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Thus Korea, which fell under her sway because the nominal independence of the country had long made it the centre of disastrous international intrigues, is governed to-day as a conquered province by a military viceroy without a trace of autonomy remaining and without any promise that such a régime is only temporary.
The time has been, and that not remote, when some of those States might, in their anxious desire to obtain a nominal recognition, have accepted of a nominal independence, clogged with burdensome conditions, and exclusive commercial privileges granted to the nation from which they have separated to the disadvantage of all others.
East Friesland remained a federation of rude but self-governed maritime provinces, until the brief and bloody dominion of the Saxon dukes led to the establishment of Charles the Fifth's authority. Whatever the nominal sovereignty over them, this most republican tribe of Netherlanders, or of Europeans, had never accepted feudalism. There was an annual congress of the whole confederacy.
If a day of reckoning did thrust itself upon them it was but a question of asking for another pension in addition to those they already held, or of obtaining at a nominal price a grant of crown domains, to be sold again for hundreds of thousands of francs.
The chieftain was an athletic man; he came to the conference mounted on a gray charger, which had cost him four hundred head of cattle, and brandished with ease and dexterity a heavy spear in his hand. He seemed willing to become the nominal vassal of the King of England, but refused to submit to any conditions.
The result of this arrangement was that when Sultán Sikandar died the several important nobles, impatient even of nominal obedience, resolved, acting in concert, to assign to his son, Ibráhím, the kingdom of Delhi only, and to divide the rest of the deceased Sultán's dominions amongst themselves, Jaunpur alone excepted.
Maids and scrubwomen were at work under the patently nominal direction of another Pullman porter, who was profoundly enjoying his own affectation of being harassed with care. "Ev'ything got look spick an' span fo' the big doin's to-night," Bibbs's guide explained, chuckling. "Yessuh, we got big doin's to-night! Big doin's!"
In many places, flower and vegetable seeds are distributed free or at a nominal cost among the school children, prizes are offered for the best garden, the largest vegetables, the most attractive back-yard, the best arranged flower-bed, and other good results; the work is examined by a committee, and the prizes awarded at the end of the season either by the club or by merchants who have become interested in the contest.
It received only a partial and temporary revival after the Mahomedan conquest at the end of the seventh century, and since that date this once happy region has gradually lapsed into barbarism. During the modern age it was chiefly known as the home of ruthless and destructive pirates, whose chief headquarters were at Algiers, and who owned a merely nominal allegiance to the Sultan of Turkey.
The Restoration, however, did not put an end to the practice of a real Government behind the nominal one. The Prime Minister and his Cabinet are presented to the world as the Japanese Government, but the real Government is the Genro, or Elder Statesmen, and their successors, of whom I shall have more to say in the next chapter.
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