84; 

 
 18.
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 OF 
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS, 
 
 OF THE MADRAS ARMY ; 
 
 WITH COMMENTS ON 
 
 SOME OF HIS WORDS AND WORK. 
 
 MAJOR EVANS BELL, 
 
 AUTHOR OP " RETROSPECTS AND PROSPECTS OF INDIAN POLICY 1 ', "THE OXUS AND THE INDUS' 
 
 ETC. 
 
 LONDON : 
 CHATTO AND WINDL T S, PICCADILLY. 
 
 1885.
 
 PRINTED BY 
 WHITING AND CO.. LIMITED, 30 AND 32, SARDINIA STREET, W.C.
 
 I 
 
 3 7 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 MY grateful acknowledgments are due to Mrs. De 
 Morgan for the letters from General Briggs to her late 
 distinguished husband, and to the Right Honble. M. E. 
 Grant Duff, for his sanction to my publishing his father's 
 letters. To all the surviving members of General 
 Briggs's family I owe some words of regret and apology 
 for the long delay that has attended the publication of 
 this work, arising chiefly, I must explain, while I am 
 not free from self-reproach, to the embarrassment of an 
 over-supply of materials. The autobiographical papers 
 alone, if printed as they stood, would have made at least 
 six volumes such as this is. Whatever force and value 
 there may be in Chapter VII, which expresses my firm 
 convictions, and for which I am fully responsible, must 
 be attributed to my friend Colonel R. D. Osborn, who 
 has made the condition of the Indian peasantry, as 
 affected by British administration of the Land Revenue, 
 a special study. To him my warmest thanks are due 
 for allowing me to present that Chapter almost entirely 
 in his own words. 
 
 357323
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAQB 
 
 PREFACE . . iii 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 1785 to 1806. 
 
 Preliminary remarks Five generations of Indian service Ancestry, 
 parentage, and connections Briggs at Eton Appointed a Cadet 
 A lesson in temperance Voyage to Madras Military instruc- 
 tion Too much zeal on sentry-duty On active service Storm 
 of Turnicul Study of Persian and Hindustani Adjutant of 
 Extra Battalion Mutiny at Vellore Critical period of excite- 
 ment at Secunderabad Incipient mutiny checked . . 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 1806 to 1811. 
 
 The rival embassies to Persia Sir John Malcolm and Sir Harford 
 Jones Visit to Mysore and Calcutta Appointed Attache" to 
 Persian Embassy Bushire Return to Bombay A second de- 
 parture Attack on Ras-ul-Khyma March to Ispahan and Sul- 
 tania The Shah Sir Harford Jones's heraldic augmentation 
 Sir John Malcolm's Lion and Sun Tabreez Madras Cold-water 
 cure Official and colloquial Persian Marriage to Miss Jane 
 Dodson Augustus de Morgan "_. . ,. .28 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 1812 to 1819. 
 
 Persian Interpreter at Jaulna Paper on the Brinjarries Assistant to 
 the Resident at Poona Mountstuart Elphinstone Bajee Rao, 
 the last Peishwa Hostile intrigues Interview with the Peishwa 
 Battle of Kirkee Residency burnt Elphinstone's note from 
 the field Battle qf Mahidpore Grant Duff: sent as Resident to 
 Sattara, Briggs to settle Khandesh The Commandant and the 
 Political Agent Vexed questions as to booty Capture of Trim- 
 bukjee Dainglia Fall of Malligaum Thanks of Government . 40
 
 VI CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 1819 to 1823. 
 
 Settlement of Khandesh The Bheels Their reclamation begun by 
 Briggs, finished by Outram Letter to Sir John Malcolm The 
 Punchayut in civil and criminal justice Letter to Grant Duff 
 Canarese and Mahrattee boundaries First misgivings as to the 
 Land Tax and as to the unqualified blessings of British rule . 75 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 1823 to 1827. 
 
 Resident at Sattara Excellent administration established by Captain 
 Grant Duff, and scrupulously maintained by the Rajah Brahmin 
 conspiracy Rajah unjustly dethroned The Resident's literary 
 pursuits Ferishta Siyar-ul-Mutakhirin The Land Tax of India 
 Return to England on leave . . . .90 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 1827 to 1830. 
 
 Ferishta Mountstuart Elphinstone's acknowledgment Briggs revisits 
 his father Death of Dr. James Briggs Country-house in Kent 
 The hop duty Rescue of goods from the sheriff's officers 
 Paris Letters to Augustus De Morgan The Latid Tax finished 
 and published . . . . . .100 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The Land Tax of India The tenure and assessment of the land under 
 the Moghul and other Native rulers and under British adminis- 
 tration Impoverishment of the people . . .111 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 - 
 
 1830 to 1832. 
 
 Lord Ellenborough, President of Board of Control Briggs nominated 
 Envoy to Persia Dinner to meet the Duke of Wellington and 
 Sir Robert Peel Return to Madras Crisis in Mysore Letter 
 to Lord William Bentinck Briggs appointed Senior Commis- 
 sioner in Mysore . . . . .136
 
 CONTENTS. Vll 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 1831-1832. 
 
 Sequestration of Mysore The Rajah The Honble. Arthur Cole 
 His butler, Ramasawmy Moodelly, made a Jaghiredar The Resi- 
 dent, Mr. Casamajor, and his Moonshee, Chowrappa True story 
 of the insurrection in Mysore The Rt. Honble. Stephen Rum- 
 bold Lushington, Governor of Madras His reception and official 
 treatment of Colonel Briggs The Dewan made master of the 
 situation . 143 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 1832. 
 
 Appeal to the Governor- General The Senior Commissioner charged 
 with importing "hungry expectants" and "greedy foreigners" 
 Krishna Rao and Mamoo Meean Encouragement and support 
 from Lord William Bentinck Interview with the Rt. Honble. S. 
 Lushington at Bangalore The Governor of Madras exiles every 
 one suspected of assisting Colonel Briggs Renewed and ex- 
 tended support given to the Senior Commissioner by the Gover- 
 nor-General 171 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 1832. 
 
 The Governor's dispensing power The disturbed province of Nuggur 
 Obstructive and corrupt intrigues of the Dewan Briggs under- 
 takes the pacification of Nuggur, but determines on action before 
 starting Recalls the exiled and proscribed persons Nominates 
 Baboo Rao to succeed the Dewan, on whose removal he insists 
 Produces complete plan of administration Starts for Nuggur 
 Intrigues and obstruction renewed Mr. J. M. Macleod succeeds 
 Mr. Drury The Senior Commissioner's proclamation Censured 
 by the Supreme Government, Colonel Briggs resigns Appointed 
 Resident at Nagpore . . . . .190 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Letter to Augustus De Morgan Changes in Mysore on Briggs's de- 
 parture are in conformity with his counsel Home Government 
 justify and approve his conduct and work His plans carried out 
 by his successors The Mysore State injured by wrongful seques- 
 tration unwarrantably prolonged, and by arbitrary exactions 
 accompanying the release ..... 209
 
 Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 1833 to 1835. 
 
 Madras Hyderabad Nagpore The Bhonsla family The Gond 
 Rajah Lord William Bentinck's non-intervention The Resi- 
 dent's Diary a check on misrule Letter to the Earl of Clare 
 Imperial Reform of Indian States Letter to Augustus De 
 Morgan on revenue settlements in Nagpore Russophobia Ill- 
 health Relieved at Nagpore by Honble. R. Cavendish Mr. 
 Cavendish on adoption and the "shoe and chair" question Briggs 
 well received by the Governor of Madras Offered command of 
 troops in Mysore, but declines Return home . . . 220 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 1835 to 1858. 
 
 General Briggs "in opposition" in the Court of Proprietors The 
 bugbear of "party spirit" in Indian affairs The two Sattara 
 cases Warnings of Mr. John Sullivan and General Briggs as to 
 the evil influence of annexation on the Sepoy Army Military 
 weakness caused by annexing the Pun jaub Letters from John 
 Sullivan and Grant Duff More warnings in India and Europe 
 Compared Mutiny and Rebellion of 1857 Letter from Grant 
 Duff on the Sepoys and Indian converts to Christianity . 235 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 1858 to 1875. 
 
 My first acquaintance with General Briggs His remarkable activity 
 of body and mind in old age Good effects of " Banting" The 
 effort to save the Mysore State from annexation Deputation to 
 Lord Cranborne, Secretary of State for India Petition to the 
 House of Commons Sir John Low insists on being second to 
 General Briggs, as his junior Letter on the Oxus and the Indus, 
 and the disposal of Peshawur What is a bad frontier for a weak 
 State is a good one for its powerful neighbour The General's 
 doubts as to the constitutional aspirations of the "Esquirearchy" 
 The Nawab Nazim of Bengal Letter from the Rt. Honble. 
 Holt Mackenzie Last days Conclusion . . . 259
 
 SOME WORDS AND WORK 
 
 OF 
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 JOHN BRIGGS entered the 1 5th Madras Native Infantry 
 as Lieutenant on the 10th of July 1801, before he had 
 attained the age of sixteen, and died in his ninetieth year 
 on the 27th of April 1875. During the first eighteen 
 years of the century he saw some active service, and 
 subsequently won distinction in several important admi- 
 nistrative and political offices under the Government of 
 India. It cannot, however, be said that his name has 
 ever filled a large space, or figured very conspicuously in 
 the annals of the Indian Empire. He left India, never 
 to return, in 1835. During the last thirty-nine years of 
 his life he had no official employment. His professional 
 career was not, as we shall see, uniformly serene and 
 unruffled, and if anyone should please to pronounce it to 
 have been a failure, he will not, from one point of view, 
 be altogether in the wrong. Notwithstanding his ser- 
 vices, both in the military and civil departments, General 
 Briggs, by a series of fatalities, public and personal, never 
 became entitled to append any distinctive letters to his 
 name, except those of F.R.S. He had no decoration but 
 the war medal. Previously to 1838, when he attained 
 the rank of Major-General, and when his succession to 
 the " off- reckonings" had led to his permanent residence 
 at home, the honours of the Bath were rarely accorded 
 to officers of the Company's Service. The Star of India 
 had not yet risen. That "light" of the official "Heaven" 
 had not yet come to be "our guide". Although the 
 
 B
 
 2 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 activity of his mind, and the strong interest he took in 
 public affairs, and in literary matters connected with the 
 East, were continuously proved, even up to the last year 
 of his life, by numerous published writings, and by the 
 prominent part he took in many political movements, the 
 General's later labours were given rather to national 
 and Imperial objects, than to such as might have been 
 directly conducive to the purposes of men in power, to 
 what are called the interests of "the Services", or to his 
 own immediate profit. Far from conciliating the Presi- 
 dent of the Board of Control or the Directors of the East 
 India Company, when he had settled himself in England, 
 he was for several years a leader of ineffectual opposition 
 in the Court of Proprietors. He was not, in short, remark- 
 ably successful, in the self-regarding sense, either as a 
 public functionary, or as the founder of a private fortune 
 and a brilliant reputation. 
 
 And yet he was undoubtedly a man of a more original 
 and rare type than most of his fellows whose merits have 
 been told to the world by outward marks of distinction. 
 That very political foresight which makes his acts and 
 testimony more worthy of recollection, will account in a 
 great measure for the extreme confidence in his own 
 views, and impatience of being impeded, which led to an 
 occasional want of harmony with his colleagues and 
 official superiors. He had all the defects of his qualities, 
 and suffered loss accordingly. An able administrator and 
 thorough man of business, he was not so enamoured of 
 his mystery, not so proud of his practical achievements, 
 as to be blind to the inherent limitations and drawbacks 
 of British rule in India. Largely endowed with toler- 
 ance and sympathy for the alien tribes over whom he 
 was placed in a position of command, he acquired an 
 insight into their opinions, feelings and temper, that. gave 
 a prophetic strain to some of his utterances. But a 
 prophet hath not honour among his own people ; and those 
 who occupy the highest seats in the administration of 
 India naturally prefer hearing of its "unspeakable bless- 
 ings" to being reminded of its drawbacks and limitations. 
 A very natural conviction of his own invaluable qualifi-
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 3 
 
 cations similar to that of the traditional cobbler that 
 "there is nothing like leather" possesses almost every 
 member of almost every profession. One of the craft, 
 who is known to be free from this conviction, is very- 
 likely to considered in the light of a traitor in the camp, 
 and to be regarded with scanty favour. And this, I 
 believe, with but little deduction to be made for avoid- 
 able faults and errors, is the true explanation of General 
 Briggs's want of material success ; of his having failed to 
 secure a full appreciation and recognition of his merits by 
 the public authorities of his time. In the race of life 
 and action he was not left behind by better men, it was 
 rather that he saw the goal too clearly from the starting 
 point, went too straight at it, and ran too far ahead, got, 
 perhaps, on the wrong side of the post, was jostled by 
 his competitors, and lost the prize for want of a moment's 
 guidance, not from want of endurance or speed. 
 
 For what he was, and for what he did, for what he saw 
 and for what he foresaw, the work and the words of 
 General John Briggs deserve to be remembered. He stood 
 between the old and the new schools of Indian states- 
 manship. His labours extended over three great periods 
 of British rule in India, that in which supreme power 
 was attained ; that in which supremacy was asserted and 
 enforced; and the more critical period, still in progress, in 
 which we are striving to find a basis of permanent policy 
 on which the Imperial structure may safely rest. During 
 the first period he took his part in conquest, diplomacy and 
 settlement. In the second, he controlled and organised a 
 Kingdom, and placed on record those political doctrines, 
 not yet officially accepted, by which alone British domi- 
 nation can be reconciled with Indian self-respect and local 
 self-government. Briggs did thoroughly well a descrip- 
 tion of work that has, perhaps, never been done so well 
 since, that will certainly never again be done so well. 
 He never overdid it, he never overrated it. In the 
 third period he consistently maintained the principles by 
 which his official career had been animated, against the 
 advocates, for a time irresistible, of the annexation policy; 
 he predicted the widely spread disaffection, especially 
 
 B 2
 
 4 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 among the Native troops, that was to arise from that 
 policy ; he lived to see his predictions disastrously ful- 
 filled, and the policy he had denounced abandoned and 
 disowned. 
 
 If the plan of constituting an Indian Empire on the 
 principles of tutelary federation and reform, which he saw 
 more clearly and propounded more distinctly than any 
 one of his contemporaries, should become, through these 
 pages, better known, more generally accepted and asso- 
 ciated as it ought to be with my venerable friend's name, 
 my object will have been fully attained. 
 
 Within his life-time and recollection five generations of 
 General Briggs's family had occupied places in the Indian 
 Army and CiVil Service, his father, himself and his 
 brothers, his nephews, his grandchildren and his great- 
 grandchildren. By the time that the patronage of 
 Leadenhall Street, heavily stricken in 1853 by open 
 competition replacing Haileybury nominations to the 
 Civil Service, ended in 1858 with the political extinction 
 of the East India Company, the descendants and colla- 
 teral relatives of General Briggs the Lysaghts, the 
 Ludlows, the Wilberforce Birds, the Watkins, Nicolays 
 and Humes had become one of those wide-spreading 
 Anglo-Indian trees, which, with their roots in the Court 
 of Directors and their topmost branches in the Supreme 
 Council, flourished and fructified both in the East and at 
 home. 
 
 John Briggs came of a sturdy stock. In the days 
 when his great-uncle Stephen, and his grandfather 
 Gilbert, left Scotland and came South with the scanty 
 proceeds of a small estate, opportunely yet hastily sold, 
 young men whose father had, like theirs, " disappeared" 
 soon after the battle of Culloden, might have good reason 
 to find the air of their native district decidedly unwhole- 
 some. In those days there was no halo of romance not, 
 at least, in the eyes of the Whig majority around the 
 name and personality of the Young Pretender. Many 
 years elapsed before it became safe to speak of " the '45",
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 5 
 
 except in an undertone, and in well-selected company. 
 More years passed before the genius of Burns and Sir 
 Walter Scott removed the stains of supposed coarseness 
 and savagery from Scottish annals, and rendered the 
 admiration of Highland character and Highland scenery 
 permissible among people of good taste, and even in good 
 society. There was, however, little temptation to speak 
 of "the '45"; little or no controversy between Jacobite 
 and Hanoverian, at Southampton, where the brothers 
 settled, and where Stephen Briggs very soon acquired a 
 considerable income and great repute as a medical 
 practitioner. 
 
 Both brothers married early in life, and Gilbert died 
 young, leaving three children, James (father of General 
 John Briggs), Stephen and Elizabeth, scantily provided 
 for, who were adopted and brought up by their uncle 
 Stephen,who was prospering in his profession, and occupied 
 a handsome house in the Polygon. Elizabeth was married 
 in 1772 to Edmund Ludlow, a person of some consider- 
 ation in the town of Southampton, though, according to 
 the family tradition, distinguished for nothing but his 
 skill as an amateur violin-player. By his wife, who died 
 in 1803, he had two sons, Edmund and John. The former 
 of these had six sons, four of whom entered the Indian 
 Army. One of them, John, who died with the rank of 
 Major- General, at a very advanced age, on the 30th of 
 November 1882, ought to be remembered with honour 
 
 * O 
 
 for having caused, by a persuasive method that induced 
 conviction and willing acquiescence, the prohibition of 
 widow-burning in its last stronghold among the Princes 
 of Rajpootana.* 
 
 John, the second son of the elder Edmund Ludlow, 
 also served in the Bengal Army; was in the expedition 
 to Egypt, under Sir David Baird, in 1801 ; distinguished 
 himself in the war with Nepaul ; was made a C.B., and 
 died in 1822, Colonel and Brigadier in command at 
 Meerut, from the consequences of exposure and fatigue, 
 during the campaigns of 1818 and 1819 against the 
 Pindarries. His son, John Malcolm Ludlow, now Chief 
 
 * Widoiv Burning, by H. J. Bushhy (Longmans), 1855.
 
 6 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 Registrar of Friendly Societies, and well known for the 
 interest and active part he has taken in the co-operative 
 movement, has made contributions to Indian history 
 and politics that deserve the attention of all who wish 
 to appreciate those matters in their ethical and legal 
 aspects,* and will throw much light on the past, when 
 the ultimate and retrospective survey of our Indian 
 Empire comes to be taken by future historians. 
 
 The wife of Uncle Stephen Briggs was a Miss Pasley, 
 by whom he had three children, Thomas, afterwards 
 Admiral Sir Thomas Briggs, K.C.B. ; Mrs. Blackburn, 
 wife of Chief- Justice Blackburn, of the Court of King's 
 Bench in Ireland ; and Mrs. Venour. 
 
 Margaret Pasley, younger sister of Mrs. Stephen Briggs, 
 married George Malcolm, of Burnfoot, Dumfriesshire. 
 One of their sons became Admiral Sir Pulteney Malcolm, 
 and another was General Sir John Malcolm, distinguished 
 as an Indian soldier and administrator, as an Oriental 
 diplomatist, and as a writer on Eastern history and 
 Indian politics. From October 1827 to December 1830 
 he was Governor of Bombay, and died in 1833. Thus 
 Admiral Sir Thomas Briggs, first-cousin of General John 
 Briggs, stood in the same relationship to Sir John Mal- 
 colm. It will be seen further on that Briggs and Sir 
 John Malcolm were thrown very much together in public 
 duties ; and although there was only a connection by 
 marriage, and not even by affinity between them, Briggs 
 was always called "cousin" by Sir John Malcolm, and 
 treated by him with constant and cordial affection- 
 
 The elder Stephen Briggs, great-uncle of the General, 
 brought up his nephew James, the General's father, to 
 his own profession, and got him an appointment in the 
 medical service of the Madras Presidency, where he rose 
 to the rank of Physician-General. 
 
 Dr. James Briggs was twice married, first in 1784 to 
 Martha, daughter of Mr. John Bryan Pybus, of the Madras 
 Civil Service, and widow of Major Arthur Lysaght, 
 
 * British India, its Races and its History (Macmillan and Co., 1858) ; 
 The War in Oude ; and Thoughts on the Policy of the Crown towards 
 India (Ridgway, 1859).
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 7 
 
 brother of the first Lord Lisle. Admiral Arthur Lysaght, 
 born 1782, died 1859 was half-brother to General 
 John Briggs. 
 
 By his first wife Dr. James Briggs had two sons, of 
 whom the General was the elder, born on the 18th of 
 September 1785. His younger brother, Stephen, born 
 in 1787, entered the Navy in 1799, saw much service in 
 the West Indies; and in 1821 fitted out a corvette, arid 
 helped his old companion-in-arms, Lord Cochrane, after- 
 wards Earl of Dundonald, in the Chilian war of liber- 
 ation. On his marriage with Louisa, daughter of Admiral 
 Hamilton, who is said to have "brought him some 
 property near Shrewsbury", he settled there, and died a 
 Post-Captain, leaving one daughter, who married her 
 second-cousin, Mr. Venour, a barrister, by whom she had 
 several children. 
 
 Mr. John Bryan Pybus, the General's maternal grand- 
 father, was in the Madras Civil Service, and retired 
 about 1786, after having been a Member of Council. He 
 had three daughters, the eldest, Martha, was the wife 
 of Dr. James Briggs ; the second, Anne, of General Sir 
 Robert Fletcher ; and the youngest, Catherine Amelia, 
 born after her father's return to England, was married in 
 1800 to the Rev. Sydney Smith, afterwards Canon of 
 St. Paul's, renowned as a wit, and as one of the first 
 Edinburgh Reviewers. Their daughter, Saba, wife of 
 Sir Henry Holland, Bart., the eminent physician, was 
 thus first-cousin to General Briggs. 
 
 On his return to England, Mr. John Bryan Pybus 
 founded a bank in Bond Street, in partnership with Sir 
 John Call, Bart., which subsequently became the house 
 of Martin Call & Co., and is now represented by the firm 
 of Martin & Co. , in Lombard Street. 
 
 Besides his three daughters, Mr. Pybus had two sons, 
 both of whom were educated at Harrow, and subsequently 
 performed what was then styled "the grand tour", 
 visiting the principal capital cities of Europe. John, the 
 elder, became a partner in the bank. The younger, 
 Charles Small Pybus, was M.P. for Dover for many years. 
 He was made a Lord of the Admiralty by William Pitt
 
 8 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 in 1791, and a Lord of the Treasury in 1797, but lost his 
 seat at the general election of 1802, and died in 1803. 
 
 " By his second wife, Miss Honor Dodson", says General 
 Briggs, in some autobiographical papers from which I 
 shall occasionally quote, "my father had two daughters 
 and nine sons, of whom both the daughters and one son 
 died in childhood. His remaining eight sons all entered 
 the public service in India, and five of them have died in 
 that country." 
 
 " After the loss of his first wife, my father came on furlough to 
 England with his two sons in 1 789. We embarked at Madras in 
 the ship General Goddard, which was wrecked off the Needles, 
 Isle of Wight, but the passengers and crew were saved. I was 
 only four years of age, and have, of course, a very faint recollec- 
 tion of what happened. 
 
 "My father remained in England till the month of May 1794, 
 when he returned to India in the same ship as the new Governor 
 of Madras, Lord Hobart, afterwards Earl of Buckinghamshire, in 
 whose family he resided till he obtained the appointment of 
 Physician-General to the expedition, under Major-General James 
 Stewart, for the capture of the island of Ceylon from the Dutch. 
 There my father became acquainted with Miss Honor Dodson, 
 who became his second wife. During his former residence in 
 England I and my brother Stephen were placed at the school kept 
 by Dr. Winter in Ormond Street, preparatory for some of the 
 large public seminaries. We were left under the guardianship of 
 our uncle, John Pybus, and I was shortly after placed as an 
 Oppidan at Eton, while Stephen was sent to the school at Salt 
 Hill, kept by Dr. Caleb Cotton. 
 
 " I was then only nine years old, but on examination I was 
 placed in the fourth form, and before I left, in 1799, when nearly 
 fourteen, I was in the upper remove of the fifth. I am sorry to 
 say that I benefited little by my public school education. Perhaps 
 it was my own fault. I know I was very often flogged. 
 
 " My father returned home once more on leave in 1799, with his 
 second wife and an infant son. He had been obliged to leave 
 India on account of having burst a blood-vessel in the lungs, and 
 he went, almost immediately after his arrival, to Clifton, where he 
 placed himself under the care of the celebrated Dr. Beddoes. 
 
 " I am afraid I must confess that, both in the case of my 
 brother and myself, there was the ancient and proverbial want of 
 sympathy and affection between us and our step- mother, of whom, 
 I must moreover explain, we saw very little. In the spring of 
 1799 we were removed from Eton, and Stephen was sent to a
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 9 
 
 Naval Academy, and at the end of the year was shipped on board 
 a frigate. 
 
 " I obtained my appointment as Cadet for the Madras establish- 
 ment in the latter end of 1800, and in order to brush up my 
 French, my father placed me in London in a French boarding- 
 house, where little else was spoken. I was always, however, a 
 welcome guest at the house of my uncle, John Pybus, till it was 
 time for me to embark for India. My passage was taken on board 
 the Charlton, the same ship on which the Commander-in-Chief, 
 General James Stewart, was to embark, and the time was fixed 
 for our departure in the last week of January 1801. My father 
 accompanied me to Portsmouth, where he introduced me to his 
 friend the Commander-in-Chief, under whom he had served in the 
 capture of Ceylon, and to the Captain of the ship. 
 
 "We were to have sailed in a few days, but strong westerly 
 winds set in so persistently that, tired of the delay, my father left 
 me to the care of Captain Cumberlege, of our ship the Charlton. 
 The Portsmouth roads were now full of shipping, and here we 
 were detained for two months. My father had provided for my 
 being boarded in the ship while in harbour, and I received his 
 instructions, as well as the Captain's, never to sleep ashore. I now 
 found myself fairly launched on the stream of life as my own 
 master at the early age of fifteen, with all the world before me 
 through which I was to make my way. My moral habits and 
 principles had been acquired amid the several branches of my 
 mother's family, with whom I and my brother Stephen regularly 
 spent our holidays, where we had examples of the strictest integrity, 
 and where any loose sentiment inadvertently expressed was sure 
 to meet with instant reproof. 
 
 " The tedium of a ship at anchor soon became very wearisome. 
 There were several Cadets on board considerably senior to me, two 
 of whom had already been to India as midshipmen, but had now 
 changed their profession. It was natural that I should court 
 their acquaintance, and look up to them as companions of great 
 knowledge and experience. Having been supplied by my father 
 with a few pounds in case the ship should be detained at any 
 part on the voyage, I was enabled to accompany some of my 
 fellow-passengers ashore occasionally, but I always returned 
 aboard to sleep. I was, however, tempted to become one of a 
 party to visit Gosport, where I had become acquainted with a 
 friend of my father's. We were to dine together, and afterwards 
 go to the play. I soon suffered from the evil consequences of 
 disregarding my father's injunctions not to sleep out of the ship. 
 Absence for the whole night necessarily formed part of our 
 scheme. At dinner I had been induced to drink more wine than 
 I was used to, and further potations were pressed upon me later in
 
 10 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 the evening. I saw nothing of the play. I became so unfit to 
 take care of myself that, after leaving the ferry-boat from Gosport 
 to Portsmouth, on our return from the theatre, .1 lost all sense and 
 recollection, until at noon next day I found myself in a comfortable 
 bed in a strange place. On ringing the bell a respectable lady 
 entered, and asked me how I felt, and what I required. With 
 shame I confessed I did not know where I was, but she soon 
 informed me that I had been brought into the Blue Posts Inn, by 
 some other gentlemen, in a state of insensibility and pat to bed. 
 Although suffering much with a racking headache, I arose at once, 
 bathed my head with cold water, and proceeded to dress. It was 
 now I discovered that the little money I had in my pocket, and a 
 gold watch, formerly belonging to my mother, were missing. I 
 rang again and mentioned the circumstance to the chamber-maid, 
 who said, to my great relief, that both money and watch were 
 quite safe in the hands of the landlady. They were honestly 
 restored to me, and after paying my bill, and something more than 
 was charged for my entertainment, I returned to the ship, which I 
 did not quit again till I landed in India. This little incident had 
 the effect of cautioning me against excess at table, and rendered 
 me through life habitually sober. 
 
 " The wind proved fair on the 1st April, and on that day the 
 fleet of merchantmen for all parts, amounting to more than one 
 hundred sail, left Spithead under convoy of the Channel fleet, 
 which saw us safe out of the narrow seas, when each vessel left 
 for its destination. In a few days our East India fleet was going 
 well together, consisting of twenty or thirty fine vessels, under 
 convoy of two line-of- battle ships and a frigate, which escorted us 
 as far as the Canary Islands. 
 
 " Our Captain, Cumberlege, was not only an accomplished gentle- 
 man, but an experienced seaman and skilful navigator, as was 
 subsequently proved. From the Commander-in- Chief I experienced 
 great kindness. He introduced me to his secretary, Captain 
 Campbell, and made me over to his special care, advice, and pro- 
 tection. This gallant officer was subsequently killed at the head 
 of his regiment on the capture of the Mauritius in 1812. We had 
 a favourable and pleasant passage, without any dissensions among 
 us, although there were about thirty young men for the Civil 
 Service and the Army on board. As was the custom in those days, 
 there was a great deal of drinking, but my first lesson against 
 intemperance was not thrown away upon me. I was destined, 
 however, to receive another on the habit of smoking. I shared a 
 cabin with a brother Cadet, who had occasional smoking parties 
 there, which to me were very disagreeable. I endeavoured to 
 overcome this feeling, and to appear sociable by taking a pipe 
 myself. Of course, my chum and his friends encouraged me, and
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 11 
 
 I was led on from one to two or more pipes ; but I suffered so 
 much that night and during the following three days, that I never 
 gave in to the habit again through life. 
 
 " I have already alluded to the Captain of our vessel, who, as I 
 have stated, was a skilful navigator, as the following instances 
 proved. When we reached the latitude of Ceylon, at the entrance 
 to the Bay of Bengal, on the 16th of July, we had seen no land 
 from the day of our departure on the 1st of April. The ships 
 for Bombay had parted from us some time before, while those for 
 Madras and Calcutta kept together. The Senior Captain, or 
 Commodore, was bound for the latter port, but had never touched 
 at Madras. Owing to the length of time which had elapsed since 
 we left England, he was unwilling to trust to the correctness of 
 his longitude, and accordingly, as he approached the Coromandel 
 shore, he made a signal for the fleet to heave-to during the night. 
 Our Captain, who was familiar with the coast, and who had more 
 confidence in his reckoning than the Commodore, made signal to 
 speak to him. The two reckonings did not quite agree, but our 
 Captain of the Charlton offered to lead the fleet during the night, 
 and stated confidently that he should strike soundings off the east 
 coast of Ceylon about midnight at one hundred fathoms. As the 
 conversation was carried on through a trumpet, we all heard what 
 passed. The Charlton, according to permission, went ahead, and 
 sure enough, as the bell struck at midnight, the lead was hove, 
 and ground was reached at a little beyond a hundred fathoms. 
 The announcement was made by signal to the whole fleet astern, 
 and was received with three cheers from the passengers, who 
 were then assured by the experienced Captain that, if the same 
 wind lasted six-and-thirty hours, we should see the Madras flag- 
 staff at daylight on the 20th July. This also came true, and 
 seemed to us, as I believe it was, a splendid example of nautical 
 skill. I had plenty of leisure on board to read and improve 
 myself, but I turned my attention principally to understanding 
 the duties of the ship. I learned the name and special use of 
 every sail, rope, and spar. I studied the mode by which the ship 
 was navigated, the particular effects produced by the rudder, and 
 the object of each trimming of the sails ; and I took advantage of 
 the knowledge of one of the Cadets, who had been twice to India 
 as a midshipman with our Captain, and who assisted him in the 
 daily settlement of the latitude and longitude, to learn how to take 
 observations, so that whenever I had an opportunity on subsequent 
 voyages and they were many I kept up my nautical knowledge 
 and practice, especially the use of the sextant, which was most 
 useful to me afterwards in several surveys on land that I was 
 enabled thereby to undertake. Our approach to Madras had been 
 announced ten days previously by the arrival of one of the ships
 
 12 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 of our large fleet, a very fast sailer, which had parted company off 
 the island of Mauritius, and as the date of each Cadet's commis- 
 sion was regulated by his arrival in India, the Government 
 resolved that the whole number of 170 of the season of 1800 for 
 Madras should bear their commissions from the 10th July 1801. 
 
 " I was most affectionately received by the brother-in-law of my 
 father's second wife, and, as soon as practicable, obeyed orders to 
 proceed with others to join the Cadet Company at Chingleput, 
 about thirty-six miles from the Presidency town. 
 
 " The Commandant of the Cadet Company, though only a Cap- 
 tain, was an old and distinguished officer, selected to superintend 
 that establishment on account of the admirable qualities he pos- 
 sessed of firmness, kindness, generosity, discretion of character, 
 and good sense. In fact, he was one out of a thousand, who united 
 these qualifications for his situation. He was assisted by two or 
 three junior officers and a number of steady sergeants. There 
 were at this time altogether about two hundred Cadets at Chingle- 
 put, all quartered within the fort, and employed, as soon as 
 they were fit to perform them, in all the duties of the garrison. 
 The guards were mounted on the parade ground daily, after the 
 ordinary drill. The Cadets were provided with military clothing 
 and accoutrements on their arrival. The Commandant and officers 
 attended at the mess dinner, the expense of which was deducted 
 from the pay to which the Cadets were entitled. After the arrival 
 of all the Cadets of the season they were appointed to regiments, 
 their standing in which was regulated according to the seniority of 
 the East India Directors who had nominated them. The Cadet 
 Company was told off in squads, to each of which was attached a 
 Sergeant-Instructor, but the officers and the Commandant entered 
 into all details, and an Orderly hour was appointed for receiving 
 daily the reports of officers and authorised applications from the 
 Cadets. Besides mere military instructions, every Cadet was re- 
 quired to receive at his quarters, for a specific time, a Moonshee, or 
 Native instructor in the Hindustani language ; and no Cadet was 
 allowed to leave the establishment without having acquired some 
 knowledge of the colloquial dialect. It may well be supposed that 
 the duties of these learned men among a number of high-spirited 
 youngsters were not always agreeable ; but as they were well paid, 
 they were induced to submit to a good deal of horse-play and 
 practical joking. One of these Moonshees, who conscientiously 
 refused to quit a Cadet's quarters during the hour assigned for a 
 lesson, was driven out of the house by a mischievous trick that 
 might have cost him his life. The young Cadet, finding he could 
 not prevail on the tutor to quit his cane-bottomed chair, quietly 
 emptied a powder-flask under it, carrying a train thence to the 
 door. He then lighted the train. The unfortunate Moonshee
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 13 
 
 was dreadfully scorched ; his clothes which, as usual, were of light 
 muslin, and loose, were set on fire ; and though, fortunately, he 
 escaped with his life, he was for some time under the surgeon's 
 ha mis. It may be imagined that this frolic did not pass un- 
 punished. The Cadet was kept for some days in the guard, pre- 
 vented from holding conversation with his comrades, or of messing 
 with them, and subsequently kept on duty on alternate days for 
 some time, and was also sentenced to pay a fine out of his pay as 
 some compensation to his Native instructor. The culprit after- 
 wards turned out a steady, gentlemanly officer, and passed through 
 a long military career with credit. 
 
 " The Commandant's mode of breaking the Cadets from being 
 late on parade was one not unusually practised in well-disciplined 
 regiments. He himself seldom appeared on parade for four or five 
 minutes after the time announced in orders, but he inculcated on 
 all the Cadets as a rule to be a few minutes before the hour. 
 ' This rule'j he said, ' should be observed on all occasions of ordi- 
 nary duties, Seniors a few minutes after time, and juniors a few 
 minutes before time.' When, however, a Cadet came after time, he 
 was required, before falling into his place, to come up to the senior 
 officer on parade and report his arrival. On such occasions the 
 Commandant directed him to stand where he was, and exhibited 
 him as a lingerer to the whole Cadet Company during exercise. 
 If this occurred more than once, when the guards were paraded 
 with all the requisite ceremony, the defaulter was attached to one 
 of them and performed an extra tour of duty for this second 
 instance of negligence, which seldom occurred again. Our dear 
 Commandant felt it his duty to study the character of every young 
 man in the Cadet Company, and he noted down every incident 
 which brought it out. He was well acquainted with my father, 
 and took an interest in me from the date of my arrival. He 
 quartered me with a son of the General Officer commanding the 
 division, a Westminster boy of my own age, between whom and 
 myself arose an intimate friendship. We paid a Sergeant for extra 
 drill at our own quarters, and devoted as much time as we could 
 spare to our Native instructor of languages ; and as we had both 
 been born in India, and had spoken the Hindustani tongue as 
 children, we very soon fell into the correct pronunciation, and 
 were favourably reported on. My chum's father paid an official 
 visit to the Cadet Company on his inspection tour of the division. 
 Advantage was taken of this occasion to promote some of the old 
 and new Cadets to the non-commissioned ranks, and among others 
 my chum was raised to the grade of Corporal, while I remained in 
 the ranks. This made no difference in our friendship. It gave 
 rise to no jealousy on my part, as I looked on the circumstance as 
 a natural compliment to my friend's father ; nor did my chum 
 assume any superiority on his accession to this dignity.
 
 14 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 " An occurrence took place shortly after which brought me to 
 the special notice of the Commandant. One night, while I was 
 sentry over the front of his house, one of those fearful tropical 
 storms of thunder, lightning, and heavy rain occurred. I might 
 have taken shelter under the open verandah, but my ignorance of 
 military practice and a strict sense of duty induced me to continue 
 walking up and down on the gravel-walk in front, where I had 
 been posted to protect the house. The slamming of the Venetian 
 shutters and open doors attracted the Commandant's attention, 
 and he got out of bed to shut them. During this operation he 
 caught sight of his sentry walking up and down, in the midst of 
 the storm, in front of the house, and by means of the vivid 
 flashes of lightning he discovered who it was. He said nothing, 
 but left me to my fate. On the following morning I received a 
 message, through his Orderly, to request my attendance at break- 
 fast after relief of guards. I was received with kindness; and 
 during the breakfast, which was usually well attended, he asked 
 me if I was on duty over his house the previous night during the 
 storm. I replied in the affirmative. He said, ' Why did not you 
 take shelter in the verandah ?' I replied that I was posted in 
 front of the house to take care of it, and I thought it my duty to 
 remain there, in spite of the storm, till I was relieved. He said, 
 with a smile, ' You are a very young soldier, but destined to be an 
 officer, and not to have much more sentry duty ; and my object in 
 not calling on you to come in was to let you feel how unpleasant 
 it is to be soaked in the rain on a stormy night, and to explain to 
 you now that the duty of an officer is to save his men as much as 
 possible from such exposure, and never to keep them out in bad 
 weather unnecessarily. You did more than your duty ; but let this 
 be a lesson to you, that whenever you can do so, preserve the 
 health and study the comfort of those under your command. 
 They will then be all the more ready for occasions when duty 
 requires them to submit to hardships and hunger.' Shortly after 
 this I was promoted to be an Ensign, and having passed as ail 
 officer fit to join a Company, I was posted to the 15th Native 
 Infantry Eegiment, and joined it as sixteenth Lieutenant, there 
 being still six vacancies in that grade, and all the ten Ensigns 
 being deficient. This state of things was due to the casualties in 
 the late Mysore War, and to the additional number of troops 
 required to occupy the provinces conquered from Tippoo and 
 added to our former possessions. 
 
 " My first station was in the territory then lately acquired from 
 the Nizam, entitled the Ceded Districts, and such was the state of 
 disorder existing when it fell into our hands, that it became 
 necessary to distribute two or three battalions, by single com- 
 panies, to occupy the posts from which certain turbulent chiefs had
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRTGGS. 15 
 
 been forcibly expelled, or where others who had fled threatened to 
 recover what they deemed their just rights. When I joined the 
 corps, there were only the Commandant and Adjutant with a few 
 men at headquarters, occupying the tolerably strong fort of Gum- 
 bum. Two companies, consisting of nearly two hundred men 
 and their officers, had been detached as a treasure escort to the 
 headquarters of the division ; and as they were detained there, and 
 employed in another very arduous duty, it seems the right place 
 to advert to it, though I myself was no sharer in the danger or the 
 honour connected with the event. I have stated that the Madras 
 Ceded Districts in 1801 were in a very disturbed state, which I 
 mention as connected with the event which brought our two 
 companies into notice. These districts were tolerably well 
 peopled, but they had for the greater part of the previous century 
 been subject to the incursions of the Mahrattas, and each village 
 was protected by a wall with round bastions or towers to keep off 
 Cavalry, and had not unfrequently a fortified building or cavalier, 
 for it could hardly be called a castle, which not only com- 
 manded the whole village, but a certain portion of the township 
 beyond it. At the period I now speak of, the village of Turnicul 
 was inhabited by an indigenous tribe, of whom at that time Euro- 
 peans knew nothing. They had succeeded in the south of India 
 in resisting the fate of the Hindu Governments and Chieftainships 
 which had fallen before the sword of the Mohammedans, while these 
 aborigines held their own under each successive sovereign as 
 feudatories paying a certain variable tribute for lands they had 
 held from time immemorial, in consideration of protecting the 
 country from robbers. The Government of the Ceded Districts 
 had been entrusted to a highly distinguished military officer, who 
 for some years had been employed in different parts of the South in 
 Civil administration. He was aware that under the former Govern- 
 ment it had been a common custom to exact from all Chiefs at the 
 head of agricultural communities like the one in question who 
 were not strong enough to resist as heavy a tribute annually as 
 could be obtained, and this was effected by putting up the Govern- 
 ment revenues to competition, and farming them to the highest 
 bidder. In this way a great part of the Chiefships had been out- 
 bidden and destroyed ; and, unfortunately, in his anxiety to secure 
 a large revenue for Government, the same measure was applied by 
 the English officer in the case of the estate of the Chief of Turnicul, 
 who had always hitherto been influential and strong enough to 
 resist this oppressive practice under the Native administration. 
 He found it impossible to come up to the figure bid by one of the 
 Brahmins who had followed the European Magistrate's camp, and 
 in a fit of despair, rather than relinquish his estate peaceably, he 
 drew his sword in open Court, cut the throat of the successful
 
 16 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 competitor, and retired, with the numerous followers who accom- 
 panied him, into his fortified village. 
 
 " Deeming it requisite to make a prompt and signal example of 
 such conduct, the military power was called in to demand the 
 surrender of the murderer. For this purpose a force was organised, 
 consisting of a Regiment of Native Cavalry with its two ojalloper 
 guns (6-pounders), a Native battalion of Infantry, and the two 
 companies of my own Regiment which had brought the treasure 
 to headquarters. The village into which the Chief had retired 
 was like those before described. His followers were simply armed 
 with spears, swords, and matchlocks. From the description of the 
 place, it was thought that the gates might easily be blown open by 
 light guns in case of the Chief not surrendering, and in the event 
 of his attempting to escape, a body of Cavalry might be sent to 
 overtake and cut off himself and followers. The General Officer 
 of the division from which the force for this service was derived 
 was himself a Cavalry Officer, and he nominated one of his own 
 Staff (also a Cavalry Officer) to command the expedition. The 
 distance from headquarters was about forty miles. The detach- 
 ment left in the afternoon, and in order to lose no time, marched 
 continuously till near daylight, when the object of attack was still 
 a few miles off. The Cavalry, with the guns, pushed on, and the 
 Chief refusing to surrender, one of the guns was run up to the 
 gate in order to blow it open. This gate was covered by a traverse 
 wall of stone, and defended by a loop-holed parapet above. It was 
 blocked up with stones on the inside, and there was a difficulty in 
 working the gun within the protecting traverse wall. The enemy 
 reserved their fire till the gun was discharged, when they plied 
 their matchlocks with such success that the loss sustained by the 
 Cavalry induced them to leave the gun in position and retire, 
 covering it, however, by the fire of the other guns, to prevent its 
 being taken by the enemy. The Cavalry Commandant now sent 
 word back to the Infantry to hasten on ; but the sturdy old Major 
 who led them sent word back that he would come up without 
 hurry, as quickly as his men could after a fatiguing march of four- 
 teen hours. On their joining, the Infantry were directed to bring 
 away the gun at the gate, which the enemy had spiked in the 
 meantime, by letting one of the garrison over the walls by a rope. 
 It was now seen that the detachment was wholly unprepared to 
 undertake the capture of the place, and on its being represented to 
 the headquarters of the division, the gallant veteran General com- 
 manding organised a reinforcement of a Regiment of Dragoons, a 
 Regiment of European Infantry, another battalion of Sepoys, and 
 all the field Artillery (6-pounders) at his disposal. The General 
 himself, though considerably past his grand climacteric, headed 
 the Dragoons, and made the march of forty miles at one stretch.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 17 
 
 On reaching his ground, he was met by the Commander of the 
 late attack, and without dismounting, he closely reconnoitred the 
 place, regardless of the frequent shots with which he was assailed. 
 After breakfast he wrote out his orders for an attack on the fol- 
 lowing day. He had taken the precaution to bring scaling ladders, 
 but they proved too short. An attempt was then made to force an 
 entrance through a sally-port on the side opposite the main gate. 
 This, too, was found impracticable, the narrow gate being also 
 solidly built up on the inside. In this attack the Commandant of 
 one of the Sepoy Regiments was killed, and many officers and men 
 fell before the troops were recalled. A third attack took place a 
 few days after with scaling ladders of greater length, which had 
 been constructed in camp for the purpose, but the assailants only 
 now discovered that there was no rampart behind the curtains, 
 while the storming parties were assailed from the bastions which 
 enfiladed their ranks with missiles of all available descriptions. 
 Every man of the storming parties who ascended the ladders and 
 showed his head above the walls, was instantly shoved back at the 
 point of a spear from within, while a smart fire from the flanking 
 bastions was poured upon the assailants, aided by the discharge of 
 large stones. After considerable loss, the storming parties were 
 recalled, but the two Companies of my Regiment, which had been 
 sent round on the opposite side to make a false attack, in order to 
 divert the fire of the enemy from the real ones, were forgotten, and 
 they remained at their post till they had expended their ammu- 
 nition, and lost in killed and wounded exactly half of their 
 number. On this occasion, several gallant officers and men of the 
 force were sacrificed to no purpose, and the General found it 
 necessary to confine his operations for the time to a close invest- 
 ment of the place, and to wait the arrival of a regular battering 
 train with an adequate number of Engineer and Artillery Officers. 
 " Meanwhile, the garrison were informed that all that was 
 required of them was that they should deliver up their Chief. 
 They replied that ' he was their master, their father, and the Head 
 of their Clan, and that they were ready to die for him'. Before 
 the heavy ordnance had shattered their walls they were invited to 
 send out their families; to which they answered, 'they were useful 
 in discharging stones, and in other ways repelling assaults, and 
 could not be separated from their homes'. A few hours, however, 
 convinced them that they had no longer any chance against 
 British power. By one o'clock on the first day the battering guns 
 opened, a practicable breach was effected, and the storming party, 
 led by the Europeans, rushed to the assault. Instead of meeting 
 with resistance, they found the weapons of the garrison piled up at 
 the foot of the breach, while the latter stood in a mass, unarmed, 
 to await their doom. After the heavy loss sustained, connected
 
 18 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 with the circumstance that led to the defence, no quarter was 
 given, and not a soul was spared within the place, while those who 
 managed to fly outside the fort were destroyed by the Cavalry. 
 Thus terminated this ill-conducted undertaking. 
 
 " I had not been many weeks with my Eegiment before I was 
 ordered, with my Company, to join a detachment consisting of two 
 Companies of Infantry under the same Captain who had com- 
 manded our two Companies at the Siege of Turnicul, accompanied 
 by a troop of Cavalry, for the purpose of scouring the country in 
 the endeavour to capture another of the turbulent Chiefs who 
 refused to submit to the conditions required by our Government. 
 We were accompanied by the Civil Authority, at whose requisition 
 we were put in motion, and to whom our Commanding Officer 
 looked for information and instructions. Our expedition, which 
 was no further successful than in expelling the enemy from the 
 Company's territory for the present, lasted about three months. 
 During this time we had no mess, but dined with each other by 
 turns ; and when not actually in motion we generally sat down at 
 night to play at cards. At this I was not skilful, and was conse- 
 quently unsuccessful, and in the course of a week or two I lost 
 more than I could conveniently pay, and I declined joining the 
 next party. I was terribly bantered for my want of enterprise ; 
 but as I was determined not to become further involved, I adhered 
 to my resolution, which I found absolutely necessary for my peace 
 of mind; for as it was, I was compelled to borrow money of my 
 own servant in order to give my dinner when my turn came round ; 
 and I could barely discharge my debts of honour out of my pay 
 before the detachment returned to head-quarters. Thus, before I 
 had left my father's house two years, and before I was seventeen 
 years old, I had been effectually cured of three fatal propensities, 
 that of drinking and gambling, besides that of smoking tobacco 
 habits which once acquired are not easily abandoned and of the 
 disastrous effects of which I have had frequent proofs in my 
 earliest and in my latest observation and experience. On my 
 return to the Eegiment, my Company was detached to an outpost 
 in a small Fort or Castle, the late residence of one of the turbulent 
 Chiefs with which the country abounded. The garrison was com- 
 manded by Captain de Morgan, who had married a sister of my 
 father's second wife. He left it, on leave, shortly after I joined, 
 and I, at the age of sixteen and six months, was left as Governor 
 of an important post. Fortunately, I had an experienced Native 
 Officer of the old school as my second in command, and there 
 being no other European in the garrison, I soon added to my 
 knowledge of the Hindustani language, which all the Native 
 Officers and most of the men spoke. At the same time I was 
 fortunate in obtaining the services of a learned Mohammedan
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 19 
 
 accustomed to teach Persian to his countrymen in his Native 
 city. I was thus left to prosecute my studies in the most favour- 
 able manner during the greater part of two years, when my 
 Company was relieved, and I rejoined the head-quarters of my 
 Eegiment at Hyderabad in 1803. I had made such good use of 
 my time, that I was called on to translate into Persian the Duke 
 of Wellington's official despatch after the battle of Assaye, for 
 which I obtained a most flattering compliment from a very eminent 
 scholar, who went so far as to predict that if I persevered I should 
 become one of the best interpreters in the army. During this 
 year I accompanied my Company on other service, and was 
 employed as Persian and Hindustani Interpreter, and returned to 
 head-quarters in August 1804. 
 
 "In consequence of the breaking out of the Mahratta war of 
 1802 and 1803, it was thought expedient to recruit additional 
 Native troops to provide for casualties in the field The operations 
 of the Madras and Bombay Armies extended as far north as the 
 Nerbudda ; while those of the Bengal Army spread over Central 
 India, the regions of Agra and Delhi, and even to the banks of 
 the Sutlej, on the frontier of the Punjaub. The state of affairs 
 induced the Government of Madras to increase the number of 
 Infantry Regiments, in the course of which the Adjutant of my 
 Corps was promoted, and the Commander-in-Chief appointed me 
 to that office. Scarcely had this change occurred, when it was 
 discovered that by an official mistake the Officer who had been 
 promoted in orders to the rank of Captain, was really unaffected 
 by the augmentation. He therefore resumed the Adjutancy from 
 me. At the same time the Government directed the formation of 
 five ' Extra Battalions' to be drilled and kept ready, and to be dealt 
 with, during or after the war, according to circumstances. 
 
 " A list of five officers was made out as Commandants, to whom 
 the choice of their Adjutants was left. There were to be only 
 these two European officers to each extra Battalion, with an 
 Assistant- Surgeon. Among the Commandants was my old friend 
 Captain Armstrong of the Cadet Company, and it w r as a subject of 
 great gratification to me that he selected me as his Staff-Officer 
 to assist in raising a new Corps. Native Commissioned and Non- 
 Comrnissioned Officers were supplied from the Army at large. 
 Our station was Trichinopoly, two hundred miles south of Madras, 
 and about four hundred from Hyderabad, where my own Corps 
 was stationed. I had scarcely been three years with my Eegiment, 
 but I had for a great part of the time been in the field, and for 
 more than a year, as already mentioned, in the command of a small 
 fort with my own Company. 
 
 "My Commandant was so thoroughly master of his business 
 that my time was fully and well occupied. In the morning I rose 
 
 c 2
 
 20 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 at day-light, and was soon on parade, superintending the drill of 
 the recruits, under the eye of my excellent and indefatigable Com- 
 mandant. At nine I returned to breakfast, and at ten attended 
 at the Major's Quarters with the regimental orderly book, and a 
 morning report, which exhibited the actual condition of the Corps, 
 the number of men on duty, those on the sick-list, those enlisted 
 during the preceding day, those who were absent on leave, or 
 without leave, and those present for duty. All this information 
 was collected from the reports of each Company, framed by the 
 Native Officers, the whole being collected and formed into the 
 general morning report of the Eegiment. I returned to my 
 quarters at twelve, and was attended by a Persian Moonshee till 
 one o'clock, when I took a hasty tiffin alone, and from two till four 
 I was engaged in examining and enlisting recruits preparatory to 
 taking them before the Commandant, who then regularly accom- 
 panied me to the afternoon drill, which terminated at sunset. 
 Bed-time was very welcome after a late dinner and a little conver- 
 sation with the Commandant and the Doctor. We got on, fortu- 
 nately for us three, perfectly well together. 
 
 " Such was the life I led till my Commandant was promoted 
 and removed to another Corps, and his place was supplied by the 
 same Officer under whom I served in the Ceded Districts at the 
 small outpost. This event occurred in May 1805. The routine of 
 duty was now familiar to me, and the health of the new Com- 
 mandant did not allow of his taking the same active part in the 
 advancement of the new Corps as his predecessor. The Corps 
 now consisted of about six hundred men, of whom more than half 
 were fit to join any Regiment. In July, orders were received to 
 break up the Battalion and to distribute the men, according to 
 orders, to different Corps of the Line. I was directed to take 
 charge of the Battalion, and march it to Madras, a distance of two 
 hundred miles, while the Commandant proceeded to join his own 
 Regiment in another direction. Thus at nineteen years of age I 
 commanded a Battalion on the march. On my arrival at Madras 
 I had to deliver over their quotas to several Regiments whose 
 Officers were there to receive them ; each man with all his papers 
 complete, and his pay paid up to date. I was now left with one 
 hundred and twenty men for my own Corps, then stationed at 
 Hyderabad, nearly 400 miles from Madras. 
 
 "In the month of November 1805 I brought into Secunderabad, 
 the military cantonment of Hyderabad, my large batch of recruits 
 in good condition, and without having lost a man on the road by 
 death or desertion. I got great credit for it, and I think I deserved 
 it. The men, though of a different language and nation, the 
 Tamul, from the Telugu Sepoys of which my Corps had chiefly 
 consisted, had taken my fancy completely, and I believe they had
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 21 
 
 become attached to me. I was, however, chiefly indebted to the 
 good influence of the Native Officers. 
 
 " I had not been many weeks at Hyderabad when the Adjutancy 
 of the 1st Battalion of my Regiment fell vacant, and I was 
 appointed to it. This circumstance removed me not only from my 
 recruits, but also from the 2nd Battalion, in which I had hitherto 
 served, and in which I knew all the men, and was known by them. 
 The mutiny which broke out at Vellore in the next year was the 
 first effort made by the discontented Mohammedans to effect the 
 destruction of our power in the South, where, during the sovereignty 
 in Mysore of Hyder and Tippoo, they had enjoyed a sort of social 
 supremacy, and opportunities for an honourable career, that were 
 closed to them under our Government. As in the late mutiny of 
 1857, the origin of the outbreak was a mere pretext, without any 
 substantial grievance in the alleged interference with rules of caste 
 and religion. Undoubtedly the wording of the orders by the 
 Commander-in-Chief at Madras, in which certain alterations and 
 innovations in dress and toilette on parade were prescribed, 
 afforded a handle to the disaffected, but this could have been, and 
 would have been, modified if a calm representation had been made ; 
 but the conspirators really rejoiced at the opportunity, and turned 
 it to their purpose. Unfortunately, as it turned out, the Governor, 
 Lord William Bentinck, was himself a soldier, and took a great 
 interest in the smartness and efficiency of the Madras Sepoys. 
 Unfortunately also, the Adjutant-General of the Army, the chief 
 adviser in such matters of the Commander-in-Chief, who was, of 
 course, a Queen's Officer, had served a very short time in a Native 
 Corps before being placed on Staff duty, conducted entirely by 
 English agency. The Deputy Adjutant-General and the Quarter- 
 master-General had only served regimentally with European troops. 
 These gentlemen, taking their cue from their superiors, found out 
 that there was a complete want of uniformity in the interior 
 economy of regiments, particularly with regard to the details of 
 dress, and under the Commander-in-Chief's orders they produced 
 a code of regulations for general observance throughout the 
 Madras army. One most offensive and imprudent point in this 
 new code was the introduction of a stiff white stock, and also of a 
 new head-dress closely resembling that worn by English soldiers, 
 which, under the name of ' topee' or hat, is held and noted by all 
 Natives as the distinctive mark of a European Christian. 
 
 " There was, moreover, a very offensive clause in the code, 
 penned in the following words ; and as if to mark it out as most 
 peremptory and essential, it was picked out for translation into 
 Hindustani, not well understood by any Madras Sepoys except 
 the Mohammedans, and copies of it were distributed in each 
 company.
 
 22 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 " ' A Native soldier shall not mark his face to denote his caste, 
 or wear ear-rings when dressed in his uniform ; and at all parades 
 and upon all duties, every Sepoy of the Battalion shall be clean 
 shaved upon the chin. It is directed, also, that uniformity shall, as 
 far as it is practicable, be preserved in regard to the quantity and 
 shape of the hair on the upper lip.' 
 
 " The Commander-in-Chief himself was struck with this clause, 
 and desired the attendance of both the Adjutant and Quarter- 
 master General, and of the Deputy Adjutant-General, to consult 
 regarding it. The Commander-in-Chief was expressly assured that 
 it only specified what was the actual practice in well-regulated 
 Eegiments. The Deputy Adjutant-General declared that he could 
 not recollect having ever seen a Native soldier on duty with the 
 caste-mark on his forehead, or with large rings in his ears ; and 
 that if any man had appeared so bedecked he would have been 
 turned off parade and punished. The Commander-in-Chief was 
 unjustly censured, after the mutiny at Vellore, as being the author 
 of these innovations ; but he very justly asked in a letter he wrote 
 at a subsequent period, when dangerous dissatisfaction had become 
 apparent : ' As a stranger, and in the hands of the principal Staff 
 Officers of the Honourable Company's army, how could I oppose 
 to their experience my single sentiment, and direct the overthrow 
 of what I was told was an established custom?' 
 
 " The Deputy Adjutant-General had a sort of mania for dress. 
 A Captain of my own Regiment, just about that time, appeared in 
 the Adjutant-General's Office to report his arrival at head- 
 quarters on leave of absence. The Deputy Adjutant-General 
 observed that there was a button too little on his coat. Not much 
 liking the sharp accents of the Staff Officer, who, after all, was 
 only of his own regimental rank, my brother officer replied that if 
 it was anyone's fault it was the tailor's, and that no mortal man 
 could keep up to time with the new regulations for dress. The 
 unfortunate Captain, who had just travelled four hundred miles to 
 see some friends recently arrived from Europe, received a peremp- 
 tory order the next day from the Commander-in-Chief of course 
 at the instance of the Adjutant-General's Office to rejoin his 
 regiment forthwith, and to quit the Presidency in four-and- twenty 
 hours. Nor was he, to my knowledge, the only commissioned 
 victim to this martinet's mania. 
 
 " When these new regulations reached Hyderabad, I had been re- 
 moved from my own old Battalion, as before stated, and had become 
 Adjutant of the other, with the men of which I was less familiar. 
 I, however, took the best means in my power to ascertain what was 
 the general feeling of the Sepoys. One of my most trusted in- 
 formants was a lad, who had been for more than two years my 
 personal attendant as a recruit boy under age ; and another was a
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 23 
 
 Native officer of the old school, who had served under Sir Eyre 
 Coote and Lord Cornwallis. The first had been the most faithful 
 and affectionate of servants, always remarkable for his gentle and 
 respectful demeanour. During my absence he had been regularly 
 enrolled in my old Company, and from him I expected the honest 
 truth. I was not deceived. At that time the new head-dress, or 
 'turban', as it was called, was the chief cause of discontent. 
 After asking him how he was getting on, and what was the news, 
 he answered cheerfully as usual; but when I spoke of the new 
 turbaii his eyes flashed fire ; his mien was entirely changed, and 
 he replied, ' Sir, it is of no use calling it a turban ; it is a Euro- 
 pean soldier's hat ; and neither I nor any man in the Eegiment 
 will wear it. We would sooner die.' I felt that if I, whom he 
 loved affectionately, had attempted to enforce its adoption, he 
 would have been the first to rise in mutiny. I then requested a 
 visit from the Native officer with whom I had served in the 2nd 
 Battalion. But how different was his behaviour. Having described 
 my interview with my young friend, he smiled, and said, ' The boy, 
 like the rest of the Eegiment, has run mad. There is. nothing 
 really objectionable in the new turban. The fact is, there is a 
 deep-laid Mussulman plot, in which the population of Hyderabad 
 are mixed up, to make use of these new orders as a plea for a 
 general row. I wore the turban yesterday throughout the day in 
 the barracks, and no one officer or private ventured to say a word 
 against it, though many looked askance at it. But take my advice 
 break up this force, and send the Battalions to different stations, 
 where there is a European Eegiment ; and you may then place on 
 our heads any English utensil you think becoming.' I translate 
 his words with as much propriety as possible. ' I have served the 
 Company,' he continued, ' from the age of fifteen till now, when I 
 am fifty-four, and I never yet heard of a Government order being 
 discussed or disobeyed. That is a new custom you had better not 
 allow.' 
 
 " I immediately communicated my two interviews to my own 
 Commandant, as well as to the Colonel of the Eegiment ; but they 
 both of them treated it lightly. After a day or two, the officer 
 commanding the Force, on inspecting the pattern- men of each 
 company of our Battalion, pointed to a fine young Hindustani, the 
 trim of whose whiskers and moustaches pleased him, and almost 
 touching his face with a somewhat muddy stick he held in his 
 hand, desired that the whiskers of the whole corps should, as far 
 as possible, be brought to that shape. The poor lad did not 
 understand English, but was evidently alarmed and offended, 
 though no one but myself seemed to observe it. Undoubtedly, in 
 consequence of the interpretation he put upon the speech and 
 gesture of the Brigadier, twenty-four of the finest young men of
 
 24 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 the Light Company, including himself, deserted on that very night. 
 The same feeling of apprehension, fostered by the evil-minded, as to 
 some attack on the rules of caste or on the notions of personal 
 self-respect connected with beards and whiskers, soon pervaded 
 the whole force. So strange and suspicious was the sudden change 
 in the manner and aspect of the six Battalions of Sepoys in the 
 Hyderabad Force, that many officers slept with loaded pistols 
 under their pillows, a fact which became known to the men. At 
 length the news of the Vellore mutiny arrived, and was hailed 
 without much disguise by all Native ranks of the force, well or ill- 
 disposed, as an opportune token of the general feeling against the 
 new regulations. Soon after this the news arrived of the terrible 
 retribution taken upon the mutineers at Vellore. The offensive 
 orders were rescinded, and the issue of the new turbans discon- 
 tinued. The withdrawal of the new code acted like oil on the 
 troubled waters, and in a few weeks all was forgiven and for- 
 gotten. Among us, at Hyderabad, no overt breach of discipline 
 had as yet taken place to prevent the English officers from main- 
 taining their authority. Nevertheless, I know that the Mohamme- 
 dans of both Battalions of my own Eegiment were deeply impli- 
 cated in hostile intrigues in the city of Hyderabad, and at their 
 instigation a murmur was now got up against the leathern stocks, 
 covered with white calico, which had been worn without complaint 
 for some time. This grievance was not openly brought forward, 
 and the rumour of discontent was treated with indifference by the 
 highest military authorities. The feeling, however, broke out in 
 our Eegiment on one occasion, and, but for the promptness with 
 which it was quelled, might have revived the dangerous disaffection 
 which had so lately been suppressed. On the occasion of a regi- 
 mental parade of both Battalions, nearly 2,400 strong, a corporal 
 punishment by sentence of court-martial was about to be inflicted. 
 The culprit was of the 2nd Battalion, and, according to the usual 
 custom, all the Native officers were called to the front to hear the 
 charge and sentence read, and to witness the punishment, the 
 European officers, with the exception of the two Commandants 
 and the two Adjutants, remaining with their Battalions in line. 
 While the charge and sentence were being read, Captain Limond, 
 the Captain of Grenadiers of the 2nd Battalion, brought forward 
 the right hand man of his Company, and reported to the Com- 
 manding Officer that he had detected him in attempting to set the 
 example of taking off his stock and throwing it on the ground, 
 which he observed nearly all the men of the 1st Battalion had 
 already done. I immediately cast my eyes in that direction, and 
 perceived on the ground in front of my own Corps a good 
 sprinkling of white stocks. I immediately called the attention of 
 my own Commandant, Major A. H. Macdowell, to what was only
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 25 
 
 too apparent. He, however, declared he saw nothing of the sort, 
 and that it was only my fancy. I felt no time should be lost, and, 
 without waiting for orders, galloped towards the centre of the 
 Battalion, and called out to the men to pick up their stocks. Not 
 one of them stirred. I saw the few European officers present had 
 gallantly checked the movement by each one stepping in front of 
 his own Company, and threatening -with instant punishment any 
 man who dared to take off his stock after this fair warning. The 
 Captain of Grenadiers of the 2nd Battalion had rather over-esti- 
 mated the extent of the mischief, in which nothing like a majority 
 of the men had yet joined. I pushed my horse close up to the 
 centre of one of the centre companies, and singling out half-a- 
 dozen men who had clearly acted in concert, I made use of the 
 flat of my sword right and left among them, wounding one man 
 slightly on the side of the head, though I did not intend it, while 
 I used some strong language in their vernacular which I knew 
 would impress them with a belief in my determined purpose. In 
 an instant more than a hundred young Sepoys had picked up their 
 stocks, and replaced them on their necks, and the. remainder, 
 seeing the game was up, followed suit. My Commandant, Major 
 McDowell, never made any official report of this incident, received 
 my account of it very coldly and ungraciously, and somehow or 
 other his relations with me were never on a cordial footing after 
 that day. Some years afterwards, as will appear, a serious rupture 
 took place between us. 
 
 " When the 2nd Battalion on that day had been marched off 
 the parade ground by companies, led by their respective Native 
 officers, the European officers, as usual, went home. The Grena- 
 dier Company, of which the right hand man had been confined, in 
 order that further inquiry might establish how far he was guilty 
 in throwing off his stock, refused to quit their arms till the pri- 
 soner was released. The Native officers endeavoured in vain to 
 dismiss them, and to make them lodge their arms. In a few minutes 
 men from the other companies crowded round the Grenadiers, 
 while a few Sepoys, who were personally attached to the Captain, 
 ran up to the mess-house, where he was about to dine, and told 
 him what was going on. Limond was not the man to hesitate. 
 He mounted his horse, accepting my offer to accompany him, and 
 we rode down full gallop to the spot where his men were assembled. 
 He asked the senior Native officer why the Company was not 
 dismissed. The state of the case was explained to him. The 
 Captain drew his sword, the men standing with ordered arms, and 
 addressed them as follows : ' You have heard the matter ex- 
 plained to me, so that I can quite understand it. You all know 
 me pretty well by this time, and you know that I never give an 
 order that I don't mean to have executed, and to see executed.
 
 26 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 Your comrade was put in the guard by my orders ; he will be 
 tried and found guilty or not guilty, according to the evidence. 
 Your duty is obedience, and I know mine. Now then, one at a 
 time, the first man who refuses to obey shall have this sword 
 through his body.' 
 
 " He then went straight up to the right hand man, and ordered 
 him, by name, to shoulder arms, which the man instantly did. He 
 then addressed the second and third, with equally prompt effect. 
 He now felt that the spell was broken, and gave the word, 
 ' Grenadiers, shoulder arms.' The word of command was instantly 
 effectual ; the Company was marched to its barracks, and the arms 
 lodged as usual. 
 
 " These two incidents, which occurred under my own eyes on 
 one day, show the effect of stern discipline, and prove that the 
 English officers had not in those days lost their personal influence 
 over the Sepoys. 
 
 " In a day or two after these critical occurrences there was a 
 general parade of the Force, consisting of two Eegiments of Native 
 Cavalry, one Company of European and one of Native Artillery, 
 H.M.'s 33rd Foot, and six Battalions of Native Infantry. Three 
 Mussulman officers, one from each Battalion of my Eegiment, and 
 one from another, were called to the front, and being tried and 
 convicted by a drum-head court-martial of holding seditious corre- 
 spondence with certain fanatics in the city of Hyderabad, they 
 were marched off the parade in irons, under an escort composed 
 partly of European soldiers and partly of Sepoys. They were sent 
 away to Masulipatam that night, and thence transported to one of 
 the islands of the Eastern Archipelago. 
 
 " Such is an episode of the volcanic period of 1806, of which the 
 chief eruption took place at Vellore. On investigation, it was 
 clearly proved that the original plot at Vellore was got up by some 
 of the family of Tippoo, who were there detained as State prisoners, 
 almost as prisoners at large, for they were only required to con- 
 fine themselves within certain prescribed limits, and had almost 
 too handsome a provision for their comfort and dignity. A 
 Mohammedan feeling of hostility towards the British Government 
 was not then unnatural. Since the fall of Seringapatam in 1799, 
 seven years only had elapsed. Not only was the Mussulman 
 kingdom of Mysore subverted, and the Hindoo Eaj restored, but 
 several other Mussulman chieftains had been degraded, and many 
 families of rank of that faith placed in reduced and humble cir- 
 cumstances. Among the Sovereign Princes who had suffered was 
 the Nawab of the Carnatic, our oldest ally, who had been com- 
 pelled to transfer his authority and his country to the British 
 Government, retaining a stipulated portion of the revenue with an 
 empty title. Many petty Nawabs of the Ceded Districts, acquired
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 27 
 
 from the Nizam in 1801, had lost their service jaghires and all 
 hope of honourable employ, and their families and followers re- 
 mained unprovided for. Even at the present day, though more 
 than half a century has passed, much discontent prevails among 
 the Mussulman population of the Madras pi evinces, whether in or 
 out of the Army, in consequence of these unpleasant reminiscences."
 
 28 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 As my object in this book is to give an account of the 
 opinions and acts of General Briggs, in connection with 
 Imperial policy and executive administration in India, 
 opinions and acts that were emphatically his own, and 
 often widely divergent from official commonplace, I shall 
 not devote so much space to his earlier career, when he 
 held a subordinate place, as to the period when he acted 
 more distinctly on his own initiative, and spoke with 
 some of the authority of experience and position. 
 
 Moreover, the military operations and diplomatic trans- 
 actions in which Briggs was engaged in the first fifteen 
 or sixteen years of his service in the East, have been 
 frequently made the subject of published reports or nar- 
 ratives by those who took the leading part in them, or 
 have been told in their biographies. The interest in them 
 has died away, and in several instances we are now able 
 clearly to recognise how much their objects and their 
 results were miscalculated and overrated at the time. 
 There would, for example, be no good in my telling at 
 full length the story of the second mission of Sir John 
 Malcolm to Persia in 1808-9, and of its cross-purposes 
 and collision with the rival embassy of Sir Harford Jones. 
 That story has not been left half told. Sir Harford Jones 
 has told it in his way,* and Sir John Malcolm in his. 
 Suffice it to say that Sir John, according to Sir Harford, 
 was only an Envoy from Lord Minto, Governor-General 
 of India. Sir Harford, according to Sir John, was a 
 poacher on the Oriental preserves of the Honourable 
 Company. But Sir Harford Jones, being duly accredited 
 
 * He afterwards took the name of Brydges, Sir H. J. Brydges, 
 Transactions of Missions in Persia, 2 vols., 1834.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BBJGGS. 29 
 
 by the Foreign Office and the King of Great Britain and 
 Ireland, managed to get received at Teheran, while the 
 Shah requested Sir John Malcolm to go to Shiraz, and 
 negotiate with one of the Persian Princes, a request 
 which was indignantly declined. The whole affair on 
 both sides was a thing of sound and fury, signifying 
 nothing. There was undoubtedly gross mismanagement 
 in the want of concert between the Foreign Office and 
 the India Office. But the difference between the two 
 Envoys, their aims and the means at their disposal, was 
 very small. And even if they had made up their differ- 
 ences and combined their efforts, they would have gained 
 no advantage, and saved no expense, for Great Britain, 
 or for India. As it was, the Envoy from Calcutta did 
 nothing; the Envoy from London, Sir Harford Jones, 
 did some very absurd and costly business. In March 
 1809, he concluded a Treaty by which Great Britain was 
 to pay an annual subsidy of 100,000 to the Shah, and 
 to supply him with 16,000 muskets and 20 field-pieces, 
 on condition that he would assist us in repelling any 
 attempt on the part of the French to invade India 
 through Persian territory a military operation about as 
 practicable as an invasion of Russia through Siberia. 
 
 That was the scare of the day a French invasion of 
 India by way of the Persian Gulf a scare quite as 
 reasonable, however, as that of later date far more 
 costly in blood and treasure, and, unhappily, not yet 
 extinct regarding a Russian invasion of India through 
 Afghanistan. The arms and munitions of war, and the 
 annual subsidy not continued for many years granted 
 to Persia in 1809, and all our meddlings with Persia, 
 friendly and hostile, down to the war of 1856, have not 
 cost a fifth part of the resources wasted by Lord Palmers- 
 ton and Lord Auckland's restoration of a "legitimate" king, 
 devoted to our interests, in 1839, and by Lord Salisbury's 
 "created object" and "scientific frontier" of 1879. India 
 was made to pay more than forty millions sterling for 
 those two bloody and bootless invasions of a free and 
 unoffending State. The crazes and scares of the officials 
 attached to our own Foreign and Colonial Offices, our
 
 30 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 Envoys, Consuls, Governors, and Under-Secretaries 
 though they have done pretty well with their Kaffir 
 Wars, their Zulu War, their Abyssinian and Egyptian 
 expeditions have not, somehow or other, been as expen- 
 sive, for the last three generations or so, as those of our 
 Indian experts. 
 
 Sir Harford Jones's gifts in goods and in cash cannot 
 have cost a tithe of the expense that would have attended 
 Sir John Malcolm's brilliant plan the plan which, when 
 driven from Persia by his cold reception, he pressed on 
 Lord Minto at Calcutta, and which, after a good deal of 
 vacillation, was finally rejected. This was for a com- 
 bined naval and military expedition to the Gulf, and the 
 occupation of the island of Karrack, where Sir John 
 Malcolm was to be established as " lord of a fortified isle 
 and arbiter of the destinies of Persia and Arabia."* 
 
 Briggs had enjoyed very good health ever since his 
 arrival in India down to the cold weather of 1806, when, 
 during the march of his Regiment from Hyderabad to 
 the Mysore country, he was attacked with acute inflam- 
 mation of the liver. Being for the time quite incapaci- 
 tated for his duty as Adjutant, he accepted a general but 
 cordial invitation, obtained a short leave of absence, and 
 instead of proceeding with his corps to Bangalore, turned 
 aside to pay a visit to Sir John Malcolm, then Resident 
 at Mysore. The Residency, a very fine house, built at 
 the Maharajah's expense, with a fine garden and park, 
 was at Yelwall, commonly called the French Rocks, a 
 few miles from the town of Mysore. The General says 
 in his autobiographical papers : 
 
 " Nothing could have been more kind, I may say affectionate, 
 than my reception. As I got a little stronger, I was enabled to 
 make myself useful by translating a considerable portion of a 
 Persian work from the original, which assisted Sir John, eventually, 
 in writing his History of Persia, published some few years after- 
 wards. My health, however, did not return, and I was ordered by 
 my medical attendant to sea for change of air. During my resi- 
 dence at Mysore, I had the good fortune to become acquainted 
 
 * Kaye's Life of Sir John Malcolm (Smith, Elder & Co., 1856), vol. i, 
 p. 422.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 31 
 
 with Colonel Mark Wilks, the distinguished historian of the South 
 of India. He kindly invited me to accompany him to Madras, 
 whence I embarked on board the East. India Company's ship 
 Preston, commanded by my old friend Captain Cumberlege, in the 
 month of November 1807, for Calcutta. I am bound to acknow- 
 ledge my gratitude to the Captain, who most generously gave me a 
 passage free of expense, and treated me with the utmost degree of 
 kindness. I brought with me letters from Colonel Malcolm and 
 others to friends in Calcutta. Among them was one to Mr. (after- 
 wards Sir) Henry Ellis, of the Bengal Civil Service, with whom I 
 resided, and contracted an intimate friendship which ceased only 
 with his life. I had not completed the full period of my leave of 
 absence when one morning he advised me to get well quickly, and 
 to return to Madras at once, where, he said, I was certain of being 
 employed on the Staff. He assigned no other reason, excepting that 
 he felt sure that an appointment was actually awaiting my arrival. 
 He was at that time an Assistant in the Secret and Political 
 Department, and though I had been his guest for the last two 
 months, he could not conscientiously let me behind the scenes, 
 and inform me of Lord Minto's Persian policy, or the exact reasons 
 for urging my immediate departure. I accordingly embarked on 
 board the Venus merchantman, and after a tedious passage reached 
 Madras in the end of March. On my arrival I was sent for by 
 the Commander-in- Chief, and was congratulated on my appoint- 
 ment as one of the attaches to the Persian mission under Colonel 
 John Malcolm." 
 
 After several delays, and a long voyage from Bombay 
 in company with his cousin, Dr. George Briggs, who was 
 appointed physician to the Embassy, the young attache 
 arrived at Bushire, on board the Honourable Company's 
 corvette the Benares. In their passage up the Persian 
 Gulf they encountered H.M.'s frigate Chiffonne, carry- 
 ing back to Calcutta Colonel Malcolm, after his unsatis- 
 factory reception and stoppage on his way to Teheran. 
 The envoy was accompanied by Mr. Henry Ellis, who, 
 having been appointed senior attache, had left Calcutta a 
 few days after Briggs and joined the envoy by land at 
 Bombay. Malcolm was there bent on his fruitless endea- 
 vour to lead Lord Minto into the capture of Karrack, 
 and a " spirited" treatment of Persia. 
 
 "During our stay at Bushire", says Briggs, "the Persian 
 authorities made our position very unpleasant, not by 
 positive acts of hostility, but by incivility and petty
 
 32 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 annoyances, to such a degree that Captain Pasley, who 
 was in charge, thought it expedient to remove the mission, 
 in order to prevent some occurrence that might thoroughly 
 compromise either himself or the Persian Governor, and 
 lead to a rupture and to war. After communicating with 
 our Consul and Commercial Resident at Bussora, Mr. 
 Manisty, as to the accommodation that could be procured, 
 and as to the advisability of such a movement, we pro- 
 ceeded to that city, and encamped within Turkish terri- 
 tory." 
 
 As it was impossible to disavow Sir Harford Jones's 
 royal credentials, it was debated for some time in the 
 Calcutta Council Chamber whether an Indian mission 
 should be sent at all, and Briggs was recalled from 
 Bussora, vid Bushire, to Bombay. Lord Minto finally 
 decided although the force for the occupation of Karrack 
 was for some time actually assembled at Bombay, not to 
 place Malcolm in a position "to menace Arabia and Persia, 
 and to baffle the designs of Napoleon and the Czar."* 
 Sir Harford Jones's treaty could not be repudiated, and 
 he was, moreover, firmly established at Teheran as Envoy 
 from His Britannic Majesty. But . for the exquisite 
 reason that "the Company's Government must not be 
 lowered in the eyes of the Shah", Malcolm was promoted 
 to the rank of Brigadier General, and reappointed Envoy 
 to Persia from the Indian Government in January 1810. 
 He started once more from Bombay, taking with him a 
 somewhat imposing escort of Madras Native Horse 
 Artillery, with six guns intended as a present for the 
 Persian King a dozen of the 17th Light Dragoons, a 
 troop of the Madras Body Guard, and forty Bombay 
 Sepoys. The detachment of Horse Artillery was under 
 the command of Lieutenant Henry Lindsay, an officer of 
 gigantic stature, afterwards General Sir Henry Lindsay 
 Bethune, who for many years commanded the Persian 
 army. Among Malcolm's well-chosen staff were his 
 kinsmen, Captain Charles Pasley and Dr. George Briggs, 
 Lieutenant Josiah Stewart, afterwards Colonel and Resi- 
 dent at Hyderabad, and John Briggs, in whom, as 
 * Kaye's Life of Sir John Malcolm, vol. i, p. 443.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 33 
 
 Malcolm's biographer says, were "then discernible the 
 germs of the ripe scholar and warm-hearted phil- 
 anthropist who still" (in 1856, at the age of seventy- 
 three) "discusses questions of Indian policy or Indian 
 philosophy, with all the ardour of a boy."* 
 
 Briggs and a portion of the staif proceeded from Bom- 
 bay in advance of the Envoy and his party. The warlike 
 episode of their voyage may be related in the words of 
 the autobiography. 
 
 "Just before our embarkation an expedition under Colonel 
 Lionel Smith, consisting of the 65th Foot, the flank companies of 
 the 47th, and the Bombay Native Marine Battalion, with a pro- 
 portion of Artillery, had sailed for the Gulf, under convoy of H.M. 
 ships Chiffonne and Caroline, and was lying in Muscat Harbour, 
 when our vessel arrived at that port. We availed ourselves of this 
 opportunity of active service by accompanying the expedition to 
 the piratical town of Eas al Khyma, which was the first object of 
 attack. Captain Pasley, Dr. Jukes, and myself volunteered our 
 services, and we landed as extra Aide-de- Camps to Colonel Lionel 
 Smith. The expedition was prepared for the attack on the follow- 
 ing day. The Marine Battalion, under Captain Egan, had for its 
 share in the day's work to turn the enemy's right flank, after 
 landing from the boats, and to take a series of batteries along the 
 coast which protected the town ; while the main body, including 
 all the Europeans, under Colonel Lionel Smith himself, proceeded 
 about a mile further down the coast to dislodge the enemy by our 
 attack on his other flank. I could not but admire our Com- 
 mander's coolness. 
 
 " On the line of boats coming within musket range the enemy 
 began to fire. The officers and men on our side became impatient, 
 and several got up preparing to fire also ; the Colonel, in whose 
 boat I was, stood up and called out to the landing party to sit 
 down, and to pass the word along the line of boats; at the same 
 time directing the officers, who were distinguished from the men 
 by the long red and white feather in their caps, to take them out. 
 Not a shot was fired by the troops, but occasionally, as a good 
 chance presented itself, a discharge took place from the carronades 
 which were in the launches of the two frigates. The infantry 
 landed, nearly up to their waists in water, formed as regularly as 
 on parade, and as they got into order each company advanced 
 according to the instructions they had previously received, and 
 soon drove the enemy out of their field works. By this time 
 Colonel Lionel Smith had landed, but before ordering a movement 
 
 * Kaye's Life of Sir John Malcolm, vol. i, p. 511. 
 
 D
 
 34 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 in advance against the town, he had to wait about half-an-hour 
 for all the guns at his disposal to be put on shore. Unfortunately, 
 the heavy guns, intended for battering the fortifications, had been 
 lost in a brig which went down at sea with all hands, including all 
 the European Artillerymen and their two officers. The Colonel, 
 in a most flattering manner, placed me in charge of the four field- 
 pieces which were manned by Infantry soldiers. The town was 
 very soon taken. Some strong, flat-roofed houses held out against 
 the advance of the Europeans of the right attack, and, among 
 others, Captain Dansey of the 6cth Foot was killed. The Arabs, 
 considering they only had matchlocks, defended themselves well 
 behind cover, but they made no attempt to charge or stand a 
 charge. By about 2 P.M. all the fighting men were driven out of 
 the town, and the piratical fleet of sixty or seventy vessels was 
 burnt by means of fire-balls. The town and its outskirts were 
 strewed with killed and wounded Arabs, but our loss was not 
 heavy. Captain Dansey was the only English officer killed, and 
 our wounded were not numerous. Having made an example of 
 the town and its piratical inhabitants, and effected all that was 
 intended, the troops re-embarked the same evening. The following 
 day our party waited on the Colonel commanding the Force oil 
 board his frigate, when he thanked us warmly for our services. 
 We were each of us mentioned in his despatches to the Govern- 
 ment of Bombay." 
 
 As soon as their travelling arrangements could be com- 
 pleted after their arrival at Bushire, Briggs and his 
 party, under instructions given before they sailed from 
 Bombay, proceeded from Bushire to Shiraz, where they 
 awaited the arrival of the Anglo-Indian Envoy Extra- 
 ordinary. " Here", says Briggs, " we remained, receiving 
 and returning visits among the Persian nobility of the 
 Prince's Court, which afforded me an opportunity of 
 becoming better acquainted with the people, and of 
 improving myself in the vernacular language ; so that 
 before I quitted the country, and had travelled over the 
 greater part of Western Persia, north and south, I 
 could distinguish the local dialects so thoroughly that I 
 could at once discover from what province any stranger 
 addressing me came, with as much facility as anyone 
 in England can distinguish the Scotch dialect or the 
 Irish brogue." 
 
 Colonel Malcolm appointed Briggs Quartermaster-
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 35 
 
 General and baggage master, which gave him charge of 
 several hundred mules, no wheeled conveyance being of 
 any use on the roads they traversed. The King had 
 sent a high nobleman of his Court to act as Mihmandar 
 or host, to see that supplies were amply furnished at 
 every halting-place ; and also a story-teller or impro- 
 visatore to beguile the tedium of the way by relating 
 those tales with which he was wont to entertain his 
 Royal master. " Being one of the few", says Briggs, 
 " together with Henry Ellis and Dr. Jukes, who had suf- 
 ficient knowledge of Persian to enjoy these tales, it was 
 our privilege to ride close to the Envoy, and observe all 
 the dramatic changes of voice and action of the narrator, 
 whose charming stories, well remembered, were subse- 
 quently given to the world as the Persian Tales, by Sir 
 John Malcolm." 
 
 The Shah not being then at Teheran, the capital, the 
 cavalcade proceeded by a route which enabled them to 
 visit the ruins of Persepolis and the city of Ispahan. 
 They halted also at the cities of Kashan and Kum, 
 " the latter distinguished for the splendid domes of its 
 mosques. Between the citizens of these two ancient 
 cities there is an immemorial jealousy, and the country 
 people admit that there is a distinction to be drawn, not, 
 however, of a very flattering nature even for the city to 
 which a preference is given ; for thus runs the Persian 
 adage : ' A dog of Kashan is better than a grandee of 
 Kum, but a dog is better than a man of Kashan.' " 
 
 " It was with some difficulty, and very much to the admiration 
 of our Persian companions, that the guns we were conveying as a 
 present to the King reached their destination without injury. The 
 roads, if they could be called roads at all, were fearfully bad. 
 Young Lindsay, commanding our little troop of Artillery, who 
 became afterwards distinguished in action against the Eussians, 
 and in defeating a formidable body of rebels under one of the 
 King's sons, surprised the Persians on more than one occasion by 
 the dashing manner in which he got over the broken ground. No 
 obstacle seemed to prevent his finding or making a way for his 
 battery ; and where the path was obstructed by crowded horsemen 
 he dashed through them, shouting out for he had soon learned so 
 
 D 2
 
 36 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 much Persian ' Clear the way, clear the road for the guns !' It 
 happened on one occasion that the Mihmandar and his suite were 
 an obstacle, but the young Commandant, disregardful of his Lord- 
 ship's dignity, forced his way through, calling out, ' By your leave, 
 my Lord, the road belongs to the guns.' The noble Mihmandar 
 took it with the wonderful politeness characteristic of Persians, 
 and seemed much amused. Whenever he afterwards encountered 
 the giant Artilleryman, with or without his battery, he used to 
 salute him with comic deference, and say, ' You are quite right, 
 Captain Lindsay, the road belongs to the guns.' 
 
 "Nothing of importance occurred on our journey towards the 
 King's camp at Sultania, before entering which, or making any 
 arrangements for waiting on his Majesty, there were some long 
 interviews, and what may be called negotiations, between General 
 Malcolm and Sir Harford Jones, who was also encamped near the 
 town. There must have been it was,in fact, visible enough a good 
 deal of awkwardness and embarrassment in the meeting of the two 
 Envoys. Sir Harford Jones was not really in a position to fulfil 
 the financial engagements into which he had entered in his Treaty, 
 for every payment was to be made by the Government of India 
 represented by General Malcolm. The General paid a visit of 
 ceremony to Sir Harford Jones, the day after his arrival. They 
 had become acquainted when Sir Harford was Consul at Bagdad, 
 some years before, on the return of General Malcolm from Persia, 
 on his first mission in 1800. They now met under different cir- 
 cumstances, and the King's Ambassador naturally felt that the 
 duty with which General Malcolm was charged reflected on the 
 dignity of the Mission from the Crown. The General hoped that 
 Sir Harford would not object to be present at his reception by the 
 Shah. To this Sir Harford did not then make any objection, but 
 when the time arrived, he sent word that he had another engage- 
 ment, which would prevent his accompanying the General." 
 
 All the difficulties of etiquette and the conflicting 
 claims of the two Envoys having been overcome, the day 
 of audience was appointed. Malcolm was most cordially 
 received by the Shah, with a degree of good humour and 
 familiarity for which he was hardly prepared. The bril- 
 liant young Staff were all in full dress, and his Majesty 
 appeared to be much struck with the varied uniforms of 
 the Horse Artillery, Cavalry, and Infantry, and expressed 
 his admiration at " all these fine youths that you have 
 brought with you, Malcolm". The escort was paraded, 
 the guns were handed over, and, with an abundance of 
 flowery speeches on both sides, the audience concluded.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRTGGS. 37 
 
 " No inquiry", wrote Briggs exultingly at the time in 
 his diary, " was made regarding his Excellency the 
 King's Ambassador. Neither his name nor his mission 
 was mentioned." All the Staff, in fact, were agreed that 
 
 ' * O 
 
 " although Sir Harford Jones had been enabled to pave 
 his way, and to conciliate the venal persons about the 
 Court with a profusion of presents, he did not gain that 
 personal influence with his Majesty that was exercised 
 by Sir John Malcolm, the first English Envoy to Persia 
 in modern times." 
 
 Sir Harford Jones, who, to fortify him for his work, 
 had been created a baronet, had persuaded the Shah to 
 grant him a patent, subsequently confirmed by the King, 
 and duly entered in Heralds' College, entitling him to 
 blazon in his arms an eifigy of his own design representing 
 the crown of Persia on a cushion. A similar patent for 
 Sir John Malcolm would clearly have been, at this junc- 
 ture, unacceptable and objectionable. But the Indian 
 Envoy induced the Shah, who was delighted with the 
 idea, to institute the new Order of the Lion and the 
 Sun, of which Sir John Malcolm was the first Knight. 
 Sir Harford Jones was beaten at all points, and the 
 Governor-General's dignity was vindicated. 
 
 From Sultania the mission proceeded, in July 1810, to 
 Tabreez, where a large camp of exercise had been formed 
 under the command of the heir apparent, Prince Abbas 
 Mirza, who was much delighted with the manosuvres of 
 General Malcolm's escort of Horse Artillery and Dra- 
 goons. At Tabreez General Malcolm received des- 
 patches from the Governor- General, transmitted through 
 Constantinople to England, where they had received the 
 sanction of the Home Government, which ordered his 
 return to India by the Bagdad route. From Bussora 
 General Malcolm, with Mr. Henry Ellis, his first Assis- 
 tant, and the Dragoons, embarked for Bombay. Briggs 
 was left in charge of the mission and the Native soldiers 
 of the escort, with orders to return to India as shipping 
 could be found. They landed at Bombay early in 1811, 
 and Briggs was detained there some weeks, winding up 
 the accounts of one of the most fruitless missions that 
 
 357323
 
 38 
 
 ever was despatched to a foreign country. It was utterly 
 unproductive of good to India, to Persia, or to Great 
 Britain. He proceeded to Madras in H.M. ship Minden, 
 and arrived there in April. Two important events in 
 his life his next appointment to the Staff, and his mar- 
 riage may now be related in his own words. 
 
 " On reaching Madras, I received a cordial and pressing invita- 
 tion to occupy a room in his house from the Governor of the 
 Naval Hospital, who was married to a sister of my step-mother, 
 whose younger sister, Miss Jane Dodson, was living with them. 
 My health required that I should remain on the sea-coast for some 
 time, and I obtained a medical certificate to that effect. I had 
 not been long at the Presidency when a Captain of my own 
 Regiment returned from the capture of the Mauritius, and after 
 residing for about a month with my kind connection of the Naval 
 Hospital, my brother officer and I took a small house together. 
 There I passed through the ordeal of a cold water cure, not very 
 different from that which has of late years become familiar and 
 famous through the practice of Herr Preissnitz and his disciples. 
 I was recommended to take active horse exercise at daylight 
 every morning, and after an hour's ride to take a douche bath in 
 the form of a dozen large pots of cold water thrown rapidly over 
 me in succession, and then, after being rapidly rubbed with towels 
 for half a minute, to lie down, warmly covered, till I was quite 
 calm and comfortable, before I dressed. This had a decidedly good 
 effect on my general health, but it produced several large boils, 
 which, although unpleasant and painful at the time, seemed to 
 form a necessary incident in my cure. During my stay at the 
 Presidency, a masked ball was given by the Governor ; and one of 
 my companions of the Embassy and myself went in the character 
 of Persian travellers, in very handsome dresses we had brought 
 from that country. As soon as we entered the crowded assembly 
 we were accosted by the Persian Secretary to Government, and 
 another gentleman on the Headquarters Staff, who was an accom- 
 plished Oriental scholar. They were evidently very anxious to 
 display their knowledge of the Court and diplomatic language of 
 Western Asia, and we had little difficulty in understanding the 
 commonplace and hackneyed phrases of salutation which they 
 addressed to us. They, however, found it quite impossible to 
 converse freely, or to make anything out of the flood of colloquial 
 talk with which we met their polite advances. They were in 
 much the same situation as a Greek Professor from Oxford would 
 be if he landed at a port in Greece, and tried to understand the 
 modern Greek of his hosts. When, after amusing ourselves for a 
 few minutes with the bewildered efforts of the great Persian
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 39 
 
 authorities at Madras to understand good Persian, we suddenly 
 spoke to them in good English, the dignified Staff officers were 
 extremely vexed, and they were mightily quizzed by some of the 
 ladies, for they had taken us for genuine Orientals. How this 
 circumstance reached the Governor's ears I do not know, but it 
 was, I know, partly to it that I owed my nomination shortly after- 
 wards to the situation of Persian Interpreter to the Hyderabad 
 Subsidiary Force, an appointment granted without any applica- 
 tion on my part. 
 
 " I have already mentioned that the wife of my good friend of 
 the Royal Naval Hospital had a sister living with her. I was a 
 frequent visitor at the house after I had left it for a separate 
 residence. I found Miss Jane Dodson so fascinating a companion, 
 that I married her on the 3rd of September 1811." 
 
 Their union, which lasted for some years beyond the 
 date of a golden wedding, was in every sense and in 
 every respect a happy one. Miss Jane Dodson, nearly 
 twenty years younger than her sister Honor, her hus- 
 band's step-mother, was the youngest of the nine daugh- 
 ters and eleven children of Mr. John Dodson, of the 
 London Custom House, whose father, James Dodson, 
 was an early F.R.S., and author of the Mathematical 
 Canon. Another sister was married to Colonel De 
 Morgan of the Madras Army, and thus Briggs became 
 uncle by marriage to Augustus De Morgan, the eminent 
 mathematician,* with whom eventually he contracted a 
 warm friendship. 
 
 * Born 1806; died 1871.
 
 40 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 CAPTAIN BRIGGS remained during the greater part of 
 the years 1812 and 1813 as Persian Interpreter to the 
 Officer commanding the Hyderabad Subsidiary Force at 
 the cantonment of Jaulna. During this period he had 
 completed the translation of most of the minor histories 
 of Ferishta, and had made much progress in revising the 
 principal portion of that author's works from the old 
 versions of Colonel Jonathan Scott and of Colonel Dow, 
 by comparison with several manuscript copies, supplying 
 the requisite notes, identifying and correcting names of 
 places by means of the best maps, verified in many in- 
 stances by his own topographical observations. During 
 his residence at Jaulna he made his first appearance in 
 print. The amount of Persian interpreting that was 
 required being very limited, the Commandant seems to 
 have employed his Interpreter, nothing loth to have 
 plenty to do, in the field carriage and intelligence de- 
 partment. And thus, he writes, 
 
 " I was brought in communication very frequently with that 
 singular race, divided into many clans, of itinerant dealers in grain 
 and salt, the Brinjarries, who live entirely in the open air, perpe- 
 tually on the move, and who make it their business to convey 
 goods and cattle, sometimes on their own account, or as carriers 
 for others, from one part of India to another, purchasing in the 
 cheapest and selling in the dearest markets. In the campaigns 
 of 1803-4-5, under General Arthur Wellesley (afterwards the 
 Great Duke), he had in his service very often as many as 80,000 
 bullocks furnished by these carriers, so that he commanded ample 
 supplies at all times, while the enemy was often distressed. No 
 description of this people had yet been published, so I wrote a 
 short essay on the subject, the materials being gathered entirely 
 from my conversations with them, and inquiries as to their tra- 
 ditions and customs, which appeared in the Transactions of the 
 Bombay Literary Society. This was my first attempt to appear
 
 GENERAL JOHN BBIGGS. 41 
 
 before the public as an author, since which time I have been a great 
 intruder." 
 
 In 1815 he was appointed Junior Assistant to the 
 Resident at Poona, the Honourable Mountstuart Elphin- 
 stone, whose acquaintance he had made in 1811, when 
 passing through Poona from Bombay, on his way to 
 Jaulna. Bajee Rao, destined to be the last of the 
 Peishwas, was then on the throne, and a very full sketch 
 of his career and of the Mahratta Confederation during 
 its period of dissension and decay, is included in General 
 Briggs's papers, a few extracts from which will make the 
 picture sufficiently distinct. 
 
 " At the death of the Peishwa Madhoo Eao Narrain in 1796, the 
 whole of the great Mahratta Chiefs, the Bhonsla of Nagpore, 
 Scindia, Holkar, and the Jagheerdars of the Deccan Appeared at 
 Poona for the last time as vassals of the Empire. The power and 
 influence of the Minister, Nana Furnavees, the last of Mahratta 
 statesmen, was insufficient to control this tumultuous assembly, 
 and scenes of intrigue and violence ensued. Nana' Furnavees and 
 his colleagues did all they could to obtain the assent of the Chiefs 
 and nobles to the adoption of an heir by the widow of Madhoo 
 Eao. But the claims of Bajee Eao, the son of the proscribed 
 Eugonath Eao, were too strong to be set aside. His handsome face 
 and figure, together with his reputed accomplishments, won the 
 hearts of the great feudatories, and he was supported both by the 
 British Government and by the military power of Scindia. He 
 had not, however, been long in power before he betrayed his 
 treacherous and cruel nature. Although for two generations at 
 least Scindia and Holkar, always rivals for influence, had ruled 
 almost independently over millions of subjects, each being able 
 to bring from fifty to sixty thousand men into the field, they were 
 nominally and ceremonially vassals of the Peishwa. While Dowlut 
 Eao Scindia, having lately succeeded his uncle, was yet encamped 
 within twenty or thirty miles of Poona, his rival in Hindustan, 
 Wittojee Eao Holkar, was taking the part of some feudatory Chiefs 
 in the Deccan, who had unsettled claims against their acknowledged 
 lord, the Peishwa. Bajee Eao sent a w r ell- organised force against 
 Wittojee Holkar, who was defeated and brought a prisoner to 
 Poona. Bajee Eao had him trampled to death by an elephant, on a 
 charge of rebellion, and looked on with undisguised satisfaction 
 from a balcony while the execution took place. Wittojee's brother, 
 the celebrated Jeswuut Eao Holkar, immediately vowed vengeance 
 against the Peishwa and Scindia, and, after many vicissitudes and 
 adventures, in the course of two years, marched upon Poona with
 
 42 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 a well-appointed army of horse, foot, and artillery, drilled by 
 European officers, most of them English. By very skilful man- 
 oeuvres he arrived before the city of Poona, with all his forces in 
 good condition, and, on the 25th of October 1 802, found the com- 
 bined armies of the Peishwa and Scindia drawn up to oppose him. 
 A furious battle ensued, in which Holkar obtained a decisive 
 victory. During the engagement the limits of the British Residency 
 were marked out by small union-jack flags, which ensured respect 
 from the combatants on both sides, and complete immunity from 
 plunder or molestation. Scindia retreated Northwards, and Bajee 
 Eao fled to the Western coast, where, embarking in an English 
 vessel, he, like his father before him, threw himself on the pro- 
 tection of the British Government. Mr. Elphinstone was then at 
 Poona as Assistant to the Resident, Colonel Barry Close, and 
 accompanied him to pay his respects to the conqueror. I recollect 
 well Mr. Elphinstone's description of the reception they met with. 
 They found Jeswunt Rao Holkar in a common bell-tent, sitting on 
 an ordinary peasant's bedstead covered by a small cotton carpet. 
 His right arm, which had been severely wounded, was bound up. 
 He apologised for the want of accommodation by saying that he 
 was a plain soldier, and accustomed to rough it in the field. He 
 regretted the heavy loss he had sustained in the battle, especially 
 making mention, with many words of respect and sorrow, of the 
 death of Captain Dawes, his English Commandant of Artillery. He 
 assured the Resident that he was quite prepared to meet the wishes 
 of the British Government in every point except that of the 
 restoration of Bajee Rao. Colonel Close replied that the recent 
 events had made such a sudden and unexpected change in the 
 affairs of Poona, that he had received no orders from his own 
 Government, and could not anticipate the instructions he might 
 receive. 
 
 " Eventually, the fugitive Peishwa was restored by the British 
 Government, after the conclusion with him of the Treaty of 
 Bassein, which led to the first Mahratta war, and the victories of 
 Sir Arthur Wellesley and Lord Lake. 
 
 "From the very day that Bajee Rao returned to Poona he 
 resented the deprivation, under the Treaty of Bassein, of his 
 authority, though it had been little more than nominal, over the 
 great Mahratta Princes ; and even while the war was going on, 
 which had broken out in consequence of his restoration, he did 
 all he could, secretly and indirectly, to detach his feudatory Chiefs 
 who were in the field with their quotas co-operating with the 
 British Army, and even seized some of their lands on the plea of 
 their unauthorised absence. General Sir Arthur Wellesley wrote 
 to the Resident, ' The policy of Bajee Rao is to deceive everyone'; 
 and he predicted, with remarkable sagacity, that as soon as the
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 43 
 
 war was over, Bajee Rao would try gradually to absorb all the 
 feudal estates in the Deccan, more particularly of those Chiefs who 
 had shown themselves well disposed to the British Government. 
 He recommended that at the end of the war, we should make such 
 arrangements with the Peishwa and the Southern Chiefs as would 
 place them under our guarantee. If this measure were delayed 
 too long, he said, the Peishwa would resent our interference, would 
 probably enter into some combination with the Northern States, 
 and form a league against us which would bring on another war. 
 This advice, given in 1805, was not acted on, but the necessity of 
 doing something to save the Jaghiredars who had been friendly to 
 us had become very apparent in 1811, and British protection was 
 extended to some of them, very much to the indignation of Bajee 
 Eao. 
 
 " The Gaekwar, the Mahratta Chief of Baroda, was also far 
 more under the influence and protection of the Government of 
 Bombay than the Peishwa liked. There had been for some years 
 a disputed balance of accounts between the Gaekwar and the 
 Peishwa, and it was arranged that an envoy or agent on the part 
 of the former should come to Poona and bring the matter to a 
 conclusion. Gungadhur Shastree, a Brahmin, one of the Ministers 
 of the Baroda State, was sent on this mission, under pledges given 
 by the Peishwa to the British Government for his safety and 
 honourable treatment. The Peishwa, whose habits were scanda- 
 lously immoral, endeavoured to conciliate or to corrupt the envoy 
 by not only inviting him and the ladies of his family to the Palace, 
 but by proposing a matrimonial alliance between his house and 
 that of Gungadhur Shastree. The Shastree had seen and heard so 
 much in and about the Palace that offended his notions of pro- 
 priety that these overtures were as respectfully as possible, but 
 still strenuously, resisted. This was a slight that the Peishwa could 
 not pardon, but he concealed his furious indignation under forms 
 of courtesy and marked attentions that almost lulled the Shastree's 
 fears and suspicions to sleep. On the eve of his intended depar- 
 ture, no settlement having been made, the Gaekwar's envoy was 
 invited to a great festival at a temple, where he was accompanied 
 by a favourite and confidant of the Peishwa named Trimbukjee 
 Dainglia. On his way home to his lodgings that evening, the 
 envoy's palanquin was arrested by a dense crowd ; a scuffle took 
 place, and Gungadhur Shastree was then and there stabbed to 
 death. Suspicion immediately fell on the Peishwa's messenger, 
 Trimbukjee Dainglia, and conclusive evidence was soon obtained 
 that he was the assassin. After much negotiation, the Resident, 
 Mr. Elphinstone, firmly insisting on the point that Gungadhur 
 Shastree was at Poona under a safeguard from our Government, 
 obtained the custody of Trimbukjee Dainglia as a prisoner, and
 
 44 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 sent him off to Bombay. Trimbukjee made his escape on the road, 
 reappeared in the Deccan, and began to raise troops and levy con- 
 tributions, unquestionably in collusion with Bajee Rao, who denied 
 all knowledge of his proceedings. The Resident, acting under the 
 orders of the Governor-General, peremptorily demanded the appre- 
 hension of Trimbukjee. The Peishwa pretended to issue orders to 
 that effect, but was treacherously entering into communications 
 with all the Mahratta Chiefs, taking measures to increase his 
 army, and to put the numerous forts in good order and mount 
 guns on their ramparts. 
 
 " It was in that year, 1816, that I became a member of the Poona 
 Resident's family, and the events which subsequently occurred, 
 within my own observation and knowledge, necessarily form part 
 of the history of my life. 
 
 " Mr. Elphinstone had ceased to visit the Peishwa in person, 
 confining his communications to receiving visits from his High- 
 ness's Ministers. On these occasions he always required some of 
 his Assistants to be present, and to minute after the conference, as 
 near as each could remember, the very words which had been 
 used. At length, one day it was in April 1817 the Peishwa sent 
 a message by his Minister that he desired to see Mr. Elphinstone, 
 to confer on State affairs. Bajee Rao was an accomplished hypo- 
 crite. No one who knew him ever trusted him, though for many 
 years he succeeded in deceiving almost everyone on a first ac- 
 quaintance. His language was fluent, and even eloquent ; his 
 arguments so specious that it was not easy to refute them. On 
 the arrival of Mr. Elphinstone and suite the Peishwa was found 
 sitting in a small private apartment, from which, after the usual 
 compliments, he dismissed the attendants, and said, ' I have re- 
 quested this meeting, Mr. Elphinstone, to endeavour to disabuse 
 your mind of some injurious impressions you seem to have formed 
 as to my feelings and intentions towards your Government. 
 Remember, that I have been connected with you from my child- 
 hood. Let me go back to the time when a cabal united against 
 my father, now in heaven, on the death of his nephew, who was 
 assassinated by his own guards in his palace ; and when he, the 
 next heir, came forward to claim his rights, you are aware how he 
 was persecuted, and driven by the rebellious nobles out of his 
 country. At this crisis there were the great chiefs, Holkar and 
 Scindia and Gaekwar, to whom it would have been natural for him 
 to apply for aid against his own subjects, but he passed them by, 
 and placed himself under the protection of the British Government, 
 and made a treaty with it. Scarcely had I reached the age of 
 manhood when an accident left the Musnud again vacant, and my 
 enemies desired to deprive me of my claim of succession. Your 
 Government interfered, and I eventually obtained my rights. But
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGB. 45 
 
 my opponents were too strong, and, having marched an army to 
 Poona, defeated my troops. I fled, not to seek assistance from my 
 countrymen, but from the English at Bombay, and by your armies 
 I was restored to my capital and my throne. How can you believe 
 that, with all this load of obligation to your Government, I should 
 ever have a design to make war against it? My whole body, from 
 my head to my feet, has been nourished by the salt of the English. 
 Look at the situation, however, from another point of view. I am 
 not so ignorant of the history of British power in this country as 
 not to know that whosoever has engaged in war with it has been 
 defeated, and his sovereignty has passed away. In former times, 
 when Hyder Ally, aided by the French, made war against the 
 English, he could gain no ground ; and it is said that on his death- 
 bed he urged his son, Tippoo Sultan, to keep at peace, and to 
 cultivate the friendship of the English. He was too proud and 
 too confident. In two great wars, although assisted by the French, 
 Tippoo was beaten, his territories divided, and at last he was 
 destroyed. Since my re-establishment at Poona, have I not wit- 
 nessed the defeat of those regular troops of infantry and artillery, 
 trained under ^European officers for the great Mahratta chiefs, 
 Holkar and Scindia, who carried everything before them in Hin- 
 dustan, but who, when they ventured to oppose the English, were 
 beaten time after time with heavy losses, and eventually reduced 
 to make peace at great sacrifices of territory and treasure ? In my 
 case, however, I ask, where are the regular troops ? where are my 
 infantry or my guns to cope with your armies ? Yet, I am sus- 
 pected of desiring to engage in war against my best friends.' 
 
 "Daring the whole of this speech, which was delivered in his 
 native tongue, Mahrattee, the Peishwa was perfectly cool, nor did 
 he exhibit any symptoms either of agitation or resentment. Mr. 
 Elphinstone replied in the most polite manner in Hindustani, 
 the language in which the Peishwa usually conversed with the 
 Kesident : ' All. that your Highness has stated with regard to the 
 connection of your family and yourself with my Government is 
 perfectly true, and I am glad that your Highness apparently appre- 
 ciates the many advantages you have derived from that connection. 
 What your Highness has 'stated with respect to the absence of 
 regular infantry and artillery against a disciplined European army 
 is also correct; but the Mahrattas have not always relied upon 
 such troops.' 
 
 "This was a hint to Bajee Eao, which Mr. Elphinstone did 
 not think it advisable to make more explicit, that we had full 
 information that there was a strong military party not only at 
 Poona, but at Nagpore and in the camps of Scindia and Holkar, 
 who strongly advised the discharge of all European commanders 
 and drill instructors, the discontinuance of all attempts to rival
 
 46 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 the British Government in regular battalions and trains of artillery, 
 and a return to the old Mahratta system of predatory tactics with 
 large bodies of horse. I return to Mr. Elphinstone's little speech 
 in reply to the Peishwa. 
 
 " ' The evidence of warlike preparations in your Highness's terri- 
 tories is not wanting. It is notorious that all your Jaghiredars 
 have been recruiting so as to fill up their quotas for field 
 service. Your cavalry and infantry have been increased in num- 
 ber and constantly exercised. The forts have been put in repair 
 and fully garrisoned. Guns have been brought into the City, and 
 also the teams of bullocks for moving them with an army. These 
 are warlike preparations ; but against whom can they be directed 
 except against the British Government ? If not, it behoved your 
 Highness, according to the Treaty, to communicate with the British 
 Government on the subject. There was, however, one point in 
 your Highness's address to which you did not allude, namely, that 
 of your late communications with the Northern Mahratta States 
 an intercourse which by treaty you were bound to relinquish. Of 
 these communications the Governor- General has received con- 
 vincing proofs, and if I am not greatly misinformed, two emissaries 
 from Dowlut Eao Scindia reached the neighbourhood of Poona 
 within the last few days, and remained concealed in a village 
 outside the City walls till midnight yesterday, when they were 
 brought to the Palace. And', continued Mr. Elphinstone, ' they 
 left this morning after two hours' stay in the Palace, no doubt with 
 a reply from your Highness, and before daylight they were several 
 miles on their return to Gwalior.' Mr. Elphinstone, however, 
 ended by expressing an earnest hope that, as his Highness so fully 
 appreciated his obligations to the British Government, and also 
 recognised its power, his Highness would not be induced by evil 
 and interested counsellors to depart from that line of conduct 
 which would ensure to him the continued friendship of the British 
 Government. 
 
 " The Peishwa replied that Mr. Elphinstone was greatly misin- 
 formed on many points to which he had adverted, and that he 
 might rely on it he would never break faith with the British 
 Government. ' As to going to war/ he said, ' the idea is absurd, 
 when it is well known that I have such a horror of the sound of 
 guns, that whenever salutes are fired, they are not allowed to take 
 place till after I have passed the batteries to a considerable 
 distance.' 
 
 " Almost immediately after making this curious appeal to his 
 own constitutional timidity, Bajee Eao called for the silver trays of 
 betel-nut and spices, and the perfumes offered to guests as a signal 
 that they may take leave, and presented them with his own hands
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 47 
 
 to Mr. Elphinstone, with most gracious expressions of goodwill and 
 with a smiling countenance. Mr. Elphinstone's good-humoured 
 and unim passioned style of letting the Peishwa know that all his 
 machinations had been watched and detected, was perfectly 
 admirable. At one of his meetings with Sir John Malcolm, after 
 his deposition, Bajee Rao complained, with deep emotion, that 
 such was the espionage established by Mr. Elphinstone that even 
 the very dishes provided for his Highness's meals were described 
 in detail every day at the Residency. 
 
 " The Peishwa usually conversed in Hindustani, which he spoke 
 with great fluency ; but I have said that on the present occasion 
 he chose to make use of his mother tongue. He was aware that 
 Mr. Elphinstone understood Mahrattee perfectly, and not a word 
 was lost on him. The practice I had had in translating so much 
 from that language daily for the last year made me also master of 
 all that was said. Notes of this important and remarkable .con- 
 ference were afterwards submitted by each of the members of the 
 Residency who was present, and a full report transmitted to the 
 Cover nor- General. No sooner was this report perused by the 
 Marquis of Hastings, than he required the Resident to take such 
 precautionary measures as he deemed necessary to defeat the 
 Peishwa's evident designs, preparatory to binding him to our 
 alliance by a new treaty more strictly than before." 
 
 The force of British troops at the cantonment near 
 Poona having been considerably reinforced, and disposed 
 so as to overawe the City, Bajee Rao subscribed to terms 
 in the early part of May 1817, whereby he engaged to 
 give up Trimbukjee within a month, and to place three 
 of his principal hill-forts in our hands ; and on the 1 3th 
 of June a treaty was concluded whereby the Mahratta 
 Confederation was dissolved, and the Peishwa renounced 
 not only his supremacy over the Bhonsla of Nagpore, 
 Scindia, Holkar, and the Gaekwar, but all connection 
 and communication with them. Very few months 
 elapsed before it became quite clear that the Peishwa 
 was again bent upon hostile proceedings against the 
 British Government. Numerous attempts were made 
 by his emissaries to corrupt the Sepoys of our Bombay 
 Regiments recruited in the Mahratta provinces. 
 
 "It appeared clear that Bajee Rao had made up his mind to 
 embark in an extensive Mahratta confederacy against the English. 
 His proceedings were conducted with the greatest secrecy, but they
 
 48 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 did not escape the vigilance of the Resident. In order to obtain 
 intelligence of what the latter absolutely knew, and what he pro- 
 posed doing, the Peishwa was lavish in promises and bribes to all 
 whom he could seduce about the Residency. The Doctor, who was 
 in the habit of passing an hour every day with Mr. Elphinstone 
 reading Greek and Italian, was supposed to be in his confidence, 
 though he was only treated as a common friend. The Peishwa 
 begged that the Doctor might be sent to attend some members of 
 his family ; and the kindness that he there received, and the man- 
 ner in which the Peishwa spoke of his fidelity and attachment to 
 the English, deceived the Doctor till the day when war was de- 
 clared. In the same manner he gained over the services of the 
 English Commandant of the Contingent, who, to the last hour, 
 professed to believe that the Peishwa would never make war with 
 us. Bajee Rao invited this officer to dine with a large party of 
 English officers at the Palace, kept him there for a few minutes' 
 conversation after the other officers had left, and then sent after 
 him the massive service of silver plate which had been used at the 
 entertainment. This last gentleman received, also, two lakhs of 
 rupees from Bajee Rao to obtain information of Trimbukjee and 
 his proceedings ; but it is only just to him to say that he rendered 
 an account of the manner in which he had employed part of it, 
 when afterwards called upon by Mr. Elphinstone to do so, and he 
 then paid the balance into the Treasury. 
 
 "I joined Mr. Elphinstone as his third Assistant early in 1816, 
 and left him, to take the field as Sir John Malcolm's Assistant, in 
 July 1817. The other two Assistants at Poona were Francis 
 Whitworth Russell, the third son of Sir Henry Russell, Chief 
 Justice at Calcutta, and Henry Pottinger, afterwards well known 
 as Sir Henry. My acquaintance with the languages induced Mr. 
 Elphinstone at an early period to employ me in making trans- 
 lations of the numerous akhbars (news-letters) he was at that time 
 in the habit of receiving from the Native Courts where he had 
 established intelligencers, his own previous acquaintance with the 
 Ministers of India while Resident at Nagpore having made him 
 familiar with their characters and connections. At the time I 
 speak of we had regular postal communications with the several 
 capitals of these chiefs ; and as the whole of that department was 
 under our own Postmaster at Poona, it was not difficult in a great 
 degree to depend on their reports, which were occasionally checked 
 by sending a confidential agent along each line, under the plea of 
 paying these intelligencers, to report circumstantially the actual 
 state of affairs. Bajee Rao's foreign communications were made 
 either by means of camel hircarras, or by special foot messengers, 
 whose progress was detected by the small javelins they carried, 
 every Court having them painted differently, to enable them to
 
 GENEEAL JOHN BRIGGS. 49 
 
 command any necessary aid they might require on their route. 
 This answered as a sort of livery, but was recognised only by the 
 officials of the several Princes. Similar javelins were used by the 
 messengers of the bankers of the different cities in the Native 
 States, but they were for the most part painted only in one colour. 
 In this way we at Poona obtained instant information of the entry 
 of any of the messengers of foreign Courts that might pass our postal 
 stations, and were enabled to be on the look-out for their arrival, 
 as well as to trace the direction of any despatched by the Peishwa. 
 As it was subsequently ascertained from the public records of the 
 Government that, out of the million and a half sterling of revenue 
 which Bajee Eao received, he laid by half a million annually, he 
 must have had at his disposal in 1816-17 upwards of eight millions 
 of treasure in jewels and in specie, and he was by no means par- 
 simonious in dispensing it to effect any of his purposes. He laid 
 himself out to gain over by bribery every servant of the Eesidency ; 
 but such was Mr. Elphinstone's vigilance that he was aware of 
 those in the Peishwa's pay, and took care to make use of them for 
 his own objects. So complete was our information, that one of the 
 complaints made by Bajee Eao against Mr. Elphinstone to Sir 
 John Malcolm at Maholy, was, that he was so completely watched 
 that the latter 'knew the very dishes that were served at his 
 meals'. 
 
 " One night, after a day that had been passed in considerable 
 anxiety, owing to reports of troops brought into the town, 1^ 
 received certain information that the cattle for the guns had 
 been sent for, and had arrived an hour before ; that the artillery 
 were drawn up in front of the park ; that the streets were full of 
 mounted men ; and that the Peishwa was in full durbar discussing 
 with his chiefs the subject of immediate war. I hastened to 
 inform Mr. Elphinstone, whom I found sitting in a large tent, 
 engaged in playing a round game of cards with a party, among 
 whom were several ladies. He saw me enter, and observed my 
 anxiety to speak with him ; but he continued his game for half an 
 hour, when, after handing the last lady of the party into her 
 palanquin, he came up to me rubbing his hands, and said, 'Well, 
 what is it ?' I told him the news, which he received with great sang- 
 froid, and we walked together to the Eesidency office. There we 
 encountered the European Commandant of the Contingent, above 
 alluded to, and Mr. Elphinstone asked him the latest news from 
 the city. He appeared not to be aware of what was in progress, 
 but observed that the Minister, whom he had just left, had told 
 him that the Peishwa had discharged some of the troops lately 
 entertained, and that all was quiet. Mr. Elphinstone then called 
 on me to state what I had heard, and distinctly told the Com- 
 mandant that he did not believe a word of his report. The latter 
 
 E
 
 50 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 said that his information was from the Minister himself, and that 
 as to the troops in the streets, he did not observe any beyond the 
 usual patrols, and knew nothing about the arrival of gun-bullocks. 
 The moment was critical, the Eesidency was incapable of being 
 properly defended, especially by the ordinary escort, and the idea 
 of attacking the Peishwa at once from the cantonment, though 
 hastily expressed, was subsequently abandoned. Mr. Elphinstone 
 resolved to defer doing anything until the morning, and then to 
 take such precautionary measures as he might deem proper. I 
 believe that neither he nor I had much sleep during that anxious 
 night, which fortunately passed quietly, owing, as was said, to the 
 opposition to war evinced by some of the Ministers. Bajee Eao 
 was physically an arrant coward ; he had always displayed this 
 weakness, and was not ashamed to avow it. No steps were there- 
 fore taken by either party during the night, but in the morning a 
 requisition for a reinforcement was made, and two guns accom- 
 panied it to the Eesidency. 
 
 " I was not present at the battle of Kirkee, the cantonment near 
 Poona, on the oth of November 1817. I had left the Eesidency 
 in September, my friend and patron General Malcolm, now Sir 
 John, having invited me to join him as one of his personal staff 
 and Political Assistants. He then held the double appointment 
 of Commander of the 3rd division of the Deccan Army, and of 
 the Governor-General's Agent with the Commander-in-Chief. 
 With the full approval and the kindest encouragement from Mr. 
 Elphinstone, I started from Poona very soon after the ratifica- 
 tion of the Treaty of June had arrived from Lord Hastings's head- 
 quarters, and when almost everyone, myself included, with the 
 exception, I think, of Mr. Elphinstone, who was never either too 
 confident or too communicative, had come to the conclusion that 
 Bajee Eao would not fight. But though I was not at the Poona 
 Eesidency when the battle of Kirkee took place, I had been com- 
 pelled to leave behind me hostages to the fortune of that day ; and 
 in consequence of my close and recent connection, I heard so much 
 at the time from eye-witnesses, from Mr. Elphinstone and my wife 
 among others, that I must say a few words about the occurrences 
 immediately after my departure. I started in the height of the 
 monsoon, having to pass over a large tract of country without 
 anything like a ' made' road, the soil consisting of the black, sapo- 
 naceous and tenacious earth called cotton soil, which when dry 
 splits into hard blocks with deep fissures, dangerous to horses' legs, 
 and when saturated with rain is so soft that beasts of burden sink 
 up to their knees in it. It was out of the question that my wife 
 and family should accompany me at this time of the year, more 
 especially as there was no small chance of encountering stray 
 Pindarrees and plunderers, in which case a train of palanquins
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 51 
 
 would have been a temptation to them, and an encumbrance to us. 
 I travelled, of course, on horseback, with a small escort. 
 
 " Bajee Eao remained tolerably quiet until, in the course of the 
 strategic arrangements by which the several Mahratta Powers 
 were to be watched and held in check while the Pindarrees were 
 assailed on all sides, the Subsidiary Force was ordered to the front 
 under General Lionel Smith, leaving only a weak brigade in can- 
 tonment at Poona. Mr. Elphinstone, suspecting that a treacherous 
 attack might be made some night without warning, had the small 
 force taken a little further from Poona, across the Mooteemoola 
 river, where it occupied the village of Kirkee, about two miles 
 from the City. The Eesident had, also, made application for the 
 reinforcement of an European Regiment from Bombay, and 
 strengthened his own escort at the Eesidency by an additional 
 company of Sepoys. It was concerted also between the General 
 and Mr. Elphinstone, that in case the former did not hear 
 by every post, he might conclude that the latter had been 
 attacked. On the very day after the arrival of the European 
 Regiment, the Peishwa's Army of at least twenty-five thousand men, 
 chiefly Irregular horse and foot, with ten or twelve guns, issued 
 from the City on the 5th November, when an Aide-de-Camp of 
 His Highness galloped up to the front verandah of the Residency 
 and shouted, ' It is War !' Major Ford, the Officer Commanding 
 the Auxiliary Force, was at that moment at the Residency, and 
 received Mr. Elphinstone's orders at once to range his brigade 
 along-side of the British line. Mr. Elphinstone placed my wife 
 and children, besides two other ladies then at the Residency, in 
 their palanquins, leaving with them his own escort for their pro- 
 tection to the Camp at Kirkee, while he, crossing the river with 
 his suite where there was no regular ford, just escaped being taken 
 prisoner, and joined the troops as they were advancing to meet 
 the enemy. It is right here to mention that Mr. Elphinstone, 
 fourteen years before, had been attached to General Arthur Wel- 
 lesley's Force in the Assaye and Argaum Campaigns of 1803-4, 
 that he was his Political Secretary and his guest during the whole 
 of that time, and was at his side in every battle and siege of the 
 war ; in fact, there was no more experienced officer at the battle 
 of Kirkee than the Resident himself, and it would be hardly too 
 much to say that he took and retained the command throughout 
 that day. 
 
 " Our force, consisting of one European Regiment and four 
 Battalions of Sepoys, besides Artillery, did not number quite three 
 thousand men on the field. The battle of Kirkee was fought 
 through the persuasion of Gokla, one of Bajee Rao's best com- 
 manders, his over confidence and impatience being founded on the 
 certainty that our Sepoys would come over by companies or batta- 
 
 E 2
 
 52 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 lions as soon as the first shot was fired. The Peishwa's Cavalry, 
 numbering more than 10,000, only made one attempt at a charge, 
 but they were received with a steady fire, and their leader, Moro 
 Dixit, being killed by a cannon ball, they did not renew the 
 attack. Our loss was inconsiderable, nineteen killed and sixty- 
 seven wounded. That of the enemy was much more severe, and 
 several Chiefs of rank fell in the action. 
 
 "The enemy plundered and burnt the Besidency, directing 
 their destructive efforts especially against Mr. Elphinstone's books, 
 which were believed to include many on alchemy and the occult 
 arts, and to have given him almost magical powers. All the 
 houses, goods and chattels of the Resident's suite were destroyed ; 
 also, my own house and valuable library included. My wife and 
 her three children, one in arms, were huddled into a palanquin, 
 saving nothing but the clothes on their backs. So also were two 
 other ladies, the whole party being protected by the Resident's 
 infantry escort in their journey over fields for the most part 
 covered with higb grain, on their way to the British lines. Before 
 they reached their destination a party of the enemy's horse arrested 
 their progress. The infantry escort, already loaded, surrounded 
 the palanquins. The husband of one of the ladies, who was not a 
 military man, and was dressed in plain clothes, dismounted and 
 called on the infantry to fire. The steady Native officer who com- 
 manded the party knew better. He desired the gentleman to 
 mount his horse and be quiet. ' We are infantry,' said he, ' we 
 don't mind these Cavalry.' This gallant soldier now addressed 
 the party of horse which had surrounded the palanquins, though 
 still about twenty yards off : ' These are only women and children, 
 and you are not come to fight them, I suppose. There is no 
 plunder here for you. We are soldiers and bound to sell our 
 lives for these ladies. Stand off, or it will be worse for you ; we 
 shall not give fire till you are within a spear's length, and then 
 some of your saddles will be emptied.' The troopers laughed at 
 the coolness of the veteran, and having satisfied themselves by the 
 screams of the women and children in the three palanquins who 
 they were, one of them said, ' The Subadar speaks truth, they 
 are only women and children, let them go/ And so they did, and 
 the party arrived safely at Kirkee, after all the fighting was over. 
 Such acts of gallantry and fidelity on the part of our Native 
 soldiers were not uncommon in those days, and were not, I fear, 
 thought so much of, or so well requited, as they ought to have 
 been. 
 
 " I received from Mr. Elphinstone a short note written in the 
 field to the following effect : 
 
 " ' We have had a battle, and have driven the enemy into the 
 City. Bajee Rao behaved like a gentleman, which I did not
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 53 
 
 expect, by sending me word while the troops were coming out, 
 " It is War". Mrs. Briggs and the children are safe with us in Camp, 
 and well ; but I fear your house, like the rest, is burnt, and all your 
 manuscripts are sacrificed.' 
 
 " This was, also, too true, I lost all my library, and my valuable 
 journal in Persia of 1808-9-10. My unfinished translation of 
 Ferishta was, fortunately, with a friend in Bombay ; and I after- 
 wards recovered two other valuable manuscripts, bought for me by 
 a Native friend in Poona from a plunderer. 
 
 " Immediately on hearing of the outbreak of hostilities, General 
 Lionel Smith, with the main body of the Subsidiary Force, then on 
 the Godavery river, returned to Poona without opposition by forced 
 marches, and a second battle was fought, wherein the enemy was 
 even more signally beaten, dispersed and pursued by the British 
 Cavalry and Horse Artillery. My family found shelter in a cow- 
 shed, which Mr. Elphinstone had made his head-quarters on the 
 night of the first battle, and in which he had written his des- 
 patches. My wife received from my friend Henry Pottinger, then 
 an Assistant like myself,* an entire piece of calico which he had 
 brought from Bombay whence he arrived the day after the battle 
 for his own use, and with this material she made up some 
 changes of clothing for herself and the children. Another friend 
 saw that she was regularly supplied with poultry and vegetables, 
 brought in by our foraging parties. Mr. Elphinstone and his Staff 
 accompanied the army in its pursuit of Bajee Rao; but in the 
 midst of his endless and engrossing public business he managed to 
 see that my wife was supplied with every sort of provision and 
 comfort from his own stores, just arrived from Bombay, including 
 plate, crockery and glass, writing out the list with his own hand. 
 At his advice, she took the earliest safe opportunity as it was 
 supposed to be of leaving Poona for Madras, where she remained 
 till the war was over with one of her married sisters, having 
 narrowly escaped encountering the enemy's army, which had 
 crossed her route twenty -four hours before she passed over it. 
 
 " As a proof that travelling across country was dangerous at 
 this period for Europeans, I may mention that in April 1817 
 Lieutenant Dacre, of the Madras Artillery, with a small escort, fell 
 in with a body of Pindarrees, and was robbed and murdered. On 
 the 6th of November, the day after the battle of Kirkee, two 
 officers coming from Bombay, Cornets Morrison and Hunter, were 
 plundered and taken prisoners by some of the Peishwa's horsemen, 
 and sent to a hill-fort in the Konkan, whence they were even- 
 tually released. A few days later, Captain Vaughan, of my own 
 
 * Afterwards the Rt. Honble. Sir Henry Pottinger, Bart, G.C.B., 
 Euvoy in China, Governor of Madras, etc., etc.
 
 54 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 regiment, and his younger brother, just arrived from England, 
 marching without an escort, were seized and taken to Futtehgaon, 
 a place about twenty miles from Poona, and were hanged there. 
 About the same time, Lieutenant Ennis, of the Bombay Engineers, 
 who was surveying, attended by a small guard, was attacked and 
 killed by a party in the service of Trimbukjee Dainglia. In con- 
 sequence of these outrages, Mr. Elphinstone had it proclaimed, and 
 took care it should be made known in the Peishwa's camp, that if 
 any prisoners were put to death or maltreated, he should retaliate 
 on any prisoners that fell into his hands, whatever their rank or 
 station might be. 
 
 " I joined Sir John Malcolm on the Nerbudda in the middle of 
 September 1817, shortly after the united 1st and 3rd Divisions 
 had received their orders to cross the river and to take up a posi- 
 tion between the army of Holkar and a strong force belonging to 
 Scindia, near Oujein. Holkar's army was encamped in a strong 
 position at Mahidpoor, constantly sending out parties of Light 
 Cavalry to cut off our supplies and capture our carriage cattle. 
 The British force, under General Sir Thomas Hislop, consisted of 
 one wing of the Madras European Regiment and the flank com- 
 panies of the Royal Scots, amounting in all to less than 600 
 bayonets, and seven regiments of Native Infantry, about 3,000 
 strong ; two batteries of Horse Artillery with six-pounders, one 
 squadron of Dragoons, and three Regiments of Regular Native 
 Cavalry, besides the Mysore Irregular Horse, numbering about 
 4,000 swords, under their Native Chief, with a European Com- 
 mandant and Brigade Major to direct their movements. The 
 enemy had fourteen Regiments of Regular Infantry, a train of 
 seventy guns, including many twenty-four and thirty-two pounders, 
 and a body of several thousand well-equipped Cavalry." 
 
 General Briggs always condemned the tactical conduct 
 of the battle of Mahidpoor, and contended in an argu- 
 ment of great length that there was a great want of 
 military skill displayed on that occasion. But his con- 
 troversy with Colonel Valentine Blacker, who was 
 Quartermaster-General of Sir Thomas Hislop's Force, and 
 wrote a military History of the Mahratta War, and the 
 discussion in general on the campaign, can have scarcely 
 any interest now. There was certainly no lack of gal- 
 lantry or of steady soldiership on that day, on the part 
 either of the English officers and men, or of the Madras 
 Sepoys. Captain Briggs himself acted as an Aide-de- 
 Camp to General Sir John Malcolm, to whom was given
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 55 
 
 the immediate command of two brigades of infantry 
 destined to attack the enemy's left. The whole of this 
 operation was performed with great steadiness, although 
 our Horse Artillery was nearly silenced during the 
 advance, for their six-pounders, though well served, were 
 unequal to the guns of heavy calibre in position before 
 them, and many of our pieces were dismounted or 
 disabled. 
 
 " Sir John Malcolm personally led the right brigade under 
 Colonel Eobert Scott, against the battery on the enemy's left, receiv- 
 ing a very heavy fire, first of round shot and then two salvoes of 
 grape, the rattle of which against the barrels of our muskets, for 
 that was what most struck my ear at the time, I shall never forget. 
 Our Sepoys advanced most steadily, hardly a shot being fired, except 
 by a very few young hands, till within a few yards of the batteries, 
 when, on receiving the order, they halted to give one volley, and 
 then rushed on to the charge. Holkar's Infantry, ranged closely 
 behind their guns, were unable to act, and very soon broke and 
 fled after receiving our fire at close quarters. Sir Thomas Hislop 
 and his Staff followed quickly after the success of our attack, and 
 we were soon gratified by the appearance of the Deputy Adjutant 
 General, Colonel Leicester Stanhope, afterwards Lord Petersham, 
 galloping from the front, waving his hat over his head, and pro- 
 claiming the capture of the batteries on our left ; after which the 
 same work was completed all along the enemy's line. Holkar's 
 Artillerymen showed undaunted courage, fighting to the last with 
 their spunge-staffs and swords until bayoneted or cut down. 
 
 " The loss of the enemy was estimated at 3,000 men, and one of 
 their principal Chiefs, Koshun Beg, was severely wounded. Young 
 Holkar, quite a child, was in the action on horseback, and fled 
 with the main body of his Cavalry after the capture of the guns. 
 Sixty-three guns of all calibres were taken with their tumbrils 
 and waggons. The loss of the British Army was 778 men killed 
 and wounded, including 38 European and 27 Native officers. 
 Leaving out the 4,000 Mysore Horse, who were very useful in the 
 pursuit, but who only lost 65 men, we numbered only 4,800 of all 
 ranks, so that our loss was about 1 in 7. There were only seven 
 Companies of Europeans, and one squadron of Dragoons besides 
 the Artillery ; the remainder, about 4,000, were all Madras Sepoys. 
 On that day the Madras Rifle Corps, numbering only 240 rank 
 and file, lost 135, including ten officers, and the only one who 
 came safely through the battle had his horse shot under him. 
 
 "The battle of Mahidpoor was fought on the 21st of December, 
 the day of St. Thomas, the patron-saint's day of our Commander-
 
 56 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 in-Chief, Sir Thomas Hislop. On Christmas Day he held a leve'e, 
 and received all the officers of the Force, European and Native. 
 On that occasion, only one officer of the Kifle Corps, Captain Evans, 
 was able to attend, the ten others had all been put Jwrs de combat, 
 one killed and nine severely wounded." 
 
 Peace having been made with the Government of 
 Holkar, under the Treaty of Mundissore on the 6th of 
 January 1818, and Sir John Malcolm having been de- 
 tached in January 1818, with his division, in the pursuit 
 of the Peishwa Bajee Rao, Captain John Briggs was left 
 in charge of the office of Governor-General's Agent with 
 the army under Sir Thomas Hislop. In this capacity he 
 was present at the storm of the strong fortress of Talnair 
 on the 27th of February, and at the surrender of the 
 forts of Gaulna and Chandore, opening a communication 
 between the army of Hindustan, under Lord Hastings, 
 and the Deccan, still occupied by the forces and partisans 
 of the Peishwa. 
 
 In May, Captain Briggs was ordered to take charge of 
 the cessions and conquests in Khandesh ; while another of 
 his friends and comrades on the list of Mr. Elphinstone's 
 Assistants, Captain James Grant,* was appointed Poli- 
 tical Agent, subsequently termed Resident, with the 
 Rajah of Sattara, just rescued from his palace prison in the 
 Peishwa's custody, and placed in possession of a small 
 sovereignty carved out of the central portion of his 
 ancestors' dominions. 
 
 Captain Briggs started at once for his new charge, and 
 just before his departure wrote a letter to Sir John Mal- 
 colm, from which the following extract is characteristic 
 of the man and of the spirit in which he worked among 
 the Indian people. 
 
 It is dated " Mahidpoor, 19th January 1818". 
 
 " Don't forget to let me know about the son of Goolzar Khan 
 Toky of Lassoor. It is a small matter, but I think we ought to 
 ensure friends and local information in Khandesh as fast as pos- 
 sible, after which we shall soon see our way. I will send you all 
 
 * Afterwards Grant Duff, author of the History of the Mahrattas, 
 father of the lit. Honble. Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant Duff, Governor 
 of Madras.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 57 
 
 the information I can collect about Holkar's Government after I 
 reach Oujein, to which place my coadjutor, Munseram, accom- 
 panies me. I shall give him letters to you and Agnew. He has 
 been immensely useful to me, and deserves everything at our 
 hands. He has received from Bhopal, from Tantia Jogh, and from 
 Ghuffoor Khan the kindest letters, most of which he has shown to 
 me. He is one of the most sensible Natives I have ever met with, 
 always communicative and obliging." 
 
 The next letter, written to Sir John Malcolm when 
 on the march to enter on his new duties, will at once 
 give some insight into the problems that had to be con- 
 sidered and solved on the first acquisition of ceded and 
 conquered provinces in India, and will show the cheerful 
 confidence and mastery of details with which Captain 
 Briggs entered on the task allotted to him in the great 
 work of invoking order out of chaos. 
 
 " Camp on the river below the Simrole Ghaut, 
 
 " 7th February 1818. 
 
 "MY DEAK Sm JOHN, We have this day received a copy of 
 Mr. Adam's to you of the 20th January. I observe the Governor- 
 General is prepared to make an allowance for the advances made 
 on account of the Pergunnahs of Chandore and Nundoorbar for the 
 revenues of the current year. This may be all very proper as a 
 passing measure of conciliation, and by way of acceding to some of 
 the many demands made by Tantia Jogh during the course of the 
 negotiations. But I observe the Governor-General also authorises 
 your holding out hopes that Holkar's Government may keep the 
 hereditary lands about Chandore and at Wabgaum in the Deccan. 
 It may be presumption in me to dissent from what you seem to 
 have recommended, and Lord Hastings has approved ; still, I will 
 venture to say in plain terms that if Holkar has one leegah of land 
 in which he can have a karkoon, so as to give him a plea for 
 holding communications with the Deccan, there will be more mis- 
 chief done some of these days than good can accrue just now from 
 the most gracious concession. Our object certainly should be to 
 consolidate the territories of each of the predatory Powers ; to cut 
 them off from any pretext for foreign communication and intrigue ; 
 to separate effectually each State from every other ; and to break 
 the neck of that abominable propensity that every true Mahratta 
 has, according to their own saying, ' to get one hand into every 
 one's dish' to have a claim, however small, in every quarter 
 without which he would no longer be a true Mahratta. We want 
 no more true Mahrattas. Our interest, and that of every State in
 
 58 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 India, is to have a settled government everywhere ; but the policy 
 in which all Indian princes and chieftains have been brought up 
 will not in the present day lead them, of themselves, to find and 
 keep their centre of gravity ; and it has, therefore, become neces- 
 sary to the tranquillity of the country for the great preponderating 
 Power to hold the scales in its own hand, and establish by force 
 that balance which they are incapable of settling, or of even com- 
 prehending. I think Mr. Elphinstone will agree with me as to the 
 inexpediency of allowing Holkar to hold any lands in the Deccan. 
 Their annual value is trifling, and might be made over to the 
 Durbar, but don't let Holkar have the appointment of a cow-keeper 
 south of the Sindwa Ghaut. I would say the same of Scindia 
 nor should any Peishwa be allowed to make or meddle north of 
 the river Taptee. Let us now break for ever what was only nomi- 
 nally broken before, the link of political connection between these 
 Mahratta Princes generally, and between those in Hindostan and 
 their old homes. All persons who can have any personal recollec- 
 tion or sentiment regarding the hereditary estates of Holkar in the 
 Deccan must now be out of date. The beautiful Bheema Baee, 
 now only sixteen, may remember her imprisonment as a child in 
 the fort of Asseerghur by Scindia ; but I doubt if she has any 
 feelings of affection to the Deccan on that account. By-the-bye, 
 talking of this lady, I hear she is most anxious for her debts to 
 her troops about a lakh of rupees being paid, and to retire to 
 Benares on a pension, giving up her mehals (estates) in toto. 1 I 
 merely mention this to enable you to make the suggestion yourself, 
 if you think it advisable. If I am not misinformed, Tantia Jogh 
 was willing enough to accede to this arrangement, when the battle 
 of Mahidpoor put an end to all their plans. 
 
 " I long to be up and doing in Khandesh, and I am in hopes Sir 
 Thomas Hislop will take the Governor-General's hint and settle it 
 himself, leaving the hunting of the Peishwa to younger and more 
 active people. All my reports and intelligence will go under his 
 name to Government ; and I confess that I think he would, on the 
 score of character, gain more in reducing the forts and pacifying 
 the country with me, than in driving Bajee Eao with light troops, 
 a business quite out of his line, but in which he would let no one 
 help him. Couldn't you follow lip Lord Hastings's hint ? 
 " I am, my dear General, with sincere esteem, 
 
 " Your very faithful and obliged friend, 
 
 "JOHN BKIGGS." 
 
 There was much rough work to be done in the Gun- 
 
 * This lady died in 1858, when her jaghire estate of Koonch was re- 
 sumed by the Government of India. Aitchison's Treaties, vol. iv, p. 282.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 59 
 
 gaturree country and Khandesh before Briggs could 
 set about his task of civil administration. Immediately 
 after the conclusion of the Treaty of Mundissore, the 
 ruling authorities in Holkar's camp had given to Sir 
 Thomas Hislop orders, duly executed and sealed, to the 
 Killadars, or commandants of all the forts in the con- 
 quered provinces, explaining the cession of territory, and 
 requiring them to hand over charge of their military 
 posts, with all guns and stores, to the English officers 
 duly authorised to take possession. But in the political 
 uncertainty of the time, obedience to these orders was 
 by no means universal or prompt. Several forts had 
 offered resistance, and as those in Khandesh were known 
 to be held in many instances by bands of mercenary 
 Arabs, claiming large arrears of pay, military operations 
 were clearly necessary before the real work of pacification 
 could be practically commenced. In May 1818 the army 
 of the Deccan was broken up. General Sir Thomas Hislop, 
 on his arrival with the main body of his force at Aurunga- 
 bad, on his way to resume his ordinary duties as Com- 
 mander-in- Chief at Madras, delivered over to the charge 
 of Captain Briggs all the forts and dependencies ceded 
 by Holkar and conquered from the Peishwa, north of 
 the river Godavery, as far as the Satpura mountains ; 
 and he was directed to consider himself under the direct 
 orders of the Honble. Mountstuart Elphinstone, sole 
 Commissioner for the government of our acquisitions in 
 the Deccan. Ever since Briggs had left Poona to join 
 Sir John Malcolm he had still remained on the establish- 
 ment of Mr. Elphinstone as one of his Assistants, and 
 had continued to correspond with him. Mr. Elphinstone 
 had, in fact, as he informed Briggs in a most friendly and 
 flattering letter, recommended him to the Governor- 
 General for the almost independent functions that were 
 now entrusted to him. 
 
 The country lying between the Godavery and the 
 Satpura Hills may be considered as a tract containing 
 about nineteen thousand square miles, comprising Gunga- 
 turree, or the valley of the Godavery, a well populated 
 region, and Khandesh, scantily inhabited. The plain of
 
 60 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 the Godavery was bounded on the west by the Syadri 
 range of mountains, in which were situated twenty- three 
 hill-forts, all occupied, with hostile intent, by garrisons 
 who refused either to obey the orders of transfer issued 
 by their old master Holkar, or to acknowledge the 
 British Government. For the purpose of introducing the 
 new authority and restoring order in these parts, a force, 
 commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel MacDowell,* consist- 
 ing of half a regiment of European Infantry, two Sepoy 
 battalions, three companies of Pioneers, with five Engineer 
 officers, an efficient Staff, and a small battering train in 
 addition to the field guns, altogether about 2,500 men 
 was placed under the political direction of Captain 
 Briggs. 
 
 Besides this strong brigade of regular troops, there 
 was an excellent body of Irregular Horse, numbering 
 1,750 swords, which had been enlisted for the Honourable 
 Company's service out of Holkar's disbanded army, after 
 the battle of Mahidpoor. They had behaved extremely 
 well when accompanying Sir Thomas Hislop in his march 
 from Malwa, and were now to be paid by Captain Briggs, 
 and to form a local force entirely at his disposal, under 
 their own Commandant, Lieutenant Rind, of the Bombay 
 Army, judiciously and considerately selected by Mr. 
 Elphinstone as much on account of his friendship for 
 Briggs as of his remarkable qualifications for such a 
 command. 
 
 In entering upon this highly responsible charge, Cap- 
 tain Briggs found himself placed in an extremely delicate 
 position. The situation bristled with difficulties, both in 
 his personal relations with the Commandant of the Force, 
 and in the antagonism which immediately grew up 
 between his functions as protector of the civil population 
 and the tendency of the troops to consider as booty 
 everything portable or convertible on their route. 
 
 Briggs had now been seventeen years in the service, 
 and was the second Captain in his Regiment, but the 
 Lieutenant-Colonel commanding the Field Force was his 
 
 * Afterwards General Sir Andrew Hay MacDowell, K.C.B.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 61 
 
 senior by nearly twenty years. The Commandant and 
 the Political Agent had been brother-officers in the same 
 Regiment. When Briggs joined the 15th Madras Native 
 Infantry as Ensign in 1801, MacDowell, whose first com- 
 mission was dated in 1785, was already a Captain, and 
 had seen much active service. It will be remembered 
 that in 1806 Major MacDowell was in command of the 
 1st Battalion of the 15th, with Lieutenant Briggs as his 
 Adjutant, when the " white stock" incident occurred, the 
 only outward symptom of the conspiracies at Hyderabad 
 in that year, a pale reflex and reverberation of the Vellore 
 mutiny. 1 Having parted in 1808, on Briggs going to 
 Persia with Sir John Malcolm, they met once more 
 in 1818, and were then associated on public duty, 
 under very different circumstances. The junior was 
 no longer subordinate to the senior. Although the mili- 
 tary command was in the hands of Colonel MacDowell, 
 the Khandesh Field Force was placed under the direc- 
 tion of Captain Briggs, and could hardly be moved ten 
 paces to the right or left except at his instance or with 
 his approval. The young Political Agent was the ever 
 present representative of the Governor-General, whose 
 confidence he was supposed to enjoy, and with whom he 
 was in direct communication. He says, in the autobio- 
 graphical papers : 
 
 "As Commandant and Adjutant of the 1st Battalion of the 
 15th, MacDowell and I did not get on well together, and I know 
 that he did all in his power to get me removed to the other Batta- 
 lion ; but, very much to his annoyance, instead of my being 
 removed he was. From 1808 we had never met till our positions 
 were now so curiously reversed, but he seemed to have forgotten 
 what had taken place ten years before, and met me with apparent 
 cordiality, avowing his desire to accede to my wishes in everything 
 for the benefit of the Service. It became my duty, as it was my 
 wish, to forget all that had passed in former times. I must do 
 him the justice to say that not only were his military operations 
 conducted with the utmost gallantry, judgment, and skill, but that 
 they were certainly not injuriously affected, as to promptitude 
 or decisiveness, by his personal feelings towards me. Perhaps, 
 however, I may claim some little credit for this, for I had to exer- 
 
 * Ante, pp. 24, 25.
 
 62 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 else a good deal of patience and, I may say, tact, to avoid clashing. 
 Our old regimental position soon became known in the camp, and 
 some of his Staff were not slow in keeping the Commandant's 
 mind in a state of irritation. I, however, scrupulously avoided all 
 interference or even suggestion in military details, and abstained 
 from assuming any of the ' political' state so common in those 
 days pitching my tents almost within his lines, displaying no 
 flag of my own, and submitting for his information all my reports 
 of military movements. He seemed to appreciate this conduct 
 on my part, which I think I may call frank and conciliatory, and 
 himself adopted the plan of abstaining from formal correspondence 
 with me while we were in the neighbourhood of each other, but 
 we carried on business by verbal intercourse and semi-official notes 
 on trivial as well as important matters. This correspondence I 
 still retain in my possession, and it serves me as a guide both as 
 to facts and dates. I believe myself that but for the disputes as 
 to prize property we should have ended the campaign on good 
 terms." 
 
 The inclination to plunder has characterised belli- 
 gerents, by sea and land, in all ages of the world. In 
 the various forms of ransom and booty, the soldiers' lot- 
 tery, with its bloody blanks and golden prizes, has been 
 recognised always and everywhere ; and, however miti- 
 gated and regulated, is not, as the annals of 1870 testify, 
 by any means extinct in the third quarter of this en- 
 lightened nineteenth century. So long, indeed, as war 
 continues to be one of the most effectual agents in de- 
 veloping the destinies of the world, it is useless to bewail 
 the survival of the destructive and predatory instincts. 
 It is natural enough that those who have to endure the 
 stress and spasm of warfare, who are compelled to stake 
 their limbs and their lives on innumerable and im- 
 measurable hazards, should think themselves entitled, 
 when there is any visible prize before them, to make the 
 losers pay. 
 
 The main principles as to what constitutes lawful 
 prize, what persons are liable to lose, and who may keep 
 or share for example, the Government, or the troops, 
 the main body, or the detachment that actually makes 
 the capture have been more fully discussed and more 
 definitely settled with reference to naval operations than 
 to warfare on land ; and in fact no single prize taken at
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 63 
 
 sea can be finally appropriated without a formal process 
 and condemnation in some Court of Admiralty. From 
 various causes chiefly, perhaps, because the rights of 
 neutrals and of the captors' fellow-subjects have so seldom 
 been involved a regular adjudication is not an essential 
 preliminary to the partition of booty taken on land, and 
 the whole subject of army prize money is in a compara- 
 tively loose and unsettled state. 
 
 In India the perplexities regarding what is lawful 
 prize have been less remarkable than the summary as- 
 sumptions, usually granted in favour of the troops. 
 Political, civil, and military authorities never seem to 
 have been able to make up their minds whether India is 
 to be considered and treated as part of the British 
 Empire or as a foreign country, and whether its inha- 
 bitants are subjects of Her Majesty or aliens citizens or 
 Helots. All the Indian allied, protected, and tributary 
 States, whose relations and responsibilities as federal con- 
 stituents of the Empire ought to be equitably defined, 
 are arbitrarily controlled by what is called the " Foreign" 
 Department. Lord Dalhousie, who extinguished and 
 despoiled so many of them in very cavalier fashion, habi- 
 tually described them, with an inaccuracy that almost 
 appears ironical, as " independent" States. Since the 
 process of annexation has been checked by English 
 opinion, acting through the Home authorities, Anglo- 
 Indian officialism has taken to designating the Native 
 States, indiscriminately, and with equal inaccuracy, as 
 " feudatory" ; while, in some instances, undoubted feuda- 
 tories of the Native Princes have been quietly detached 
 from their proper allegiance and turned into tributaries 
 to our Government. Neither in peace nor in time of 
 rebellion have our " Foreign" Secretaries or our Coun- 
 cillors been able to make the right distinctions between 
 Princes connected with the Imperial Power by Treaties, 
 Chieftains having heritable jurisdiction, mere private 
 landlords, and political stipendiaries. 
 
 There have been some strange and very questionable 
 cases of plunder claimed and granted as prize to troops 
 in Indian campaigns, such as the Bhurtpore prize of
 
 64 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 1825, when we emptied the treasury and jewel room of 
 the Prince we professed to protect from a cruel usurper ; 
 such as the Scinde prize-money Sir Charles Napier's 
 share of which was upwards of 50,000 derived from 
 confiscating the private valuables, including the ladies' 
 jewels, of the Ameers' families, seized in cold blood, with- 
 out any storm or siege, in the Palaces of Hyderabad. 
 
 There was the quiet misappropriation in 1849 of the 
 jewels and other personalty, worth about 250,000, of 
 our Ally and Ward, the Maharajah Duleep Singh, which, 
 being in charge of his guardian, the British Resident at 
 Lahore, were handed over as prize money to the British 
 troops that had taken part in the Punjaub campaign. 
 This property, together with the person of the Maha- 
 rajah, had been uninterruptedly in charge of the Resident 
 as head, under Treaty, of the Punjaub Government at 
 Lahore, the capital of the State, which throughout the 
 war had never been besieged, assailed, or, in a military 
 sense, threatened. The war had, from first to last, been 
 carried on under Treaty, and by public proclamation, for 
 the suppression of a mutiny and rebellion against the 
 Maharajah's Government, and with the aid of the Maha- 
 rajah's councillors and troops.* The Maharajah Duleep 
 Singh's jewels and plate, even if they had fallen into the 
 hands of our army through some military exploit, were 
 not the property oif an enemy, but of a friend, held by our 
 Government in trust. I cannot see, and have never had 
 pointed out to me, any military, executive, or legal process, 
 up to the present day, whereby that trust has been dis- 
 solved, or our Government exempted or indemnified from 
 having to account for it. 
 
 Then there were some singular interpretations and as- 
 sumptions of customs and precedents relating to plunder 
 and booty, during the operations for suppressing the 
 mutinies and rebellion in India between 1857 and 1859. 
 Without entering on the more debatable appropriations 
 in and about Delhi, Lucknow, and other places where 
 
 * See Punjaub Papers, 1849, pp. 374, 375, 448, 449, 591, 187, 197, 
 256, 289, 379, 457, 584, 585, 589, 631.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 65 
 
 fighting took place, there was, for example, the case of the 
 Kirwee prize-money, the largest haul made by any body 
 of troops in those days, and about which there has been 
 so much litigation. This was really the plunder of the 
 undefended house of private persons charged with rebel- 
 lion, not the fort or palace of a Prince or ruling Chief- 
 tain, but the house of two brothers of high rank and 
 great wealth, who had probably conspired against the 
 Government, but had certainly taken no part in hostili- 
 ties, had committed no overt act of rebellion, and had 
 actually surrendered themselves to the General in com- 
 mand, before the troops were anywhere near their place 
 of residence.* It was just as if the British troops had 
 claimed the private property of Lord Lovat or Lord 
 Derwentwater during the rebellion of 1745, and their 
 claim had been admitted. 
 
 The Crown, I believe, granted the Kirwee booty to the 
 troops, a preliminary left out, as could hardly be 
 avoided, when the Maharajah Duleep Singh's jewels were 
 handed over and therefore it may be presumed there 
 was no illegality; but it is not easy to see any justification 
 for such a grant. 
 
 It would have been impossible, it seems to me, for any 
 Attorney-General, Advocate-General, prize agent, or any 
 expert in the law of booty, to have drafted a royal man- 
 date for the condemnation of the Maharajah Duleep 
 Singh's goods. And for that reason, I suppose, they 
 were handed over without any such formality. 
 
 But even the Crown draws the line somewhere in 
 the liberality of its grants, particularly when the 
 plunder is not palpably in possession of the troops, and 
 in the case of money in the public funds belonging to 
 the Kirwee brothers and other rebels of 1857, declined 
 to transfer it as booty to the troops. The claim to such 
 a transfer was, however, actually made, and great expec- 
 tations were entertained of its success ! 
 
 It is no doubt always a matter of primary and indis- 
 pensable importance in military operations to keep 
 soldiers in good temper, and some relaxation of discipline 
 
 * Malleson's History of the Indian Mutiny, vol. iii, p. 199. 
 
 F
 
 66 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 is generally overlooked in the progress of a campaign, so 
 long as prompt and implicit obedience can be maintained 
 among them on the march and in action. What they 
 find after a storm or an assault they must generally be 
 allowed to keep ; and a speedy distribution, or the ex- 
 pectation of it, after or before the grant from the Crown, 
 is the best safeguard against indiscriminate and irregular 
 plunder, against each man keeping what he finds for 
 himself, instead of all being thrown into a common 
 stock. But it is the duty of the Commandant to see 
 that nothing is taken but what is lawful prize, a duty 
 generally understood and observed in European warfare, 
 but often overlooked when war is waged by a civilised 
 nation in such outlandish regions as India, China, or 
 Burma, against barbarous races of a different complexion 
 and creed. 
 
 The difficulty with which Captain Briggs had to con- 
 tend on this campaign was the inclination of the troops, 
 from the Commandant downwards, to consider every 
 desirable object they came across to be " Bajee Rao's", 
 and everything that was " Bajee Rao's" to be good prize. 
 At the very outset, on the 8th of April 1818, Colonel 
 MacDowell writes to Captain Briggs : " With regard 
 to forage, I consider that we are in an enemy's country." 
 By virtue of this inaccurate and very insufficient assump- 
 tion, all hands began to help themselves, with very little 
 restraint, to whatever they could pick up on the road, or 
 near the halting places. It seemed to be considered 
 quite enough by Colonel MacDowell, if, in his own words, 
 " everything was paid for that was brought to the camp 
 for sale." 
 
 Captain Briggs, on the contrary, conceived it to be his 
 first duty to let the inhabitants understand that we did 
 not consider them as enemies, that the Force was not 
 marching in "an enemy's country", but in territory 
 ceded by Holkar to the British Government under a 
 Treaty, or conquered from the Peishwa ; that if the 
 people remained peaceably in their villages, and pursued 
 their ordinary occupations, they would not be wronged 
 or molested in any way; and that all supplies required 
 would be paid for at the market price.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 67 
 
 On the second day after entering Khandesh, the 9th 
 April, a small village, surrounded with the usual mud 
 wall of defence, having been entered without any resist- 
 ance, Colonel MacDowell writes to Briggs : " I have 
 ordered the place to be immediately occupied by Lieu- 
 tenant Rule, and have directed him to communicate 
 with me. His first duty, of course, will be to take 
 charge of whatever may appear to be prize property, 
 and send in an account of it." 
 
 On the 29th of April the Commandant writes : " I 
 received information last night that a number of Bajee 
 Rao's sheep are in a jungle within twelve miles of this, 
 and I have sent a guard under a Native officer with 
 orders to bring them in, and in order to prevent mis- 
 takes, if there should be any doubt of their being the 
 Peishwa's, to bring in the head-man of the village. There 
 can be no doubt about it." 
 
 Briggs had to explain to Colonel MacDowell that not 
 only was there very great doubt whether the sheep were 
 Bajee Rao's, but that there was no doubt at all in his 
 mind that sheep grazing in a jungle twelve miles from 
 the line of march could not, to whomsoever they be- 
 longed, become prize property. He had, moreover, to 
 give his very unwelcome opinion that Bajee Rao's treasure 
 or property of any description, wherever found, unless 
 taken in the storm of a town, was State property, and 
 must be carried to the account of our Government. This 
 doctrine, bad enough when applied to grain, sheep, and 
 such commonplace commodities, was peculiarly irritating 
 when made applicable, as occurred very early in the cam- 
 paign, to a genuine discovery of jewels, coin, and bullion 
 belonging to Bajee Rao. When he had thus placed himself, 
 though ineffectually as it proved, between his old comrades 
 and their prize, Briggs came to be regarded as a sort of 
 traitor in the camp. His incessant occupation, on horse- 
 back and at his writing-table, left him little time for 
 social intercourse at the Mess, or in his own tent, with 
 officers of the For.ce. He saw little of them, except in 
 company with the Commandant, who, though, as after- 
 wards appeared, sharing in the bitter feeling against the 
 
 F 2
 
 68 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 over-scrupulous Political Agent, allowed no symptom of 
 that feeling to break out in his conversation, or in the 
 familiar notes in which their daily correspondence was 
 carried on. 
 
 At a very early period in the campaign of 1818, the 
 Governor-General had laid down as a general rule that 
 " property taken in an open town, without resistance, by 
 the civil authority, and by irregular troops, such as 
 Sebundy, is not to be considered as prize to the Army". 
 It was by endeavouring in vain to adhere to this rule, 
 that Briggs incurred the animosity of too many of his 
 fellow soldiers, and had to endure some of those injurious 
 imputations, which, just because they are vague and im- 
 palpable, may cast a shade over a man's good name for 
 years without its being possible to call any one to account, 
 or to obtain a definite statement of their nature. 
 
 On one of the last days of April 1818, Briggs had 
 received an intimation from the Honble. Mountstuart 
 Elphinstone, his immediate superior, then at Poona, that 
 a considerable quantity of jewels and plate belonging to 
 the Peishwa Bajee Rao was in the town of Nassik, and 
 that steps ought to be taken for securing this property 
 without delay, before it could be removed and hidden 
 elsewhere. The name of the actual custodian, and the 
 quarter and street in which his house was to be found, 
 were all given from an informant in the Peishwa's capital, 
 Poona, whence Mr. Elphinstone wrote. The letter ar- 
 rived most opportunely, when the Force was within a 
 very few miles of Nassik a town of about 25,000 inha- 
 bitants and a place of great sanctity among the Hindus. 
 Captain Briggs immediately applied to Colonel Mac- 
 Dowell for a guard of Sepoys under an officer, and a 
 small party of Pioneers, in case any excavation, as was 
 very probable, should be required ; and as the occasion 
 was one of some importance and interest, and the value 
 of the treasure likely to be very large, he invited Colonel 
 MacDowell to accompany him, and to assist in the 
 operation. The Commandant sent this, reply : 
 
 " MY DEAR BRIGGS, I send one Native officer, two Havildars, 
 two Naigues, and thirty Privates, as well as a party of Pioneers.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 69 
 
 " I fear it will be too late to commence the search to-night. If I 
 can, I shall call on you to-morrow before breakfast. 
 
 " Yours very sincerely, 
 "2nd May, 2 P.M. A. MAcDowEtL." 
 
 Briggs could not delay proceeding to Nassik and com- 
 mencing the search because the Commandant did not 
 choose to come with the guard, as he could easily have 
 done. Colonel MacDowell's presence was by no means 
 necessary, nor was his assistance required. There was 
 ample time to march to Nassik and get the work done 
 that evening ; which meant that there was ample time, 
 in case of half an hour's delay, for notice to be given to 
 the custodian, and for the removal of the treasure to some 
 unknown or inaccessible place. Briggs, therefore, set off 
 at once, the treasure was found in the place indicated, 
 catalogued that night in the presence of his two 
 assistants, his brother, Lieutenant James Briggs, and 
 Captain Davies, and the officer of the guard, packed in a 
 tumbril, and sent off to the encampment of the Force, 
 not as prize, but for safe keeping. 
 
 The officers acting as prize-agents to the Force imme- 
 diately claimed it as lawful booty, although taken by the 
 civil power in an open town, without resistance, chiefly 
 on the plea of no validity, even had it been accurate 
 that they had received information as to the treasure 
 quite as soon as the Political Agent, if not sooner ; the 
 fact being that they had heard nothing but a general 
 rumour that some of the Peishwa's jewels were in the 
 town, without any clue to the place of deposit. But even 
 if the plea had been accurate it would not have made the 
 property good prize. 
 
 A correspondence on the subject ensued, and was con- 
 tinued for some months, every point being ultimately 
 submitted both to the Commissioner and to the Governor- 
 General. Captain Briggs gave his report and his opinion ; 
 the Commandant and the prize-agents expressed their 
 views as to their claim on the property, and the question 
 was for some time in suspense. Eventually, it may be 
 added here, the Crown granted the treasure to the troops, 
 a grant which may have been advisable, as a measure
 
 70 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 of military policy, but which seems to me, as it did 
 to Captain Briggs, to have been based on no legitimate 
 claim or recognised custom of war. In the meantime, 
 although nothing was said or hinted against his proceed- 
 ings publicly or officially, a most offensive report found 
 circulation in the camp, and into some private correspon- 
 dence, that the prize-agents were much disappointed with 
 the amount of the jewels, and that Briggs had taken 
 possession of them with only his brother as a companion, 
 although he had promised Colonel MacDowell that he 
 should be present at the search and during the appro- 
 priation. The Colonel's note of the 2nd May shows that 
 he was not at the time particularly prompt or anxious to 
 take part in the search, when invited to do so, and the 
 other strictures on the Political Agent's course of action 
 were equally without foundation. More correspondence 
 ensued, and Briggs was disposed to demand a court- 
 martial either on himself or on one of the prize-agents ; 
 but both the Commissioner and the Commander-in-Chief 
 decided that no such step was called for, since no one had 
 made any intelligible charge against the Political Agent, 
 and the Marquis of Hastings, as Governor- General, finally 
 disposed of the controversy in these terms, contained in 
 a despatch dated 20th of June 1819, to the Honble. 
 Mountstuart Elphinstone : 
 
 " His Excellency cannot omit remarking in this place that he 
 has perceived with much regret the tone of the observations made 
 relative to the conduct of Captain Briggs by Brigadier-General 
 Doveton, Colonel MacDowell, and the Prize Committee in Khan- 
 desh. The difference of opinion does not seem to His Excellency 
 to have been maintained, on the part of the latter-named officers, 
 with that degree of courtesy and attention towards the other party 
 that might have been looked for in a fair discussion of the question. 
 The misconception of the Prize Committee in asserting that the 
 information given by them of a large amount of treasure in the 
 town of Nassik led to its seizure by Captain Briggs, is evident 
 from the circumstances under which that knowledge was obtained 
 by you, and communicated to Captain Briggs. It is due to that 
 officer to state that the Governor-General considers the whole of 
 his procedure to have been unexceptionable, and deems his exer^ 
 tions in securing the treasure to have been highly commendable."
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 71 
 
 There is really nothing more to be said on this matter, 
 which nevertheless, as may easily be understood, gave 
 rise to much bad feeling among the younger officers in 
 the camp, and caused great exasperation and unmerited 
 pain of mind to Briggs for a long time, more especially as 
 General Sir Andrew MacDowell to the last day of his 
 life never ceased to persist most perversely in saying that 
 " Briggs ought to have waited for him that evening". 
 
 The forts of Rajdehr and Trimbuk having been taken 
 and occupied, the most serious operation of the Khandesh 
 campaign, and that which put an end to all serious 
 resistance, was the siege of Malligaum, a very strong 
 fortress with an Arab garrison. It was invested on the 
 1 6th of May ; an unsuccessful assault was made on the 
 29th, and it was not taken until the 15th of June, 
 Colonel MacDowell having been reinforced by a detach- 
 ment from the division of General Sir Lionel Smith, 
 under whose command Briggs had served as a volunteer 
 at Rasul Khyma,* consisting of two more Sepoy bat- 
 talions, 800 horse, and a strong company of artillery with 
 six heavy battering guns and four mortars. A practicable 
 breach was effected, the enemy's principal magazine was 
 blown up by a shell, and everything was prepared for 
 storming the place, when the Arab garrison surrendered, 
 and were allowed to march out with a promise that they 
 should be shipped, unmolested and with their private 
 property, to their native land. 
 
 Briggs was destined to have one more collision with 
 the Prize Agents. Jt will be remembered that one of 
 the sinister events that preceded and led to the second 
 Mahratta war, was the murder of Gungadhur Shastree 
 by Trimbukjee Dainglia, one of Bajee Rao's favourite 
 counsellors. Trimbukjee having escaped from British 
 custody ,t rejoined the Peishwa after the battle of Kirkee, 
 and accompanied him throughout the campaign ; but on 
 the surrender of Bajee Rao to Lieutenant (afterwards 
 General Sir John) Low, who treated with him under in- 
 structions from Sir John Malcolm, in the middle of June 
 1818, Trimbukjee Dainglia fled, slenderly attended, to 
 * Ante, pp. 33, 34. t Ante, pp. 43, 44.
 
 72 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 the neighbourhood of his birth place in the Gungaturry 
 region, near the town of Trimbuk. Just after the taking 
 of Malligaum, Captain Briggs, following up a clue given 
 by Mr. Elphinstone, despatched a body of cavalry under 
 the command of Captain Swanston, with full instructions, 
 to the village of Aheergaum, where the fugitive's brother- 
 in-law resided, and Trimbukjee Dainglia was cleverly 
 captured with all his baggage and his two wives, after 
 some severe forced marches. At the time of his escape 
 in 1817 a reward of two lakhs of rupees had been publicly 
 offered for his apprehension, but the war having virtually 
 ceased with the surrender of Bajee Rao, Trimbukjee 
 ceased to be a person of such importance as to warrant 
 the offer of so large a gratuity for his capture. The 
 reward of two lakhs of rupees was therefore withdrawn , 
 and the notification of this withdrawal only arrived in 
 camp a week before Captain Swanston's horsemen 
 started on the trail of Trimbukjee. Briggs writes : 
 
 " The Sowars under Swanston's command had behaved so admir- 
 ably, and I was so gratified at the success of the expedition, that 
 considering the disappointment to which the men were subjected 
 by the withdrawal of the reward, and the unfavourable impression 
 likely to be produced on their minds, I ventured on my own 
 responsibility to make over to Captain Swanston and his 800 Horse 
 all the property taken with Trimbukjee, amounting to 60,000 rupees 
 in gold and silver, jewels to the value of about 5,000 rupees, and four 
 horses. Trimbukjee Dainglia was sent to the fort of Chunar, there 
 to be imprisoned for life. 
 
 " The letter from Mr. Elphinstone on the apprehension of 
 Trimbukjee Dainglia was highly nattering, while that from the 
 Governor-General was even more so. The Secretary to Government 
 at Calcutta wrote at once to Mr. Elphinstone as follows : ' The 
 Governor- General in Council has instructed me to express his high 
 satisfaction at the receipt of the intelligence of this important 
 capture, due to the active and judicious conduct of Captain Briggs 
 in immediately despatching Captain Swanston to the town where 
 he had learned that Trimbukjee Dainglia was concealed, as well as 
 to the measures he concerted for arresting him, should he have 
 escaped from Aheergaum. His Excellency in Council feels also that 
 much praise is due to the exertions of Captain Swanston and his 
 party in rapidly marching from Malligaum to the place of Trim- 
 bukjee's concealment. For the complete success which attended 
 that extraordinary activity both of these officers are entitled to
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 73 
 
 the applause of the Government, and I am desired to request that 
 you will convey to them the assurance of approbation of the Go- 
 vernor-General in Council and his high sense of their distinguished 
 merits.' 
 
 " Some months afterwards an application was made by the Prize 
 Agents of Colonel MacDowell's Force for the property taken with 
 Trimbukjee Dainglia as prize to that detachment, with an exagge- 
 rated statement of the amount realised. I replied that ' the seizure 
 of Trimbukjee Dainglia, a proscribed criminal, after the war with 
 Bajee Rao had ceased, appears to me purely an act of civil magis- 
 tracy, and I am at a loss to conjecture upon what grounds the 
 Prize Committee can found its claim to the private property of 
 such a person, which from his being an outlaw is, in my opinion, 
 rightly confiscated to the State. The means I employed to seize 
 this criminal .were unconnected with the operations of the war. 
 The measure I adopted for rewarding Captain Swanston's body of 
 Irregular Horse for their exertions in the immediate distribution 
 of the property so confiscated was one which I considered just and 
 politic under the peculiar circumstances of the case, and for that 
 step I hold myself responsible to the Government. I shall, how- 
 ever, forward a copy of your letter and of my reply to the 
 Commissioner, the Honourable Mountstuart Elphinstone.' Mr. 
 Elphinstone replied that he concurred with me in the opinion that 
 the property found with Trimbukjee Dainglia could not be con- 
 sidered as prize to the army. A letter dated 13th December 1818, 
 from the Secretary to the Governor-General, contains the following 
 decision : ' Captain Briggs's view of the case, I am desired to 
 inform you, seems to the Governor-General in Council to be per- 
 fectly correct, the property in question not appearing to be on any 
 ground claimable as prize to the army. The distribution of it, 
 which was made among Captain Swanston's detachment, is accord- 
 ingly confirmed.' " 
 
 On the report of the fall of Malligaum, the Governor- 
 General tendered his thanks to Lieut. -Col. MacDowell 
 and Captain Briggs, in a despatch to the Hon. M. S. 
 Elphinstone, dated 14th July 1818, of which this is an 
 
 " The energy and success of our operations in Gungaturry and 
 in Khandesh have been no less distinguished than in other 
 quarters, and the zeal of Captain Briggs and Lieut.-Col. MacDowell 
 and the officers and troops of the small detachment employed in 
 that quarter, by which the whole of the country on both sides of 
 the Godavery has been reduced, and the conquest of Khandesh 
 nearly achieved, demand the warmest expression of the Governor- 
 General's admiration.
 
 74 SOME WORDS AND WORK, ETC. 
 
 " The occupation of Khandesh, which was ceded to the British 
 Government by Holkar, having been connected with the conquest 
 of the Peishwa's possessions in that Province, I am directed to 
 take this opportunity of signifying his Lordship's approbation of 
 the measures pursued by Captain Briggs for that purpose, after the 
 conduct of political affairs had devolved on him in Khandesh on 
 the departure of his Excellency Sir Thomas Hislop. 
 
 " The plan of operations proposed by Captain Briggs for the 
 establishment of our authority throughout Khandesh, and the 
 movements by which it was to be supported, are regarded by the 
 Governor-General as being highly judicious. It is his Lordship's 
 hope that the force which has now been allotted to Khandesh, 
 coupled with the reduction of Malligaum and its probable conse- 
 quences, will enable Captain Briggs to enter on a regular and 
 systematic plan for the subjugation of that part of the Province 
 which still resists our power, and the settlement of the whole. 
 
 " The judgment, ability, and prudence displayed by Captain 
 Briggs throughout the late services justifies the most confident 
 expectation of the success of your views under his management."
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ALL military resistance having ceased by the first week 
 of August 1819, Captain Briggs had taken up his 
 quarters at Dhoolia, a considerable town on the road 
 from Bombay to Agra, and then almost the only place 
 worthy the name of a town that was left in Khandesh. 
 
 Khandesh, literally the hollow country, is a valley or 
 basin, traversed by the river Taptee, and surrounded on 
 three sides by hill ranges ; on the north by the Sat- 
 pura range ; on the south by the hills on which are the 
 fort of Chandore and the pass of Adjunta, near which 
 the battle of Assaye took place ; and on the south-west 
 by the expansion of the Syadree or Western Ghauts. 
 On the south-east the boundary is but slightly elevated, 
 gradually sinking to the plain or valley of Berar, in the 
 Nizam's dominions. The hills are not very high, 
 averaging from 1,000 to 1 ,800 feet, many of their summits 
 being flat tables of basaltic rock, affording tempting sites 
 for hill forts, of which more than twenty were occupied, 
 and had to be emptied, before any measures of civil 
 administration could be undertaken. The inhabitants 
 are principally Mahrattas, including many bold and 
 restless clans, from which the predatory forces of Jes- 
 wunt Rao Holkar had been largely recruited. Still more 
 restless and less removed from barbarism were the 
 Bheels, a tribe supposed to have been the aborigines of 
 Guzerat and Meywar. The earliest notice of the race 
 occurs in the Mahabharata. The Bheels are estimated 
 to form one-eighth of the population of the province. 
 
 " Khandesh", writes Briggs, " the province I was destined to 
 govern for some years, was one of the six Mohammedan kingdoms 
 of the Deccan, or South of India, which flourished between the 
 fourteenth and sixteenth centuries of our era. The founder of the
 
 76 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 kingdom, established about A.D. 1370, traced his pedigree through 
 thirty-seven generations to Omar, designated ' Al Farukh', or the 
 fortunate, one of the four companions of Mohammed, and who 
 succeeded as Khalifa in A.D. 636. The Farukhi kings of Khandesh 
 reigned prosperously, sometimes at war, sometimes forming matri- 
 monial alliances, with the kings of Guzerat and Malwa, until these 
 petty states were subverted and incorporated with the Empire 
 about the year 1600 by the Emperor Akbar. Khandesh fell into 
 the hands of the Mahrattas in the middle of the eighteenth century, 
 and was allotted for the support of troops to the charge of Holkar, 
 in the possession of which family it remained until ceded to us in 
 1818. In a despatch of Mr. Elphinstone to the Court of Directors, 
 after alluding to the Mahratta war of 1817-18, he writes : ' The 
 part in which difficulties were most to be apprehended was 
 Khandesh, at one time the seat of a flourishing kingdom, and one 
 of the most prosperous provinces in India down to the year 1802. 
 In that year it was devastated by Holkar, A famine and a long- 
 continued period of tumult and insurrection ensued. No fewer 
 than 180 distinct bands of plunderers with territorial pretensions 
 had succeeded each other during sixteen years, when this country 
 fell to be occupied by our troops. Immediately before this occu- 
 pation its miseries had reached the utmost height. Bands of 
 mercenary Arabs had seized the hill fortresses, and levied contri- 
 butions on all within their reach. The Bheels poured down 
 from the surrounding mountains, and renewed their connection 
 with their brethren in the plains, who, from being the watchmen 
 and police of the country, suddenly became the most formidable of 
 its marauders. Before the decline of Khandesh had been con- 
 summated by the rapacious misgovernment of the Peishwa and 
 Holkar, the Bheels of the plain had lived mixed with the Hindu 
 cultivators, and as village watchmen had been the chief protectors 
 of life and property. They now for the most part withdrew into 
 the surrounding hills, whence they made incursions on the low 
 country, and carried off cattle and prisoners, whom they held to 
 ransom. As village police they had held lands on the borders, 
 exempt from assessment, besides being entitled to certain portions 
 of grain from every crop. As the villages were plundered and 
 devastated by Pindarrees and Arabs the Bheels lost all their means 
 of subsistence, and all their interest in the settled occupations of 
 the plain. They fled to the mountains, and reverted to their 
 ancient habits.' 
 
 " It was one of my first duties to reclaim this race, and through 
 the agency of the hereditary village and district officers I gained 
 over many of the chiefs in the mountains, granting them stipends 
 on condition of their sending the village Bheels of the plain back 
 to their villages, where I stipulated they should be well received
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 77 
 
 and their lands and share of grain secured to them. Some of those 
 nearest to the mountains stood out for confederate agreements, 
 which I strenuously resisted, insisting on the several chiefs of 
 districts entering into distinct terms with me for each separately. 
 To this end I called in the services of Lieut.-Colonel Jardine, who 
 commanded the detachment stationed at Nandurbar." 
 
 The commandant of the small brigade at Nandurbar 
 was supported by a regiment of 500 Horse under Captain 
 Swanston, whose operations in preventing the Bheel 
 chieftains in the Hills from obtaining grain and other 
 necessary articles of subsistence from the plains were 
 chiefly instrumental in bringing them to terms of sub- 
 mission. Mr. Elphinstone describes the principal 
 conditions of the problem and the method adopted for 
 its solution in these words of a despatch already 
 quoted : 
 
 " The expulsion of the Arabs was a natural consequence of the 
 war, and no parties of plundering horse were able to keep the field, 
 but the settlement of the Bheels was a work of more time and 
 difficulty. Those in the Satpura Mountains were the most for- 
 midable ; as that range, though nowhere, perhaps, more than 1,500 
 feet high, contains many deep gorges and strong places, and is so 
 unhealthy that no stranger can long remain in it. 
 
 " The plan adopted by Captain Briggs, and zealously executed 
 by Lieut.-Colonel Jardine, was to stop the supplies of the Bheels, 
 which were drawn from the plains, to cut off any parties that 
 attempted to plunder, and to make vigorous attacks on the points 
 in the Hills to which the principal Bheels had retired. These 
 measures soon reduced the Bheels to accept the very favourable 
 terms held out to them, the chiefs receiving pensions and allow- 
 ances for a certain number of men, and binding themselves to 
 restrain the depredations of their people. The same plan was 
 carried out more easily with the Bheels of the Chandore range, 
 and with those of the low country. 
 
 " The terms have been occasionally broken by some chiefs, but, 
 on the whole, they have succeeded beyond my most sanguine 
 expectations, and have effectively delivered the province from this 
 species of invasion. The only attacks of the Bheels are now made 
 in small parties of three or four, who rob passengers. These out- 
 rages have been resisted by the police, and are stated by Captain 
 Briggs to be greatly on the decline." 
 
 Briggs himself says that when any of the Bheel chiefs 
 broke faith by perpetrating or allowing one of the old-
 
 78 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 fashioned incursions, they were summoned to appear 
 before him to clear themselves of the charge ; " and if", 
 he continues, "they held aloof, I always found a reward 
 of one or two hundred rupees sufficient to induce the 
 Bheels of another district to bring in the accused, who, 
 if convicted provided there had been no bloodshed in 
 the case was astonished by the brief term of imprison- 
 ment to which I sentenced him. They knew very well 
 that their fathers and their brethren had been frequently 
 invited under the former government (if so it may be 
 called) to come in and make terms, and on doing so, had 
 not unfrequently been put to death." 
 
 Some notion of the intermediate process that had been 
 going on in the two years before the date of Mr. Elphin- 
 stone's despatch may be derived from the following two 
 letters from Captain Briggs to Lieut. -Colonel Jardine and 
 to Mr. Gerald Wellesley, the Resident at Indore, capital 
 of the conterminous Holkar State, to which Khandesh 
 had belonged before the war. 
 
 The first is to the military Commandant : 
 
 "Dhoolia, April 1st, 1819. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, I have just received your private letter of the 
 29th ultimo. The enormities committed by Eamjee and Owchait 
 Naig have placed them in the blackest part of my list of Bheel Chiefs. 
 Some of their outrages appear quite wanton. It is too soon, however, 
 for us to say that the door of repentance is no longer open to 
 them, and if you can catch hold of either of these Chiefs, or any 
 of their principal followers, by fair or foul means, we will treat 
 them more gently than they expect or deserve, and you will add 
 very much to the number of your eminent services in settling this 
 quarter of Khandesh. Eamjee promised to be quiet if we gave 
 him a pension. He got it, and immediately became the rallying 
 point for all the greatest villains in the district. We can have no 
 reliance on any more promises that he, or, indeed, any of them, 
 may make. It will not be till they are convinced they cannot 
 plunder with impunity that we shall have any hold on their fears. 
 And yet I think we have made considerable progress. The legions 
 of robber Bheels in the impenetrable fastnesses of the Satpura 
 Hills, whom Mr. Elphinstone, down to a very late period, wanted 
 me to embody into a corps of Sebundees, have been dispersed. 
 The change has been gradual, and is not yet complete, but I firmly 
 believe our plan has solid advantages, and that before you return
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRTGGS. 79 
 
 you will have the consolation of knowing that you have been the 
 principal cause of dispelling a formidable obstruction to good 
 government. If any of these refractory and pertinacious villains 
 are brought in to me, I am determined that they shall settle in the 
 plains on cowl* or be imprisoned. I am determined, and I feel con- 
 vinced it can be done, to bring the whole mass down here ; and if 
 we require 400 or 500 Sebundees, and 200 or 300 Horse to cut off 
 communication between the hills and the villages, the money will 
 be well laid out. I am ready to pension all the Chiefs on reason- 
 able terms. None have yet received more than 2,000 rupees per 
 annum, and Eamjee and others of his class must certainly not get 
 more than I have already agreed to pay, and they to accept. He 
 and his brother were to receive fifty rupees monthly. I am pre- 
 pared to advance money to the Bheels for cultivation to give 
 them land on advantageous terms, to provide for them in their 
 wuttuns^ but they must and shall quit the Hills first. This is 
 applicable only to those who formerly belonged to villages in the 
 plain, though I should wish to draw them all from the Hills, if it 
 could be done. 
 
 " Your precautions to protect Boraree were highly judicious. 
 We must never allow anyone to suffer for supporting us, and not 
 be sparing in rewards where they are well merited. Keep on, my 
 dear Sir, in the same way, and I feel sure you will soon carry out, 
 to the fullest extent of our most sanguine expectations, every 
 object of the command in which you have already been so suc- 
 cessful." 
 
 " To Gerald Wellesley, Esq., Eesident at Indore. 
 
 " January 3rd, 1819. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, From the proximity of our public situations it 
 is probable that we shall have frequent occasions to correspond, 
 and I have therefore taken this opportunity of introducing myself, 
 and of returning my thanks for your polite attention in forwarding 
 your public and private letters to Mr. Elphinstone, regarding the 
 Bheels, open for my perusal. We had originally intended to have 
 a corps of Hill Eangers here, but on a closer acquaintance with the 
 condition of the Satpura Bheels it was considered more advisable 
 to pension the chiefs, and to induce their followers, who had 
 originally been inhabitants of villages in the plain, and had only 
 lately become Hill people, to return to their old homes. I have 
 recommended a place to Mr. Elphinstone which will provide for 
 them, and make them the instruments of our police in Khandesh. 
 My Bheel reports of the 24th September and 19th November, 
 copies of which were forwarded to Sir John Malcolm, who will 
 
 * Conditions of pardon. f Their homes, or original villages.
 
 80 .SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 furnish you with them, will give you an idea of my opinions 
 regarding the Bheels with whom I have to deal. Those who live 
 on highroads and passes have an acknowledged and immemorial 
 claim to a toll on merchandise, and even on travellers proceeding 
 through their limits ; and for this privilege they are bound to 
 protect them till well beyond their confines. With all the Bheels 
 in my jurisdiction I have at once admitted this right, and 
 demanded in return their duty of police and safeguard : but the 
 customary collections are made by my own karkoons and paid to 
 the Bheel Chief. This admission on my part extends to all tolls 
 admitted by Holkar's government in Ahalia Baee's time. What- 
 ever has been usurped since has been relinquished. 
 
 " Goomanee Naig of the Sindwa Ghaut has lately conducted him- 
 self in a manner which. seems to be approaching to downright 
 rebellion. The mode of punishing him and all Bheels in the 
 Satpura Hills is by pushing up a few Horse to the skirts to 
 occupy the villages from which they draw their supplies; and 
 for the infantry to endeavour to surprise, or at any rate to reach 
 and burn, their huts. As they never have any store of provisions, 
 this invariably compels them to accept our terms without our 
 being obliged to attack them or to hunt them down. In this 
 way, by stopping their supplies, I have compelled all those to 
 submit who obstinately refused to come in, and continued to 
 plunder for many months after our settlement with Holkar. I 
 thought Goomanee Naig had been brought to his senses. If it 
 should become necessary to take hostile measures against him, I 
 shall do myself the honour of suggesting what co-operation we 
 should require from Nimawur. 
 
 " I am, my dear Sir, 
 
 " Your very faithful and obedient servant, 
 
 "JOHN BRIGGS." 
 
 Nearly all the Bheel Chiefs and their followers fulfilled 
 their engagements, and became once more an effect ive 
 body of police under Captain Briggs's administration. 
 Bheels were employed to convey all the local post letters, 
 and even to convey to the treasury the revenue of the 
 country ; for a whole year gang robbery everywhere 
 ceased to exist. In 1821, however, a military expedition 
 on a small scale was required to dislodge, both from the 
 northern and southern ranges of hills, some refugee Bheels 
 who had not been able to take to the quiet life of culti- 
 vators and watchmen in the plain, owing, as they said, 
 to the utter devastation of their old settlements, and
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 81 
 
 there being no room for them in other villages. There 
 was not much resistance, and there were few casualties 
 among our troops on this occasion, but outrages and 
 robberies had been committed ; some of the delinquents 
 were known to have already received for former offences 
 all the consideration that it was advisable to give them, 
 while they had violated the conditions under which they 
 had been previously set free. More than 200 prisoners 
 were made. In these operations the villagers were active 
 assistants, under a pledge on the part of Captain Briggs 
 that the Bheels, if captured and identified, should not 
 again be released without a long term of imprisonment, 
 unless they could find some responsible persons to be 
 security in a large sum for their good conduct. The 
 Patels of several villages swore the peace against the 
 Bheel chiefs and their leading partisans ; no security, of 
 course, was forthcoming, and a large number of these 
 freebooters were sent for safe custody to the prison of 
 Tanna, near Bombay. Khandesh now remained quite 
 tranquil for three years, and two Bheel chiefs who mis- 
 behaved were delivered up by their neighbours to the 
 Political Agent. 
 
 The Home Government, however, actuated by solici- 
 tude, which we cannot but admire, for strict adherence 
 to legal principles and procedure, found fault with the 
 detention in prison of men against whom no specific 
 charge had been substantiated by judicial proof, sent out 
 directions in 1824, after Briggs had left the charge of 
 Khandesh for the Residency of Sattara, that unless there 
 was enough evidence for a regular trial, the imprisoned 
 Bheels should be released. If this punctilious observance 
 of legal forms had been maintained, Thuggee would never 
 have been extirpated, but would have flourished to this 
 day. The orders of the Court of Directors were obeyed ; 
 the Bheels were released ; they returned to Khandesh ; 
 they murdered all those whom they suspected of having 
 aided in their apprehension, and terror was spread 
 through the province. Under these circumstances Cap- 
 tain, afterwards General, Sir James Outram, at the very 
 outset of his distinguished and chivalrous career, was
 
 82 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 sent to pacify Khandesh. This work he carried out 
 mainly by the formation and agency of a Bheel corps, 
 which absorbed within its ranks most of the outlawed 
 .and disaffected men of the tribe a measure which Briggs 
 had recommended, but had never been allowed to under- 
 take and thus most of the credit due for the conciliatory 
 subjugation and settlement of the Bheels, nearly accom- 
 plished by Briggs, has always been placed to the account 
 of Outram, who finished well a task that had already been 
 well commenced. 
 
 Among the secondary matters of public usefulness 
 voluntarily undertaken by Briggs during his adminis- 
 tration of Khandesh, was the construction of a map of the 
 country. He says : 
 
 " Only some imperfect and incorrect maps were in existence, 
 which had been used by the commanders of our troops in the 
 former Mahratta war of 1803. A very few points of longitude 
 had been determined by celestial observations. Two Engineer 
 officers were sent to me in 1818 to complete this desirable object, 
 but both of them very soon contracted the malignant intermittent 
 fever so prevalent on the outskirts of the hills, and had to go 
 away on sick leave, and the Government declined to send others. 
 I then procured instruments from Bombay, selected by a scientific 
 friend, and with my own knowledge of surveying, I was enabled 
 to direct the operations of three young native engineer clerks, 
 whom I engaged as my assistants. In the course of two years 
 I produced a complete map of Khandesh, which, together with 
 the field books and map of triangulation, I submitted, on my 
 quitting the country, to the Bombay Government; which, on 
 ascertaining the value of the work, by sending professional sur- 
 veyors to verify its correctness, reimbursed me for the trifling 
 expense that I had incurred. That map was lithographed in 
 Bombay, and has been included in the trigonometrical survey of 
 the Deccan." 
 
 The best general description of the measures adopted 
 by Captain Briggs for pacifying and establishing a regular 
 government throughout Khandesh, and especially for the 
 administration of justice, will be found in a letter he 
 wrote to Sir John Malcolm when he had been at work 
 for rather more than a year.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 83 
 
 " Dhoolia, 17th October 1819. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR JOHN, I have just received your note, written 
 on the back of Mr. Wellesley's letter to you, acknowledging the 
 receipt of one of mine to you, which I perceive he has had copied, 
 and intends sending to Mr. Gardiner. Now, although this is very 
 flattering to me, particularly as my letter was written in great 
 haste, I hope that it may not be forwarded until I have had an 
 opportunity of expressing myself more fully, and with more reflec- 
 tion, on the subject. I daresay I can compress all I want to say 
 into this letter. 
 
 "In the month of August 1818, we all received our instructions 
 from Mr. Elphinstone on the subject of judicial administration. 
 They were very short, and the tenor of them seemed to me at the 
 time to direct that all judicial proceedings should be conducted by 
 Punchayuts ; and that the opinions of the Mufti or Sbastree 
 should be recorded on the face of them, and unless the punish- 
 ment should be at variance with our customs, their award should 
 in general be adopted ; the name of the law book from whence 
 the Shastree or Mufti quoted should also be recorded. I accord- 
 ingly adopted Punchayuts as juries on all criminal cases, and in 
 this instance, although I mistook Mr. Elphinstone's instructions, 
 he directed me to continue the custom. So much for the origin of 
 criminal courts of Punchayut, the first and only ones, I believe, 
 ever adopted under our Government. 
 
 " In entering on this subject, I shall commence with the ordinary 
 Punchayuts in civil cases. These are neither more nor less than 
 courts or juries of arbitration, assembled by authority of the chief 
 civil officer on the spot, and the process is simply this : 
 
 " N". has a demand on B. ; he makes out a written statement of 
 his case, and denounces himself as guilty of an offence to the 
 Sircar, if he has misstated anything. B. is called on for a counter- 
 statement, by which the civil officer is generally able to judge if 
 the subject calls for a trial or Punchayut, for it frequently happens 
 that the question has been before decided by Punchayut many 
 years ago at some other place. After being satisfied that the 
 plaintiff has a real cause of complaint, the parties each select two 
 persons, and the Sircar another, making the Punch or Court. The 
 parties then enter into a written engagement to agree to the 
 decision of this Court, when the statements of each are made 
 over to the Punchayut, which proceeds to examine witnesses, 
 whose depositions are committed to writing. The Court at length 
 comes to its decision, which is signed by the whole of the 
 members. The award is then given to the party in whose favour 
 the decision has been made, signed by the chief civil officer, and 
 the whole forms a public record. When the amount of the award, 
 if it is money, is paid, or when the plaintiff is cast, the defendant 
 
 G 2
 
 84 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 party receives a Farikut-Ndma, or writ of absolvence from any 
 further demands, etc. In cases where the parties require witnesses 
 from a distance, they are made to give security for the payment of 
 their expenses before they are summoned ; and, therefore, on most 
 occasions their depositions, taken before some local authority, and 
 attesting witnesses are considered sufficient by the Court ; and in 
 such instance it is rare to find false statements given, unless the 
 witnesses are much interested, when the Court usually require 
 their attendance. Such are the proceedings in civil cases. At 
 these Punchayuts I do not preside. I merely settle the issues, order 
 the investigation, and confirm the award before the parties. It 
 frequently happens that four or five Punchayuts are going on at a 
 time. This system ensures the following great objects of justice : 
 immediate investigation, full and patient hearing, least possible ex- 
 pense, and the award being confirmed by an impartial superior, 
 who is open to complaints against corruption, the only ground 
 of appeal. Justice is thus administered in the most simple and 
 popular mode, according to the forms and customs understood and 
 preferred in the country over which we rule. 
 
 " Criminal cases under the late rule were tried solely by the 
 chief magistrate of each talook, and summary punishment followed. 
 Murder cases were only taken by the Soobas, and were often com- 
 pounded in some way. All criminal cases of importance are con- 
 ducted by myself or my Assistant, acting as Judge, with a Punch- 
 ayut as a jury, and the Mufti and Shastree as expounders of the 
 law. I shall, in giving an account of this system as it is entirely 
 novel in our administration go into some detail. On any crime 
 being committed in the province, the nearest civil authority, on 
 receiving intimation of it, proceeds with the informant to ascertain 
 the truth, either by taking the depositions of the parties, or, if a 
 murder has been committed, by going to the spot and acting 
 according to the circumstances. If the criminal has not been 
 secured, all particulars are collected as to his name and personal 
 appearance from witnesses, and the proper steps taken for his 
 apprehension. The crime, the time and place, the informant, and 
 the names of witnesses, with their depositions, are sent to me, and 
 all the parties as soon as possible. When the parties arrive, no 
 delay takes place in assembling a criminal Punchayut, which is 
 convened by my orders. The Shastree, the Mufti, and the clerk 
 who records the proceedings, sit on one side of the Bench, the 
 Punchayut on the other. This Court is formed according to no 
 particular law, and bound by no particular form, its object being 
 merely to ascertain the truth. In this Court there is no respect 
 shown to the English maxim, that a prisoner cannot criminate 
 himself. On the contrary, the acknowledgment of the prisoner is 
 considered rather a satisfactory element in the perfect conviction
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 85 
 
 of crime; and, therefore, if the evidence is only collateral, the 
 prisoner is cross-questioned and examined. If two or three pri- 
 soners are supposed to be concerned in the same crime, they are 
 each separately examined before the Court. The prisoner has a 
 right to challenge, and is first asked if he consents to be tried by 
 the Court. No preliminary deposition is brought in as evidence 
 unless the party is unable to be produced, when it is admitted, and 
 receives its due weight only. The examinations being concluded, 
 which are on oath, and the prisoner having pleaded in his defence, 
 the Court proceeds to pronounce whether he is guilty or not guilty, 
 and in what degree. The Shastree or Mufti then proclaims the 
 law, which is entered on the face of the proceedings, upon which 
 the Judge passes sentence, entering his reason on the face of the 
 proceedings only when he finds it proper to dissent from the law 
 officers. The law officers in this Court, therefore, you perceive, 
 are not the judges ; they are the expounders of the law. The 
 judgment is solely vested in the European officer sitting as Judge. 
 A copy of all the trials is sent off monthly to Mr. Elphinstone, 
 who makes his comments on them and confirms them. 
 
 " By this system of judicature I have no causes lying on the 
 file after sufficient evidence is once obtained, though it has hap- 
 pened that adequate evidence of highway robbery has not been 
 procurable for two or three months after the criminals had been 
 secured. Only one robbery within the last ten months' has taken 
 place in which the criminals have not been apprehended, and that 
 was committed by some Bheels who made their escape from 
 prison, and have taken refuge in the Adjunta Hills, where they 
 find protection from some of the Nizam's zemindars. I am hatching 
 mischief against them, and shall have them at my feet in a fort- 
 night after I begin. When the jungles become less unhealthy, 
 and my information is complete, and when my maps are ready, I 
 shall form a plan of operations like that against the Satpoora gen- 
 tlemen, and, in concert with the agent at Aurungabad, occupy the 
 friendly villages. The troops need not pursue them into the 
 hills. They will be starved into terms in a very few weeks. The 
 great secret in Bheel fighting is to know from whence they get 
 their supplies. Attack them, carry off and destroy what stores 
 they have, and occupy their friendly villages to starve them out. 
 All the Hill Bheels are dependent on the plain for food. They 
 are for the most part originally natives of villages on the plains. 
 When they are caught or subdued, I have not tried and hanged 
 them, as used to be done. I have pensioned the chiefs, and dis- 
 tributed their followers into villages where, if they choose, as for 
 the most part they do, they can earn a livelihood. The chiefs I 
 have either allowed to be at large, or have confined them, according 
 to circumstances. Some few of their retainers have been employed
 
 86 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 as guards in ghauts, so that, although I entirely put down their 
 predatory habits by force, I ensure a good number of friends, even 
 amongst the most powerful of them. The only one who has 
 turned traitor after being admitted to this indulgence is Dusrut 
 Naig of Pergunna Chopra, who finds protection in Nimawur. 
 Thirteen Bheels who escaped from the prison here have, I hear, 
 found refuge with him, and I learn also that he has now left his 
 village on the plain, and is assembling a band for plunder some- 
 where. If this be true, Colonel Jardine and I must stop his pro- 
 visions, clap a good round sum on him, and when I have got him, 
 he shall be sent as a prisoner to Malligaum fort, where I have two 
 other incorrigibles of the same character. On this subject, how- 
 ever, I shall write publicly soon. 
 
 " In order that you may further comprehend what we have been 
 about here, I send you a series of questions from that most inde- 
 fatigable of all investigators our master, Mr. Elphinstone with 
 my answers. I hold a furyad* kutcherry from nine to eleven 
 daily, when all complaints are heard, verbally, or written in Mah- 
 rattee. A notice to this effect is posted up in every village. 
 
 " Believe me, dear Sir John, with great esteem, 
 " Ever most sincerely yours, 
 
 " JOHN BKIGGS." 
 
 The continuance of his historical and philological 
 studies and recreations, in the midst of administrative 
 labours, is indicated in the following letter to his old friend 
 and comrade, Captain Grant Duff, then Resident at 
 Sattara. 
 
 " Dhoolia, 24th August 1820. 
 
 "MY DEAE GRANT, I only received your letter of the 15th 
 yesterday, and have been the whole of this day employed in 
 endeavouring to fix the date of Malik Amber's death. He was 
 alive when Perish ta finished his work, and I have somewhere met 
 with an account of his death and the succession of Futteh Khan, 
 during the life-time of Moorteza Nizam Shah. The latter lies 
 interred under a plain slab at Koza, in the same cemetery with 
 Syed Rajoo Kuttal. I had a thick folio volume, nearly full, con- 
 taining notes, taken on the spot, of all the dates, carefully worked 
 out, with descriptions of the tombs at Beejapoor, Golconda, Bidar, 
 and Eoza, clearing up and confirming all the remarkable events in 
 the Mohammedan history of the Deccaii ; but this, and all my 
 
 * Complaint.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 87 
 
 MSS., which I thought were valuable, were lost in the conflagra- 
 tion of the Sungum.* 
 
 " Surely you don't mean by saying that you ' can find no vestige 
 of a Desmookh or Despandia previously to the period of the 
 Tartar Nobles establishing their independence in the Deccan,' that 
 you believe these officers, with purely Hindoo designations, to 
 have been created by the new Mohammedan dynasty. If so, how 
 do you account for the same offices being known and held under 
 the Mysore Government before a Mohammedan ever set his foot 
 in those territories ? And from whence have sprung the Dessayes 
 of Ceylon, which was never conquered by the Indian Mohamme- 
 dans ? Whenever the Mohammedans introduced reforms they had 
 the vanity to stamp their new regulations with indelible marks of 
 their origin; and the Institutes of Akbar, though his revenue 
 system was due entirely to the labours of Todur Mull, afford a 
 striking example of the propensity to perpetuate the fame of Islam 
 by names and titles. And I believe you are right so far, or rather 
 I believe here is the source of your mistake, that in the history 
 and old records of the Deccan, you will not find the name of one 
 Hindoo Chief or officer mentioned for more than a century after 
 the rise of Mussulman power. The gradual reappearance of the 
 Hindoo names and offices proves, or strongly hints, that the Moham- 
 medans tried to extinguish them, and could not do it. 
 
 " I am glad, as you have not yet got satisfactory proof regarding 
 the Desmookh, that you stand out against the generally received 
 opinion, because these disputes lead to useful investigation. I 
 have set my hands to work, and hope to be able to discover some- 
 thing in these parts, but I despair of delivering over to you a 
 Desmookh of the old Raj precisely circumstanced as the Des- 
 mookhs with whom we have lately come in contact. We must 
 recollect that the Mussulman invasion and innovation swept away 
 everything that was a prominent obstruction to its absolute and 
 despotic sway, and levelled to the ground much that had formerly 
 been the highest, while ancient institutions and internal arrange- 
 ments, which rather aided in the re-establishment of order and in 
 the collection of revenue, were not only tolerated, but sometimes 
 cherished. 
 
 " I am happy to find our Mahratta boundaries so nearly agree. 
 I will not quarrel with you for differing a few miles to the right or 
 left in defining Maharashtra. But, recollect, I admit no village 
 into the Mahratta limits whose native tongue is not Mahratta ; 
 and I do most stoutly reject all places which have ' pully', ' hully', 
 
 * The Residency at Poona, near the " Sungum" or confluence of the 
 two rivers, Muta and Mula, burnt and plundered on the day of the 
 battle of Kirkee, 5th November 1817, ante, p. 53.
 
 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 'kotta', 'kot', 'hill', 'kid', ' hal', or 'petta', as terminations or initials;* 
 while I embrace with parental fondness all the 'gaums', ' nuggurs', 
 ' gurhs', ' kherds', and ' warrees', that may have escaped my boun- 
 dary line.'f' There are some few, such as 'oor', ' poor', etc., that are 
 common to the Mahratta, Telinga and Canara limits. 
 
 " I am quite vexed at my failure to aid you in determining the 
 time of Malik Amber's death. I have no knowledge of him 
 beyond what Ferishta tells us, but he appears to me to have 
 been the most sensible Mussulman who ever managed revenue 
 matters. Do you know that I have a theory of my own regarding 
 the Indian system of finance in general, and that I would go back 
 for guidance to the good old times of Menu, who required only 
 one-sixth of the produce for the Raja, and who made land- 
 ownership permanent, hereditary, and saleable. To draw our 
 resources on a constantly increasing scale from the land, is very 
 like digging away the root of a tree to get at its fruit, or tapping 
 the palm for toddy, and still expecting to have dates. A comfort- 
 able peasantry is the basis of an affluent gentry and nobility, and 
 affluence is the parent of manufactures and trade, which are the 
 most desirable, the most productive, and the most durable sources 
 of wealth to a state. Look at the actual picture before us an 
 indigent peasantry that cannot afford to purchase anything but 
 the produce of its own district, whose wives, children, and them- 
 selves go all but naked. What can such people contribute to 
 trade, what have they to do with manufactured goods ? Look at 
 the gentry, deprived of employment, who cannot afford to cultivate 
 because the produce will not cover the cost of culture and the 
 assessment on the land. What have they to do with trade or 
 manufacture ? Look at the noble, reduced in his income and 
 power, but not in his pride or in his retinue of needy adventurers, 
 continuing to run in debt, with no prospect whatever of improving 
 or keeping up his fortune, or of retaining that importance to 
 which he was born and to which he is accustomed. How little 
 can he encourage trade or manufactures. The manufacture of 
 goods for home consumption soon swells in value, and overflows 
 into commerce abroad. But where there are no home consumers 
 there can be no manufacturers. Land is in the same falling pre- 
 dicament on another account. As far as food goes, there will 
 always be demand in proportion to the population. But the 
 more costly and profitable raw material such as cotton, opium, 
 dyes of all kinds, oils, tobacco, hemp and flax, will only be produced 
 
 * These are all Canarese words for "hill", "fort", and "rock", ending 
 the names of towns and villages. 
 
 t These are Mahrattee terminations, meaning "village", "fort", and 
 "camp".
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 89 
 
 iii proportion to the demand ; and where is the demand to arise 
 among a nation of beggars ? 
 
 " Experience has convinced European financiers of the errors of 
 those French economists who, after the Eevolution, expected to 
 draw enormous revenues from an enhanced land-tax. Five or six 
 years reduced the nation to ruin, and necessity was one of the 
 principal incitements to carry on an ever-lasting, self-sustaining 
 war to maintain an army, which it was impossible, even if it had 
 been politic, to reduce, in foreign countries. Things have now 
 resumed their original order, or found their level, and French 
 financiers are recovering. But if I don't dismount my hobby, I 
 shall carry myself and you away the Lord knows where. 
 
 " Believe me, 
 
 " Sincerely yours, 
 
 "JOHN BRIGGS."
 
 90 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ON the retirement of Captain James Grant Duff from the 
 office of Resident at Sattara in January 1823, Captain 
 Briggs was appointed to succeed him. When the British 
 Government had determined, on account of Bajee Rao's 
 repeated acts of treachery, to make no peace that would 
 restore him to power, the policy was adopted, with a 
 view to conciliate the Mahrattas, of setting up once more 
 the Rajah of Sattara, the representative of Sivajee's 
 dynasty, whose authority had been usurped for several 
 generations by their chief Ministers, the Brahmin 
 Peishwas. Before the Rajah of Sattara had been rescued 
 from his captivity in the Peishwa's camp in the pursuit 
 after the battle of Ash tee, a proclamation had already 
 been issued by Mr Elphinstone to the following effect, 
 as quoted in the autobiographical papers : 
 
 " ' The Eajah of Sattara, who is now a prisoner in Bajee Eao's 
 hands, will be released and placed at the head of an independent 
 Sovereignty of such an extent as may maintain the Eajah and his 
 family in comfort and dignity. With this view the Fort of Sattara 
 has been taken, the Eajah's flag has been set up in it, and his 
 former Ministers have been called into employment. Whatever 
 country is assigned to the Eaja will be administered by him, and 
 he will be bound to establish a system of justice and order.' 
 
 " At the termination of the war, accordingly, the Eajah was placed 
 on the throne, and a treaty of alliance and friendship was con- 
 cluded between His Highness and the British Government. 
 
 " By this treaty, although the limits of the Eajah's territory are 
 accurately defined, yet several of the estates of the feudatory 
 chieftains, originally granted by his ancestors, prior to the usurpa- 
 tion of the Peishwas, were partly detached beyond the Eajah's 
 boundaries, and surrounded by British territory. When, however, 
 those feudatories elected to remain under the restored Eajah's rule, 
 those estates became properly a portion of the reconstituted king- 
 dom of the Eajah. Such was his view, and such was always mine.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 91 
 
 It was owing to the opposite view of this question, taken by the 
 Government of Bombay several years afterwards, that the discus- 
 sions began which ended in the unfortunate Prince being igno- 
 miniously and unjustly deposed, so that he ended his days in 
 exile. 
 
 " The Eajah Pertab Singh was twenty-four years of age when he 
 was installed as ruling Eajah of Sattara. Owing to the rigid 
 seclusion in which he had been kept from his birth, under the 
 power of the Peishwa, and his being wholly unused to business, 
 it was determined that his country should, for a time, be under 
 English management. It was thought right not only that the 
 British Government should be satisfied of His Highness's capacity 
 and disposition, but also that means should be taken to disabuse 
 his mind of the exaggerated pretensions to supremacy over all the 
 Mahrattas, encouraged by his mother and other relations. With 
 this view, Captain Grant (afterwards Grant Duff), who was inti- 
 mately acquainted with the Mahratta customs and languages, was 
 appointed Eesident, with full power to conduct the administration 
 under instructions from the Sole Commissioner, Mr. Elphinstone, 
 who furnished a complete code of rules by which the Government 
 was to be conducted ; a civil list, equal to one-fifth of the revenue, 
 being assigned to the Eajah and his family. During the time that 
 I remained at Sattara the Eajah, who had been entrusted with full 
 powers, strictly abided by Mr. Elphinstone's rules, and would 
 permit no deviation from them. Captain Grant Duff had carefully 
 trained the Eajah in public business. He kept a diary in his own 
 hand-writing, and attended to state affairs with great assiduity 
 and interest. He was naturally shrewd, free from most of the 
 ordinary prejudices of his countrymen, and not having been 
 instructed in Brahminical lore, had little respect either for the 
 religious doctrines and ceremonies of the Brahmins, or for their 
 cosmogony and science, 'falsely so called'. He was extremely 
 desirous of educating all the Mahrattas, so that they might be 
 able to break up the Brahmins' monopoly in office; for which 
 purpose he established a school within his Palace, to which he 
 invited the attendance of all the sons of his Mahratta chiefs and 
 high officers. He entertained strict notions of justice and morality, 
 and was incapable of telling a direct falsehood, but was not free 
 from finesse, amounting sometimes to dissimulation, which, con- 
 sidering the school in which he had been brought up, among a host 
 of artful flatterers, selected to be spies over him by the Peishwa, 
 was not to be wondered at. 
 
 " In his deportment the Eajah was always dignified and self- 
 possessed, and very particular in the observance of the distinguishing 
 style and forms in the reception of his guests, visitors, and suitors, 
 according to their rank and position. He was polite in his conver-
 
 92 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 sation, and though very sensible of any want of courtesy or 
 propriety in others, he never forgot the self-restraint of a Prince 
 and a well-bred gentleman. He was naturally kind and liberal to 
 those about him, and humane to all his servants and subjects. By 
 his frugal and careful management, the Rajah kept free from debt, 
 while he expended large sums in the construction of roads, public 
 buildings, and other useful works, and in the improvement of the 
 country. Captain Grant Duff, before quitting Sattara in 1853, had 
 made over the entire management of public affairs to the Eajah, 
 so that I had little else to do but to make myself acquainted 
 with all that took place, to be always ready to give information 
 and advice to His Highness, but to abstain from interference 
 except when I thought the interest or objects of niy own Govern- 
 ment required my action, while I, of course, reported regularly 
 everything of importance that occurred." 
 
 The General, in his autobiographical papers, goes at 
 very great length into the causes and circumstances of 
 the Rajah's deposition in 1839, which he attributed to a 
 Brahmin conspiracy, stimulated and encouraged by the 
 official ill-will which the Rajah had incurred at Bombay 
 from the pertinacity with which he asserted his Suzerain 
 rights over his feudatory chieftains, and against the inter- 
 ference of our local authorities. But it is too late for a 
 discussion at full length of the complicated Sattara case, 
 for many years dreaded as an infliction and a bore by the 
 majority in the Court of Proprietors and in the House of 
 Commons. It is no longer, unfortunately, a practical 
 question. I shall, therefore, only give such extracts and 
 explanations as may suffice to vindicate the views adopted 
 by General Briggs, by two subsequent Residents at the 
 Rajah's Court, Generals Robertson and Lodwick. and by 
 all the most competent and impartial persons who inves- 
 tigated the charges that were brought against the 
 Rajah. 
 
 " Nine years after I had left the Sattara Eesidency, the Court 
 of Directors, in consequence of repeated letters from the Govern- 
 ment of Bombay praising the Eajah's conduct, passed a resolution 
 in July 1835 that a jewelled sword should be purchased, suitable 
 for presentation to the Eajah, and should be sent to His Highness, 
 accompanied by a letter from the Court, in which it should be 
 declared that ' this mark of distinction is founded not solely on 
 the public spirit evinced by the Eajah in the construction of roads,
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 93 
 
 and the execution of other public works, but on the general and 
 distinguished merits of His Highness's administration, which justly 
 entitle him to applause, as well as on the liberality which he has 
 displayed in disbursing his private funds for public purposes.' 
 
 " A letter to that effect was accordingly addressed to the Rajah, 
 and sent with the sword for presentation, through the Government 
 of Bombay. But neither sword nor letter was ever delivered. 
 They were detained in the Chief Secretary's office at Bombay, 
 because the Rajah had already committed himself to a decided 
 opinion regarding the interpretation of those articles in the Treaty 
 relating to his feudatory chieftains, and his jurisdiction over their 
 estates as affected by the boundaries of his principal piece of 
 territory, which was opposed to that of the Bombay Government, 
 and which, more especially as the Rajah appealed to the Court of 
 Directors, was considered at Bombay to be disrespectful and con- 
 tumacious. But at this time there were no charges against the 
 Rajah. The treasonable plot imputed to him was not thought of 
 till July 1836. Moreover, the Home Government acknowledged 
 the correctness of the Rajah's views regarding his feudatories. In 
 a despatch of the 22nd November 1837, sixteen months after the 
 pretended discovery of the plot, the Court of Directors again take 
 occasion to express the pleasure they feel from the Resident's 
 reports of the Rajah's administration. The Rajah's rights, freely 
 admitted by the Home authorities, were obstinately resisted by 
 the Bombay Government ; all his appeals were unheeded ; his 
 grievances aggravated by delay, and still more deeply embittered 
 by withholding from him the despatch of the Court of Directors 
 which contained the sanction to his claims. This course of pro- 
 ceeding was, in my humble opinion, a positive breach of treaty on 
 our part.* The disagreeable relations between the Bombay 
 Government and the Rajah were the signal and the starting-point 
 for the machinations of his enemies. And the Rajah had against 
 him the most powerful enemies that any man can have against him 
 in India the Brahmins. Against the Brahmins, as the tribe to 
 which the Peishwas belonged, this unfortunate Prince, though he 
 could not help employing a great many of them, entertained an 
 invincible prejudice, almost amounting to hatred. During Captain 
 Grant Duff's management of the Sattara State, his principal Native 
 assistant and agent was a Brahmin of great capacity, named 
 Balajee Punt Natoo, whom I knew well, as he had been in the 
 intelligence department under the Poona Residency during the 
 
 * It is one of many instances on record of the distinct instructions or 
 orders of the Imperial Government being boldly disregarded and baffled 
 by the local authorities in India. The overland mail and the telegraph 
 may have made such acts of official self-will and self-interest more diffi- 
 cult, but they are still a great source of political danger.
 
 94 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 last two years of the reign of the Peishwa Bajee Bao. Having 
 good claims on the consideration of our Government, he had been 
 presented with a small jaghire at the end of the war, and was held 
 in high favour and esteem by all English officers under whom he 
 had been employed. As usual in such cases, he brought several 
 relations and hangers-on of his family into the Sattara service 
 when he was the Eesident's first assistant. When Captain Grant 
 Duff, just before his own retirement, placed the Eajah in power, 
 Balajee Punt Natoo fully expected to have been made Dewan or 
 Minister, but the Eajah dreaded a second Peishwa supported by 
 British authority, and had, moreover, an aversion for the man. 
 Grant Duff would not force or press on the Eajah a Minister 
 whom he disliked, and Balajee Punt withdrew to Poona, but had 
 one of his relations in a place at the Eesidency to tell him all 
 that passed. He was a plausible gentleman, and professed to 
 keep me well informed of all occurrences at the Sattara Court. 
 He knew very well what was also brought to my notice from 
 several sources, that the Eajah's weak point was an exaggerated 
 -notion of his own hereditary dignity and consequence, and of his 
 rightful claims as representative head of the Mahratta Empire in 
 its brief period of triumph. He gloried in the titles of ' Maha- 
 rajah Chuttraputtee' and ' Hindooput',* and always alluded to 
 the Peishwas, especially the last, Bajee Eao, as unfaithful servants 
 of his house, who had abused his confidence, and all of whose 
 acts, their treaties as well as their wars with the Honourable 
 Company, were unauthorised by the legitimate sovereign, and 
 therefore politically of no effect. But these absurd pretensions, 
 though not matters of indifference to me, and duly reported to 
 Government, never, I am convinced, went beyond the small circle 
 of the Eajah's intimate friends and favourite companions. They 
 were mere subjects of talk and dreamy speculation, the Eajah 
 having sufficient good sense and sound knowledge to be fully 
 aware of the altered circumstances of military and political power 
 in India. But when it became known that the Eajah was in 
 trouble with the Bombay Government, and had incurred the 
 serious displeasure of our authorities in 1835, Balajee Punt Natoo, 
 in concert with the Eajah's brother, who was on bad terms with 
 him, and who was put in his place after the deposition in 1839, 
 saw his opportunity had come, and commenced the calumnies and 
 intrigues which ultimately proved successful. 
 
 " What was called evidence of the most preposterous and ridi- 
 culous plans of raising rebellion throughout India, with aid from 
 Portugal and Eussia, was collected, behind his back and without 
 allowing him, or anyone on his behalf, to see or cross-examine the 
 witnesses, these inquisitorial proceedings being spread over three 
 
 * Lord of the Umbrella and Lord of the Hindoos.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 95 
 
 years. The name of his traducer, Balajee Punt Natoo, was 
 concealed throughout the proceedings." 
 
 " A mass of fiction, as I verily believe," said Mr. Forbes, 
 one of the Directors in 1840, "consisting of letters not 
 proved to be authentic, of seals and ciphers forged, of 
 oral evidence obtained under every suspicion of undue 
 influence, of partnerships contracted with bankers, and 
 false entries made in their books ; every artifice, in short, 
 that the great cunning, great ability, deep personal 
 interest and inveterate hatred of Balajee Punt Natoo and 
 his ignoble instrument, Appa Sahib, could employ, has 
 been directed against this devoted Prince."* But, as I 
 said before, it would be wearisome and useless now to 
 enter on a detailed inquiry into the question of the 
 Rajah's guilt or innocence. Suffice it to say that four of 
 the Directors of the East India Company, Messrs. H. St. 
 George Tucker, Cotton, Shepherd and Forbes, recorded 
 Minutes of dissent against his deposition ; that Mr. 
 Henry Shakespear, a member of the Supreme Council of 
 India, considered that " no charge of a serious nature had 
 been substantiated against the Rajah" ;t that Mr. Forbes 
 declared his belief that all that Prince's misfortunes were 
 caused by a Palace conspiracy, of which, in his words, 
 we were "the dupes" and he was "the victim ";J and 
 that many other competent judges at the time expressed 
 opinions equally decided in favour of the Rajah. And 
 there is at least this presumptive proof of his innocence, 
 that he steadily rejected all compromise, and when a full 
 amnesty was offered him, resolved to sacrifice his throne, 
 to abandon his treasures, to relinquish his home, and to 
 go into exile with his family to a distant part of India, 
 rather than subscribe certain articles which implied a con- 
 fession of his criminality. "Guilt", said Mr. St. George 
 Tucker, "would have found it easy to accept the 
 conditions proposed, in order to escape from the threat- 
 ened penalty. The consciousness of rectitude must be 
 strong when it impels a man to make a great sacrifice to 
 
 * Sattara Papers (569 of 1843), p. 70. f Ibid. p. 1260. 
 
 J Ibid. p. 1258.
 
 96 . SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 a sense of honour, however mistaken."* And in this 
 instance the sacrifice was tremendous, and was made with 
 perfect deliberation and great dignity. 
 
 The Rajah Pertaub Singh of Sattara was dethroned 
 and deported to Benares in 1839. He died in 1846, 
 having adopted in the previous year the son of his first 
 cousin, Bala Sahib Bhonsla, the titular Senapati, or Com- 
 mander-in-Chief. His brother, who was installed in his 
 place under the title of Rajah Shahjee, died in 1848, 
 having also adopted a son with every due formality. 
 But Lord Dalhousie's career of annexation, sustained by 
 the cordial approval and applause of the Anglo-Indian 
 Civil Service, had commenced. The imputed treason of 
 the elder brother was used, with complete success, as a 
 plea for the extinction of the State on the death of the 
 younger brother. The Government of India, in defiance 
 of the opinion of Sir George Clerk, then Governor of 
 Bombay, rejected both the adopted sons, and took this 
 occasion to forge the machinery of imaginary precedents 
 and sham prerogative by which the rightful heirs of the 
 Rajahs of Jhansi and Nagpore were subsequently disin- 
 herited, and those faithful and useful States destroyed. 
 
 The beneficent rule of the two successive Rajahs, and 
 the prosperity of their subjects, were not allowed to 
 plead against the policy of annexation. "There can be 
 no doubt", said the Hon. Mr. Willoughby,t one of the 
 Bombay Councillors, in June 1848, "of the excellence of 
 the late Rajah's administration." To the same effect, 
 and in the same Council, wrote the Hon. Lestock Reid. 
 
 " Whether it is expedient in this case to admit the adoption and 
 succession to the Sattara musand, is a question for the decision of 
 the highest authorities. In favour of this course are the policy of 
 conciliating the population of what formed the Mahratta Empire ; 
 the advantage of having a perfectly friendly and dependent State 
 in the heart of our districts, whose power and influence can be 
 made use of by us in the maintenance of internal tranquillity ; 
 and probably a conviction that under the mild and excellent 
 
 * Sattara Papers(5G9 of 1843), p. 1258 
 
 f Afterwards Sir John P. Willoughby, a Director of the East India 
 Company, and a Member of the Secretary of State's Council.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 97 
 
 government of the late Kajah, his country flourished in a degree 
 with which our neighbouring districts cannot well sustain a com- 
 parison. I believe it will be universally admitted that the manner 
 in which both their Highnesses, Pertaub Singh and Shahjee, admi- 
 nistered the internal affairs of the Sattara State was such as to 
 hold them up as models to all Indian Princes."* 
 
 Both of these gentlemen, however, voted in favour of 
 the annexation. But that subject will be more con- 
 veniently treated when we come to the period in General 
 Briggs's life when he took a prominent part in the 
 discussion ; when he was one of a small minority who 
 deprecated and opposed by all available means the policy 
 that then prevailed of territorial aggrandisement and 
 administrative uniformity in India. 
 
 Although the salary allotted to the Resident at 
 Sattara was exactly the same 2,500 rupees a month 
 as that drawn by the Political Agent in Khandesh, Briggs 
 had gladly accepted the Residency, as a post offering a 
 healthier climate and somewhat more of society to his 
 wife and children, and more leisure to himself, after five 
 years' hard and harassing work, for study and literary 
 pursuits. At Sattara he completed his translation of 
 Ferishta's History of the Rise of Mohammedan Power 
 in India, and also his Persian edition of the same his- 
 torian's works, collated from many manuscripts, which 
 was printed at Bombay in 1831, perhaps the most beau- 
 tiful and extended specimen of Persian lithography ever 
 executed, t It was in this period, also, that he trans- 
 lated the Siyar-ul-Mutakhirin, or " Review of the 
 Moderns", by Ghulam Hussain, the chronicle of the 
 decay of the Mogul Empire and Mussulman domination 
 in India, which was published in London by the Oriental 
 Translation Fun<L| He had been collecting and digesting 
 for years the materials for his book on the Land Tax of 
 India, and great progress was made in this work before 
 Major Briggs left Sattara, in December 1826. 
 
 * Sattara Papers (83 of 1849), pp 54, 66. 
 
 f One or two copies may still, I believe, be found at Quaritch's, in 
 Piccadilly. 
 
 J 1832, John Murray, Albemarle Street ; and Parbury and Allen, 
 Leadenhall Street. 
 
 H
 
 98 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 " I had now been more than twenty-five years continuously in 
 India and Persia, and, besides making many sea voyages, had had 
 my full share of severe and anxious duties and of unhealthy 
 stations. I had suffered considerably and very frequently from 
 illness, especially from a very bad chronic headache, during the 
 previous ten years, and I was strongly recommended to return 
 to England. The Eajah's assiduous attention to the duties of 
 government, and the liberal scale of his expenditure on public 
 objects of general utility, were all that could be desired ; but I was 
 much annoyed and embarrassed by those hints and symptoms of 
 the Eajah's overweening notions of his inherent grandeur, and of 
 its inadequate recognition by our Government, of which I have 
 already spoken. Some quiet remonstrances of mine on the subject, 
 in consequence of private information I had received, led to a misun- 
 derstanding and a coolness between myself and the Eajah, which I 
 have no doubt I should have dispelled, as well as the exaggerated 
 pretensions, had my health permitted me to stay a little longer at 
 Sattara. But my last days there were passed in sickness and low 
 spirits, and I was not equal to the long interviews that would have 
 been required to bring His Highness to a sense of his errors. 
 
 " Those errors, I must add, were by no means unnatural or inex- 
 cusable on the Eajah's part, or entirely without grounds in the 
 declarations and action of our Government. Even while the 
 Peishwas ruled, like the Maires du Palais with the Merovingian 
 kings, they paid ceremonial homage to the Eajah, received their own 
 investiture from him, and made no appointment to high office or 
 public act of any consequence without his formal assent under 
 seal. Before the Eajah and his family fell into our hands, on the 
 capture of Sattara by our troops, Mr. Elphinstone ordered the 
 British flag, which was at first hoisted, to be hauled down, and the 
 flag of the Eajah displayed, and by proclamation, and in other 
 forms intended to attract and conciliate the Mahratta chiefs, 
 implied that the claims to federal supremacy of the Eajah of 
 Sattara were more legitimate than those of the usurping Peishwa, 
 whom we denounced and proscribed. There was never, of course, 
 any intention or promise of restoring the extended sovereignty of 
 Sivajee's House, but there was quite enough advantage taken of 
 its old headship for our political purposes at the time to give the 
 Eajah and his personal adherents an uneasy feeling that his full 
 rights had been unduly cut down by the Treaty. The other side 
 of the question was easily argued ; and on the side of the Eajah, 
 the pretensions referred to never advanced beyond idle and senti- 
 mental talk. It was my duty to report these matters to our 
 Government, and I did so, without attaching to them any extra- 
 ordinary importance. I never said, nor believed, that the Eajah, 
 who was gifted with much good sense and shrewd powers of calcu-
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 99 
 
 lation, would ever be drawn into a violation of the Treaty, the 
 binding nature of which he well understood, or into any hostile 
 intrigues against the Honourable Company. But in later days, 
 in the proceedings before and after the Bajah's deposition, my 
 despatches were most unfairly used to prejudice the Eajah's cause, 
 and to disparage my efforts on his behalf. 
 
 " The Rajah and I parted with every appearance of friendship 
 I do not think he had any grudge against me. I know I had no 
 ill-will towards him, and I had a great respect for his many excellent 
 qualities as a man and as a ruler. He came to see me off, and on 
 taking leave presented me with the sword he was then wearing, 
 and with a diamond ring of small value, which, according to custom, 
 I had to surrender at Leadenhall Street on my arrival. The sword 
 I was allowed to keep. 
 
 " I remained some weeks at Bombay with my wife and family 
 as the guest of the Governor, my old master, Mr. Elphinstone, who 
 took great interest in my literary labours, and whose friendship 
 I retained after his retirement until his death. We embarked in 
 the good ship Upton Castle, on the 18th of January 1827, and 
 reached England in June." 
 
 H 2
 
 100 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 SINCE his first appearance in print with the treatise on 
 the nomad carriers of India, the Brinjarries, in 1812, 
 Briggs had, beyond the necessary sphere of his official 
 duties, written many papers on social, ethnological, and 
 economic subjects, which were chiefly communicated to the 
 Government of Bombay, and in some cases printed. He 
 had a natural facility in the acquirement of languages, 
 and was fond of associating with well-informed Natives. 
 Thus he obtained rare opportunities of gaining an insight 
 into their manners, habits, and institutions, religious and 
 civil. Before leaving Sattara he had supplied the Bombay 
 Government with a very full account of the peculiar laws 
 and customs of the Hindus of the Deccan that part 
 relating to the Mahrattas being the most complete with 
 regard to the surnames of families ; propinquity of rela- 
 tionship and line of descent as affecting marriage and 
 adoption ; and the property and family position of 
 widows. He had also compiled a sort of Mahratta Peer- 
 age, in which the origin and pedigree of the principal 
 chieftains were traced, and a description given of their 
 political claims, and the actual condition and tenure of 
 their estates. But the most important of the literary 
 labours to which he referred, in the extract at the end of 
 the last chapter, was the translation of the great historical 
 work of Mohammed Hussain Asterabadi, commonly called 
 by his literary name, Ferishta, in which he had made 
 great progress when appointed Assistant to Mr. Elphin- 
 stone at Poona in 1816. He says: 
 
 " I began with the minor dynasties, which had never been 
 rendered into either English or Hindustani. I was very fortunate 
 in coming across a good copy of these parts, as well as the better 
 known histories of the Kings of Golconda, or Hyderabad. I found 
 that those parts of Ferishta which had been published by Dow and
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 101 
 
 Colonel Jonathan Scott were extremely inaccurate, both of them 
 having translated from a Hindustani version. They were merely 
 narratives founded on Ferishta. The proper names of men and 
 places were fearfully distorted, and often rendered unintelligible. 
 Before proceeding to the field in 1817, I had, fortunately ^ sent part 
 of my translations to my friend, Mr. William Erskine, at Bombay, 
 and another portion to Mr. (afterwards Sir) Eichard Jenkins, then 
 Eesident at Nagpore. Meanwhile, as has been related, the Eesi- 
 dency at Poona was sacked and burnt, and all my valuable Oriental 
 MSS., together with my Persian Journal and other papers, the 
 produce of great labour, and which neither money nor memory 
 could replace, were destroyed. I may observe that, in spite of the 
 remonstrances of Mr. Elphinstone, no adequate compensation was 
 granted by Government to me and the other sufferers for the loss 
 of our houses and their contents. My occupation in the field for 
 the next two years, and my extensive range of duty in the Govern- 
 ment of Khandesh, prevented me from giving much time to these 
 pursuits. During my stay in that province, however, I gained an 
 intimate knowledge of the landed tenures and village institutions, 
 of which I recorded copious notes, utilised subsequently in my 
 work on the Land Tax. 
 
 " It was in Khandesh, also, that I obtained from two Pundits, 
 who were intimately acquainted with, modern Mahratta history 
 and politics from about 1760 to 1800, a very detailed narrative of 
 the life of the great Minister, Nana Furnavees, the autobiography 
 of whose early life I afterwards obtained from his widow when I 
 was at Sattara. This document I brought to England, and it will 
 be found among a mass of Mahratta papers preserved in the 
 archives of the Royal Asiatic Society. I translated the autobio- 
 graphy, and it was my intention to have published these interesting 
 materials in the shape of a history of Nana Furnavees and his times ; 
 but I fear I must, at my time of life, consider that project at an end. 
 " Having recovered the Ferishta manuscripts, which had, for- 
 tunately, been preserved by Mr. Erskine and by Mr. Jenkins, though 
 the latter was for some time in great danger at Nagpore, I took 
 advantage of the comparative leisure I enjoyed at Sattara to return 
 to my task of editing Ferishta, and finishing the translation. 
 Having secured several copies written in various parts of India, 
 I was able to collate a more complete and correct edition "of this 
 valuable work than had ever before existed. I tendered it for 
 publication to the Government of Bombay, who caused a large 
 edition, in two volumes folio, to be lithographed from the beautiful 
 Persian text prepared under my supervision, and granted me the 
 sum of 5,000 rupees for my expenses, with part of which I 
 remunerated my learned Mussulman collaborator, who had been 
 supported for many years at my private expense.
 
 102 SOME WORDS AND WOBK OF 
 
 " Some years later, Lord Clare, then Governor of Bombay, gave 
 me forty copies, so that I was enabled to distribute the work among 
 the chief Royal and public libraries of Europe. 
 
 " My health rapidly improved on board ship, and I relieved the 
 tedium of the long voyage round the Cape by working up for the 
 press the materials I had in hand. The translation of Ferishta 
 was ultimately produced in four thick octavo vo]umes. In order 
 to cover as much as possible the cost of publication, I had suc- 
 ceeded in obtaining a large list of subscribers in India. On the 
 strength of these subscriptions, which they were to receive, Messrs. 
 Longman undertook the work, engaging to place at my disposal 
 half the remainder of the first edition. My share of the profits, 
 after presenting many copies to my friends and to public institu- 
 tions, amounted to forty pounds. 
 
 " The work was not entirely unnoticed, nor has its value been 
 unacknowledged. Sir Henry M. Elliot, one of the highest autho- 
 rities on Oriental literature, in speaking of my translation as one of 
 the efforts of Europeans to bring the knowledge of the Moham- 
 medan historians before the public, observes that ' the translation 
 of the entire work of Ferishta, by Colonel Briggs, in four vols., 8vo, 
 has thrown all similar efforts into the shade for ever.'* At a later 
 period I was gratified by the receipt of the following short note 
 from my valued friend and patron, Mr. Elphinstone, on sending 
 me his History of India, published in 1 841 : 
 
 " ' MY DEAR BRIGGS, I am bound to send you the accompany- 
 ing production, however unworthy of your acceptance, as con- 
 taining my receipts for stolen goods of yours. They will be found 
 in every page of the early Mohammedan history, but particularly 
 in vol. i, p. 527. 
 
 " ' Yours most sincerely, 
 
 " ' M. ELPHINSTONE. 
 
 " ' I wish I had seen your supplement on the Land Revenue 
 before I wrote on that subject. It cost rne a vast deal of trouble 
 to attain to nearly the same conclusion. ' M. E/ " 
 
 " The reference in the History of India is as follows : 
 " ' From this time forward my principal dependence will be on 
 Ferishta, a Persian historian who long resided in India, and wrote, 
 in the end of the sixteenth century, a history of all the Moham- 
 medan dynasties in that country, down to his own time. I think 
 myself fortunate in having the guidance of an author so much 
 
 * bibliographical Index to Mohammedan History (Calcutta, 1849), 
 p. 318; see also History of India told by its own Historians, Posthumous 
 Papers of Sir H. M. Elliot, edited by Professor Dowson (London, 
 Triibner, 1875), vol. vi, p. 213.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 103 
 
 superior to most of his class in Asia. Where the nature of my 
 narrative admitted of it, I have often used the very expressions of 
 Ferishta, which, in Colonel Briggs's translation, it would be difficult 
 to improve.'* 
 
 " The edition of Ferishta contained genealogical tables of every 
 dynasty at the head of each chapter, and an index of the names of all 
 towns mentioned in the work, in the Persian and English character, 
 with the longitude and latitude of each." 
 
 The Persian edition and English translation of Ferishta 
 were reviewed by Yon Hammer in the Vienna Jahr- 
 Mcher (No. LI, pp. 36 to 58), and in the Journal des 
 Savants (1850, pp. 212-226, 354-372, 392-403), in a 
 series of articles replete with information on the general 
 subject, by Jules Mohl. 
 
 "During the voyage I also completed a paper on the life of 
 Ferishta, and the translation from the Mahrattee of the auto- 
 biography of Nana Furnavees, with a series of original letters of 
 the Peishwa, Madhoo Rao the Great, all of which were read before 
 the Eoyal Asiatic Society, and are published in its Transactions. 
 
 " We reached England in the middle of June, in fine summer 
 weather. It would be impossible for me to describe my feelings 
 on touching the English shore after an absence of more than 
 twenty-six years. I remember well that what struck me most was 
 what seemed to me to be the general beauty of the inhabitants of 
 both sexes, especially of the children, just as on landing in India I 
 had been impressed as I believe all Europeans are with the 
 general and, as it appears, almost uniform strangeness, I do not 
 say ugliness, of the Natives. By degrees, as one becomes better 
 acquainted with the dark races, one learns to distinguish difference 
 of features and expression, and so, after a few days in England, the 
 impression of universal beauty began to wear off. 
 
 " Nor was it the faces and forms of my countrymen alone that 
 gratified me. I was equally struck with the activity of the 
 country population at that busy time of the year, and with the 
 verdure and evident fertility of the soil. As we travelled through 
 the country between Weymouth and Bath, on the first day after 
 our landing, I saw nothing but smiling flowers covering the walls 
 of the most insignificant, but still neat, dwellings ; and instead of 
 barren and burnt-up wastes of many miles in extent, such as we 
 should have often come across in India, I could not perceive a 
 sterile spot throughout the whole journey. We were very hospit- 
 ably received at Bath by my brother, Captain Arthur Lysaght, K.N.,f 
 
 * Elphiust one's History of India, vol. i, p. 527. 
 
 t Ante, p. 7.
 
 104 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 and on the following day I found myself in the arms of my father, 
 who awaited our arrival at Cheltenham. He had been always in 
 the habit of wearing powder till I left England, so that his grey 
 hairs did not give to him in my eyes the appearance of the age 
 which he had attained since we parted at Portsmouth twenty-six 
 years before. He enjoyed apparently excellent health, and I could 
 hardly realise the fact that he was in his seventieth year. He was, 
 however, suffering from a lingering disease, which proved fatal to 
 him about three years later. As a young man he was remarkable 
 for his easy temper and the grace of his manners, and obtained the 
 designation of Sir Charles Grandison. He was a favourite in 
 society wherever he became known, and possessed great influence 
 with many friends of distinction. Among others was Lord Hobart, 
 afterwards Earl of Buckinghamshire, who had been Governor of 
 Madras, as well as others whom he had known in India, and who 
 had become from time to time Directors of the East India Com- 
 pany. Through their friendly patronage, he contrived to secure 
 appointments in India for every one of his large family of eleven 
 sons. He was a man of strong good sense, and throughout main- 
 tained a high character for integrity. Considerate kindness to all 
 was equally remarkable in him with firmness and resolution under 
 all circumstances. 
 
 "My youngest child, a girl, was born at Cheltenham a month 
 after my arrival, and as soon as we could move we came to London, 
 and shortly afterwards took a partly furnished house in the parish 
 of East Mailing, near Maidstone, in Kent. By this time I had 
 obtained all my baggage, the most bulky, and to me the most 
 valuable, part of which was my library, consisting of three large 
 cases of English works, besides one of Oriental manuscripts and 
 printed books. I caused shelves to be constructed for them, and 
 had rendered my new habitation comfortable, as I hoped, for two 
 years at least. But I was not destined to enjoy my quiet country 
 residence long. In the depth of winter I received notice to quit, 
 in a most unpleasant shape. My landlord was a great grower of 
 hops, for which privilege a heavy duty was levied by the Govern- 
 ment on the quantity produced. The year had been plentiful, and 
 the amount of duty proportionately heavy. The landlord, not 
 having the means of paying at the moment, absconded, and the 
 collector of the duty proceeded to distrain on the premises for all 
 he could find. Sheriff's officers came to the spot on Saturday, the 
 23rd of December, after sunset, without any official notice to me, 
 to carry into effect their purpose, and my property became liable 
 to be seized in the first instance, to satisfy the demands of the 
 Exchequer. During my short sojourn in Kent, my mind being 
 much occupied with my unfinished work on the Land Tax of 
 India, I had pushed my inquiries in every direction, and by all
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRTGGS. 105 
 
 available means, into questions of tenure, and such matters as 
 village rights of common. And thus it came about that I had 
 made friends with the bailiff of the estate, from whom I obtained 
 from day to day all the peculiarities of English farming, and the 
 laws and local customs of landed property, of which I had pre- 
 viously known very little. This acquaintanceship now proved of 
 essential service. The bailiff came to me with a long face one 
 Saturday evening after dark, and told me that the Sheriff's 
 officers were on the spot to seize all the property found on the 
 premises of the landlord, to satisfy the demand of Government for 
 the hop duty, that they would be at the door in half an hour, and 
 that it was their intention to seize all the furniture and effects 
 found in the dwelling-house, whether belonging to the landlord or 
 bis tenant; for such, said he, was the law, though I might, perhaps, 
 in the course of time, recover compensation or damages from some 
 one. I asked him what was to be done. ' Why,' said he, ' I am 
 corne to put you up to the best plan. The officers cannot lawfully 
 make a seizure after sunset, or before sunrise ; nor can they do so 
 on Sunday. This being the case, you will have time to pack up 
 your books and furniture, and remove them off the premises before 
 sunrise on Monday morning.' 
 
 " The bailiff undertook to procure carts, and carpenters to pack 
 my property. In the meantime I received the Sheriff's officers 
 very coolly at the door, where they submitted at once to my 
 warning against any attempt at an entry or seizure in unlawful 
 hours. The work of removal soon began. Books, crockery, and 
 glass were replaced in their cases, and more than half our packing 
 done when the church clock struck twelve at midnight. The 
 carpenters having heard it, began grumbling at being made to work 
 on Sunday. A consultation was now held, and a discussion com- 
 menced, which was chiefly carried on by the bailiff and the work- 
 men themselves, a few of whom had no qualms of conscience at 
 all, and justified their views by quotations from the Holy Scrip- 
 tures. They declared that our Saviour allowed of works of 
 necessity and mercy on the Sabbath day, and that this was a 
 work of necessity and mercy, if ever there was one. As Kentish 
 men, they were all prejudiced against the taxes and tithes on hops. 
 Many of the party, however, stuck to the fourth commandment, to 
 keep holy the Sabbath day, and recalled to mind how dire calami- 
 ties had fallen on their neighbours by the sudden loss of crops 
 and cattle, and even of children, by violating that injunction. It 
 was found at last that there was a strong majority in favour of 
 knocking off work, but they made a solemn promise, which they 
 kept, of returning at midnight on Sunday, and of removing all my 
 goods before sunrise on Monday morning. This was done in due 
 course, and all my goods were in London by Monday evening. I
 
 106 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 sent on my family very early, while I remained as a rear-guard, 
 and settled with my Sabbatarian allies, the carpenters. We took 
 refuge with a relative until I engaged a furnished house in Port- 
 man Street, Montagu Square/* 
 
 After occupying this house for a few months, during 
 which time the house was twice robbed first by the 
 footman, and, secondly, on the very day of the man's 
 conviction and sentence at the Old Bailey, by his accom- 
 plices, who carried off two hundred pounds' worth of 
 silver plate Colonel Briggs decided on proceeding to 
 Paris, and devoting all his time to the completion of his 
 work, as he says, " on the landed tenures of India and 
 the land tax of the ancients, as compared with our own 
 system of revenue." 
 
 "My family now consisted of two daughters of sixteen and 
 thirteen years of age, of two younger girls, one of five years and 
 one of twelve months old, and of a son, nine years of age. I had 
 letters of introduction to an old retired English officer long resident 
 in Paris, and through him was introduced to the several Orientalists 
 and scientific men of that capital. Among them was M. Jules 
 Mohl, a German gentleman of Stutgard, and of noble birth, who, 
 having taken his degrees at the University of Tubingen, became 
 so interested in Oriental literature that he settled in Paris, where 
 the greatest advantages and facilities for such studies were then to 
 be found, and became subsequently a naturalised Frenchman. He 
 was made a Member of the National Institute, than which there is 
 no higher literary honour in France. The acquirements of Dr. Jules 
 Mohl are such as have rendered his name familiar throughout 
 Europe as one of its best Persian scholars, and I can never cease 
 to be grateful for the pleasure and profit I have ever derived from 
 my friendship with him. 
 
 " During my short stay in London I had obtained access to the 
 meetings of the Geological Society, and began to take a great 
 interest in that subject. In Paris I availed myself of an intro- 
 duction to the celebrated Baron Cuvier, the first of Naturalists in 
 his day, and, it may be said, the first Palaeontologist. At his 
 weekly soirees I became acquainted with many eminent men of 
 science, and was induced to attend the lectures of Brogniat and 
 Oudouen. Among my literary acquaintances were Baron Silvestre 
 de Sacy, Eugene Burnouf, Bemusat, Klaproth, and others. My 
 evenings were chiefly devoted to scientific studies, but my main 
 object at this time, and the occupation of every morning, was the 
 completion of my work on the Land Tax of India before the 
 renewal of the East India Company's Charter. The Parliamentary
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 107 
 
 Committee to report on the whole subject was expected to assemble 
 in the Session of 1830, three years before the termination of the 
 usual term of twenty years in 1833. My friend Jules Mohl, who 
 is a thorough and correct English scholar, was of infinite use to 
 me, both by searching for books in the Eoyal Library, and by 
 affording me his well-considered opinion on many points. 
 
 " My two elder daughters were of an age to profit by the excel- 
 lent opportunities in Paris for improving their knowledge of 
 French, Italian, music, and dancing. This last accomplishment 
 was pursued and cultivated by them even at this distance of 
 time, I am almost ashamed to say it with very little gratification 
 to me, for I had to submit more often than pleased me, to be 
 dragged out to balls and parties, where I was assured my presence 
 and support were indispensable, although I thought their mother's 
 escort would be sufficient." 
 
 The following letters to his nephew, Augustus de 
 Morgan, for which I am indebted to the great mathe- 
 matician's widow, the accomplished authoress of her 
 husband's Life, and editress of his immortal Budget of 
 Paradoxes* belong to this period. 
 
 "31, Rue Vaugirard, Paris, 
 
 " 27th October 1829. 
 
 " MY DEAR AUGUSTUS, I had just finished a letter to you when 
 yours of the 21st arrived yesterday. How can it be so long on the 
 road ? I am sorry that my replies to the queries of your friend, 
 Mr. Long, must necessarily be short and imperfect. 
 
 Imprimis Hamadan is a fine town situated on the highroad 
 between Baghdad and Teheran, an ancient capital of Persia, and 
 undoubtedly the E/c/Saram of Herodotus. "We that is, Jules Mohl 
 and I suppose the K in EK/3drava to have been written by mistake 
 for a v. Moreover, the Greeks usually write r for 8 in Oriental names, 
 as Aprafiavrja-^ for ApSafiav or Urdu-ban, one who maintains an 
 army or horde, urdu, as they still call it in Turkish and Persian, 
 Apra/Sa^o-f* for Urdu-bash, the head of an army, or general. 
 They also wrote f for sh, as in ApTagepgrjrf for Ardashlr or Urdu- 
 sher, the lion of the army. 
 
 " Are you aware that Mirza Ibrahim, the Persian Professor at 
 Haileybury College, is translating Beloe's Herodotus into Persian ? 
 It might be worth Mr. Long's while to see him, and talk to him on 
 the subject, though I don't promise him much light in that 
 quarter. 
 
 " I am anxious to see Godfrey Higgins's apology for Mohammed. 
 
 * Longmans, 1882 and 1872. 
 
 t Artabanes, Artabazes, and Artaxerxes.
 
 108 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 He has lately sent to Todd, who is now here, the prospectus of his 
 new work, which is now in the press ; but I am quite sure he will 
 be open to easy attack, in spite of his Hebrew learning. He has 
 quite neglected Arabic, without which no one can really master 
 Hebrew, Hebrew being the uncultivated or undeveloped Arabic, 
 and he does not know a word of Sanscrit, though he declares 
 he will prove it to be a dialect of Hebrew, and says that Mel- 
 chisedec was a Boodhist ! I think with him and you, that all the 
 Pagan Pantheon will be found to be symbols of the planets and 
 constellations ; but Higgins will not keep within his depth, and 
 will sink accordingly." 
 
 From the next two letters it will be seen that the 
 opus magnum was finished before Briggs left Paris, and 
 that its general purport, an outline of which is given in 
 the second letter, was not very likely to conciliate the 
 official world, or to recommend Colonel Briggs to the 
 general suffrages of the Anglo-Indian Secretariat and 
 Civil Service. 
 
 "31, Rue Vaugirard, 
 
 "10th January 1830. 
 
 " MY DEAR AUGUSTUS, Having completed the researches among 
 public records, I am now engaged in studying MacCulloch, Adam 
 Smith, and others, preparatory to commencing my last chapter. 
 Meanwhile I have been turning over my project for the gradual 
 liquidation of the National Debt of Great Britain, and for providing 
 an immediate remedy for the great burden of annual interest by a 
 succession duty, or tax on the estates of deceased persons. I wish 
 you could procure for me, for love or money, an account of the 
 property which has passed through Doctors' Commons annually 
 during the last thirty or forty years." 
 
 " Paris, Rue Vaugirard, 
 
 " 22nd January 1830. 
 
 " MY DEAR AUGUSTUS, The work is finished. It has cost me a 
 vast deal of labour ; and the worst of it is that I have been com- 
 pelled in the process of revision to throw away the product of 
 months of hard study as irrelevant. The book opens with an 
 account of the nature of landed property in all countries, and the 
 imposts usually levied for the Crown. In ancient times this 
 appears to have been in India, and everywhere the same, one- 
 tenth of the crop. The Hindu institutions and laws are then 
 explained, under which new imposts on land were introduced, not 
 higher than one-sixth, except in time of war, when a fourth might 
 be taken. The invasion and domination of the Mussulmans raised
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 109 
 
 the tax from a quarter to a half of the crop. Some of the wisest 
 Mohammedan kings reverted to the fourth, but it was usually 
 found to be about one-half in the countries which we occupied. 
 
 "The Chapters II, III, and IV give a history of English 
 revenue proceedings in Bengal, Madras, and Bombay, each of these 
 Presidencies having, at different periods, under authority from 
 England, adopted conflicting and irreconcilable views as to landed 
 tenures and Sovereign rights. The leading men under all three 
 Governments now agree in stating that the cultivator is the sole 
 proprietor of his land, as long as he pays the tax, or by whatever 
 name the impost may be called. They all agree, also, in claiming 
 the unoccupied lands for the Sovereign, and are unanimous in 
 asserting that the present rates of land-tax are ruinous to the 
 people, and ought to be reduced. 
 
 " From the reports of all three Presidencies it is established by 
 authentic proofs that one uniform system of government formerly 
 prevailed throughout India, and neither Mussulman oppression 
 nor our own blundering arrangements have been able to effect 
 its destruction. This system consists in the existence of village 
 communities or corporations, each with its Mayor, or Mayor and 
 Aldermen, originally elected by the inhabitants, who are repre- 
 sentatives of the village, and administer all its affairs. The 
 Mohammedans, without troubling themselves about Hindoo cus- 
 toms, allowed these corporations to continue unchanged, provided 
 they paid their assessment. We have done all we can to break 
 them up, and have endeavoured to take the interior management 
 of the people's concerns into our hands, to place our paid servants 
 everywhere, and to cry down the power and influence of the 
 popular village magnates. By these measures we have unhinged 
 the whole frame of society, and have done infinitely more harm, 
 and given more offence, than the Mohammedans ever did. Our 
 claim to the whole of the landlord's profits has left no source of 
 national wealth, and the inhabitants, though wealthy under the 
 native Governments, are poor under ours. This is the reason why 
 the free trade has not been successful. "With the exception of 
 cotton cloths it has entirely failed. Two steam engines for manu- 
 facturing Indian cloths on the spot have already gone to India. 
 Four at each of the Presidencies would ruin the Glasgow and 
 Manchester weavers, and you and I may live to see England 
 purchasing Bengal muslins again as of old. 
 
 " I have proved that a tax such as the Company raises in India 
 direct from the land, which it spends in great measure out of the 
 country, and in the pay of its English officers and soldiers, is not 
 only the most detrimental tax to the people, but is the least 
 profitable of all taxes to Government. My remedy is to give up 
 all the waste lands to those who are now so heavily taxed, to
 
 110 SOME WORDS AND WORK, ETC. 
 
 allow the weight of the present tax to diminish by fixing its 
 amount as it is, while the present landholders are permitted to 
 take up the unoccupied tracts in their neighbourhood gratis. 
 Landlords will thus be created ; wealth will accumulate, and with 
 it will arise the desire and the capacity of purchasing our manu- 
 factures. If great Britain could now send a thousand shiploads 
 of goods instead of a hundred, the poverty of the people would 
 prevent their being sold at a profit." 
 
 " My work on the Land Tax of India", says Briggs, 
 "was published in London in the spring of 1830 ; and as 
 the time for my return to India was approaching, I pre- 
 pared to quit Paris in the summer. In the month of 
 June I was elected an Honorary Member of the Asiatic 
 Society of Paris, and of the Society of Universal Statistics. 
 We started for England on the 10th of July 1830, thus 
 escaping by little more than a fortnight the detention, 
 and possibly danger, that would have attended our 
 presence in Paris during the ' three glorious days ' of 
 July. I was quite prepared to hear of the Revolution. 
 During the last six months at least of my residence in 
 the French capital, it seemed to be the settled opinion 
 of all the most distinguished men with whom I was in 
 the habit of meeting, many of whom took no active 
 interest in politics, that the reign of Charles X would 
 not last much longer."
 
 Ill 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE greater part of Briggs's Land Tax of India is of too 
 technical a character to be commended to the notice of the 
 general reader ; and that portion of the book which refers 
 to our land-settlements in Bengal, Madras, and Bombay 
 has now little more than a historical value. Although 
 Colonel Briggs perceived the ruinous errors that had been 
 committed, and gave very plain warning of their evil 
 effects, his observations and experience were at too early 
 a date to enable him to discern fully in what their 
 pauperising and exhausting conditions consisted. There 
 has been much tinkering with the land revenue since his 
 time, and a vast outlay in settlement and survey opera- 
 tions in all the Presidencies, but, with the incessant 
 growth of debt and expenditure, there has been no 
 respite or relief given to the agricultural population. 
 
 The first part of the book is, however, of permanent 
 importance, and remains, in fact, unshaken and unsuper- 
 seded by any subsequent publication, whether of official 
 origin or not. No statesman or systematic student of 
 British rule in India can afford to disregard or to overlook 
 it. The work is divided into three parts, the first dealing 
 with the " Land Tax of the Ancients" in Greece and 
 other parts of Europe, and with the " Land Tax of 
 India" in Hindoo and Mohammedan times ; the second 
 with the changes introduced by English rule and adminis- 
 tration ; and the third, with the effects of those changes 
 on the condition of the people and the country. In the 
 three chapters of which the first part consists, the 
 author proves beyond all dispute, by citations from a 
 large number of original authorities, Hindoo and Mussul- 
 man, the universal existence of private property in land 
 in India from the earliest ages. He shows that this right 
 of property was never questioned by either Hindoo or
 
 112 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 Moslem rulers, and that the assessments levied by them 
 upon the landed classes were distinctly a tax, and in no 
 sense an appropriation or demand of the rent, either in 
 whole or in part, or an assertion of proprietorship in the 
 soil. In his second part he shows how this important 
 fact was everywhere and invariably ignored by the 
 British authorities, who, unlike their predecessors, as- 
 serted that " the State", i.e., the East India Company, 
 was the actual proprietor of all the land in British India, 
 and entitled, as such, to levy an assessment upon it, 
 equivalent to the entire rental, precisely as an English 
 landlord is, by law, entitled to receive the full rent of 
 his estates. In the third and last part, he shows what 
 dire distress and poverty this monstrous and exorbitant 
 claim has wrought throughout British India. 
 
 The book is written throughout in a style studiously 
 calm and dispassionate ; ample extracts from official 
 documents are given in support of every fact stated and 
 every inference drawn ; and at the close of the long and 
 laborious examination, the writer thus expresses himself: - 
 " I conscientiously believe that under no Government 
 whatever, either Hindoo or Mohammedan, professing to 
 be actuated by law, has there ever been any system so 
 subversive of the prosperity of the people at large as 
 that which has marked our administration."* 
 
 I have said that the second and third parts do not 
 now possess the value attaching to the first portion, which 
 establishes incontrovertibly the existence of private pro- 
 perty in land ; but this must not be taken as implying 
 a lack of industry or insight on the part of the author. 
 Colonel Briggs saw with clearness the gross and rapacious 
 pretension on which the land administration of the East 
 India Company was based ; but, living, as it were, in the 
 midst of the policy which he describes, he could not see 
 so clearly as we can the causes which brought about the 
 error, or the full extent of the mischief which it was 
 destined to occasion. 
 
 That the East India Company was originally only a 
 company of merchants engaged in the trade with India, 
 * Land Tax, p. 410.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 113 
 
 is a fact known to all, but the appalling consequences of 
 this fact to the people of India after the Company had 
 acquired territorial sovereignty and full administrative 
 powers, have never been clearly perceived, or, at any rate, 
 have been almost wholly ignored. And yet it is not too 
 much to say that, until the extinction of the Company in 
 1858, this fact of its commercial origin and interests con- 
 stituted the great guiding principle of all our Indian 
 policy our wars, our annexations, our barbarous mono- 
 polies and systems of taxation, and, above all things, our 
 ruinous assessments on the produce of the land. The 
 rapid decay of the ancient wealth and prosperity of India 
 is distinctly traceable to this one fact; and until its 
 supreme importance has been seen and acknowledged, no 
 truthful account of British Rule in India can ever be 
 written. 
 
 The Directors of the East India Company, in its 
 character of a trading corporation, had, of course, to pay 
 half-yearly dividends to the Proprietors of East India 
 Stock. But the capital which had been subscribed 
 for purposes of trade was, as a matter of fact, expended 
 down to the last farthing in the struggle with the French. 
 When Lord Clive obtained from the Mogul Emperor the 
 decree empowering the East India Company, as Dewan,to 
 collect the revenues of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, he not 
 only established the nucleus of our present Indian Empire, 
 but he did what the Directors deemed then to be of far 
 greater importance, he preserved them from going into 
 liquidation. The East India Company, at that time, did 
 not possess one sixpence of trading capital. The capital 
 which they had once possessed was now represented by a 
 debt of 700,000. But they regarded Bengal, Behar, 
 and Orissa as a large freehold estate, in the purchase of 
 which their capital had been sunk, and proposed to carry 
 on their East India and China trade by means of the 
 "territorial rents" to be derived from these three provinces. 
 This "rent" i.e., all the surplus revenue of Bengal, Behar, 
 and Orissa was annually devoted to the purchase of such 
 Indian and Chinese commodities as there w r as a demand 
 for in England, and in this form sent to London to pay 
 
 I
 
 114 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 the dividends on East India Stock. This it was which 
 became known as the Company's "Investment", and the 
 following incident will show how absolutely the existence 
 of the Company depended upon it. In the year 1769, 
 the Government of India proposed to cut down "the 
 Investment" by one-half for a few years, in order to pro- 
 vide a Reserve Fund to defray the expenses of the con- 
 stantly recurring wars. The anger and consternation of 
 the Court of Directors upon the receipt of this intelli- 
 gence are thus described in the Report of the Parlia- 
 mentary Committee of Secrecy. 
 
 " That however salutary it may be to have a view to remote 
 events, and to provide for future contingencies, after these invest- 
 ments shall have been carried to the extent requisite for the 
 Company's immediate occasions, yet in how unfavourable a light 
 must appear the intentions of their servants to guard against 
 remote and uncertain evils abroad by leaving the Company to sink 
 under absolute and present distresses at home." 
 
 They then go on to state the many demands they have 
 on hand at home, and express the utmost astonishment 
 at seeing their servants entertain the idea of reducing 
 "the Investment" without absolute necessity, and thereby 
 depriving them of the only means they have to answer 
 such demands. They then express their hopes that upon 
 more mature deliberation their servants will lay aside so 
 destructive a design ; yet they say the view of it is so 
 alarming as to make it necessary for them to declare their 
 peremptory prohibition of such a measure. They tell 
 them that "every other consideration is to give place to the 
 
 essential and primary object of their investments" 
 
 and they conclude with positive injunctions that " their 
 servants do not at any time engage in plans of so impor- 
 tant a nature without their knowledge and concurrence, 
 as it behoved their servants to concert with them only 
 such systems as materially affect the very being of the 
 Company".* 
 
 It would take up far too much space to indicate even 
 in outline how this "Investment" occasioned wars, con- 
 
 * Letter from Court of Directors, 23rd March 1770.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 115 
 
 trolled taxation, and entailed upon the people of British 
 India hurdens very largely in excess of the nominal amount 
 of "the Investment" itself. The Salt Monopoly, the 
 opium trade, and our Inland Customs Revenue, the most 
 ruinous and extortionate that the mind can conceive, were 
 created exclusively for the benefit of "the Investment", 
 and the collateral expenses which grew out of it. But it 
 pressed most heavily upon the land. In its manage- 
 ment of the land the one object which the Government of 
 the East India Company consistently held to was that of 
 obtaining the largest possible amount of money from it. 
 For this purpose, they let it out to farmers at public 
 auction; and then, in order to get their money punctually, 
 left the farmers at liberty to deal with the agricultural 
 population precisely as they pleased. Under the merci- 
 less exactions of these farmers, supported whenever ne- 
 cessary by the troops of the Company, all the ancient 
 proprietary rights in the soil were lost, and obliterated in 
 general ruin. And then the officers of the Company 
 declared that the chaos which they had themselves created 
 was the normal condition of agricultural India that the 
 State was the universal landlord, and all other so-called 
 proprietary rights depended upon its sufferance and tolera- 
 tion. To this theory, the successors of those early officials 
 have obstinately clung to this day, and the wide-spread 
 pauperism of British India, which Colonel Briggs, in 1832, 
 viewed with such profound sorrow and apprehension, and 
 which has certainly not lessened since his day, is the result 
 of the official doctrine. Assertions of this kind are so dis- 
 tasteful to the self-love of the English character, that 
 they generally excite nothing but incredulity, and it is, 
 unfortunately, impossible to put within a small compass 
 the abundant evidence on which they rest. Except where 
 a Permanent Settlement has saved the agricultural 
 classes from the rapacity of English administration, the 
 process by which they have been reduced to indigence 
 has differed in almost every Indian province, and it 
 would require a volume to take each region separately, 
 and follow "the road to ruin" in each. Merely as an 
 illustration, therefore, I take that portion of the Madras 
 
 I 2
 
 116 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 Presidency in which Sir Thomas Munro's Ryotwar settle- 
 ment prevails. This settlement and its effects are de- 
 scribed as follows in a Keport of the Madras Board of 
 Revenue, dated 5th Jan. 1818. 
 
 " However beneficial in other respects our administration may 
 have proved to the people, it is greatly to be feared that the almost 
 immediate introduction into these districts of the Ryotwar system 
 .... tended to complete the destruction of the property which it 
 was so much our interest and our duty to support. While the 
 Ryotwar survey assessment professed to fix an equal and moderate 
 tax in money on each field, we find U, in almost every instance, 
 
 greatly increasing the Government demand on the country 
 
 It has been stated by Colonel Munro that under the Ryotwar 
 system, ' the ryot knew, before he set his oxen to the plough, and 
 dropped his seed into the ground, the utmost limit of rent that he 
 could be called on to pay ; and that the advantage of additional 
 labour employed on his fields would be all his own, as well as the 
 advantage of additional produce in an abundant season, and that 
 he also knew in an unfavourable season an abatement of the 
 demand would be made in his favour, if his diminished means 
 rendered him unable to satisfy it'. But where the utmost limit of 
 rent was raised so much above the means of the ryot, and where 
 the ability of the people was to be the limit of the collection, it is 
 obvious that the ryot's knowledge of it was of little consequence. 
 .... The Ryotwar settlement was, in fact, made annually. If 
 the crop was good, the demand was raised as high within the survey 
 rates as the means of the ryot would admit; if the crop was bad, the 
 last farthing was, notwithstanding, demanded, and no remission was 
 allowed unless the ryot was totally unable to pay the, rent. On this 
 point the most severe scrutiny was instituted ; for not only was 
 the whole of the Collector's establishment employed in the investi- 
 gation of his means, but his neighbours were converted into inqui- 
 sitors, by being themselves made liable for his failure, unless they 
 
 could show that he was possessed of property The little 
 
 profit accruing to the industrious ryot was thus taken by the State to 
 remunerate it for the losses it sustained from the failure of the less 
 fortunate or more extravagant. 
 
 "Moreover, to use the words of Mr. Chaplin, the Collector in 
 Bellary, one of the most able of Colonel Munro's assistants, it ' was 
 the custom to exert, in a great degree, the authority of compelling 
 the inhabitants to cultivate a quantity of ground proportionate to 
 their circumstances'. This he explains to have been done by ' the 
 power to confine and punish' them, exercised by the Collector and 
 his Native revenue servants ; and he expressly adds that if the 
 ryot was driven by these oppressions from the fields which he
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 117 
 
 tilled, it was the established practice 'to follow the fugitive 
 wherever he went, and by assessing him at discretion, to deprive 
 him of all advantage that he might expect to derive from a change 
 of residence'. Reviewing the . . . . Ryotwar system as it thus 
 existed in practice, nothing can well be more revolting to justice, and 
 to all sound principles of government." 
 
 Notwithstanding this outspoken condemnation, this 
 system, so "revolting to justice", continued to flourish 
 without one harsh feature in it being removed or 
 even mitigated until the outbreak of the, great insurrec- 
 tion in 1857. -Nor must it be forgotten that while thus 
 appropriating to itself the entire rental of the soil of 
 British India, the East India Company, for the first sixty 
 years of its supremacy, did absolutely nothing for the 
 land which it professed to own. Not merely did it 
 construct no public works of its own, but the magnificent 
 works with which its Hindoo and Moslem predecessors 
 had covered the country were allowed to fall into ruin. 
 In the Gangetic Provinces, the Moslem rulers had con- 
 structed and maintained, in good repair, a splendid net- 
 work of raised roads, linking the great towns together. 
 During the first thirty years of the Company's rule, so 
 entirely was this function of government neglected, that 
 tbese roads entirely disappeared ; and in Madras the 
 tanks for irrigation were allowed, in like manner, to 
 become useless to the inhabitants. The Company was, 
 in fact, an absentee landlord of the worst possible de- 
 scription, and on the largest scale. Nominally, its rent 
 collectors were the English magistrates of each division ; 
 but actually, these rent collectors were a vast swarm of 
 underpaid, irresponsible, and unscrupulous Native under- 
 lings, who, without control or supervision of any kind, 
 were let loose like an army of locusts, to eat the wretched 
 people out of house and home. "It is", says Colonel Briggs, 
 " hardly credible that no fewer than one hundred thousand 
 Native civil servants form the train of our European 
 agency." What with the rapacity of the East India Com- 
 pany itself, the greed and unlimited power of these hundred 
 thousand Native civil servants, doing the work, on bad 
 pay, of our highly paid English officers, the inefficiency,
 
 118 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 procrastination, venality, and corruption of our Courts of 
 Justice, it is not possible to exaggerate the sufferings 
 which we have inflicted upon the agricultural classes in 
 India, and continue to inflict to this day, under a more 
 erudite and symmetrical, but not more genial, system. 
 
 Colonel Briggs sums up, in the following passage, the 
 results of his examination in the year 1832 : 
 
 " My whole life has been devoted to the study of the history, 
 the manners, the customs, and the institutions of the country. It 
 is from these sources I have borrowed materials to show that our 
 measures have been founded on false assumptions ; that the hundred 
 and fifty millions of freemen in India were once ruled by judicious 
 laws which we have overlooked ; that their institutions are founded 
 on wisdom, and have withstood the shock of eight centuries of 
 conquest in a manner that no other institutions with which I am 
 acquainted ever have or could have done ; that these people pecu- 
 liarly claim our protection in their ancient rights and privileges ; 
 and that until they are restored to them they must gradually sink 
 lower and lower in the scale of humanity : but I believe that they 
 will never sink into a condition so abject as to render our dominion 
 over them secure from subversion. 
 
 " On the contrary, every thought which I have ever given to 
 the subject convinces me that our own safety will be rendered 
 more permanent by the adoption of a system that may raise the 
 Natives to that scale in the State to which they have a right to 
 aspire, and for which they are fitted ; and that, by affording them 
 advantages equal, if not superior, to those they would enjoy under 
 the Native Governments, we shall supply them with motives of 
 attachment and fidelity. The connection is, however, an unna- 
 tural one, and will probably, in the end, be dissolved- Let us 
 prepare ourselves and them for that separation, by rendering them 
 tit to govern and to defend themselves, and leave them disposed 
 to continue a friendly connection with us. To act otherwise, to 
 retain them in forcible subjection, to withhold from them those 
 natural rights to which they are entitled, will be to hasten that 
 disunion which may be protracted, and to lay the seeds of that 
 revolution which may end fatally to our dominion in India."* 
 
 The introduction of European education has inter- 
 vened to thwart, in some measure, and among certain 
 classes, the fulfilment of this prediction as to the degrada- 
 tion of the Indian people " in the scale of humanity"; 
 
 * Pp. 464, 465.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 119 
 
 but our administration of the land remains to-day, in all 
 its essential features, the same as described by Colonel 
 Briggs. Always excepting the area of the Permanent 
 Settlement, it is a system in the highest degree destruc- 
 tive of that sense of security whereby alone intelligence 
 and capital can be attracted to the cultivation of the 
 land. The English Collector and the Native money-lender 
 follow the agriculturist wherever he goes, and share 
 between them all that is not needed for a scanty and 
 insufficient subsistence. We could not realise our extor- 
 tionate assessments without the aid of the money-lender, 
 and we could not obtain his co-operation unless we kept 
 the agricultural population wholly at his mercy by our 
 judicial system. Unlike the indigenous Punchayut, which 
 Briggs endeavoured to regulate and modify so as to form 
 the central pivot of cheap and serviceable courts,* our 
 elaborate and imposing judicature, absolutely divorced 
 from local and popular opinion, has become a fearful 
 instrument of oppression in the hands of the usurer and 
 the rich litigant. 
 
 Another distinctive peculiarity of British administra- 
 tion, the tribute extracted from India in the form of 
 Home Charges, and its exhausting effects, did not 
 escape Colonel Briggs's observation. 
 
 " Above all, the landholders must, be allowed to retain a portion 
 of the surplus of their crop, instead of paying the whole. Were 
 this tax even expended in India, the evil would be less : but how 
 is it disposed of ? About one-fifth of the gross taxation, that is to 
 say, four millions annually, is withdrawn from it, either in pro- 
 duce or in specie, to be expended in England, not one sixpence of 
 which ever returns to benefit the country from which the tribute 
 is derived. The nature of our rule, and the interest of England, 
 seem to demand that India should support the Home Charges ; 
 and I fear it is too much to hope for the adoption of any measures 
 which might alleviate the burthen that India now sustains from 
 our injustice."-]- 
 
 The Home Charges, amounting to four millions annu- 
 ally in 1830, and then characterised by Briggs as an 
 unjust burthen, have now grown to between seventeen 
 
 * Ante, pp. 83 to 85. t P- 459.
 
 120 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 and eighteen millions, a tribute to Great Britain of 
 about one-third of the true revenue of India. 
 
 " I have limited my subject to the land-tax, the principal source 
 of Our revenue. I have shown, I believe, how we have erred, not 
 from intention, but out of ignorance. Our resources are now begin- 
 ning to fail us ; we endeavour to meet the contingency by reduc- 
 tion of expense, but we must avoid inefficiency. The great engine 
 of the Government is its army; it cannot be tampered with 
 without danger. I have already witnessed two or three commo- 
 tions that threatened our empire with ruin : twice from the dis- 
 affection of the Natives ; once from the discontent of the Euro- 
 peans. In times of peace and order the machine is sufficiently 
 manageable, and works well : it is in times of commotion that 
 superior minds are requisite to regulate it."* 
 
 In subsequent parts of this book it will be seen that 
 this early recognition of the danger to our rule from any 
 maladministration, or inequitable measure that might touch 
 the hearts or the homes of our Sepoys, was not a casual 
 or passing notion, or a mere piece of ornamental rhetoric, 
 but represented a logical train of thought, and a rooted 
 conviction arising from it. Our Native army, Briggs 
 repeatedly urged, was a part of the population, and 
 shared in all its feelings and interests. Here is another 
 significant passage taken from the concluding pages of 
 the " Land Tax" : 
 
 " We are too apt to ascribe to the inhabitants of India a 
 character for timidity and pusillanimity. They are neither timid 
 nor pusillanimous : they are bold and enterprising. He who has 
 read their history cannot deny it. The deeds of our armies in 
 India verify the assertion ; and the false estimate we have of them 
 may lead to our ruin. When we recollect the scene at Vellore in 
 1806, and the state of the Madras army at that period ; when we 
 see a population of a hundred thousand inhabitants quitting their 
 houses and their property, and encamping for whole weeks in the 
 open fields, rather than pay a house-tax imposed without their 
 consent, as did the inhabitants of Benares, we. may judge whether 
 they will tamely submit to injuries affecting whole communities. 
 So far from their being supine, they are most tenacious of their 
 wonted privileges. The hold we have on them is already too 
 loose : it should be our object to bind them more strongly to our 
 Government. We have, fortunately, in the Hindoo institutions 
 themselves, a broad basis on which to build. Each village is 
 
 * P. 457.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 121 
 
 entire within itself : its elders form a body of senators at home, 
 and representatives of the people abroad. A number of such 
 villages constitute a district, which has its chief, who represents 
 each of these little States at the Court of his Sovereign. These 
 individuals enjoy their family estates absolutely independent of 
 the favour of their Prince. They hold their representative offices 
 hereditarily, as he holds his crown ; and cannot be dispossessed, 
 but for treason, without violence and injustice."* 
 
 No greater impediment exists to the removal of even 
 acknowledged evils and deficiencies in our administration 
 of India than the false and fantastic notions which are 
 prevalent concerning the condition of the country under 
 its Native Princes. The English rulers of India con- 
 ceive of that condition as one of such extreme misery 
 and oppression that any change could hardly fail to be a 
 change for the better, while a change which substituted 
 British rule for what they summarily describe as 
 " Oriental despotism" must be equivalent to a transition 
 from darkness into light. This condition of wretched- 
 ness is never demonstrated ; it is assumed to be like a 
 mathematical axiom, which requires only to be stated in 
 order to command acquiescence. And yet even upon 
 the surface of things there is much which would seem to 
 render this assertion, so confidently and constantly made, 
 a highly questionable one. It was not the wretchedness 
 and poverty of India which first attracted European 
 adventurers thither. It was, on the contrary, as they 
 say and as they describe, its wealth, the magnificence of 
 its Princes, and the high level of civilisation and pros- 
 perity to which its people had attained. And in these 
 days it is impossible for the least observant traveller to 
 journey through India without meeting, in all parts of 
 the country, the indications of a grandeur and an opu- 
 lence that have only recently decayed. The most con- 
 vincing proof of the general order and security prevailing 
 in India under her Native Princes is to be seen in the 
 irrigation tanks, the mango-groves, the wells, caravan- 
 serais, mosques, and temples now too often in ruins 
 which meet the eye so frequently in almost every pro- 
 vince. These and they must formerly have been much 
 
 * Pp. 454, 455.
 
 122 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 more numerous were nearly all the creation of private 
 liberality. They demonstrate alike the wealth and the 
 public spirit of the people, and what is riot less important 
 in passing judgment upon a Government, the safety with 
 which the evidences of wealth could be openly displayed. 
 In 1829 Colonel Sleeman caused an estimate to be made 
 of the public works of ornament and utility which in the 
 single district of Jubbulpore now included in the Cen- 
 tral Provinces were due to the munificence of private 
 persons in days anterior to British rule. The population 
 of the district amounted to about half a million ; and 
 there were, in various parts of town and country, erected 
 by individuals for the public good, and with no view to 
 personal return in profits, 2,286 tanks ; 209 large wells, 
 with flights of steps extending from the top down to the 
 water in its lowest stage ; 1,560 wells lined with masonry, 
 but without stairs; 362 Hindoo temples, and 22 mosques. 
 The estimated cost of these works amounted to 866,640. 
 In addition to these, two-thirds of the towns and villages 
 were embedded in groves of mango and tamarind trees, 
 mixed with the banyan and the peepul, all planted at 
 the cost of private citizens, at an estimated cost of 
 120,000. 
 
 Here is a picture of the wealth and prosperity of 
 Bengal, drawn by Mr. Verelst, one of our early 
 Governors : 
 
 " Though our provinces (Bengal, Behar, and part of Orissa) afford 
 no gold, silver, or precious stones, yet the vast variety and abun- 
 dance of the produce of the land, and the excellence of the manu- 
 factures of the inhabitants, leave them no great occasion for 
 imported commodities ; and at the same time invite foreign mer- 
 chants to purchase and export these goods and manufactures from 
 
 their superior cheapness and quality The extent of this 
 
 traffic was prodigious ; and besides the large investments of the 
 different European nations, the Bengal silk, cloths, etc., were dis- 
 persed, to a vast amount, to the west and north inland, as far as 
 Guzerat, Lahore, and even Ispahan. 
 
 " Here, then, we trace the grand and true fountain of the wealth 
 of the Soubahs, and the splendour of their Nazirns. But, besides 
 this, there were also several collateral streams, which served in 
 their turn to feed and swell the principal one. The advantages 
 accruing from so beneficial a commerce, enabled the farmer and
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 123 
 
 the manufacturer to discharge their stipulated revenue to their 
 Prince ; and these revenues, again, did not centre or sink in his 
 coffers, but returned through various channels into the general 
 circulation.* Large jaghires were granted to men of noble families, 
 or particular favourites ; while districts were allotted to other 
 branches of the reigning family at a rate vastly below their real 
 value. Large armies of horse were maintained, either for show or 
 security, at an enormous expense ; and even the luxury and pomp, 
 customary among the potentates of the East, contributed in some 
 degree, by encouraging a spirit of expense, and dissipating large 
 sums among the people in general, which if they had remained 
 shut up in the treasury, would have been a loss to the currency, 
 and no present advantage to the proprietor. By these means, 
 therefore, and the advantage of trade already mentioned, an exten- 
 sive and brisk circulation of specie was kept up everywhere ; the 
 farmer was easy, the artisan encouraged, the merchant enriched, 
 the Prince satisfied. It would not be easy to ascertain the precise 
 era in which all these began to decline, but so much is certain, 
 that the decline was neither sensibly felt by the country, nor per- 
 ceptible to us, till after the revolution in favour of Meer Jaffier." 
 
 It was as the consequence of this revolution that the 
 English began to govern the country, or rather to 
 plunder it. 
 
 Extracts of a similar purport might be multiplied 
 indefinitely, and show, beyond all possibility of dispute, 
 that India, under her Native Princes, was possessed of 
 wealth and abundance of goods, that her upper classes 
 were remarkable for their liberality and public spirit, and 
 that the industrial and lower classes were in a thriving 
 condition. What is the explanation of all this so con- 
 trary to the common legend, officially propagated, of dis- 
 order and misery from which we were divinely commis- 
 sioned to rescue the wretched Hindoos ? It would be 
 absurd to ascribe the prosperity of India to the character 
 of her Kings and Princes, whether reigning at Delhi or 
 elsewhere. Great Kings, it is true, are to be found 
 among them, but extremely bad ones in far greater 
 numbers. And after all, 
 
 " Of all the ills that human hearts endure, 
 How small the part that Kings can cause or cure." 
 
 It is not in the character of the Kings or Princes of 
 
 * No ''Home Charges" in those days.
 
 124 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 India, but in that of the constitutional order at the head 
 of which they were placed, that we must look for the 
 explanation. As far as India is concerned, we must get 
 rid of the popular conception of an Oriental despot, and 
 recognise the Emperors of Delhi, as they truly were, 
 monarchs despotic in theory, but hedged round by con- 
 ditions which limited their power, certainly beyond the 
 circle of their own Court, as effectually as if they had 
 been devised for that end. 
 
 For the collection of the revenue, the Empire was 
 divided into Soubas, or provinces, and these again were 
 sub-divided into Pergunnas, or fiscal divisions. The con- 
 necting link between the Soubadar or Governor of a 
 province, and the central authority, was the annual 
 revenue, which he was expected to remit to the Imperial 
 Treasury. In other respects the Provincial Governor 
 might be regarded as a ruler with full powers, practically 
 uncontrolled. The troops within his limits looked for 
 pay, promotion, and reward, not to the Emperor, but to 
 their own Soubadar. If the reigning Emperor was a 
 strong man, the Soubadars were held in due subordina- 
 tion ; but when the central authority became weak or 
 unpopular, the Imperial commands became inoperative. 
 It was thus that the Mogul Empire fell to pieces, afford- 
 ing the opportunities and the means for the rise of 
 British influence, in the midst of a Hindoo revolution 
 excited by the bigotry of Aurungzeb, who reversed the 
 tolerant policy of his ancestors, and endeavoured to 
 intensify Mussulman supremacy into an absolute and 
 exclusive domination. Here, then, was the first efficient 
 check upon the arbitrary desires of the Imperial head. 
 The Emperors could not afford to quarrel with their own 
 Soubadars. But the Soubadar, in his turn, was sur- 
 rounded by checks as effectual as those which limited 
 the autocracy of the Emperor. In the province which 
 he ruled there existed both a Hindoo and a Moslem 
 aristocracy Zemindars, Jaghiredars, and Talookdars ; 
 and the measure of his ability to hold his own against 
 any extraordinary mandates of the Imperial Court de- 
 pended upon the warmth of attachment and fidelity
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 125 
 
 which he had kindled among his more powerful vassals. 
 On the whole, a fair field was open to merit without 
 regard to race, colour, or religious distinction. When 
 we came into possession of the Gangetic provinces, the 
 wealthiest merchants, the richest bankers, the most 
 powerful landowners were all Hindoos a truly remark- 
 able illustration of the liberal and tolerant spirit of the 
 Mussulman Government. 
 
 The provincial nobility, in its turn, depended for its 
 power and credit on the loyalty and content of the 
 village communities, from whose labour its own wealth 
 was derived. By the constitution of a village community 
 it was specially adapted for migration from one part of 
 the country to another. And communities which found 
 the exactions of a Talookdar, Jaghiredar, or Zemindar 
 intolerable, simply migrated en masse within the juris- 
 diction of another, from whom they w r ere certain to 
 receive welcome and protection. This contingency of 
 migration, there being everywhere plenty of waste land 
 to be settled, acted as an effectual check upon oppressive 
 landlords. For .while it impoverished the oppressor, it 
 added to the wealth and power of a rival. Thus the 
 political and social order in India, in the time of our 
 Tudors and Stuarts, was so far consolidated that each 
 grade in the Imperial fabric derived strength and sup- 
 port from the grade next below it, the mass of the 
 people being thus effectually protected from oppression 
 and extortion. 
 
 In desire and in intention the Imperial authority 
 might be, and probably often was, as rapacious as the 
 proverbial Oriental despot ; but it had limits prescribed 
 to its autocracy which, practically, it was impossible to 
 overpass. The entire financial machinery, the assessment 
 and collection of the taxes, was confided to those whose 
 strongest interest it was to keep the burden of taxation 
 as low as possible. From the Nawab Soubadar, or the 
 Rajah ruling the Province or the Talook, down to the 
 humblest ryot, there was no one who did not lose by 
 every rupee which was abstracted from the Souba to 
 swell the magnificence of the Imperial Court. And being
 
 126 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 the men in possession, they were, with a fair share of 
 prudence and deference, and within the limits of custom 
 and precedent, masters of the situation. Another early 
 Governor of Bengal, Mr. Holwell, in a strain of moral 
 indignation foreshadowing our unsympathetic and in- 
 flexible rule, thus explains to the Court of Directors how 
 the fiscal exactions of the Imperial Court were checked 
 and limited by that chain of local and mutual interests 
 to which I have briefly adverted. 
 
 "The Eajalis and Zemindars by private contract with the Soubah's 
 officers, who are charged with the management of this department, 
 obtain more lands than by their sunnuds appear, and consequently 
 pay no rent to the King for the surplus land. The same artifice 
 is practised between the Dewans of the Eajahs and Zemindars, 
 and the farmers, and the tenants or leaseholders under them, by 
 bribing the officers of the Jummabundi, and those entrusted with 
 the measurements of the lands, that they may enjoy among them 
 the benefit of the surplus land ; and 1 may justly aver that there 
 is not a tenant in Hindostan but possesses and occupies a greater 
 quantity of land than his pottah expresses, or than he pays rent 
 for. Consequently it is the tenant that ultimately enjoys the 
 benefit of the surplus land, thus gained by corruption, while the 
 King suffers in his rents. It extremely well answers the tenant's 
 purpose to possess, if he could by a small bribe, more land than he 
 pays for, because himself and his heirs enjoy the profit of it in 
 perpetuity ; since by a fundamental law of the Empire, these 
 pottahs are irrevocable so long as they pay the rent rated to them 
 respectively, and so tender and indulgent are the courts of Hin- 
 dostan in this particular that no tenant forfeits his land before he 
 has failed in his payments for twelve months ; though the land- 
 tax by the same laws is to be paid every three months."* 
 
 With a slight deduction for a few dyslogistic terms, it 
 will be seen that Mr. Holwell's hostile description of the 
 tenure and taxation of land under the Imperial system, 
 is in substance just as, in accordance with the views of 
 Colonel Briggs, it has been represented in the preceding 
 pages. 
 
 The chief source of revenue then, as now, was a por- 
 tion of the produce of the soil. Anterior to our rule, 
 though money payments were the rule in Bengal Proper, 
 the more general practice was to take a proportion of the 
 
 * Letter to Chairman of Court of Directors, December 1 765.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 127 
 
 standing crop in satisfaction of the State dues. This 
 practice was stigmatised as barbarous by our English 
 administrators, and, by degrees, we everywhere substi- 
 tuted assessments in cash. Lord Cornwallis's Permanent 
 Settlement was an exception to the general rule, so far 
 as the permanence of its demand was concerned, but it 
 affects only a small part of British India. Barbarous as 
 the practice of levying a tax in kind may appear, it was 
 a practice exactly suited to the condition of the agri- 
 cultural classes in India. Grain was, in fact, the cur- 
 rency of the village, the chief medium of exchange. The 
 practice of levy in kind, also, preserved the State from 
 entanglement in the labyrinth of the infinite variety of 
 tenures which prevail in an Indian village. From the 
 immemorial usage of village self-government, and the 
 sacred arbitration of the Punchayut, these tenures could 
 never become a subject of dispute in any superior courts; 
 the Government, moreover, looked upon the village as 
 embodied, for all official purposes, in its harvest for the 
 year. So long as the State got its proportion of the 
 produce, it left the allotment of each man's contribution 
 to the village authorities, and had no occasion or desire 
 to interfere. When we came into possession these things 
 were a great mystery to us ; and with the best inten- 
 tions in the world, we introduced at one bound new 
 methods of assessing and collecting the land revenue, 
 which have converted a once flourishing population into 
 a huge horde of paupers. Our first act in a newly 
 acquired district was to decree that the land revenue 
 should henceforth be paid in coin, without having pre- 
 viously ascertained if there was sufficient coin in circula- 
 tion to allow of such a sudden and drastic change. There 
 was not, and the consequence of our ill-judged and pre- 
 cipitate action was a ruinous derangement of values. A 
 pressing demand for specie glutted the markets with an 
 immense quantity of produce, which had to be sold for 
 whatever it would bring. The first effect of British 
 rule in an Indian province, owing to this violent change 
 in the method of collection, was, in many recognisable 
 instances, to reduce the incomes of the agricultural
 
 128 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 classes by 50 per cent. Again, the assessment being 
 levied in money, in the event of the revenue falling into 
 arrears a thing impossible under the old practice of 
 taking a share of the produce it became necessary to 
 proceed against the defaulters by distraint or civil 
 process. This at once entangled the State in the intri- 
 cate labyrinth of land tenures, and the individual allot- 
 ment of village contributions. It became necessary that 
 there should be a record in which the names of all occu- 
 pants, together with the number of their fields and 
 particulars as to their tenures and rights, should be 
 specified. This was officially described as conferring an 
 important privilege upon the ryots by giving them a 
 transferable and saleable right in their holdings. Actually, 
 it transferred the guardianship of their rights from the 
 village community of which they were members, to their 
 own servant, the keeper of the village records, now 
 insidiously and almost imperceptibly converted into a 
 servant of Government. Obviously the English officer 
 ostensibly at the head of revenue affairs in a district 
 does not, and cannot, possess the minute local knowledge 
 required to prove or preserve the accuracy of these 
 village records. Those chiefly interested, the ryots, are 
 as helpless, for the records have been kept, from genera- 
 tion to generation, by their own hereditary servant, a 
 Brahmin, in a language they cannot read. These all 
 important records are now laid open, through their 
 Brahmin record-keeper, now free from their control, to 
 the tender mercies of those very Native underlings of 
 office, to emancipate the ryots from whose corruption 
 and oppression the change had been professedly intro- 
 duced. These men were underpaid, without effective 
 supervision, and, therefore, specially liable to succumb to 
 bribery, and under their manipulation the records became, 
 in the course of a few years, a mass of confusion and 
 imposture. Among the many causes which combined to 
 produce the insurrection of 1857, none were more potent 
 than the fraudulent sales of land that had been effected 
 by means of these falsified records, by which ancient 
 landholders were converted by hundreds into the rack-
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 129 
 
 rented tenants of some grasping and unscrupulous 
 usurer. 
 
 The inhabitants of an Indian village, under their own 
 Princes, formed a sort of petty republic, the affairs of 
 which were managed by hereditary officers, any unfit 
 person being set aside by popular judgment in favour of 
 a more acceptable member of his family. The village 
 contained, in miniature, all the elements of a State, and 
 was well nigh sufficient to protect its members from all 
 oppression but that of armed or military violence, when 
 all other protection was withdrawn. 
 
 By destroying the popular authority of the headman, 
 the responsibility of the village accountant and record- 
 keeper, and the judicial powers of the Punchayut, British 
 administration of the land revenue subverted the entire 
 organisation of the village communities, and may almost 
 be said to have torn up by the roots the entire social, 
 economical, and political fabric of India. Local self- 
 government and local arbitration have been swept away, 
 and a costly and mechanical centralisation substituted. 
 
 The vigorous corporate life of the village communities 
 was not peculiar to the agricultural classes. It knit 
 together, with hardly less strength, the trading, manu- 
 facturing, and banking classes. It created in each class 
 a force of social opinion which was a far more efficient 
 restraint upon personal selfishness and dishonesty than 
 those courts of law which seem rather to afford facilities 
 for wealthy greed, and for fraud in every form. Formerly, 
 when there was practically no judicial appeal beyond the 
 class Punchayut or the patriarchs of the guild, there 
 was, by all accounts, a spirit of trust and of honour in 
 the carrying out of commercial engagements which have 
 never been surpassed in any country of the world. This 
 corporate life, as it existed without the aid of officials, 
 and beyond their cognizance, continued to discharge its 
 functions in a healthy and orderly manner, when both 
 government and laws were, during a revolutionary 
 period, replaced by anarchy, rebellion and invasion. 
 And so it was that as one province after another came 
 into our possession, our English officials were surprised 
 
 K
 
 130 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 to discover behind the turbulence and disorder conse- 
 quent upon the breaking up of the once magnificent 
 Mogul Empire, an inner social order hardly affected by 
 the tumult and struggle around it, but busy, active, and 
 prosperous. 
 
 The difference, in short, between our land revenue 
 system and that of our predecessors, as very clearly 
 exposed and explained by Colonel Briggs, was this. 
 They were content to levy the State demand by a simple 
 process which had superficially what may be called, if 
 you like, a barbarous appearance, but which had adjusted 
 itself with nicety to the social and climatic conditions of 
 the country, out of which it had, in truth, grown. We 
 grasped at too much in every sense of the word, and in 
 all directions. We aimed at an impossible perfection of 
 record and mastery of detail by our officials, and realised 
 our conception so imperfectly that we achieved nothing 
 but the general ruin of the people. Since then we have 
 continually but impotently striven by various inconsistent 
 measures of reconstruction and palliation to protect the 
 ryots from the destructive effects of our revenue opera- 
 tions. And in this year of grace, 1885, Lord Dufferin, 
 succeeding to the well-intended plans and labours of Lord 
 Ripon, is busy in attempts to solve the distressing 
 problems of uncertain tenures and assessments, and to 
 resuscitate local self-government with extremely limited 
 functions. 
 
 Brief and necessarily superficial as has been the fore- 
 going sketch of the changes produced by English admi- 
 nistration in India, it will suffice to remind us of the 
 historical fact that the laws and customs which we found 
 regulating the lives of her inhabitants were not laws and 
 customs which had been arbitrarily imposed upon them 
 by the fiat of a conqueror. They were the natural and 
 genuine product of the character and faith of the native 
 races, and because they were so they possessed that flexi- 
 bility and adaptive quality which are characteristic of 
 all natural growths. This or that military adventurer 
 might establish his supremacy in this or that portion of 
 the continent, but he had not the means, even had he
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 131 
 
 felt the desire, to interfere with the working of those 
 institutions already in existence among the people. But 
 he was conscious of no such desire. He was himself a 
 native of the country in which he had risen to power. 
 He had grown from infancy to manhood under the shelter 
 and influence of these immemorial institutions. He knew 
 of no other way of carrying on the business of the 
 country ; and he would never have entertained so wild a 
 project for so it would have presented itself to him as 
 that of devising a new system and forcing it upon his 
 subjects. The dynastic revolutions in India, anterior to 
 our period of power, did not aim at the subversion of 
 political order, or at any change in the constitution of 
 society. And the wealth-producing classes thanks to 
 their admirable capacity for self-government, and the 
 strong corporate life that knit them together were but 
 little affected by them. But all this was changed when 
 we appeared upon the scene. We were the products of 
 a civilisation differing in every possible way from that 
 which had wrought with such grand and beneficent 
 results in India, and we regarded what we did not under- 
 stand with the scepticism and the contempt which are 
 usually the concomitants of ignorance. Unhappily, too, 
 for the people of India, we differed from our governing 
 predecessors in another all-important particular. We did 
 not, like them, depend for the preservation of our power 
 upon the loyalty of our subjects, but upon the might of 
 a great nation at the other side of the globe. This con- 
 sciousness of an independent reserve of strength has 
 operated to make the English officials far less tender 
 and considerate of popular feelings, affections and pre- 
 judices than their predecessors had been. Strong in the 
 conviction of their own intellectual and moral superiority, 
 strong, also, iiL the knowledge of an irresistible material 
 force behind them they fell into the error of supposing 
 that whatever they did, or attempted to do, must be, as 
 a matter of course, a vast improvement upon anything 
 which the people had experienced before. 
 
 There is nothing in my experience more painfully 
 enlightening for the student of political science, as exem- 
 
 K 2
 
 132 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 plified in our Indian Empire, than to peruse with care 
 the official and historical records that disclose the pro- 
 gress of an Indian province during the first half century 
 of British domination. The same story is repeated in 
 province after province with heart-breaking uniformity. 
 A number of English officers, charged to overflowing 
 with self-complacent philanthropy and national con- 
 fidence, are let loose upon the devoted region. They set 
 to work under the impression, excited and slightly justi- 
 fied by recent revolution or war, that the material to be 
 operated on is a population quite without social or 
 political form, and void of anything like order, and upon 
 which, consequently, they can impress any shape that is 
 most pleasing to themselves. They are the potter, and the 
 people are to be as clay in their hands. Actually, they 
 have before them, not only a very complex social organ- 
 isation, but one of extraordinary toughness and endur- 
 ance. A desperate conflict, carried on in the dark, at once 
 begins between this social order and the judicial and 
 administrative system which obstinately ignores its 
 existence. In this conflict the prosperity of the country, 
 both agricultural and manufacturing, is rapidly and 
 completely destroyed. The heaven-sent English adminis- 
 trators are much at a loss to account for this grievous 
 result. It cannot be from any lack of wisdom in them- 
 selves, for are they not the apostles and the evangelists 
 of a higher civilisation ? And they set it down most of 
 them, for there are always a few, like Briggs, who have 
 some insight into the truth to the perversity of " the 
 Indian character", to the inborn depravity of " the 
 Oriental mind ", which drive the Natives to refuse to be 
 happy and prosperous, although provided with all the 
 appliances requisite for achieving such a condition of 
 life. But at last, the upper classes having been destroyed, 
 and the lower sunk in indebtedness, the revenue begins 
 to fall oiF. This is serious, and investigations are then 
 get on foot to discover the cause of this most appalling 
 phenomenon. Then, but not till then, it is perceived, 
 but seldom confessed, that our own precipitate ignorance 
 has been the cause ; and an attempt is made to recon-
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 133 
 
 struct the things that we, in our blindness, have de- 
 stroyed. Of course the old order cannot be, and never 
 has been, restored in its integrity, but as in the case of 
 Mr. Robert Mertens Bird's village settlement in the 
 North West Provinces, a superficial semblance of it is 
 laboriously patched together, and this lame and impotent 
 conclusion is trumpeted abroad as an evidence of the 
 superior wisdom and beneficence of our rule. In many 
 cases of our administrative reforms and removal of abuses, 
 we made the giants first, and then we killed them. 
 
 In a " Joint Report of the Survey and Assessment of 
 the Bombay Presidency", printed in 1850, there is a 
 whole string of half-conscious confessions, exactly con- 
 firmatory of what has been said in commenting on 
 Colonel Briggs's Land Tax, and remarkably summed up 
 in the following passage : 
 
 " We fully coincide in the justice of the principle of limiting the 
 Government demand to a portion of the true rent, and believe 50 or 
 80 per cent, thereof, as laid down by the Board, would form a 
 liberal assessment, and that this principle, if capable of being carried 
 into practice, would prove an invaluable blessing to the agricultural 
 classes of India, and introduce a neiv era in their history. And we 
 further ascribe to the fact of a portion of the rent having been seldom, 
 if ever, left to the proprietor or cultivator in India, the characteristic 
 wretchedness of its agricultural population, rather than to any 
 peculiarities marking its different systems of revenue management." 
 
 But that "principle" has never, under the ever- 
 growing demands of our expenditure, been found "capable 
 of being carried into practice", and "the new era" for 
 the agricultural classes of India has, consequently, not 
 yet been " introduced". 
 
 The principle of gradual evolution cannot be ignored 
 with impunity in India, any more than in any other 
 quarter of the globe, and our work in India, so far, has 
 been almost wholly destructive, socially, religiously, and 
 politically. The effect of our presence in India has been 
 to throw down the ancient land-marks, and to leave the 
 lives and the minds of the people without a guide or a 
 goal. There are but few traces yet apparent of a new 
 order arising from the ruins of the past, and those are
 
 134 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 not entirely reassuring for the stability of our rule. Our 
 English representatives in the East, with their faces 
 ever more and more set towards home, seem to be more 
 evidently than ever "losing touch" of the people; so that 
 our administration, while it perpetually grows in costli- 
 ness and indebtedness, tends to become a deaf and blind 
 mechanism, revolving in obedience, not to popular wants 
 or wishes, but to the heartless routine of departments 
 and the narrow interests of the Anglo-Indian Services. 
 
 I shall not offer here to estimate, or to discuss, the 
 countervailing advantages to the Indian Empire of the 
 Western enlightenment, and a higher culture acquired 
 by certain classes of the population in consequence of 
 British supremacy. India has paid, and pays, for all she 
 receives in this, as in every other department of the 
 public service. Nor shall I examine the real extent and 
 benefit of what has been called the Pax Britannica, 
 broken as" it has been, since 1820, by many calls to arms 
 within the continent ; by wars in China, Burmah, Persia, 
 and Abyssinia, entirely due to Imperial demands ; by 
 the terrible convulsion of 1857 ; and by two aggressive 
 wars in Afghanistan, which, between them, have cost 
 India more than fifty millions sterling.* 
 
 I am not discussing at present on which side the 
 
 * Twenty millions is a very moderate calculation for the first Afghan 
 war, 1839 to 1842, without including its cruel sequel, the conquest of 
 Scinde in 1843. The second war, 1879 to 1882, is proved clearly in 
 the London Statesman for September 1881, the article being attributed 
 to about the most competent financial auditor living, General Sir George 
 Balfour, M.P. to have cost quite thirty millions. A summary but very 
 fair demonstration of the fact can be seen in a comparison of the gross 
 military charges in India in Lord Northbrook's time with what they 
 were in Lord Lytton's. 
 
 Under Lord Northbrook. 
 
 1872-73 14,596,802 
 
 1873-74 14,217,390 
 
 1874-75 14,386,321 
 
 1875-76 14,262,848 
 
 Total... 57,463,361 
 
 Under Lord Lytton. 
 
 1878-79 17,092,488 
 
 1879-80 23,383,982 
 
 1880-81 30,583,684 
 
 1881-82 19,618,100 
 
 Total... 90,678,434 
 
 There is nothing whatever to account for the difference of thirty-three 
 millions between the two periods except the Afghan war.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 135 
 
 balance of advantage lies from the connection of Great 
 Britain and India. Nor do I deny that some profit may 
 be reaped on both sides. The only question before us 
 now is British administration of the Indian Land Tax, 
 with that economic and social result in the impoverish- 
 ment of the people of which Colonel Briggs was one of 
 the first to warn us, and which since his time" has per- 
 ceptibly advanced to the stage of periodical famine. 
 
 Official apologists have lately become accustomed to 
 deny, with an air of triumphant eulogy, that the Indian 
 Land Tax is a tax at all, and to declare it to be a rent. 
 It is, I am afraid, too true that in a great many provinces 
 the Land Tax does swallow up all, or nearly all, the rent. 
 But those who have taken to eulogising Anglo-Indian 
 fiscal institutions on these extraordinary grounds, appear 
 to have forgotten they omit, at least, to remind their 
 audience that the Imperial State landlord of India is 
 an alien and absentee landlord, who has half the rent 
 and nearly half of all additional assessments remitted to 
 him in his foreign place of residence ; while he disburses 
 nearly one-third of the same revenues for the remunera- 
 tion of the Civil and Military services, his own relatives 
 and fellow-countrymen, who have no abiding- place on 
 the soil, and no stake in the fortunes of India. It is 
 not easy to see how our scientific frontier, the competi- 
 tive erudition of our Collectors and Judges, or the higher 
 culture disseminated by our Educational Department, 
 can satisfy or pacify the tax-paying masses who are 
 insufficiently fed and clothed.
 
 136 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 WHILE the Land Tax was going through the press, 
 Briggs paid one short visit to London in May 1830, and 
 was advised by one of his old friends at the India House 
 to pay his respects to Lord Ellenborough at the Board 
 of Control. He was very graciously received, and was 
 encouraged by the President of the Board to give his 
 views frankly and fully on every branch of Indian 
 administration. From what soon followed, as well as 
 from the note, shortly to be quoted, in Lord Ellen- 
 borough's diary, it would appear that on this occasion 
 Colonel Briggs must have impressed the President of 
 the Board of Control with a high opinion of his intelli- 
 gence and talents. 
 
 " In the midst of my preparations to go back to India, an event 
 occurred which led me to believe that my lot would be cast for 
 some time in another Eastern country. This was the sudden 
 death of my esteemed friend and companion, Sir John McDonald 
 Kinneir, Envoy at the Court of Persia. Lord Ellenborough, then 
 President of the Board of Control, offered the place first to the 
 Honourable Mountstuart Elphinstone, and, on his declining it, to 
 Sir Richard Jenkins, who had distinguished himself as Resident 
 at Nagpore. Jenkins was then canvassing for the seat in the 
 Court of Directors which he filled for many years, and he, also, 
 declined to go to Persia. At the suggestion of the old and 
 influential friend who had given me the benefit of his introduc- 
 tion and recommendation to Lord Ellenborough, I furnished his 
 Lordship with a very comprehensive letter on the actual condition 
 of the Persian Kingdom, the relations of the King's sons with each 
 other, and with the chief provincial governors, one or two of whom 
 had long entertained designs of asserting their practical independ- 
 ence at the demise of the reigning King. 
 
 " Foremost among these was Hussain Ali Mirza, who had been 
 Governor of the Province of Shiraz for a very long period, and 
 had resided there from his childhood. He, I was informed, had 
 made up his mind to establish himself as a hereditary Governor,
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 137 
 
 with the humble title of Wakil-i-acdum, or representative of the 
 people. Though twenty years had passed since I was in Persia 
 there had been little change in the politics, and very little in the 
 personal elements of power. I had been attentive to passing 
 events in that country, and had kept up an occasional correspond- 
 ence with one person of great intelligence and talent. It was 
 clear to me that on the demise of the reigning Shah there would 
 be a contest for the throne, and that a decisive step in such a 
 crisis by the British Government might make or mar our influence 
 at Teheran, where Russia had been making way steadily during 
 the whole of the present century. 
 
 " I may mention that at the death of the Shah in 1834 a struggle 
 for the succession, combined with an uprising of several ambitious 
 chieftains, took place very much as I had predicted, and tran- 
 quillity was restored mainly by the energy and ability of Captain 
 Lindsay, of the Madras Artillery, who afterwards assumed the 
 name of Bethune. In his capacity of a General in the Persian 
 Army, he defeated the forces raised by Hussain Ali Mirza, the 
 Prince of Shiraz, and took him prisoner, by which means Mohammed 
 Ali Mirza, son of Prince Abbas, was firmly seated on the throne, 
 and English influence for the time became dominant. For this 
 service Captain Lindsay Bethune obtained the local rank of an 
 English Major-General. I have somewhat anticipated matters, 
 and gone a little out of my own course, in order to show that my 
 views, as events proved, were not unworthy of Lord Ellenborough's 
 attention ; and, in truth, he was greatly struck by them, and was 
 not only pleased to say that I had given him more insight into 
 Persian affairs than anyone with whom he had yet come in contact, 
 but at a subsequent interview told me that he should recommend 
 me to the Court of Directors for the post of Envoy to Persia. The 
 East India Company then bore half the expense of the Embassy, 
 and the Government of India, by right or by courtesy, had some 
 voice in the appointment. Lord Ellenborough invited me to his 
 house at Eoehampton, to meet at dinner the Duke of Wellington, 
 Sir Eobert Peel, and the Chairman and Deputy Chairman of the 
 Court of Directors." 
 
 In his Political Diary, Lord Ellenborough briefly 
 mentions the favourable impression that Briggs appears 
 to have made upon him at the first interview, where 
 Indian affairs were discussed. " 1830 May 14. Colonel 
 Briggs called. He is a clever man. He will prepare for 
 me a memorandum on the Native Army. He seems 
 equally conversant with revenue, judicial, and military 
 matters."* 
 
 * Lord Ellenborough's Political Diary, edited by Lord Colchester 
 (Beutley, 1881), p. 246.
 
 138 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 In the sole reminiscence he gives of the little dinner 
 at Roehampton, the Colonel gives us reason to regret 
 that he did not record or remember a little more. 
 
 " I was much interested, after the cloth was removed, at hearing 
 the Duke of Wellington, apropos of the recent occurrences in 
 Paris, explain to Sir Eobert Peel how a town might be taken and 
 occupied, though the streets were barricaded and guns placed so as 
 to command them. The Duke said : ' It is a tedious and dangerous 
 operation all the same. You recollect the French were at work 
 more than six months in taking the open town of Saragossa.' Sir 
 Eobert Peel asked how that was at last effected. The Duke 
 replied, ' By taking house after house, breaking through the party 
 walls on each side, till the troops got past the barricades, and took 
 them in reverse'. 
 
 " My appointment somehow or other seemed to hang fire, though 
 Lord Ellen borough, in order to keep me at home, arranged with 
 Sir -Francis Burdett that I should be called as a witness before 
 the Parliamentary Committee then sitting on Indian affairs.* I 
 learned afterwards that a majority of the Court of Directors were 
 desirous of having Major John Campbell, the locum tenens, con- 
 firmed as Envoy, and had suggested, therefore, that the office should 
 be filled up by the Governor-General in India, to whom a letter 
 was addressed stating that the Court would approve of Major 
 Campbell's appointment. I left England with my wife and two 
 eldest daughters under the full impression that I was to be Envoy 
 to Persia. 
 
 " On my arrival at Madras I, therefore, addressed the Governor- 
 General, applying for employment in the diplomatic line in which 
 I had so long served both in Persia and India, and adding that I 
 was authorised by Lord Ellenborough to advert to the fact that he 
 considered me the best qualified and most eligible person for the 
 post of Envoy to the Court of Persia. I received very soon a very 
 gracious autograph reply from Lord William Beiitinck, stating 
 that the correspondence between Lord Ellenborough and the Court 
 of Directors on the subject had been communicated to him, but 
 that before seeing that correspondence, anticipating that the choice 
 might be left to him, he had written to the Court of Directors 
 nominating the present Eesident at Hyderabad, Colonel Josiah 
 Stewart, my old comrade in Persia,f for the office, and that the 
 selection could not now be altered. He was pleased to add that 
 he regretted that Lord Ellenborough had not ' directed ' him to 
 appoint me, for, said his Lordship, ' While I should have had the 
 
 " May 18th, 1830. Examined Colonel Briggs, who gave very good 
 evidence indeed." Lord Ellenborough's Political Diary, vol. ii, p. 102. 
 t Ante, p. 32.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 139 
 
 fullest confidence in you, I can ill afford to spare the services of 
 the present Eesident at Hyderabad'." 
 
 The Governor-General, also, intimated to Colonel 
 Briggs that it was not improbable his services might 
 within a few months be required for the purpose of 
 applying some remedy to the disordered affairs of Mysore, 
 and invited him to offer an opinion as to the condition 
 of that country, and as to the measures that might be 
 taken for its relief. The views of Colonel Briggs are 
 given very clearly in the following extracts from his 
 reply, dated "Madras, 22nd May 1831". 
 
 " If the accounts which have reached me are correct, we are 
 lending our aid to enable the Eajah of Mysore to force oppressive 
 contributions from a people accustomed to a considerable degree 
 of freedom, already borne down by the weight of taxation, and now 
 full of resentment and determined to resist. Our people have 
 been repulsed three times in the field, and although our power 
 must be asserted and submission enforced, I must be pardoned, 
 my Lord, for saying that this is not an occasion for relentless 
 operations. It is not a war against a pretender, or a tribe of free- 
 booters, but against a distressed people. The Resident in the first 
 instance, and latterly the Madras Government, have identified 
 themselves with the Eajah and his acts. And yet, my Lord, to 
 tell you the plain truth, the authorities here are no friends to the 
 Eajah. People here anticipate with pleasure, quite undisguisedly, 
 our deposing him and taking his country : they have already begun 
 to calculate on the number of new civil appointments in the pleasant 
 climate of Bangalore to which this will give rise. 
 
 " It seems clear that the Eajah has brought himself into a scrape. 
 He has ceased to pay his subsidy ;* his treasury is empty, and he 
 has no credit. There is a sufficient plea for our assuming the 
 management of his concerns when he drives his subjects into 
 rebellion, and is unable to fulfil his engagements to us. The next 
 question to consider is, what is the most politic mode of effecting 
 this assumption of power ? 
 
 " In the case of a minor there is not usually much difficulty, as 
 we have seen in the cases of Travancore and Nagpore. Hyderabad 
 presents us with the instance of an imbecile in the person of the 
 late Nizam.f Sattara affords the example of an emancipated 
 state prisoner. In all these cases the Eesident acted the part of 
 
 * This was a mistake, as will be seen shortly, into which Briggs was 
 led by the Madras authorities. 
 
 t Secunder Jah, who died in 1829.
 
 140 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 Regent, and exercised more or less authority, more or less openly, 
 according to circumstances. The Rajah of Mysore is neither a 
 minor nor an imbecile, and was too young when we released him 
 from a state prison to recollect the wretchedness of his infancy. 
 He is a young man of about thirty -five years age, said to be active 
 and intelligent, and though self-indulgent and grievously misled, 
 to be by no means of an evil disposition, or insensible to the dictates 
 of humanity and honour. He has for the last twenty years exer- 
 cised unlimited power. The surrender of that power without a 
 struggle or a pang, or the being reconciled to such a surrender 
 afterwards, for however short a period, cannot be contemplated as 
 possible. He is followed by a long train of courtiers and rapacious 
 functionaries, whom it would be equally unsafe to employ, or to 
 allow to remain idle and discontented, and, lastly, by a host of 
 priests who have received grants of land and charges in money 
 from his hands, all of whom would become most influential instru- 
 ments in rendering our rule unpopular, and in impeding every 
 reform. If it be not intended to depose the Rajah altogether, 
 which I fear is the predominant wish here, it occurs to me that 
 the situation of the Rajah of Sattara, under my predecessor in 
 office, Captain James Grant Duff, is well suited to the present 
 crisis in Mysore. Captain Grant Duff, under Mr. Elphinstone's 
 instructions, established for the Rajah a complete Native Govern- 
 ment with all its institutions, nearly as efficient as they were then 
 capable of being rendered, and I am free to confess that such a 
 Government presents, to my mind, the most perfect model of a 
 monarchy in which a system of elective representation forms no 
 part. The Rajah of Sattara's administration has, like most others 
 in which we have interfered, the grinding evil of an annual assess- 
 ment on the land, while many legitimate sources of revenue are 
 neglected and overlooked. It is upon the whole, however, a 
 cheaper and better administration than our own, and more cal- 
 culated for the happiness of the people. Captain Grant Duff, with 
 two English assistants, conducted all the affairs of the State, all 
 orders being issued in the Rajah's name, and the Rajah's seal being 
 affixed to all public documents. The Rajah sat in the Kutcherry, 
 or Durbar, alongside of Captain Grant Duff, to see how business 
 was conducted. His Civil List was fixed from the first, and had 
 not, at the time of my departure from Sattara, ever been 
 augmented. 
 
 "During Captain Grant Duff's administration the Rajah was 
 always told that he would have the sole management of his affairs 
 whenever he proved himself fit for it, and in April 1822, after four 
 years' probation, the Rajah was placed in full possession of his 
 authority. I went to Sattara just one year afterwards, and remained 
 there till January 1827, when I returned to England. During
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 141 
 
 that time I had never occasion to remonstrate against his abandon- 
 ment of any of Captain Grant Duff's rules, which the Rajah seems 
 very fortunately to respect as much as the Spartans and Athenians 
 did those of Solon and Lycurgus. 
 
 "The Treaty of Sattara in 1818 was drawn up on the model of 
 the Treaty of Mysore in 1799, and it seems to me that the institu- 
 tions of Sattara, framed under the immediate eye of Mr. Elphin- 
 stone, might with great propriety be rendered applicable to the 
 present circumstances of Mysore. To whomsoever the office of 
 Resident and Regent is entrusted, he must possess the entire con- 
 fidence of Government, for his task will be arduous, odious at first, 
 and full of difficulty. He ought, moreover, to be a man fully con- 
 vinced of the policy and wisdom of supporting a Native Govern- 
 ment, well acquainted with the frame of administration capable of 
 being worked by Natives, and accustomed himself to work with 
 them. As he will have to travel about the country frequently, 
 his allowances should be on the footing of the first-class Residencies, 
 to be charged, of course, to the Mysore State. 
 
 " In Captain Grant Duff's case, he came armed with absolute 
 power, and relinquished it gradually as he found others born and 
 bred in the country fit to exercise it. In the present case the 
 Resident would have to take that power in the first instance out 
 of the hands of those who have long enjoyed its sweets. The 
 Rajah of Sattara is a man of strong mind, free from prejudices, 
 and of irreproachable private character. The Rajah of Mysore 
 is represented as being in many respects the very reverse of 
 this. 
 
 "After a trial of some years, if the new system is found to 
 produce the good results that I should anticipate, the Rajah might 
 be reinstated in power, and become bound (by an additional article 
 of the Treaty if requisite) to refrain from departing from the laws 
 and regulations which have been established, and from engage- 
 ments that have been made during this period of probation, 
 without permission having been first obtained from the pro- 
 tecting State." 
 
 Being given to understand that there would be no 
 occasion for him to enter upon any administrative work 
 for several months, Briggs now carried out a long-deferred 
 project of travelling through the British provinces and 
 Native States of Mai wa, the North West, and Rajpootana, 
 chiefly with a view to further investigations into the 
 Land Tax and its assessment. He visited Delhi, Ajmere, 
 Jeypoor, and the States governed by Scindia and Holkar, 
 and made copious notes on many interesting topics. But
 
 142 SOME WORDS AND WORK, ETC. 
 
 a serious crisis occurred in Mysore sooner than had been 
 expected, and on the 10th of October 1831, Briggs 
 received at Delhi a private letter from the Governor- 
 General, which caused him to retrace his steps as rapidly 
 as possible to Madras. He was appointed Senior Com- 
 missioner for the government of Mysore.
 
 143 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 LORD WILLIAM BENTINCK had announced his intention 
 to the Maharaja of Mysore of assuming charge of his 
 Highness's dominions, under the provisions of the Treaty 
 of 1799, in a letter dated the 7th of September 1831. In 
 this letter the Maharaja's maladministration was unspar- 
 ingly denounced. After complaining that the ryots of 
 Mysore had been handed over to the tender mercies of 
 "needy and greedy adventurers", the Governor- General 
 proceeds as follows : 
 
 " This mismanagement, and the tyranny and oppression that re- 
 sulted, came at length to such a pass as to be no longer bearable 
 by the inhabitants of the territory of your Highness ; and for the 
 past year the half of your Highness's entire dominions have been in 
 insurrection in consequence. The troops of your Highness were 
 first sent to bring the insurgents to subjection ; the greatest ex- 
 cesses were committed and unparalleled cruelties were inflicted by 
 your Highness's officers ; but the insurrection was not quelled. It 
 became necessary to detach a part of the armies of the British 
 Government to restore tranquillity, and take part against the insur- 
 gents. Tranquillity has for the present been restored, but the 
 British Government cannot permit its name or its power to be 
 identified with these acts of your Highness's misrule." 
 
 Truly a terrible indictment, which has been frequently 
 recapitulated, and made the most of ever since, to justify 
 the long- continued sequestration of the Mysore terri- 
 tories. 
 
 We shall see whether all the blame for the insurrection 
 ought to have been thrown on the Maharaja, who were 
 the " needy and greedy adventurers" who misgoverned 
 the country, and what persons were properly responsible 
 for the "unparalleled cruelties" that took place. Relying 
 for facts partly on the Report of the Special Committee 
 of 1833 consisting of Colonel Sir W. Morrison, Colonel
 
 144 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 (afterwards Sir Mark) Cubbon, General Hawker, and Mr. 
 (afterwards Sir John) Macleod, which has never yet 
 been published, and partly on the papers of General 
 Briggs, I shall endeavour to answer those questions. The 
 document from which I shall quote most largely will be a 
 long Memorandum drawn up by Briggs in 1833 as an 
 apology for the course he had taken, and sent in the first 
 instance to his old master, the Honble. Mountstuart 
 Elphinstone, then living at home in the retirement from 
 which he never afterwards emerged. Occasionally I shall 
 quote the Colonel's Diary. 
 
 MEMORANDUM. 
 
 "In 1811 Poorniah quitted public life, and left to the Eajah of 
 Mysore a treasury containing 21,900,000 rupees, or more than two 
 millions sterling. The Eajah took the reins in his hands at the 
 age of sixteen, without a check or a remonstrance on the part of 
 our Government. His nature is gentle and mild, his propensities 
 and tastes are what might be expected from his early emancipa- 
 tion from control. No wonder that he became the dupe of his 
 favourites of both sexes. In a few years he lavished away all his 
 treasure, and was left without the means of meeting the usual 
 demands of the parasites by whom he was surrounded. Eecourse 
 was now had to bankers and merchants ; and loans and purchases 
 were provided for by either bills drawn on the districts, or by 
 promissory notes payable, with heavy interest, in five or six years. 
 The Eajah became deeply involved, and the public establishments 
 were unpaid. All the better class of offices were sold to the 
 highest bidder, or a certain share of the emoluments of each place 
 was paid to the ministers and favourites at Court, the chief of 
 whom was a fiddler. 
 
 " During the first three years of the Eajah's assumption of power, 
 the Eesident, the Honble. Arthur Cole, was not inactive. He 
 constantly urged reform upon the Eajah. Fair promises were made 
 from time to time; but at last, tired of the importunity of his 
 Mentor, the Eajah deputed a secret envoy to Madras to complain 
 of Mr. Cole's constant interference, and in 1814, the Eajah being 
 then nineteen years of age, the Eesident was forbidden by the 
 Government of Madras to interfere in the internal management of 
 the country. The Eesident and the Eajah continued, however, to 
 be good friends even after this, and it is notorious that the former 
 never made a special request, public or private, that was not 
 instantly complied with by the latter. The Eajah has, in fact,
 
 GENEKAL JOHN BEIGGS. 145 
 
 been all along, when properly managed, a mere pageant, quite at 
 the Eesident's disposal. So long as Cole remained, matters went 
 on tolerably well. He did his own work ; and his noble and 
 generous conduct established a name for him which will never be 
 forgotten in Mysore." 
 
 I may here interrupt Colonel Briggs's narrative, to 
 explain that the Honourable Arthur Cole, born in 1780, 
 was fourth son of the first Earl of Enniskillen. He 
 entered the Madras Civil Service in 1800, and retired on 
 a pension in 1824. He sat in Parliament, as Member for 
 the family borough of Enniskillen, from 1830 until his 
 death in 1854. He was never married. And as an illus- 
 tration of the good old times, I may mention that when 
 Mr. Cole gave his last shake to the pagoda-tree, a rich 
 windfall dropped into the lap of a very humble person, 
 his butler, who, by all accounts, had been very useful 
 and influential in the Residency. 
 
 Just before Mr. Arthur Cole's retirement from the 
 public service, his butler, Ramasawmy Moodelly, called 
 " Janopakara-kurta" Ramasawmy, the meaning of which 
 Tamul nickname I do not know, was made by the Maha- 
 raja Jaghiredarof Sevasamoodrum, a place about twenty- 
 five miles from Mysore. The Mootta, or jaghire, consists 
 of three villages, and is supposed to be worth nearly 
 30,000 Rs., or 3,000, a year. The principal village, 
 Sevasamoodrum, being near the picturesque Falls of the 
 Cauvery, and game abounding in the neighbourhood, is a 
 favourite place of resort for English visitors, shooting 
 excursions for the men, and picnics for the ladies, having 
 their respective attractions, and being easily combined. 
 Here, therefore, old Ramasawmy, who put not his entire 
 trust in Princes, with strong feelings of gratitude for 
 the favours he had gained by the goodwill of one English 
 gentleman, and not, perhaps, without a lively sense of 
 security for those favours in all time to come from the 
 goodwill of English gentlemen in general, built and 
 furnished a spacious bungalow, kept it stocked with the 
 best supplies, and manned with a small staff of servants ; 
 and here all members of the official hierarchy and their 
 families, or parties introduced by them, were always wel- 
 
 L
 
 14G SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 coined and entertained at his expense. For some years 
 after Cole's retirement, Ramasawmy Moodelly, as Briggs 
 mentions further on, continued to be an influential person 
 at the Mysore Court. 
 
 A grandson of the original grantee, also named Rama- 
 sawmy Moodelly, now enjoys the jaghire, and the same 
 hospitality for English gentlemen visiting the Falls of the 
 Cauvery is still kept up at the Sevasamoodrum bungalow, 
 though, it is said, on a scale of expenditure somewhat 
 less liberal than it used to be. 
 
 We now return to the Memorandum prepared by 
 Briggs for Mountstuart Elphinstone, previously mention- 
 ing that the successor of Cole was Mr. James Casamajor, 
 of the Madras Civil Service. 
 
 " No sooner did Arthur Cole go than a new order of things was 
 introduced. The power of the Residency continued, but it was no 
 longer exercised by the Resident. The Resident's head man, a 
 Brahmin named Chowrappa, having many connections in several 
 districts of the country, became the organ of all communications, 
 the indispensable factotum of his master, and the terror of the 
 Rajah. The Resident, under the semblance of non-interference, 
 in conformity with the instructions of the Madras Government in 
 1814, suffered his agent to meddle and dictate in everything, and 
 to accumulate vast wealth by becoming the patron or proprietor 
 of all the Foujdars and their deputies, who were, in 1831, without 
 exception, besides between thirty and forty of the Amils, all men 
 appointed at the instance of this low creature. 
 
 "The superior offices were purchased at the rate of 5,000 rupees 
 for a Foujdarree, and 1,000 rupees for each Mamlut. The re- 
 mainder of the offices were sold either by the Rajah's favourite 
 fiddler, or by another influential person about the Residency, one 
 Ramasawmy Moodelly, who had been successively butler to the 
 late Colonel Wilks and to Mr. Cole, who holds at this moment 
 from ten to twelve Talookdarees, and also has a hereditary jaghire, 
 recently granted by the Rajah. 
 
 " You will not be surprised at bad government following such a 
 system. The ryots were awed by the British force at Bangalore, 
 and by the knowledge, industriously propagated among them, that 
 the Residency influence was paramount, and they endured the 
 most grievous extortions for several years. At length, in 1830, 
 the oppression became more than they could bear, and a general 
 rising took place in nearly every district, the most serious occurring 
 in Bednore and Bullum, where the people invited their old chiefs,
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 147 
 
 the Polygars, to place themselves at their head, and to take the 
 lead in throwing off the yoke of the corrupt officials. Matters 
 went so far that, in the latter part of 1830, the inhabitants sent 
 round proclamations calling on everyone to cease cultivating the 
 land, keeping markets, paying taxes, or suffering the customs to be 
 levied, and inviting all to repair to the capital, there to lay their 
 grievances before the Eajah. It is to be remarked that, except in 
 the Nuggur districts of Bednore and Bullum, these assemblages 
 were mostly unarmed, and that they did not plunder on the road, 
 but paid for what they required, most of them carrying with them 
 flour and other provisions, in some, but rare, instances, they seized 
 the public officers, and made them refund part of what they had 
 unjustly exacted, but the whole extent of their violence was 
 limited to a few slaps with a slipper. 
 
 " These commotions had become very general in November 
 1830, so much so that the Eajah was roused entirely by his own 
 sense of what was right, for his favourites tried to restrain him, 
 into quitting his capital, and proceeding into the districts for the 
 avowed purpose of inquiring for himself, and granting redress. In 
 three or four places he made some investigation, and punished the 
 Mamlutdars. This led to the selling of places being talked about 
 in the Rajah's camp, leading up towards a complete exposure of 
 abuses, in which the favourites of the Eajah and the hangers-on 
 of the Eesidency were deeply implicated. Their great object now 
 was to put a stop to the Rajah's inquiries. 
 
 " At Chinroypatam, a place about fifty miles north of Mysore, 
 and the chief town of a district farmed by the Eesident's factotum, 
 Chowrappa himself, all the shops were closed, and the people came 
 out in crowds, unarmed, but accompanied by the ordinary noisy 
 music used on festive occasions. The Eajah was now getting much 
 too close upon the scent. The danger of the truth coming out 
 becoming imminent, this was construed as open insurrection, and 
 the Rajah was exhorted to order the cavalry to charge and disperse 
 them. The Eajah himself, however, saw that the people were at 
 once alarmed at the appearance of his troops, and sent forward the 
 commandant, Bheem Eao Bukhshee, to remonstrate with them. 
 The Bukhshee spoke to the people in a conciliatory manner, and 
 one party came in to the camp on his guaranteeing their safety. 
 Three of the most respectable men in Mysore, one of whom was 
 Meer Mahmood, brother of Meer Kummer-ood-deen, Tippoo's 
 celebrated Cavalry General, who was settled as a jaghiredar in the 
 Nizam's country, were ordered to investigate their complaints. 
 They gave it as their opinion that the ryots then assembled could 
 prove that the public servants at Chinroypatam and in the neigh- 
 bourhood had, within the past year, extorted from them a lakh of 
 pagodas on their private account, and that the offenders ought to 
 
 L 2
 
 148 SOME WORDS AJs 7 D WORK OF 
 
 be made to refund this amount. The Amil was a near relative of 
 Chowrappa, the Eesident's man of business, who not only trembled 
 for his relation and for others, in whose fate he was equally inte- 
 rested, but also for the disclosures that might be made of his own 
 malpractices and corruption. He, therefore, worked on the Resi- 
 dent, who had accompanied the Rajah on this occasion, and per- 
 suaded him that the rebellion, as he called it, could only be put 
 down by severe measures. The nominal Minister and the fiddler, 
 in concert with the evil genius of the Residency, had been inces- 
 santly plying the Rajah with similar arguments, so that he was 
 well prepared for the advice given him by the Resident, that the 
 ringleaders of these assemblages should be summarily hanged as an 
 example and a warning. The Rajah and two or three of his 
 familiars, unconnected with the Residency party, for some time 
 resisted this proposition ; but the influence and authority of the 
 Resident were irresistible in urging immediate action, and on that 
 very evening of the 21st December 1830, after the report just 
 mentioned by three impartial persons, two of the Potails (head- 
 men) of villages, who had presented themselves in the morning on 
 the faith of Bheem Rao Bukhshee (who protested against their 
 execution), were hanged without even the form of a trial. In the 
 same way fifteen Potails were summarily executed in the following 
 four or five days, and the unarmed multitudes were everywhere 
 attacked, and several hundreds put to death. The Rajah, feeling 
 himself superseded, and hating the cruelties in which he had been 
 made to acquiesce, went back to Mysore. The Resident wrote to 
 Calcutta that peace and order had been restored. On the 5th of 
 January 1831 the Resident thus reported these proceedings to the 
 Government of Madras : ' His Highness, who is always averse to 
 spill the blood of his subjects, was prevailed on to exercise his 
 legitimate authority, and to make examples of the principal leaders, 
 and the insurrection has thus been put an end to.' He adds that 
 ' the ryots are paying their taxes willingly and quietly'. 
 
 " From the date of that despatch a civil war raged throughout 
 the country. Part of a European Regiment and three Native 
 Battalions were called out in aid of the Rajah's troops. In Nuggur 
 the Polygars headed the people, occupied strong posts, and expelled 
 the Rajah's officers, but committed no acts of murder or pillage. 
 Wherever the Rajah's officials could get the upper hand they ruth- 
 lessly hanged all the leading men they could catch, often on mere 
 suspicion ; and on the 16th of March 1831 no fewer than ninety- 
 seven prisoners were hung up on trees in one spot by torchlight, 
 under the direct orders of a British officer* who had been lately in 
 charge of the Resident's escort, and who had been selected by the 
 
 * Lieutenant (afterwards Colonel) Gtistavus Cowper Rochfort, who 
 died in 1875.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 149 
 
 Resident to command the Rajah's troops. In the public correspond- 
 ence there are several letters from the Rajah protesting against 
 such proceedings. The Polygars, who had hitherto spared the 
 officers of Government, now carried off twenty Brahmins, and 
 hanged them all, in retaliation for the slaughter of their relative.* 
 and followers." 
 
 In a demi-official letter to Lord William Bentinck, 
 dated 1st April 1832, Colonel Briggs gives a similar 
 account of the severities by which it was attempted to 
 crush the first symptoms of discontent, and refers to 
 public records as containing positive proof of their true 
 source. Urging on the Governor- General the necessity 
 of making great changes in the list of public function- 
 aries, he says : 
 
 " Your Lordship will be shocked to learn that numbers of the 
 Mamlutdars, who forced the people into revolt, were appointments 
 from the Residency, and that the cruel execution of several Potails, 
 invited into camp on the faith of the Rajah, was a step suggested 
 by the interested Mamlutdars, and the Residency Moonshee, and 
 urgently pressed on the Rajah by the Resident himself. The Rajah 
 was utterly opposed to the measure, but was compelled to yield 
 his assent; and in issuing his orders the very next day he quali- 
 fied his own share in them by inserting in his own hand-writing, 
 ' These are the positive orders of the Resident', an assertion which 
 is borne out by documents signed by Mr. Casamajor.* The cold- 
 blooded execution of ninety-seven prisoners at Honelly, on the day 
 
 * Here is an extract from the Report of the Special Committee of 
 1833: 
 
 " 105. On the 21st December a circular notice or proclamation 
 was issued, directing that all persons who should thenceforward be 
 found carrying bones and margosa leaves, the usual symbols of insur- 
 rection in Mysore, should be seized, tried on the spot, and, if con- 
 victed, hanged ; and on the following day printed instructions were 
 addressed to the Foiijdar of Bangalore to cause some of the leaders of 
 the insurrectionary assemblages to be caught, and one or two of them 
 hanged in each talook ; to fire upon those assemblages without hesi- 
 tation if any resistance should be offered by them ; and, generally, 
 to take rigorous measures against the evil-disposed ; ' shooting such as 
 deserve to be shot, and hanging such as deserve to be hanged'. This 
 letter of instructions, which bears date the 22nd December, is con- 
 cluded with a sentence in his Highness's own handwriting, to this effect : 
 ' The gentleman' (meaning the Resident) ' strongly recommends the 
 adoption of these measures for putting down the insurrection, and has 
 given the same orders.'"
 
 150 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 after they were taken, is reported to the Eajah on the 16th of 
 March 1831 as being carried into effect by order of the British 
 officer placed in command of the Eajah's troops by the Eesident; 
 and against this measure the Eajah himself entered a strong and 
 feeling remonstrance." 
 
 The most characteristic feature in the case was that 
 these acts of " firmness" and wholesome severity, per- 
 petrated in pursuance of the Resident's authoritative 
 counsel, and against the Rajah's will, had already heen 
 demi-officially, that is to say secretly, reported by the 
 Governor of Madras to Lord William Bantinck, before the 
 unwelcome appointment of Colonel Briggs to be Com- 
 missioner, as horrors 'and acts of atrocity for which the 
 Rajah was to be held responsible, and for which he was to 
 be deprived of power. 
 
 " The Polygar, Eungapa Naik, at once retaliated by seizing and 
 putting to death twenty Brahmins, the first officers of Government 
 who suffered at the hands of the insurgents. No less than 164 
 persons, many of them heads of villages, were hanged without trial, 
 and on the most frivolous charges, besides a great number of 
 unarmed people killed by musketry. This information does not 
 come to me from private sources ; it is entered on the face of 
 official journals kept for the use of the Mysore Government, in 
 some cases containing entries in the Eajah's own hand-writing, 
 and always bearing the signet of the late Dewan. The system of 
 Indian records forbids the possibility of concealing these things, 
 if we have access to them, but an exposure of them must ruin one 
 party. The full truth can never be placed officially before your 
 Lordship so long as the Eesident, supported by the Governor of 
 Madras, precludes access to the Eajah and his records by the 
 Senior Commissioner." 
 
 We now return to the Memorandum which was sent 
 to Mr. Elphinstone : 
 
 " On the 12th of April 1831, the Governor of Madras in Council 
 wrote to the Governor-General that he was then about to proceed 
 to Mysore to investigate the state of affairs, and report on them. 
 In this letter, among other charges, mostly very vague, against the 
 Eajah, the Governor of Madras with perfect inaccuracy, as was 
 afterwards proved, stated that ' the payments of the subsidy had 
 been delayed beyond the appointed period', and that consequently 
 ' the troops and establishments are ready to mutiny for want of 
 subsistence'. On the 8th of June the Governor-General writes 
 that he shall wait for the promised report before issuing final
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 151 
 
 instructions, but that his present views lead him to anticipate the 
 necessity of taking the management of the Bajah's country into 
 our own hands, and that he should propose to govern it by a 
 Commission of British officers. On the 4th of July the Governor 
 sent the Governor-General, not the promised report in official 
 form from the Government of Madras, but an informal letter and 
 minute from himself, containing very meagre, and, as afterwards 
 turned out, very erroneous, information. The Governor-General, 
 however, having waited in vain till the end of August for some- 
 thing more explanatory, acted on this letter. 
 
 " The Governor of Madras had recommended a recurrence to 
 the system prevailing in Poorniah's time, of a Minister, appointed 
 by us, and having our confidence, exercising full authority in 
 concert with the Resident. To this plan the Governor-General 
 was strongly opposed, and on the 6th of September 1831 he wrote 
 to the Madras Government expressing his complete dissent from 
 the Kesident-and-Dewan-system, and his resolution to vest the 
 Government in the hands of two British Commissioners, of whom 
 his Lordship was pleased to nominate me the senior, leaving it to 
 the Madras Government to appoint the junior, and to supply the 
 necessary establishments, the new Government .of Mysore being 
 made directly subordinate to the Madras Government. On the 
 27th of September the Governor of Madras again recorded a long 
 Minute urging the same scheme that he had advocated on the 4th 
 of July." 
 
 The plan on which Lord William Bentinck insisted 
 was a grievous disappointment to the Governor, and he 
 made hardly any secret of his dislike to it, even, as will 
 be seen, in his personal communications with Briggs. The 
 Governor of Madras had assumed that the conduct of 
 Mysore affairs, the patronage, and the credit of any 
 success, would fall into his own hands, as directly as in 
 the case of any district in the Presidency. As an old 
 Madras Civilian, with an elder brother in the Court of 
 Directors, and a younger brother, under his own wing, 
 in the Madras Civil Service, to whom he had allotted, 
 without fear of any obstacle, the sole administration of 
 Mysore, he took a determined aversion to what he con- 
 sidered the intrusion of a military officer into the best 
 and highest place in that very country. He wanted 
 Mysore as a new province (a very agreeable one in 
 climate) added to Madras, open to frequent visits from 
 the Governor, or available as a usual place of residence.
 
 152 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 The appointment of Colonel Briggs, furthermore, was, in 
 his view, and in that of the whole Civil Service, an 
 encroachment on the good things properly reserved for 
 that select and superior body. 
 
 "On the 10th of October", writes Briggs, "when I 
 received the notification of my appointment to Mysore, I 
 was at Delhi ; on the 1 6th of December I was at 
 Madras." 
 
 The Governor of Madras at this time was the Right 
 Honourable Stephen Rumbold Lushington, a man who 
 had shown great capacity in many situations, and whose 
 actual position in 1831, as it was the crowning triumph, 
 was certainly the most remarkable incident in a not 
 uneventful career. For, placed at the head of the 
 Government of Fort St. George, Mr. Lushington had as 
 his colleagues in Council some of the comrades of his 
 early public life. Several high officials at the Presidency 
 had been senior to him in the Civil Service, and one of 
 them had even sat in secret judgment on his conduct 
 when he left Madras under a cloud in 1804. When 
 young Stephen Lushington, born in 1774, came out as 
 a. Writer to Madras in 1791, the Honourable Company 
 still retained its commercial character, and a certain 
 speculative element still entered into the legitimate 
 expectations of all who served in India. No one in civil 
 employ depended entirely on his mere salary, or could, 
 indeed, subsist upon it. In all ranks of the army, more- 
 over, above that of Lieutenant, the chief emoluments and 
 provision for retirement were drawn from the right of 
 holding certain Government contracts for stores, tents, 
 and carriage, and certain petty monopolies for the supply 
 of necessaries to the troops. The Commandant of a corps 
 was even allowed to levy an octroi in the regimental 
 bazar for his own private profit. The incredible officers' 
 mutiny of 1809 in the Madras Army arose out of measures 
 adopted by the Government of Sir George Barlow for 
 abolishing some of these unseemly perquisites. 
 
 The opportunities of making a fortune by recognised 
 gains incidental to office, and by private trade, were 
 much more numerous and extensive in the Indian Civil
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 153 
 
 Service than in the Army, while the salaries were pro- 
 portionately much smaller, in fact, merely nominal. The 
 commercial privileges of the Company's servants were 
 gradually withdrawn, and, finally, private trade was 
 forbidden altogether under the Government of Lord 
 Cornwallis, between 1793 and 1797, while civil salaries 
 were raised on a liberal scale, and pensions introduced. 
 But, very naturally, some vestiges of the old system 
 lingered for a while, and the line between authorised and 
 prohibited emoluments and pursuits was not clearly 
 defined or strictly drawn for some years, after many 
 alleged infractions of the rule, and many disputes. 
 Stephen Lushington thus began to be a member of the 
 Madras Civil Service in this transition period, his first 
 two years of service ' having been passed before the 
 reforms of Lord Cornwallis had been instituted. From 
 1795 to 1799 he was Private Secretary to his father-in- 
 law, Lord Harris, the Commander-in-Chief,* and was 
 present in that capacity at the siege and capture of 
 Seringapatam. 
 
 Subsequently Mr. Lushington was placed in what was 
 considered a very good appointment, Collector of the 
 Peishcush, or tribute of the Southern Polygars, chieftains 
 in the South of India, who, under the Nawab of the 
 Carnatic converted, in 1800, into a virtual pensioner 
 had exercised almost independent jurisdiction in their 
 own estates, and whose tribute was payable in kind, as 
 to some extent was then also the.land revenue of ordinary 
 districts, now everywhere commuted into cash. It had 
 been the privilege, an unbroken custom, as Mr. Lush- 
 ington pleaded, until he took up the office, for the Col- 
 lector to trade in the grain paid as tribute, in the interval 
 between its delivery in many instalments, and its final 
 sale and the appropriation of the proceeds as public 
 revenue. The Government of Madras, however, held 
 that this privilege had been abolished by the new regu- 
 lations consequent on Lord Cornwallis's reforms, and the 
 new scale of civil salaries. The Collector of the Polygars' 
 
 * Whose biogi'aphy he wrote, Life and Services of General Lord 
 Harris, London, 1840.
 
 154 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 Peishcush was charged with having engaged in specula- 
 tions in grain belonging to the Government, and in 
 having profited by them. An inquiry followed ; Lush- 
 ington left Madras under suspension from office in 1804, 
 and having been unable to convince the Court of Directors 
 on appeal that his interpretation of the new rules was 
 the correct one for he never admitted that his course 
 had been in any way irregular he ceased to belong to 
 the Madras Civil Service in 1806. In 1807 he became 
 M.P. for Rye, and in the general election of the next 
 year obtained a seat for Yarmouth. He must at once 
 have been recognised as a noticeable person, for in 1809 
 he was chosen to second the Address in answer to the 
 King's speech. In 1824 he became Chairman of Com- 
 mittees of the House of Commons. In 1825 he was 
 granted a pension on the Civil List of 1,500 a year. 
 In 1827 he was made a Privy Councillor and Joint 
 Secretary of the Treasury. 
 
 There are prophecies that tend to fulfil themselves. 
 There are prophecies that may be shrewdly suspected of 
 an origin later than their supposed fulfilment. Whether 
 we have to do with one of either sort of prediction, with 
 a real tradition or with a contemporary invention, I can- 
 not say, but the story was current in 1832 that Stephen 
 Lushington had declared in 1806 that he would never 
 return to Madras except as Governor, and that as 
 Governor he was determined to return. Certain it is 
 that in 1827 the Right Honourable Stephen Rumbold 
 Lushington was appointed Governor and Commander-in- 
 Chief of Fort St. George and its dependencies, and 
 arrived at Madras in November of that year. 
 
 It may as well be added here that Mr. Lushington, at 
 the expiration of his five years' term as Governor of 
 Madras, returned home at the end of 1832, and became 
 once more a Member of Parliament in 1835. He afforded 
 one more instance of longevity among the old Indian 
 contemporaries of General Briggs. He died in 1868 at 
 the age of 94, having married for the second time in 
 1856, when 82 years old. 
 
 When he entered on the Government of Madras in
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 155 
 
 1827, his elder brother, General Sir James Law Lush- 
 ington, was a Member of the Court of Directors ; and a 
 younger brother, Charles May Lushington, was in the 
 Madras Civil Service. 
 
 We shall obtain a more clear, full, and connected view 
 of the situation, and of the difficulties under which 
 Briggs entered on his new office, if we again quit the 
 Memorandum which he sent to Mr. Elphinstone, and 
 make some extracts from the autobiographical papers, 
 and from his unofficial correspondence. 
 
 " While at Delhi I received a private letter from the Governor- 
 General, dated the 4th of September 1831, reciting the substance 
 of the despatch about to be sent to the Government of Madras 
 on the affairs of Mysore, and offering me in the most flattering 
 terms the appointment of Senior Commissioner for the adminis- 
 tration of that country. I felt at once the dangers before me, but 
 I could not refuse the post. The rude means of conveyance, and 
 the distance I had to travel, nearly two thousand miles, chiefly 
 through tracts where British authority did not prevail, protracted 
 my journey through Rajputana and the Deccan till the middle of 
 December. On the 16th, immediately on my arrival at Madras, 
 I waited on the Governor, the Eight Honourable Stephen Rumbold 
 Lushington, who received me with that courtesy and grace of 
 manner for which he was distinguished. After kindly referring 
 to the letter of recommendation 1 had brought him some months 
 previously, on my return to India, from the President of the 
 Board of Control, the department to which he had been himself 
 attached, he entered on business, and made me at once to under- 
 stand that he dissented altogether from the system of Government 
 laid down by Lord William Bentinck for Mysore ; but without 
 entering into details, he said he would send me for perusal all the 
 recent correspondence on Mysore affairs, saying that he should be 
 glad to see me again when I had got through the papers. 
 
 " A careful examination of these documents showed me the 
 startling fact that the management of Mysore had been assumed 
 on the erroneous grounds, informally laid before the Governor- 
 General by the Governor of Madras, that the subsidy had fallen 
 into arrears, but that as soon as the Madras Government happened 
 to make an application on the subject to the Accountant General, 
 the return made by that officer had proved that no failure in the 
 regular monthly payments of the subsidy had ever occurred. 
 
 " As the Governor of Madras was necessarily aware of the truth 
 by this time, from the Accountant-General's report, and probably 
 not very comfortable in his mind on the subject, and as I knew
 
 156 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 the Governor-General could not long be kept in ignorance regard- 
 ing it, I did not conceive that it was my duty to press this fact on 
 the attention of either of them, more particularly as it could have 
 no practical bearing, in the present condition of Mysore, on the 
 policy of our Government." 
 
 And here we will interrupt Colonel Briggs's narrative, 
 in order to indicate, as clearly as may be, the nature and 
 extent of the error and irregularity, under the terms of 
 the Treaty, into which Lord William Bentinck had been 
 misled. The following Article is that by virtue of which 
 the Governor-General assumed the right of bringing the 
 Mysore territories " under the direct management of the 
 Company's servants" : 
 
 " Article 4. And whereas it is indispensably necessary that effec- 
 tual and lasting security should be provided against any failure in 
 the fund destined to defray either the expenses of the permanent 
 military force in time of peace, or the extraordinary expenses 
 described in the 3rd Article of the present Treaty, it is hereby 
 stipulated and agreed between the contracting parties, that when- 
 ever the Governor-General in Council at Fort William in Bengal 
 shall have reason to apprehend such failure in the funds so des- 
 tined, the said Governor-General in Council shall be at liberty, 
 and shall have full power and right, either to introduce such regu- 
 lations and ordinances as he shall deem expedient for the internal 
 management and collection of the revenues, or for the better order- 
 ing of any other branch and department of the Government of 
 Mysore, or to assume and bring under the direct management of 
 the Servants of the said Company Bahadoor, such part or parts 
 of the territorial possessions of His Highness Maharaja Mysore 
 Kistna Rajah Oodiaver Bahadoor as shall appear to him, the said 
 Governor-General in Council, necessary to render the said funds 
 efficient and available in time of peace or war." 
 
 By Article V, which fixes the share of the revenue to 
 be allotted for the Rajah's household and privy purse, it 
 was provided, " that whenever and so long as any part 
 or parts of His said Highness's Territories shall be placed 
 and shall remain under the exclusive authority and con- 
 trol of the East India Company, the Governor- General 
 in Council shall render to His Highness a true and faith- 
 full account of the revenues and produce of the Terri- 
 tories so assumed".* 
 
 * Aitchisons Treaties, vol. v, pp. 159, 160.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 157 
 
 Thus, according to the letter of the Treaty (Article TV), 
 neither defects in the Rajah's domestic policy, nor the 
 occurrence of a revolt in his Dominions, afforded sufficient 
 grounds for even his temporary supersession, unless the 
 payment of our Subsidy were endangered. All defects 
 could easily be cured by enforcing Article XIV, or by 
 " ordinances". Reasonable anxiety for the instalments 
 of annual tribute was the only cause that could sanction 
 the attachment of districts. 
 
 And it must be further remarked that, according to 
 the Treaty (Articles IV and V), when it should be 
 thought necessary to have recourse to this extreme mea- 
 sure, we had no right to attach the whole of Mysore, but 
 only " such part or parts" as should be required to render 
 the funds of the State " efficient and available". It is 
 also clear from Article V that the management was to 
 be temporary. 
 
 Nor did these difficulties long escape the observation 
 of Lord William Bentinck. In a despatch to the Secret 
 Committee of the Court of Directors, proposing the 
 Rajah's reinstatement under conditions, dated 14th of 
 April 1834, he writes as follows : 
 
 " By the adoption of the arrangement which I advocate, certain 
 doubts will be removed which I cannot help entertaining, both as 
 to the legality and the justice, according to a strict interpretation, 
 of the course that has been pursued. The Treaty warrants an 
 assumption of the country with a view to secure the payment of 
 our Subsidy. The assumption was actually made on account of 
 the Rajah's misgovernnient. The Subsidy does not appear to have 
 been in any immediate jeopardy. Again, the Treaty authorises us 
 to assume such part or parts of the country as may be necessary 
 to render the funds which we claim efficient and available. The 
 whole has been assumed, although a part would unquestionably 
 have sufficed for the purpose specified in the Treaty." 
 
 Lord William might have added that, under Articles 
 IV and XIV, " regulations", or " ordinances" of reform 
 might at any time have been " introduced", without 
 sweeping away the whole fabric of the Rajah's Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 We now return to Colonel Briggs's narrative.
 
 158 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 " On my second visit to the Governor he was equally gracious 
 as at the first, but in the course of conversation which he gra- 
 dually led up to that point, and incidently referring to a despatch 
 from the Honourable Court thirty years old, which happened to be 
 lying on the table before him, he remarked that the Directors had 
 always objected to the employment of Military officers in purely 
 civil situations. I was, in short, made to feel that my selection by 
 the Governor-General, was considered a deviation from an esta- 
 blished and salutary rule, and was distasteful to the Eight Honour- 
 able gentleman under whose immediate orders I was placed. This 
 was not very promising ; but the Governor went on to say, courte- 
 ously enough, I must confess, and with great appearance of good 
 humour and frankness, that he did not understand how two Com- 
 missioners, on an equal footing, were likely to conduct affairs in 
 Mysore to a good end, except by dividing the country between 
 them, and each taking one half under his charge. ' When you 
 get there, however', said he, ' I have no doubt that you and my 
 relative will hit on some plan, and will manage everything to my 
 satisfaction.' I said we should, of course, be guided by his instruc- 
 tions, which, I hoped, we should soon receive. 'Oh, as to that', 
 replied he, ' I shall have no instructions to give you. You are 
 aware that I do not entirely agree with Lord William Bentinck's 
 views, but they are plain enough, and they must, of course, be 
 carried out.' On this I took my leave." 
 
 Two or three days after this interview with the 
 Governor of Madras, Colonel Briggs took his departure 
 for Mysore, and his first impressions and experiences of 
 the work before him, and of the irreconcileable conflict 
 of jurisdiction and of duty in which he was soon to be 
 involved, can best be seen in a few extracts from the 
 autobiographical papers. 
 
 " On Christmas Day, 1831, I arrived at Bangalore, where I had 
 been informed by the Governor it was intended I should remain, 
 and where I was to meet my colleague, the Junior Commissioner, 
 Mr. C. M. Lushington. I found him suffering from the gout, 
 aggravated by the fatigue of his journey from the Eajah's capital 
 of Mysore, where he had been living for three months with the 
 Eesident, his old and intimate friend. He had brought away from 
 Mysore all the Native establishments he considered necessary, 
 and had already appointed, with the approval of the Governor of 
 Madras, a Brahmin, named Vencataramaniah, recommended by the 
 Eesident, to be Dewan, or Minister. Mr. Lushington only remained 
 a fortnight at Bangalore, and then returned to Madras. Im- 
 mediately before his departure he publicly recorded his opinion
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 159 
 
 upholding his brother's views, in defiance of the Governor-General's 
 decision, that the Commissioners were to act the part of the 
 Eesident, with the new Dewan, as the actual executive head of the 
 administration. And the new Dewan was told that he was to have 
 full powers, such as Poorniah had exercised, subject to the supervi- 
 sion of the Commissioners. The Governor-General's views, as 
 conveyed to us in his instructions, appeared to me to be from first 
 to last opposed to those of the Governor of Madras. My con- 
 science forbade me to interpret the Governor-General's instructions 
 according to the wishes of Mr. Lushington. 1 was called on to 
 express my sentiments, which I did in two Minutes of the 6th 
 and 12th of January 1832, wherein I declared my belief that the 
 Commission was intended to represent the Prince, and was to be 
 at once a deliberate and an executive body, possessing complete 
 authority, and bearing the sole responsibility, the Dewan being, 
 with respect to the Commissioners, a subordinate and ministerial 
 officer." 
 
 We now return to the Memorandum sent to Mr. 
 Elphinstone. 
 
 " During his three months of sole administration, in concert 
 with the Eesident, Mr. Lushington had made no progress in 
 tranquillising the people, but he had certainly got through some 
 work. He had abolished the only Court of Justice in the country, 
 and, I may add, that the Government of Madras forbade me to 
 establish another. He had discharged a whole Ecgiment of 
 Cavalry, maintained under the terms of the Treaty, and made over 
 the horses, 500 in number, to the Eajah to support. The Eajah, 
 the question of whose income was quite unsettled, gave the horses 
 away. My colleague had also repudiated all the pensions to Tippoo's 
 relations, and to the old servants of the Sultan's and of Poorniah's 
 administration ; and, as a master-stroke of economy for that was 
 the plea he had suspended the payment of all charitable and 
 religious grants, and had sequestrated all the jaghires and inam 
 lands throughout the country, until their title-deeds could be 
 examined. About 9,000 influential families were thus reduced to 
 great straits, and threatened with ruin. 
 
 " At this time the hilly western districts of Bednore or Nuggur 
 were still in a state of revolt, while the Mysore soldiery, long in 
 arrears of pay, were levying contributions on the people to keep 
 themselves alive, but refusing to act against the insurgents. More 
 than a year's pay was due to all the establishments, military and 
 civil. Complaints and petitions were coming in every day against 
 the corrupt and cruel Amils, appointed or maintained by the new 
 Dewan, under the influence and with the support of the Eesidency. 
 There were more than two thousand untried prisoners in the jails."
 
 160 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 Colonel Briggs recommended that three measures 
 should be adopted without delay, a loan, in order that 
 the unruly troops and public servants might be relieved 
 and brought to order; a general amnesty and act of 
 oblivion ; and a careful scrutiny and revision of the 
 administrative personnel, without which he was con- 
 vinced that every plan of redress and reform would be 
 made fruitless and of no effect. 
 
 But nothing that Colonel Briggs proposed met with 
 support or approval from the Government of Madras. The 
 Governor, who had, in fact, originated them, upheld all the 
 views of his brother, and to question or criticise them was 
 treated as if it were presumptuous insubordination. Not 
 recognising the provocation given, and the irritation 
 kept up by the corrupt creatures in office throughout 
 Mysore, the Governor and his brother considered that 
 instead of conciliation and amnesty, some more severe 
 examples were wanted before order could be restored. 
 With the same blind reliance on the Residency party, 
 the Governor could see no necessity for expurgating the 
 public service, or infusing new blood into it. Colonel 
 Briggs was expressly forbidden to interfere with the 
 Dewan's administration, or with any of his appointments. 
 Although left, after the departure of his colleague, as 
 sole Commissioner for more than a month, he was not 
 allowed to do anything, and he could get nothing done. 
 
 Every plan proposed by Colonel Briggs for organising 
 a reformed administration in Mysore was rejected by the 
 Government of Madras, in acrimonious and contemptuous 
 terms, of which the following extracts from a despatch, 
 dated the 17th of February 1832, may form a fair 
 sample. 
 
 " The Right Honourable the Governor in Council has read with 
 dissatisfaction and disappointment the foregoing papers. Lieuten- 
 ant-Colonel Briggs has not only thought fit to re-assert that his 
 information respecting a Court for the administration of Civil and 
 Criminal Justice at the capital is ' essentially correct', but he has 
 presumed to complain of the delay of this Board in replying to 
 his voluminous minutes, although they have been answered with 
 an expedition that would have been incompatible with their due 
 consideration, had not a strong sense of public duty induced the
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 161 
 
 Board to apply their immediate and undivided attention to the 
 prevention of the mischief likely to result from Colonel Briggs's 
 erroneous opinions. 
 
 "The Eight Honourable the Governor sees with regret the 
 extreme pertinacity with which Lieutenant-Colonel Briggs adheres 
 to his hastily formed opinion that the statement he made is 
 ' essentially correct'. Upon the records of this Presidency no 
 trace has yet been discovered of this institution at any period, and 
 looking at the nature of its composition as described by Colonel 
 Briggs, the Eight Honourable the Governor in Council would deem 
 its revival in a Hindoo State even if it had ever existed 
 neither politic nor advisable. 
 
 " The Eight Honourable the Governor in Council therefore 
 desires that no measure may be adopted without his sanction for 
 the revival of this or any other Court which was not in operation 
 in 1804. Whatever changes may have been subsequently made 
 must be regarded as excrescences not originating with, or known to, 
 Sir Barry Close or Mr. Webbe, whose united wisdom founded upon 
 the Hindoo institutions of the country that system of government 
 of which they made Poorniah the ostensible instrument. 
 
 " Under the practice which has obtained since Lieutenant- 
 Colonel Briggs reached Bangalore, the Dewan cannot know what 
 is going on, and his mind must be kept in a continued state of 
 irritation and alarm." 
 
 " The Eight Honourable the Governor in Council willingly gave 
 to Lieutenant-Colonel Briggs all the credit he obtained under the 
 Bombay Government for his general zeal and activity. These 
 qualities, if duly restrained in him, may be made useful to the 
 public service, but if allowed to continue in the direction they 
 have taken, would be extremely detrimental. His activity, as it 
 has ydt been exhibited, is not that which promotes the attainment 
 of any useful end, but that which, without any fit cause, sets every- 
 thing in stir and commotion, puts the public functionaries, European 
 and Native, out of their places, and disgusts them all. There must 
 be but one executive authority in the country, as in the time of 
 Poorniah and Sir Barry Close. Authority to be efficient must be 
 single, and the Commissioners will best uphold their own by 
 maintaining that of the Dewan, so long as he is recognised in that 
 character by the British Government." 
 
 Colonel Briggs having reported that he could place no 
 reliance on either the capacity or the integrity of the 
 Dewan, and having given strong reasons for desiring a 
 change in that office, the Governor still more warmly 
 took up the cause of his brother's nominee. In a despatch 
 dated the 28th of February 1832, he praised "the manly 
 
 M
 
 162 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 ^dependence" with which the Dewan "denies the sinister 
 motives imputed to him by Lieutenant-Colonel Briggs", 
 and declared that, having now "before him conflicting 
 statements from public functionaries, each in his own 
 sphere exercising a high office, and entitled to the confi- 
 dence of Government", he must wait for the opinion of 
 the newly appointed Junior Commissioner, then on his 
 way to Bangalore, before deciding between the views of 
 the Dewan and those of the Senior Commissioner. 
 
 In pursuance of the same course, the new Commis- 
 sioner, Mr. Drury, having in the meantime joined Colonel 
 Briggs, another despatch, dated the 19th of March 1832, 
 directed that "in the event, of a difference of opinion 
 between the Commissioners, they are to record their 
 sentiments separately, for the consideration of Govern- 
 ment ; but in any matter requiring to be immediately 
 decided upon and carried into effect, the views of the 
 Dewan and those of the Commissioner agreeing with 
 him should be adopted." 
 
 Thus the Dewan was left master of the situation, the 
 initiative and the executive of administration being 
 concentrated in his hands, while he was made, virtually, 
 a Member of the Commission, with a casting vote when- 
 ever he chose to demand it. 
 
 " In a private letter to Lord William Bentinck at this 
 time", says Briggs, " I ventured to contrast my situation 
 under the present Governor of Madras with that which I 
 had occupied in Khandesh, or with that of Mr. Jenkins 
 at Nagpore during the minority of the Rajah. I pointed 
 out what seemed to me the impossibility of my fulfilling 
 the duties imposed on me to his or to my own satisfac- 
 tion, and I begged his Lordship to relieve me, arid to 
 place me in any position, however inferior, under his own 
 direct authority." 
 
 The position of Colonel Briggs had become quite in- 
 tolerable. The Junior Commissioner, as might be ex- 
 pected from one specially chosen and instructed by the 
 Madras authorities, was merely an inseparable opponent. 
 It was enough for the Senior Commissioner to propose a 
 measure, to ensure the lively dissent of the Junior, sup-
 
 GENERAL JOHN T BRIGGS. 1<>3 
 
 ported by the local experience of the Dewan, and in due 
 course by the Governor's veto. 
 
 Before the arrival of his irreconcileable colleague, in a 
 letter addressed on the 23rd of February 1832 to the 
 Chief Secretary to the Government of India, Briggs had 
 again tendered his resignation, with a full defence of his 
 own proceedings and a protest against his persecution ; 
 and in reporting to the Government of Madras the step 
 he had taken, he remarked that it would now be for his 
 Lordship the Governor- General " to judge how far it 
 may be expedient for the public service to continue at 
 the head of the Mysore Commission an individual who has 
 so completely lost the confidence of the Government under 
 whose direct orders the Commission has been placed." 
 
 After defending in detail the measures he had pro- 
 posed, he thus described the state of aifairs at the official 
 head-quarters of Mysore. 
 
 " I cannot conclude this despatch without adverting to the novel 
 scene which Bangalore now exhibits. The people see the head of 
 the Government in a manner cut off from all communication with 
 the capital and the Kajah. The} 7 see the senior, and apparently the 
 sole, Commissioner prohibited from interference with the measures 
 of a Dewan whom they know to be ignorant and corrupt. They 
 see him deprived of the means of doing them justice, left without 
 any fixed establishment, and publicly spoken of in the bazar as 
 the object of the displeasure and disapprobation of the authority 
 under which he is placed. They see him here alone and unaided, 
 unknown to the whole people, and without a single public func- 
 tionary with whom he has any acquaintance, over whom he has 
 any claim, or to whom he can venture to hold out any promise or 
 hope of reward. In spite of these obstacles, such are the general 
 contempt and dislike entertained for the Dewan, and so strong the 
 conviction abroad as to the impossibility of the present system 
 lasting, that I have strange to say met with the fullest support 
 from a number of public servants here who are now out of employ. 
 Knowing, as they do, the nature of the Dewan's proceedings and 
 the character of the British Government, they have been induced 
 to volunteer their aid gratuitously ; and although not one of them 
 has opened his lips for remuneration, or has stipulated for pay, I 
 am at this moment literally encumbered with help, and have been 
 able, through their means, to collect a mass of authentic documents 
 which will enable me, whenever it may be required, to exhibit, in 
 an entirely new point of view, the history of the late insurrection 
 and the present state of Mysore." 
 
 M 2
 
 164 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 He thus described the extraordinary relations between 
 himself and the Dewan. 
 
 the enjoyment of the confidence of the Madras Government 
 the Resident, in the full exercise of a power with which I 
 
 "In 
 
 and of 
 
 am forbidden to interfere, with all the public servants of the State 
 from the Foujdar of a district to the messenger of an office, 
 looking up to him for subsistence and promotion, the Dewan keeps 
 up an active system of espionage, and maintains an extensive 
 secret correspondence. Instead of my being able to transact 
 public business with composure, my whole time has been taken up 
 in endeavouring to counteract the plots of the Dewan to keep me 
 in the dark." 
 
 And, in fact, the Govern or- General had already, as he 
 afterwards admitted, obtained clearer notions as to the 
 nature of the disturbances in Mysore, and as to the actual 
 condition of the country, from the correspondence of 
 Colonel Briggs than from all the reports, official and 
 private, coming from Madras. It did not at all suit the 
 Dewan or his patrons that Colonel Briggs should be able 
 to collect information through any channels but those 
 which they could control, and the Government of Madras, 
 prompted by the Residency at Mysore, manifested exces- 
 sive irritation at the Senior Commissioner's volunteer 
 establishment. The Governor was pleased to notice the 
 subject in the following language. 
 
 " The revival of that mode of conducting public business by 
 private servants not in the public employ, which has long been ex- 
 ploded in every part of the Company's territories, as tending to 
 the worst corruption, would be as odious to the people as it would 
 be disgraceful to Government. Except for the knowledge the 
 Eight Honourable the Governor in Council has recently obtained 
 of Lieutenant-Colonel Briggs's proceedings, he would have con- 
 sidered a hint upon this matter quite sufficient to put an end 
 to it.' 
 
 In another passage of the same letter, dated 17th 
 February 1832, Briggs is accused of having "brought 
 with him a band of hungry expectants", who are also 
 characterised as " greedy foreigners". 
 
 From these assertions a conclusion would naturally 
 have been drawn that Colonel Briggs had brought with
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 165 
 
 him. or called round him, from distant provinces, a number 
 of personal followers. The truth was that, although fully 
 convinced before his arrival that a considerable purifica- 
 tion of the public service would be required, he had not 
 sent for anyone who had ever been employed under him- 
 self, and he had held out no encouragement or hope to 
 any candidate who was not a native of Mysore. The 
 only person whom he had summoned by name to his 
 assistance was a Brahmin named Krishna Rao, the here- 
 ditary record-keeper of Ooscotta, a town near Bangalore, 
 where he was born and brought up, but who, following 
 the example of his father, had served with great credit 
 under the Government of Bombay, until, on the abolition 
 of his office, he retired on a pension of 400 rupees a month 
 480 a year. He was no " hungry expectant", but 
 in easy circumstances, as, in addition to his pension, 
 he enjoyed a jaghire of 5,000 rupees (500) per annum, 
 which had been conferred on his father as a recognition 
 of long and faithful service in troublous times. Before 
 his arrival at Bangalore, Krishna Rao was really almost 
 a stranger to Colonel Briggs, who only knew him by 
 character as the chief revenue officer under his old master, 
 Mountstuart Elphinstone, when the latter was Commis- 
 sioner of the Deccan, and afterwards as head of the 
 Deccan Department at Bombay. This was the man 
 whom rumour pointed out, quite incorrectly, as intended 
 by Briggs for the office of Dewan, and as such he became 
 the principal mark for the calumnies and intrigues of the 
 Residency party, and for the subsequent proscription of 
 the Madras Government. 
 
 Another person, from whom Colonel Briggs had ob- 
 tained some useful and trustworthy information, and 
 whom he intended to restore to office on the first oppor- 
 tunity, was a young Mussulman of distinction, named 
 Gholam Mohammed Khan, otherwise Mamoo Meean,* 
 
 * These house -names, or pet-names, are very common in Southern 
 and Western India, both in Hindoo and Mohammedan families. Among 
 the Mahrattas, of all castes, some such appellation as Nana, Dada. 
 Bhow, Abba, Bapoo, Dajee, Tantia, or Baba, is almost invariably fixed 
 on a person in childhood, so that the true name is quite dropped in 
 after life. The use of the real name is considered unlucky.
 
 166 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 who had been Bukhshee, or General, of the Mysore In 
 i'antry, a place in which he had succeeded his father, 
 Khan Jehan Khan, one of the celebrities of Tippoo's 
 army. Secure, as he supposed, in the Rajah's favour, he 
 had never truckled to the Residency Moonshee, and was 
 one of the few men of character and position who had 
 tried to open their master's eyes to the corruption around 
 him, and who had, as plainly as they could venture to do, 
 deprecated the reign of terror by which it was sought to 
 silence the general outburst of remonstrance. His own 
 men were, of course, greatly in arrears, and when forced 
 to take the field in all directions, to quell the insurrec- 
 tion, became importunate for their pay. With rumours 
 abroad of his impending supersession, and even of the 
 annexation of his country, the Rajah's credit was very 
 low ; and when it was at the very lowest ebb, the young 
 Bukhshee had borrowed a lakh of rupees (10,000) on 
 his own personal security from the local bankers, in order 
 to get some of his battalions to march. But he was an 
 object of hatred and fear to the Residency party, and 
 they endeavoured to make him harmless by disgrace and 
 removal from office. As soon as the Rajah's authority was 
 suspended, on Mr. C. M. Lushington's arrival at Mysore, 
 that gentleman, in concert, and of one accord, with his 
 old friend the Resident, whose guest he was, dismissed 
 Gholam Mohammed Khan from the place of Bukhshee 
 without any pension, and attached his jaghire. Having 
 sought redress from the Senior Commissioner, he also 
 became a marked man. 
 
 On the 23rd of February 1832 Briggs sent in his 
 appeal to the Supreme Government against the harsh 
 and humiliating treatment he had received from the 
 Governor of Madras, who, doubtless, about the same 
 time submitted his own account and advice on the 
 matters of difference that had arisen. But communica- 
 tions were not very rapid in 1832 ; six weeks had to 
 pass away before an answer could come from Simla, 
 where Lord William Bentinck was then residing. Allow- 
 ing one week only for deliberation, and the preparation
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 167 
 
 of a despatch, the Governor-General's decision could not 
 be expected much before the first week in April. Some 
 days at least of this interval, Briggs, whose nervous 
 system was completely upset by the continuous worry to 
 which he had been exposed, determined to pass, under 
 medical advice, with some friends at Oossoor, a place 
 about twenty miles from Bangalore. He was detained, 
 however, for several days by unexpected and alarming 
 events. 
 
 One visible consequence of the rash measures of re- 
 trenchment adopted by Mr. C. M. Lushington in his three 
 months of undivided power, was, that a concourse of 
 soldiers, discharged without their arrears being paid, of 
 pensioners, whose allowances were stopped, and of jag - 
 hiredars and inamdars, whose lands were sequestrated, 
 used daily to assemble either outside the board-room of 
 the Commission, or at the Senior Commissioner's gate, 
 and to beset him on his arrival and departure, with out- 
 cries for relief and redress. They singled out Colonel 
 Briggs as the special object of their clamorous appeals, 
 not merely because he was designated as the head of 
 the new administration, but because on one point his 
 personal adherents, and the hostile party of the Dewan, 
 were quite agreed in opinion, that the great cause of 
 delay in the settlement of Mysore affairs lay in the anta- 
 gonism between the Senior Commissioner on the one 
 side, and the Governor of Madras on the other, and that 
 all would go smooth enough if Colonel Briggs would 
 only submit to be guided by the Governor, and to 
 co-operate with the Resident. This he could not do, 
 and therefore could get no sanction to his repeated 
 suggestions of a loan, or to any of his proposals of 
 reorganisation. 
 
 Many of the pensioners and landholders, whose in- 
 comes were suspended, and who were in constant fear of 
 total disendowment, were doctors of the law, teachers 
 and preachers of religion, having great influence among 
 the discharged soldiery and the most fanatical and tur- 
 bulent classes in general throughout the country, both
 
 1(J8 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 of the Hindoo and of the Mussulman faith. The impo- 
 licy of keeping these people for so long a time in a state 
 of anxiety and positive distress had forcibly presented 
 itself to the mind of Colonel Briggs, but all his warnings 
 and remonstrances could make no impression at Madras. 
 At last an explosion took place. 
 
 On the 3rd of March 1832 the Senior Commissioner 
 received information that the Mysore Infantry on duty 
 in the Fort of Bangalore, for the most part Moham- 
 medans, were prepared, in pursuance of a plot in which 
 a great number of the Rajah's army as well as of the 
 Company's troops were engaged, to seize on the Fort 
 during the night, and to murder all the European officers, 
 including: the Commandant of the Division, who were 
 
 O 
 
 within their reach. Colonel Briggs took steps without 
 a moment's delay, in concert with the General Command- 
 ing at Bangalore, to relieve all the guards in the Fort 
 with European soldiers, and to secure the alleged ring- 
 leaders in the conspiracy. Further inquiries proved the 
 truth of the information ; several of the persons impli- 
 cated betrayed a consciousness of their guilt by flight, but 
 were subsequently apprehended and convicted. 
 
 Incidents of a still more alarming character immedi- 
 ately followed the detection of this plot. The 5th of 
 March 1832 was a day of great solemnity among the 
 Mohammedans, one of their chief religious anniversaries. 
 On the morning of that day the principal mosque of 
 Bangalore, to which the Mussulman sepoys were accus- 
 tomed to resort, was found to be polluted by the worst 
 of all conceivable abominations, the head of a pig, trans- 
 fixed on a rude wooden cross, being placed in the most 
 conspicuous part of the front of the building, while the 
 walls of the interior were smeared with crosses in blood. 
 A vast crowd of Mohammedans, excited to the highest 
 pitch of horror and fury by this desecration of their place 
 of worship, soon assembled, and commenced the work of 
 vengeance by sacking and pulling down a small Roman 
 Catholic Chapel which stood in the bazar, not far from the 
 mosque. Arms were being brought out of the houses, 
 and the infuriated mob would undoubtedly have pro-
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRTGGS. 169 
 
 ceeded to more serious acts of violence, when they were 
 dispersed by the prompt arrival of the 13th Light Dra- 
 goons and a detachment of the 62nd Foot. Every pos- 
 sible precaution was taken in good time. The best means 
 were adopted for explaining to the most intelligent and 
 influential Mohammedans in the place the absurdity of 
 supposing that Christians could have taken part in 
 an outrage which involved a monstrous insult to the 
 emblem of their own faith. The clue found by Colonel 
 Briggs was taken up, and in the inquiry which followed 
 it was clearly proved that the pig had been purchased 
 from a low-caste man, who had also been paid to kill it, 
 to display its head in the mosque, and to make crosses 
 of blood on the walls under their directions, by two 
 Mussulman sepoys, one belonging to the Mysore troops 
 and the other to the Company's Army. The conspirators 
 were tried by Court-martial at Bangalore, and of those 
 who were found guilty, four were blown from guns, and 
 two shot. Several non-commissioned officers and sepoys, 
 also, were transported. Altogether 130 arrests were 
 made, but the greater number were released without 
 trial. 
 
 The European troops at Bangalore in 1832 consisted 
 of the 13th Light Dragoons, the 62nd Foot, and a Com- 
 pany of Madras Artillery, altogether about 1,200 men ; 
 while the Natives, including a Regiment of Light Cavalry 
 and a troop of Horse Artillery, amounted to more than 
 4,000 ; and there were, also, close at hand, 2.000 of the 
 Mysore Silladar Horse, nearly all of them Mohamme- 
 dans, and 2,000 of the Mysore " Barr" or Line In- 
 fantry. 
 
 The obvious aim of this dangerous combination was to 
 rouse Mohammedan fanaticism against the Christian 
 faith, and the European rulers of the country. But 
 Colonel Briggs was of opinion, and certainly not with- 
 out good grounds, that the origin of the movement was 
 to be sought in the sudden loss of subsistence and of an 
 honourable position, that had inflicted great misery upon 
 a much respected class, spreading far and wide those 
 rumours of general discontent, and those words of bitter
 
 170 SOME WORDS AND WORK, ETC. 
 
 hate, which encourage fanaticism and breed insurrection. 
 These notions, however, met with no favour at Madras ; 
 and the Senior Commissioner got no credit, and received 
 no thanks, for the share he had taken in averting a great 
 calamity. On his report reaching the Madras Govern- 
 ment, he was briefly ordered to leave all future proceed- 
 ings in the hands of the military authorities.
 
 171 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 ON the 14th of March 1832, all immediate danger from 
 the Mussulman plot having apparently ceased, the 
 military authorities being in possession of the facts, and 
 being quite competent to deal with them, Colonel 
 Briggs left Bangalore for a few days' comparative recrea- 
 tion at Oossoor. During his brief absence, the opposite 
 party made the best use of their time. On the 20th of 
 March the Junior Commissioner, now alone at the Board, 
 sent the Madras Government a general report on the 
 Dewan's proceedings, highly eulogistic of his conduct and 
 capacity. Within two or three days after the receipt of 
 this despatch, the Right Honble. the Governor came in 
 person to Bangalore, accompanied by his brother, the 
 late Junior Commissioner, and was there joined by the 
 Resident, Mr. Casamajor, the new Junior Commissioner, 
 and the Dewan, - - terrible odds against one poor 
 Lieutenant-Colonel. The first attack was made on 
 Gholam Mohammed Khan, called Mamoo Meean, the 
 ex-Bukhshee of Infantry, one of the Dewan's opponents 
 and victims, and a leading remonstrant against the 
 corrupt and secret rule of the Residency Moonshee. He 
 was accused, on information furnished by the Dewan, of 
 having been implicated in the Mussulman conspiracy. 
 On the very day after Colonel Briggs's rather sudden 
 return to Bangalore his visit to Oossoor having been 
 somewhat cut short by the news of the Governor's 
 arrival, and by an important despatch from the Governor- 
 General, the young ex-Bukhshee appeared before the 
 Board to answer this charge. There was not an atom of 
 evidence, or even a plausible case of suspicion, brought 
 against him ; but before he could reply to his accusers, 
 the Governor had already condemned him, as we shall
 
 172 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 see, to banishment, without trial or allegation of offence. 
 Colonel Briggs gives his opinion on the case of Gholam 
 Mohammed Khan in the following extract from a Minute 
 which he recorded when the inquiry was over. 
 
 " On the first day of taking my seat after my return from 
 Oossoor (the 4th April 1832), I found that the Board had formed 
 itself into a Court of Investigation on the conduct of a nobleman 
 of high rank and family, the eldest son of one of the most distin- 
 guished officers of Tippoo Sultan's army. Gholam Mohammed 
 Khan, familiarly called Mamoo Meean, is the son of the late Khan 
 Jehan Khan, who was selected by Poorniah, on the first creation 
 of the present Principality of Mysore, to the command of all the 
 Regular Infantry. Khan Jehan Khan maintained a high character 
 throughout his life, and handed an unspotted name down to his 
 son, who, although I have seen little of him, I can pronounce to 
 be the most accomplished Native gentleman, and the most elegant 
 scholar I have met with in this part of India. Brought up from 
 infancy among his father's battalions, he commanded one of them 
 while a mere stripling, and on his father's death succeeded to the 
 command of the whole force, under the title of Bukhshee, which 
 he held till within the last year. It is due to this young nobleman 
 to record the opinion entertained of him by the Honble. Mr. Cole, 
 the late Resident at Mysore, and expressed after an acquaintance 
 with father and son of fourteen years. The following letter, now 
 in Gholam Mohammed Khan's possession, was presented to my 
 colleague, and read by him in this room. It is addressed 
 
 " ' To James A. Casamajor, Esq., 
 
 " ' favoured by my particular friend, 
 " 'A. H. Cole. " ' Gholam Mohammed Khan. 
 
 " ' MY DEAREST JAMES, Whenever after my departure for the 
 Mauritius this shall be given to you by Mamoo Meean, son of 
 Khan Jehan, I beg you to receive him as one of the most confi- 
 dential friends we have at this Durbar. He is quite a gentleman, 
 mild, unassuming, and withal an efficient soldier, and ready to 
 uphold his family name with honour. The boy or rather when 
 he was one was left to my own care by his father, whom I visited 
 on his death-bed ; and I have seen no man about this Durbar whom, 
 on the whole, I like and respect half so much. He wants from 
 you abroo* nothing more. I give little Khan Jehan this in time, 
 
 * Treatment consistent with his honour. Abroo is honour or reputa- 
 tion.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 173 
 
 as I may be hurried on the eve of ray departure, that is, if I am 
 to get away at all. God bless you. 
 
 " ' Yours most affectionately, 
 
 " 'A. HY. COLE. 
 " ' Mysore Residency, 16th January 1824.' 
 
 " I have considered it necessary, after the treatment he has 
 received, to put this document on record. 
 
 " Before the examination of Gholam Mohammed Khan com- 
 menced on the 4th instant, he had been subjected, I was sorry to 
 find, to the indignity of being sent for by common peons, instead 
 of receiving a written notice or summons, and was even threatened 
 to be brought before the Board by a military guard. Orders of 
 this kind under similar circumstances in other parts of India have 
 cost the lives of those entrusted with them, as well as those of the 
 persons needlessly insulted. 
 
 " The most minute and private scrutiny of witnesses confined in 
 separate apartments has been entrusted to those who are known 
 to be the Bukhshee's inveterate enemies. The written results of 
 this inquisition did not appear to me to contain sufficient grounds 
 for any charge ; but as I found them on the table, proceedings in 
 progress, and the Bukhshee in attendance below, I did not feel 
 myself authorised to interfere, or to record my sentiments at that 
 time of a measure I could not approve. Moreover, such was my 
 confidence in the character of Gholam Mohammed Khan, and in 
 the opinion of the honourable gentleman whose letter has been 
 read, that I thought it better the investigation should go on without 
 a word of dissent from me. 
 
 " The Bukhshee was required to exculpate himself from the 
 several imputations cast upon him, by submitting to a sort of 
 cross-examination. 
 
 " It is due to every prisoner and he was brought here as one 
 that he should see and hear his accusers give their evidence. He 
 has had no such opportunity. He has never been confronted with 
 them. He was subjected to a close and rigid examination, from 
 which he has come out quite clear. I never saw less appearance 
 of guilty consciousness in any countenance. On the third day he 
 was sent off from Bangalore to Mysore under charge of a common 
 peon. He has lost his abroo. He was not allowed to choose his 
 place of residence, but was sent back to those sahoucars* his 
 creditors, from whose importunity he had withdrawn himself. 
 But they are not his private creditors. He stood forth when his 
 battalions were in arrears by a whole year's pay, and their services 
 were wanted in the field to save the Government from ruin. At 
 such a time, when neither his Sovereign nor the Ministers had 
 
 * Hindoo bankers.
 
 174 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 credit to raise the money, he became security for a lakh of rupees. 
 How was he rewarded ? By removal from office ! His pension 
 has also been stopped, in common with all others in Mysore, and 
 his family estate has been placed under sequestration. Gholam 
 Mohammed Khan came to the Commissioners at Bangalore to 
 obtain redress; but instead of getting any, his name has been 
 mixed up with infamy. 
 
 " Under these circumstances I should ill perform my duty were 
 I not to record my deliberate opinion that Gholam Mohammed 
 Khan, late Bukhshee of the Infantry, has passed through the 
 ordeal to which he has been subjected without a stain or a shadow 
 of guilt, and that, instead of being deserving of punishment, he is 
 entitled to the protection of Government." 
 
 In these animadversions on the treatment of Gholam 
 Mohammed Khan, Colonel Briggs was not merely com- 
 bating his colleague he was now deeply engaged in a 
 personal conflict with the Governor of Madras, who had 
 taken the matter out of the hands of the Commissioners. 
 The ex-Bukhshee was "sent off from Bangalore to Mysore 
 under charge of a common peon", and under summary 
 sentence of banishment, by an order from the Governor, 
 which was aimed as a blow at the Senior Commissioner. 
 It was a bold stroke, and struck at a critical moment, for 
 a despatch had just arrived from Lord William Bentinck, 
 proving his general agreement with Colonel Briggs, and 
 his determination to support him. 
 
 Several days before the urgent appeal from Colonel 
 Briggs of the 23rd of February 1832 can have arrived 
 at his Lordship's camp, the Governor- General, after 
 balancing the conflicting statements of Madras and Ban- 
 galore, had already sent off a short despatch, dated the 
 27th of February, accepting, on every important point of 
 controversy, the views of the Senior Commissioner, and 
 rejecting those of the Governor. In a private letter of 
 the same date, Lord William Bentinck addressed Colonel 
 Briggs in these encouraging terms : 
 
 " Go on, and be of good cheer. You will know that you have 
 my support ; and I may assure you that at my age, and with my 
 experience, I do not easily abandon a position deliberately taken. 
 I confess from what you state, as well as from the tone of the 
 orders and communications addressed to you from Fort St. George,
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 175 
 
 there seems too much ground for your belief that you have not 
 the goodwill of the Governor. There is all the appearance, 
 certainly, of a desire to counteract your measures. But in pro- 
 portion as this may be true, so I would impress upon you the 
 necessity of exercising the greater degree of temper and firmness. 
 You have an ingenious enemy to combat with, if Mr. Lushington 
 be really your enemy ; and, as you have seen, any lapses on your 
 part, such as imputing deficiency to the Dewan on the ground of 
 his historical and geographical ignorance, will be eagerly laid hold 
 of. I therefore recommend to you the prudence which it is equally 
 necessary for me to observe. You urge that Mysore should be 
 withdrawn from the constraint of the Madras Government, and 
 that you should be appointed sole Commissioner. The first of 
 these arrangements may become necessary eventually, but I am 
 exceedingly desirous of avoiding what might be termed a coup-d'ttat, 
 until circumstances should, to the perfect satisfaction of those who 
 are to be ultimately the judges, bear out an act that would be so 
 offensive to the local Government. With respect to your appoint- 
 ment as sole Commissioner, I will fairly acknowledge my decided 
 objection to it. I am strongly opposed to individual agency, 
 except in cases of great emergency, in times of trouble and danger, 
 when the executive authority cannot be armed with too much 
 power. But in the government of Kingdoms, such as Mysore may 
 be considered, equally with Bengal and Bombay, where the duties 
 are mainly deliberative, and where the acts of the agency require 
 to be vigilantly controlled, there is no system so safe as that which 
 the Legislature has wisely established for Indian government. 
 
 " You will see by the despatch to Fort St. George, of which a 
 copy has been sent to you, that your interpretation of my instruc- 
 tions, and your general views of the course to be followed, have 
 been approved and confirmed. Another despatch, conveying a 
 similar approval of your sentiments on the question of military 
 authority, will shortly follow. 
 
 " I need not add more, I hope, to convince you of the necessity 
 of pursuing a steady, temperate and conciliatory course. Let me 
 advise you against the adoption of innovations. Adhere as closely 
 as you can to the institutions of Poorniah, which appear to be 
 generally approved. He was a very able man, and knew, better 
 than we can do, the means of promoting the prosperity and 
 happiness of the country. Above all, avoid the introduction of 
 any plans of English manufacture, and, as far as possible, the 
 employment of any but natives of Mysore as public servants, 
 especially of European officers. 
 
 " I remain, dear Sir, 
 
 " With truth, yours very sincerely, 
 
 " WM. BENTINCK."
 
 176 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 In the official communication of the same date (27th 
 February 1832), referring to his original despatch, Lord 
 William Bentinck declares its main principle to have 
 been that the Commission should, " during the suspen- 
 sion of the Rajah's rule, exercise all the functions of a 
 Regency", thus preserving " that unity of action which, 
 while we hold the country in trust for the Rajah, he is 
 at least entitled to expect at our hands". Inviting the 
 Governor to "a reperusal" of that despatch, he urges 
 that " its whole tenor is opposed to the plan of working 
 out the desired reforms through a Dewan". 
 
 " It never could have occurred to his Lordship to appoint two 
 highly paid British functionaries for the mere purpose of aiding an 
 officer of that description ; nor can it be for an instant allowed 
 that the appointment of a Dewan, even though it has been ap- 
 proved by the Madras Government, relieves the Commissioners 
 from any part of the responsibility which, as the supreme authority 
 in Mysore, exercising full powers in all departments, they have 
 incurred to Government for the proper execution of its designs and 
 purposes. 
 
 " As observed by Lieut.-Col. Briggs, a Dewan is a Ministerial 
 officer, whose relative position to the Head of the State is as 
 that of a Secretary or other officer who may be the medium for 
 submitting questions, and for taking and issuing the necessary 
 orders." 
 
 After pointing out that the position of Poorniah, who 
 had, in fact, been Regent as well as Dewan during the 
 Rajah's minority, was not at all analogous to that of the 
 present Dewan, the Governor- General declared that " it 
 would be a deviation from the principle of administration 
 to be now introduced, were the Dewan to be converted 
 into an authority for originating plans of reform upon 
 his own responsibility, or were he allowed further weight 
 than must necessarily attach to the person who conducts 
 the executive correspondence with local officers" : 
 
 " Consistently with the same view, his Lordship cannot agree 
 with the Eight Honble. the Governor in Council, in the restric- 
 tions imposed upon the Commissioners in respect to the appoint- 
 ment and dismissal of Native officers. A reform in this depart- 
 ment is more urgently required than in any other. The abuses 
 which existed through the nomination of needy favourites, or 
 through the sale of appointments to extortioners, having been
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRTGGS. 177 
 
 among the primary causes of the insurrection which led to the 
 intervention of the Supreme Government. Unless the Commis- 
 sioners exercise a searching control in this department, matters 
 will probably remain in the same condition as before ; and to 
 enable them to do so, it is his Lordship's decided opinion that 
 instead of leaving appointments and removals to the Dewan, with 
 a prohibition against interference except upon cause shown, the 
 responsibility for proper officers being employed should rest with 
 the Commissioners, who must, therefore, have the power of nomina- 
 tion and dismissal, they referring to the Dewan for information 
 only so far as they may deem expedient." 
 
 It might have been supposed that, after so signal a 
 defeat, the Governor of Madras would have made a virtue 
 of necessity, and giving the Senior Commissioner of 
 Mysore, as graciously as might be, due credit for having 
 accurately divined the views of the Supreme Govern- 
 ment, would have left him to carry those views into 
 execution without much let or hindrance. But Mr. 
 Lushington was, indeed, "an ingenious enemy", and 
 more especially after his long consultations on the spot 
 with the Resident, the Dewan and the Junior Commis- 
 sioner, he was too deeply engaged and too closely com- 
 mitted to be willing so easily to retire from the contest. 
 This will more clearly appear in the following extract 
 from Colonel Briggs's diary, and also from the extra- 
 ordinary step taken by the Governor immediately after 
 the interview therein described. 
 
 The Governor-General's private letter to Colonel 
 Briggs, dated 27th February, was delivered at Banga- 
 lore on the 25th of March ; and on the same day the 
 official despatch of the former date must have reached 
 the Governor's hands. The copy of the official despatch 
 for the Commissioners' information did not, somehow or 
 other, arrive at their office till the 30th. Briggs was 
 still in the country, but returned to Bangalore on the 
 2nd of April, and the next morning went to pay his 
 respects to the Right Honble. the Governor. 
 
 " At noon I waited on the Governor. On entering the room I 
 was met by Mr. Drury, who greeted me very cordially, and told 
 me he would tell the Governor I was there. I was immediately 
 sent for, and saw the Governor alone. He rose from his chair 
 
 N
 
 178 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 with his usual politeness, asked how I was, and made me sit close 
 to him. He spoke of the climate and my health, and then 
 addressed me thus : 
 
 " ' Pray, Colonel Briggs, did you hear anything, or have any 
 warning, of this Mohammedan conspiracy before the day when 
 General Hawker marched the Europeans into the Fort?' 
 
 " ' Nothing at all', I said ; ' it came upon us all like a clap of 
 thunder.' I remarked that its suppression reflected great credit 
 on the military authorities at Bangalore. 
 " ' It was providential', said he. 
 
 " I observed that if the European soldiers had not been effec- 
 tually separated from the Sepoys, and the latter properly managed 
 for two or three days after the pig affair, the consequences might 
 have been dreadful. He asked me in what I thought it originated. 
 I said that I now believed there was no deep-rooted plot, though 
 it looked like it at first. I thought it was principally caused by 
 distress and discontent arising among the unpaid and discharged 
 soldiery. 
 
 "'Well', said the Governor, 'you can get to work and settle all 
 those matters now. "We have given you Mr. Drury, a very efficient 
 man, as a colleague.' 
 
 " I said, ' Yes, certainly, Mr. Drury is not only a man of great 
 talent, but of great assiduity.' 
 
 " ' There ought to be no difficulty', he said, ' in paying up all 
 arrears. To what do they amount ?' 
 
 '' I explained that besides what was due to the troops, to the 
 Hoozoor and district establishments, the bonded debts of the 
 Rajah were said to amount to twelve lakhs of pagodas. 
 
 " ' But', said he, ' we are not bound to pay all the Rajah's debts, 
 and thus to recognise and approve his profligate extravagance.' 
 
 " I said that ' iue' were not going to pay the Rajah's debts. All 
 such demands were against the revenues of Mysore ; and I added 
 that I knew not how to distinguish between the Rajah's debts and 
 the debts of the State . 
 
 " ' Oh, yes', said the Governor, ' it is simple enough. The Rajah 
 had no right to incur debts for mere wanton luxury. We must 
 meet all arrears due to public establishments, and debts that can 
 be referred to public purposes ; but those that arise from the 
 private caprice and vice of the Rajah, he must pay, or may pay if 
 he thinks fit, from his stipend. The people who trusted him knew 
 very well that our Government would never sanction such trans- 
 actions.' 
 
 " I replied that the people who trusted him had no reason to 
 think of our Government in those days. They lent their money, 
 or sold their goods, on the credit of a despotic Prince. The Rajah, 
 in his Sovereign capacity, had surely a right to make what pur-
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 17 ( J 
 
 chases, and incur what debts, he chose, to be paid out of the revenues, 
 of which he was the absolute master. 
 
 " ' Not at all', said the Governor, who seemed to be getting 
 nettled at iny disputation, feeling his inability to maintain his 
 position against me, ' not at all, Colonel Briggs, the Rajah had no 
 right to take more than a fair share for the support of his house- 
 hold and dignity. He had no right to spend other people's 
 money.' 
 
 " ' Undoubtedly', I replied, ' he had no moral right to squander 
 the revenue ; but there was, before our intervention, no legal right 
 or power above his. For the future, so long as the country is in 
 our charge, the Rajah must rely on his stipend and share of the 
 revenue, and no one ought to look to any other source if they 
 choose to give him credit.' 
 
 " ' These debts', said the Governor, ' must be rigidly examined.'* 
 
 " To this, of course, I acceded ; and I added that I believed a 
 large proportion of the sums claimed were for jewels, shawls, and 
 other costly goods purchased at four times their value, and that 
 bonds or bills at five or six years after date were given for them, 
 and that, therefore, these debts did not call for immediate atten- 
 tion, and could probably be settled for much less than their nominal 
 amount; but that the arrears to the troops, and other establishments, 
 ought to be at once taken in hand. 
 
 " ' Certainly, certainly, Colonel Briggs', said the Governor, ' and 
 then, there is Nuggur. The state of that district is a disgrace to 
 our Government. You should immediately settle Nuggur.' 
 
 " As I had already fully assented to that view, or rather enforced 
 it on the Government of Madras with no effect, I said nothing more, 
 and a pause of some time ensued ; after which the Governor said, 
 ' Well, Colonel Briggs, you now perfectly understand the footing 
 on which you stand with Mr. Drury, that you are to act con- 
 jointly, and not separately.' 
 
 " I said, ' Surely, sir, I never thought otherwise.' 
 
 " ' You are not', he continued, ' to take the whole Revenue 
 Department into your hands, as you proposed ; because, you 
 know, that is the particular branch of the administration we should 
 most unwillingly confide to you.' 
 
 " I said I was aware of the views of the Council, and had never 
 arrogated to myself the sole management of the Revenue or any 
 other Department ; although I suggested that, as a matter of con- 
 venience, each Commissioner should superintend the current busi- 
 
 * It was eventually settled that all the debts incurred by the Rajah 
 before the administration was assumed by the British Government 
 should be regarded as debts of the State, and that his Highness's stipend 
 and fifth share of the revenue under the Treaty should not be charged 
 with them. 
 
 N 2
 
 180 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 ness of certain Departments, just as I understood was done at 
 Madras, where Members of Council were Presidents of the Revenue 
 and Judicial Boards, but that all matters of general concern and 
 great importance should be disposed of by the Commissioners con- 
 jointly, after consultation. 
 
 " ' You certainly did not express yourself clearly to that effect 
 before', said the Governor. 
 
 " I regretted very much that I had failed to make myself under- 
 stood. 
 
 " ' Now, at any rate, Colonel Briggs, you understand your posi- 
 tion. You have been all along in error. We are all liable to err. 
 You can atone for it by acting cordially with your new colleague ; 
 aud you may rely on the fullest support from me. You, above all 
 other persons, were the very man to whom I was disposed to 
 show every kindness and attention. Did I not evince this in the 
 letter I wrote to you at Hyderabad ?' 
 
 " I bowed, and said I was much indebted for his kindness and 
 condescension. 
 
 " ' Why, I had resolved', he continued, ' to make you Military 
 Auditor-General. You applied for the appointment, and you should 
 have had it, only you were out of the way when it fell vacant.' 
 
 " I then rose, bowed again, and said I was quite sensible how 
 much I was indebted to him for his goodwill. 
 
 " ' I have always been well disposed towards you, and anxious 
 to advance your interests.' 
 
 " ' You have been good enough ever to express yourself so', I 
 said, ' and I can only tender my acknowledgments for all the kind- 
 ness and courtesy I have received at your hands.' I must confess 
 that I was rather too stiff ; but there was a strain on us both from 
 first to last. 
 
 " ' Well, then', said the Governor, ' have you anything more to 
 discuss ? If so, say it at once.' 
 
 " I said that I would rather decline discussion altogether ; that 
 I should endeavour to do my duty, and hoped to give satisfaction 
 to my superiors. 
 
 " ' You may rely on my cordial support, if you get on well with 
 your colleague, who is an admirable man of business.' 
 
 " I said there was no question about that, and that I should do 
 my best in every way. During the conversation the Governor 
 adverted several times to the Dewan, and he detained me to revert 
 to the subject again. He said my first opinion of him seemed to 
 be the true one, that he was a plain, simple, and unpresuming 
 man. 
 
 " I said that certainly such was the impression he gave one by 
 his manner and address. 
 
 " ' Having been raised to the Office by the Government, it would
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 181 
 
 be disgraceful for us to degrade him without sufficient and manifest 
 cause. If, however', continued the Governor, ' you and Mr. Drury 
 should hereafter think him unfit, we shall not be disposed to 
 uphold him.' 
 
 " I said that I had made no objection to the Dewan as a person 
 to receive and execute orders, but that he was not, in my opinion, 
 fit to govern a Kingdom, as Poorniah did. 
 
 " ' There is a great mistake about Poorniah', said the Governor. 
 ' Poorniah was never a Kegent, nor was he a Secretary ; he was 
 merely a Dewan, set up by our Government ; and Mr. Webbe 
 and Colonel Close managed the affairs of Mysore through his 
 agency.' 
 
 " I knew this was quite wrong, for Poorniah was, after the first 
 two or three years, almost entirely left to his own devices, but I 
 said nothing ; indeed he hardly gave me time to make any remark, 
 but abruptly inquired, ' Who is this Krishna Eao that you have 
 got about you ?' 
 
 " I answered that he was the son of Hunamunt Eao, a very dis- 
 tinguished public servant, much trusted by Sir Thomas Munro 
 and Mr. Chaplin, and who had been rewarded by a jaghire of 5,000 
 rupees a year. Krishna Eao was born and bred at Ooscotta in the 
 Bangalore district, of which town he and his father were the here- 
 ditary Goomashtas. He was trained from his youth in the Eevenue 
 Department under his father, and succeeded him as Head Duf- 
 turdar at Poona, and subsequently as Head of the Dewan Duftur 
 at Bombay, where his salary was 800 rupees a month. ' I had 
 no acquaintance with him', I added, ' of an agreeable nature ; 
 indeed, I had only seen him once for five minutes casually in the 
 Poona Office, but I knew he was employed some years ago, when I 
 was in Khandesh, to make a tour through the country, and that he 
 sent in a report to which I had to reply.' 
 
 " ' Do you mean', said the Governor, ' that he was employed to 
 scrutinise your administration ?' 
 
 " ' Yes, indeed', I answered, ' I knew very well what was going 
 on then, and he acknowledges it now, and has told me exactly 
 what his instructions were.' 
 
 " ' Then how came he to think of coming here ?' 
 ' " I sent for him. I knew him to be a man of high character 
 and ability. He was out of employ, and wrote to me at Hyderabad. 
 I did not answer his letter till I reached Bangalore, when con- 
 ceiving that the Government intended the Commissioners to 
 remodel the administration of Mysore with men brought up in our 
 own school, I wrote to my friend Mr. Nisbet, the Principal Col- 
 lector of Dharwar, to send me Krishna Eao, who was residing in 
 that district, and a few good Mamlutdars of the borders, who 
 might be natives of Tippoo's Kingdom of Mysore.'
 
 182 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 "'Aye, aye', said the Governor, 'and when he arrived, every- 
 body gave out that he was to be your Dewan, and that the other 
 was to be displaced.' 
 
 " ' I never gave sanction to such a report ; nor do I believe did 
 Krishna Rao. If reports were to render people ineligible for office, 
 I ought to have been incapacitated long ago, for scarcely a week 
 has passed since I came here that I have not heard of my intended 
 removal next Council day/ 
 
 " ' Ah, I dare say', said the Governor. ' I believe Bangalore is 
 rather famous for originating reports and scandals.' 
 
 " I said it was like all other large stations, where there were 
 many people who had little to do but gad about and gossip. 
 
 " ' Well, Colonel Briggs, you now see the footing on which you 
 stand. The Governor-General's instructions are plain enough, 
 and though you have been in error, we are all, as I said before, 
 liable to error, and I trust you will not misunderstand me for the 
 future, and that you will agree well with Mr. Drury. I have 
 been very candid with you, and have explained all that I expect ; 
 and if you act in the spirit I recommend, you may rely on my 
 support' 
 
 " I bowed and left the room." 
 
 This interview took place on the 3rd of April. Not 
 many days passed before Colonel Briggs had a specimen of 
 the " support" he had to expect from the Right Honble. 
 Stephen Lushington. On the 4th the Commissioners 
 met for business, which chiefly consisted of the investi- 
 gation into the conduct of Gholam Mohammed Khan. 
 The despatch from the Governor-General of the 27th 
 of February was formally read, and a resolution passed 
 that, " in obedience to the orders contained in its con- 
 cluding paragraph, measures be taken for giving imme- 
 diate effect to the views and instructions of the Supreme 
 Government." The Junior Commissioner did not posi- 
 tively object to this resolution being recorded, but he 
 was of opinion that it was quite unnecessary and super- 
 fluous, as the letter afforded no new instructions, and its 
 application must be left to the Madras Government, 
 under whose immediate orders the Commission was 
 placed. This was a slight hint to Colonel Briggs of the 
 Governor's intentions, but he little thought of what was 
 coming. 
 
 The Governor of Madras still remained at Bangalore.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 183 
 
 The two Commissioners met almost every day at their 
 board-room for the despatch of business. The Governor 
 and his brother, the Resident, the Junior Commissioner 
 and the Dewan, had their meetings almost every day to 
 compass the defeat and downfall of the Senior Com- 
 missioner. On the 5th of April the Governor gave a 
 grand ball, at which Colonel Briggs was present. The 
 very next day a heavy blow was struck at the Senior 
 Commissioner, well calculated either to crush him at 
 once, by rendering him powerless and contemptible, or 
 to provoke him to some rash and intemperate course 
 destructive of his interest with the Governor-General, 
 and necessitating his removal. 
 
 The Governor- General, in the despatch of the 27th of 
 February, had disapproved " the restrictions imposed 
 upon the Commissioners in respect to the appointment 
 of Native officers", and had ruled that " the responsi- 
 bility for proper officers being employed should rest with 
 the Commissioners, who must have the power of nomina- 
 tion and dismissal".* The Governor of Madras was deter- 
 mined that, even if the Commissioners must have the 
 power of nominating and appointing Native officers, 
 those Native officers whom the Senior Commissioner 
 would wish to nominate and appoint should be put out 
 of his way. 
 
 On the 6th of April, when the Commissioners met at 
 the Board, a despatch from the Governor, dated on the 
 previous day, sent from a few hundred yards distance, 
 was laid before them, stating that " idle rumours" had 
 been " propagated through the agency of intriguing and 
 interested individuals", " calculated to produce serious 
 mischief, by encouraging the pernicious designs of aban- 
 doned characters", to the effect that " a general change 
 was contemplated of the Native officers under the orders 
 of the Commission, whose places were to be supplied from 
 amongst strangers who have been assembled in expecta- 
 tion of employment at this place." It was, therefore, 
 ordered that six persons, " named in the margin", who 
 were " suspected of being most particularly interested 
 
 * Ante, p. 177.
 
 184 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 in the diffusion of these reports", should be expelled 
 under police escort from Bangalore, " the seat of the 
 Commission", within twenty-four hours. " If any of 
 them" were " Natives of the country", they should be 
 directed "to repair to their respective villages"; if "resi- 
 dents of Bangalore", they " must choose some other place 
 of abode"; if not Natives of Mysore, they must "proceed 
 beyond the frontiers of the territory". 
 
 Not one of those proscribed in this despatch was a 
 " stranger"; they were all Natives of Mysore. Colonel 
 Briggs was known to take a strong personal interest in 
 two of them, Krishna Kao, who was avowedly his 
 right-hand man, and Gholam Mohammed Khan, the ex- 
 Bukhshee. At his interview with the Governor, on the 
 3rd of April, he had been questioned as to Krishna Hao, 
 and had expressed a high opinion of his capabilities and 
 character. On the 5th of April the Governor ordered 
 Krishna Kao to be turned out of the place. There could 
 be no doubt or question for whom the blow was in- 
 tended. 
 
 Not one of these persons had been convicted, or even 
 accused, of any crime or misdemeanour. Their sole offence 
 was that they bowed not, nor did reverence, before the 
 Dewan, and that they sat in the gate of the Senior 
 Commissioner. The despatch itself admits of no other 
 meaning. 
 
 Briggs at once recorded a Minute protesting against 
 this extraordinary measure, and appealing to the 
 Governor for its modification, so far at least as Krishna 
 Ilao was concerned. 
 
 "It is not for me", he said, "to oppose the execution 
 of any orders of the Eight Honble. the Governor, but it 
 is a duty I owe to the station I fill at this Board to 
 record my dissent from a measure like this. No proofs 
 are brought before us of its necessity ; and I can hardly 
 believe that an act so prompt, not originating with the 
 Board, can have the effect of giving strength to the local 
 Government established by the Governor-General." 
 
 In this Minute he declared, as he had explained clearly 
 enough to the Governor on previous occasions, that he
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 185 
 
 wanted the services of Krishna Rao for his own personal 
 assistance, and that he desired on the first opportunity, 
 as soon, in fact, as the Governor would sanction the 
 formation of permanent establishments, to place him in 
 one of the highest offices in Mysore. He referred to 
 Krishna Rao's distinguished official career and un- 
 blemished character, quoted the flattering testimonials 
 he had received from the English officers under whom 
 he had served, and from the Bombay Government, and 
 concluded by trusting that on reconsideration the Right 
 Honble. the Governor would not " degrade" this exem- 
 plary public servant, or " deprive" Colonel Briggs " of 
 his aid". 
 
 Though it was necessary to go through the form of 
 making this reference, Briggs knew perfectly well that 
 his request would be refused. It was very promptly 
 refused. Moreover, the Colonel having unfortunately 
 mentioned that Krishna Rao was no " stranger", but 
 was born and brought up at Ooscotta, a town about 
 sixteen miles from Bangalore, of which he was the 
 hereditary record-keeper, the Governor directed that he 
 should not be considered as a Native of Mysore, and 
 allowed " to repair to his own village", as ordered in the 
 original despatch. The Governor strongly objected to 
 Colonel Briggs employing " a confidential agent not in 
 the public service", as if it was Colonel Briggs's fault 
 that he was not in the public service, declaring that 
 this would be merely " bringing back a repetition of 
 those days of dubash influence which in former times" 
 had been "the fruitful source of discord, corruption, and 
 failure". 
 
 " The Right Honble. the Governor has learnt", the 
 despatch continued, "that Krishna Rao has not resided 
 in the Mysore country for thirty years, that his jaghire 
 is in the Dharwar district, and that his pension is pay- 
 able there also. It is not, therefore, expedient that, he 
 should be permitted to remain at Ooscotta, upon the 
 pretext of his being a Native of that village ; and the 
 Right Honble. the Governor desires that no time may 
 be lost in sending Krishna Rao beyond the frontiers of 
 the Mysore country."
 
 186 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 This despatch was dated the 9th of April 1832. The 
 Colonel's diary of the 10th contains the following 
 entries : 
 
 " Every Native of rank and respectability who has entered my 
 doors since my return to Bangalore has now been expelled from 
 the Mysore country, with the exception of one, a grain-contractor, 
 whose removal at this time would injuriously affect the supply of 
 the troops. 
 
 " Krishna Rao came in the evening, sealed up all his papers, and 
 left them with me, with a catalogue. He is to call to-morrow 
 morning early to enable me to translate some papers for iny use 
 before he goes. He has been permitted to go to Koryconda, Zilla 
 Bellary, seventy-two miles from hence, where his family reside, 
 instead of Dharwar, as originally ordered. 
 
 " llth April. Krishna Eao called at 11 a.m. with his relations, 
 and took leave. He said it was industriously circulated by the 
 Dewan's party that the Governor had written to Bombay and 
 Bengal to deprive him of his jaghire. He did not believe it, but 
 he felt the insult acutely, and was greatly dejected and afflicted, 
 poor man, as well he might be. I endeavoured to comfort him 
 with assurances that the Governor-General would not support 
 such persecution ; and I told him plainly that I was confident 
 that the Governor-General had long since decided the question as 
 to my remaining here or not. I told Krishna Eao to take example 
 by me, and to bend before the raging of a storm which must be of 
 short duration in proportion to its violence." 
 
 Proof that the Governor- General had long since de- 
 cided in favour of Colonel Briggs, and against his perse- 
 cutors, was very soon forthcoming. On the 12th of 
 April, the very day after the entry last quoted from the 
 diary, it was reported that the Governor had received 
 an express from Madras, "which came in the incredibly 
 short space of thirty-one hours, very little less than 
 seven miles an hour",* that orders had been imme- 
 diately given for moving with the utmost possible haste, 
 that the tents were all struck and packed, and that the 
 camp would be off the ground in another hour or two. 
 The Governor left Bangalore for the Neilgherry Hills on 
 the morning of the 13th, and before noon on that day 
 the Commissioners received a despatch from him direct- 
 
 * It must be remembered that the mails were in those days carried 
 by men who ran with them on foot.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGUS. 187 
 
 ing them to suspend the operation of any orders that 
 might arrive from the Governor-General until they had 
 got the Governor's own instructions upon them. Evi- 
 dently something very unpleasant had arrived from the 
 Supreme Government, and the Governor of Madras had 
 assumed a dispensing power until he could circumvent it. 
 The breeze that had so suddenly broken up the Governor's 
 camp was Lord William Bentinck's reply to Briggs's 
 urgent appeal of the 23rd of February, in the form of a 
 Minute dated the 24th of March. The Governor's copy 
 arrived by express on the 12th of April, and that for 
 the Commissioners on the morning of the 15th. After 
 observing that he has received from Lieutenant-Colonel 
 Briggs an appeal against " the harshness evinced towards 
 him by the Madras Government", the Governor-General 
 proceeds as follows : 
 
 " I feel myself on the present occasion placed in a distressing 
 predicament, but I also feel that I should ill perform my duty 
 were I to be restrained by motives of delicacy from a declaration 
 of my sentiments. Impressed with this conviction, I must reluc- 
 tantly, but deliberately, declare that it would have better consisted 
 with what is due to the station of the Senior Commissioner in 
 Mysore, as well as to the dignity of the Madras Government, had 
 a different tone been adopted in the instructions furnished to that 
 officer. 
 
 "4. I am far from wishing to screen any public functionary, 
 still less one of my own selection, from a fair and candid exposure 
 of his errors ; but at the same time I must not shrink from ex- 
 tending to him my protection when I feel satisfied that his conduct 
 has been actuated by correct and honourable motives. 
 
 " 5. Under feelings of irritation produced by reproof which he 
 considered to be unmerited, Colonel Briggs has suffered himself 
 to be betrayed into a warmth of expression for which he is justly 
 censurable, and I entreat the Eight Honble. the Governor in 
 Council to reflect how materially the interests of the public service 
 have already been injured by the course of proceeding which has 
 been pursued. 
 
 " 6. I have seen nothing in the proceedings of Colonel Briggs 
 to alter the favourable opinion which his public reputation alone, 
 and his selection by His Majesty's late Ministry to fill the important 
 office of Envoy in Persia, had led me to form ; and I yet indulge 
 the hope that the same degree of confidence may be reposed in 
 him by the Governor of Madras, aiKl that in conducting the
 
 188 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 momentous duties confided to his charge, he may be encouraged 
 by the support of the authorities to whom he is subordinate. 
 
 " 7. But it behoves me to omit no precaution by which failure 
 can be obviated ; and I deem it indispensable to issue distinct 
 instructions on three points, without which it would be vain to 
 expect a successful administration of the affairs of Mysore. These 
 three points are the following : 
 
 " 8. First, the character and past occupations of the individual 
 now filling the office of Dewan are not such as to justify the belief 
 that he is capable of fulfilling the duties of that eminent situation 
 with impartiality and efficiency. The Senior Commissioner is 
 convinced of his incapacity, and with this conviction, even were it 
 not well founded, it is quite impossible that the affairs of the 
 country could be creditably managed. I have, therefore, to request 
 that the Eight Honourable the Governor in Council will be pleased 
 to give authority to the Commissioners for the immediate removal 
 of the person in question from the office of Dewan. 
 
 " Secondly, the whole of the patronage, from the highest office 
 in the State, including that of Dewan, down to the lowest, must 
 rest in the Commissioners, and it is absolutely necessary that no 
 appeal should be allowed to the Madras Government regarding 
 removal from, and appointment to, such offices. The Commis- 
 sioners being responsible for the public conduct of affairs, the 
 choice of their subordinate instruments should (as stated in my 
 instructions of the 27th ultimo) be left entirely to them. Any 
 interference in this department would only embarrass their admin- 
 istration, and convert the officers of State from useful instruments 
 into factious opponents, by teaching them to look to other authority 
 besides the Commission for promotion and support. In fact it 
 would be impossible to hold the Commission responsible for the 
 Government of Mysore, if their subordinates in any degree were 
 to be supported in office against their authority. 
 
 " Thirdly, with a view to secure a prompt decision of all ques- 
 tions that may come before them, it is important to define accu- 
 rately the relative powers of the two Commissioners. It should 
 be understood, therefore, that in all matters (including questions 
 of patronage, of appointment, or removal from office), the Senior 
 Commissioner for the time being is to have the casting voice, and 
 his opinion must be considered as representing the will of the 
 Commission." 
 
 The Government of Madras had sharply reprimanded 
 Colonel Briggs for giving some direct instructions to 
 Major James, an officer in charge of a detachment in one 
 of the disturbed districts, instead of applying to the 
 superior military authorities. "With reference to 'the
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 189 
 
 censure passed on the conduct of Colonel Briggs on that 
 occasion, I cannot help", said Lord William Bentinck, 
 "recording my opinion that it was unnecessarily severe, 
 even admitting (which is to me by no means clear) that 
 he had erred in the exercise of a discretion to which he 
 could have resorted with no other purpose in view than 
 the benefit of the public service." 
 
 The Governor- General observed that the Senior Com- 
 missioner, Colonel Briggs, had proposed, in his letter of 
 appeal, "to furnish a history of the late insurrection, and 
 of the present state of Mysore, and as nothing has yet 
 appeared on this very important subject in a detailed 
 and connected form, I consider", said his Lordship, "that 
 this design should be fulfilled." Major-General Hawker, 
 commanding the Mysore Division, was to be associated 
 with the two Commissioners in a Committee " for the 
 special purpose of framing a report on the origin, progress, 
 and suppression of the recent disturbances". 
 
 " The proclamation of a general amnesty", the Governor- 
 General went on to say, " and the establishment of a 
 Court of Justice, are measures of such paramount import- 
 ance that they will doubtless have already been carried 
 into effect." 
 
 These were two of the measures which Briggs had 
 unceasingly pressed on the attention of the Madras 
 Government, but which had hitherto met with nothing 
 but supercilious and vexatious obstruction.
 
 190 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 IT might now have been supposed that Colonel Briggs, 
 being fairly and firmly seated as head of the local 
 government of Mysore, relieved from the incubus of the 
 Dewan, and authorised, if necessary, to overrule the 
 opposition of his colleague, would at last be able to work 
 freely. It was not quite so easy. The Governor, under 
 whose immediate command the Commission was placed, 
 chose to exercise a dispensing power over the Governor- 
 General's orders, and forbade their execution pending 
 the issue of his own definite instructions. The Dewan 
 could not be removed from office, and the Senior Com- 
 missioner could not make use of his casting vote, until 
 the Governor- General's decrees were ratified, and, per- 
 haps, qualified, by the Governor of Madras. 
 
 With the Province of Nuggur still in a state of dis- 
 turbance and anarchy, the collection or loss of its revenue 
 dependent entirely on the speedy restoration of quiet 
 and confidence, and the rainy season approaching, every 
 day of delay was dangerous, and might be disastrous. 
 Briggs gave expression to his impatience and perplexity 
 at this time, in a letter dated the 26th of April, to his 
 friend, Colonel W. Morison, then Resident at Travan- 
 core.* 
 
 " Was ever human being placed in such a situation ? His Lord- 
 ship assures me of his support, but while I am subjected to the 
 authority of my determined opponents, and bound to be obedient 
 and respectful to them, how is it possible for me to do my duty 
 and avoid blame ? Seeing all this before me as clearly as I did at 
 first, I ought not, perhaps, to have accepted the office. Nobly 
 supported as I have been, I have nearly sunk under the struggle, 
 and I hardly hope to get through it now. The Governor-General 
 
 * He succeeded Briggs as Commissioner of Mysore, and was after- 
 wards Member of the Supreme Council of India.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 191 
 
 can hardly overlook the fact of the Governor coming here, and 
 acting in open and personal opposition to me, after the receipt of 
 the despatch of the 27th February, and continuing to interfere and 
 to obstruct business after the Minute of the 24th March. The 
 Governor-General's orders are clear and positive, but Mr. Lush- 
 ington has suspended their execution in so artful a manner that I 
 am at a loss to know whether responsibility may not attach to me 
 for suffering all our affairs to be thus brought to a standstill. It 
 is so difficult to trim between forbearance and action. If I were a 
 mere soldier I could see my way well enough ; in military matters 
 the chain of subordination almost always proves where the respon- 
 sibility rests. But in ruling a kingdom it is different ; the machine 
 of government cannot be idle without danger. During the whole 
 of my stay here my task has been that of preventing an explosion 
 by persuading all classes that matters would soon be settled. My 
 word will not be taken much longer, and my position is becoming 
 contemptible. Their patience is exhausted. The arbitrary banish- 
 ment of men of distinction and high character for the sole crime 
 of helping me in public matters, the treatment of Gholam 
 Mohammed Khan and others of rank, have excited a feeling of 
 hatred and disgust that cannot be described. I am cut off from 
 every source of intelligence. The first men in the State, whose 
 co-operation I require, write that they are now afraid to approach 
 me from fear of losing their dbroo. I could act boldly at once, but 
 I dread incurring censure for disrespect towards the Governor ; 
 and yet I shall probably be driven to do something in a few days, 
 for matters cannot remain as they are." 
 
 In a few days he was driven to do something. The 
 most pressing things to be done were the displacement 
 of the Dewan Vencataramaniah, and the installation of 
 his successor, which could only be carried out at Banga- 
 lore ; and, secondly, the pacification of Nuggur, which 
 required a tour to be taken through the disturbed dis- 
 tricts by one or other of the Commissioners. But the 
 Governor was in no hurry to give the word for the 
 Dewan's removal, and on the subject of the disturbances 
 in Nuggur, delay was caused by a difference of opinion. 
 Colonel Briggs, besides being bent on a sweeping dis- 
 missal of the corrupt and oppressive officials in that 
 Province, was in favour of publishing a general amnesty 
 for all insurgents who would come in by a certain date, 
 a few leading offenders excepted, who had been personally 
 engaged in acts of atrocity, so that the chiefs and their
 
 192 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 followers might return to their homes as soon as possible, 
 and cultivation and commerce be resumed. The Governor, 
 on the contrary, preferring the Resident's views, the 
 Junior Commissioner heartily concurring, would not 
 admit the misdeeds of the relatives and creatures of the 
 Dewan and the Residency Moonshee, but directed a pro- 
 clamation to be issued denouncing the Polygar chiefs 
 who were " out" in the jungle as common robbers, whom 
 everyone ought to resist and endeavour to apprehend, 
 calling on the population, as " the best guardians of their 
 own property", "to make use of fire-arms and other offen- 
 sive weapons to secure themselves, their houses, and their 
 property against the incursion of such depredators", and 
 offering large rewards for their capture. Colonel Briggs, 
 knowing that the natives of these districts were always 
 ready enough to take up arms in their own quarrels 
 without that " earnest encouragement" from the British 
 Commissioners which the Governor of Madras recom- 
 mended, considered that this invitation to them to take 
 up the neglected or mismanaged work of the troops and 
 police was a confession of weakness and a dereliction of 
 duty on our part, and would probably operate as a public 
 authorisation of blood-feuds and faction fights. He, there- 
 fore, expressed his disagreement with this policy, but, as 
 the orders of the Madras Government were imperative, 
 proposed their being carried out forthwith by the Junior 
 Commissioner, who should proceed in person to the scene 
 of action. He urged, with much reason, that " no 
 measures could be so likely to succeed in the settlement 
 of the disturbed district as those wherein the views of 
 the person actually employed were in complete union 
 with those of the Right Honble. the Governor". In the 
 meantime he would remain at Bangalore, and give his 
 attention to remodelling the public service at head- 
 quarters and in the provinces, to forming a -code of 
 regulations for the judicial department, and to the all- 
 important question of the finances. 
 
 The Junior Commissioner having warmly objected to 
 go on the expedition to Nuggur, Colonel Briggs at once 
 offered to undertake it, and to hold himself in readiness
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 193 
 
 to march at the earliest practicable moment. But he 
 was determined not to go until the change had been 
 completed in the important place of Dewan. For this 
 two transactions were necessary, the resignation or re- 
 moval of the Dewan, and the acceptance of office by a 
 suitable successor. The Dewan would certainly not 
 resign without the express orders of his patron, the 
 Governor of Madras. So long as a desire to serve under 
 the Senior Commissioner seemed productive of insult and 
 exile, no one of eminence and character would venture to 
 accept his nomination. 
 
 On the 28th of April permission was received from the 
 Governor to act on the Governor-General's instructions 
 by calling on the Dewan for his resignation. But it was 
 useless to take advantage of this permission until some 
 one was ready to take up the duties of the office. This 
 no eligible person would do as long as the proscriptions 
 remained in force. The person on whom Colonel Briggs 
 had fixed to fill the expected vacancy Baboo Rao, an 
 old Brahmin of rank residing at Mysore, who had pre- 
 viously occupied the place of Dewan for three years with 
 great credit refused even to pay him a visit at Banga- 
 lore without a written assurance that he should incur 
 no penalty, and be exposed to no affront. " Those who 
 have before come on your invitation", he wrote, " and 
 others who came of their own accord, men of the highest 
 respectability, have been turned out of the place, and 
 even directed to quit the Mysore territory, without any 
 crime. Persons, therefore, who have acquired reputation 
 by their services under the Nawabs Hyder and Tippoo 
 Sultan, and have served with honour ever since, are now 
 apprehensive of coming." 
 
 Why was the Senior Commissioner of Mysore, Briggs 
 argued with himself, to hesitate any longer in using the 
 powers with which the Governor- General had invested 
 him ? The Minute of the 24th of March was sent ex- 
 pressly to the Commissioners, and was intended as much 
 for their guidance as for the Governor's. The Governor 
 was bound to obey the Governor-General's orders, and so 
 were they. Those orders were that " the whole of the 
 
 o
 
 194 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 patronage, from the highest office in the State, including 
 that of Dewan, down to the lowest, must rest in the 
 Commissioners"; that " no appeal should be allowed to 
 the Madras Government regarding removals or appoint- 
 ments"; that " the Commissioners being responsible for 
 the public conduct of affairs, the choice of their sub- 
 ordinate instruments" was to "be left entirely to them", 
 and that " any interference in this department would 
 only embarrass their administration".* 
 
 It was impossible that the Governor's arbitrary banish- 
 ment of candidates for office favoured by the Senior Com- 
 missioner should hold good in the face of these orders. 
 The Commissioners could not, it was clear, have " the 
 choice of their subordinate instruments", if those whom 
 they had chosen, or were likely to choose, were placed 
 beyond their reach. When the Governor of Madras 
 resorted to that extraordinary measure, it was in pur- 
 suance of his avowed policy of leaving the patronage in 
 the hands of the Dewan, and of upholding that func- 
 tionary's authority on a level with that of the Commis- 
 sioners. That policy had now been condemned and 
 annulled by the Supreme Government. The Dewan was 
 to have no voice in the patronage, but was, in common 
 with all the officers of state, to be in strict subordination 
 to the Commissioners, and to look to no "other authority 
 for promotion or support". In the total disallowance of 
 the Governor's policy, and the prohibition of his inter- 
 ference with the Commissioners' patronage, all restric- 
 tions on their patronage were necessarily disallowed. 
 Whether the Governor of Madras formally withdrew 
 those restrictions or not, they were null and void, and 
 the orders which the Commissioners had passed in con- 
 sequence of them could no longer remain in force. No 
 order on the subject had been published by the Governor 
 of Madras ; none, therefore, would have to be publicly 
 withdrawn or noticed. 
 
 At the meeting of the Commissioners on the 5th of 
 May, Briggs accordingly proposed, and carried by his 
 casting vote, a resolution that the persons exiled in pur- 
 
 * Ante, p, 188.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 195 
 
 suance of the instructions received from the Governor of 
 Madras should be informed that the orders given to them 
 by the Commissioners of Mysore on the 9th of April 
 " being now deemed unnecessary", they were " per- 
 mitted to proceed and reside wherever they pleased". 
 Briggs writes in his diary, 
 
 " I never acted with more deliberation than I have done in this 
 business. I could not start for Nuggur without constituting the 
 reformed establishments. My endeavours to call around me the 
 first men in the State had failed, and I was assured that till these 
 proscriptions were removed, no one unconnected with the present 
 Dewan and the Residency gang would trust himself near me. To 
 have applied again to the Governor of Madras to reconsider the 
 question involved a great loss of time, when there was no more 
 time to be lost, if I wanted to secure a week or two of fine weather 
 in Nuggur before the rain set in. Besides, if a reconsideration had 
 been applied for and refused, as it certainly would have been, 
 with Mr. Casamajor's vote at the Council, I could not have taken 
 off the proscriptions, in defiance of a renewed prohibition, though 
 I might venture to do it on the assumption that they were incom- 
 patible with the Governor-General's orders, and consequently of 
 no effect. I knew that I was risking a reprimand, but without 
 running that risk, I could not reform a single office. I throw 
 myself on the Governor-General's protection. With my own 
 agents about me, I shall soon be able to prove that I am worthy 
 of the high trust confided in me, and that I can exercise the power 
 with which I am armed without abusing it. 
 
 " I sent a special messenger to Mysore, and Baboo Rao was 
 persuaded with some difficulty to come to Bangalore, where he 
 arrived on the 13th. Even after his interview with me he waa 
 in great apprehension as to the influence of the present Dewan 
 with the Governor, the Resident, and the Junior Commissioner., 
 His first anxiety was to satisfy himself that I could protect him, 
 from similar disgrace to that imposed on others against whom 
 there was no charge. He told me that had I not removed the 
 proscriptions, he would not have come to Bangalore, even to pay 
 me a visit." 
 
 Everything at this time tended to strengthen the 
 influence adverse to Colonel Briggs at Madras, and to 
 reassure the party connected with the Residency as to 
 continued help and support from that quarter. On the 
 very day, the 13th of May, a Sunday, that Baboo Rao 
 arrived at CoJonel Briggs's house, and consented to accept 
 
 02
 
 196 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 the place of Dewan, Mr. Casamajor, the Resident, also 
 arrived at Bangalore, on his way to Madras, where he 
 was to take his seat as Acting Member of Council, 
 received the Dewan in office, his own nominee, with 
 marked graciousness and some degree of publicity, and 
 was understood to have spoken to him in the most en- 
 couraging terms, and to have given him renewed pro- 
 mises of protection on the part of the Madras Gfbvern- 
 ment. The Dewan Vencataramaniah boasted without 
 disguise that he could not be removed unless he sent in 
 his resignation, and avowed his determination not to do 
 so. And in truth the despatch from the Governor ap- 
 pears to have been worded as if to confine the Commis- 
 sioners to receiving the Dewan's resignation, if he chose 
 to repeat an offer to that effect, which he was said to 
 have recently made to the Governor of Madras in person. 
 Any reference to the Government of Madras, or to the 
 Supreme Government, would have delayed matters for a 
 period which might be a fortnight, and might be six 
 weeks ; and as Briggs had now secured a competent 
 successor for the Dewan, and had no doubt as to the 
 Governor-General's intentions, he was determined that 
 there should be no more delay. 
 
 At the Board meeting of the next day, Monday, 14th 
 May, Briggs accordingly moved that the Dewan Venca- 
 taramaniah should be sent for, that his immediate resig- 
 nation should be required, and that Baboo Rao should be 
 appointed in his place. The Junior Commissioner pro- 
 tested against so high a functionary being treated in such 
 an unceremonious manner, and proposed that a letter 
 should be addressed to him, and a fair time allowed for 
 him to send in his reply. This being overruled, he 
 brought forward several dilatory motions as that the 
 Dewan's resignation should not be accepted until his 
 accounts were audited and passed; that Baboo Rao should 
 not be appointed until a full report on his antecedents 
 had been obtained from the Residency to none of which 
 the Senior Commissioner would accede. 
 
 The Dewan was called in, and the substance of the 
 Governor-General's Minute and of the Governor's de-
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 197 
 
 spatch relating to himself having been explained to him, 
 he was requested to resign his office. This, with all the 
 grave dignity and humble self-possession of a courtly 
 Brahmin, he positively declined to do, adding that if the 
 Governor- General desired his removal, his resignation was 
 quite unnecessary, and that he had no objection to being 
 dismissed. He denied, also, having tendered his resigna- 
 tion to the Governor ; and said that he had merely ex- 
 pressed his willingness to resign, if the Governor was 
 dissatisfied with his conduct. " And if that be the case 
 now", he said, " I am quite ready to resign, but not other- 
 wise." 
 
 Briggs firmly set aside every suggestion of a misunder- 
 standing as a plea for adjourning the question. In reply 
 to his colleague's repeated proposals of a postponement, 
 he declared at last that he would not quit his chair that 
 day until the Dewan had been removed, and his successor 
 installed in office. When all the necessary documents 
 for this change of ministry had been drawn up, signed 
 and sealed, the Senior Commissioner laid upon the table 
 the finished results of his labours in the closet during the 
 previous three months, complete plans for the reorgani- 
 sation of every department, in method as well as in men, 
 and circulars ready for immediate issue, restoring the 
 judicial functions of the Potails and Amils in the villages 
 and districts, and supplying forms for keeping and for- 
 warding periodical registers, and also proclamations point- 
 ing out where the people ought to go, and how they 
 ought to proceed, in order to obtain redress of their griev- 
 ances, or a settlement of their disputes. 
 
 Most of the removals and appointments to office were 
 opposed by the Junior Commissioner, in two instances 
 on account of persons being nominated who had been pro- 
 scribed by the Governor, but Briggs was now determined 
 on losing no more time, and within five days of the instal- 
 lation of the new Dewan, all these arrangements were 
 carried out, and the Senior Commissioner started from 
 Bangalore for the disturbed districts of Nuggur. 
 
 During Briggs's absence from Bangalore, his irreconcil- 
 able colleague contrived to revive the hopes of the Resi-
 
 198 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 dency faction, and to renew a general feeling of instability 
 and insecurity among those who had recently been placed 
 in office, by the very simple process of stopping their pay. 
 Having been left, by his own desire, at head-quarters, to 
 carry on the routine business of the Commission, he re- 
 fused to countersign the monthly bills, on the plea that 
 neither the salaries nor the appointments had been con- 
 firmed by the Governor of Madras, although the new 
 establishments were less costly than those already sanc- 
 tioned, and although the Supreme Government had ruled 
 that " the whole of the patronage must rest in the Com- 
 missioners" ; that " the choice of their subordinates 
 should be left entirely to them"; that there should be "no 
 appeal to Madras regarding appointments to office", and 
 that "any interference in this department would only 
 embarrass their administration". 
 
 After a hard day's work in camp, Briggs had his evening 
 enlivened by his confidential Native Secretary reading 
 him extracts of a letter just received from Bangalore. 
 
 " The refusal to countersign the pay-abstracts has thrown all the 
 public servants into dismay. Some of them have been waiting 
 many months in the hope of employment; they have borrowed 
 money, or lived on credit, but now the shop-keepers have taken 
 alarm, and will trust them no longer. The ex-Dewan Vencatara- 
 maniah exultingly said, ' Well, how is it with your fine courts of 
 justice and new departments? You see matters have taken another 
 turn. You are all a set of simpletons. Only wait fifteen or twenty 
 days, and you will see a pretty sight.' This measure has infused 
 such joy into the minds of the ex-Dewan's party, that an express 
 was instantly despatched to Chowrappa, the Resident's Sheristadar, 
 at Mysore, with the glad tidings. On the ex-Dewan being asked 
 lately why he still remained at Bangalore, he said ' he had made 
 all preparations for going to his own village, when he was desired 
 by the Junior Commissioner to stay a short time, and see what 
 would take place'." 
 
 Whether these assertions were true or false, they were 
 generally believed, and had a most injurious effect on 
 the progress of affairs. From the first, it had been the 
 great object of the Dewan and his patrons at the Resi- 
 dency to prevent Colonel Briggs from settling the dis- 
 turbed districts by amnesty and conciliation. Knowing
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 199 
 
 such measures to bring with them the certainty of in- 
 quiries and explanations that would expose their extor- 
 tions and iniquities, their plan was to foment the gene- 
 ral confusion until refractory remonstrants were trans- 
 formed into contumacious rebels, when all old scores 
 would be wiped out or clouded over, and totally new 
 issues raised, amid the din and smoke of military coercion. 
 Within the last week of the Dewan's administration 
 Briggs received nine proposals of surrender from leading 
 chieftains who were "out" in the jungle, but the Dewan 
 was at the same time sending secret orders that they 
 should be followed up and attacked. The object of Colonel 
 Briggs was to reassure and conciliate the Polygars. The 
 object of the Dewan and his partisans, the district officers, 
 was to drive the Polygars to despair. As long as the 
 Dewan and his creatures remained in office it was in vain 
 for the Senior Commissioner to hope for the success of 
 his policy. Two days before the Dewan's removal, just 
 as Briggs had obtained permission, with some difficulty, 
 from the Governor of Madras to accept the unconditional 
 submission of the Polygars of Terry kerry, the Foujdar 
 of Nuggur, acting on a hint from his relative the Dewan, 
 tried to surprise their encampment with a body of 300 
 Horse, and to effect their capture. He failed completely 
 in this attempt, but he burned their houses, destroyed 
 some of their property, and, by this appearance of double 
 dealing, nearly frustrated the Senior Commissioner's en- 
 deavours to calm excitement and to bring the fugitives to 
 reason. Other instances of delay and neglect in execut- 
 ing orders were attributable to the same counteracting 
 cause. Impatient and indignant at these petty obstruc- 
 tions to the good work in which he felt himself to be 
 engaged, and, perhaps, a little too much elated by what 
 seemed a complete and final assurance of the Governor- 
 General's sympathy and support, Briggs now took a step 
 which exercised a most injurious and durable influence 
 over his professional interests and prospects. And yet 
 the step that he took will, I think, appear to most people 
 to have been perfectly natural and logical under the 
 circumstances of the time to have been the step best
 
 200 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 calculated to make him, as the Governor-General seemed 
 to intend him to be, master of the situation. In the 
 midst of the exasperating perplexities that harassed his 
 solitary hours in camp, he received on the 10th of July a 
 letter from the Secretary to the Government of India 
 telling him that Lord William Bentinck had resolved that 
 " the Mysore Commission should be placed in immediate 
 subordination to the Supreme Government", and that 
 " Mr. G. E. Drury will consider himself relieved from his 
 duties as Junior Commissioner on your receipt of this 
 communication", and forwarding extracts from a Minute 
 by the Governor-General having reference to the subject, 
 dated " Simla, 26th May 1832." The extract commenced 
 with paragraph 32, the preceding part having doubtless 
 contained some strong language regarding the Madras 
 Government, which it was considered unadvisable to show 
 to Colonel Briggs. The purport of the new rules was 
 that the Commissioners were henceforth to correspond 
 directly with the Governor-General, and that the 
 Governor of Madras was to have no authority whatever 
 over the Mysore Commission ; nor was it " considered 
 requisite that duplicates of the Commissioners' corre- 
 spondence with the Supreme Government should be 
 furnished to the Madras Government". The vacant 
 place of Mr. Drury was filled up by the Governor- 
 General with the name of Mr. John Macpherson Mac- 
 leod, of the Madras Civil Service ;* but in the event of 
 any circumstances preventing, or postponing for some 
 time, that gentleman's assumption of his duties, none of 
 the full powers of the Mysore Commission were to be held 
 in abeyance. " Colonel Briggs", said Lord William Ben- 
 tinck, in his Minute, " from the time of his receiving these 
 orders, may exercise solely the full powers of the Com- 
 mission until I shall have an opportunity of providing 
 him with a colleague." 
 
 All perplexity now ceased ; all hesitation was now at 
 an end. Feeling himself left to his own judgment, and 
 invested with the authority for which he had asked, and 
 
 * Afterwards Member of the Indian Law Commission and K.C.S.I., 
 died in 1882, at the asrc of 90.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRTGGS. 201 
 
 believing himself assured of the firm support of the 
 Governor-General, the Senior Commissioner at once pro- 
 ceeded to act. He recorded a Minute on the proceedings 
 of the Commission, directing the immediate issue of a 
 proclamation " calculated to ensure the future obedience 
 of all public functionaries, and to put an end at once to 
 the intrigues which have so long embarrassed the ad- 
 ministration." The proclamation ran as follows : 
 
 " It is hereby proclaimed for general information, that the Eight 
 Honble. the Governor-General of India has been pleased to place 
 the Commission under his own direct authority, and has conferred 
 on the Commissioners full powers to nominate and appoint all the 
 subordinate officers, and to conduct the duties of the Government 
 on their own responsibility. It is now accordingly notified that 
 all persons giving currency to rumours affecting the permanency 
 or validity of any measures of removal or appointment to offices, 
 which may embarrass the proceedings of those filling them, and 
 which may distract or delay the public business of the State, such 
 persons will be considered as enemies to the Government and 
 disturbers of the public peace of the country, and will, on due con- 
 viction, be punished, and, if it be found necessary, be even liable to 
 be banished from Mysore. Every Mamlutdar in Mysore is desired 
 to give publicity to this proclamation, and after having done so, to 
 paste it on some conspicuous place in the town in which he resides, 
 and to report to the Commission that he has done so." 
 
 It certainly may be objected to this proclamation, 
 the objection was made officially from Calcutta, that it 
 threatened certain persons with the same summary and 
 arbitrary penalty of exile from Mysore which Colonel 
 Briggs had considered so unjust when enforced against 
 his own adherents by the Governor of Madras. But the 
 Senior Commissioner only menaced the disaffected in- 
 triguers with punishment " on due conviction". The 
 Governor of Madras had, on the contrary, banished and 
 proscribed a number of respectable persons without either 
 trial or accusation. 
 
 Exception was particularly taken at Calcutta to the 
 form and style of a proclamation, as being a procedure 
 at once disrespectful to the Government of Madras, and 
 calculated, by encouraging familiarity with the higher 
 official mysteries, to breed contempt of authority. Colonel 
 Briggs, however, had chosen the form of a proclamation
 
 202 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 because publicity was essential for his purpose. In those 
 days there were no vernacular newspapers, and it was 
 necessary to prevent by authentic information the con- 
 fusing and contradictory rumours that would soon have 
 been spread abroad regarding the change that had taken 
 place in the relations of the Mysore Commissioners with 
 the Governor of Madras. At the same time Colonel 
 Briggs had the good taste and tact to avoid, in the 
 papers which he circulated, any direct mention of the 
 Madras Government, as he had also carefully done when 
 recalling the exiles from banishment. 
 
 It is a remarkable fact, and confirmatory to some 
 extent of the decision at which Colonel Briggs arrived, 
 that when a somewhat similar crisis arose in Mysore at 
 a much later period, the Commissioner at once thought 
 of adopting the same plan of a general proclamation. 
 From 1864 to 1867 rumours were prevalent not with- 
 out some foundation, for the Secretary of State had at 
 one tune resolved on restoration, but was overruled by 
 the Cabinet that the Maharajah was to be replaced at 
 the head of the Mysore Government, only two or three 
 English officers being retained to exercise control over 
 financial and judicial affairs. Mr. Bo wring, then Chief 
 Commissioner of Mysore, refers to this subject in a letter 
 to the Government of India, dated 18th February 1864, 
 from which the following passage is an extract : 
 
 " As the Province of Mysore has for nearly three years been 
 kept in a state of agitation and uncertainty respecting the Eajah's 
 claim to recover the administration of the territory, and as the 
 wildest and most improbable reports have been circulated regarding 
 its final issue, I originally proposed to put forth a proclamation 
 announcing to the people generally the fact that the Government 
 had decided that his Highness would not be allowed to reassume 
 the reins of power. To some extent this course was desirable also 
 in the case of the Native officials, many of whom, and especially 
 the elder men and a few influential persons whom I need not 
 name, held a divided allegiance, which is scarcely to be wondered 
 at, and had shared in the intrigues which have been going on for 
 some time past. 
 
 " As, however", he continues, " I understand it to be the desire 
 of Government to spare his Highness any mortification which 
 might without detriment be avoided, I have contented myself with
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 203 
 
 forwarding to the Superintendents copies of the orders received, 
 which will thus become gradually known publicly, though in a 
 manner which cannot be offensive to the Maharajah's feelings."* 
 
 Mr. Bowring does not seem to have felt he certainly 
 does not express any doubt as to his full power to issue 
 such a proclamation, or as to the complete regularity and 
 propriety of publishing such a document, had he con- 
 sidered the occasion to be urgent. Had he decided on 
 doing so, his proceedings would have been almost exactly 
 parallel, in object as in form, with those proceedings 
 which brought down on Colonel Briggs the displeasure 
 of the Supreme Government in the manner thus described 
 in his own words. 
 
 " In the midst of my difficulties in the Nuggur district, I received 
 a letter from the Secretary to the Supreme Government, dated the 
 4th of June, which reached my hands only on the 26th of July, 
 censuring severely as an act of ' unjustifiable presumption', and of 
 great disrespect to the Government of Madras, my resolution and 
 order of the 5th of May for permitting Krishna Rao and the other 
 proscribed persons to return from exile. I considered, and still do 
 consider, my justification to have been complete. I had avowed 
 the heavy responsibility I was incurring, but I pleaded absolute 
 necessity. If, after receiving what seemed to me full authority 
 from the Governor-General, I had maintained the expulsion of 
 those blameless persons, I should have been effectually prevented 
 from forming an establishment of my own selection; and the 
 directions of the Governor-General, which authorised me to use 
 my casting vote in order to secure the necessary instruments of 
 administration, would have been frustrated. These explanations, 
 however, did not satisfy his Lordship. The Secretary was directed 
 to convey the expression of the Governor-General's disapproval in 
 the most unqualified manner, and to add that had it not been that 
 the public service might have suffered, his Lordship would have 
 thought it necessary to have suspended me from office until I could 
 afford a satisfactory explanation. This reproof was, in fact, intended 
 as an apology and consolation to the Government of Madras for 
 the several mortifications arising out of their determined attacks 
 on me. I have good reason, also, to believe now, though I had no 
 suspicion of it at the time, that Lord William was beginning to see 
 how difficult it would be to save Casamajor, if I had time to carry 
 out my declared intention of getting at the records in the Residency 
 and in the Rajah's Palace, and giving a full and true account of 
 the origin of the insurrection, and the worst secrets of the Rajah's 
 
 * Mysore Papers, 112 of 1866, p. 38.
 
 204 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 misgovernment. Every Civilian in Bengal was as desirous as those 
 in Madras of getting rid of me, and the Governor- General was 
 beginning to feel me as a thorn in the flesh. 
 
 " No sooner was the despatch containing this reprimand in the 
 possession of the Madras Government than it was communicated 
 to the Resident, and by him to the ex-Dewan. Reports were im- 
 mediately circulated that my removal would take place in a very 
 short time, that the new Dewan would be disgraced, all the new 
 establishments broken up, and the ex-Dewan and his partisans 
 restored to power. This was exultingly stated by the Resident in 
 open durbar to the Rajah. Such was the extraordinary situation 
 produced just at the moment the Governor-General had assumed 
 the direct command over Mysore, and placed, for a time, all the 
 authority of the Commission solely in my hands. The wide pub- 
 licity given by the Madras Government and the Resident to the 
 reproof and the reserved threat of suspension with which I was 
 visited, neutralised the powers conferred on me, and effaced almost 
 entirely the salutary effect of my recent proclamation. But blow 
 followed blow. No sooner did my letter enclosing a copy of that 
 same proclamation reach the Governor-General's camp than an 
 adverse reply was drafted, disapproving and condemning the issue 
 of such a document, which was also construed into a disrespectful 
 demonstration aimed at the Right Honble. Stephen Lushington and 
 his Councillors. From the hour I received that despatch I felt 
 pretty sure that the tide had finally turned against me, and that I 
 could not much longer hold my own against the whole force of the 
 Madras and Bengal Civil Service. 
 
 " On my return to Bangalore, at the end of August 1832, I soon 
 found that my new colleague, Mr. Macleod, had undisguisedly 
 joined the faction of the ex-Dewan, at the head of which was 
 placed, in fact, the Resident, Mr. Casamajor. The Governor and 
 Councillors of Madras, Mr. C. M. Lushington, Mr. Drury, Mr. 
 Casamajor, were all intimate personal friends of Mr. Macleod, who 
 arrived at Bangalore prejudiced and pledged on their side, and 
 sworn to wage war to the knife against the military interloper. 
 He began the war at once, and his mode of attack at once revealed 
 to me, what I had learned already from every quarter, that his base 
 of operations, whether he knew it or not, was in the conclave of 
 spies and intriguers directed by the ex-Dewan, and prompted by 
 Mr. Casamajor, from whom Mr. Macleod received what he vainly 
 imagined to be valuable and exclusive information. From the 
 first he held aloof from the close and confidential intercourse to 
 which I invited him. He so utterly misinterpreted my policy and 
 mode of procedure, that he charged me always under Mr. Casa- 
 major's guidance with seeking by underhand means the very 
 object which I had, from the first, urged openly on my two succes-
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 205 
 
 sive colleagues and on the Govern or- General, as essential to the 
 thorough rectification of Mysore affairs. I had repeatedly and 
 continuously pointed out that to clear up the errors of the past, 
 and to provide for the future restoration of Native government, 
 the Commissioners ought to have personal access to the Rajah, as 
 well as to the records of the Palace and the Residency. There was 
 no secret, also, for the matter had been several times mentioned in 
 conversation with my colleagues and assistants, and in my private 
 correspondence with the Governor-General, that the Rajah had 
 taken means to intimate to me his desire for an interview, and 
 that I had responded in courteous and conciliatory terms, through 
 a respectable and trustworthy person in my confidence, related to 
 Baboo Rao, the Minister. There could have been no possible use 
 in making any secret about it, for the object was now attainable, 
 and, had I remained in office, close at hand. That was what was 
 driving the conclave at the Residency to desperation, and they 
 took the best means in their power, as it turned out, to get rid of 
 me just in time. In express compliance with my request, the 
 Governor-General, in his instructions of the 26th May, when taking 
 the Commission and the Residency under his own direct orders, 
 had made a new rule, quite sufficient for my purpose, providing 
 for the Commissioners having interviews with the Rajah, 'to com- 
 municate personally on any important matters'. My colleague, 
 Mr. Macleod, immediately on my arrival at Bangalore, forestalled 
 my intention of at once arranging for personal communication with 
 the Rajah, by recording a Minute, a mere mare's-nest as to facts, 
 but most offensive in its tone, attacking me for having held secret 
 correspondence with his Highness the Rajah, which had been dis- 
 covered in a wonderful manner by the Resident. Now Mr. Macleod 
 was a very different person from Mr. Drury. He was a man of 
 very great ability, and, from various causes and connections, of 
 considerable weight and influence. I was determined not to enter 
 on a new period of controversy and recrimination, which might be 
 long, and must be useless. I wanted to work, not to waste any 
 more time. After briefly pointing out in a Minute recorded on 
 our proceedings, the futile nature of the personal imputations 
 against myself, I wrote on the 10th of September to the Governor- 
 General, protesting against being hampered with another hostile 
 colleague, earnestly recommending once more that the plan of a 
 Board of two Commissioners might be altered so as to ensure unity 
 of purpose and authority, and respectfully tendering my resigna- 
 tion of the place of Senior Commissioner." 
 
 The feelings and the proposals of Colonel Briggs at 
 this time will be more clearly understood by some extracts 
 from his private letter of the 10th of September 1832 to 
 Lord William Bentinck.
 
 206 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 "Previously to my reaching Bangalore, Mr. Casamajor, whose 
 object is to prevent my going to Mysore, and to remove me, if 
 possible, from the country by any means, came here and poisoned 
 the mind of my colleague. The whole extent of my communi- 
 cations with the Kajah was fully and undisguisedly laid open in 
 my Minute of the 4th instant. Mr. Macleod has had abundant 
 time to make a specific charge, if there were any to be made, or to 
 refute what I have said. I refer your Lordship to his Minute of 
 the 6th, to mine of the 8th, and, lastly, to his of yesterday, as a 
 sample of the mode in which he chooses to attack me. Human 
 frailty can no longer bear the severe trials to which I have been 
 subjected. Mr. Macleod was brought up in a Secretary's office, 
 and transferred to the Board of Ee venue without ever having been 
 out of Madras for a day, or conducted business with a Native in 
 his life. For the last fifteen years he has been a mere regulation- 
 machine, looking out for mistakes in subordinates, and is notorious 
 for the acrimony of his reproofs to all whom he can catch tripping 
 in matters of routine and form. Such a man, my Lord, is not fit 
 to conduct a Native government with Native agents. It is utterly 
 impossible for such a man, so tutored and so prejudiced, to work 
 harmoniously with me. 
 
 " I hope it will not be deemed presumptuous in me entreating 
 your Lordship to look back on Sicily. Only fancy a Junior Com- 
 missioner taking you to task, and thwarting every measure you 
 proposed, in concert with a Kesident at the Court intriguing against 
 you. 
 
 " Your Lordship could not have anticipated all this opposition. 
 It is for you now to remove it, and I see but two possible remedies. 
 There must either be a regular government according to our system 
 in the three Presidencies, or a simple and economical Native 
 administration under a sole Commissioner. 
 
 " If your Lordship should determine on having a sole Commis- 
 sioner, make your selection among all the able men you have in 
 India, and arm him with the fullest authority and confidence, as 
 on other occasions. Let him act at his peril and on his own 
 responsibility, keeping a diary of all his proceedings, as at present. 
 There are many men well fitted for the office. For myself, I am 
 sick at heart. I am able, I hope, at least to command a regiment 
 or a brigade, and it would be a relief indeed to go back to military 
 duty out of this fiery ordeal and purgatory." 
 
 The final decision of the Supreme Government, although 
 not endorsing any of the offensive imputations against 
 him, was adverse to Colonel Briggs on every point. In a 
 despatch dated the 13th of November 1832, his resigna- 
 tion was accepted in the following terms :
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 207 
 
 " Having performed the painful duty of accepting the resigna- 
 tion of Lieut.-Colonel Briggs, his Lordship deems it no more than 
 justice to that officer to record his sense of the energy, activity, and 
 zeal which he has displayed in the duties of Senior Commissioner. 
 As far as his Lordship is able to judge, the exertions of Lieut.- 
 Colonel Briggs have been judiciously directed in his successful 
 efforts in restoring tranquillity to the Province of Nuggur. 
 
 "Lieut.-Colonel Briggs, on relinquishing the duties of Senior 
 Commissioner in Mysore, will be pleased to proceed at his earliest 
 convenience to assume charge of the Residency at Nagpore. 
 
 " With regard to the subjects discussed in the Minutes which 
 accompanied your Acting-Secretary's letter, his Lordship feels 
 compelled to observe that it was indiscreet in Lieut.-Colonel 
 Briggs to hold any unofficial communication with the Rajah of 
 Mysore, though in the transaction his Lordship can perceive 
 nothing to detract from the character of honour and probity which 
 Lieut.-Colonel Briggs has so long and so honourably borne. 
 
 " With respect to the recall of the individuals banished by the 
 Government of Fort St. George, and the proclamation issued by 
 Colonel Briggs, his Lordship directs me to state that the explana- 
 tion lately afforded has not removed the impression which he 
 originally entertained that the proclamation in question was ex- 
 ceedingly injudicious ; while the explanation contained in Lieut.- 
 Colonel Briggs's letter of the 18th July, though it certainly shows 
 that officer to have been placed in an embarrassing situation, yet 
 it does not acquit him of the blame that has already been imputed 
 to him. Having accepted the resignation of Colonel Briggs, his 
 Lordship deems it superfluous to enter on any further comment 
 with reference to these transactions." 
 
 The same express brought the following private letter 
 from Lord William Bentinck : 
 
 " Camp, Allygurh, 
 
 "Nov. I3th, 1832. 
 
 " DEAR SIR, I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of 
 the 10th September, expressing a desire to be relieved from your 
 present appointment, and it is impossible for me not to come to 
 the conclusion that neither your own comfort, nor the good of the 
 public service, could be promoted by your continuance in the Com- 
 mission. I cannot alter its constitution. I believe it to be the 
 form the best adapted to the Government of Mysore, with refer- 
 ence to the many considerations to be held in view ; and its failure 
 must be attributed to the combination of a multitude of circum- 
 stances the most unfortunate, the most extraordinary, which, if 
 purposely arranged by design, instead of being the result of acci- 
 dent, could not have more effectually damned the success of the
 
 208 SOME WORDS AND WORK, ETC. 
 
 measure. The whole transaction, from the beginning to the end, 
 has been a series of the greatest embarrassments and the deepest 
 mortifications to me. I lament the result, but it would only be 
 adding to the pain I have already suffered to comment upon the 
 causes of it. I have not been mistaken in the opinion I had 
 formed of your possession of many of those high qualifications, 
 ability, integrity, and experience, which peculiarly fitted you for 
 the office. But you have been wanting in that degree of temper, 
 prudence, and discretion requisite to encounter the opposition and 
 violence which were opposed to you. I am happy to have it in my 
 power to show to the world that your honour and character stand 
 unimpeached in my opinion, by nominating you to the Eesidency of 
 Nagpore on the departure of Mr. Groeme. 
 
 " Lieut.-Colonel Morrison has been appointed to succeed you, 
 and in him you will find an honourable and independent protector 
 against any intrigues that falsehood or revenge may attempt to 
 raise up against you. " With respect, dear Sir, 
 
 " Your faithful servant, 
 
 "WM. BENTINCK." 
 
 The Govern or- General, considers that Briggs had 
 shown himself " wanting in temper and discretion", 
 the very points in which the Court of Directors, 
 using those identical words, finally declared him to 
 have had an " advantage" over the Madras Government ; 
 yet Lord William Bentinck admits that the Senior 
 Commissioner had been opposed with " violence", and 
 would probably be assailed with revengeful " intrigues" 
 and " falsehood" after his departure. The truth is that 
 he had, " from the beginning to the end", been on the 
 defensive. If the Court of Directors had been in closer 
 and more frequent communication with Calcutta, Briggs 
 would have been more firmly supported, and his views as 
 to unity of command and responsibility would have been 
 imperatively pressed on the Government of India. But 
 it must be remembered that in those days from nine to 
 twelve months had to pass away before the answer to a 
 despatch could come from the Home Government. 
 
 Colonel Briggs left Bangalore soon after the receipt of 
 the Governor-General's orders, and before Christmas, 
 1832, was installed in the Residency at Nagpore.
 
 209 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 IN a letter written from Nagpore on the 3rd of October 
 1833 to Augustus De Morgan, in London, Briggs throws 
 some light on the changes that took place in the admi- 
 nistration of Mysore in the first year after his depar- 
 ture. 
 
 "My successor, Colonel W. Morrison, a most able and honour- 
 able man, the late Commissary-General of the Madras Army, 
 cannot read or write any Native language, and can speak very little 
 Hindustani, so that he will be very dependent on interpreters, 
 strangers to Mysore. Nearly all his time so far has been occupied 
 on the Committee for inquiring into the origin and circumstances 
 of the insurrection of 1830. My late colleague, Mr. Macleod is, 
 I hear, heartily sick of the Mysore Commission. Not very proud, 
 perhaps, of the part he acted when I was there, he tendered his 
 resignation conditionally, but it was greedily laid hold on by the 
 Governor-General, who instantly accepted it. No Junior Commis- 
 sioner had been, or will be, nominated in his place. The very path 
 I pointed out in vain to Lord William is now to be pursued, in 
 obedience to the strict injunctions of the Home authorities, namely, 
 the appointment of one supreme functionary, under whatever title 
 his Lordship may please to give him, with sole responsibility, and 
 subordinate only to the Governor-General. The plan will not be 
 complete, nor will the machine work smoothly, if the Resident is 
 left there, in close connection with the Rajah, and independent of 
 the actual ruler of Mysore, the British Commissioner. The cause 
 of all the troubles throughout my tenure of the Senior Commis- 
 sionership was an unfortunate want of singleness of purpose in 
 several quarters. It may seem boastful to say so, but no one but 
 myself was thinking of nothing but the public work before us. 
 Mr. Lushington wanted Mysore for his brother, and never forgave 
 me for standing in his way. The Governor-General, as I did not 
 understand till lately, was excessively anxious from the first, and 
 all through the business, to screen the Resident, Mr. Casamajor, an 
 old prot6g and favourite of his own, so that while his despatches 
 demonstrated that gentleman's incapacity to the perceptions of the 
 Court of Directors, he still supported him both publicly and pri- 
 
 P
 
 210 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 vately, and was glad to get me out of the way because I frankly 
 avowed my aversion to the Eesidency party, and my conviction 
 that they were answerable for the misrule of Mysore." 
 
 In a succession of letters from the India House in 
 Leadenhall Street to the Government of Calcutta, the 
 Court of Directors, from first to last, adopt and confirm 
 all the forebodings and objections of the Senior Commis- 
 sioner as to the scheme of dual control, and acknow- 
 ledge, moreover, the manifest fact that all the good work 
 in Mysore had been done by Colonel Briggs alone, 
 impeded by his colleagues, and persecuted by the autho- 
 rities at Madras. In a despatch, dated 6th March 1833, 
 the Directors say : 
 
 " We must observe that this unfortunate difference might have 
 been anticipated. Two Commissioners with equal powers, ap- 
 pointed by two different Governments, the one a Military, the 
 other a Civil Servant, could hardly be expected to act harmoni- 
 ously together ; and an officer appointed by one Government, and 
 accountable to another, was not very likely to give satisfaction. It 
 was, we think, unfortunate that two officers were appointed, when 
 one, if properly selected, and allowed the number of Assistants 
 necessary to relieve him from the burden of details, would not only 
 have been sufficient, but preferable. When all the necessary 
 qualities can be found in one man, unity in the directing head has 
 numerous advantages." 
 
 After setting forth those advantages, almost in the 
 words of Briggs himself, the despatch continues as 
 follows : 
 
 " We do not, however, observe in the letter from Mr. Prinsep to 
 the Madras Government" this is one of the letters finding fault 
 with their treatment of Colonel Briggs " any indication that you 
 have become sensible of the inherent and incurable defect of the 
 present plan, the absence of unity in the presiding head. Until 
 this error is corrected, we are convinced that the machine will 
 continue to work ill ; and we therefore direct that instead of a 
 Commission of two Members, a single functionary, properly quali- 
 fied, and aided by the requisite number of European Assistants, 
 be appointed to the charge of the Mysore country, and that he be 
 superintended by the Government by which he is appointed." 
 
 In their letter of the 23rd April 1834, the Court regrets 
 to find that " all their anticipations have been more than
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 211 
 
 realised". Disunion between the Senior Commissioner 
 and the Government of Madras has continued, and has 
 become aggravated to such a degree, that " it would 
 have been impossible for them to act together" any 
 longer : 
 
 " The advantage of temper and discretion does not, we are con- 
 cerned to say, rest on the side of the Madras Government, whose 
 strictures upon the conduct of Lieut.-Colonel Briggs were so mani- 
 festly the result of an unfortunate prepossession, and so entirely 
 failed of being substantiated, that it was impossible for you on 
 such grounds to remove Colonel Briggs. You had, therefore, no 
 alternative short of that which you adopted, namely, to assume to 
 yourselves the direct superintendence of Mysore, leaving the im- 
 mediate agency in the hands of Lieut. -Colonel Briggs, and a col- 
 league, selected, indeed, from the Madras establishment, but 
 nominated by yourselves. In appointing Mr. Macleod you made a 
 most unexceptionable choice. 
 
 " This was a considerable improvement, and it was attended 
 with salutary effects. 
 
 " The Commission ceased to be a nullity, or . worse than a 
 nullity, for all purposes of good government ; and measures were 
 taken with considerable promptitude for the reform of abuses 
 and the pacification of the country. They were taken, however, 
 mostly on the authority of the Senior Commissioner. Mr. Macleod 
 found* the same difficulty as his predecessors had done in acting 
 with Lieut.-Colonel Briggs. The latter officer ultimately tendered 
 his resignation, which you accepted ; and the Commission now con- 
 sists of Lieut.-Colonel Morrison and Mr. Macleod. 
 
 " Though we admit that the Commission as now constituted is 
 free from many of the objections to which it was liable, we shall 
 be glad to learn that our orders for reducing it to one Member 
 can be carried out without public inconvenience." 
 
 To one piece of work to which Briggs himself attached 
 much importance, the pacification of Nuggur, the Court 
 of Directors did full justice. In the despatch which has 
 just been quoted they say : " One part of Lieut.-Colonel 
 Briggs's administration would appear to have been highly 
 successful. By a personal visit to the disturbed districts 
 he appears to have restored tranquillity, and to have made 
 satisfactory arrangements with the malcontents without 
 effusion of blood. He collected, at the same time, much 
 
 * Or "made". 
 
 P 2
 
 212 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 valuable information respecting that interesting portion 
 of the territory of Mysore." 
 
 Within little more than a year after Briggs had left 
 Bangalore for Nagpore, the change in the constitution of 
 the Mysore Commission, to which Lord William Bentinck 
 was so averse, was made, in compliance with the per- 
 emptory orders of the Court of Directors. Colonel W. 
 Morrison was made a Member of the Supreme Council in 
 June 1834, and Colonel Mark Cubbon took his place 
 without the encumbrance of any Board or colleague. In 
 the same month Mr. Casamajor was transferred from the 
 Residency to the minor appointment of Resident at 
 Travancore; and in 1842 the office of Resident at Mysore 
 was abolished under the government of Lord Ellen- 
 borough, in consequence of " the complications and dis- 
 putes which it occasioned".* 
 
 The doctrine and the practice of Colonel Briggs have 
 been in every way justified and confirmed by the course 
 and conduct of his immediate successors, and by the very 
 quebtionable results of our management in Mysore. He 
 laid the foundation and drew the plan for all the good 
 work that has been done there, and every divergence 
 from his programme has led to pretentious failure. 
 
 We have seen how the misrule of the Maharajah of 
 Mysore, and the petty revolt which was the pretext for 
 his being put on the shelf in 1832, were attributable, in 
 a very great degree, to the inexcusable and very sus- 
 picious negligence of the Madras Government, and to 
 the incapacity of the British Resident ; and how the 
 Maharajah was actually stigmatised with severities in the 
 suppression of the revolt, which were the work of British 
 officials, and against which he had protested. In the 
 anxiety to retain this valuable field of patronage, when 
 it was threatened in 1866, the resources of rhetoric were 
 stretched very near the confines of the suppressio veri 
 and the suggestio falsi, both in Calcutta despatches and 
 in London minutes and dissents. It was then that we 
 heard of " an exasperated and revolted people", of their 
 wrongs, and their rescue, and the certainty of their ruin 
 unless they were annexed. It was then that we heard 
 * Mysore Papers (112 of 1866), p. 38.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 213 
 
 of Mysore being " full of European settlers", who could 
 not exist under a Native government, the fact being that 
 there were sixteen English coffee-planters in two small 
 corners of the country. By those who joined in the 
 triumphal chorus of Lord Dalhousie's career of territorial 
 acquisition, it was always assumed, as it came to be 
 officially asserted when the crisis arrived, that ultimate 
 annexation had really been involved and implied when 
 the sequestration was decreed in 1832. But this is 
 totally untrue. When Lord William Bentinck assumed 
 the administration of Mysore, he not only had no inten- 
 tion of annexing the country, which in the course of years 
 became the settled object at Calcutta, but he had no inten- 
 tion of permanently superseding the Maharajah. That 
 iniquitous and most ill-advised policy arose out of the 
 greed and exigencies of patronage. There was not at 
 first any desire to multiply departments and appoint- 
 ments for English gentlemen. That incubus on Mysore 
 grew from a small beginning into the monster that it 
 became at last. The Madras Government, under the 
 Right Honble. Stephen Lushington, whose exaggerated 
 demi-official reports had led Lord William Bentinck to 
 take the steps he afterwards regretted, and Colonel 
 Briggs, who did so much to expose and correct those 
 inaccurate reports, had not many views in common ; but 
 they were so far agreed that none of them had any 
 notions of either annexation, or of spreading English 
 officers all over the country in every place of authority 
 and emolument. The Madras Government, undoubtedly 
 hankering after Bangalore as its head-quarters, wanted 
 the old system kept up, with a Madras Resident as 
 dictator over a Dewan of our nomination. Colonel 
 Briggs, as both his public and private papers prove, had 
 constantly two objects before him, first, stern and 
 thorough reform, and wholesome restriction by ordi- 
 nances, of princely absolutism, especially of power over 
 the revenues ; secondly, the restoration of the Rajah, as 
 soon as might be, to his proper position at the head of 
 the State. The antagonism of the Madras Government, 
 by whom he was regarded as a hostile interloper, and the 
 friction of working with a Board against which he had
 
 214 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 from the first remonstrated, made Briggs's position un- 
 tenable, just as he had pacified and organised the country; 
 but all his plans were adopted and maintained after his 
 departure, and were eventually approved by the Home 
 Government. The Secret Committee of the Court of 
 Directors write as follows in a letter, dated the 23rd of 
 April 1834: 
 
 " Concerning the measures which emanated from the Commission 
 while Lieut.-Colonel Briggs was Senior Commissioner, it is im- 
 possible for us at present to give any decided opinion. These 
 measures formed the subject of warm discussions, and were mostly 
 adopted contrary to the sentiments of the gentleman who was 
 Junior Commissioner at the time. We expect that the present 
 Senior Commissioner, Lieut.-Colonel Morrison, will have deliber- 
 ately reconsidered all the measures which have given rise to 
 difference of opinion, and that his judgment and experience will 
 have led him to confirm what has been wisely done, and to rectify 
 whatever may be amiss." 
 
 Colonel Morrison, his immediate successor, "deliberately 
 reconsidered all the measures" devised by Lieut.-Colonel 
 Briggs, and " his judgment and experience", even with 
 the not too friendly counsel of Mr. Macleod, " led him 
 to confirm" everything that Briggs had done. Nothing 
 was found " amiss", there was nothing to " rectify", and 
 nothing to alter. Not only did Colonel Morrison and 
 Mr. Macleod find nothing to rectify or to alter in Briggs's 
 arrangements, but as much may be said of the judgment 
 passed on them by the single Commissioner who succeeded 
 them, and who a circumstance almost unexampled in 
 Indian annals retained the post for nearly thirty years. 
 
 During the brief period of Colonel Briggs possessing 
 real power in Mysore, while the Commission was in direct 
 relation with the Governor-General, and relieved from 
 the meddling malice of Fort St. George, the following 
 measures of redress and reform were carried out : 
 
 The apprehension of a rebellion and civil war breaking 
 out in the Nuggur Western districts was promptly dis- 
 pelled, and the imminent danger of such a misfortune 
 prevented, by Colonel Briggs promptly proceeding to 
 that quarter, and personally re-assuring the excited popu-
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 215 
 
 lation. The civil establishments were organised in every 
 detail, from a condition of utter confusion and arbitrary 
 inefficiency, into a practicable and manageable system. 
 And all this was done by Briggs, single-handed, not only 
 with no help from his colleagues, but in spite of their 
 captious and vexatious obstruction. 
 
 An efficient High Court of Justice was established, at 
 the head of which was placed Ram Raz, a very able Brah- 
 min,* who had for some years previously been the inter- 
 preter and pundit, or expounder of Hindoo law, in the 
 Supreme Court at Madras, with whose aid the code of 
 procedure for punchayuts or juries was framed. 
 
 "In conformity", says Briggs, in his diary, "with 
 ancient practice, as in force under Poorniah's administra- 
 tion in Mysore, under my own authority in Khandesh, 
 and under the admirable arrangements of my friend, 
 Captain Grant Duff, at Sattara, the successful working of 
 which I had been able to watch and test as his first suc- 
 cessor, this code was privately submitted by me to the 
 Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Sir Ralph Palmer, 
 who visited Bangalore in 1833, and from whom I received 
 the warmest sympathy and the kindest help." 
 
 Before Briggs went through the ceremony of laying on 
 the table before " the Board", the simple regulations he 
 had prepared, there had been a blank sheet in Mysore 
 with regard to legal principles and form. Judicial powers 
 had been exercised by anyone, and every one, who had 
 any power at all by virtue of office, of rank, or of property, 
 from the Prince on the throne down to the landlord of a 
 single village. The Maharajah, in particular really for 
 the benefit of certain officials near his person retained 
 always the prerogative of reversing or altering all deci- 
 sions, on appeal or on information, and of hearing and 
 deciding, at pleasure, any cause in the first instance. 
 
 A competent High Court was established at the capital 
 by Colonel Briggs, with an intelligible code for its guid- 
 
 * An accomplished mathematician, whose name became known in 
 Europe as the author of a learned work on Hindoo architecture, pub- 
 lished by J. W. Parker, for the Royal Asiatic Society, in 1834, and still 
 the text-book on the subject.
 
 21G SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 ance in principle, and a simple procedure for its practice. 
 But by the system of punchayuts, the advantages of 
 speedy justice close to their own doors, in the ordinary 
 cases of village life, were secured for the people, a system 
 gradually complicated and spoiled by the permission of 
 appeals, and finally swept away by what were called judi- 
 cial reforms when annexation was confidentially decreed 
 under Mr. Bowring's Chief Commissionership. Sir Mark 
 Cubbon adopted the scheme oi' punchayuts as arranged by 
 Colonel Briggs, and maintained it, though not, as just 
 explained, quite intact, throughout his long and success- 
 ful administration. 
 
 Colonel Mark Cubbon had won distinction in the Com- 
 missariat Department, through every grade of which he 
 had passed, from Deputy- Assistant in 1810, up to Com- 
 missary-General in 1831. Although, as became speedily 
 manifest, his administrative capacity was fully equal to 
 the task imposed on him, he was, when he assumed the 
 government of Mysore, not well versed in either revenue 
 or judicial matters, or in the institutions and customs of 
 the province over which he was to rule. But he enjoyed 
 the immense advantage, which he knew how to appreciate 
 and appropriate, of having before him a complete scheme 
 drawn up in English for every department from the 
 hands of Colonel Briggs, the whole machinery being, to a 
 great extent, in working order, and fairly started. Look- 
 ing back at Mysore after the lapse of a few years, Briggs 
 might well have quoted the poet's humorous complaint : 
 
 " Hos ego versiculos feci, tulit alter honores, 
 Sic vos ucn vobis fertis aratra boves." 
 
 And still more truly might he have said : 
 " Sic vos non vobis mellificatis apes." 
 
 Butter and honey did not form his official fare ; he had 
 done the rough work, and quaffed the bitter cup in 
 Mysore : the sweets of office fell to those who followed 
 him. 
 
 Colonel Cubbon understood men and things ; he knew 
 how to guide and govern. He was not one of those fussy 
 officials who must do everything himself, and in his own
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 217 
 
 way. He thoroughly accepted the general maxim Briggs 
 laid down for administration, that the people should 
 have what they want, not what we think they ought to 
 want. But he could not stem the gradual tide of super- 
 fine establishments as he would have wished. For several 
 years he let well alone, and altered as little as possible, 
 but more Assistants were forced on him. He protested, 
 in vain, against multiplying departments, and overload- 
 ing them with highly-paid officers ; but as Mysore could 
 not be made, by any economy, to contribute more than its 
 fixed quota to the Imperial exchequer, nothing was left 
 for the genius of Bengal Civilian ism but to extend, in 
 every direction, the list of places and salaries, and to 
 make Mysore pay in the form of prizes and snug berths 
 for English gentlemen of the commissioned and " cove- 
 nanted" Services. 
 
 If Briggs had remained in Mysore as sole Commissioner, 
 he would have done the work with two English Assist- 
 ants, and would never have lost sight of the object which 
 the British Government, in good faith, and according to 
 the treaty, ought always to have kept in view the 
 reform and re-establishment in working order of the 
 Mysore State. 
 
 Colonel (afterwards General Sir Mark) Cubbon, five 
 years after taking over charge in 1834, had six Assist- 
 ants. He was induced to ask for a few more ; subse- 
 quently he was encumbered with additional establish- 
 ments, particularly with Lord Dalhousie's procrustean 
 Public Works Department, against which he pleaded in 
 vain. When he retired in 1861, there were thirty 
 English officers in the Mysore Commission, and he left 
 an accumulated surplus of a million sterling in the public 
 treasury. When the old Rajah died in 1867, annexation 
 having in the interval been confidentially decreed, though 
 averted by Home influence, the costly structure of jobs 
 and salaries called the Mysore Commission included no 
 less than ninety English officers, their aggregate salaries 
 amounting to about 100,000 a year, or one-seventh of 
 the net revenue of Mysore, the tribute being deducted. 
 When the young Maharajah was enthroned in March
 
 218 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 1881, Sir Mark Cubbon's surplus of a million in hard cash 
 had entirely disappeared, and it fell to the lot of Sir 
 James Gordon to hand over the State to our Ward, 
 burdened with debt to the amount of about a million 
 sterling, with the Treaties of 1799 arbitrarily superseded 
 by a " sanad" or " instrument", as it is called, whereby 
 the stipulated tribute is raised by an arbitrary decree 
 from about one-quarter to about one-third of its gross 
 revenue, from twenty-five to thirty-five lakhs of rupees 
 per annum.* No justification has ever been shown for 
 these high-handed acts. No justification, most assuredly, 
 can be found in the mere fact of the sequestration of 
 Mysore and its long continuance, which more justly 
 demanded redress and reparation. 
 
 The Mysore Subsidy, which Lord William Bentinck 
 admitted had " never been in jeopardy", having been 
 regularly and uninterruptedly paid in monthly instal- 
 ments, according to the terms of the Subsidiary Treaty, 
 there never was any lawful cause, under the terms of 
 that Treaty, for taking the Rajah's dominions under the 
 " exclusive authority and control" of the British Govern- 
 ment. That harsh measure, declared in Lord William 
 Bentinck's Letter to the Maharajah to have been called 
 for by a failure in the monthly payments, was, on fuller 
 inquiiy, admitted by him to have been uncalled for, no 
 such failure having occurred. Lord William Bentinck vir- 
 tually acknowledged the " illegality" and the " injustice" 
 of this measure.f The supersession of the Rajah was the 
 result of erroneous information from the Government of 
 Madras. Neither the failure of subsidy nor any " reason 
 to apprehend such failure", as defined by Article IV of 
 the Treaty, having existed, that supersession was un- 
 warranted, and was, in fact, a breach of the Treaty.* It 
 may be doubted whether those who are now ruling India, 
 and are conducting our relations with the State of Mysore, 
 have more than the very haziest idea of that critical 
 period in its history which I have endeavoured to eluci- 
 date, whether they do not share in the mistaken belief, 
 founded on the official legend, that our assumption of the 
 
 * Mysore Papers, (C. 3026 of 1881), pp. 126 to 135. 
 f Ante, p. 156. J Ante, pp. 156, 157.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 219 
 
 management of the State was due entirely to the mis- 
 government of the late Maharajah and in no degree to any 
 fault or shortcoming of ours. On this legend is based 
 the conclusion that, in taking the government out of his 
 hands, we were obeying a stern necessity, and performing 
 a simple duty ; and it is not difficult for men with official 
 instincts and inclinations to proceed to the further con- 
 clusion that, having once redeemed the people of Mysore 
 from Native rule, we would have been justified in refus- 
 ing to hand them back to another Native government. 
 Those who hold this view regard the restoration of the 
 State of the Native dynasty, in the person of the present 
 youthful Maharajah, as not an act of justice, but one of re- 
 markable generosity, and think that we were entitled to 
 drive with him any sort of bargain that seemed good to us. 
 I assert, on the other hand, that in founding on our own 
 mismanagement and straining of the Treaty the right to 
 do away with the Treaty, to substitute a sanad or grant, 
 and to screw down the Maharajah as if he had no inherent 
 rights as if the State had no corporate existence we 
 have exercised our power in a way not only harsh, but 
 positively iniquitous. 
 
 On the double grounds of the wrongful sequestration, 
 and of the self-seeking and greedy extravagance of our 
 administration of Mysore, special care ought to have been 
 taken to avoid all appearance of any further violation of 
 the Partition and Subsidiary Treaties of 1799. It is a 
 rash thing to loosen the sanctions of our Indian Treaties. 
 We cannot justly or safely attempt to tamper with a 
 treaty of eighty years standing, on the plea that it was 
 originally a bad bargain. It was, in this case, a bargain 
 with the Nizam as well as with the Rajah, and ought to 
 have been scrupulously adhered to. Our only title to 
 the greater part of our possessions in India is a title by 
 treaty. We do not hold many Provinces directly by 
 conquest. Our only title to possession, our only moral 
 claim to the allegiance and subordination of the Princes 
 of India, and, as I believe, all our future power of perma- 
 nent influence for the education and civilisation of India, 
 depend on the preservation and development of our exist- 
 ing system of treaties.
 
 220 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 BEFORE proceeding to take up his new appointment at 
 Nagpore, Colonel Briggs paid a short visit to Madras, 
 where he was a guest of the new Governor, Sir Frederick 
 Adam, and w r here he fitted himself out with camp equip- 
 age and other necessaries for a journey of upwards of six 
 hundred miles over very bad roads. "I left the Presi- 
 dency in November 1832, and proceeded to my destination 
 by the route of Hyderabad. At Secunderabad, the military 
 cantonment near the Nizam's capital, I stayed a few days 
 with my eldest daughter, who had been married in the 
 previous year to Captain Westrop Watkins, one of the 
 staff officers of the Subsidiary force, and thence I pursued 
 my march to Nagpore." 
 
 " Maharajah Bughojee Bhonsla, to whose court I was deputed, 
 was a grandson of the Rajah, also named Kughojee, who fought 
 against us at the battles of Assaye and Argaum, the son of his 
 daughter married to a chief of the Goojur family. On the defeat 
 and deposition of Appah Sahib, who had put his cousin, Pursojee, 
 to death, usurped the throne, and joined the Peishwa Bajee Eao, 
 in the second Mahratta war against us, this young Prince was, in 
 1819, adopted into the house of Bhonsla by the widow of his 
 murdered predecessor. Appah Sahib was dethroned and exiled by 
 the power of our Government, and the young Kughojee was chosen 
 as heir with its approval, but all was done in consultation with the 
 relatives and ministers of the reigning family, and with the common 
 voice of the people in its favour. When installed in 1819, the 
 Rajah was only ten years of age, and Sir Richard Jenkins, who 
 had been Resident at Nagpore all through the time of trouble and 
 war that preceded his accession, was made guardian of the youthful 
 Prince and Regent of the country, employing one English officer 
 only in each of the four great divisions to superintend the adminis- 
 tration, which was conducted entirely by Native civil officers. Sir 
 Richard Jenkins had transferred the government of about half the 
 Nagpore country, the districts most nearly connected with the
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 221 
 
 capital, into the young Eajah's hands in 1825, and the remainder 
 of his dominions had been handed over by Mr. Wilder in 1829, 
 after negotiating a new treaty with his Highness by which a tribute 
 of eight lakhs of rupees a year was to be paid to the Honourable 
 Company. Thus, when I arrived at Nagpore, the Rajah had been 
 his own master for about seven years. 
 
 " The Nagpore territories covered an area of about 70,000 square 
 miles, and included the greater part of the ancient province of Gond- 
 wanna, a tract very interesting to me, both from so large a pro- 
 portion of its inhabitants belonging to the great aboriginal race of 
 Gonds, and from its having been found exempt, on its acquisition 
 by the Mahrattas, from the system of village municipalities which 
 prevails through the greater part of India. This is an additional 
 proof of the village .jystem being a Hindoo, indeed an Aryan, insti- 
 tution, as it can be traced throughout the whole of Europe, and 
 in every part of the British Islands. The aboriginal tribes of India, 
 whether in the plains or the hills, know nothing of it. Until the 
 conquest of Gondwanna by the first Eughojee Bhonsla, under a 
 commission from the Eajah of Sattara, in the beginning of the 
 eighteenth century, the country had been governed from time 
 immemorial by Princes of the aboriginal race of Gonds, with- 
 out the slightest interference from the potentates around, ex- 
 cepting for a short period when a portion of Gondwanna was 
 tributary to the Mohammedan Kings of Khaiidesh. During this 
 period the principal Gond chieftain, who occupied the city now 
 called Nagpore, was compelled to visit the provincial capital, 
 Boorhanpoor, and was there made a convert to the Mussulman 
 religion. There can be no doubt that the conversion arose from a 
 wish to gain the favour of a powerful neighbour, and from some 
 notion of superior dignity being thereby acquired, for the Gond 
 Rajahs have always been utterly illiterate, and the members of 
 the family know no more of the doctrines and precepts of their 
 religion than are contained in the brief creed, ' There is no' God 
 but Allah, and Mohammed is his Prophet.' The Gond Rajah is 
 treated ceremonially by the Bhonsla as the lord of the soil, and 
 a sort of partner in the Government, though not left in possession 
 of any power beyond the walls of his own house. This was a 
 piece of characteristic Mahratta policy at first, in order to avoid 
 acknowledging that Gondwanna was held in subordination to the 
 Rajah of Sattara or the Peishwa, but it was always a mere out- 
 ward form. The Gond Eajah, however, has his own officers in 
 every district of his original Eaj, who collect his share, one-sixteenth, 
 of the land revenue. 
 
 " I found the country had not suffered from the transfer of the 
 Government to the young Eajah. Like most of the Mahratta 
 Princes, he was very little influenced by Brahmins, and had for
 
 222 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 his Prime Minister an extremely sensible Mohammedan, Gholam 
 Ali Khan. The "Rajah had few troops, not more than 4,000 alto- 
 gether, and those principally Cavalry, a mixture of all classes, Mus- 
 sulman, Rajpools, and Mahrattas. On the whole, I found the Nag- 
 pore territories, as I proceeded in the course of a year through the 
 greater part of them, well cultivated, the inhabitants prosperous 
 and decently clothed, and the Rajah popular. 
 
 " As I have already stated, the Hindoo municipalities nowhere 
 prevailed in the Nagpore country. Each village had a head-man 
 and an accountant, remunerated by rent-free land ; but these 
 offices were held at the pleasure of Government, and there were 
 no hereditary proprietors, or proprietary tribes, as among the 
 Hindoo communities. There were not many jaghiredars of any 
 importance, except members of the Rajah's family and a few great 
 people about the Court ; but in one large district, Chutteesgurh, 
 the're were some semi-independent chieftains of ancient origin, 
 whose territories were almost unexplored. Under its subsidiary 
 alliance with the Company's Government, the State was protected 
 by a British Force of all arms, consisting of about five thousand 
 effective soldiers, one-third of them Europeans. Lord William 
 Bentinck was averse to placing too much power in the hands of 
 his Agents at the Native Courts. He required that a weekly report 
 should be made to the Political Department at Head-quarters in 
 the shape of a Diary, recording the official communications, 
 personal or in writing, that had taken place between the Residency 
 and the Court. But above all he desired that no open or direct 
 interference should on any pretence take place in the conduct of 
 the Rajah's administration. Here, I have no doubt, Lord William 
 Bentinck, rightly convinced of the great mischief that had been 
 wrought by the excessive pressure of the Resident's influence at 
 Hyderabad and Lucknow, went a little too far in the other direc- 
 tion. Had it not been for the firm and honest discharge of his 
 duty by the Mussulman Minister, the young Prince might have 
 been led into the same course of extravagance and negligence that 
 had so lately brought ruin on the Rajah of Mysore. This very 
 argument was urged upon me very soon after my arrival by the 
 Minister, who had begged me to remonstrate with the Rajah 
 regarding an act of personal aggression on one of the families 
 closely allied with the Court, when I told him that' to do so would 
 be contrary to my instructions. I quite agreed with the Minister 
 that it could hardly fail to end in some disaster, if the young 
 Rajah were left to suppose that there was no check whatever on 
 his personal inclinations, his desires, and his dislikes. The Minister 
 said that after the late events in Mysore, people were beginning to 
 say that our Government had no objection to have opportunities of 
 destroying the independence of allied States given to it by the
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 223 
 
 faults or errors of Native Bulers. I said that our Government 
 was incapable of any such motive. I recommended him to an- 
 nounce to the Eajah that I had heard the current story to his 
 disadvantage, and had observed to my visitor that it would be as 
 well if he would ask his Highness whether the version that had 
 come to me was the correct one, as I felt very averse to enter it in 
 its present form, evidently incomplete and unsettled, in my Diary 
 for the Governor-General's information. This hint had the effect 
 I desired and expected. In two or three days I learned through 
 the same channel that reparation had been made, and a recon- 
 ciliation arranged. My report was made to the Governor-General 
 as usual, but was not calculated to prejudice the Eajah in his eyes." 
 
 A very full and lucid account of his views as to the 
 Imperial right and duty of interfering in the govern- 
 ment of the allied and protected States, as to their 
 capacity for administrative reform, and as to their true 
 place in our political system, will be found in the follow- 
 ing important demi-official letter from Colonel Briggs, 
 written in reply to one that he had received from the 
 Earl of Clare, then Governor of Bombay. The letter, in 
 conformity, I presume, with that from Lord Clare, which 
 called it forth, is marked " Private". 
 
 " MY LORD, 1. I sit down to reply to your Lordship's question 
 regarding our interference in the internal management of Native 
 States closely allied to us. 
 
 "2. The policy of inducing the Native Princes who have been 
 compelled to seek our protection from foreign aggression to purchase 
 it by subsidising troops, was coupled with conditions that virtually 
 deprived those Princes of every vestige of independence, and para- 
 lysed their strength in every sense of the phrase. 
 
 "3. This policy arose, not merely out of the exigencies of the 
 time when the French, Tippoo Sultan, and their well-wishers, were 
 making desperate efforts to subvert our power, but has been more 
 generally forced on us by the rude and uncivilised character of the 
 Native States which border on our own territory. 
 
 " 4. These alliances at once relieve the Sovereigns who have 
 embraced them from all apprehension of foreign enemies and of 
 domestic insurrection. They exchange political power and am- 
 bition for the security and ease which belong to Princes tributary 
 to a mild though potent Superior. 
 
 " 5. These treaties did not, at first, confer in direct terms the 
 right of interference in the internal affairs of the several States 
 with which they were formed. This right, however, inevitably 
 followed wherever ihe condition of the alliance was coupled with a
 
 224 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 stipulation for the regular payment of a subsidy ; for misrule in 
 India being sure to bring down its own punishment, a failure of 
 revenue, -the control of the public resources, and the management 
 of the country, were necessarily demanded by us as the only 
 effectual security, and the territories eventually passed into our 
 hands. This was the case with the dominions of the Nawab of 
 Arcot, the Eajah of Tanjore, and other Principalities of less im- 
 portance. In these cases we appropriated the entire administra- 
 tion to ourselves, reserving for the deposed Princes a certain share 
 of the net revenue. 
 
 " 6. This may, perhaps, be the end of some more of these alli- 
 ances at some future period, but I would earnestly deprecate the 
 notion of accelerating or facilitating such a crisis in any single 
 instance that I can foresee or conceive. We should always en- 
 deavour to guard against it and avoid it. Every extension of our 
 territory henceforward, now that we have made ample provision 
 for our establishments, and for securing general control, can only 
 increase our burdens, and enfeeble our authority. But, on the other 
 hand, we must not hesitate or procrastinate in exerting our influ- 
 ence, naturally and fairly acquired and maintained, and upheld for 
 the general good as well as for our own interests, on behalf of 
 orderly and regular government. 
 
 " 7. In the instance of our subsidiary alliance with Bajee Rao 
 at Poona, we suffered misrule to continue too long. At length the 
 Southern jaghiredars threatened a coalition against him, which, if 
 permitted to run its course, might have ended in a change of 
 dynasty. The Peishwa was precluded by treaty from calling on 
 his former vassals and confederates for aid, and he consequently 
 demanded that assistance from us which we were bound to afford. 
 Our interference becoming requisite, we assumed the position of 
 Umpire, and averted a Civil War. On this occasion we guaranteed 
 to the jaghiredars the integrity of their estates, and to the Peishwa 
 the fulfilment on their part of their feudatory duties.* The per- 
 fidious character of Bajee Rao brought about the Mahratta war 
 of 1817, otherwise his reigii of misrule, corrected only by our 
 mediation in favour of the jaghiredars, might have continued 
 during his life-time. The people would have been still groan- 
 ing under the weight of his injustice and oppression,*!- while 
 his claim to our support against internal revolt must have 
 effectually checked or crushed every effort, however justifiable, of 
 the insurrectionary spirit. Such is the actual condition of our 
 relations with the Nizam. On the one hand, we do not consider 
 
 * This was in 1812, see Collection of Treaties, Calcutta, 1863 
 (London : Longmans and Co.), vol. iii, pp. 85 and 88. 
 
 t Bajee Rao, the ex-Peishwa, died at Bithoor on the 28th of January 
 1851, aged seventy-seven, eighteen years after this letter was written.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 225 
 
 ourselves warranted by Treaty to interfere in preventing misrule ; 
 we are compelled, on the other, by giving military support, to 
 assist in perpetuating bad government. 
 
 " 8. I cannot persuade myself that we are any more bound by 
 natural justice as between State and State, or by the want of 
 specific stipulations in a Treaty, to abstain from promoting reformed 
 administration, when we have good reason to fear the evil conse- 
 quences of disorder, than we are justified by our abhorrence of the 
 misrule that has done the mischief in refusing to restore peace and 
 order, when an actual revolt has broken out. In either case these 
 are questions of prudence and equity as to the extent of our action 
 that we must solve for ourselves. 
 
 " 9. If we decline to support a Prince against revolt, and look 
 on supinely at the contest between him and his subjects, one of 
 two consequences must ensue. Either the Native Government, 
 without our aid, will be strong enough to put down all resistance 
 with its own army, adding, perhaps, cruel and sanguinary punish- 
 ments to its former oppression; or else the people, getting the 
 mastery, will dethrone, or even put to death, their hated Sovereign. 
 In either of these cases anarchy and civil war are brought to our 
 own doors, and all who are oppressed, and all who suffered, blame 
 us, because they know our power could have worked a cure. 
 
 " 10. A more striking example of the impossibility of adhering 
 to the non-interference principle could not be adduced than is pre- 
 sented by a review of the late events in Mysore. Our connection 
 with that State warranted our regulating its affairs from the first, 
 at all times, and in any shape we pleased ; but we tried the effects 
 of non-interference. The result was a long period of mal-adminis- 
 tration, ending in a revolt, which the Rajah was unable to suppress. 
 In order to save the Government, it became necessary to employ 
 our own troops, and eventually to assume the direct management 
 of the Eajah's dominions. 
 
 " 11. If after a period of reform and organisation the reins of 
 government are to be ultimately replaced in the Rajah's hands, 
 under certain restrictions and limitations, we shall then be just 
 where we ought to have been at the time when the Rajah's 
 minority ended. The conduct and character of the Prince must 
 determine how long our direct control should be exercised, and at 
 what time, and how far, it should be relinquished. At no period, 
 however, can the British Government, I conceive, withdraw its 
 supervision, with credit or advantage to itself, from any State 
 connected with us as is that of Mysore. The disadvantage of its 
 having done so in this case has been sufficiently manifest. 
 
 " 12. Our treaties with Mysore, Sattara, and Nagpore are on 
 the same model ; and it is to this middle condition between inde- 
 pendence and incorporation that I conceive it should be our policy 
 
 Q
 
 226 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 to reduce all the Native States, a condition upon the whole the 
 most favourable to all classes within them, the least dangerous and 
 the least burdensome to us, and the most conducive to civilisation 
 and general prosperity. 
 
 "13. I have before remarked upon the influence on public 
 affairs of the personal character of Native Princes, even of those 
 who are bound by Treaty to adopt our advice in their administra- 
 tion. In order to render this influence harmless, without diminish- 
 ing its efficacy for good, our main principle should be the formation 
 of a regular system, I should be inclined to call it a constitution, 
 which should be binding on the head of the Government, and 
 which ought not to be essentially altered or departed from without 
 the sanction of the Protecting Power. Such is the course, in fact, 
 which has been followed at Sattara and Nagpore, and such, I 
 should hope, will be the policy pursued towards the Eajah of 
 Mysore. 
 
 " 14. I have studied the Indian fiscal institutions with much 
 assiduity and care ; I have also studied theoretically and examined 
 practically, in the various localities, those of our own country 
 and of several other States of Europe, and I know of no mon- 
 archical government, of which an elective representation forms no 
 part, more adapted to promote the happiness and welfare of the 
 people in the present form of society in India, or which could be 
 administered more cheaply or more efficiently, than that of the 
 little Principality of Sattara. The constitution and frame of this 
 Government were first sketched out, with the advice and approval 
 of Mr. Elphinstone, by Captain Grant Duff, and afterwards modelled 
 and built up by his agency. 
 
 " 15. In all States that are brought under our supervision the 
 Civil List, that is to say the sum allotted for the annual expendi- 
 ture of the Eajah and his family, ought to be fixed, as it was in 
 Sattara, at a certain proportionate share of the net revenue, after 
 deducting all the charges of collection. A budget exhibiting esti- 
 mates for the ensuing year, both of expenses and receipts, together 
 with full accounts of the income and disbursements of the -past 
 year, should be delivered to the Eesident annually, and no essential 
 changes in financial matters should be permitted to take place 
 without the sanction of the British Government. 
 
 " 16. It need hardly be added that 'the Eesidents to whom is 
 entrusted the supervision of the protected States, should be men of 
 the very highest class of public servants, carefully trained, selected, 
 and instructed for this difficult duty; for on their reports the 
 British Government must, in a great measure, rely for the infor- 
 mation by which its control will be regulated. While we have 
 Princes on the musnud like the Eajahs of Nagpore and Sattara, 
 who have personally witnessed the effects, and who acknowledge
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 227 
 
 the advantage of European organisation and system, and who are 
 desirous of maintaining the same, our Residents at those Courts 
 will have little more to do than to make their weekly reports, and 
 to watch the progress of affairs, refraining, as much as possible, 
 from interference, and making their current counsel as palatable and 
 unobtrusive as they can. But when Princes or Ministers feel that 
 the eye of the British Government, or of its representative, is no 
 longer on them, or regards their movements with indifference, or 
 when the musnud receives a new occupant, who may be imbecile, 
 vicious, wrong-headed, or an infant, very rapid changes for the 
 worse may take place in States that were once well regulated, and 
 our interference may be imperatively required. In some cases 
 direct and open management by British officers may be unavoid- 
 able, as in the present instance of the Rajah of Mysore. 
 
 " 17. Thus, iny Lord, you have my humble sentiments on this 
 important subject. I think I have shown that we deceive our- 
 selves in supposing that our non-interference will tend to enable 
 the people to correct the misrule of their Princes. Even if it were 
 so, we are pledged against non-interference. We are bound by 
 solemn engagements in the case of all the subsidiary States to step 
 in and check the natural corrective process of insurrection as soon 
 as it displays itself ; and when we choose, as in the case of Mysore, 
 to refrain from interference till the last moment, we only permit 
 the agonies of the people to be protracted without giving them a 
 fair chance of effecting their own relief. 
 
 " 18. So far am I from advocating the principle of non-inter- 
 ference, that I conceive we are bound in duty to the Princes them- 
 selves and their subjects, and in the interest of our own territories, 
 to watch carefully the administration of all Native States, and 
 to interfere promptly whenever the infancy or incapacity of a 
 Sovereign demands temporary guidance, relaxing our control, or 
 withdrawing our superintendence, in the precise ratio that we 
 recognise in Prince or Minister the faculties for directing a good 
 Government. The policy that I contemplate is that while we are 
 endeavouring to govern our own Provinces through the instrumen- 
 tality of a more extensive Native agency, we should at the same 
 time be preparing the protected States by constant supervision for 
 the establishment of our institutions ; and by the conjunction of 
 this double movement, the time may very much be hastened for 
 the construction of that political system which must, I think, 
 before our work is complete, overspread the whole of India. 
 
 " I have the honour, etc., etc., 
 
 " JOHN BRIGGS. 
 " Nagpore Residency, 12th June 1833." 
 
 Q2
 
 228 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 On the 24th of January 1834, he writes as follows to 
 Augustus De Morgan, in London. 
 
 " MY DEAR AUGUSTUS, I really do not know how I am to repay 
 you for your two long and interesting letters of the 28th June 
 and 17th August last, both of which have come to hand within 
 these few days. You ask about the state of the land question in 
 Kagpore. This is a mildly governed Mahratta Kingdom, and 
 presents a very fair example of what the revenue principles 
 accepted by our Government would introduce everywhere, with 
 the aggravation of our costly system, and without the many alle- 
 viations of Native rule. The odious system of taxing the farmer 
 to the full extent of his profits, and of putting up these taxes to 
 farm for two or three years at a time, flourishes here ; and the 
 country remains half barren, the people continue for the most part 
 paupers, and little but a bare subsistence is left to the common 
 run of cultivators. James Mill and Holt Mackenzie, the sup- 
 porters and advocates of this system, say this is not taxation, that 
 it is merely the payment of rent to the Government as universal 
 Landlord, a position utterly false and untenable. But even if it 
 were not so, what would be the consequence if all the occupants 
 of land in America or New South Wales, not to say of Great 
 Britain, were compelled to surrender all their profits (by which 
 alone they are at present induced to till the soil) to the State ? 
 These two oracles, one at the India House, the other at the Board 
 of Control, are to direct the destinies of this unhappy region of the 
 world under the new Charter." 
 
 The Revenue settlements of the Nagpore country, after 
 the dethronement of Appah Sahib in 1819, and during 
 the minority of his successor, were made by English 
 officers under the supervision of the Resident, Sir Richard 
 Jenkins. The notice in Colonel Briggs's preceding letter 
 of the heavy assessments on the land while he admits 
 " the alleviations of Native rule" is, perhaps, one of the 
 first hints on record of the bad example in that direc- 
 tion set by our administrators, and the bad precedents 
 afforded by them, to the Native States under their 
 management or influence. 
 
 An extract from another letter to Augustus De Morgan, 
 dated 30th September 1834, contains an indication of the 
 prevalent Russophobia, of which, in after years, a very- 
 small trace remained in the mature counsels to which 
 General Briggs gave utterance.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 229 
 
 " Our last accounts from England of June 6th exhibit the Grey 
 administration falling to pieces, and the probability of a war with 
 Eussia. The Board of Control ought to think seriously of Persia. 
 That country is on the eve of a great political change, on which 
 will probably depend the ultimate fate of India. Unaided by 
 Persia, Eussia will never attempt even to threaten our Eastern 
 possessions, and would assuredly not succeed in any aggressive 
 movement against them. But backed by Persia, either as an 
 ambitious and hopeful ally, or as a subdued and subordinate 
 follower, Eussia may take up a position on our North-Western 
 frontier, and exhaust our resources without firing a shot, whenever 
 she feels so disposed/' 
 
 In consequence of bad health Colonel Briggs was 
 relieved from his duties of Resident at Nagpore in 1835, 
 by the Honble. Richard Cavendish of the Bengal Civil 
 Service, a son of the second Lord Waterpark. Mr. 
 Cavendish came from Gwalior, where he had been Resi- 
 dent at the Court of the Maharajah Scindia. I may add 
 that he retired from the Bengal Civil Service on a pension 
 in 1840; the year after his retirement he married an 
 heiress, and died at what must have been a very ad- 
 vanced age in 1876, leaving a large family of children and 
 grand-children. Mr. Cavendish never had the reputation 
 of being a very able man, and the letter now to be cited 
 seems to show that his erudition, even in the department 
 of English grammar and phraseology, was hardly up to 
 the standard of our competitive examinations. The 
 opinions on any subject expressed by 'the successor of 
 Colonel Briggs at Nagpore could not properly be noticed 
 in these pages, but for the fact that Lord Dalhousie, at a 
 critical period in his policy of annexation, when there 
 was one opponent in his own Council, cited Mr. Caven- 
 dish as a competent judge in a matter of Indian history 
 and politics. Colonel Briggs heartily sympathised with 
 his old colleague and comrade, General Sir John Low, 
 and took his part at home in the ineffectual struggle 
 against the extinction of Native States. 
 
 Mr. Cavendish's letter, written a very short time after 
 the departure of his predecessor from Nagpore, did not 
 refer to any very weighty affair, but only to a point of 
 ceremonial etiquette in visiting and receiving an Indian
 
 230 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 Prince. If his despatches were usually written in the 
 peculiar slipshod style that characterises this letter, they 
 ought hardly to have impressed the Government of India 
 with a very deep respect for his capacity or judgment. 
 Yet a blundering assertion of his was quoted in 1854 in 
 support of the iniquitous annexation of Nagpore, against 
 which General Briggs lived to protest in the Court of 
 East India Proprietors. " In the year 1837", said Lord 
 Dalhousie, "Mr. Cavendish, then Resident at Nagpore, 
 asked for the instructions of the Government of India, in 
 the event of the Rajah dying without a male heir. Mr. 
 Cavendish gave it as his opinion that 'adoption' should 
 not be allowed, for the British Government conquered 
 ' this country, and gave it to his Highness and his sons, 
 and on his death, without an heir-apparent or post- 
 humous child, it should escheat or lapse to our Govern- 
 ment'."* The treaty was, in truth, made with the 
 Rajah, " his heirs and successors", not " his sons", as Mr. 
 Cavendish represented. But any stick will do to beat a 
 dog, and so Mr. Richard Cavendish was exalted into an 
 authority. The strain of plaintive sentiment and " regard 
 for the feelings of others" in the letter of 1835 is not 
 easily reconcilable with the disregard for the rights of 
 others in that of 1837. In all probability the confiscat- 
 ing doctrine that dropped from the Resident's pen, and 
 which met with no approval or response from the Govern- 
 ment of the day, though eagerly appropriated by Lord 
 Dalhousie, was due to no worse cause than sheer, 
 honest ignorance, and carelessness as to the terms of the 
 Treaty. The following letter is of some use and interest, 
 partly as a measure of Mr. Cavendish's literary and 
 logical capabilities, partly as an instance of the aspect 
 assumed by the " Shoe and Chair" question when applied 
 to the more important Princes of India in the transition 
 period of 1835, when Sir Charles Metcalfe was acting as 
 Governor-General, between the departure of Lord William 
 Bentinck and the arrival of Lord Auckland. 
 
 * Papers, Rajah of Berar (416 of 1854), p. 29.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 231 
 
 "Xo W. H. Macnaghten, Esq., Secretary to the Government of 
 India, in the Political Department, Fort William. 
 
 " SIR, The Maharajah according to custom returned my visit 
 on the 21st instant; and when a few hundred yards from the 
 Residency, I heard for the first time that it had been the custom 
 for his Highness to sit on a guddee,* and the British and Native 
 functionaries on the ground on his Highness's right hand, until Mr. 
 Graeme substituted a. throne or couch for the Maharajah and him- 
 self, and chairs for all the other British and Native attendants of 
 rank, and such had ever since been the rule and practice. 
 
 " 2. I determined for several reasons not to sit on the same 
 couch or throne with his Highness, and took one of the chairs on 
 his Highness's right hand ; and have since ascertained it to be his 
 Highness's wish to revert to the old-established custom previous to 
 Mr. Graeme's arrival of sitting on a guddee and on the ground 
 without shoes ; but I do not like to undo what has been done with- 
 out knowing the pleasure of the British Government. My opinion 
 is in favour of compliance with the old-established custom and his 
 Highness's wish, for the British Government under Providence is 
 all-powerful, and the greater humility and attention shown to the 
 weak, the more gratifying it must be to our own feelings, and 
 must in some degree soothe the pain and anguish of the Prince 
 and his nobles under their reverses. No one knows what to- 
 morrow may happen to him, and it is therefore wise to be pre- 
 pared, through humility and regard for the feelings of others, for 
 the greatest reverses Providence may be pleased to visit him. 
 
 " I have* etc., 
 
 "R. CAVENDISH, 
 
 " Resident. 
 " Nagpore Residency, 28th March 1835." 
 
 Perhaps an additional assurance is needed that the 
 last two sentences, in which the climax is reached of pure 
 benevolence and confused grammar, are given verbatim et 
 literatim, as in the original. Here is the answer from 
 the Government of India : 
 
 " To the Resident at Nagpore. 
 "No. 31. "13th April 1835. 
 
 " SIR, I am directed to acknowledge the receipt of a letter 
 from you, dated the 28th ultimo, reporting the Maharajah's visit 
 to the Residency, and describing the former and late modes of 
 reception. 
 
 " 2. In reply I am directed to acquaint you that the Honble. 
 
 * Or musnud, simply a large cushion.
 
 232 SOME WORDS AND WOKK OF 
 
 the Governor-General of India in Council entirely approves the 
 partial change of ceremony adopted by you on the occasion, but 
 he is of opinion that it would not be expedient to revert to the 
 custom of sitting on the ground in the Eesidency after the esta- 
 blishment of the English fashion of using chairs. At the Eajah's 
 Durbar the Native custom, it is presumed, prevails. 
 
 " I have, etc., 
 
 " W. H. MACNAGHTEN, 
 " Secretary to the Government of India." 
 
 Colonel Briggs left Nagpore early in March 1835, and 
 arrived at Madras in April. He was very courteously 
 and even cordially received by the Governor, Sir 
 Frederick Adam, then on the eve of his return to 
 England, and without any application on his part was in 
 a few days gazetted to the command of the troops at 
 Bangalore, with the rank of Brigadier-General. He 
 felt himself constrained, however, to decline the appoint- 
 ment. 
 
 " Besides considerations of health, and the strong recommenda- 
 tions of medical advisers and friends, I had strong objections to 
 take up the military command at Bangalore, though I felt the offer 
 was intended as a kindness and a compliment. I should have been 
 in a false and painful position at the military head-quarters of 
 Mysore, where I had so recently been at the head of the Govern- 
 ment, and where many persons of more or less importance not 
 to mention the Eajah, who was not ignorant of my views looked 
 upon me as their patron and protector, and would have erroneously 
 imagined my presence in the country to be favourable to their 
 interests or their ambition. Here were sufficient reasons for my 
 refusing to return to Mysore, but in fact my health was much 
 impaired. I was urged, on the highest medical authority, to proceed 
 to sea at once, with provisional permission to go on to Europe, 
 and this advice I felt bound to adopt. 
 
 "While at Madras in 1835, I was the guest of an old Eton 
 schoolfellow, high in the Civil Service, Mr. John Sullivan, whose 
 father was then a Eight Honble. Member of the Board of Control. 
 It was from him I first learned the gratifying fact, which was 
 afterwards more formally confirmed, that in the last sentence of 
 the Governor-General's despatch to the Court of Directors on 
 Mysore affairs, written after having received the Eeport of the 
 Special Committee, he said that he ' felt bound to record his senti- 
 ments on the conduct of Colonel Briggs, the late Senior Commis- 
 sioner, during the time he held that office', and he concluded, ' I
 
 k 
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 233 
 
 have no hesitation in saying that with the exception of the single 
 instance of indiscretion for which he justly incurred blame, the 
 whole of his conduct throughout that period met with my un- 
 qualified approbation.' 
 
 " I obtained leave to proceed to sea and to any British depen- 
 dency within the limits of the Company's Charter, between the 
 Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn, and eventually to Europe. 
 I embarked from Madras, with several old civil and military 
 friends, for the Mauritius, where I remained for two months, 
 enjoying a delicious climate, and the kindness of the Governor, 
 with whom I had become connected by the marriage of my second 
 daughter with one of his near relatives. I also experienced much 
 friendlv attention from the Judge, a connection of my own, with 
 whom 1 had passed many happy days in his own family in early 
 life at home. 
 
 " The negro freedmen, so recently slaves, seemed to me to be 
 for the most part kindly treated, but the social revolution had not 
 as yet settled down, and labour for wages was unwillingly and 
 irregularly given. This had already led to the introduction of 
 Indian coolies, chiefly from the Madras Presidency, and chiefly 
 through the medium of Madras Native merchants and shopkeepers 
 who had settled in the island. I was much interested in convers- 
 ing both with the labouring and the commercial class of Madras- 
 sees, and I found that they had a grievance. There was an old 
 law regarding the slaves, that they were liable to punishment for 
 quitting their master's estate without a passport. This was made 
 applicable to the negroes after emancipation. The Legislature 
 also proposed that the same law should be extended to the Indian 
 coolies. Some of the Indian merchants remonstrated, and drew 
 up a petition against the measure to the Secretary of State for the 
 Colonies, which they entreated me to present when I went home, 
 and which I actually did present to Lord Glenelg. Their prayer 
 was, I think, granted. 
 
 " From the Mauritius I took my passage in a sugar ship for the 
 Cape of Good Hope. The state of my health had not much im- 
 proved, and after a very short stay at the Cape I availed myself of 
 the leave conditionally granted to me, and preceeded to England. 
 I landed at Dover in the month of January 1836, after thirty-five 
 years of Indian service, during which time I had made twenty-one 
 sea voyages of duty in different parts of the East, and had singular 
 opportunities of observing the different systems of discipline in 
 ships of war of the Eoyal and in the Indian Navy, in the Com- 
 pany's regular Indiameu, in vessels manned chiefly by Indians, and 
 in an Arab barque manned by a mixed crew of Arabs and Indian 
 lascars." 
 
 "When leaving Madras in 1835, Colonel Briggs had
 
 284 SOME WORDS AND WORK, ETC. 
 
 by no means formed any resolution or intention of settling 
 at home and of not returning to India. He was, on the 
 contrary, for several years desirous of employment. The 
 number of "political" and civil places of the first class 
 for which military officers were eligible, was very 
 limited. The covenanted Civil Service was engrossing 
 more and more of them, and officers of the Madras Army 
 were greatly at a discount in comparison with those of 
 Bengal. In 1838, on his promotion to the rank of Major- 
 General, he applied, but unsuccessfully, for the command 
 of a Division. As a Colonel he was in the enjoyment of 
 the " off-reckonings" a double share in those days, 
 when there were two battalions to each Regiment so 
 that his military emoluments, while unemployed, amount- 
 ing to 1,750 a year, with the income arising from his 
 Indian economies, made him fairly independent of official 
 patronage. He had no sons to be provided for, and only 
 two unmarried daughters.
 
 235 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 1835 to 1853. 
 
 FROM the day that Briggs was relieved from official tram- 
 mels and took up his abode in England, finally and per- 
 manently as it proved, he may be said to have " gone 
 into opposition" against the Government of India the 
 Government of all others in the world the most intensely 
 official in its personality and its processes, and the least 
 open to popular or party influence. Of Indian adminis- 
 tration and Indian affairs in general, it had been com- 
 monly made a subject of solemn exhortation that they 
 ought not to be made what is called " the sport of party". 
 With that exhortation I have never been able to sympa- 
 thise. If the extreme crisis, so often predicted and 
 dreaded, were to arrive, and India were to become the 
 battle-field of Parliamentary parties, I am not of opinion 
 that any bad consequences would ensue. It would at 
 least put an end to the impatience and apathy with 
 which Indian affairs are now usually treated, and would 
 make them a subject of universal attention and discus- 
 sion. Being the citizen of a free country, great and 
 strong because it is free, I cannot accept that catchword 
 of permanent officials and reputed experts, by which 
 discussion is deprecated, inquiry evaded, and respon- 
 sibility nullified. After all, it is only a baser version of 
 Lord Beaconsfield's audacious demand. The serene supre- 
 macy in lofty international regions, undisturbed by " the 
 harebrained chatter of irresponsible frivolity", that he 
 claimed for " sovereigns and statesmen", is claimed in 
 Indian affairs not only by the executive dignitaries of 
 Calcutta, but by " the front benches" at Westminster. 
 Viceroys and Councillors have frequently written home
 
 236 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 to warn the Secretary of State that if some particular 
 decision of their conclave should be disallowed, the very 
 foundations of British power in India would be upset. 
 And there has been too much inclination on the part of 
 the men actually and recently in power to accept such 
 warnings as legitimate. Not party, but Parliament, is to 
 be silenced. For more than a century, a growing tendency 
 has been manifested by Ministers, without distinction of 
 party, to prevent Parliament from acting as a court of 
 revision and censure over executive proceedings. Official 
 voices have warned the profane vulgar .off the Indian 
 field with even more of unanimity and rigour than they 
 have off the Continent of Europe, Terrible consequences 
 are always predicted, if " the spirit of party" should 
 permit an appeal from India to be judged on its merits 
 in either House of Parliament. Unless all pretensions of 
 this nature are sternly set aside by representatives and 
 constituencies, and a just measure of real responsibility 
 to Parliament exacted, constitutional supervision will 
 never be more than an empty name and a deceptive 
 nullity. 
 
 Constitutional Government is nothing if it does not 
 include a system of checks on autocracy, mystery, and 
 unadvised undertakings ; and the official hierarchy in- 
 stinctively struggles against it from a dislike to the pre- 
 vious debate that may disclose dubious plans, and the 
 subsequent debate that may expose undeniable failures, 
 and malpractices. Close observation, and real supervision 
 by Parliament and the nation, are far more urgently 
 required for Indian than for foreign affairs. If diplomacy 
 were to be let alone for a year or two by its practitioners 
 and by its detractors, the Empire might survive, and 
 not even suffer ; but the Indian question is vital, and 
 ever before us national as well as international. The 
 conventional cry that India must not be the sport of 
 party, really means that every important Indian question 
 must be kept out of Parliament, must be exempt from 
 unofficial strictures. It really asserts that the two hun- 
 dred and fifty millions of Indians in the British provinces 
 and the protected States, may be righteously and safely
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 237 
 
 confided, without Parliamentary or national control, to 
 the covenanted and uncovenanted mercies of alien 
 officials. It means that statesmen are not to decide on 
 the merits of an Indian question, hut only to take into 
 respectful consideration the high merits of the Bengal 
 Civil Service. It leads to Indian affairs being debated 
 on no principle and to no purpose. Authority is sup- 
 ported, and the powers that be are upheld, but not 
 morally strengthened. 
 
 Although General Briggs, as I have said, was generally 
 to be found in opposition to the Government of India, his 
 attachment and allegiance to his old masters, the Honble. 
 East India Company, never wavered. On this particular 
 point he differed from the majority of those closely allied 
 with him in conference, most of whom held that the open 
 and unequivocal transfer of power, patronage, and respon- 
 sibility to the Crown, was essential to any large reform 
 of Indian administration. The Indian Reform Associa- 
 tion, of which the late Mr. John Dickinson was the 
 founder and animating spirit, which numbered in its 
 ranks several peers and nearly forty members of Parlia- 
 ment, including Mr. Bright, Mr. W. M. Torrens, and 
 Lord Goderich, now Marquis of Ripon,* had " made 
 up their "minds", as Sir Charles Wood complained in 
 his five hours' speech of June 3rd, 1853, "to oppose 
 any plan not founded on the basis of what was called 
 the single government". Briggs, on the contrary, 
 though generally in accord with the Association, was 
 always of opinion, in common with John Stuart Mill, 
 and others of high repute, that the Court of Directors 
 formed an almost ideal body of local experience and inter- 
 mediate authority, usually taking the initiative, and 
 retaining to the last the right of remonstrance and 
 protest, as a check on the hasty and inconsiderate action 
 into which a Minister or a Cabinet might easily be misled. 
 
 * It will be seen, therefore, that when Lord Ripon went out as 
 Viceroy in 1880, having, moreover, been successively Under Secretary 
 and Secretary of State for India, he was not exactly a novice in Indian 
 affairs, and had sought for information and instruction beyond official 
 sources.
 
 238 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 One thing at least is certain, that there was greater pub- 
 licity, and a wider field for debate, both in and out of 
 Parliament, under the Company's Government than there 
 is under that of the Crown. 
 
 General Briggs had a vote, as a holder of India stock, 
 in the Court of Proprietors of the East India Company, 
 and frequently attended its meetings. That singular 
 assembly, though almost deprived of direct power over 
 its nominal delegates, the Court of Directors, afforded a 
 field for openly discussing their proceedings, and for 
 invoking and informing public opinion. The same Act of 
 1858 which shut up the Court of Proprietors, also put 
 an end to the accidental and imperfect representation of 
 India in Parliament by a few of the Directors, unofficially 
 chosen in both capacities. Their successors, the Coun- 
 cillors of the Secretary of State, being mere nominees, 
 and excluded from the House of Commons, the media- 
 tisation of the East India Company did but strengthen 
 the secrecy and irresponsibility of Indian administration, 
 and confirm the supremacy of permanent officialism. 
 
 From the first day of his return home General Briggs 
 associated himself with the Liberal party in every pos- 
 sible way. He joined the Anti-Corn Law League at a 
 very early date after its formation, and was in the chair 
 at one of its great meetings in Covent Garden Theatre 
 on the 22nd of May 1844. In the same year he was a 
 candidate for the representation of Exeter as a Liberal 
 and a Freetrader against the Attorney-General of Sir 
 Robert Peel's Government, Sir William Follett, but was 
 unsuccessful, and never again endeavoured to become a 
 member of Parliament. He frequently read papers before 
 the Royal Asiatic Society, which were subsequently pub- 
 lished in the Journal. He became a Fellow of the Royal 
 Society, and of several other learned Societies. 
 
 He was intimately associated with the little band of 
 Indian reformers, and assiduous in his attention to the 
 proceedings of the Court of Proprietors. General Briggs 
 fully appreciated the great principles involved in the two 
 Sattara cases, frequently confounded and denounced as 
 if there had only been one, and that one equally vexatious
 
 GENEKAL JOHN BRIQGS. 239 
 
 and wearisome. In the numerous debates in the Court 
 of Proprietors on the deposition in 1839 of Rajah Pertaub 
 Singh, and on the refusal to admit the succession of the 
 adopted son of his brother and successor, Rajah Shahjee, 
 in 1848, Briggs voted invariably on the side of the mi- 
 nority, which included the names of Henry St. George 
 Tucker, General Archibald Robertson, who had been 
 Resident at Sattara, W. H. C. Plowden, John Shepherd, 
 Sir Robert Campbell, Colonel Sykes, William Leslie Mel- 
 ville, John Forbes, and John Cotton, among the Direc- 
 tors, and of the Right Honble. Holt Mackenzie, General 
 Lodwick, formerly Resident at Sattara, Joseph Hume, 
 John Sullivan, George Thompson, Captain W. J. East- 
 wick (afterwards a Director and a member of the Indian 
 Council), General Delamotte, and Alderman Salomons, 
 in the general body of Proprietors, and which was known 
 to have the sympathy of those who were confessedly the 
 two best living authorities, the Honble. Mountstuart 
 Elphinstone, who had made the Treaty and placed the 
 Rajah on the throne, and Mr. Grant Duff, who had been 
 the first Resident at Sattara, the Rajah's political tutor, 
 and the organiser of the State.* 
 
 It is very remarkable that the principal opponents of 
 Lord Dalhousie's destructive policy almost unanimously 
 indicated the demoralisation and disaffection of our Native 
 Army as a very probable and most dangerous conse- 
 quence of annexing the allied States. The first warning 
 of this description that I have observed is in a speech 
 by Mr. John Sullivan, formerly Member of Council at 
 Madras, in the Court of Proprietors on the 25th of April 
 1849, protesting against the annexation of Sattara : 
 
 " If then you are to have no increase of military strength, no 
 increase of political strength, who is to benefit by this measure ? 
 I will tell you the Bombay Civil Service will get a little promo- 
 tion. On one side of the account will be a few lakhs of rupees, a 
 few writerships ; and on the other all the misery and distress 
 which Mr. Frere has pointed out, and the irretrievable loss of your 
 character for good faith, and in losing that you will lose the only 
 solid element of your strength. You may think that you have the 
 strength of the sword, but never forget that the sword is in the 
 
 * Ante, pp. 56, 86, 90, 91.
 
 240 SOME WORDS AND WOKK OF 
 
 hands of the Native Army. You cannot rouse disaffection among 
 the Native Chiefs without endangering the disposition of your 
 Native Army." 
 
 In another debate on the same subject in the Court of 
 Proprietors, General Briggs, after lamenting the indis- 
 position of his friend, Mr. Sullivan, in whose absence he 
 rose to second a resolution in favour of maintaining the 
 Sattara State, and after explaining that among the 
 Hindus it was only through the form of adoption that 
 any collateral heir could succeed, said : 
 
 " An assertion on the part of the British Government that the 
 throne of Sattara is vacant for want of an heir is a most dangerous 
 missive to send forth through the world of India, simply because 
 it is false. It would be better in every way, more honest and 
 more politic, to recognise the fact that there is nothing but two 
 solemn Treaties to prevent the British Government from annexing 
 the Sattara territory, and to say plainly, ' It is no longer con- 
 venient for us to abide by these Treaties, and as there is no one 
 strong enough to dispute our power, we shall take possession of 
 Sattara.' The princes and people of India will not be deceived by 
 your declaration as to the want of heirs. They know there are 
 heirs, and can point to theni. Those in Western India have seen 
 the successive steps by which, as it appears to them, the Govern- 
 ment of Bombay has broken down the Sattara Kaj. First of all 
 some estates belonging to the Eajah's feudatory jaghiredars were 
 claimed as within British jurisdiction. The Court of Directors 
 eventually disapproved of these encroachments, and ordered them 
 to be given up. But this was never done. Then came the blunder- 
 ing cruelty of the Rajah's deposition, a matter which I shall not 
 think of reopening now. When the new Treaty was imposed on 
 the Rajah's brother all the feudatories were placed under the 
 Bombay Government, which has now recommended the annexa- 
 tion of the State, on the plea that there is no legitimate successor, 
 while all India knows that there is an heir. This is a momentous 
 occasion. This is your first open declaration of a disregard for 
 Treaty obligations and for the Hindu law of inheritance by adop- 
 tion. These precedents will sap the foundation of our Indian 
 Empire. Governments, in the plenitude of what seems irresistible 
 power, are too apt to overlook the probable effects of their measures 
 in the future. 
 
 " Aurungzebe in the middle of the seventeenth century had his 
 governors in Afghanistan, and his Viceroys in Southern India as 
 far as the Carnatic. When he had conquered the Kings of the Dec- 
 can, he thought his Empire supreme and invincible. Drunk with
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 241 
 
 the vastness of his power, he ventured to encroach on Hindu insti- 
 tutions and long-established immunities. He imposed the jazeea 
 or poll tax on all non-Moslems throughout his dominions. The 
 immediate consequence was that the ancestor of this very boy 
 whom you reject, the great Sivajee, roused his countrymen about 
 two hundred years ago, raised the Hindu standard against the 
 mighty power of the Mogul, and in twenty years imposed tribute 
 on all Mussulman territories; while in less than a century his 
 descendants held the Emperor a captive in Delhi, and spread 
 Mahratta supremacy from Tanjore to the entrances of the Northern 
 desert. We have now had our day ; our first century is not yet 
 completed ; we have conquered and annexed till very few of the 
 Mahratta States are left. We have prevailed hitherto, and secured 
 alliance and obedience, from observing good faith and from re- 
 specting constitutional rights. We have an army on our side of 
 250,000 Native soldiers, capable of defeating any enemy we can 
 expect to encounter in India, even if it be the Russian and the 
 Cossack from the Don or the Volga. But, Sir, our soldiers are 
 derived from the yeomanry and the peasantry of India. There is 
 no one who ought to know better than yourself with what caution 
 we must deal with those classes of the population. If I mistake 
 not, you were honourably distinguished in suppressing and punish- 
 ing the terrible mutiny of Vellore in 1806, a mutiny caused by 
 injudicious measures which impressed the Sepoys with a belief 
 that the Government intended to abolish distinctions of caste. 
 Those injudicious measures were rescinded, and the Court of 
 Directors recalled from Madras both the Governor and the Com- 
 mander-in-Chief. But without occupying time with recapitulat- 
 ing cases that are familiar to many of us, I may remind you that 
 there are many Indian mutinies on record the manifest result of 
 a real or fancied breach of privileges or prejudices to which the 
 Sepoys attached importance, and which they considered to be con- 
 nected with their honour and their religion. These instances of 
 serious disaffection among our Native troops have occurred, and 
 will for ever be liable and likely to recur, so long and so often as 
 the troops believe that there is any want of faith on the part of 
 the British Government towards those whom they respect, and 
 regarding rights in which they feel an interest. Do not let us 
 imagine, like Aurungzebe, that we are strong enough to defy public 
 opinion, or to infringe on national institutions with impunity. 
 The attachment of the people of India to their native dynasties is, 
 I fear, very much overlooked or very much despised. It is even 
 more dangerous to overlook their attachment to their ancient 
 customs of inheritance, which if rejected by us in the case of a 
 Prince, they will believe to be altogether disregarded by us and 
 threatened with subversion. It is less than a century since Great 
 
 R
 
 242 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 Britain drove America to contend for its independence. When- 
 ever the people of India feel that they can no longer rely on our 
 good faith, and that their dearest rights and privileges are trampled 
 on, I promise you that the destruction of our power will not 
 occupy as long a time as the American war of independence. . 
 
 " I will not doubt the fidelity of the Sepoys as long as they are 
 fairly paid and dealt with fairly, but armies cannot combat 
 national opposition; and when we recollect that those soldiers 
 who have won India to our rule are derived from the body of the 
 people that their fathers and their brethren are not always 
 subjects of the British Government, but are often born and resi- 
 dent in the allied States, can it be supposed that they are devoid 
 of sympathy for their Princes, for their brethren, and their fellow 
 countrymen that they have no inclination and no energy to 
 resist what seems to them oppression and treachery ? They are 
 men, with hearts, with feelings, with affections as warm as ours, 
 and do you suppose that when the voice of the people is opposed 
 to us that they will not join in that opposition ? It is not neces- 
 sary they should fight against us. It is sufficient that they should 
 desert us, and then there will be an end of our boasted dominion 
 of India. 
 
 " If you are not too far gone in the intoxication of your mili- 
 tary successes, and in the contemplation of your vast establish- 
 ments, I have said enough to warn you against the consequences 
 of permitting the tide of public opinion in India to turn against 
 you when you refuse to recognise the validity of adoption among 
 the Hindus, you infringe on a sacred ordinance of their religion. 
 The Government does, in regard to sovereign Princes, what its 
 own law officers would not venture to do in a court of justice. 
 The Government may think itself safe in violating the most 
 solemn engagements, trusting to the support of a powerful army. 
 But, Sir, I feel as certain as that I stand in this room that -when- 
 ever the tide of public opinion in India shall set in strong against 
 the Government, not your 740 Civil Servants, nor your 30,000 
 European soldiers, nor your 250,000 Sepoys will avail you. The 
 whole fabric of our Empire, which it has taken a century to con- 
 struct, will be swept away in the torrent, and British domination 
 in India will cease, and, ' like the baseless fabric of a vision, leave 
 not a wrack behind'." 
 
 It will be readily understood that the convictions 
 entertained at this period by General Briggs, and the 
 uncompromising terms in which he expressed them, were 
 not calculated to obtain the approval and patronage of 
 the Home Government of India, or even so much of the 
 confidence of the East India Proprietors as would have
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 243 
 
 sufficed to place him by their votes in the Court of 
 Directors, towards which at one time his views were 
 turned. He was far ahead of the public opinion of the 
 day. Lord Dalhousie, supported by the Ministry, and 
 by the unhesitating partisanship in the Court and the 
 House of Commons of Mr. R. D. Mangles, Sir James 
 Weir Hogg and others of less note, was then infallible 
 and irresistible. 
 
 The General never failed nor flagged in his interest in 
 the Indian Army, more especially in the Madras troops. 
 He always maintained that in the military service, as well 
 as in civil administration, it was a great defect and 
 danger in our system to have set aside so completely the 
 claims and qualifications of Indians to a share in the 
 higher offices and ranks of public employment. In 1842 
 he published a letter to the Marquis of Tweeddale,* then 
 just appointed Governor and Commander-in-Chief at 
 Madras, discussing the whole subject of the organisation 
 and discipline of our Sepoy battalions. Referring to the 
 appeal that had been " so repeatedly brought before the 
 Home authorities as to the want of European officers with 
 our Native Army in India", he said : 
 
 " I maintain that it is not so much the want of European officers 
 as of efficient officers, in whom the men might confide. Time was, 
 as already shown in the early part of this Letter, when in the days 
 of Mohammed Yusuf, Jemal Sahib and Olive, no troops could be 
 more efficient than the Sepoys under their Native officers, directed 
 only by European minds. Whosoever has served of late years 
 with those bodies of Cavalry denominated Irregular Horse, whether 
 exclusively raised for our service in time of war, or furnished by 
 our Native allies and acting as auxiliaries, directed by one or two 
 selected European officers, will bear testimony to the chivalrous 
 spirit of those troops, and to their fidelity and discipline. It is 
 not necessary that we should incur the heavy expense of filling 
 the ranks of the Native Army with the same number of European 
 officers as in the other armies of the world ; but that the masses 
 should be commanded in detail by persons of a higher order than 
 those now composing the Native commissioned ranks, who are 
 respected neither by those above them nor by those over whom 
 they are placed. I have no hesitation in saying that unless this 
 
 * Reprinted in 1856. Harrison, Pall Mall. 
 
 R 2
 
 244 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 be effected, our Native Army will, from day to day, decline in 
 character and lose its utility."* 
 
 He objected to the annexation policy, not only on 
 account of its destroying our moral supremacy, but on 
 account of its weakening our military position and re- 
 sources. He was never tired of pointing out the great 
 error committed by the iniquitous appropriation of the 
 Punjaub. In 1849 he published a pamphlet on that 
 subject, from which the following extracts explain his 
 opinion as to the mistake made in advancing beyond our 
 impregnable frontier. 
 
 " A single glance at the map of India must convince anyone 
 who regards it with attention, that nature has protected its frontiers 
 in every direction with singular care. As the eye passes over it 
 from the mouths of the Brahmaputra and the Ganges towards the 
 North- West, the broad and lofty ranges of the Himalaya are seen 
 bidding defiance to the approach of any foe from beyond them. 
 From the district of Sirhind, touching the mountains on the East, 
 from whence flows the Sutlej, a belt of deep sandy desert extends 
 Westward and Southward along the left banks of that river and 
 of the Indus, till the latter enters the ocean. This desert, varying 
 in breadth from 150 to 200 miles, is for the most part thinly 
 dotted with small villages, if so they can be called, at several 
 miles' distance from each other, having a few deep wells of 
 brackish water, around which the inhabitants congregate, and are 
 occupied in breeding camels for sale to the countries on their 
 borders. When pressed by an enemy they fly to the nearest large 
 town (say fifty miles off), and conceal their wells by covering them 
 with boards and laying sand over them. 
 
 " Having traced the desert to the mouths of the Indus, the 
 ocean embraces 3,000 miles of sea-coast, protected by our maritime 
 power, and the line of circumvallation terminates where it began, 
 at the embouchures of the two mighty streams which disembogue 
 into the Bay of Bengal at its northernmost point. 
 
 " From the earliest times the people of India have regarded 
 . these as their natural limits ; and all the great battles which have 
 been fought for the defence of that Empire have taken place on 
 the plain, close on the North of Delhi, in the Province of Sirhind,f 
 a name given to indicate the 'head' or boundary entrance into 
 the region of India. There should, therefore, be shown strong 
 reasons for changing the frontier so defended by nature. 
 
 * Letter to the Marquis of Tweeddale, pp. 35, 36. 
 t There were several battles of Paniput, before those fought against 
 Nadir Shah in 1746, and against Ahmed Shah Abdallee in 1762.
 
 GENEBAL JOHN BRIGGS. 245 
 
 " Sir Charles Napier has stated that the line of the Sutlej is 
 more difficult to defend than the line of the Indus, being 600 miles 
 in extent, and capable of being crossed almost anywhere at certain 
 seasons of the year. I am prepared to admit that neither the 
 Sutlej nor the Indus, nor any other river in the world, is worth a 
 straw as a natural boundary. Mountains like the Himalayas, and 
 oceans, and deserts like that of India, and those of Africa and 
 Arabia, are strong natural boundaries. 
 
 " The Province of Sirhind presents the only vulnerable point 
 for an enemy to enter India, and contend against such an army as 
 we can present to oppose him, with the least prospect of success. 
 Our security is neither in the rapidity, nor breadth nor depth of 
 the Sutlej or the Indus, but is to be found in the desert along the 
 left bank of each of these streams, commencing near Loodiana, 
 and exhibiting a breadth, North and South, from thence to 
 Canoond, of about 180 miles, extending, as has been stated, to the 
 very coast at the mouth of the latter river."* 
 
 After referring to the difficulties and dangers, and the 
 heavy loss of forty men out of his escort of 500, expe- 
 rienced by Mr. Mountstuart Elphinstone in 1809, on the 
 most favourable route from Delhi to Bhawulpoor, when 
 600 camels were required to carry provisions and water for 
 the party, after quoting the disastrous flight of the 
 Emperor Hoomayoon in 1542, from Ajmeer by Ummer- 
 kote to the Indus, when the want of water drove the 
 horses mad, and all his followers perished but twenty, 
 after mentioning the loss of the greater part of the 
 invading army of the Emperor Mahmood of Ghuznee in 
 1024 in the desert, the General continues : 
 
 " But the best proof, if any other were wanting, of its impracti- 
 cability for large armies, is the fact that the British Government, 
 with all its power and all its resources, cannot send reinforcements 
 to Sind or Mooltan, but by the mouths of the Indus on the South 
 or through Urnballa Eastward of the desert, on the North, and 
 then up or down the rivers. All the battles of which history 
 affords us any account for the defence of India, have been fought 
 within forty or fifty miles North of Delhi, after the enemy have 
 turned the desert, and have crossed the Sutlej between Loodiana 
 and the Himalaya. The distance between them is under forty 
 miles."t 
 
 * What are we to do ivith the Piinjaub ? 1849, pp. 5, 6. 
 t Ibid., pp. 11, 12.
 
 246 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 At every possible opportunity General Briggs en- 
 deavoured to spread his principal doctrines for the 
 government of India as an Empire, that the allied 
 States should be carefully sustained, and encouraged in 
 the path of administrative reform, and that our greatest 
 peril in India was that of alienating the Native troops 
 by assailing the leaders and celebrities of the country, 
 and thus, in their eyes, threatening their faith and their 
 institutions. In 1849, when the annexation of Sattara, 
 the first in Lord Dalhousie's series, had just taken place, 
 he warned the advocates of territorial aggrandisement, 
 in the Indian News, a paper which he had the chief hand 
 in starting, that if they did away with " the right of 
 adoption, with respect to the Princes of India, they 
 would tread on delicate ground." No one would believe 
 that they were going to confine the process to sovereign- 
 ties. 
 
 " If you are to do away with the right of individuals to adopt, 
 you will shake the faith of the people of India ; you will influence 
 that opinion which has hitherto maintained you in your power; and 
 that influence will thrill through your army; and you will find some 
 day, as Lord Metcalfe more than once said, ' we shall rise some 
 morning, and hear of a conflagration through the whole Empire of 
 India, such as a few Europeans amongst millions will not be able 
 to extinguish.' Your army is derived from the peasantry of the 
 country, who have rights, and if those rights are infringed upon, 
 you will no longer have to depend on the fidelity of that army. 
 You have a Native army of 250,000 men to support your power, 
 and it is on the fidelity of that army your power rests. But you 
 may rely on it, if you infringe the institutions of the people of 
 India, that army will sympathise with them, for they are a part of 
 the population; and in every infringement you make upon the 
 rights of individuals, you infringe upon the rights of men, who are 
 either themselves in the army, or upon their sons, their fathers, or 
 their relatives. Let the fidelity of your army be shaken, and your 
 power is gone."* 
 
 * It is very remarkable that so many of the opponents of the annex- 
 ation policy, Sir Henry Lawrence, Sir William Sleeman, General Briggs, 
 John Sullivan, John Dickinson, in the days immediately preceding the 
 Great Mutiny, predicted the disaffection of our Sepoys as a sure con- 
 sequence of our despoiling the Indian Princes. See Retrospects and 
 Prospects of Indian Policy (Triibner, 1869), pp. 230, 232.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 247 
 
 The following letters from Mr. John Sullivan will be 
 seen to refer to the same journal, to which that gentle- 
 man also occasionally contributed. 
 
 " Brighton, 22nd Nov. 1850. 
 
 " MY DEAR BRIGGS, Two or three trifling inaccuracies have 
 crept into your last interesting article, which you may as well 
 correct to prevent carping. You club Malabar and Canara 
 together, and say that they were ceded to us in 1792. It was 
 only Malabar that was ceded by Tippoo in 1792. Canara was not 
 taken till 1799. Munro was never in Malabar before 1817, and 
 then only for a few months as Commissioner, but he was the first 
 Collector of Canara after the downfall of Tippoo in 1799. The 
 Nairs are in Malabar ; there are no Nairs in Canara. The strangest 
 proof that could be afforded of the inflammable materials of which 
 our Empire is composed, was the rebellion which broke out in 
 Canara in 1837, and which, but for the prompt arrival of a 
 Eegiment by a steamer from Bombay, would have spread over all 
 the Peninsula. It took more troops than fought at Assaye to put 
 it down, and the heads of villages were its most active abettors. 
 Lewin was principal Collector. He and the Judge, and all Euro- 
 peans, shipped themselves off from Mangalore, and could only 
 regain their position under cover of the troops. Private property 
 in land has existed in Canara for two thousand years in a most 
 perfect form. All the land is saleable at a high price ; the assess- 
 ment is fixed and moderate. The people had no grievance but an 
 abominable tobacco monopoly, and yet they broke out, risking the 
 loss of all they possessed, and even of their lives, at the instiga- 
 tion of a few conspirators from Coorg. 
 
 " I am glad to see that you are at work again. If you should 
 collect these Essays and print them separately, I think the one 
 contained in the last Indian News should form the first in the 
 series. Pray don't give the enemy an advantage by speaking in 
 unqualified terms of the bad government of our predecessors. Con- 
 sidering the incessant wars and revolutions in which they had 
 been engaged for a full century after the Mogul Empire broke up, 
 it is quite a wonder that there was any government at all. Yet 
 in the midst of incessant fighting, the civil institutions were undis- 
 turbed, and almost everywhere the country was flourishing. Since 
 our last good piece of work, when we put down the Pindarry 
 ravages in 1818, we have held India with such an iron grasp that 
 hardly a shot has been fired in our territory ; but what have we 
 made of this quiet interval ? The Government is more in debt, 
 and I doubt if the people are so rich. Pray draw largely on your 
 biographical stores as you go on. Give us Nana Furnavees and 
 such like. What poor pigmies we are, as Indian administrators,
 
 248 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 when compared with Natives t>f that stamp ! I am glad you have 
 shown up Mr. Thornton. What a misfortune what a crime 
 that the jobbing patronage given to his trumpery History should 
 have deprived us of Elphinstone's sequel ! 
 
 " Ever yours sincerely, 
 
 " J. SULLIVAN." 
 
 "Brighton, 14th Feb. 1851. 
 
 "Mv DEAR BRIGGS, I heartily concur in all that you say 
 regarding Sir John Hobhouse's most impudent announcement. If 
 Ministers should determine not to make any change in the exist- 
 ing system, then Parliament and the country are to be excluded 
 from all knowledge of what has been going on in India for the last 
 twenty years, the mere events of war excepted. Never was any- 
 thing more audacious. There was an excellent article on the 
 subject in yesterday's Daily News. Do pray write a letter to that 
 paper. I mean to do the same to Lord Jocelyn, though I don't 
 know him. We must be up and doing. 
 
 " Ever yours, 
 
 " J. SULLIVAN." 
 
 "Brighton, 12th April 1851. 
 
 " MY DEAR BRIGGS, I have this moment received your note 
 of the 9th, from Westbourne Terrace. It is unhappily true that 
 Lord Jocelyn will not present the petition. This is entirely from 
 his connection with, and feelings towards, Lord Dalhousie. He 
 heartily concurs in our opinions, and will support them. Sir 
 Edward Colebrooke is equally favourable to them, and will aid us 
 with his vote and voice, though he too would rather not present 
 the petition. We have no resource, therefore, but in Mr. Hume. 
 It would have been better, considering his untiring advocacy of 
 the Sattara question, if we could have placed it in other hands ; 
 but the poor Princes of India may count their friends in Parliament 
 upon finger and thumb, and out of Parliament by digits. I can't 
 help hoping, however, that the antagonistic opinions of the 
 Governors-General, and the sanction of the Home authorities to 
 both, may attract attention. I shall be in town on Wednesday, 
 and could meet you at two o'clock at the Asiatic Society's rooms. 
 Will this suit you ? 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " J. SULLIVAN." 
 
 The next letter was written five years later, on the 
 very eve of the terrible convulsion of 1857, which they 
 may both be said to have foreseen, although they cer-
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRTGGS. 249 
 
 tainly did not anticipate that it would come so soon, and 
 that it would follow so closely the annexation of Oude, 
 so lightly and so confidently undertaken. 
 
 " Brighton, oth Nov. 1856. 
 
 " MY DEAR BRIGGS, I was very glad to see your interesting 
 article No. 2, in the News of yesterday, and I hope you will go 
 into the whole subject in future numbers. I am particularly glad 
 that you have given the ' Friend of India' a rap, the wits-leading 
 paper of the East, most anti-native, and therefore most mischiev- 
 ous, though generally very clever." 
 
 Here is a letter in a lighter tone, and on a less irritat- 
 ing subject, from his old friend and comrade, Grant Duff, 
 evidently called forth by some inquiries bearing on the 
 biography of Nana Furnavees, the last of the great 
 Mahratta statesmen, which Briggs had so long meditated, 
 and for which he had collected ample materials. 
 
 " Eden by Banff, Feb. 28th, 1854 
 
 " MY DEAR BRIGGS, It gives me pleasure to see the hand- 
 writing of an old friend, especially when I see it, like yours, strong 
 and vigorous ; and your letter is none the less welcome because it 
 is full of a subject pertaining to our younger days, in which I 
 seldom see anyone who takes the slightest interest. 
 
 " I could not now lay my hand on the notes of evidence as to 
 the matter you mention, nor do I know where I may have depo- 
 sited them, but I perfectly recollect the universal opinion of the 
 well-informed about the Poona and Sattara Courts, and that no 
 doubt was entertained among them as to the legitimacy of Madhoo 
 Eao Narrain. That the Ministers had several pregnant women 
 carried up, to make sure of a successor somehow, was also gene- 
 rally believed, and that Nana Furnavees was afterwards much too 
 intimate with Narrain Eao's widow ; but nevertheless no one of 
 any consequence expressed any suspicion as to the legitimacy of 
 the child born at Poorundhur. Ballajee Punt Nathoo, Abba Joshee 
 (Bajee Rao's private secretary), Abbajee Gonedeo, all of whom 
 you knew, had no doubt of it ; and I also recollect asking Madhoo 
 Eao Eastia if he had ever heard it doubted, and his reply was a 
 decided negative. 
 
 " I also rather think Eughonath Eao himself believed in the 
 legitimacy of the child, and would have been quite content to 
 have been recognised as Eegent. So general was the belief, that 
 however influential Eughoba may have been, and numerous as 
 may have been the adherents of his cause, the English could
 
 250 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 never have done more than place him temporarily in the Re- 
 gency. 
 
 " Mr. Mostyn's evidence at that time was not so good as yours 
 or mine in the impartial period of our inquiries. I knew the 
 widow of Nana, and remember being surprised at her very youth- 
 ful appearance the first time I had the pleasure of being intro- 
 duced to her,* I think by Ballajee Punt, but my impressions do 
 not lead me to recollect her as particularly intelligent. The most 
 ladylike Brahmin ladies I ever had occason to converse with were 
 the wives of the last Peishwa and of the Pritee Needhee. The 
 celebrated Warunassee Bye I was obliged to send from Waee, and 
 she behaved so well when I told her how disagreeable it was for 
 me to be obliged to tell her that the Sirkar required that she 
 should proceed to join Sree Munt.^ But so long as one is not 
 obliged to depart from terms of personal respect, it is surprising 
 how the better classes in India manifest a refinement and polish 
 only known among Europeans of the highest rank, and in an 
 advanced state of culture. 
 
 " Pray how do you mean to publish, and how do you mean to 
 make your book go down with the public ? The only advice I can 
 offer must be in the style of that given me by the late John 
 Murray, when I called upon him about my History of the Mah- 
 rattas, ' Can't you put something of the present day into it ? ' Try 
 to connect the life of Nana Furnavees with the Golden Horn, St. 
 Sophia and the Sultan, mix up the Peishwa's Durbar with a par- 
 ticular account of the receptions of Messrs. Pease and Sturge by 
 the Emperor of All the Russias.J As an amusement to yourself, 
 and a pleasure to those old friends who care about the most unin- 
 teresting history in the world, it is all very well, but I would not 
 venture on publishing unless some bookseller would take the 
 whole risk. If you will allow it to be published by subscription, 
 I should be very happy to put down my name for six copies ; and 
 if I could clear up any points that may appear muddy, I would do 
 my utmost to assist ; but you would be astonished, though not 
 more than I am myself, at the total forgetfulness which comes 
 over me about India, until some person or incident recalls the 
 
 * Major-General Sir Arthur Wellesley, on 18th May 1804, writes to 
 Colonel Barry Close : " I took the opportunity, on my arrival at Pan- 
 well, to see Nana's widow, in consequence of the receipt of your letter 
 of the 7th instant. I had a very long conversation with her. She had 
 a Moorish woman interpreter. 
 
 " She is very fair and handsome, and well deserving to be the object 
 of a treaty." Vol. ii, enlarged Edition of the Duke's Despatches, pp. 
 1,186, 1,187. 
 
 f One of the Peishwa's titles, equivalent to " His Majesty". 
 
 J This letter was written in the early stage of the Crimean War.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRTGGS. 251 
 
 subject, when it returns very vividly. Ten years ago, on one 
 occasion in London, I was pleased to find how well Hindustani 
 came back to me ; but when I last saw you, or about that time, I 
 was obliged to try again, and found myself positively stuck. It is 
 thirty-one years since the days of my pilgrimage in the East 
 ceased. In London one has every now and then opportunities and 
 interests that revive many things that are lost in such obscurity 
 as mine has been. When are you likely to be in town ? About 
 the end of May ? I should not have been here this winter but for 
 circumstances I could not foresee, or get over but by standing 
 fast and watching events. I do not think I shall get away before 
 the end of May. Where are you then likely to be ? Do you know 
 anything of Mr. Elphinstone ? I trust he is well ; happy he 
 always is, as such a mind must be. I reverence Mr. Elphinstone 
 as the most perfect of philosophers. Whatever some of us, con- 
 fident in his great powers, might have wished to see him undertake 
 in public affairs, I think he was profoundly wise in never coming 
 into an arena where arts must be practised so foreign to his nature 
 and his habits that he must have died from sheer vexation and 
 disgust, and would probably never have been known as we 
 knew him. 
 
 " I see our friend Pottinger is about to be relieved by Lord 
 Harris.* Pottinger has been a good deal thwarted in the good he 
 wished to have accomplished ; and by being tied down instead of 
 being allowed to do as his experience prompted, the benefits he 
 might have conferred on Madras were marred, and as a Governor 
 he does not return to receive a triumph. 
 
 "Why will you call me 'Captain'? In 1827 I was by right 
 regimentally a Major ; but when Cleiland, who saw the mistake, 
 went to the Adjutant-General (Leighton), the latter told him that 
 he knew it, but that as Grant would never return, more good 
 would be done to his old brother-officers if he would not insist 
 on its being rectified, and so he meant to let it stand. When I 
 heard this, as I intended to give up all military rank, and could 
 not get Major's half-pay without going back to India, and as it 
 was to be of use to old friends, I made no inquiry about my pro- 
 motion, and became henceforth Mr., as a far more respectable 
 appellation than that of the fifty Militia Captains who captained 
 me until I would not answer to the name. I afterwards learned 
 that by not being a Major I lost being a C.B., a matter of no 
 consequence to one who had retired from public life. 
 " Believe me, my dear Briggs, 
 
 " Yours most sincerely, 
 
 " J. C. GRANT DUFF." 
 
 * Right Honble. Sir Henry Pottinger, Bart., G.C.B., was Governor of 
 Madras from 1847 to 1852.
 
 252 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 In the last quarter of 1856 (although, as is often the 
 case, there is 1857 in the title-page), General Briggs 
 published a little book, India and Europe Compared.* 
 In this work he set forth once more, reduced to a very 
 small compass, his views as to the Land Tax, the Native 
 Army, and the more extended employment of educated 
 Indians in the higher branches of the public service. In 
 discussing the probabilities and possibilities of a Russian 
 invasion, he glanced once more on our deplorable aban- 
 donment of India's true frontier by the annexation of 
 the Punjaub. He reminded us that, " though India has 
 suffered frequent invasions during the last three thousand 
 years, her territorial ramparts have never changed." 
 
 " Greeks, Mohammedans, and Scythian or Tartar hordes, have one 
 and all had to pass the gorges of the Sulimany range, before 
 crossing the Indus at Attock, whence they entered the Punjaub. 
 There they had to encounter the hardy mountaineers of Cashmere 
 and the Himalaya, and passing over the fertile district of Jull- 
 undhur, found before them a desert, impassable for an army capable 
 of protecting itself. Hence they were compelled to keep close to 
 the Himalaya range, for the sake of water and forage, along a 
 narrow slip of from thirty to forty miles wide ; till, after a march 
 of more than a hundred miles, they came to the plain of Paniput, 
 where they had to encounter the army of India."f 
 
 And he once more gave expression to the anxieties, 
 very real and decided, though vague as to imminence 
 and urgency, caused by the destructive and provocative 
 policy of Lord Dalhousie. 
 
 " The present peaceful disposition of the Natives ought not to 
 lull us into a conviction of our security. 
 
 " The several modes by which the Natives have corrected abuses, 
 or have got rid of tyrannical masters, are familiar to them. None 
 is more common or so effectual as to withdraw from Government 
 altogether by the process of the 'Wulsa', or gathering, as practised 
 in Mysore, as before described. We have seen the inhabitants of 
 the populous city of Benares, resisting an infringement of their 
 local privileges by the imposition of a house-tax without consult- 
 ing them, quit their homes, and live for several weeks in the open 
 fields, stopping all intercourse with the town, and obtaining uni- 
 versal sympathy throughout the district. We have witnessed a 
 
 * W. H. Allen & Co., .Waterloo Place. 
 f India and Europe Compared, p. 255.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 253 
 
 similar insurrection in Bareilly on a like occasion, which cost much 
 bloodshed. We have witnessed a general disaffection pervading 
 the whole of our Native Army of Madras, which commenced by 
 the massacre of the European portion of the garrison of Vellore ; 
 and we have seen partial plots of a similar nature in other parts. 
 It was often said by one of the wisest of our Indian statesmen 
 (the late Lord Metcalfe), that we sit on a volcano, not knowing 
 when it may burst forth and overwhelm us. We have more to 
 apprehend from revolutions commencing with peaceful withdrawal 
 from our Government, than from the outbreaks of Native Princes, 
 who, for the most part, are not sufficiently popular with their 
 subjects, and have no adequate resources to combat successfully 
 against our gigantic power."* 
 
 " The question for consideration, as regards the Native Princes 
 of India, is, \vhether it be our true interest to hasten the time 
 when the rest of India may be subjected to our immediate rule, 
 with the feeling of the whole of the upper classes opposed to us, 
 or to retain and foster as long as it be possible the existent Native 
 Princes, and gradually raise the character of their Government 
 to an approximation with ours, and thus 'secure their aid in more 
 ways than one, in case of future wars. We ought not to forget 
 the assistance which both the Mysore and the Hyderabad Govern- 
 ments rendered us in the last two Mahratta wars, by bodies of 
 efficient troops, furnished at the moment of exigency, and kept up 
 in time of peace, nor the pecuniary aid which Oude has supplied, 
 when our coffers were exhausted, and our credit at a low ebb, in 
 similar emergencies. It is the tendency of our auxiliary alliances 
 to increase the wealth of the subsidised States, and to place at 
 our disposal their military, and in many cases their pecuniary 
 resources. 
 
 " My own conviction is, that by insuring good government to 
 the Native States, judiciously introduced, we shall add more to 
 our moral and political strength than by their extinction, a con- 
 viction which has forced itself upon my mind after a long and 
 deliberate consideration of the subject, and after having passed a 
 great part of my life in official intercourse with the Ministers of 
 several Native Courts, a conviction which it is my satisfaction to 
 know accords with that of some of the wisest statesmen that 
 India has produced."^ 
 
 " Let us beware lest by injudicious measures and too hasty en- 
 croachments on prejudices held sacred among her subjects, our 
 Government drive to desperation her teeming and brave popula- 
 tion. Let us not calculate on keeping down insurrection by means 
 
 * India and Europe, Compared, pp. 233, 234. 
 f Ibid., pp. 248 to 253.
 
 254 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 of our European troops, in case our Native Army becomes exten- 
 sively disaffected ; for at such a season we may find that those 
 gallant soldiers who have gained for us an Empire (the largest, with 
 the exception of China, of any in the world) may be induced to 
 sympathise with their suffering countrymen, and either withhold 
 their services, or, even worse, turn those arms against us which 
 they have so faithfully wielded in our favour."* 
 
 In the very next year after these words were penned, 
 the Sepoys did " turn their arms against us". The expe- 
 riences of the great Mutiny and Rebellion of 1857, 
 which was only suppressed by operations extending over 
 more than two years, at a cost of forty millions sterling 
 and more than a hundred thousand human lives, brought 
 to the minds of English statesmen of both parties a very 
 general conviction as to the inexpediency of the policy 
 of annexation. That conviction has never come home 
 with the same force to the Civil and Military Services of 
 India. Eager as ever for distinction, for promotion and 
 for special employment, confident as ever in their own 
 special capabilities, they have never been thoroughly 
 cured of the official craving for centralisation and for 
 uniformity, or of the Anglo-Indian contempt for the in- 
 convenient rights and impertinent claims of " Natives". 
 The covenanted Civil Service and the Staff Corps are 
 almost as unanimously moved by the spirit of national 
 domination and professional monopoly as they ever 
 were. 
 
 With very natural predilections for his old masters and 
 associates, and with much reasonable justification based 
 on recent proofs as to the absolute action of the Cabinet 
 in the wars of Afghanistan and Scinde, General Briggs 
 could never be brought to admit that the East India 
 Company in any form or aspect was exclusively or even 
 principally to blame for the disasters of 1857, or for the 
 iniquities and malpractices which, as he had foreseen and 
 always maintained, had led up to them. Under the 
 system of double-government, which gave the ultimate 
 authority and the secret initiative at will to the Cabinet, 
 he held, surely with good grounds, that the Ministry was 
 
 * India and Europe Compared, p. 261.
 
 OEKERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 255 
 
 far more responsible than the Court of Directors. He 
 claimed more independence for the Court as the best cure 
 for the defects in British control. In the following letter 
 Mr. Grant Duff alludes to some speeches of that purport 
 made in the Court of Proprietors during the last agony 
 of the East India Company. 
 
 " Campagne Livingstone, Pau, Basses Pyrenees, 
 
 "January 18th, 1858. 
 
 " MY DEAR BRIGGS, I have just read your speech, and also 
 Sykes's, in the Court of Proprietors. Both have spoken well and 
 wisely. I, however, agree with you in thinking that this terrible 
 rebellion has been for some considerable time hatching. Many 
 stimulants towards it have been applied, but fear fear of compul- 
 sive conversion by hikmut* has been the great lever by which the 
 ordinary Sepoy mind has been perverted. Twelve years' regimental 
 duty, -during which time I was only absent from one muster, 
 nine years Linguist, and seven years Adjutant, when I was in con- 
 stant contact with the men of my own regiment and of many other 
 corps, made me as well acquainted with the Sepoy mind of the 
 Bombay Army as it was possible for any European ever to become. 
 I loved the Sepoys, and well I might, for in more than one 
 instance they proved their regard by sacrificing their lives for me ; 
 and I need not bring to your recollection that my knowledge of 
 the Sepoys was of some use when they were sorely tried in 1817. 
 It may also be borne in mind that the Bombay Army did, and still 
 does, represent the whole Army of India, as, excepting your 
 Coromandel men, we have Sepoys of all castes : and in my day, I 
 should say we had a much larger proportion of Christians than you 
 now state. I observe Lord Shaftesbury quotes you as having told 
 him that dive's Sepoys in Bengal were all low-caste men. Are 
 you sure of that ? We know, indeed, that Sepoys, as well as sub- 
 sidiary alliances, originated with Dupleix. The first Topasses were 
 the sweepings of Pondicherry, and ours were much the same from 
 Madras. How they ran away, and how they fought, Orme's pages 
 have well recorded. But I have always understood that Mo- 
 hammed Yoosoof got the topee or cap changed in name at all 
 events into the puggree, a distinction which at once admitted a 
 better description of men, and that such was the mixture embarked 
 on Clive's expedition to Bengal. I have been at no pains to verify 
 the fact, but it is of some importance at this moment ; and as I see 
 you quoted as an authority (than whom, where is there a better ?), 
 I wish to call your attention to the quotation, that you may not be 
 accounted among the number of those who would recommend 
 
 * Trick or subtlety.
 
 256 " SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 corps of entirely low-caste men. I am convinced that under the 
 same temptation as the Bengal Sepoys they would prove even more 
 atrocious and abominable, if that be possible, than those madmen 
 have been. 
 
 " In matters of caste, I have had infinitely more trouble with 
 low-caste than with high-caste men, inasmuch as pretension with- 
 out foundation is always more pertinacious than when there is any 
 solid reason for assuming forms or privileges, and therefore I would 
 have you warn the authorities to beware of corps composed solely 
 of low-caste, or indeed of any one caste, of Natives of India. I say 
 of any one caste, as in fact there is no safety except in a wisely 
 poised admixture. Goorkhas, I suppose, must be kept by them- 
 selves, but Punjaubees can mix with others. 
 
 " You may recollect I was always against too many Poorbeeas. 
 The first time I ever met Mr. Elphinstone, in 1812, I had a very 
 keen argument with a certain Sir Robert Colquhoun, of the Bengal 
 Army, when I quoted the prophecy of poor Thomas Grant, of the 
 15th Bengal, murdered, as you recollect, in Persia, who said, 
 that unless they adopted our Bombay plan of mixing all, and 
 allowing no caste exemptions from soldiers' duties, or from pick 
 and spade, discipline must come to an end in the Bengal Army ; 
 at which, and at many Bhurtpore anecdotes, detailed by Cleiland, 
 Sir Robert became very wroth, and Mr. Elphinstone, though he 
 took the Bengalees' part, laughed heartily at our respective pre- 
 judices and esprit de corps. 
 
 " But as late as 1832, when replying to queries from the Board 
 of Control, I repeated the warning I gave more than forty years ago 
 in India, as to the danger of having more than a fourth of Poor- 
 beeas in any Bombay corps. 
 
 " But it is not the Army system alone which has led to this 
 awful catastrophe, the emancipation of the Native press ; the 
 Mohammedan massacre in Afghanistan, and our final evacuation 
 of that country ; our unjust and rapid annexations ; the unheard- 
 of mistake of always making the paramount authority a person 
 new to India, appointed also by a Home authority, which overrides 
 all Indian knowledge and experience, have all contributed. And 
 now we are about to plunge deeper into misgovernment and crime 
 through that irresistible popular clamour which Lord Palmerston 
 has managed, and good, well-meaning, ignorant men have excited, 
 under the idea that we have discouraged Christianity, and have 
 pandered to paganism. I am sure I do most sincerely wish the 
 Native mind were in such a state of enlightenment as to receive 
 the great truths of Christianity ; but to suppose that we can force 
 knowledge on them, or even appear to be conveying knowledge to 
 them with a view to proselytism, why, it is simply lurking the 
 only chance of progress. We can only convert India, as we have
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 257 
 
 conquered and as we must keep it, through the Natives them- 
 selves, but if we go too fast, all we have seen is nothing to the 
 horrors we shall see. 
 
 " Of Christian Sepoys you and I have known many. I have had 
 among them several very good non-commissioned officers. In 
 other regiments, I have seen here and there a Christian Native 
 officer ; but I was never able to promote one. Native Christianity 
 is too often merely a licence to eat and drink whatever comes in 
 the way ; and at the very time one may be anxious to promote one 
 of these men, he may get drunk, even on duty ; and in short, until 
 they can respect themselves, it would be unjust, and very much 
 against Christianity, to place them in a position from which their 
 speedy degradation would be a sort of disgrace to their creed. All 
 I can say is, such motives as are alleged against Indian authorities 
 never influenced me. I am writing as if I had commanded the 
 Eegiment, but the truth is that an old Adjutant must be the chief 
 person in regulating promotions ; and every officer in the Regi- 
 ment always consulted me before he recommended a Naig. On 
 duty no Brahmin, with us, ever thought of making objections to 
 standing shoulder to shoulder with a Purwaree. We had, however, 
 few Brahmins proper among our Hindustani Sepoys. 
 
 " After you succeeded me at Sattara, or just at that time, there 
 was a most rascally trick played by a Christian writer, a very 
 respectable-looking fellow, and a man whom I had always treated 
 with only too much consideration. He was also remarkably well 
 paid. The Bengal Government, in the midst of my terrible over- 
 work, imposed on me the duty of selling their lottery tickets. I 
 entrusted them to this Christian. He sold the tickets ; collected 
 the money ; and spent it in riot and debauchery. I think it was 
 your old friend, Yessoba, who warned me. I seized the gentleman, 
 and finding it was all true, I kept a constant watch over him, but 
 did not send him to jail, at the earnest entreaty of the other clerks, 
 he protesting that he would repay the money, which he borrowed 
 from them to make up the deficiency. I warned them of what 
 would happen if the surveillance were removed, and for their 
 security had him carefully watched ; but a Brahmin, whom you 
 probably recollect, as he was a Madras writer, named Butcha Rao, 
 came forward, paid all the other Purvoes,* and begged that I would 
 not discharge 'his friend' from my employment. I acceded to 
 his request. The villain was always afraid to bolt while he knew 
 the horse-dawk might overtake him, but no sooner was my back 
 turned than he went off, and years afterwards I heard that poor 
 Butcha Rao was thus ruined. So much for the difference in this 
 instance between a Christian and a Brahmin. Unless I thought 
 you recollected the circumstance, I would not bring this case 
 
 * Clerks.
 
 258 SOME WORDS AND WORK, ETC. 
 
 forward ; but how many more could we adduce of a moral tendency 
 exactly opposite to what is alleged ? 
 
 " Next to fear of contrived conversion, nothing can excite and 
 alarm the minds of our Indian subjects so much as meddling with 
 the land tenures, for which this is a bad time. They seem to have 
 been proceeding on a mode of settlement for Oude as hasty and 
 imprudent as well could be ; and I fear that there the casus belli 
 may be our greatest difficulty, because there is a cause there, while 
 elsewhere there may have been none, but I must call a halt. I 
 only meant to write three lines about Topasses, and here I am in 
 my third sheet. 
 
 " It is too distressing to Mr. Elphinstone to read any writing, 
 much more my horrid hand,* and I therefore refrain from writing 
 much to him ; and I would not tax your eyes, had it not been 
 that I am sure you are not one of those who would like to be 
 quoted as an authority for enlisting whole corps of low-caste men. 
 
 " My wife joins me in kind regards, and I am always, my dear 
 Briggs, 
 
 " Yours most sincerely, 
 
 " J. C. GRANT DUFF." 
 
 * Mr. Grant Duff does great injustice to his handwriting, which is 
 small and peculiarly elegant, and, for a man above seventy years of age, 
 very firm and legible.
 
 259 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 MY personal acquaintance with General Briggs began 
 in 1865, when he was in his eightieth year, and living, it 
 may be said, in strict retirement, only leaving the pretty 
 little house in Sussex Bridge Lodge, Burgess Hill, his 
 residence for the last twenty years of his life for occa- 
 sional, and gradually less frequent, visits to London. For 
 a long period he had occupied chambers in Tenterden 
 Street, Hanover Square, just opposite to the Oriental 
 Club, where he was a well-known and always a welcome 
 figure. He was at this time a man of extraordinary 
 energy and activity, both mental and bodily, for his age. 
 A great improvement had, by his own account, quite 
 recently taken place in his health, which he attributed to 
 his adoption of the dietary popularly known as "Banting", 
 from the name of the author of a pamphlet which at- 
 tracted much attention to the subject. It seems only 
 right to give the testimony of General Briggs, from a 
 memorandum in his own handwriting, to the efficacy of 
 that system of diet. 
 
 " In the year 1836, after a residence of upwards of thirty-three 
 years in India, I returned to England in impaired health, and 
 weighed at the age of fifty-one my height being 5 ft. 9 in. 12 
 stone 12, or 180 Ib. I was very well in 1843, and enjoyed health 
 until in 1858 I contracted rheumatic fever, and during the following 
 six years I suffered severely from rheumatism and occasional attacks 
 of gout, and for three winters was confined to the house for two or 
 three months together on account of bronchitis, for which disease 
 I visited annually the various thermal springs of Germany and 
 England recommended by professional men. In 1864, at the age 
 of seventy-nine, I read the third edition of Banting's pamphlet on 
 Obesity, in which he proved that by a system of diet he had not 
 only reduced his inconvenient bulk, but had relieved himself from 
 several diseases with which he had been afflicted. I then weighed 
 fifteen stone four pounds, or 214 Ib., and was a burden to myself. 
 I commenced Banting's dietetic system in May 1864, and continued 
 
 S 2
 
 260 
 
 it strictly and regularly for twelve months, during which time I 
 gradually lost 46 Ib. in weight and ten inches in girth, nor have I 
 found more than one or two pounds difference of weight for the 
 last two years. I still continue it without any sensible alteration, 
 and have lost all symptoms of any disease whatsoever. 
 
 DIET. 
 
 Breakfast 
 
 Lunch 
 
 Dinner 
 
 Solid. 
 2 oz. 
 
 z oz - 
 
 2 oz. 
 
 Dry toast 
 
 One egg 
 
 Tea with yolk of egg 
 
 Dry toast . . 
 
 Broth . 
 
 Sherry . 
 
 Fish and meat with dry toast 10 oz. 
 
 Claret 
 
 Total 
 
 Fluid. 
 
 6 oz. 
 
 6 oz. 
 4 oz. 
 
 6 oz. 
 . lib. 6oz. 
 
 August 1867." 
 
 The immediate cause of the introduction to General 
 Briggs, which led to our subsequent intimacy and close 
 association in several matters connected with Indian 
 politics, was the effort promoted by the old Rajah of 
 Mysore to save his kingdom from extinction at his death, 
 and to obtain his personal restoration as reigning and 
 ruling sovereign. So far as the more important point 
 went, the rescue of the State from annexation, for which 
 a decree was undoubtedly recorded in petto at the India 
 Office, that effort was ultimately successful. 
 
 At this time I was acting in concert with Dr. Campbell, 
 the Rajah's accredited agent in London, and with the 
 advice of Colonel Macqueen and Colonel Gregory Haines, 
 who, having filled high offices in the Mysore Commission, 
 and possessed the full confidence of Sir Mark Cubbon, 
 were designed by the Rajah to be the chief ministers of 
 his country during any prescribed period of probation. I 
 drafted all the despatches in which the Rajah quite 
 capable of understanding and sanctioning all that was 
 going on combated the wonderful sophistries and pre- 
 varications of the Calcutta Foreign Office,* while the 
 
 * Mysore Papers (112 of 1866).
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 261 
 
 destiny of Mysore as a State was trembling in the 
 balance. 
 
 A book, The Mysore Reversion* which I published, to 
 supply what was then quite deficient, a tolerably complete 
 and popularly intelligible statement of the Rajah's case, 
 drew from the General a very gratifying letter of thanks 
 and appreciation, and the proposal of a conference at his 
 chambers in Tenterden Street, to be followed by a dinner 
 at the Oriental Club. I remember well how much I was 
 impressed, on this first occasion of our meeting, by the 
 marvellous vivacity of the old man of eighty, the bright- 
 ness and point of his table-talk, full of special information 
 and anecdote, poured forth in his peculiar shrill voice, 
 without much interruption or comment on my part. 
 From that day our communications were never broken off 
 for many weeks together. He was as ready and fluent in 
 writing letters as in conversation. I visited him several 
 times at Burgess Hill, and always when he was in town ; 
 and he astonished me more than once in the two years after 
 our first interview by making his appearance at my house, 
 having walked nearly half-a-mile from the Metropolitan 
 Station. 
 
 In the vicissitudes and progress of the Mysore contro- 
 versy the General took the intensest interest. In the 
 movement set on foot for saving the Mysore State he 
 co-operated with his old comrade, Sir John Low, and his 
 old antagonist, Mr. Casamajor, the Resident in 1832, who 
 could not, however, be induced to meet the quondam 
 Senior Commissioner on a footing of friendly reconcilia- 
 tion. In 1866 General Briggs took part in a deputation 
 introduced by Sir Henry Rawlinson, M.P., to the Secretary 
 of State for India, Lord Cranborne, now the Marquis of 
 Salisbury, and said a few words on the unwarrantable 
 prolongation of management by the Mysore Commission, 
 and the advisability of restoring the country to the 
 Rajah. 
 
 During the Parliamentary Session of 1867, I prepared 
 a petition to the House of Commons, presented by John 
 Stuart Mill, then M.P. for Westminster, praying for the 
 
 * Trubner, 1865.
 
 262 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 maintenance of Mysore as an allied and tributary State, 
 signed by many distinguished old Indians of the Civil 
 and Military services, some of them contemporaries and 
 comrades of General Briggs. Among these were General 
 James Stuart Fraser, who had been Resident at Mysore, 
 and fifteen years Resident at Hyderabad, and General 
 Sir John Low. When I visited the latter to obtain his 
 signature he was only passing through London from the 
 Continent, if I recollect rightly on his way to his place 
 in Fifeshire, and a slight indisposition prevented his old 
 friend from coming up to town to see him. Sir John Low 
 was very particular in pointing out that he had left room 
 for a signature above his own. " Tell Briggs", he said, 
 " that he must sign just over my name ; we were both 
 of us Assistants to Sir John Malcolm ; but he was my 
 senior in the Madras Army, and my senior also in the 
 Political line."* 
 
 A little book of mine, The Oxus and the Indus J induced 
 the General to write me the following letter, the longest 
 that I ever received from him. 
 
 " Bridge Lodge, Burgess Hill, 
 
 " 20th June 1869. 
 
 "MY DEAR EVANS BELL, I always receive with gratitude your 
 works which you so kindly send me, and read them with pleasure, 
 and, I will add, with instruction. I reduce your policy set forth in 
 The Oxus and the Indus to this : that in order to avoid the inces- 
 sant inroads of the Hill tribes, and to promote commerce and draw 
 closer the connection between Cabul and India, you propose to 
 restore to Sher Ali and his successors the territory beyond the 
 Indus, so that the Ameer of Cabul may keep the Waziris and the 
 Afridis, et hoc genus omne, in order, which we cannot do, and may 
 have reason both to fear and to trust our power on the Indus more 
 than that of Eussia on the Oxus. I am too old now to sit down 
 and enter as fully on this great subject as I should wish. I could 
 not do justice to it without going back to the time when the King- 
 dom of the Sikhs was at its zenith, when Runjeet Singh had a for- 
 midable disciplined army under Avitabile, Ventura, and others 
 whose names I forget. But it appears to me that the greatest 
 mistake Runjeet Singh ever made was that of turning his attention 
 
 * General Sir John Low, G.C.B., G.C.S.I., died 10th January 1880, 
 aged 91. 
 
 f Trubner, 1869. Second edition, 1872.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 263 
 
 to the conquest of Peshawur and the Derajat, and the greatest 
 mistake in our policy of that time was in backing him up in 
 retaining those acquisitions against Dost Mohammed. The Sikhs 
 never got any revenue from those Provinces without military 
 coercion ; and it is just the same in fact now : the revenue does not 
 pay for our troops. These were, I believe, the views taken by Sir 
 Alexander Burnes, but he was too young a man to be allowed to 
 put them forward too prominently in 1838 and 1839. He was on 
 his promotion, as it were, and his business was to attend to his in- 
 structions. His instructions were to demand of Dost Mohammed 
 the reliiiquishinent of all claim over the Afghans of Peshawur and 
 the Derajat, and to confirm by a treaty their conquest by Eunjeet 
 Singh. Dost Mohammed's reply was, ' We are all brothers, and I 
 have no power over them ; nor would they at my bidding submit 
 themselves quietly to be the subjects of a Hindu Rajah like 
 Runjeet Singh. Even if I had now any control over them I would 
 certainly never consent to the transfer of a Mussulman population 
 to an idolatrous Prince.' 
 
 " These were the views of my old friend, Sir Henry Russell, 
 formerly Resident at Hyderabad, who for many years wrote some 
 remarkable letters to the Times under the signature 'Civis', which 
 were afterwards collected in a volume. He strongly condemned 
 the policy of extending our borders beyond the Sutlej and the 
 Desert which embraces India properly so called : and even after 
 the second Sikh war he advocated, as I did, the retention of 
 Dhuleep Singh as ruler, under English tutelage, leaving the Mo- 
 hammedans west of the Indus to unite, as before the time 
 of Runjeet Singh, with their brother Afghans on and beyond the 
 Suleimani mountains. 
 
 " I am pretty sure also that these were the views of Sir Henry 
 Lawrence. My memory is not so good as it was, and I have no 
 journal or correspondence to go by, but I perfectly well remember 
 his telling me in London, before the Mooltan rebellion broke out, 
 that he had recommended to Lord Hardinge that the heavy exac- 
 tions of the Sikh Government on the Afghans of the Derajat 
 should be reduced to a mere nominal tribute, and that their own 
 Chieftains should be charged with their management, on condition 
 of peaceful submission and of their preventing all inroads into the 
 Pimjaub ; but the loss of revenue, however insignificant or imagi- 
 nary, when measured against expenses, was not to be endured 
 by the Civilians. And I don't think I am wrong in saying that 
 he expressed a wish for some opportunity of reconciling our 
 Government with Dost Mohammed, and subjecting him to our 
 influence, by having those districts restored to Afghanistan. 
 
 " There was a slight connection between Henry Lawrence and 
 myself, from my brother James having married one of his wife's
 
 264 SOME WORDS AND WOliK OF 
 
 sisters, and I had many conferences and discussions with him, 
 though we generally were of the same opinion, when he was in 
 London. When the second Punjaub war broke out he told me 
 that it was brought about by a breach of promise on the part of 
 his successor, Sir Frederick Currie, at the expense of the ill-fated 
 Moolraj of Mooltau. The promise had been made by Sir Henry 
 Lawrence, and his locum tenens, who perhaps did not fully under- 
 stand it, ought not to have swerved from it. Moolraj had succeeded 
 his father as Nazim or Governor of Mooltan, over which Pro- 
 vince they had both of them ruled like vassal Princes, paying a 
 fixed tribute to Runjeet Singh. During the disturbances and revo- 
 lutions that followed the death of the great Maharajah, Moolraj 
 had maintained himself quite independent of the Durbar and of 
 the military Punches, and had paid no tribute at all, on the plea 
 that he was obliged to keep up an extra number of troops to pre- 
 serve order and to protect the Province from plunder. On Henry 
 Lawrence, as Regent for Dhuleep Singh, demanding the arrears of 
 tribute, Moolraj declared his inability to pay such an immense 
 demand, and was invited to come to Lahore in order that some 
 settlement for the past and the future might be arranged. After 
 some dispute the arrears were not insisted on, but absolute submis- 
 sion to the Government of Lahore was required and acknowledged, 
 and the payment of tribute was to recommence from the date of 
 the British occupation. 
 
 " Moolraj had at first argued very strongly for better terms, but 
 Lawrence told him that he could only offer him the choice of three 
 courses : (1), to take his seat at the Council board as a member of 
 the Regency, and appoint a Deputy for Mooltan under the Resi- 
 dent's terms ; (2), to retire from public life ; or (3), to pay up the 
 arrears due to the existing Government from the period of its 
 institution, and to continue as Nazim of Mooltan on the new con- 
 ditions of tribute and subordination. Moolraj chose the last 
 course. 
 
 "Lawrence's back was no sooner turned than the Durbar demanded 
 a heavy payment in lieu of the arrears due from the date of 
 Runjeet Singh's death. Moolraj, who was not a Sikh, but a Banya, 
 was no favourite at Lahore on account of the independent character 
 of his rule, which had been all the more independent because 
 there were very few Sikhs in the Mooltan Province ; and the 
 members of the Regency tried to put the screw on him. Unfor- 
 tunately, Sir Frederick Currie, not knowing or disregarding Sir 
 Henry Lawrence's promise, leaned to the strict measure suggested 
 by the Durbar. Moolraj was again summoned to Lahore, where 
 he was urged to retire from office, with the injunction that he must 
 produce the accounts of all his collections and expenditure, and 
 pay up the balance due, as he understood, from the accession of
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 265 
 
 the Eegency presided over by the Resident, but as it appears was 
 still intended by the Durbar, from the demise of Runjeet Singh, 
 which would have imposed six years more of arrears of tribute 
 upon him. The two young officers, Agnew and Anderson, pro- 
 ceeded to Mooltan to take charge. At their first interview with 
 Moolraj they, however, demanded the accounts and the accumu- 
 lated arrears of tribute from the death of Runjeet Singh, which 
 Moolraj said was 'a breach of the agreement made at Lahore'. He 
 declared that, owing to the demands made upon him by the two 
 Commissioners, he could not pay his own troops, to whom heavy 
 arrears were due. The troops, already disaffected from knowing 
 that they were about to be discharged, now thought that the 
 English Commissioners were going to discharge them without 
 settling their arrears. They attacked the English camp, and mur- 
 dered the young officers. Moolraj was thus compromised, and was 
 probably coerced by the soldiers. He defended Mooltan as long as 
 he could, and on the capture of the city was tried for his life, con- 
 victed, and sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to 
 imprisonment for life on the recommendation of the Court, who 
 very justly considered that he was in a great measure a victim to 
 circumstances. Few people know what a victim he was, and how 
 he was driven and forced into rebellion. 
 
 "In addition to these notes, I send you a pamphlet* I wrote about 
 the same time that my old friend, Sir Henry Russell (Civis), was 
 writing to the Times about the Punjaub. Our views did not differ, 
 nor do I conceive they differ much from your views on the Afghan 
 question. 
 
 "Before the disastrous retreat of our army from Cabul in 1842, I 
 addressed a letter to the Indian News, the first Anglo-Indian 
 paper published in London, to the establishment of which I con- 
 tributed with a few friends, and I pointed out the imminent pro- 
 bability of an outbreak in that quarter from the hostile spirit that 
 by all accounts began to be evinced towards us, and the probable 
 check to our arms, if not the utter destruction of the force, if our 
 Sepoys were compelled to march, fight, and bivouac in the height 
 of an Afghan winter. 
 
 "Sir Henry Willock, an influential East India Director, strongly 
 denounced the notion of trusting to our Hindustani soldiers amidst 
 the snows of Cabul. His experience in the command of an escort 
 of Madras Cavalry at Teheran, during two winters, convinced him 
 that, clothe them as we might, the ordinary exercise on a fine 
 winter's day brought on violent bowel-complaints, and that from 
 chilblains only, the best Sepoys became perfectly useless and quite 
 disheartened. My letter found its way into the Calcutta papers, 
 
 * What are we to do with the Punjaub ? By Major-General Briggs, 
 London, 1849.
 
 266 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 and attracted considerable notice when its prognostications were so 
 sadly fulfilled. 
 
 "These objections to campaigning in cold regions with tropical 
 soldiery are always overlooked by those who talk of assisting the 
 Afghans, or of conquering them, in their own country, with an 
 Indian army.* 
 
 " On one point I do not agree with you, as to the origin of the 
 Afghan war, and I am well acquainted with the facts. The 
 scheme was not concocted at Calcutta, but at Teheran. Sir John 
 McNeill, our Ambassador in Persia, was the originator of the idea. 
 It was adopted by Lord Palmerston ; and Sir John Hobhouse, 
 afterwards Lord Broughton, admitted and indeed boasted before a 
 Committee granted to John Bright to inquire into the origin and 
 consequences of the Cabul disasters, that 'the Directors not only 
 did not approve of the Afghan expedition, but they had nothing 
 to do with it from first to last ; I made it, and carried it out on my 
 own responsibility'. Lord Auckland received his orders from the 
 Secret Committee of the Court of Directors, i.e., from the Cabinet. 
 It is true that poor Sir William Macnaghten, who was made Envoy 
 and bear-leader to Shah Shooja, and most of the Government 
 House set at Calcutta, went into the project con amore, but they 
 were mere executive officers, obeying the Home Government. 
 Burnes had always taken the opposite view, and did all he could 
 to defend and support Dost Mohammed. Sir John Hobhouse and 
 Lord Palmerston garbled the correspondence when presented to 
 Parliament, in order to make out that Sir Alexander Burnes had 
 been the prime mover in the plan of restoring Shah Shooja, and 
 that he had represented Dost Mohammed as hostile and unmanage- 
 able. But all this was disproved by the publication of duplicates 
 of his despatches by his brother, Dr. James Burnes, and by Kaye. 
 
 " The Board of Control, in my recollection, has done an equally 
 bad act of suppression by the denial of the existence of two strong 
 Minutes by Sir Henry Ellis and Holt Mackenzie, both members of 
 the Board of Control and Privy Councillors, on the validity of the 
 Treaty of Lucknow of 1837, which was repudiated by Lord Dal- 
 housie as never having been confirmed in England, a false pretence 
 which was made the pivot for the deposition of the King of Oude 
 in 1856. I know that those two Minutes, which would have dis- 
 persed Lord Dalhousie's sophistries to the four winds, were on the 
 
 * The General's experience did not extend to the qualifications of our 
 Punjaubee Sepoys, nor was he aware that great numbers of Afghans 
 were in our service, and that we could recruit them in any required 
 number. There is no necessity now that we should march unwilling 
 Hindustanis or other " tropical" tribes into the cold regions. All Hin- 
 dustanis, however, are not unwilling or unfit for service in cold climates, 
 nor even Madras Sepoys, with proper equipment.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGtiS. 2G7 
 
 records of the Department, but, with some mental reservation as 
 to their not having been officially communicated, or some such 
 convenient scruple or quibble, their very existence was denied.* 
 Thus was removed the last obstacle to the annexation of Oude, a 
 measure which, coming on the top of others of a similar character, 
 did more than anything else to ripen the seeds of the Sepoy war, 
 as Kaye calls it. But I have wandered from the origin of the 
 Afghan war. As I said, this was the work of Sir John McNeill.f 
 who had been raised to the post of Ambassador after having been 
 Doctor to the Embassy, when he had been allowed -to practise his 
 profession among all who wished for his attendance, and to take 
 fees wherever he could get them. This of course lowered his posi- 
 tion in the eyes of the Court, and advantage was taken of it by 
 the Russian Envoy to sneer at the medical capacity and antece- 
 dents of our representative. The result was that McNeill was con- 
 stantly slighted, struggled in vain to uphold his proper influence, and 
 became very unpopular and very sour. He was thus prepared and 
 inclined to oppose the policy of Persia on the occasion of the cam- 
 paign undertaken against Herat, which, according to the Treaty 
 with the Governor-General of India in 1800, he was justified in 
 doing. When the King of Persia marched on Herat, McNeill 
 refused to accompany him, and encouraged the Herat Vakeel to 
 remain behind also. He received instructions, however, from 
 England to join the camp, and endeavour to prevent the siege. He 
 was too late : the trenches had been opened and siege operations 
 commenced. Soon after McNeill reached the camp, it was dis- 
 covered that he was carrying on a correspondence with Eldred 
 Pottinger, who was defending the place. One of McNeill' s chu- 
 prassees, bearing a letter from Pottinger, was intercepted at the out- 
 posts and brought before the King. McNeill was furious when he 
 heard of it, and not only demanded the release of his messenger 
 and the delivery of any letters he might have brought, but also 
 the severe punishment of the officer who had apprehended the 
 chuprassee. The King, a thorough diplomatist, sent back the 
 messenger and the letter unopened, expressing regret for what had 
 occurred, but declined to punish the Persian officer at the outposts, 
 who had only done his duty. When McNeill threatened to leave 
 the camp and refer the matter to his own Government, the King 
 remained firm, but offered to send an autograph letter of explana- 
 tion to the Queen. McNeil! would accept no apology, represented 
 the case as he viewed it to our Foreign Office, and was authorised 
 to demand his passport for England. Persia was left entirely 
 under the influence of Russia, while Lord Palmerston and Sir John 
 Hobhouse adopted McNeill's plan of strengthening our position in 
 
 * See Punjaub Papers, East India (Annexation of Oude), 102 of 1858. 
 t Born 1795, died at Cannes in 1883.
 
 268 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 India by seeking a quarrel with Dost Mohammed Khan, and by 
 wantonly forcing on the unwilling Afghans a King, Shah Shooja, 
 who had been twice expelled by his countrymen. The miserable 
 result we know. Had our dealings with the Persians and Afghans 
 been left from the beginning to the policy of the Governors-General 
 of the day, virtually nominated by the Crown, and always com- 
 municating with the Cabinet, no invasion of Cabul would ever 
 have been arranged at Calcutta ; India would never have expended 
 twenty millions beyond the Indus, or have plunged into the policy 
 of annexation to retrieve the loss, or have become involved in her 
 present predicament with the Afghans to the east of the Suleimani 
 mountains. 
 
 I have not written such a long letter for years. Excuse 
 erasures and corrections. Since a late attack of illness I find 
 I am getting too old to copy my first drafts of letters, and I have 
 no amanuensis. 
 
 "Ever yours sincerely, 
 
 "JOHN BRIGGS. 
 
 "P.S. On speaking about our North-West frontier with a Bengal 
 Civilian of the Punjaub school, he said that if Henry Lawrence 
 had been allowed to have his own way, he would have squandered 
 all the surplus revenue in conciliating the Sirdars and the Afghan 
 tribes. How has the opposite policy turned out ? Where is the 
 surplus revenue ? " 
 
 Two days later came a supplementary letter on the 
 same subject. 
 
 "Bridge Lodge, 
 
 "22nd June 1869. 
 
 "MY DEAR E. BELL, One word more about the Afghan war. 
 It is fully admitted that the project was carried out by Sir John 
 Hobhouse, who sent out his orders to Lord Auckland through the 
 Secret Committee, without the consent or knowledge of the Court 
 of Directors. We so far agree that the modus operandi and mili- 
 tary details were left to the Indian Government, and that there 
 was no opposition or serious objection made at Calcutta. The 
 object was to secure protection against Persia to the Afghan rulers 
 of Herat and Candahar. The object was a good one, and I have 
 no doubt it could have been effected through the mediation of 
 Alexander Burnes by means of a small subsidy to Dost Mohammed, 
 with a supply of the munitions of war, and assurance of military 
 aid if necessary. But instead of any effort being made to strengthen 
 the hands of Dost Mohammed, the ruler in possession, and of whose 
 popularity there was no doubt, or to win him over to our views, 
 the Indian Government unfortunately became the tool of Eunjeet 
 Singh, and instructed Burnes to demand of Dost Mohammed the
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 269 
 
 formal cession to the Sikhs of the districts occupied by his Afghan 
 brethren, the liege-men of his predecessors. Failing in this nego- 
 tiation, the Indian Government acquiesced in the plan of making 
 war on Dost Mohammed, the popular Prince of Cabal, in favour 
 of Shah Shooja, the twice-dethroned king. Shah Shooja had been 
 for years a pensioner on the bounty of Runjeet Singh, before he 
 took refuge in our territories, and no doubt it was a fundamental 
 article of the first secret agreement between them, to which we 
 afterwards became a party, that the Shah should transfer Peshawur 
 and the Derajat by treaty to Runjeet Singh, and should take some 
 steps to subject the Afghan tribes to the Sikh ruler, which Dost 
 Mohammed was unable or unwilling to take. 
 
 "Meanwhile Henry Pottinger was employed in reconciling the 
 Ameers of Sinde to the passage of our troops into Beloochistan, 
 and through the Bolan Pass into Afghanistan. Notwithstanding 
 our disasters, the Ameers subsequently gave every facility for the 
 return of our force from Candahar. They were repaid by ruin and 
 exile. You know the whole story ; and we are of one accord as 
 to the actual state of the case. We are in a false position in the 
 North- West, both from a political and a military point of view, and 
 no railways will improve it. I caii see no remedy but that pro- 
 posed by Henry Lawrence, provided that we are quite sure of the 
 fidelity of the Ameer, Sher Ali Khan, or that we can get a tight 
 hold over him. Since his visit to Umballa he seems to have so 
 fully appreciated our system of administration that he promises 
 fairly to be a good ruler and a faithful ally. As for the Russians, 
 they will never attempt to invade India till they have a safe 
 point d'appui in Afghanistan. It will be our fault if they ever 
 get it. 
 
 "Ever yours very sincerely, 
 
 "JOHN BRIGGS." 
 
 Before quitting the subject, I feel bound to add 
 that with regard to the policy of drawing the Afghan 
 State as a satellite within the Imperial system by the 
 attraction of Peshawur, I still hold the same opinions, 
 more strongly if possible, that I expressed in 1869. 
 Nothing that I have heard, nothing that has occurred 
 since then, seems to me to have had any significance or 
 any tendency but that of strengthening and confirming 
 that view of the question. My pamphlet was a good 
 deal noticed at the time, and when a second enlarged 
 edition was published in 1874; but I have never seen any 
 intelligible argument against the policy therein recom-
 
 270 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 mended, except one based on strategic and military con- 
 siderations, which seems to me to be so utterly unsound 
 as to prove the very conclusion it is intended to subvert. 
 That argument cannot be more clearly and concisely 
 stated than in the words attributed to the noble soldier 
 and excellent man, General Colin Mackenzie, whose 
 counsel in 1849 had unquestionably great influence over 
 Lord Dalhousie's decision. 
 
 "The two Military Secretaries, Colonel Stuart and Colonel 
 Benson, now strongly advised Lord Dalhousie to secure the friend- 
 ship of the Afghans by restoring the province of Peshawur, which 
 had been wrested from them by Ranjit Singh. Sir Henry Elliot 
 was greatly opposed to this, and wrote to Mackenzie to come im- 
 mediately to camp The Governor-General sent for him on 
 
 his arrival, and asked his candid opinion. During a prolonged con- 
 versation, he "proved, to Lord Dalhousie's satisfaction, that the 
 Indus, a fordable river at times, was no boundary at all, and that 
 our only strong and thoroughly defensible frontier was the one we 
 already held. To give up Peshawur would be to place the Afghans 
 inside the gate of India, instead of keeping them outside. The 
 Governor-General acknowledged his obligations to his adviser by 
 following his advice."* 
 
 Instead of keeping the Afghans "outside", exposed to 
 outside influence, I want to bring them "inside the gates 
 of India". 1 do not wish to enrol the Ameer as a feuda- 
 tory, which would weaken the Afghan Ruler without 
 conferring any strength on the Queen-Empress, but I 
 wish to have a material guaranty for his good behaviour 
 and co-operation in the shape of his richest and most 
 valued Province, within the reach of the Viceroy of 
 India. 
 
 "The Indus", exclaim certain military experts, in 
 accord with Colin Mackenzie, "is no boundary at all", 
 a "fordable river" is not "a defensible frontier". Does 
 any one really believe that we have to defend our 
 frontier against the Afghans ? It is quite true that a 
 river is a bad frontier for a State that is always on the 
 defensive, for a weak State, but it is a very good and 
 convenient boundary for its powerful neighbour. No 
 
 * Storms and Sunshine of a Soldier's Life (Douglas, Edinburgh, 1884), 
 vol. ii, p. 43.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 271 
 
 one, surely, can fail to understand that Switzerland would 
 be weaker, and more at the mercy or under the dictation 
 of Germany or France, if she had a rich Canton in the 
 plains. 
 
 For a full and complete explanation of the facts and 
 arguments, I must refer to The Oxus and the Indus.* 
 
 In carrying out the policy of engrafting Afghanistan 
 on the Indian Empire, much would, of course, depend 
 on the conditions, and the opportune occasion, to be 
 determined and arranged by our Government. 
 
 If we desire to provide Afghanistan with a defensible 
 frontier ; if we desire to keep that State under British 
 influence ; and if we desire to prevent the otherwise in- 
 evitable and legitimate interference of Russia, we should 
 adhere to the same strategic principles in that settlement 
 of the frontier between Turkestan and Afghanistan that 
 we now have in hand. Afghanistan, being a weak State, 
 should have the strongest possible frontier on the side in 
 contact with Russia. The territory of Herat should 
 certainly not be advanced beyond the Paropamisus range. 
 The Afghans should have no outlying possessions or posts, 
 in the plains, like Punjdih, open to Russian influence, 
 which is and must be dominant and supreme through- 
 out the Turkoman region. 
 
 The next letter opens up another subject of growing 
 importance, the political and constitutional aspirations of 
 educated Indians in the great centres of our commerce 
 and administration a class for whom the General, refer- 
 ring to their adoption of our forms of address, had in- 
 vented the facetious epithet of "the Esquirearchy". 
 
 " Bridge Lodge, Burgess Hill, 
 
 "26th June 1872. 
 
 "MY DEAR EVANS BELL, I return with many thanks and kind 
 regards to Mrs. Bell her entertaining work.f I seldom read novels, 
 and have not for years read one which I have enjoyed so much. I 
 hope she will soon give us another. I observe Mr. Disraeli, in 
 adverting to the charges imposed on the Parent State by the 
 Colonies, declares India to entail the most permanent and extrava- 
 
 * Second edition, Triibner, 1874. 
 
 t A First Appearance, three vols. (Hnrst and Blackett, 1872).
 
 272 SOME WORDS AND WORK. OF 
 
 gant drain of all. This is rather too bad, though it may be 
 prophetically true. India has not cost us a shilling as yet, and 
 pays for all she gets. Will Dadabhai Naoroji and the East India Asso- 
 ciation let this error pass unconnected ? I see, also, that Lord North- 
 brook, in his opening address to the Natives at Calcutta, urges them 
 by all means to study and qualify as Civil Engineers, for which 
 duties, he says, they are especially adapted. He did not mean to 
 mock them, of course, but any of them who knew the state of the 
 case must have felt his advice to be a mockery. Lord Northbrook 
 was not, I suppose, aware of the monstrous establishment at Cooper's 
 Hill created by the Duke of Argyll for the express purpose of con- 
 fining that branch of the service to our own countrymen. Dadabhai 
 Naoroji ought not to have let a man like Lord Northbrook leave 
 England in utter ignorance on such a subject. These legitimate 
 grievances remain unredressed, and little notice is given to 
 the threatened encroachments of the Esquirearchy at the three 
 Presidency towns. Observe the last paragraph but one in the first 
 page of the last Allen's Indian Mail, in which we are told that 
 Dadabhai Naoroji's friends at Bombay 'the inhabitants of Bombay' 
 they are called, but we know what that means have presented a 
 Memorial urging 'the establishment of a Corporation of at least 
 one hundred members, and of a Town Council consisting of twenty- 
 four Aldermen with a Mayor' ; that the salaries of all executive 
 officers of the Municipality should be fixed by the Corporation, 
 and that the municipal funds should be at their disposal. Why, a 
 Corporation of a hundred members would be a regular legislative 
 assembly. Once accustom the Esquirearchy to play at Parliamen- 
 tary debates, and there will soon be the jeu de paume in a 
 Bombay racquet-court, or a ship-money question somewhere up 
 country, with a Hampden-Jee at its head. The Lord Mayor and 
 Aldermen are to fix the salaries of all executive officers, which 
 means that they are, sooner or later, to appoint them all, and in 
 good time to have their own Recorder and Magistrates. In a few 
 years the Presidency towns would be a nice refuge for a Mussulman 
 Lord George Gordon, or a Mahratta John Wilkes. I suppose I am 
 not Liberal enough for these days. Certainly my notions of a 
 liberal policy for India do not go in the direction of encouraging 
 the Esquirearchy. 
 
 "Believe me, yours very sincerely, 
 
 "JOHN BKIGGS/' 
 
 It is not very extraordinary if General Briggs, when 
 eighty-six years old, had not quite kept pace with the 
 age, and had not entirely realised the changes worked in 
 the political mind of India by half a century of English
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 273 
 
 education. Still his instinct was right in the main ; 
 and those who see that the progress and propagation of 
 Western ideas are inevitable, and should be adapted and 
 utilised, not opposed, may yet, in a very great measure, 
 share his misgivings. Until British statesmanship has 
 e'ffaced all the artificial inequalities that have been set 
 up between the several races of the Empire by the 
 influence of the pretentious, though petty, class of 
 English officials, I should myself have much doubt 
 and anxiety as to the effect of any liberal measure 
 of self-government in India resting on an elective and 
 representative basis. Until every British subject is 
 a British citizen, until the distinction of " European 
 British subject" is no longer maintained by any Act of 
 Parliament or of the Indian legislature, until the 
 Imperial Power is free, by the extinction of the cove- 
 nanted Civil Service, to open a career to talent, there 
 will be no security for peaceful progress, and the pre- 
 posterous costliness of Anglo-Indian administration will 
 remain incurable. If competitive examination is to remain 
 as a condition of entrance to the public service, the com- 
 petition must be brought within reach of every citizen's 
 domicile. A long sea-voyage and expensive residence 
 abroad must no longer form an almost insurmountable 
 obstacle to the advancement of Indians in their own 
 country. Until the true principles of Imperial rule over 
 various nations and races are accepted and enforced by 
 the great Council of the Empire, there may well be some 
 hesitation as to encouraging oi\ stimulating the constitu- 
 tional aspirations of educated Indians, General Briggs's 
 " Esquirearchy". There are many signs of India being 
 on the verge of an epoch that might produce a Mirabeau 
 or a Paul Louis Courier. Such personalities bring light 
 into the liberal air ; but in an atmosphere of alien preju- 
 dice and race tyranny, they scatter incendiary sparks and 
 multiply risks of explosion. 
 
 It has been the fashion lately for the Anglo-Indian 
 official class, and the writers inspired or instructed by them, 
 to attribute all troublesome criticism and all presumptu- 
 ous claims to one class of Indians only, whom they call 
 
 T
 
 274 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 " Bengalee Baboos", and against whom a stereotyped 
 form of abusive disparagement is invariably employed. 
 But this is a very great mistake. The names of Hurris 
 Chunder Mookerjee, of Keshub Chunder Sen, and of 
 Kristo Dass Paul will remind those who have really 
 looked into these matters how much has been done by 
 Bengalees to rouse and to direct the Indian mind within 
 this generation. The career of Lall Mohun Ghose in his 
 own country, and the career that seems to be opening 
 before him here, may give us an example of at least one 
 Bengalee possessing courage, energy, and large views as 
 well as a remarkable gift of oratory. But it is a great 
 error to suppose that intellectual unrest and the spirit of 
 inquiry are confined to Bengal, or that in that quarter 
 there is the most reason to apprehend the rise of political 
 agitation. Western India is more decided and more 
 ready than Bengal to appropriate Liberal principles 
 and methods, and much more likely to initiate a serious 
 and well-organised movement against inequalities of race. 
 There are geographical and, above all, historical condi- 
 tions that place the centre of political thought and action 
 nearer to the cities of Bombay and Poona than to Calcutta 
 or any place in the north of India. 
 
 The last chapters of self-development and self-depend- 
 ence in India belong to the Western region. The Mah- 
 ratta Confederation emancipated the Hindus and extin- 
 guished Mussulman domination, destroyed the Mogul 
 Empire, and set up religious and social tolerance. Even 
 the battle of Paniput was a triumph and a glory for the 
 Mahrattas. They fought in the cause of " India for the 
 Indians", while the great Mohammedan Princes of Delhi, 
 of Oude and the Deccan stood aside, intriguing and 
 trimming. And though the Mahrattas were defeated, 
 the victorious Afghans retired, and never again interfered 
 in the affairs of India. The Mahrattas did more, they 
 lifted the cold shade of aristocracy and caste from the 
 ranks of i^.e people. They opened a career to talent, 
 irrespective of birth and creed. High commands, the 
 first places in council, great estates, even sovereignties, 
 fell to men of humble origin. Moslems were welcomed
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 275 
 
 to comradeship on equal terms. Brahmins were preferred 
 for their capacity, not merely for their caste, and had to 
 prove their capacity, in defiance of tradition and scripture, 
 by leading armies to the field. Mahratta campaigns and 
 conquests brought the more distant parts of the conti- 
 nent closer together, and made their tribes and their 
 languages mutually known. 
 
 The Hindu revival of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centuries, which paved the way for British intervention, 
 was a movement of social and political progress, in which 
 the Mahrattas took the lead, it may be said, unconsciously, 
 instinctively, without premeditation or prevision. Nations 
 never know exactly what they want, or exactly where 
 they are going. Their struggle to keep the lead com- 
 pelled the British Government to assume absolute supre- 
 macy. But, notwithstanding their subjugation, the 
 Princes, the chieftains, and the warlike tribes of Western 
 and Central India, have always retained a place in the 
 popular annals and recollection as the last upholders of 
 Indian chivalry and military honour against the arms 
 and arts of Europe. 
 
 The closer intercourse between races and tribes, the 
 nationalisation of India, begun during the Mahratta 
 revolution, has gone on with ever-increasing rapidity 
 under the influence of the improved means of communica- 
 tion, material and intellectual, with which British rule 
 has overspread the continent. Roads and railways, sea 
 and river steamboats, the post-office, and the electric 
 telegraph, freedom of speech and the press, tend to 
 efface caste distinction and privilege, provincial jealousies, 
 and even the differences of languages. Our schools and 
 universities have created "the Esquirearchy", well typi- 
 fied by Dadabhai Naoroji, and including such men as 
 the Honble. Vishwanath Narayun Mandlik, now in the 
 Viceroy's Legislative Council, Sir T. Madhava Rao, and 
 many others belonging to various provinces of India. 
 From the very fact of its comparative prosperity under 
 the Permanent Settlement, and the large influence of its 
 wealthy landlords, political activity in Bengal, especially 
 in Calcutta, has hitherto been chiefly concentrated on its 
 
 T 2
 
 276 SOME WORDS AND WOKK OF 
 
 local affairs and interests. General criticism of British 
 rule, on an extended field, and from Imperial points of 
 view, has occupied far more attention in Western India. 
 In Poona, the capital of the Peishwas, and in Bombay, 
 the great centre of commerce and finance for 'the 
 Deccan, Guzerat, Malwa, and the Central States, the 
 interrupted work of the Mahratta Confederation is carried 
 on by men like Dadabhai Naoroji and his disciples. In 
 the proceedings of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, and of 
 several Associations in Bombay, Indians are called to 
 united and concerted action in politics, and strictures 
 are constantly published in general agreement with those 
 of General Briggs's work on the Land Tax, and with 
 Chapter VII of this book, proving to a demonstration 
 the inordinately expensive and exhaustive nature of 
 British administration. Nor is the more delicate ques- 
 tion of its exclusive and scornful character kept quite out 
 of sight. ' For my own part, like General Briggs, but 
 with more sympathy, perhaps, and more hope, I look 
 with some apprehension on the influence of " the Esquire- 
 archy" and the much abused Bengalee Baboos. My 
 apprehension is that the movement will continue to be 
 misunderstood and misrepresented. The educated Indians 
 are working in good faith and in loyalty to the British 
 Crown, but they have no power to enforce their instruc- 
 tions or their warnings. They have not even a consulta- 
 tive share in the Government. Men of this class and 
 calibre are at once an honour and a reproach to our 
 system of rule. We have reared them, but there is 
 literally no place for them at our board. They have no 
 hold or authority, either on the one side over the 
 assumed experts who direct the administration, or on 
 the other over the latent passions, desires, and forces of 
 the Indian continent. We will not recognise them as 
 true interpreters ; the people will not have them as 
 leaders. They are too "Native" to be acceptable to our 
 officials, too English to be popular. But their work is 
 not without influence or without result. With the best 
 intentions, with truth and right enforcing their facts and 
 their deductions, they are giving body and soul, senti-
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRTOGS. 
 
 ment and reason, to the general discontent. Their lessons 
 are taken to heart by all of their countrymen who have 
 any political interests or aspirations. They are giving, 
 like the loyal writers and reformers in France before the 
 Eevolution, an impetus to thought and action, over which, 
 when the fulness of time comes, they will have little or 
 no control. Our statesmen might do well to listen to 
 them. The secret of Empire is not to be found in Ad- 
 ministration Reports, or in the mutual admiration of the 
 members of an official guild. 
 
 General Briggs joined, in 1872, in another ineffectual 
 effort to prevent the violation of an Indian treaty, and 
 the destruction of another of our living title-deeds. A 
 petition to Parliament and a memorial to the Secretary 
 of State, in which he took part, could not check the 
 scheme that had then been formed, and has now been 
 consummated, for the degradation and spoliation of the 
 Nawab Nazim of Bengal. On that subject he wrote as 
 follows : 
 
 " Bridge Lodge, Burgess Hill, 
 
 "8th May 1872. 
 
 " MY DEAR EVAXS BELL, Many thanks for your Bengal Rever- 
 sion. It lets one completely behind the scenes. The .mistakes 
 of Sir Frederick Halliday and the inveterate feeling of Lord Dal- 
 housie led us into this great wrong. But perhaps I ought not to 
 attribute so much to the personal or free action of Lord Dalhousie, 
 for I have good reason to believe that in Lord Auckland's time, long 
 before the appointment of Lord Dalhousie, there was a conclave of 
 Whig Ministers and magnates at Lord Lansdowne's place, Bowood, 
 to discuss the policy of upholding or of absorbing the Native 
 States, and it was decided that we should avail ourselves of all 
 opportunities for adding to our territories and revenues at the 
 expense of our allies and of stipendiary Princes like the Eajah of 
 Tanjore and the Nawabs of the Carnatic and Bengal. In this 
 direction -the Bombay Government set the example by annexing 
 the inconsiderable principality of Coluba, under the pretext that 
 an adopted heir had no right of succession. This led the way to 
 the more important and more impolitic cases, under Lord Dal- 
 housie, of Jhansi and Nagpore. Lord Dalhousie only acted on the 
 policy prescribed by the Ministers in England. The same policy 
 led to the denial of the validity of the Treaty of 1837 with the 
 King of Oude, duly concluded and ratified by the Governor-
 
 278 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 General, and recognised by Lord Dalhousie's predecessor, Lord 
 Hardinge. This denial opened the way for the annexation of 
 Oude. It is undoubtedly true that since Pitt's India Bill of 1784, 
 the Cabinet, and not the Court of Directors, have taken all im- 
 portant steps in the government of India. Soon after the decep- 
 tive effect produced by the early operations in the Afghan War, 
 under Sir John Keane, began to clear off, there was a Special 
 Committee of the House of Commons to ascertain the cause of the 
 war, and I think Mr. Bright was on it. Either he or some other 
 member asked Sir John Hobhouse, then President of the Board of 
 Control, if the Court of Directors approved of the Afghan War, 
 when he replied almost in these words : ' The Court of Directors 
 had nothing to do with it. I made the Afghan War, and I believe 
 it will lead to achievements and develop resources which the most 
 remote fancy has not yet depicted or anticipated.' After the disas- 
 trous termination of this war, Sir John Hobhouse tried to throw 
 the weight of it on Sir Alexander Burnes, then dead, by garbling 
 his despatches, as proved by his brother, Dr. James Burnes, who 
 had duplicates of the original correspondence, and published them. 
 Sir John Hobhouse, for this and similar services to the State, was 
 raised to the peerage. 
 
 "During the interval between 1784 and 1858, when the Crown 
 assumed the direct government of India, the Proprietors of India 
 Stock had the privilege, under certain rules, of calling a meeting, 
 at which the Directors were bound to be present, and might be 
 called to account for such measures as might be considered pre- 
 judicial to proprietary interests, Hence the Court of Proprietors 
 became in some degree an Indian Parliament, open to the public, 
 and where at least there was the power of exposing injustice or 
 maladministration to the public and the press. There was, also, 
 some little power of confirming or forbidding the grant of pensions 
 and gratuities. The Act of 1858 has changed all this ; and though 
 a Council, consisting for the most part of public servants long 
 resident in India, was then instituted by way of continuing the 
 Court of Directors, the new Councillors cannot sit in Parliament, 
 and need not be consulted by the Secretary of State, if he chooses 
 to act without them. I understand that they really act in small 
 committees as the heads of the several departments at the India 
 Office. The Secretary of State or his Under Secretary may find 
 the Councillors useful to dictate the proper words and phrases to 
 enable them to answer questions in either House of Parliament, as 
 if they were thoroughly up in the subject, but they are riot bound 
 to consult the Council, except with regard to the expenditure of 
 money, an exception which I believe they have found the means 
 of nullifying. Sir Charles Wood said this quite plainly when 
 asked the question in the House of Commons.
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRTGGS. 279 
 
 " I am shocked to perceive that the Government whether in 
 London or Calcutta is not quite clear should garble a, public 
 document, as you show was done, by forming two paragraphs out 
 of one, and suppressing that one which required of the Governor- 
 General to pay a certain sum to the Nawab Nazim's family out of 
 the fund reserved for their benefit.* But after the treatment of 
 Burnes's despatches by Sir John Hobhouse, one can be surprised 
 at nothing of this sort." 
 
 Although not properly falling within the scope of this 
 work, I cannot refrain from here adding a letter from 
 one of General Briggs's contemporaries one who often co- 
 operated with him in the Court of Proprietors the Right 
 Honble. Holt Mackenzie, for many years Joint Secretary 
 of the Board of Control, in which he refers to the disin- 
 heritance, in spite of an existing Treaty, of our earliest 
 and most serviceable ally, the Nawab of the Carnatic. It 
 affords another proof of the fact that Lord Dalhousie's 
 rapacious policy was carried on in defiance, not only of 
 every fair principle, but of all the best authority. 
 
 " 28, Wimpole Street, Cavendish Square, W., 
 
 " llth December, 1868. 
 
 " DEAR Sin, I am much obliged to you for sending me your 
 volume, of which the title,f I fear, only indicates too plainly 
 the probable fate of any fresh appeal to the House of Commons 
 seeking a review or reversal of the decision passed by the Indian 
 authorities in the case of the Carnatic Nawab. I have never, 
 indeed, had any doubt as to the hereditary title of the family, 
 though as a Calcutta functionary and Finance Secretary in times 
 when the hard demands of the exchequer left little room for 
 tenderness in maintaining the rights of the Government, I can 
 scarcely be supposed to have taken too favourable a view of any 
 claims adverse to those rights. But I do not wonder that opposite 
 views should prevail when I see the strange conclusions to which 
 so able and, in private life, so amiable a man as the late Lord 
 Dalhousie was led by what I must regard as a kind of monomania. 
 In truth, if the Executive of any Government is allowed to be judge 
 in its own case, and especially if allowed to act without a full 
 hearing of the parties opposed to it, there is no extent of injustice 
 into which it may not fall, urged on by motives to which it gives 
 ever to itself the false colour of zeal and public spirit. And I 
 need not say how many circumstances must operate to make 
 
 * The Bengal Reversion (Triibner, 1872, pp. xv, xvi). 
 t The Great Parliamentary Bore (Triibner, 1868).
 
 280 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 Parliament a bad tribunal to which to appeal in cases relating to 
 India, such as you have advocated. It seems to me there is only 
 one thing that would afford a fair prospect of justice being done. 
 And that is a rule prescribing that whenever the Government took 
 or withheld any property claimed by a Native Prince, otherwise 
 than by right of warfare, the case should be referred to some 
 tribunal acting judicially, and of course hearing counsel, and that 
 the Government should be bound by the decision of such tribunal 
 when formerly reported to it. We have, I believe, in the Judicial 
 Committee of the Privy Council, such a tribunal as would well 
 answer the purpose of securing substantial -justice certainly it 
 would have been such when presided over by the late Lord Kings- 
 down. And it does not occur to me that there need be any diffi- 
 culty in referring to it any case in which a Native Prince, not 
 subject to the ordinary Courts, and consequently not protected by 
 them, should appeal to the Crown for redress. And this could be 
 done without any new legislative provision, though such provision 
 is of course desirable to take the cases out of the reach of indi- 
 vidual caprice or discretion. Had such a rule prevailed, I am per- 
 suaded we should have had no more doubt as to the right of adop- 
 tion by Native Princes than there has been in the case of wealthy 
 Natives in our provinces. And it seems to me that if your clients 
 applied for such a rule, they would have a much better chance of 
 success than by any perseverance in asking for a review or reversal 
 of the decision they complain of, whether with the India Board or 
 either of the Houses of Parliament. All, I conceive, must admit 
 that ex parte decisions by persons necessarily but imperfectly 
 informed, and without the aid of counsel, must be unsatisfactory. 
 And every candid man must rejoice in being able by such a rule 
 to relieve himself from the duty of being judge, without the means 
 of forming a just judgment. But I have written much more than 
 I intended. If the general notion be approved, all details may 
 readily be settled. Grant Duff, I doubt not, will show himself not 
 unworthy of the name of Mountstuart Elphinstone, and the Duke 
 of Argyll, I should hope, has too much talent and virtue to allow 
 any personal prepossessions to stand in the way of doing right. Of 
 all securities for our Empire, justice, administered in a spirit of 
 kindness and respect (I will not say toleration), is the best the 
 only good foundation. God knows how soon another storm may 
 try the strength of the Empire that looks so grandly imposing. 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " HOLT MACKENZIE." 
 
 If ever the supremacy of Great Britain in India should 
 be wrecked or grievously shaken, it will be through re-
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 281 
 
 liance on the illusions raised up by a self-complacent and 
 self-interested bureaucracy. There have been some signs 
 of late traceable chiefly to the personal action and in- 
 fluence of Lord Ripon as Viceroy of a healthy desire to 
 court popular sympathy and co-operation in India. Every 
 word and every measure indicating such a tendency has 
 called forth marked disapproval and opposition from the 
 official class, its partisans in the press, and its pensioned 
 representatives at home. Unless our statesmen can free 
 themselves quickly from the pretensions of experts and 
 permanent subordinates, the immediate future of the 
 Indian Empire will be gloomy and stormy. 
 
 The administrative directors of India, according to 
 their own official and literary avowals, do not really 
 believe in an Indian Empire. The word "Empire" is con- 
 stantly on their lips, but they 'have not the smallest 
 notion of its true meaning. Theirs has always been a 
 policy of disbelief, distrust, and contempt. It is not in 
 response to any invitation or encouragement from them 
 that the leading Princes of India have recently placed 
 their troops and their treasuries at the disposal of the 
 Imperial Government in the prospect of war with Russia. 
 The general judgment of the Anglo-Indian Services, as 
 expressed on every occasion, and through every organ at 
 their command, has always been that the armies of the 
 Indian Princes constitute an element of danger, and must 
 in every case be locally counterbalanced and watched by 
 British troops.* 
 
 The rapacious policy of Lord Dalhousie's period, the 
 realisation for a time of all their dreams and schemes of 
 promotion and enhanced emolument, forms the sole ground 
 for the high place that Governor-General occupies in the 
 estimation of our Civil and Military Services. Although 
 the condemnation of that destructive and disastrous 
 policy by our leading statesmen of both parties, and by 
 
 * See, for a very fair statement of the ordinary official views, a book, 
 full of exaggerations and blunders. The Armies of the Native States of 
 India (Chapman and Hall, 1884), reprinted from articles in the Times, 
 and dedicated to the Earl of Dufferin, who is advised "to imitate the 
 policy of Lord Dalhousie".
 
 282 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 public opinion at home, has almost reduced its admirers 
 to silence, the practical temptation has never presented 
 itself to the departmental mind without precept and prin- 
 ciple at once giving way. We are told by his son, Mr. 
 H. M. Durand, the present Foreign Secretary at Calcutta, 
 that Sir Henry Durand, who filled that office for five 
 years, was "decidedly opposed to the sweeping annexa- 
 tions of Lord Dalhousie, which, while they weakened our 
 military position, had also unsettled the minds of our 
 Indian feudatories, and sown fear and distrust broadcast."* 
 Yet when two actual proposals of annexation were made, 
 while he was at the head of the Foreign Office, those of 
 Dhar and Mysore, both of them most iniquitous and im- 
 politic, Sir Henry Durand was bitterly bent on absorbing 
 both those States. His son, the present Secretary, in 
 the book just quoted, distinctly sets forth as sound 
 doctrine the perverse heresy as to forbidding adoptive 
 succession by which the "sweeping annexations" of Lord 
 Dalhousie were perpetrated and justified, a heresy which 
 Lord Canning and the Home Government explicitly re- 
 canted.t Mr. H. M. Durand, moreover, in that same 
 book, wishing, as the apologist of his father, to exalt un- 
 duly a well-deserving potentate, the Begum of Bhopal, 
 at the expense of a Prince, the Maharajah Holkar, of 
 much higher merit and importance, says that during the 
 mutinies and rebellion of 1857, "State after State turned 
 against us". By this very erroneous assertion he betrays 
 a curious ignorance of the annals of his own department, 
 and suggests an unfriendly prejudice against the protected 
 States. Not one single State in India " turned against 
 us". No Prince connected by Treaty with the Imperial 
 Government joined or favoured the rebels.| 
 
 * Life of Sir H. M. Durand (W. H. Allen, 1883), vol. i, p. 282. 
 
 + Ibid. p. 286 ; and Letter to Mr. H. M. Durand from Major Evans 
 Bell (Chatto and Windus, 1884), p. 56. 
 
 $ There were three or four instances of petty chieftains having 
 hereditary jurisdiction, and of stipendiary Princes turning against us, 
 but not one of them can justify Mr. Duraud's misstatement. There 
 was, for instance, the Nawab of Furruknuggur, undoubtedly a blood- 
 thirsty traitor. The guilt of the Nawab of Banda was doubtful. The
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 283 
 
 The Bombay authorities and English functionaries, with 
 practical unanimity, would not have hesitated, if Lord 
 Northbrook had taken up the ordinary official parable, to 
 have annexed the Baroda territories, when the misconduct 
 of Mulhar Rao Gaekwar, ten years ago, seemed to afford 
 a pretext. Let there be the smallest opening offered for 
 creating a new salaried Commission, or for converting a 
 Chief Commissioner into a Lieutenant-Governor, through 
 the ruin of an allied State, and pretexts and precedents 
 will not be wanting, or plausible proofs (as was 
 vehemently urged while the fate of Mysore was yet 
 undecided), that "this is quite an exceptional case". 
 
 At this very moment there is a case of annexation as 
 bad in law and as bad in policy as any one on Lord 
 Dalhousie's list, provisionally decided by the Bombay 
 Government, pending the demise of the ruling Chieftain. 
 The estate of the Vinchoorkur Chief was declared in 
 1819 by the Honble. Mount stuart Elphinstone, during 
 the settlement of conquests from the Peishwa, to be held 
 on hereditary tenure. The present Chieftain, having no 
 son, has adopted the son of his brother, but the Bombay 
 Government, refusing to recognise the adopted heir as 
 the rightful successor, proposes to confiscate half the 
 territory, and to sub-divide the remainder. The chief- 
 tainship is to be broken up, and the family degraded and 
 impoverished, in order that lands producing about 4,000 
 a year sure to be swallowed up in establishments may 
 be added to a Bombay collectorate. It is true that this 
 estate is not a sovereignty, and the Vinchoorkur is not a 
 Prince, but the principle violated is exactly the same as 
 in the deplorable cases of Sattara, Jhansi and Nagpore ; 
 and the results in destroying a conservative centre and 
 alienating popular feeling are identical. The Vinchoor 
 estate has always been well managed, and the local juris- 
 diction well administered. The Chief may be considered 
 to have as powerful an influence over as wide a range as 
 
 execution, after a court-martial, of the Rajah of Bullubghur near Delhi, 
 was very like a judicial murder ; that of the Nawab of Jhujjur was 
 little better. But not one of these personages was the head of a 
 State.
 
 284 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 
 the heads of the house of Douglas or Campbell possessed 
 in Scotland during the sixteenth century. The Bombay 
 Civilian cares for none of these things, but believes firmly 
 in Administration Reports, and " I have the honour 
 to be". 
 
 On the other hand, the Indian "Esquirearchy", typified 
 by Dadabhai Naoroji, whom General Briggs admired and 
 esteemed, though with a little old-fashioned mistrust as 
 to the spread of liberal and constitutional doctrines in 
 India, have always upheld the sacredness of treaties, and 
 the maintenance of Native States. The best men in the 
 great Presidency cities of Calcutta. Madras, and Bombay 
 those most eminent for their wealth and for their 
 attainments took the deepest interest in the rescue of 
 Mysore, and alike in the reform and in the administra- 
 tive independence of the Baroda State. The true Im- 
 perial insight has never prevailed in the ranks of the 
 Anglo-Indian Services, and we shall inquire among them 
 in vain for the secret of reconciling order and progress on 
 the Indian continent. For that secret, for clear views of 
 the policy of tutelary federation pointed out by the 
 words and work of General Briggs, our statesmen had 
 better turn, while there is yet time, to such men as Sir 
 T. Madhava Rao, and the unpretending gentleman whose 
 name I have unavoidably mentioned so often, Mr. Dada- 
 bhai Naoroji, who has done good work for the Empire 
 both as a critic of our fiscal system, and as the adviser 
 and Minister of Native States. They know the funda- 
 mental truth, which has quite escaped the notice of our 
 Indian Secretaries, Commissioners and Councillors, both 
 in their acts of state and in their legislative acts, that 
 what the Indian Empire demands is Union, but not 
 Uniformity. 
 
 There is little for me to add as to the closing years 
 of the General's long life. The visits to Tenterden 
 Street and the Oriental Club became less frequent, and 
 ceased entirely in 1873. The death of Mrs. Briggs in
 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS. 285 
 
 1870 was, of course, a great shock, and he seldom left 
 home after that event. He was always glad to see old 
 friends, and to talk over the topics of the day, and the 
 subjects that had so long interested him and occupied so 
 much of his attention. He retained full possession of all 
 his faculties to the last. His occasional contributions to 
 the periodical press, especially to Aliens Indian Mail, 
 continued up to within two or three months of his 
 decease. He died at Bridge Lodge, Burgess Hill, 
 on the 27th April 1875, and would in three months more 
 have completed his ninetieth year. 
 
 General Briggs had two sons, both of whom died in 
 early boyhood. Three daughters survive him, Clara, 
 widow of Colonel Nicolay, of the Madras Army ; Julia, 
 widow of Thomas Marsh Nelson, the eminent architect ; 
 and Emma, wife of her cousin, Underwood French, Esq., 
 one of the last of the learned society of Proctors. The 
 General's grandchildren and great-grandchildren are very 
 numerous. 
 
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