Humanity to his own subjects must be considered a distinguishing feature
in the character of the reigning despot. He is ignorant, but not
stupid--to his foes fierce, but not implacable; and although his
manifold good qualities are sullied by the part he sustains in the
odious traffic in his fellow-men--a moral plague which has by its
baneful influence contaminated the whole of this quarter of the globe--
he had, on more occasions than one, evinced an unlooked-for readiness to
open his eyes to his errors. Possessed of faults inseparable from the
absolute semi-barbarian, he had, nevertheless, been found mild, just,
clement, and almost patriarchal in his government:--he is a monarch whom
experience has proved worthy to reign over a better people, and to be
possessed of an understanding and of latent virtues requiring nought
save cultivation to place him, in a moral and intellectual point of
view, immeasurably in advance of other African potentates.
Whilst indulging in the agreeable conviction that the endeavours of the
British Embassy had been successful in arousing a monarch, who exercises
so wide an influence over the destinies of surrounding millions, to a
sense of the wickedness and degradation attaching in civilised lands to
barter in the flesh and blood of our fellow-men, it occurred to me that
he might be exhorted, with the best prospect of success, to break
through the barbarous precautionary policy under which those members of
the royal house who possess a contingent claim to the crown, and in
other Christian realms would hold the highest offices and honours within
its gift, had, through every generation since the days of the son of
David, been doomed to chains in a living grave. And from the fortunate
fact of the issue male of the present reign being limited to two, I
derived the pleasant hope, that if a statute so jealously guarded during
nearly three thousand years, could now for once be infringed, it would
not, in all probability, be revived on the monarch's demise.
Entertaining the liveliest fears of death, his manifold superstitions
were ever the most easily awakened during sickness, when the actions of
his past life crowded up in judgment before him. It was on these
occasions that, in order to quiet his conscience, he made the most
liberal votive offerings to the church and to the monastery, and that he
gained the greatest victories over his deep-rooted avarice; and it was
on these occasions, therefore, that the chord of his latent good feeling
might obviously be touched with the happiest result to the cause of
humanity.
That singular blending of debauchery and devotion which marks the royal
vigils, has seriously impaired a constitution naturally good. During a
long succession of years the Psalms of David and the strongest cholera
mixture have equally shared the midnight hours of the king; and although
scarcely past the meridian of life, he is subject to sudden spasmodic
attacks of an alarming character. In one of these his restoration had
been despaired of both by the priests and the physicians; and the voice
of wailing and lamentation already filled the precincts of the palace.
Scarcely was it light ere a page came to my tent with an urgent summons
to the sick chamber. We found the despot pale and emaciated, with
fevered lip and bloodshot eye, reclining upon a couch in a dark corner
of the closed veranda, his head swathed in white cloth, and his
trembling arms supported by bolsters and cushions. Abba Raguel, the
dwarf Father Confessor, with eyes swollen from watching, was rocking to
and fro, whilst he drowsily scanned an illuminated Ethiopic volume,
containing the lives of the martyrs; and in deep conversation with the
sick monarch was a favourite monk, habited like an Arab Bedouin in a
black goat's hair cameline and a yellow cowl, but displaying the sacred
cross in his right hand. The loud voice of the priesthood arose in
boisterous song from the adjacent apartment: strings of red worsted had
been tied round the monarch's thumbs and great toes; and the threshold
of the outer chamber was bedewed with the still moist blood of a black
bullock, which, when the taper of life was believed to be flickering in
the socket, had been thrice led round the royal couch, and, with its
head turned towards the East, was then slaughtered at the door, in the
name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
"My children," said His Majesty in a sepulchral voice, as he extended
his burning hand towards us--"behold, I am sore stricken. Last night
they believed me dead, and the voice of mourning had arisen within the
palace walls, but God hath spared me until now. Tell me the medicine
for this disease."
A febrifuge having been prepared, we attempted to follow the etiquette
of the Abyssinian court, by tasting the draught prescribed; but the
king, again extending his parched hand, protested against this
necessity. "What need is there now of this?" he exclaimed
reproachfully: "do not I know that you would administer to Sahela
Selassie nothing that could do him mischief? My people are bad; and if
God had not mercy on me to restore me, they would deal evil with you--
and to strip you of your property would even take away your lives."
I had oftentimes complimented the king upon the mildness and equity of
his rule, and upon the readiness with which he gave ear to intercession
on behalf of the slave. The implicit confidence which had supplanted
all fear and suspicion in the breast of His Majesty, now favoured a
still stronger appeal to his humanity, to his magnanimity, and to his
piety. I urged him to take into favourable consideration the abject
condition of his royal brothers--victims to a tyrannical and unnatural
statute, the legacy of a barbarous age, which for centuries had resulted
in such incalculable misery and mischief. I reminded him that it
belongs unto those who wield the sceptre to triumph over prejudices; and
that by the liberation of many innocent captives, of whom, though
possessing the strongest claim that blood can give, he had perhaps
scarcely even thought during his long and prosperous reign, he would
perform an act alike acceptable to Heaven, and calculated to secure to
himself on earth an imperishable name.
"And I will release them," returned the monarch, after a moment's debate
within himself. "By the holy Eucharist I swear, and by the church of
the Holy Trinity in Koora Gadel, that if Sahela Selassie arise from this
bed of sickness, all of whom you speak shall be restored to the
enjoyment of liberty."
The sun was shining brighter than usual, through a cloudless azure sky,
when we all received a welcome summons to witness the redemption of this
solemn pledge. The balcony of Justice was tricked out in its gala suit;
and priests, governors, sycophants, and courtiers, crowded the yard, as
the despot, restored to health, in the highest spirits and good humour,
took his accustomed seat upon the velvet cushions. The mandate had gone
forth for the liberation of his brothers and his blood relatives, and it
had been published abroad, that the royal kith and kindred were to pass
the residue of their days free and unfettered near the person of the
king, instead of in the dark cells of Goncho.
There were not wanting certain sapient sages who gravely shook the head
of disapproval at this fresh proof of foreign influence and ascendency,
and who could in nowise comprehend how the venerable custom of ages
could be thus suddenly violated. The introduction of great guns, and
muskets, and rockets, had not been objected to, although, as a matter of
course, the spear of their forefathers was esteemed an infinitely
superior weapon. Musical clocks and boxes had been listened to and
despised, as vastly inferior to the jingling notes of their own vile
instruments; and the Gothic cottage, with its painted trellises, its
pictures, and its gay curtains, although pronounced entirely unsuited to
Abyssinian habits, had been partially forgiven on the grounds of its
beauty.
But this last innovation was beyond all understanding; and many a stupid
pate was racked in fruitless endeavours to extract consolation in so
momentous a difficulty. The more liberal party were loud in their
praises of the king and of his generous intentions; and the royal gaze
was with the rest strained wistfully towards the wicket, where he should
behold once again the child of his mother, whom he had not seen since
his accession, and should make the first acquaintance with his uncles,
the brothers of his warrior sire, who had been incarcerated ere he
himself had seen the light.
Stern traces had been left by the constraint of one-third of a century
upon the seven unfortunate descendants of a royal race, who were shortly
ushered into the court by the state-gaoler. Leaning heavily on each
other's shoulders, and linked together by chains, bright and shining
with the friction of years, the captives shuffled onward with cramped
steps, rather as malefactors proceeding to the gallows-tree, than as
innocent and abused princes, regaining the natural rights of man.
Tottering to the foot of the throne, they fell as they had been
instructed by their burly conductor, prostrate on their faces before
their more fortunate but despotic relative, whom they had known
heretofore only through his connection with their own misfortunes, and
whose voice was yet a stranger to their ears.
Rising with difficulty at the bidding of the monarch, they remained
standing in front of the balcony, gazing in stupid wonder at the
novelties of the scene, with eyes unaccustomed to meet the broad glare
of day. At first they were fixed upon the author of their weary
captivity, and upon the white men by his side who had been the
instruments of its termination--but the dull, leaden gaze soon wandered
in search of other objects; and the approach of freedom appeared to be
received with the utmost apathy and indifference. Immured since
earliest infancy, they were totally insensible to the blessings of
liberty. Their feelings and their habits had become those of the fetter
and of the dark dungeon. The iron had rusted into their very souls;
and, whilst they with difficulty maintained an erect position, pain and
withering despondency were indelibly marked in every line of their
vacant and care-furrowed features.
In the damp vaults of Goncho, where heavy manacles on the wrists had
been linked to the ankles of the prisoners by a chain so short as to
admit only of a bent and stooping posture, the weary hours of the
princes had for thirty long years been passed in the fabrication of
harps and combs; and of these relics of monotonous existence,
elaborately carved in wood and ivory, a large offering was now timidly
presented to the king. The first glimpse of his wretched relatives had
already dissipated a slight shade of mistrust which had hitherto clouded
the royal brow. Nothing that might endanger the security of his reign
could be traced in the crippled frames and blighted faculties of the
seven miserable objects that cowered before him; and, after directing
their chains to be unriveted, he announced to all that they were Free,
and to pass the residue of their existence near his own person. Again
the joke and the merry laugh passed quickly in the balcony--the court
fool resumed his wonted avocations; and, as the monarch himself struck
the chords of the gaily-ornamented harp presented by his bloated brother
Amnon, the buffoon burst into a high and deserved panegyric upon the
royal mercy and generosity.
"My children," exclaimed His Majesty, turning towards ourselves, after
the completion of this tardy act of justice to those whose only crime
was their consanguinity to himself--an act to which he had been prompted
less by superstition than by a desire to rescue his own offspring from a
dungeon, and to secure a high place in the opinion of the civilised
world--"My children, you will write all that you have now seen to your
country, and will say to the British Queen, that, although far behind
the nations of the white men, from whom Ethiopia first received her
religion, there yet remains a spark of Christian love in the breast of
the king of Shoa."