H. Ravenscroft, Acting Colonial Secretary. B. L. Burnside, Q. A. L. B. Clarence, S. P. J., F. R. Saunders, Govt Agent W.P. J. Stoddart, Acting Surveyor-General. W. Halliley, Acting P. Collector Customs. W. W. Mitchell. P. Rama Nathan, J. Van Langenberg, Admiral Gore Jones, C. B. Mr. G. T. M. O'Brien, Asst. Colonial Secretary. Dr. Loos, Acting Principal Civil Medical Officer. Mr. E. Elliott, Inspector General of Prisons. |