Mr. Isaacs

Mr. Isaacs

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mr. Isaacs, by F. Marion Crawford
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Title: Mr. Isaacs
Author: F. Marion Crawford
Release Date: August 31, 2004 [EBook #13340]
Language: English
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MR. ISAACS A TALE OF MODERN INDIA
BY F. MARION CRAWFORD
1882

BY F. MARION CRAWFORD
CHAPTER I.
In spite of Jean-Jacques and his school, men are not everywhere born
free, any more than they are everywhere in chains, unless these be of
their own individual making. Especially in countries where excessive
liberty or excessive tyranny favours the growth of that class most
usually designated as adventurers, it is true that man, by his own
dominant will, or by a still more potent servility, may rise to any grade
of elevation; as by the absence of these qualities he may fall to any
depth in the social scale.
Wherever freedom degenerates into license, the ruthless predatory
instinct of certain bold and unscrupulous persons may, and almost
certainly will, place at their disposal the goods, the honours, and the
preferment justly the due of others; and in those more numerous and
certainly more unhappy countries, where the rule of the tyrant is
substituted for the law of God, the unwearying flatterer, patient under
blows and abstemious under high-feeding, will assuredly make his way
to power.
Without doubt the Eastern portion of the world, where an hereditary, or
at least traditional, despotism has never ceased since the earliest social
records, and where a mode of thought infinitely more degrading than
any feudalism has become ingrained in the blood and soul of the chief
races, presents far more favourable conditions to the growth and
development of the true adventurer than are offered in any free country.
For in a free country the majority can rise and overthrow the favourite
of fortune, whereas in a despotic country they cannot. Of Eastern
countries in this condition, Russia is the nearest to us; though perhaps
we understand the Chinese character better than the Russian. The
Ottoman empire and Persia are, and always have been, swayed by a
clever band of flatterers acting through their nominal master; while
India, under the kindly British rule, is a perfect instance of a ruthless
military despotism, where neither blood nor stratagem have been

spared in exacting the uttermost farthing from the miserable serfs--they
are nothing else--and in robbing and defrauding the rich of their just
and lawful possessions. All these countries teem with stories of
adventurers risen from the ranks to the command of armies, of itinerant
merchants wedded to princesses, of hardy sailors promoted to
admiralties, of half-educated younger sons of English peers dying in
the undisputed possession of ill-gotten millions. With the strong
personal despotism of the First Napoleon began a new era of
adventurers in France; not of elegant and accomplished adventurers like
M. de St. Germain, Cagliostro, or the Comtesse de la Motte, but regular
rag-tag-and-bobtail cut-throat moss-troopers, who carved and slashed
themselves into notice by sheer animal strength and brutality.
There is infinitely more grace and romance about the Eastern
adventurer. There is very little slashing and hewing to be done there,
and what there is, is managed as quietly as possible. When a Sultan
must be rid of the last superfluous wife, she is quietly done up in a
parcel with a few shot, and dropped into the Bosphorus without more
ado. The good old-fashioned Rajah of Mudpoor did his killing without
scandal, and when the kindly British wish to keep a secret, the man is
hanged in a quiet place where there are no reporters. As in the Greek
tragedies, the butchery is done behind the scenes, and there is no glory
connected with the business, only gain. The ghosts of the slain
sometimes appear in the columns of the recalcitrant Indian newspapers
and gibber a feeble little "Otototoi!" after the manner of the shade of
Dareios, but there is very little heed paid to such visitations by the
kindly British. But though the "raw head and bloody bones" type of
adventurer is little in demand in the East, there is plenty of scope for
the intelligent and wary flatterer, and some room for the honest man of
superior gifts, who is sufficiently free from Oriental prejudice to do
energetically the thing which comes in his way, distancing all
competitors for the favours of fortune by sheer industry and unerring
foresight.
I once knew a