On the other hand, _with_
this kind of support, and deriving his title in any degree
from the favor of the Imperial Court, he became almost
in that extent an object of hatred at home and within the 30
whole compass of his own territory. He was at once an
object of hatred for the past, being a living monument of
national independence ignominiously surrendered; and an
object of jealousy for the future, as one who had already
advertised himself to be a fitting tool for the ultimate
purposes (whatsoever those might prove to be) of the
Russian Court. Coming himself to the Kalmuck sceptre
under the heaviest weight of prejudice from the unfortunate
circumstances of his position, it might have been 5
expected that Oubacha would have been pre-eminently
an object of detestation; for, besides his known dependence
upon the Cabinet of St. Petersburg, the direct line
of succession had been set aside, and the principle of
inheritance violently suspended, in favor of his own 10
father, so recently as nineteen years before the era of his
own accession, consequently within the lively remembrance
of the existing generation. He, therefore, almost
equally with his father, stood within the full current of
the national prejudices, and might have anticipated the 15
most pointed hostility. But it was not so: such are the
caprices in human affairs that he was even, in a moderate
sense, popular--a benefit which wore the more cheering
aspect and the promises of permanence, inasmuch as he
owed it exclusively to his personal qualities of kindness 20
and affability, as well as to the beneficence of his government.
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