On Monday the King also addressed "a Message to the
Princes and Peoples of India." In the course of it he says :- " Queen Victoria of revered memory addressed her Indian subjects and heads of Feudatory States when she assumed the direct government in 1858 ; and her august son, my Father, of honoured and beloved name, commemorated the same most notable event in His Address to you fifty years later. These are the charters of the noble and benignant spirit of Imperial rule, and by that spirit in all my time to come I will faithfully abide." These words combine wisdom with feeling. It would have been an easy mistake by some ambiguous phrase to appear to promise concessions which would be fatal to the " noble and benignant spirit of Imperial rule." The King here declares to India with obvious sincerity that the happi- ness of the country is wrapped up in the essential mainte- nance of a system which is notoriously administered for the good of the people.
