Their myriad progeny, a veritable "beehive of princelings," a "race of royal drones," were both a disgrace and a menace to their countrymen. Now, however, these luckless descendants of a fallen house, shorn of all power, and some of them reduced even to beggary, proclaim, in their distress, the consequences of the abominations which their progenitors have perpetrated. Swelling the ranks of the ill-fated scions of the House of Uthman, and of the rulers of the Romanov, the Hohenzollern, the Hapsburg, and the Napoleonic dynasties, they roam the face of the earth, scarcely aware of the character of those forces which have operated such tragic revolutions in their lives, and so powerfully contributed to their present plight. (71:1)

Already grandsons of both Nasiri'd-Din Shah and of Sultan 'Abdu'l-'Aziz have, in their powerlessness and destitution, turned to the World Center of the Faith of Baha'u'llah, and sought respectively political aid and pecuniary assistance. In the case of the former, the request was promptly and firmly refused, whilst in the case of the latter it was unhesitatingly offered. (71:2)

The Decline in the Fortunes of Royalty
And as we survey in other fields the decline in the fortunes of royalty, whether in the years immediately preceding the Great War of after, and contemplate the fate that has overtaken the Chinese Empire, the Portuguese and Spanish Monarchies, and more recently the vicissitudes that have afflicted, and are still afflicting, the sovereigns of Norway, of Denmark and of Holland, and observe the impotence of their fellow-sovereigns, and note the fear and trembling that has seized their thrones, may we not associate their plight with the opening passages of the Suriy-i-Muluk, which, in view of their momentous significance, I feel impelled to quote a second time: "Fear God, O concourse of kings, and suffer not yourselves to be deprived of this most sublime grace... Set your hearts towards the face of God, and abandon that which your desires have bidden you to follow, and be not of those who perish... Ye examined not His (the Bab's) Cause, when so to do had been better for you than all that the sun shineth upon, could ye but perceive it... Beware that ye be not careless henceforth, as ye have been careless aforetime... My face hath come forth from the veils, and shed its radiance upon all that is in heaven and on earth, and yet ye turned not towards Him... Arise then... and make ye amends for that which hath escaped you... If ye pay no heed unto the counsels which, in peerless and unequivocal language, We have revealed in this Tablet, Divine chastisement shall assail you from every direction, and the sentence of His justice shall be pronounced against you... Twenty years have passed, O kings, during which We have, each day, tasted the agony of a fresh tribulation... Though aware of most of Our afflictions, ye, nevertheless, have failed to stay the hand of the aggressor. For is it not your clear duty to restrain the tyranny of the oppressor, and to deal equitably with your subjects, that your high sense of justice may be fully demonstrated to all mankind?" (71:3)

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