al EARL OF ELLENBOROUGH'6 HEIRLOOMS. Book N THE MARQUIS OF DALHOUSIE'S ADMINISTRATION OF BRITISH INDIA. VOLUME THE SECOND, Containing the Annexation of Pegu, Nagpore, and Oudh, and a General Review of Lord Dalhousie's Rule in India. EDWIN ARNOLD, M.A., University College, Oxford ; late Principal, Poona College ; and Ftllow of the University of Bombay. London : SAUNDERS, OTLEY, AND CO., 66, BROOK STREET, HANOVER SQUARE, W. 1865. \_All rights reserved.^ TO MY WIFE, KATHARINE ELIZABETH AKNOLD, WITH ENDLESS LOVE IS INSCRIBED THIS VOLUME; UNWORTHY OF ITS SUBJECT, UNWORTHIER OF HER BY WHOSE SICK-BED IT WAS PAINFULLY COMPOSED, AND BY WHOSE DEATH-BED MOURNFULLY FINISHED. CONTENTS OF \ 7 OL, II. CHAPTER XIV. Reasons for distribution of Topics Remaining acts require Criticism as well as Narration Lord Canning also an Annexer General tendency of Indian Governments towards the same policy Ideas of Lord Dalhousie upon Annexation Burmah The Burmese Empire Previous British relations with it. CHAPTER XV. Origin of the Second Burmese War View of Lord Dal- housie Vessels of war despatched to Rangoon The ships of war at Rangoon Behaviour of the Burmese Government The difficulty deepens Provocations to the war, and its com- mencement Incidental difficulties The energy of Lord Dal- housie Arrival of Forces at the Seat of War Hostilities renewed Martaban captured Preparations for attack 011 Rangoon Its Pagoda The attack on Rangoon and Kemmen- dine Approach to the Pagoda The storming of the Pagoda Scene in the Pagoda of Rangoon. CHAPTER XVI. Occupation of Rangoon General Godwin's good manage- ment Capture of Bassein The whole sea-coast in British hands Lord Dalhousie's new programme of the war Pegu not really a hostile country Godwin in Rangoon Attack on Prome The policy of the Secret Committee, and the argu- ments of the Governor General capture of Pegu, and its siege by the enemy Annexation of Pegu, Dec. 20, 1852 Con- venient insurrection at Ava End of the war General God- win's character- The annexation criticised. . -\ + *. - JLJLJL vi Contents. CHAPTER XVII. Annexations by war and in peace Annexation of Sattara- - Its previous history Lord Dalhousie's dealings with Sattara, and the law of adoption in India Disregard of the law openly expressed by Lord Dalhousie The Court of Directors accept his view Comments on the annexation of Sattara Relation of this act to the Mutiny Resumption of the Bithoor pension Nana Saheb. CHAPTER XVHI. Lord Dalhousie's energy in annexations Their order The Nizams of Hyderabad Beginning of our dealings with the Xi/iiTu- State of Hyderabad Conduct of the British Govern- ment to the Nizams The process of annexation commenced The Nizam tries to pay his debt Colonel Lowe and the Nizam The Nizam reluctantly signs the Treaty Relation of this measure to the Mutiny Annexation of Jhansi Jhansi in mutiny The Ranee of Jhansi. CHAPTER XLX. The annexation of Nagpore Previous history of Nagpore The opportunity offered to Lord Dalhousie Lord Dalhousie's apology Precautions to be observed in criticizing these annex- ations Manner of confiscation Efforts of Royal Family to reverse the decree Conduct of the Royal House during the Mutiny Lord Dalhousie and the Nabob of the Carnatic His- tory of our relations with the Nabobs Occasion of resumption Observations upon it Lord Dalhousie's defence of the re- sumption Other and minor annexations Tanjore Angool Sikkim Sumbhulpore Ali Morad of Khyrpore Hindoo men- dacity Defence of Ali Morad Probable state of the case The punishment a severe one The fault of Lord Dalhousie's proceeding Review and close of the subject of annexations Bhawulpore Cashmere The last of the Great Moguls. CHAPTER XX. The minor acts of Lord Dalhousie Revenue The Army The poverty of India Lord Dalhoubie's fiscal and commercial Contents. vii measures External trade of India under his rule All ports in India made free The River Ganges The Viceroy's bold- ness in public expenditure Railways in India The earliest lines marked The Calcutta and Lahore line The Great Indian Peninsula Railway The Bhore Ghat incline Lord Dalhousie's old experiences useful The railway system in India Effects of the rail in India. CHAPTER XXI. The electric telegraph in India The introduction of the electric wire Sir William 0' Shaughnessy and his difficulties Roads in India The Grand Trunk road Other lines of communication Postal reforms Former state of postal com- munication in India The nature of the reform Effects of the postal reform Remaining acts of Lord Dalhousie The re- sources of India The tea plant Silk The stud Sheep and wool Forest trees and road-side groves. CHAPTER XXII. Public works The Ganges canal Previous negligence as to works of irrigation Lord Dalhousie's expenditure Reform of the department of Public Works and Army Commissariat The Viceroy's great omission. CHAPTER XXIII. Important topics neglected Lord Dalhousie's dealings with the superstitions and crimes in India Thuggism The Meriah or human sacrifice Nature of the Meriah The in- veteracy of the custom The Meriah still existing The rite of Sati Redeeming traits of this rite Other acts and policies of Lord Dalhousie Education The variety and energy dis- played in them His kingly character. CHAPTER XXIV. Oudh The right of a king to his kingdom The true points to be considered in the Oudh question The natural charac- teristics of Oudh Its ancient history Our early relations with it Rapacity of previous governments towards Oudh The year 1801, and the treaty of that date That treaties imply viii Contents. mutual fidelity The terms of the treaty The treaty consi- dered Social state ofOudh Bugbhur Singh, theTalookdar Our real fault to have maintained the Oudh family at all Colonel Sleeman's mission His report How to interfere had become the question, not whether to interfere The evi- dence of General Outram Anarchy universal Absence of emigration out of Oudh no argument for its Government Style of life at court The central point of the subject Treaty of 1837 Lord Dalhousie's proposition to the Court of Di- rectors The resolution of the Court of Directors The an- nexation effected Its justification Relations of this act to the Mutiny. CONCLUSION. The departure of Lord Dalhousie from India His rule What it effected The future of India Concluding remarks. APPENDIX. THE MARQUIS OF DALHOUSIE'S ADMINISTRATION OF BRITISH INDIA, CHAPTER XIV. IN that superb retrospect of his Rule, which Chap. XIV. the weary but not enfeebled hand of Lord * for * distribution Dalhousie traced upon quitting India, the of topics. second Punjab war occupies but two para- graphs. In the present work it has engrossed a volume, leaving only the ensuing one for a review of another lengthened war, and all the re- maining acts of this remarkable pro-consulate. Weighty reasons, however, defend such a distri- bution. The annexation and administration of the Punjab made up together an act of empire epical in itself and isolated by sharp boundaries from the events and policies left to examine. The conquest and complete absorption of that broad region into British India was a labour, too, of the Marquis of Dalhousie, pursued from first to last ; a glory and a care extending over all the eight years of his vice-royalty. The Punjab was always his favourite province : its VOL. II. B 2 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. XIV. settlement must always be associated with him. He founded the polity and chose the instru- ments that made it the mainstay of our rule during the mutiny, and he in person planned those extensive works which recalled the power, and far outdid the public spirit of Shah Jehan. In a word, the affairs which have preceded will not have received too much attention, but those which follow too little. The assumption of three more kingdoms, all extensive, wealthy, and populous, and one of them of an ancient civilization and exhaustless fertility, should be treated of in volumes rather than chapters ; especially as the Rebellion is the dark horizon where they terminate, and against which they must be viewed. To consider these great governmental deeds, with their supple- ment of daily acts of administration the mere routine and leisure-labours of Lord Dalhousie, but still very rich in interest the annalist should prepare a large canvass. But in truth the eight years of Lord Dalhousie can be only out- lined now. Later hands must fill up with light and shade, praise and blame, the bas-reliefs of an imperial monolith, too roughly chiselled here. One reason, indeed, suggested a different division of the task ; for to have included the Burmese campaigns with those of the Punjab, would have completed the chronicle of the wars of Lord Dalhousie. And the forcible annexa- of British India. 3 tion of Pegu was not only the latest martial Chap. XIV. achievement of the vice-royalty, hut the last hlow struck with Bengal native regiments before that splendid hut unfaithful army turned upon its own masters. But a sufficient argument forbade this allotment of the la- bours now submitted to the reader. The an- nexation of the Punjab, almost alone of Lord Dalhousie's chief measures, stands unchal- lenged, or, at any rate, is proof against adverse criticism. No moralist or public writer, upon fair grounds of examination, has maintained that our Viceroy did ill to take in a province that had twice attacked us without provocation, and once brought the Affghan against us from the denies of Cabul. The safety of India demanded, and justice allowed, that we should move our frontier up to those mountains, and guard for ourselves the gates of India thus treacherously opened. Afraid of any extension, and especially towards the Khyber, the languid assent of the Court of Directors to that annexation well ex- presses the irresistible necessity, by which every reasonable mind saw and must see that nothing but annexation was possible. This act has had, too, as much justification as after events can give, in the fidelity of the Punjabeesto our rule, and in the evidence of their allegiance during the mutiny, so much indeed as to pass already into ac- cepted and certified history. It hasbeentold in the 4 Dalhousie'a Administration Chap. XIV. pages that are already turned back how the rule of the Kardars was replaced by our strong and honest " raj," how taxes were lightened, society protected, crime detected and put down, and fast friends made out of gallant foes. The Sikh has fought beside his old enemy now in Burniah and China, and with Dhuleep Singh's conversion to Christianity and married country life, and the death of the Maharanee ChuiidaKour, whose body lay for some time in an English grave a fate too sad in Hindoo eyes even for her sins the last relics of the Khalsa days seem departed already. The remain- But the remaining acts of the Marquis of * 5 critt Dalliousie must be criticised as narrowly as re- , a well counted. Very grave charges are brought ' against them, involving, not his character alone, but that of the British Government and country. The mutiny has drawn its dark line between his time and ours, although so near. The stateliest corporation of the world has passed away, an army has disappeared, a fleet has been abolished, and new ideas, new names, new measures, new policies rule in India. Ac- cordingly, the later deeds of LordDalhousie have been called in question as they never would have been without the sequel of such a catas- trophe ; never also, perhaps, if their author had lived to defend them with his ready intel- lect and skilful pen. And whatever praise or of British India. 5 blame is advanced in the pages which folio where, Chap. XIV. one reservation must always be understood as made, namely, that this kingly defendant, who is arraigned in the language which he adorned, and by the nation which he enriched, has yet to be heard in person. The time is distant when the private papers of the Viceroy will be freely given to the world, except such portions of them as are to be quoted here. It is due, therefore, to the memory of so distinguished an English- man constantly to remember this in reviewing the long list of measures which added Pegu, Nagpore, Sattara, Jhansi, Berar, and Oudh to the British dominions in the East, increasing the revenue of the empire by four millions and a half sterling, and its area by districts equal to Russia in Europe. These annexations have been indicted all together for injustice, and for reck- less imperial avarice ; and while "taking king- doms in" by every colourable device, the hostile critics of Lord Dalhousie declare also that he failed to notice the "little cloud" arising out of the camp and barrack, and settling upon the Sepoy's sullen face. " He had overlooked," it is said, " the gloom which even in his time was overspreading the horizon. He had positively augmented the growing disaffection of the native troops. Even his material measures of civiliza- tion, and progress, and legislative enactments, had needlessly shocked those jealous feelings 6 Dalhousic's Administration chap. xiv. which the most cautious and wisest of Indian statesmen had endeavoured to conciliate. Above all, his determined policy of annexation, pursued at all hazards, and embracing all parts of the empire, had spread everywhere a sense of inse- curity amongst princes and people, had taught the natives to feel themselves a conquered race, had converted our rule from a light burden into a galling yoke, had compounded together and brought to a head those feelings of irritation which needed only one spark for a tremendous explosion, and had shaken and endangered the stability of our Government, and the old belief in our sense of truth and right." Lord Can- Such is the usual form of the charge brought against the Governor-General; but General ten- justice may at once be done to the small extent dency of o f stating that Lord Dalhousie's were not at any vernments ra ^ e ^ ne ^ as ^ instances of annexation before the to ards the mutiny, as they were by no means the first be- 16 po ley ' fore it. One of Lord Canning's earliest measures was an act of the same nature with those so much impugned. The force of gravitation, indeed, seems not more inexorable than the influences which have always impelled the most peaceable Governors- General towards wars of conquest and accumulation of territory by edge of sword. Greatness has been constantly thrust upon us in India: we have not "achieved" it. The ad- vance of our dominions there from three grocers' of British India. 7 " go-downs," and twenty square miles, in 1752, Chap. XIV. to 650,000 square miles and a hundred and thirty million subjects, has been far more often against our wish than by it. The Romans, though they, too, felt the necessitas imperii, set themselves deliberately to conquer a good deal of what they knew of the world, and spent three hundred years in the task. "We have become the masters of as large a space in half the period, but in spite of parliamentary denunciations, popular indigna- tion, and personal reluctance on the part of our Yiceroys. The retrospect has been often made, but it will bear a brief repetition. In 1782, the House of Commons voted that Mr. Hastings had brought great calamities on India, and enormous expenses on the Company. In 1784, it passed a resolution that " to pursue schemes of conquest and extension of dominion in India is contrary to the wish, the honour, and policy of the British nation." But the sea of Indian affairs was already too vast to be calmed by a resolution. India remained in a state of peace only for six years. In 1790, Tippoo Sultan attacked our ally, the Rajah of Travancore. Lord Cornwallis remonstrated ; obtaining no satis- faction, he commenced hostilities with the Sul- tan, and stripped him of one half his dominion. With the " wish, the honour, and policy ' ' reso- lution still on its books, the House of Commons voted that the war was founded in policy and 8 Dalhousies Administration Chap. XIV. justice, and the thanks of the two Houses were presented to the conqueror. In 1799, Lord Wellesley was forced into a second war with Tippoo, which terminated in the Moslem prince's death, and the annexation of the greater portion of his dominions. Parliament having now crusted over with two wars the " wish, honour, and policy " resolution, the absorption of the Carnatic followed the conquests in the Doab and the cession extracted from the Nabob of Oudh, by which Lord Wellesley doubled the dimen- sions of the British Empire in India. But still the Court of Directors regarded these conquests as Polycrates did his recovered ring ; they looked upon their good fortune as much too fortunate, and thus recorded their relapse into contentment : " The territories which we have lately acquired under these treaties, under others of a similar kind, and by conquest, are of so vast and exten- sive a nature, that we cannot take a view of our situation without being seriously impressed with the wisdom and necessity of that solemn declaration of the Legislature, that to pursue schemes of conquest and extension of dominion in India, are measures repugnant to * the wish, the honour, and policy' of the nation." Yet statesmen were just as inconsistent as stockholders ! Among those who most de- nounced the additions which Lord Wellesley had made to the British Empire in India was of British India. 9 the Earl of Moira. Six years afterwards, he chap. XIV. was himself appointed Governor-General, and he had not been a twelvemonth in India before he was waging war with the Nepaulese, which terminated in another accession of territory. Two years after, the Pindarries, and the treachery of the four Chiefs of Poonah, Nag- pore, Indore, and Gwalior, obliged him to take the field, with an army of ninety thousand men. The Pindarries were extinguished, the Mahratta power was broken, and our territories were again alarmingly enlarged. The Earl of Moira, who had deprecated any expansion of our do- minions, proclaimed, as Marquis of Hastings, that the Indus was to be considered our boun- dary in future. He was followed by Lord Am- herst, certainly innocent of any spark of warlike ardour. That nobleman scarcely reached the shores of India when he found a Burmese war on his hands, which cost ten millions sterling, but ended in giving us the whole of Assam, Arracan, and the Tenasserim provinces ; while Lord William Bentinck, with a character for re- trenchment and conciliation, illustrated both by annexing the principality of Coorg. Lord Auck- land again, peace-loving to a fault, was led by the phantom of Russian intrigue across the Indus ; whereas, seven years before, Clivehad declared that we must never look beyond the Curum- nassa. We buried thirteen thousand men in the 10 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. xiv. snows of Affghanistan, and then Lord Ellen- borough came out "to restore tranquillity to both banks of the Indus ; in a word, to give peace to Asia, to create a surplus revenue, and to emulate the magnificent benevolence of the Mahomedan emperors in the great work of public improve- ments." But all these good intentions had to disappear to the winds on his arrival in India. The mode in which he finally restored tranquil- lity was by declaring the whole of Sindh annexed to the British dominions, by extin- guishing the power of Scindia, and by making ready to march on Lahore. Sir Henry Har- dinge was chosen his successor, with the strictest injunction to avoid war, and, above all things, annexation. He came out with sword-hilt glued, as it were, to the scabbard, but maintained his pacific policy only for sixteen months. The Sikhs poured sixty thousand of their warriors across the Sutlej to devastate our territories ; Lord Hardinge was constrained to dismember the Punjab, and to add the Sikh territories south of the Sutlej, along with Jullundhur, to our dominions. Still dreaming of peace and har- mony, however, he also retired from India, declaring that there would not be a shot fired for the next seven years. Lord Dalhousie landed at Calcutta in 1848, and received the pacific testament of his predecessor ; but, as has been seen, war broke out in the Punjab in less than of British India. 11 three months, and before fifteen months had chap. XIV. passed, the entire Punjab was declared to be British territory. Two years and a half were then devoted to the organization and adminis- tration of our new acquisition, and even the least sanguine were led to predict that the wars of the British Empire in India had ceased, that every enemy was at our feet, and that we might now look forward to a season of tranquillity, which would aiford us leisure for the improve- ment of our institutions. Surely in this long series of coy conquests, it is impossible to pro- nounce all the Governors hypocrites, all the Cabinets double-tongued, and all the Courts actors of moderation ; it is unavoidable not to recognize a law, like that which in physics makes the greater attract and absorb the less, compelling the march of the energetic Saxon over and through the weak Oriental mass. Acts of injustice, indeed, must not shield themselves under any such law, but practical sense will acknowledge its existence. Wine colours water, forest trees will make underwood perish, and strong races in contact with effete ones, in spite of sentiment, will extend their borders. It is clear, nevertheless, that after his taste Ideas of Lord of conquest in the Five Waters, a new spirit Dalh U8ie upon annex- Seized the Marquis of Dalhousie. What may ation. be called a passion for imperial symmetry un- doubtedly possessed him, and grew as he gazed 12 Dalhou&ie'a Administration Chap. XIV. upon the map of India. His nature had already in it the elements that worked in the great annexing pro-consuls and pro-praetors of Rome, although constrained by another and stricter morality ; and with this innate disposition, to have dealt with kingdoms, to have transferred " the mountain of light" from the " Kulgi" of Runjeet to the crown of Victoria, to nominate princes in all but name and state to new pro- vinces, instead of merely passing contingent bills in Council, drew all the king out in the heart of Lord Dalhousie. By fair means always, but by these so soon as offered, he henceforth resolved acting upon an old theory, be it said to take kingdoms in wherever they made a gap in the red line running round his dominions, or broke its internal continuity. Such a decla- ration need not rest upon a mere examination of the subsequent acts of his rule ; it can be verified from his own words. So far back as 1848 he had written, " I cannot conceive it possible for any one to dispute the policy of seiz- ing the advantage of any just opportunity for consolidating the territories that already belong to us, by taking possession of states which may lapse in the midst of them ; for thus getting rid of these petty intervening principalities, which may be a means of annoyance, but which can never, I venture to think, be a source of strength; for adding to the resources of the of British India. 13 public treasury, and for extending the universal chap. XIV. application of our system of Government to those whose best interests, I sincerely believe, will be promoted thereby. " And subsequently, "It is my strong and deliberate opinion that, in the exercise of a wise and sound policy, the British Government is bound not to put aside or neglect such rightful opportunities of ac- quiring territory or revenue as may from time to time present themselves, whether they arise from the lapse of subordinate states by the failure of all heirs of every description what- ever, or from the failure of heirs natural, when the succession can be sustained only by the sanction of Government being given to the ceremony of adoption according to Hindoo law." These, then, were the deliberate opinions of the Viceroy that it was expedient for the dominant power in India to absorb those inde- pendent states which broke the map, and to complete the coast-line, if possible, wherever the crimson edge was interrupted, from Kurra- chee to the Straits of Sunda. It was also his declared and repeated principle that to pursue this policy, the British Government might justly avail itself of every fair technical ground, such as in common law would confer a right. As to the first view, it is simply a thesis of statesmanship upon which much maybe urged, and both ways ; but the second comes within the 11 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. XIV. domain of morality, and must be discussed, not as a general principle, but with regard to the particular application given it in each case. As eacli arises, therefore, the merits of each annex- ation shall be questioned, without condemning by a long word, or for mere fashion, a policy that elsewhere and in other times civilized Britain, and made it easy for Christianity to extend its divine message through the world. Burmah. The passion, however, for that which we have called imperial symmetry, grows by what it feeds on, like others which are either vulgar or less magnificent. THa acquisition of the Punjab had given us " natural boundaries" on the north and north-west, and Lord Dalhousie's eye travelled south and east from that nourishing and favourite province, to note not only a gap in the great ring-fence of India, but trespassers threatening to enter there. State papers tell the truth sometimes, but seldom the whole truth, and the incidents which first attracted the thoughts of the Governor-General to Bur- mah will not be found in the Blue Books upon the war. It was because the Americans and French, but principally the former, were busy in the Eastern seas, and notably looking to- wards the delta of the Irrawaddi, that the hiatus between Arracan and Moulmein dis- quieted the watchful Viceroy.* Our Burmah * This title was not formally given till Lord Canning's day, but the anachronism will be braved for ita convenience. of British India. 15 traders had been subject to chronic insult ever chap. XIV. since the treaty of Yandaboo, and would have been left still to balance, in all likelihood, their profits against their dignity, but for the pro- bability that if we were forgiving to the " Golden foot," other "barbarian" powers might not be. A Pondicherry or Travancore on the east coast of the Bay of Bengal, and that, too, 24,000 square miles in extent, was the vision which seemed to Lord Dalhousie to threaten British India. It would be a grave injustice to say that it induced Lord Dalhousie to look for a cause of quarrel with the King of Ava ; but it is not more or less than the simple truth to affirm that it made him very ready to accept one, especially as there lay, just at the time spoken of, ten millions and a half sterling in silver in the Indian treasuries. The first Burmese war, in 1825, may be taken The Burmese as having first introduced to general knowledge Empire. . the singular kingdom watered by the Irrawaddi. tish relations Its government, the weakest, but, at the same w li ' time, the most arrogant of the East, had more than once bearded and invaded the strongest, by organizing Burmese dacoits, and letting them loose upon our Chittagong frontier, until a British army, vainly resisted by the " Prince of Sunset" and his rabble, found its way almost to Ava, and dictated peace. " The King of all the White Elephants" was compelled to yield Te- 16 Dalhousie's Administration chap. XIV. nasserim, with Assam " the unrivalled," to toler- ate a British resident at Ava,and to grant certain shadowy commercial privileges. Calcutta, Bom- bay, Madras, Moulmein, Singapore, and Hong Kong are always full of adventurers ready to make the largest use of the smallest opening ; and an intermittent trade was thus established with the defeated but very business-like Bur- mans. British and Indian goods were excharged for cutch, japanned ware, bell-metal, petroleum, and rubies, in brisk commerce, but only on some- thing like sufferance. Above all, the magnifi- cent teak forests, which clothe the steep hill- sides of the jungly districts of Burmah, kept the intercourse alive. Season after season the raftsmen of thelrrawaddi penetrated unexplored lagoons, and navigated rivers only known to alligators and water- snakes, to fell the massive stalks of teak, which, being left till dry, or made buoyant with bamboos, were floated down to B/angoon and Moulmein, to be converted into those stout Indiamen and coasters, some of which have been known to keep the sea for whole generations. One result of this trade was, that the valley of the Irrawaddi became well supplied with arms of a better kind than the matchlocks and spears which had offered a feeble resistance to Sir Archibald Campbell. But it was altogether unprotected, and con- ducted under such vexations as only savages, at of British India. 17 once covetous and contemptuous, know how to chap. XIV. inflict. Every little " Woon" who boasted a gold umbrella, levied his tax upon the trader's go-down; the Burmese courts of law spread nets to catch their rupees, and, like the Spanish musician, who demanded ten maravedis for leaving off, and only one for playing, made an acquittal rather more costly than a condemna- tion. The handful of adventurers who had cast their lot upon this perilous edge of British rights frequently invoked the English flag, by appeals to the Resident ; but the Burmese authorities promised reasonable behaviour one day, and invented more audacious exactions on the next. At last, in 1837, a revolt broke out at Ava, ending in the accession of Prince Thara- wadi; who, after making a clearance of the royal family in the wholesale way common in the East, proceeded to disown all previous royal acts or compacts. He refused to adopt the treaty of Yandaboo, and affronted the Resident with outrageous demands upon his already sig- nal humility. 1 By persevering arrogance of this 1 The following is the form of address which an English envoy received, with the request that he should pronounce it before the king at Ava : " Placing above our heads the golden majesty of the mighty Lord, the Possessor of the mines of rubies, amber, gold, silver, and all kinds of metal ; of the Lord under whose command are innumerable soldiers, generals, and captains ; of the Lord who is King of many countries and provinces, and Kmperor over many Eulers and Princes, who wait around his throne with the badges of his authority ; of the Lord who is adorned with the greatest VOL. II. C 18 Dalhottsie'a Administration Chap. XIV. kind, the Resident, driven from Ava to Ran- goon, was eventually withdrawn altogether in 1840, leaving no diplomatic channel of commu- nication at all with Burmah, except the indirect one of the Commissioner's Office in Tenasserim. For twelve years this cessation of dealings with the "Golden Foot" continued, during which time a stream of complaints trickled through Colonel Boyle's Cutchery to Government House, Cal- cutta. Apparently the Viceroys were of opinion that the profits of Burmese trade must he set against its disagreeables, or were else too much engaged in state difficulties to attend to those of a few Parsee, Mahommedan, and British mer- chants. The Blue Book gives, indeed, a more amiable reason as regards such as came addressed to Lord Dalhousie ; for his letter of the 17th No- vember, 1851, to the King of Ava, contains this passage : " From time to time complaints have been preferred to the Government of India by British subjects resident at or frequenting the Port of Rangoon, of extortion and oppression exercised towards them by the Governor of that place. But the Government of India has been power, wisdom, knowledge, prudence, foresight, &c.; of the Lord who is rich in the possession of elephants and homes, and, in particular, is the Lord of many white elephants ; of the Lord who is the greatest of Kings, the most just and the most reli- gious, the master of life and death : we, his slaves, the Govern- ment of Bengal, the officers and administrators of the Company, bowing and lowering our heads under the sole of his royal golden foot, do present to him, with the greatest veneration, this our humble petition." of British India. 19 unwilling to believe that the provisions of the Chap. XIV. treaties of friendship and commerce which sub- sist between the two Governments had been disregarded by any officer of the Ava Govern- ment." In brief, however, whether from pre- occupation or an incredulity more convenient to the " mighty lord" than to " protected inte- rests," the wrongs of the Rangoon and Mar- taban merchants had hitherto found no redress. It is needful to understand something of the Government Government of Burmah, as it then existed, to ofs new programme manded, rather than suggested, leave for further O f the war. chastisement of the Burmans. The Governor- General declared that the Ava Court was waiting 80 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. xvi. to see whether the monsoon would decimate the troops; and if disappointed, then, and not before, peace would be proposed. But he was urgent now to raise the terms in more than the sibyl's ratio with King Tarquin to fifteen lacs of rupees, and the cession of the Negrais or Diamond islands, along with the Martaban dis- tricts. This was to be the price of peace, if shortly accepted; but if deferred, or should these terms be refused, "the Burmese forces will be defeated, wherever they stand, and the British army will reach the capital," after which Lord Dalhousie goes on to write : " The ques- tion for the decision of the Government of India will then be, what measures should the Go- vernor-General in Council adopt for confirming the vindication of our power, for obtaining reimbursement of the expenses of the war, and for providing a security against its re- currence ? " In the earliest stage of the present dispute I avowed my opinion that conquest in Burmah would be a calamity second only to the calamity of war : that opinion remains unchanged. If any adequate alternative for the confiscation of territory could have been found by me, or had been suggested to me, my mind would most readily have adopted it. If conquest is con- templated by me now, it is not as a positive good, but solely as the least of those evils before of British India. 81 us, from which we must, of necessity, select one. Chap. XVI. But, after constant and anxious reflection, through the months during which hostilities have been in progress, I can discover no escape from the necessity. I have been driven, most reluctantly, to the conclusion, that no measure will adequately meet the objects which, in my judgment, it is indispensable for us to secure, namely, the establishment of our superiority now, and its maintenance in peace hereafter, except the seizure and occupation of a portion of the territories of the Burman kingdom. In like manner, as in 1826, it was felt to be neces- sary to deprive the Burmese of the provinces of Tenasserim, Arracan, and Assam : so now, for stronger reasons, and with better effect, the occupation of the province of Pegu appears to me to be unavoidably demanded by sound views of general policy." Thus the word " conquest," understood all along, is definitely expressed at last, nor will the arguments of the minute here quoted bear contrast with the reasons originally alleged for entering into the war. Then it was with the object of obtaining satisfaction and apology from the king; now, should he grant everything, Lord Dalhousie declares, that " the case would remain substantially the same." And in fact, no longer concealing the latent object of the expedition, Lord Dalhousie proceeds with a VOL. II. G 82 DalhousM?s Administration chap. xvi. sweeping, masterly, but inconsistent manner, to sketch the five alternatives of annexation, for the most wholesale of which he proclaims him- self. He dwells upon the undoubted advan- tages of Pegu ; points out its commanding situation for trade and military influence ; insists upon the advantage of a settled plan, that the troops may not have to retire from any ground they occupy, a step always magnified into defeat by the imaginative and conceited Burmese ; in truth, the Viceroy paints the acquisition in colours so free and tempting that it seems like irony when he checks himself with the remark, " that although this conquest be an evil, it will not be an evil altogether without mitigation." Pegu not One fact was altogether in favour of these really a hos- p i ans an ^ that was not forgotten by the tile country. r thoughtful Viceroy. He urges that the occu- pation of Pegu will not be the occupation of a conquered province or hostile people ; and, in- deed, throughout the war nothing was more marked than the good feeling of the Peguese, as nothing has seemed more certain than their subsequent contentment with our rule. Pegu had once been the paramount province in Ava, but that memory was overlaid with the tyran- nies and extortions of its Burmese conquerors. Pegu, therefore, from the first did not desire freedom, but only wished for better masters, and hailed the English as such. During the first fort- of British India. S3 night of May in this year the Peguese actually Chap. Xvl. rose of themselves, and drove the Burmese out of their town of Pegu, although it was recovered again for a time. Repeatedly the native people came to head- quarters, volunteering to make ex- peditions and attack the enemy themselves, if the English would only arm them ; and it has been shown with what eager confidence they ministered at Rangoon to the material wants of their "friend the enemy." All that Pegu needed, indeed, to declare itself annexed before formal annexation, was the promise from the British that the pro- vince should not be left alone to the frightful vengeance of the Court of Amarapoora. In the last war the Peguese and Karens who had shown any friendship with us, or were suspected of it, were decimated by the furious tyrant of Ava ; their women were ripped open, their children pounded in wooden mortars, and the men miser- ably mutilated. Thus the Governor-General was able to urge his view with almost irresistible force upon the Secret Committee. If it accepted the rich gain of Pegu, it would complete the coast- line, obviate future wars, secure a fertile pro- vince, accept the eager submission of a friendly race, and have nothing to defend but a northern border. If it shrunk from that step, the victims would be the kindly barbarians who had re- ceived us with open arms ; and blood and trea- sure would have been merely wasted upon the 84 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. XVI. pachydermatous and hereditary arrogance of the king. The Secret Committee made as much demur as was decent to the triangular thesis where policy hacked aggrandizement, humanity recommended policy, and justice, of the colour- ahle kind at least, whispered assent to all three. They "concur with the Governor- General in his opinion, that extension of territory is not in itself desirable; and that the annexation, even of a province possessing so many advan- tages as Pegu, is to be looked upon rather in the light of a choice of evils than a positive and unmixed good. But we think with him," they say. "that, if the presumption and in- justice of the Burmese Government compel us to take possession of Pegu, as being necessary to our security, the objections which may be urged against its acquisition will be counter- balanced by no inconsiderable advantages. And we entirely agree with the Govern or- General in his estimate of the important bearing which the occupation of this fine province, with re- ference to its position, its climate, and its adap- tation, in a commercial and maritime point of view, to the interests of this country, may have upon the security and advancement of our Eastern Empire." " Sighing, we will ne'er consent," in reality, the Court finally "consented;" and then for- tifying its decision with facts, it "observes of JBritish India. 85 -with great satisfaction the very friendly dis- chap. xvi. position of the inhabitants of Pegu;" conveys " to you our authority under the sanction of the Queen's Government, to consider the permanent occupation of Pegu, and its final annexation to the East Indian dominions of her Majesty, as the just and necessary result of those military operations which you have been driven to direct against the Burmese empire." ... "It may be doubted, indeed," ends this highly diplo- matic despatch, "whether the relations even now established between you and that people have not already imposed upon you the obliga- tion of protecting them." Meanwhile General Godwin was lying in Godwin in Rangoon, roundly abused by everybody who Kan g on - had no share in his responsibility about the health of his men, for not moving them, in the rains, up to Prome. Among other excellent reasons against risking this, might be mentioned the entire acquiescence of the Government at Calcutta in the delay; approved of also at home. But not knowing this, and forgetting how impossible it would have been to transfer the sanitary arrangements of Rangoon to Prome, the General was attacked with an unmeasured bitterness, which might have made a younger man rash, and led to a repetition of the miseries of 1825. l However, it was certainly 1 The private correspondence of the Governor-General with 86 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. XVI. n t true that to get up to Prome was " an im- possibility," for four steam-ships, with a recon- noitring force, ascended the stream in July, and stripped that town of all its guns. The expe- dition, on its way up the river, captured a small steamer, the remaining vessel of the king's cir- cumscribed navy. At Akouk-toung, the bluff which separates Pegu from Burmah, they were obliged to evade a garrison of seven thousand men and forty guns by passing through a smaller channel, dry in the hot season. This post was looked upon as the key of the river, and once past it, the force found Prome so com- pletely undefended, that the vessels anchored abreast of the stockades, and hove the brass guns of the enemy off into the river, with the capstan-bars and the ships' fiddlers, the oddest mode of disarming a land-battery ever exhi- bited. For twenty-four hours Prome was in possession of the flotilla, which returned safely, capturing on its way back the barge and the two gilt umbrellas of the commander of the fortified post. Simultaneously with this dash- ing, but not particularly useful enterprise, Lord his Commanding-General in Burmah exonerates the latter from the aole responsibility for this act of prudence. Lord Dalhousie approved of the halt at Rangoon, and confirmed its wisdom in general orders. His letters are full of the fear that an advance may fill the hospitals with sick and dying, as in Sir Archibald Campbell's time. " Keep the men well," he writes ; " when they foyin to sicken, their spirits are affected, and the melancholy goes to the stomach." of British India. 87 Dalhousie started from Calcutta to visit Ban- chap. xvi. goon, and to confer with General Godwin upon the coming campaign. He was received with much state upon the newly-captured wharf, and rode through the dusky populations to the pagoda, where the troops welcomed him with presented arms and the roar of artillery. No- thing struck him more than the natural strength of the great temple as a fortress. " I cannot imagine, General," he said, "how your men ever got in at this place." The result of his conferences with the leader of the forces was to limit all movements to the province of Pegu, but to arrange for a speedier attack on Prome than had been resolved on. Yet no candid person will lay the blame of delay upon General Godwin's head after reading the minutes penned upon the Viceroy's return to Calcutta. 1 On the 13th of September, however, 1 " The want of support without reinforcements, which could not then be given ; the uncertainty as to the plans and movements of the Burmese ; and the insecurity of the communication by the rivers, upon which the Major-General must have exclusively re- lied ; were the chief objections advanced by the Major-General; and they appeared to the Governor- General in Council to be valid and sound. He therefore fully approved of the resolution not to make an immediate advance to Prome. "It will be in the recollection of my colleagues, that the subject of an immediate advance to Prome was officially discussed by the Major-General shortly after the first operations of the army at Rangoon. He stated strong military objections to the movement ; he pointed out that his force was comparatively small, and that no reinforcements could be obtained at that season ; he showed that we were totally ignorant of the plans and movements of 88 Dalkousie's Administration Chap. XVI. the rains having abated, troops began to move up the river, though it was not until the 9th of October that the united squadron arrived once Attack on more abreast of Prome. Two guns only opposed Prome. the landing, which was effected, under cover of the fire of the " Winchester," without any diffi- culty, and the town was occupied before night. At daylight the rest of the troops were taken on shore, and advanced without opposition to the pagoda and stockades. Prome finally fell, with the ridiculous loss on our side of one killed on the land, and none in the naval division. The possession of Prome gave us the command of the enemy. Hence he argued, that if he should take his force to Prome, it would be placed there in the heart of an enemy's country, wholly without support, if attacked (which was an event at least as possible then as in 1825), and with his sole communi- cation by the river insecure ; and, consequently, that he would be Altogether in a weak and false position. " These reasons against an immediate advance seemed to me to be unanswerable. " The Major-General has subsequently been strongly urged by many to advance during the rains. He has informed me that he had declined to do BO. Though some of his previous objections were removed by the command obtained over the river by the flotilla, he would still, in the absence of reinforcements, have been wholly without support ; and he alleged as an additional reason for declining to advance, that while no object of importance had been pointed out, as likely to be secured by the early occupation of Prome, it would have been unwise and culpable to remove the troops, without positive necessity, from the barracks which had been provided for them, and where they were enjoying com- paratively good health, in order to expose them at Prome to effects of climate and the season, from which they were likely to suffer severely. " I consider that these reasons of General Godwin, for refusing to advance hitherto, during the rains, to Prome, were sound and good." of British India. 89 all the lowlands dividing Pegu from Burmah chap. XVI. Proper ; and any further contest, except of a desultory character, and within the limits already gained, must have had for its object Burmah and the extinction of Alompra's dynasty. 1 Now, with regard to this, the Secret Com- The policy of mittee were really less moderately inclined than *^ e their servant the Marquis of Dalhousie. In and the their minutes of September they had accepted ar g^ ment8 of x * the G-overnor- the annexation of Pegu as the present con- General, dition of peace; but if the King of Ava refused to acknowledge and submit to this act, they were for prolonging the war, and marching upon Amarapoora. Two motives prompted the Secret Committee, one to be secure of what they had obtained, and the other to get more if they could. They were ready to be content with one bird if very safely in hand ; but if not, they desired to get at the two in the bush. But Lord Dalhousie had found out the difficulties of the Irrawaddi in the dry season, and its unhealthiness in the rains. He was satisfied with his triumph, and unwilling to give the Press at home and in India more room to declare against his war. The point which he had to reply upon was that of the treaty with 1 That idea crossed the mind of Lord Dalhousie sometimes. " To march to Ava," he writes in a private letter, " will give no peace, unless the army remain at Ava ; in other words, unless we absorb the whole Burmese Empire. That necessity may come some day. I sincerely hope it w ill not come in my day." 90 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. xvi. Burmah, very much desired by the Committee. The Viceroy cared nothing at all for such a document. He even declared it was " a thing to be avoided." Eramed carefully and with detail, he was of opinion that it would only em- broil peace while peace practically existed, by starting trivial disputes ; and, if drawn up in general terms, it would offer no security not already guaranteed by power on one side and fear on the other. He enlightened the Com- mittee upon the fact that " all Burmah would scout as an absurdity the notion of observing a treaty if they could profitably disregard it." * The only fault to be found with this astute minute addressed in answer to the Secret Com- mittee is, that it harmonises badly with those equally sagacious and logical ones that preceded the war. If, in the first place, the Viceroy sent ships to Burmah to get an apology, and a fresh recognition of the treaty of Yandaboo, he was 1 This is not good Buddhism, but it was real Burmanism. " I beg," writes the Governor-General, " to quote again the state- ments of Dr. Judson, to whom their customs and character were familiar. He says, ' All idea of negociation is repugnant to the pride of the Burmans, and contrary to their custom. They be- lieve that the conquering party will always keep what it has got if it can, and that negociation is therefore useless. Overtures to treat are always looked upon either as a mark of weakness, or they are considered as an artifice to gain time.' Again, Dr. Judson says, in reply to the question, whether he considered the Burman Government very faithless, ' Utterly so. They have no (practical) idea of the moral excellence, or of the utility, of good faith. They would consider it nothing less than folly to keep a treaty, if they could gain anything by breaking it.' " of British India. 91 either making an empty demand, or thought Chap. XVI. better of the Burmese, with the same sources of information, then, than now. However, no reasonable person will differ from the second and maturer view of the Marquis, which he fortified, too, by other arguments. If the war was to roll beyond Prome, there would be, he wrote, the necessity for expenses far greater than now in contemplation ; and even if Ama- rapoora should fall, which was not unlikely, the wild, mountainous, and half unknown regions of Burmah must be penetrated to effect its full subjugation, and tribes like the Shans encountered in their own highland haunts. In risking this, eight hundred miles in length of useless country would be hung about the neck of the empire, all of which might be better controlled (and if necessary, the Go- vernor-General explained, "starved") 1 from a 1 " Burmah depends largely upon Pegu for the supply of all its wants. Pegu is the outlet for its export, the sole channel for its . commerce. Pegu is the storehouse, from which it draws almost ex- clusively its supply of articles of first necessity, rice and salt. Pegu is the mart from which alone it can derive ngape, or preserved fish, an article of such universal consumption that it has almost become a necessary food; and every other object of use or luxury which it employs. " In occupying Pegu at Prome, the Government of India holds in its hand the key of the food, and of the enjoyment of Burmah. How effectually we are therefore enabled to lock up the sup- plies of both", the present campaign has shown. Although the Irrawaddi has of course been less effectually stopped than it will be by arrangements made at Prome, the effect of our partial command over the traffic of country boats on the river has been 92 Dalhousie'a Administration Chap. XVI. point north of Prome. "I do not assume," wrote the Governor-General, with a candour explanatory of many subsequent events, " to claim the merit of being governed in the policy I have proposed by a spirit of moderation. I have been guided thereto by unmixed con- siderations of the self-interest of the British Government : any larger acquisition than the province of Pegu was calculated, in my opinion, to be injurious to this government. For that reason I have opposed, and still deprecate it." Attempts may be made, he thinks, to effect an arrangement by treaty ; and if the Burman court will in the end accept nothing but war, " war it must be." But, satisfied with the actual possession of Pegu, the Governor-General counsels no such announcement in the letter to be sent to the capital. These representa- tions, put in the home-thrust manner of the best political dialectics of the Viceroy, and most severely felt. Setting aside as exaggerations, the state- ment made by the natives, that the Burmese force near Prome were reduced to feed " on ponies and plantain stalks," we hare positive proof that they and the population have been reduced to great straits ; for the fact has been authenticated through several channels, that two months ago the basket of rice, whose price was usually half a rupee, was then selling at five rupees. " With such a power as this in our hands, the Burmese will not be likely to provoke its exercise. If peace be observed, their usual supplies will be permitted to pass. But if we should be harrassed in our possession of Pegu, the traffic will be stopped, as an instrument of most effectual blockade ; even though the stoppage must necessarily be detrimental to our own subjects and to our revenue for the time." of British India. 93 supported by his Council, were not resisted by Chap. XVI. the Secret Committee. Lord Dalhousie had his way, and it was, as usual, the wisest. Pegu only was to be annexed, and the annexation recognized by treaty, if possible ; if not, accom- plished without it. There was still, however, a little more Capture of fighting to be transacted before negotiation of Pega> L and , lts siege by the that semi- serious kind, peculiar to the whole enemy, war. The city of Pegu, which had been won from the Burmese by the Karens, but only held by them for a week, was a dangerous point to leave unoccupied after the advance to Prome. An expedition was therefore de- spatched up the Pegu river, which found some four or five thousand troops in garrison. As usual, the pagoda was the citadel of the town, which was also, as usual, defended by a wall and ditch. The Madras and Bengal Fusiliers together waded through the mud, and stormed the terraces of the temple, of which, after receiving one volley of musketry, they be- came the possessors. A garrison of 400 men, under Major Hill, was put into Pegu, and this force afterwards sustained, perhaps, the most creditable and difficult contest of the campaign. On the 27th of November, a large number of Burmese surrounded and endeavoured to storm the pagoda, and were beaten back only by great exertions and sustained valour. Some 94 Dalhousie'a Administration Chap. xvi. guns and ammunition were thrown into the position, and a detachment of Sepoys ; but on the 9th of December a letter, rolled up in wax, and stuck under the armpit of a Burman, reached General Godwin with the unwelcome news that the little garrison was closely in- vested, and had fired away almost all its cart- ridges. A reinforcement of 240 men sent to the place, returned without being able to enter. Meanwhile, Major Hill, embarrassed at first with 2,000 Peguese and their families, and with 216 carts-full added to them since the original attack, had made most skilful provisions. He stockaded a space round the pagoda for his trembling allies, and brought the carts inside it for their temporary dwelling-places. From the day that this arrangement was completed till that on which General Godwin delivered the place, a body of 6,000 Burmese hung constantly upon the stockade. The fact, too, that cover was plentiful close to the embrasures made a sur- prise easy, and helped to keep the garrison un- comfortably alert. On the 13th December the Burmese attempted a resolute coup-de-main, and were with the greatest difficulty repulsed ; the British soldiers fighting with their bayonets side by side with the Peguese cattle-drivers. On the 14th the garrison was succoured. General Godwin landed on that day with 1,200 men, and executing one of thoseflank movements of British India. 95 which the Burmese seem never to have foreseen Chap. XVI. or comprehended, he drove the enemy right and left into their jungles, with a loss on his own side of a dozen killed and wounded. Praise in a despatch has not often been better earned than that awarded to Major Hill for "the wonderful way in which he managed to save the Peguese." His position had been like that of a caravan attacked by wolves, with a herd of helpless cattle to defend. To chastise the enemy still more General Godwin moved out after them some days subsequently; but after standing once, behind a stockade of teak beams, just long enough to let the Sikhs 1 cross swords with them, they scattered over the country, and the last real fighting of the campaign was finished. On the 20th of December, 1852, the pro- Annexation clamation was issued, annexing Pegu to British of Pe s u ' India ; and at the same time the Governor- General draughted a treaty of peace, and a 1 Lord Dalhousie, in his private letters, makes great pets of these Sikhs, whose volunteering for service in Burmah was indeed a striking event. " They are jungle cavalry," he writes to Godwin, " and will therefore suit. I hope the Sikhs will please you, if they get a chance, and do honour to me who recommended them. Some years ago I got one of their regimental caps, which is a Glengarry bonnet, made for me, and I believe they half consider me to belong to their corps. I told their commanding officer to remind them of it, and I think they will go ahead. Lord help the Burmese that come across them, if they do, for they are bloody fellows." 96 Dalhowie's Administration Chap. xvi. letter to the King of Ava. The haughty sen- tences of the proclamation ran thus : " The Court of Ava having refused to make amends for the injuries and insults which British subjects had suffered at the hands of its servants, the Governor-General of India in council resolved to exact reparation by force of arms. " The forts and cities upon the coast were forthwith attacked and captured. The Burman forces have been dispersed, wherever they have been met ; and the province of Pegu is now in the occupation of British troops. " The just and moderate demands of the Government of India have been rejected by the king. The ample opportunity that has been afforded him for repairing the injury that was done has been disregarded ; and the timely submission, which alone could have been effec- tual to prevent the dismemberment of his king- dom, is still withheld. " Wherefore, in compensation for the past, and for better security in the future, the Go- vernor-General in council has resolved, and hereby proclaims, that the province of Pegu is now, and shall be henceforth, a portion of the British territories in the East. " Such Burman troops as may still remain within the province shall be driven out. Civil government shall immediately be established, of British India. 97 and officers shall be appointed to administer Chap. XVI. the affairs of the several districts. "The Governor-General in Council hereby calls on the inhabitants of Pegu to submit themselves to the authority, and to confide securely in the protection, of the British Go- vernment, whose power they have seen to be irresistible, and whose rule is marked by justice and beneficence. " The Governor-General in Council, having exacted the reparation he deems sufficient, desires no further conquest in Burmah, and is willing to consent that hostilities should cease. " But if the King of Ava shall fail to renew his former relations of friendship with the British Government, and if he shall recklessly seek to dispute its quiet possession of the pro- vince it has now declared to be its own, the Governor-General in Council will again put forth the power he holds, and will visit with full retribution aggressions which, if they be persisted in, must, of necessity, lead to the total subversion of the Burman State, and to the ruin and exile of the king and his race." The letter was equally imperious, and the treaty simply proposed, " if the king's consent could be obtained," peace and friendship for ever between the Honourable East India Com- pany and His Majesty the King of Ava, embrac- ing certain formal articles, and leaving blanks in VOL. II. H 98 Dalhowie's Administration Chap. XVI. some of them for theboundariestobe agreed upon by commissioners. These were to be General Godwin and Captain Phayre the last being appointed to the civil charge of the new pro- Convenient vince. But at this juncture a very fortunate Insurrection ft^fa befel at tne Ava court> and one w hi c h, &t a.VH. from time to time, supplies the place, with these barbarous and despotic governments, of votes of "no confidence" and changes of ministry, The peace party found itself strong enough to revolt, with the heir-presumptive at its head, the half-brother of the king. His majesty was seized in the palace, and confined to the congenial but inglorious retirement of his women's apartments ; and this revolution drew all the Burmese generals, with their troops, to the capital. It ended in the acces- sion of the revolutionary prince, and the ascen- dancy of peaceful counsels at Amarapoora. On the 5th of April the Burmese commissioners met those of Britain with a ceremony marked by all the display possible on each side. But it came to nothing ; for whereas the Governor- General had proclaimed the annexation of Pegu, his representatives were instructed to ask a frontier nearly 100 miles farther northward and eastward. The Woonghees were prepared to cede the old kingdom of Pegu, but not all their teak-forests and richest territory besides. They would have yielded the line from Prome to of British India. 99 Tonghoo, but not more, at least without a very Cha P- XVL indignant struggle. It would be harder than ever to justify the war after -what transpired at this conference, for the new king's envoys offered to pay all the expenses of it, if he might so escape the shame of losing any territory. But this idea of sending in the bill was no longer in our programme, and the discussion terminated, while the king withdrew the powers he had given to the Woonghees. Time went on tediously till July, 1853, when, by a tacit sub- mission, the Burmese court accepted events, and assented to, rather than declared, peace. Two war-boats came down to General Godwin, bringing letters from the king to the Governor- General, couched in terms as amiable and oblivious as if peace had been concluded for a year. It was thus that this proud but impo- tent government affected to forget rather than forgive the war ; but they granted no treaty, and the British Governor-General was con- tented to do without it. Many who peruse these pages must also know those which relate the subsequent mission of Captain Phayre to the new king, to attempt the filling up of this hiatus. The mission resulted in a sumptuous and inte- resting work, once or twice quoted here, dedi- cated to the Governor General, and honourable to the inquisitiveness and conversational powers of the gentlemen engaged on this useless 100 Dalhousie's Administration End of the war. General Godwin's character. Chap. XVI. errand. But though the Burmese monarch showed himself polite, philosophical, and peace- ful, he was not- husiness-like, and Lord Dal- housie's annexation of Pegu was confirmed by no treaty. On the 3rd of August General Godwin em- barked for Calcutta, and the force was broken up. It has not been possible to pronounce the second Burmese war one just in its origin, or marked by strict equity in its conduct and issue ; but the words addressed to this fine old soldier by Lord Dalhousie were, in his sense at least, certainly deserved. " Your service," writes the Governor-General, in a private note, " will be more justly appreciated when ignorance and malignity have exhausted their efforts." It is, indeed, astonishing to the quiet student of this period that Godwin should have been the object of attacks so virulent in the English press. If it be a sin to attain three-score years and ten, the general deserved the unremitting abuse showered on him by certain organs ; but if to bring to that age as much vigour, courage, and invention as belong to the best years of life, and to employ them, along with the forethought and wisdom of grey hairs, sincerely and singly for the well- being of his troops and the success of his enter- prise, then we were all Major-General Godwin's debtors. It is hard to pick out a single step that he could have taken to secure the issue of British India. 101 sooner or more completely ; while his govern- Chap. xvi. ment of his troops, and his care of them, was, beyond doubt, the explanation of much of the difference between 1825 and 1852-3. It would be a great mistake, of course, to hold that, be- cause General Godwin did his duty well and thoroughly, sexagenarians should be chosen as a rule to lead British troops ; but surely, on the other hand, the examples of Conde and others show that grey locks may mask an unextin- guished spirit and undimmed capacity, as green leaves may sometimes sprout from an old trunk. Godwin differed from his great superior upon certain questions, and much mutual ill-feeling at one time existed in consequence ; but, as it turned out, the advance was made quite early enough to fill the hospitals, and, made earlier, it would have choked them. No one questions the courage of an English general ; but this man fought an unpopular campaign, with what must appear singular ability and judgment, and received for it the most persistent abuse. That this abuse was for a purpose rather than a principle would appear from the fact that, when its real object was attained, the old soldier was no longer the mark for every barbed arrow of blame. He himself did not live long to medi- tate upon the offence of doing his duty. Burmah had cost him his last few years of life, and he died at Simla, on the 26th of October, in 102 Dalhousie's Administration chap. xvi. the year of his return from the pagodas of Pegu. The annexa- These incidents are but twelve years old, and tion criti- the historian's labour might therefore fitly cease with narrating them. He cannot tell to what eventual issues so aggressive a stroke of policy may lead ; in what wars it may hereafter involve us on far orient frontiers ; to what strange coun- tries it may lead us ; in what manner the un- relenting Nemesis of all human actions not per- fectly pure will some day display itself. He must judge by present knowledge; and, so judging, Lord Dalhousie appears to have added here a splendid province to the empire, and an unbroken line to its sea-board, at the price of what may be called " diplomatic injustice." The series of acts by which this war was made inevitable would not pass muster at the council- tables of Europe. No king in Europe could appeal in vain to an international congress against arbitrary and offensive steps like those by which the envoys of Lord Dalhousie forced war upon His Majesty of Ava. Arrogant as the offending court was, there seems reason to be- lieve that it was bent on securing peace, with as much show of dignified delay as possible, had not the king's vessel been seized at her moor- ings and submission been thus made to appear degradation in the eyes of subjects who obey only what they see is feared. But this is not of British India. 103 the age when the rights of kings are so delicately chap. xvi. regardedas that such aquestion should hegin and end with the throne, which Denmark has found out. The old theory that the people and the land are the property of the sovereign, and that a personal injury is done when he is dispossessed of them, has gone out of date. With the events of the French Revolution and the Italian war divine right may he said to have passed into the limbo of ancient superstitions, except where it lingers in the fatuous brain of a pipe-clay king. "We must rather ask if an outrage has been done upon the people ; whether popular desires and popular rights have been contemned and violated, when we examine any such abrupt change of boundaries. So judged, the phrase of " diplomatic injustice" applied to Lord Dalhousie's act exhausts all that can be said against it. It annexed a country that met us half-way with the wish for annexation, and made British subjects of a people who rose everywhere on our behalf, before they were well assured of our protection. The strongest evi- dence shows that Pegu fell willingly into the golden circle of our power, and enough has been said of the behaviour of the Rangoon bazaars after the storm, and of the revolt at Pegu, to prove this fact. If such friendliness on the part of the Peguese did not inspire Lord Dal- housie's conduct at first, which we dare not 104 Dalh&usie's Administration Chap. XVI. assert, it goes far to justify his annexation ; for that measure was welcomed by a peaceful and industrious people, as transferring them from a detestable tyranny to the really benefi- cent sway of the British. Subsequent events, too, have confirmed the choice of the Peguese ; and certainly not shown our acquisition of their soil to be anything but profitable to them as well as to us. The revenue of the country has sur- passed what we expected ; its population has remained contented and prosperous ; and the Court of Ava, busy enough with the Shans and Yunnan marauders on its eastern and northern frontiers, has been none the less friendly for want of one of those documents so much prized by diplomacy, and so little regarded by it in the West or East, when interest ceases to up- hold their maintenance. The annexation of Pegu was a salutary thing done questionably. That is the harshest verdict that can fairly be pronounced ; and if it be urged, as it may be, that a great right can never justify a little wrong, History retires, having nothing further to say in defence of the Governor-General. She can only contemplate with perhaps a dan- gerous sympathy, the action of her great in- struments in these mixed human actions, of which the world is ever ready to reap all the benefit, and to disown the responsibility. That we are masters over the splendid valley of the of British India. . 105 Irrawaddi and of the eastern riviera of the Bay Chap. XVI. of Bengal ; that Arracan and Chittagong are safe from Burmese dacoits, as well as American and French ambition ; that in the mutiny we had a depot of troops so near and yet so ex- ternal to the seat of rebellion that we could draw our first British force from it in the hour of peril, and send thither to linger and die, after its suppression, our grey-haired enemy the last of the Great Moguls all this is due to Lord Dalhousie. If we enjoy all the advantage of the act, we must take our share of its blame ; and seeing that this chiefly consisted in a few offences against etiquette and royal rights, it may perhaps be borne without much fret of conscience. 106 Dalhousie's Administration CHAPTER XVII. Chap.xvn. THE wars of the Marquis of Dalhousie have Annexations ^ een now narra t e d with the annexations to by war and in peace. which they led. Following the march of the armies set in motion by his powerful will, this imperfect chronicle has recounted how the Pun- jab and Pegu, two great kingdoms, were added to the British empire ; and lingered overlong, perhaps, on the curious spectacle of religions and races so different, provinces so wide apart in position and character, made to fall under the embracing shadow of our power. Desiring to judge of those achievements in a spirit free at once from impertinent cavil at a grand statesman, and from the too easy tone of mo- dern morality, it has pronounced the assumption of the Punjab an inevitable and justifiable step, and the annexation of Pegu, rather tech- nically, than morally or practically, open to question. In both cases, were it not suspicious to press that argument too much, a successful administration has vindicated the Viceroy's measures, answering one class at least of his accusers with the evidence of contented of British India. 107 peoples and prosperous lands. And tried, as has Chap.XVII. been said, by that touchstone, the rebellion, these additions to the territory of British India cannot be found fault with on the score of policy ; on the contrary, they were, each in its degree, safe and undisturbed depots of the power by which the English raj shook off a pre- mature fate. So far as these provinces were con- cerned, they resembled, indeed, those stout branch roots which the Indian fig-tree sends down to the ground, and which are often seen sustaining the foliage and fruit when the parent trunk is weak and shaken. But a new group of annexations has now to be reviewed, about which it would be very bold to say as much. Whoever can totally disconnect the conduct of Lord Dalhousie towards S attar a and the Mahrattas, towards the Nizam and Nana Saheb, towards Jhansi, Nag- pore, and Oudh, from the great mutiny, must be either very blindly devoted to the good name of this statesman, or imperfectly acquainted with the particulars of each case, and the effect which each had, and could not fail to have, on the only part of Hindoo society that attends to such things. In three of these instances, Sattara, Nagpore, and Jhansi, the Governor- General not only terrified the native governing class throughout India with the spectre of a resistless centralization, but struck at the root of Hindoo religion and cut out of Hindoo law o 108 Dalhousie *s Administration Chap. xvn. its highest and gentlest enactment. But it will be time to speak of each act in turn as it arises, and to briefly trace, when all have thus been recalled, the conjoined influence of them as regards 1857. Enough to preface here, that the narrative passes now out of the quiet waters of facts to be recounted, to enter a stormy sea of political moralities, whereupon the character of Lord Dalhousie as a just man is yet tossed. But to judge him a great Governor, it is enough only to notice the circumstances of this accu- sation. The charges are read against him from a golden roll of empire ; kingdoms are flung in his teeth ; and provinces made articles of impeachment. For his condemnation we must to a certain extent arraign ourselves, since if he " conveyed" these jewels of the Oriental empire from their rightful owners, it is in the crown of England that they still glitter, and this country that has played the "receiver." Annexation In the case of Sattara it is necessary to its & reviou8 retrace the annals of his viceroyalty back to history. their commencement, for Lord Dalhousie had been but few months in India when the first opportunity was offered, in the case of this state, of adding to the dominions which he governed. Sattara is a beautiful Hindoo city under the shadow of the Mahabuleshwar hills, close by the fountains of the sacred Krishna, the capital of the renowned Mahratta king- of British India. 109 dom, the metropolis of the great robber- Chap. xvil. chief of India, Shivaji. Pertaub Shean was the lineal descendant of that kingly freebooter, and by right of heritage therefore the lord of the Deccan, with its wide hill-circled plains and towering fortresses. Tew fairer lands are looked O upon by the sun than that which stretches off the edge of the western Ghats south and north O from Guzerat to Canara, the cradle of the bravest and manliest people in India, and a chief seat of her antique and copious learning. No valleys are fairer than those of the Beema, Neera, and Krishna, on whose banks the dark-stemmed aca- cias grow thickly, their lightgreenfoliage clouded with gold blossoms, and herds of antelopes pasturing beneath them in the tall river grass. Of this country Pertaub Shean was titular Rajah, but the usurping Brahmanical dynasty of the Peishwah had reduced the power of his family to a shadow. Afterwards the English ascended the Ghats, came into contact with the Peishwahs, and defeated BajeeRao, the last of their number, in the great battle near Poona. Before this, how- ever, the throne of Shivaji was restored to them at Sattara to counterpoise the influence of the Brahmans, and a treaty was concluded between the re-established rajah and the English. 1 1 "AfiTiCLE 1st. The valiant English Government on its part agrees to give the country or territory specified to the Government or State of his Highness Maharaja Chuttreputtee (the Eajah 110 Dalh&usie's Administration Chap. XVII. Much hangs upon this treaty, and it should therefore he noted that all its language seems that of a convention between equals ; for it would have diminished the influence of the restored court to treat it with the language of patronage, and this seems almost studiously avoided. Furthermore, the wording of the arti- cles reinforce the notion of sovereign equality, and of sincere establishment of rights in per- petual succession according to Hindoo law. His Highness is called " Chattra putti," that is to say, " a Lord of the Chattra, 1 or Yak's tail," the conventional emblem of Hindoo royalty. The words in the original for " sons, heirs, and successors" are Persian vocables and phrases, the first implying an own son, the next an- swering to the idea of an adopted son, 2 the third applicable to "assigns," representa- of Sattara). His Highness Maharaja Chuttreputtee and his Highness's Sons and Heirs and Successors (meaning a Regency,) are perpetually (. e., from generation to generation) to reign in Sovereignty over the Territory. On account of this, these ('. e., the Treaty and Territory) are given." 1 Compare the passage of the "Hitopadesa" in my own trans- lation : " What but for their vassals, Elephant and man, Swing of golden tassels, Wave of silken fan ; But for regal manner Which the Chattra brings, Horse, and foot, and banner, What would come of kings P" Book of Good Counsels, p. 48,, , 2 The equivalent in Mahratta being " dutt pootra" . ., adopted son. of British India. Ill tives, or a regency. The word "perpetuity" also, Chap.xvu. sudodit, could not have been rendered stronger ; for the vernacular implies "for ever," "as long as the sun and moon endure." Upon this document, then, the new sovereignty was esta- blished ; and it is difficult to see how an in- strument could better assure to a Hindoo prince the rights and the various modes of succession common to Hindoo thrones. This treaty was signed in 1819. In 1839, twenty years after- wards, the Rajah Pertaub Shean was accused of plotting against the English Government, in intrigue with the Government of Goa, tam- pering with the allegiance of native officers, and conspiring to the same treasonable end with the exiled Rajah of Nagpore. It is enough to say at this date that without pronouncing the prince guiltless, nothing could be weaker than the indictments against him. The witnesses against the rajah plainly and cumbrously per- jured themselves, the Viceroy of Goa disowned the plot, and declared the letters exhibited to be forgeries. As for the Rajah of Nagpore, an officer, who is mentioned here with deep respect, as one whose parliamentary virtue adds lustre to his Indian service Colonel Sykes found that Moodhajee Bhoslay of Nagpore was living upon alms at the time in a small court yard at Goud- pore, and could hardly furnish therefore the 25,000 lacs said to have been arranged for as 112 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. XVH. the price of treason. 1 It is not pleasant, in- deed, to dwell upon the circumstances of the dethronement, so discreditable were they. The rajah begged for a fair trial, but got none. A secret court^of inquiry accepted the charges as proved, while the authors were actually with- drawing them, and Pertaub Shean was deposed. He was taken from his palace in the night, carried eight miles out of the city, and placed in a cattle hut. Nearly half a million of gold, silver, and jewels were found in his palace, and escheated ; and his brother, Appa Saheb, was declared Rajah, the old treaty being confirmed verbatim towards him and his heirs, with a new preamble, by which it was notified that the British Government " had no views of advan- 1 Sir J. C. Hobhouse, a late President of the Board of Control, expressed his total disbelief of the Goa charge in the following words, taken from a speech delivered by him in Par- liament on the 23rd of June, 1842 : " The honourable member has also accused me of believ- ing that the Eajah of Sattara was about to bring 30,000 Portuguese from Goa to invade British India. Where the honourable member learned that I know not, but there is not a word of truth in it. As President of the Board of Control I knew that these charges were brought against the Rajah of Sattara, but to say that I believed them is what the honour- able gentleman has not the slightest foundation for saying." Yet on a previous occasion the same Sir J. C. Hobhouse, utterly disbelieving as he did the principal charge against the ex-Bajah, declared that he would never allow the Eajah to sit on the Gudee again ; that he would support the Government of India right or wrong, and put a stop to these " turbaned gentle- men" (alluding to certain native emissaries of the ex-Eajah) oiling London with their appeals. of British India. 113 tage and aggrandizement." To have selected Chap, x VI I. the brother at all seems to convey an indirect recognition of the rights of the family, which were afterwards set at nought ; hut this need not be pressed. The royal brothers died in the years 1848 and 1849 respectively, each childless, and each having very formally and duly adopted, according to the Shastra of the Hindoos, a " dutt pootra," or son of adoption. The language of Pertaub Shean's will 1 implies much doubt as 1 Translation of aYad, memorandum or paper, written as will or testament, made by his Highness Shreemun Maharaj Khetri Koorawataus Rajey Shree Pertaub Shean Maharaj Chuttraputtee, the Rajah of Sattara, now at Benares. " The Government of Bombay having in the most despotic, cruel, and unjustifiable manner driven me from my throne and country, exiled and confined me for the last six years to a place the unhealthiness of which is undermining my constitution, so as to have reduced me to a state of extreme debility, and to render the tenure of my life altogether uncertain, I have deter- mined that in the event of my decease, my wishes to the fol- lowing effect may be made known. " Having no sons by either of my wives, I have adopted, ac- cording to the custom practised in our Hindoo religion, as my son and heir, Trimbukjee Rajey Sisoday Bhoslay, the son of my kinsman, Bulwunt Rao Rajey Sisoday Bhoslay. This adop- tion has been acquiesced in by his mother, Gunawuntabai, to whom the choice of adopting another son in his place has been given. " It is my wish that on my death he, Trimbukjee Rajey Sisoday Bhoslay, may succeed me in my right to my kingdom, throne, property (private and public), titles, and in everything appertaining to my rank, station, and person " Hereafter, if I may have any son or sous by my surviving wife, he, my own son, shall be my lawful and principal heir, according to the provisions in this will or testament in all respects ; and my will is that my adopted son, the said Trim- bukjee Rajey Sisoday Bhoslay, may live under and assist my said own son according to our brotherly custom, and that my said VOL. II. 114 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. xvn. to the recovery of his rights, hut none of his adopted son's title to succeed to them. Appa Saheh also, upon his death-bed, named an adopted son to be his heir, sending for the boy out of a poor but kindred family; and his funeral pile was lighted by this very lad. Thus the " gadi" was vacant by death ; but if there could be any question at all about succession to it, it should have arisen between the adopted cousins, and, in their absence, between the many collaterals, of whom Mr. Frere, the Sattara Resident, wrote that " no one would think his claim sufficiently strong to be put in competition with that of an adopted son of either the late rajah or his brother ; because all other relations, who might otherwise be claimants, believe both adoptions to be regular. But there are many who might have asserted their claim, had no adoption taken place, and who may possibly assert it now, should they hear that both adoptions are inva- lidated ; and any of them, as far as I can judge of the facts of the case before me, would, were other competitors, save the British Govern- own son, agreeably to our forefathers' rules and regulations, may be a protector to my aforesaid adopted son, Trimbukjee Rajey Sisoday Bhoslay, as his legal brother. If I may never have any sons by my wife, my said adopted son, Trimbukjee Rajey Sisoday Bhoslay, is to be my lawful and legal heir as aforesaid " Done at Benares, 10th October, 1845. (Signed) " BAJAH SEBKA HUSTAKHU KHUD PBBTAUB SHBAN MAHABAJAH CHATTH A PUTTEE." of British India. 115 ment, out of the field, be able to establish aChap.xvu. very good prima facie claim in any court of justice in India to be the rajah's heir by blood, as against the British Government, in its cha- racter of heir to all who die leaving no natural heirs of their own ; which appears to me the only character in which our Government can, consistently with the treaty, lay claim to the Sattara state." This was the position of affairs at Sattara in 1848, when the Marquis of Dalhousie asked himself and answered in the negative the question "Is the British Government bound, as a matter of right and justice, to recognize one of the lads adopted, as being actually the successor of the late rajah, and heir to the throne of Sattara ?" To those but slightly acquainted with Hindoo Lord Dai- society by residence in its midst, or even to in ou g 81 ^ 8 th ea those whose knowledge springs from the most Sattara, and cursory study of their religion or perusal of / j*. w . their laws, to dwell upon the right of adoption India, and its practice must seem like trifling. " He goeth not to Swerga" (heaven), the Hindu proverb runs, " who planteth no tree, diggeth no well, and leaveth no son." But in the East to be childless is even more common than else- where, because early marriages and vicious ex- cesses are too unhappily the rule and not the exception, and children are hard to rear. Yet 116 Dalhowie's Administration Chap. XVII. if the Hindoo leaves no heir to his name and line to apply the torch to the " gouri " at his burning, to sprinkle the water of lustration, and to lead the pious " shradh " or ceremony of commemoration, his soul must wither in the worst torments of "Put" for long ages, unahsorhed and undelivered. With masses the Romanist smooths the way of escape for the souls of his co-religionists ; and, by a not un- graceful similarity of idea, the pious offices of a son, or one appointed to represent him, achieve the same for the spirit of the dead Hindoo. Deep under both beliefs as also be- neath that obligation to " scatter dust, 1 " if not to give formal burial to a Latin or Greek corpse lies the beautiful faith, that the affections of the living and of the so-called " dead," still act and react upon each other, 2 are still necessary, are still ordained, are still claimed. Thus, a Hindoo who has no male child is entitled or enjoined, like the Roman under Justinian's code, to the "jus adoptandi," the right of taking "any he will" for son. With Orientals, however, the right is, as now explained, also a duty, and one of the most imperative kind ; the object of adoption being altogether re- ligious, rather than domestic. The " super- stitious" belief is, that certain ceremonies 1 " Pulveris exigui jactu." HORACE. z Cf. Aristotle, Ethic. Nicb. upon the interest taken by the " Head" in the affairs of the living. Ch. x., Bk. I. of British India. 117 performed by a son, can alone deliver the soul Chap. XV n. of even the purest and most virtuous of parents from one of the direst quarters of purgatory : so that where no natural-born son exists, a son must be and is constantly adopted from the same tribe as the parent. The favourite cousin, nephew, or other relation is invariably thus chosen among the Mahrattas, even when such a step is no way necessary to secure to him the succession to property to which without be- coming adopted heir he would have succeeded as heir-at-law. It is a common error to suppose that adoption is a remedy for lack of heirs. Adoption is merely a selection from among possible heirs of one individual as heir, which he becomes in virtue of his election to the religious position of a son. So important is the rule, and so complete the privileges, filial and of the family, which its observance assures, that the case of one dying without opportunity or time to take this pre- caution is provided against. His widow then undertakes the selection, and other remedies are established for other cases. In all instances, as was justly pleaded against this very seques- tration, the word " heir," when used in India, means either an heir of the body, or an "heir" by adoption. Both are equally " rightful " heirs, and it is, indeed, difficult to convey to English minds the reality of the relationship created 118 Dalhvusie's Administration Chap. XVII. by the tie of adoption. Except in regard to marriage and the collateral descent of property, the paternal relation ceases to exist between the adopted son and his natural father, and the son belongs exclusively and entirely to the adoptive father. 1 Such is the law and such is the custom throughout India, and it is the respect we had shown for these laws and usages which, in the eyes of the natives, served hitherto in some degree to mitigate the invidious character of foreign domination. Such, too, was the law of the State of Sattara, for the rajah's own father was thus adopted in 1777. Indeed, the im- portance attached to adoption by the Mahrattas is shown by the instance of two brothers, whom the British Government successively re- cognized as descendants of Sevajee, and invested with the sovereignty, having inherited their position and influence over the Mahrattas as chiefs of the family through two successive adoptions. The line of Sevajee twice failed, and the father of the last two rajahs was only remotely connected by blood with the founder of the empire. The British Government itself, 1 A well-known case from the Legislative Code may illus- trate this : A. and B. were brothers. A. had two sons, C. and D. ; B. was childless. B. adopted one of A.'s sons, C., and soon after the son remaining with A. (viz., D.) died. Under these circumstances, C. could not succeed to A. as his son, but only as his nephew, through A.'s brother B. of British India. 119 in truth, had so thoroughly recognized the chap. xvu. right, and supported it in the case of other Hindoo principalities, that actually there were many more successors by adoption in the Hindoo royal houses than by direct descent, at the time that this universal privilege was denied to the Uajah of Sattara. Dutt pootras, or adopted sons, had succeeded to the throne of Scindia at Glwalior, of Holkar at Indore, of Pawari at Dhar, and twice successively to that of the Bhonslays at Nagpore. Among the minor rajahs, chiefs, and zemindars the case was notoriously the same; and down to the lowest ranks of the people, the graceful cere- mony of adoption, with its attending transfer of name, home, and duties, was an every-day occurrence in every Hindoo community, the brother's son being usually chosen. 1 But Lord Dalhousie had very early written, " I take occasion of recording my strong and de- liberate opinion, that, in the exercise of a wise 1 By Hindoo law, there is a prohibition against any other being adopted if available, although he may be at the time an only son. The Vyuvuhara Muyookhu, a work more followed in Guzerat, declares that a person who is about to adopt a son should take " the nearest kinsman to the adopter, among whom the nearest of all is the brother's son, for if among several brothers one of them have a son born, Menu pronounces them all fathers of a male child, by means of that son." The Mitackshara, another still more celebrated work on in- heritance for Upper India, has a commentary on Menu, and states, that he intended to prohibit the adoption of others, if there is a brother's son to be adopted. 120 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. XVII, Disregard of this law openly ex- pressed by Lord Dal- housie. and sound policy, the British Government is bound not to put aside or to neglect such right- ful opportunities of acquiring territory or re- venue as may from tune to time present themselves, whether they arise from the lapse of subordinate states, by the failure of all heirs of every description whatsoever, or from the failure of heirs natural, where the succession can be sustained only by the sanction of the Government being given to the ceremony of adoption according to Hindoo law." The death of Appa Saheb seemed to afford the first occa- sion for carrying this maxim into practice, and the Governor- General flatly recommended that course to the Directors. He wrote, "The words ' heirs and successors ' must be read in their ordinary sense, in the sense in which they are employed in other treaties between states. And in the absence of all evidence or reasonable presumption, founded on known facts, or on some special wording of the English instrument in favour of a wider interpretation, those words cannot be construed to secure to the Rajahs of Sattara any other than the succession of heirs natural, or to grant to them the right of adopt- ing successors to the rajah without that sanc- tion of the sovereign state, which may be given, or may be withheld, and which, by ordinary and invariable practice, is necessary to the validity of such an act of adoption by the prince." of British India. 121 Now it is true that the Sovereign or Su- chap. xvn. zerain had the right a right of formality to confirm the appointment of an adopted son of the vassal ; but then it was never exercised to forbid adoption. This was well understood, and thus there is but one point grateful to dwell upon in the matter, which is that the Court did at least waver before it decided ; yet The Court of in January, 1849, it responded in these terms : ^ e ec ^* 8 "The result of our deliberation is, that, con- view, curring with you in opinion, we are fully satis- fied that, by the general law and custom of India, a dependent principality, like that of Sattara, cannot pass to an adopted heir without the consent of the paramount power ; that we are under no pledge, direct or constructive, to give such consent, and that the general interests committed to our charge are best consulted by withholding it. The pretensions set up in favour of the adopted son of the ex-rajah being wholly untenable, and all claims of collaterals being excluded by the fact that none of them are descended from the person in whose favour the principality was created, the ex-rajah, Per- taub Shean, it follows that the territory of Sattara has lapsed by failure of heirs to the power which bestowed it, and we desire that it be annexed to the British dominions." Comments Thus fell Sattara to British India, with the on the An- banks of the beautiful Neera and 122 Dalliousie 's Administration chap. XVII. rivers, and the fruitful uplands of the Mahabu- leshwar spurs, a rich but not a lawful prize. These pages have nowhere shown too delicate a regard for " divine right," nor is this the age when, as against the necessities or will of peoples, it can be at all upheld. But Govern- ments are bound to respect Governments while their subjects accept them, and if Pertaub Shean had been deposed for misconduct, Appa Saheb, at least, was our faithful friend. He had been also an admirable ruler : he had, on all accounts, been conspicuous for charity, and left noble records of his taste and munificence in public works, as, for example, the bridges over the Krishna and Yunna. The fact that while the British Government was spending one half per cent, of their income on public works, Appa Saheb spent eight per cent, of his annual re- venues, speaks volumes; while the abolition of the Sati 1 celebrations proves him to have been both bold and enlightened. But let per- sonal matters be left untouched when the ques- tion is one of right : there is no argument that extenuates or exaggerates injustice. What right, then, had we to annex Sattara ? There is no accusation that the people were oppressed 1 Sattara was one of the first native states to abolish Sati. The measure was a completely voluntary act on the part of the rajah, adopted in compliance with the well-known wishes of the British Government, but not suggested to his Highness by the Resident or any one else. of British India. 123 under the throne which we recognized and Chap. xvu. maintained, as in the case of Oudh. There is hut one plea urged, in fact, in the minute of the Marquis, and hut one employed in the reply of the Court, which is, that Sattara was a subor- dinate state, and Calcutta the paramount power. Those are the phrases used by Lord Dalhousie and his merchant masters, and justification for both must depend upon their accuracy. But if Sattara was a subordinate state in the sense of possessing rights inferior to those enjoyed by Scindia and Holkar, what was the meaning of the Company's own proclamation, dated 1818 ? " The Rajah of Sattara," it ran, " who is now a prisoner in Bajee Row's hands, will be re- leased, and placed at the head of an independent sovereignty of such an extent as may maintain the rajah and his house." What was the meaning of the terms and titles of independent sovereignty, almost laboriously heaped upon the new rajah, in Mr. Elphinstone's treaty? There are no answers to this question that can quite satisfy a mind which refuses to confound expediency with principle. But abandoning such a position, which must perhaps be done in the days when treaties are laughed at even in Europe, the technical ground of an- nexation is still too narrow for our national honour to stand upon. Appa Saheb's son by blood, it will be conceded, would have had an 124 Dalhomie's Administration Chap. xvn. absolute right of succession (had such a per- sonage existed), even against a " paramount power," and why not his " heirs and succes- sors," then? Yet granting that a paramount power, in the lack of such a claimant, had right to bar the adopted son, the next heir to Appa Saheb adoption not occurring, or not being recognized by the English, Hindoo, Maho- medan laws, and by the law and usages of every civilized people, would have been Balla Saheb Senaputtee, next blood relative to the rajah. But the Court echoed the Governor- General in barring this claimant and all the other colla- terals as not descended from the ex-rajah, in whose favour the principality had been created. Why, then, have confirmed, in every phrase and word, to Appa Saheb, the treaty with Pertaub Shean ? Were all other privileges transferred except the privilege to have successors? History searches anxiously for a satisfactory rejoinder to this: it seems to leave the Marquis and the Court in the dubious position of employing one gross injustice to defend another. By raising Appa Saheb to the throne, we recognized colla- terals directly after the deposition of Pertaub Shean, otherwise why elevate him specially? and we rejected them directly after Appa Saheb's death. How was such conduct con- sistent? The adopted son of Pertaub was not adopted during his father's reign, and we were of British India. 125 not therefore bound to acknowledge him ; but chap. XVII. with regard to the "dutt pootra" of Appa Saheb, if charters were to stand, we were bound to recognize him. 1 If rules constrained us, we were bound, 2 if custom and prescription were to exist, we were bound, if opinion was to weigh, we were bound, if policy, we were bound, 3 and granting the very disputable claim of the " paramount power" to refuse consent, we were, still under obligation, rejecting the adopted heir to have owned a collateral. Re- luctantly, and with shame for an act which cannot and will not be now reversed, this is the one conclusion to which candour and veracity must conduct men. Such was the first of these annexations, Relation of which are charged as causes of the mutiny; and tne mu ti ny . it has been necessary to dwell with some tedi- ousness upon its features, because they will 1 Vide charter from the Crown granted to the United Com- pany of Merchants Trading to the East Indies, 21 George III. cap. 70, sect. 18 : " And in order that regard should be had to the civil and religious usages of the said natives, be it enacted, that the rights and authorities of fathers of families and masters of families, according as the same might have been exercised by the Gentu (i.e., Hindoo) or Muhammedan law, shall be preserved to them respectively within their said families ; nor shall any acts done in consequence of the rule and law of caste, respecting the members of the said families only, be held and adjudged a crime, although the same may not be held justifiable by the laws of England." 33 Geo. III. cap. 4252. 2 To refuse consent to adoption on the part of a paramount power entails by Hindoo creed 6000 years of hell. At least Mountstuart Elphinstone constantly maintained the advantage of a native state at Sattara. 126 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. XVII. recur presently. But for the conduct of the Collector of Sattara, Mr. Rose, during that red year 1857, it would have been harder to question some connection between them and rebellion, so far as the dominion of Appa Saheb was concerned. Conspicuous talent and courage, however, presided at Sattara, and foiled the plot with which the very ground there was undermined. But that an extensive conspiracy was afoot to restore a Mahratta dynasty, and that Sattara was its centre, were facts well known to those in authority, and afterwards made notorious by the spectacle of executions upon the maidan, and by the arrest and imprisonment of the Ranee of the State. Of all the cities of the Bombay presidency, Sattara during the rebellion saw most lives taken on the gallows, in defence of public safety. In Sattara, of all the cities of India, the first example had been given of an im- perious disregard for that rule of inheritance which is common there to the childless palace and the cow-keeper's bereaved hut. It is not a necessary conclusion, but in this case it will be a just one, that at least the princes and noble families of the West of India were made our bitter enemies by an act that chiefly threatened the rajah in his kingdom and the zemindar in his jagheer. But there is another proof in another Mahratta annexation or escheat which may be of British India. 127 mentioned briefly, because its facts and its horri- chap. xvn. ble moral is world-known. The "Peishwas" or ministers of Sivajee's great house intrigued Resumption the power away from his descendants, and made 5^^, Poona their capital, while a titular king was ion. Nana kept in a palace-prison at Sattara. The minis- ter's metropolis soon outdid the monarch's in splendour, extent, and population, and will some day become the inland capital of British India. Admirably seated in the wide plain watered by the Moota and Moola, full of fine old palaces and frescoed halls, with the superb temple of " Parvati of the Hills" overlooking it; crowded in its hey-day with learned Brahmans and warlike Mahrattas, the city was a queen among Hindoo cities, in the great times of Nana Furnavees and Bajee Kao, and is destined to a greater history yet. We fought the last of its native lords, and vanquished him, with the Nizam's help, on the plain at Kirkee, in sight of the hundred shrines of the city. The Mahratta confederacy fell, but we gave the Peishwa a city in the north-west, and a pension of eight lacs of rupees. He adopted a son to succeed to his city and to his pension, the city was Bithoor, the adopted son was Nana Saheb. The old Peishwa died, and Nana Saheb, possessing all the external and usual honours of ex-royalty, applied to be recognized as heir to him, and for a continuance of his pension. Firm to the 1 28 Dalhousie s Administration Chap. XVII. course of losing no chance of economy or se- questration, Lord Dalhousie rejected his claim. It need not be discussed now ; the parchments are washed out with blood : the well at Cawn- pore with its huddled victims the shrieks of English wives and maidens suffering worse than death the volleys of murderous musketry on the river the hacking and slashing in the com- pound of the Residency the frantic vengeance of our English soldiery, who swore to take a life for every hair of the butchered ladies, and did much to keep their promise; and that one fierce phrase of theirs, "aCawnpore dinner, "which was long current in our camps for three inches of keen steel driven into the yielding flesh and shivering nerve of flying sepoys; all these make calm examination of the Nana's rights impossible. It is enough to say he was an adopted Hindoo son ; he claimed the city and pension by right of adoption : the first was pro- longed to him for a time, the last was refused him altogether, and Cawnpore told in 1857 how a Hindoo prince's heart regarded Lord Dalhousie 's doctrine of expedient escheats. of British India. 129 CHAPTER XVIII. IT is a fact to help towards a comprehension of Cap. XVIII. Lord Dalhousie's energy in annexations, that his _ J m m Lord Dai- historians are puzzled to decide in what way best housie's to arranere the long series. The Viceroy him- ener sy V 1 annexations. self has dealt with the dazzling list in his own Their order, large manner, ticketing four of them as " king- doms," and three of them as "various chief- ships and separate tracts ;" yet under the last modest title, the smallest item of empire is larger than Yorkshire in population and extent of territory. And so " busy with taking king- doms in" was the Marquis, that, like veteran captains who have forgotten some of their smaller victories, he fails, even in his minute, to chronicle all his gains. It is a singular fact, that Sambulpore, with an area of more than 4000 square miles, although added to British India by Lord Dalhousie, is not mentioned in the record by him. But the division of his acquisitions into the two classes of " king- doms" and "chiefships" was one made by the Viceroy in ignorance of the dread event about to follow his administration. Approaching VOL. II. K 130 Dalhousie's Administration Cap. XVTII. as this work must, at each page, nearer and nearer to the gloom and rebuke of 1857 darkened as its brightest pages must be by the ever-deepening shadow of the rebellion, this consideration should dominate it. Lord Dal- housie's further annexations will be followed, therefore, neither by reference to the " reasons" for confiscations, nor by the nature of the ter- ritory taken in, but rather in order of date an order already observed in the cases of Sattara and Bithoor. Tiu- Nizam it was in the end of 1853, then, when the bad. Burmese war was well settled, and the vast machine of the empire was falling again into the brief regularity of peace, that the eye of the Marquis of Dalhousie, traversing the map of India, lighted on that central portion of it named " the Nizam's dominions." In that day these included the rich red and black soil about Omrawattee, the metropolis of the cot- ton fields which have since rescued Manchester from her shameful partnership with the slave- drivers. It included Berar, and Pal Ghaut, the fattest and most fertile tract, perhaps, in Cen- tral Hindostan, where poppy-heads and cotton- pods may be grown bigger than anywhere in the world. It included, too, the Raichore I)oab, between the Tombudra and Upper Krishna rivers a country almost as fruitful as the Berar district, and admirably irrigated of British India. 131 by tanks and wells. But "the Nizam's do- Cap. xviu. minions" include these no longer, thanks to the roving eye of the Viceroy ; not on account of bad government or for unpopularity, so far as is recorded ; but through the incapacity for accounts and book-keeping by double-entry shown by the Nizam of Hyderabad. The Nizam came into our power by a process Beginning of which has been often and successfully repeated in our Indian annals. There is a curious phe- nomenon in the insect world, 1 where an egg is deposited in the body of a living creature, which nourishes itself upon the substance of its unwilling nurse, gradually taking up all the fat, flesh, and tissues of the victim, till it dies, or drags on a futile existence. Our Government in India has frequently laid such an egg, in the shape of " a contingent," within the confines of friendly states. Oudh, Gwalior, and the territories of Scindia were thus treated, and by no other means were the dominions of the Nizam brought within the grasp of Lord Dalhousie. When the power of Tippoo Saheb had just been destroyed, the Nizam, for his friendship with the English, was menaced by native princes upon more than one side. Mr. Russell, the then Resident of Hyderabad, took pains that the peril should not be overlooked ; 1 The instance of the ichneumon fly, and of the New Zealand swift-moth (Hepialis virescens] are cases in point. 132 Dalhonsie's Administration Cap. xviii. and Chundoo Lall, the native minister, listened with fear and credulity, when he was told that the Mahrattas were powerful, that the Rajah of Berar meditated attack, and that Holkar and Scindia had large armies ready to move. Thus, the contingent force was saddled upon the Nizamate ; and it is worth remarking, that no formal recognition of it by either the Com- pany or the Nizam was ever produced. Lord Dalhousie knew as much, and in reply to the Nizam's question on a certain occasion, *' "Why the contingent was kept up longer than the proceedings of the Hindoo princes threatened war ?" he has written, " I, for my part, can never consent, as an honest man, to instruct the Resident to reply that the contingent has been maintained by the Nizam from the end of the war in 1817 until now, because the 12th article of the treaty of 1800 obliged his Highness so to maintain it." And earlier still, he had spontaneously denounced the ab- surd and costly establishment of this parasite force, which was upon the usual scale, when one orders and another pays. He wrote, in 1848 : "I agree with Colonel Low in thinking that we cause the contingent to become a much heavier burden on the Nizam's finances than it ought to be. The staff, in my humble judgment, is preposterously large. The pay and allowances, and charges of various kinds, of British India. 133 are far higher than they ought to be." Acap.xvin. more candid minute than usual upon the same subject, from the pen of a much less distin- guished member of the Council, runs thus : " I have always felt the difficulty of the posi- tion in which we should be placed, if the Nizam were to fall back upon the treaties, and call upon us to explain by what authority, and on what grounds, we had organized in his name this costly army, and imposed this in- cubus upon the revenues of his state, and had assumed the right of regulating its every move- ment, and of giving and withholding at will the services of the force for purposes connected with the administration of the Nizam's own Government." Thus there was no treaty -right, as in Oudh, to enforce the perpetuation of the contingent, and no reason but the easy ignorance of an ally to warrant the existence of five 1 brigadiers for a 1 " It consisted of eight regiments of infantry, five regiments of cavalry, and four field batteries ; yet for this force there were no less than five brigadiers with brigade majors. A military secre- tary has been appointed for it, who draws the same salary as the adjutant -general of the Bengal army. Although there is a superintending surgeon for the Hyderabad subsidiary force, who has only ten regiments and some artillery to look after, another superintending surgeon has been appointed for the con- tingent. Although the subsidiary force has its magazines on the spot, the contingent supplies its own stores, and has its commissaries of ordnance accordingly. The superior officers are all highly paid. By the rules of the force, officers are promoted to superior grades and to higher pay earlier than they would be iu their own service, whereby the cost of the force is propor- tiouably enhanced." The Resident, Nov. 19, 1851. 134 Dalhousie's Administration Cap.xvni. force of 8000 men with regiments of cavalry. But since for forty years the Nizam had borne the incubus, for forty years the British Govern- ment had very cheerfully imposed it. Its chief officers were British, its pay, training, and con- trol were in the hands of the British, and so thoroughly was it an alien force in the midst of its soi-disant Lord's dominions, that its own leaders declared it ready to march with joyous infidelity against its patron and paymaster. state of Hy- The way in which the Nizams had come to to- lerate or forget it was curious. With a natural hankering after an army, they had long enlisted all the Arabs, Seedees, and Rohillas, who liked to take service in Hyderabad, till at last that city was a kind of Indian Cairo. The Arabs, after parading to please the Nizam, used to plun- der to gratify themselves ; they would seize some district, levy black mail there, drive the cattle, and imprison the bunyas. Then the Nizam made use of his other army, and with " the favour of God and the Resident," sent a de- tachment to the fort of the unruly " faithful." There was, in point of fact, a regular pro- gramme. The second force marched, summoned the first force in its fort, were defied, fired a shot, the garrison bundled out at the rear, and the British marched in at the front. This kind of thing would occur half a dozen times a year, and at first it would seem to prove the contin- of British India. 135 gent worth its cost. But it was because the Cap.xvm. Nizams had no money for their Arah troops that they rebelled ; the troops were always in arrear of pay ; the treasury was, thanks to the con- tingent, helplessly in debt to the " sowcars," or native bankers ; the Nizam's candle was burn- ing furiously " at both ends," with everybody but himself interested in the speediest combus- tion. Driven to hard straits, the Court of Hyde- rabad encouraged, it must be confessed, although indirectly, the general turmoil. It was a com- mon practice with it to farm out a particular province to two or three rival personages at the same time, leaving them, while it pocketed the instalment of the price all round, to fight out upon the spot the knotty question of posses- sion. Por forty or fifty years this state of things had been quietly seething, justice starved, officials driven to embezzlement, Arabs left to insurrection, merchants squeezed, com- merce paralyzed, all by the " eternal want of pence" consequent upon the presence of the contingent, which, although not paid for with regularity, was still only a creditor for 750,000 sterling j 1 when the Governor- General grew suddenly weary of dunning the Nizam's minis- ter, and changed ground by observing that there were territories to the eastward of our last ac- quisition in India which were his Highness' s 1 The annual payment being 400,000. 136 Dalhousie's Administration Cap. xviii. to cede, and would very nicely cover even the debt of many years. Conduct of We have used the unhistorical phrase " dun- the British nm > " because it exactly describes the attitude Government Q to the of our Government towards the Nizam. We Nizams. treated him as Jew attorneys treat a client who has tried to live upon money borrowed at forty per cent., and found the system a financial mis- take. We knew his difficulties had mainly sprung from the force we fathered upon him ; we knew that no treaty sustained it, no neces- sity enjoined it ; but he was in our power, and we served the writ upon him with merciless legal logic and punctuality. There was but one ground upon which we could do this, with the equanimity of a power calling itself just and generous, and that was that during all these years he had not objected to this slow ruin. It is a good ground, perhaps, at common law, but it goes more to prove that native Governments live in grooves than that our subsequent de- mand was equitable. At the moment, too, that he objected, not only must all the arrears of pay have been forthcoming, but arrangements, it was hinted, must be formed for those " to whom Government is pledged, as being on the roll of the contingent, that they shall receive from his Highness justice and their rights." 1 1 " His Highness said, in an angry tone of voice, ' Sup- pose I were to declare that I don't want the contingent at all P' of British India. 137 Human nature is very susceptible to habit, and Cap. xviil. Indian human nature extravagantly so. The Nizams had become accustomed to the "old man of the sea," who hung night and day upon their shoulders. The desire to shake him off had passed away with the sense of helplessness, and to fully qualify our conduct towards them, it is only necessary to observe that neither the Resident nor the Governor-General ever treated the idea that the Nizam could discharge his debt, or continue to pay for the contingent, as other than visionary. Accordingly, the screw was gently but irre- The process sistibly turned down. In a minute, elegant as of annexa- all the papers of Lord Dalhousie are, he re- menced capitulated against the Nizam the history of his bond. "Antonio" was shown to have no leg to stand upon ; step by step the minute traces him, accepting the fatal gift of the contingent ; using it, writhing under it, cheating it, putting I answered him instanter, by saying, that I was quite prepared for that case, only that the removing of that force from his Highness's service must be done gradually, in order to preserve the good faith of the British Government towards those troops, which had been heretofore kept up for the advantage of thft Hyderabad Government, first by his father's consent, and then by his wn, and for a long course of years had been trained and dis- ciplined and commanded by British officers. Some years, I said, might perhaps elapse before all those men could either be other- wise provided for or discharged as they might respectively merit, and that until the whole could be removed from his Highness'a service, we must still have command temporarily of districts for their regular payment." 138 Dalhousiea Administration Cap.xvui. off its dues, accustomed to it, alarmed at it, repentant, economical, despairing, resigned, stoical. In 1851 his Highness had been served with what may be called the "Writ of the Calcutta sheriff, his debt being then about 750,000. Translate Hyderabad into lodgings in a sponging-house, and the embarrassment of a great native prince into the language of the debtor of ordinary life, and his Kharreeta to the Governor-General becomes a document of every-day life. He shudders under the tap of the Resident's constable ; he exhausts Oriental compliment in tremulous anxiety to gain time. " Your letter," he says, " filled with kind ex- pressions, so completely fragrant with joy, and indicative of your anxious desire for the better arrangement and welfare of this government, taking into consideration existing friendship and its continuance, and desiring alone the well-being of the Hyderabad Government, ex- pressive in every way of the most kindly in- terest, and viewing the mutual engagements existing between the two Governments, and in the mode of true friends, communicated to me what was imperatively necessary, and has reached me at the most auspicious and happy moment. " After an examination of the meaning of the friendly expressions with which it is filled, and the way of kindness pointed out, and the of British India. 139 mode of increasing the feeling of affection indi- Cap.xvill. cated in so friendly a manner, the veil is truly removed from the face." This last touch of melancholy irony is fol- The Nizam lowed by the announcement that thirty-four *? e * J 'his debt. lacs of rupees have been paid, 1 and that the rest shall follow before the close of the year. But 1851, as Lord Dalhousie relates it, passed, the Nizam could not keep his promise, and the alternatives were put bluntly before him, that he must pay or transfer districts of the value of not less than 350,000 sterling per annum, "so as to provide for the payment of the principal of the debt within three years," and further to afford a margin, " which should in each year be applicable to meet any partial deficiencies occurring in the supply of monthly pay for the troops of the contingent." It is unpleasant to lay bare an injustice which is not likely to be reversed, but the Nizam had certainly not even such tender treatment at our hands, as a fraudulent bankrupt. Surajool Moolk, his faithful Wuzeer, pointed out that the extent of district claimed would be equal to one-third of the Nizamate ; that the contingent would still exhaust another third annually, and that upon the remainder his master could not keep up the 1 The Government would not take the money at the current rate of exchange ; nor bills instead of coin, and Hyderabad was drained of silver to pay the first iostalrnent. 140 Dalhoiwe's Administration Cap. XVIII. state. The Nizam himself remonstrated plain- tively, " that the Honourable Company was not in the habit of transferring territory in payment to its creditors." The reply was short, sharp, and obvious : " The Honourable Company did not incur debts of the description under consideration." Col. Lowe Those whom inclination may induce to and the analyze more closely this odd blending of im- perial affairs and the Bankruptcy Court, will find the story culminating in a very curious conversation between the Nizam and Colonel Lowe, the Resident. The English gentleman was as usual cautious, adroit, and softly in- flexible ; the Rajah pathetic, perplexed, and irritated in turn. He had not paid the balance of his debt, and the pleasing scheme by which he expected to do it, that of farming the Wuzeer- ship to the financier who promised hardest to settle everything, had failed. But he was earnest in desiring to acquit himself ; even the Resident had acknowledged that he was " ex- erting himself in good faith to pay the whole." Yet the year had passed, the pound of flesh was due, and Hindoo Antonio was called upon to cede Berar by treaty. Colonel Lowe began the conversation upon the subject, by adverting to the fact that his Highness was aware that the treaty to that effect was then on its way from Calcutta. "Yes," said his Highness, "you of British India. 141 told me that you were going to propose a new cap. XVTII. treaty, but you never told me that such a treaty as this was to be proposed to me ; you never told me that you were to ask me to give up a large portion of my dominions in per- petuity (his Highness dwelt particularly on the word " perpetuity,") and he went on to say, " Did I ever make war against the English Government, or intrigue against it ? or do any- thing but co-operate with it, and be obedient to its wishes, that I should be so disgraced ?" The appeal ad misericordiam fell flat ; the speech led to a long address, in which the Re- sident tried to persuade his Highness that there was no disgrace whatever in forming such a treaty as that which was proposed to him ; but the Nizam replied with some lugubrious quota- tions from his country's classical poets, the last of which, translated, was the following: " Two acts on the part of a sovereign prince are always reckoned disgraceful; one is to give away unnecessarily any portion of his here- ditary territories, and the other is to disband troops who have been brave and faithful in his service." To meet this rather touching statement of his dilemma about the contingent and the cession, the Resident had no softer words than " sign the treaty." " Will your Highness con- 142 Dalh&usie's Administration Cap. XViii. sent to a new treaty ? m "I could answer in a moment," he said, " but what is the use of answering ? If you are determined to take districts, you can take them without my either making a new treaty, or giving any answer at all." But petulance did not help the miserable prince more than expostulation, and he tried another tone in his despair. " Gentlemen like you," said the Nizam, " who are sometimes in Europe and at other times in India ; sometimes employed in Government business, at other times soldiers ; sometimes sailors, and at other times even engaged in commerce, at least I have heard that some great men of your tribe have been merchants ; you cannot understand the nature of my feelings in this matter. I am a sovereign prince, born to live and die in this kingdom, which has belonged to my family for seven generations ; you think I could be happy if I were to give up a portion of my kingdom 1 The Rajah might hare expected the proposition, but he had never yet accepted it even verbally. At a former conference he expressed a very decided repugnance to making any alteration in the existing treaty. When Col. Lowe expressed an opinion to him that the only way for matters between the two states to be put upon a proper footing would be to add some new articles to the treaty, his first exclamation was, " God forbid that I should suffer such disgrace ! A change in a treaty, be it what it may, can never be an advantage to a sovereign who prefers, as I do, that there should not be any change at all. I don't want any uew treaty at all, how much soever you or any person or persons may fancy it to be advantageous to my interests." of British India. 143 to your Government in perpetuity ; it is totally cap. xviu. impossible that I could be happy ; I should feel that I was disgraced. I have heard that one gentleman of your tribe considered that I ought to be quite contented and happy, if I were put upon the same footing as Mahomed Ghouse Khan ; l to have a pension paid to me like an old servant, and have nothing to do but to eat, and sleep, and say my prayers." Here his Highness made use of an exclamation in Arabic, which expresses both surprise and anger, and with a manner and a tone of voice, too, indicating anger in no ordinary degree. After recovering a little, his Highness went on, " You are not quite so preposterous in your way of judging me as that ; but you, too, do not comprehend the nature of my feelings as a sovereign prince ; for instance, you talked of my saving eight lacs of rupees per annum, by making this treaty, as something that I ought to like ! Now I tell you, that if it were quite certain that I could save four times eight lacs of rupees, I should not be satisfied, because I should lose my honour by parting with my territory." In fact the Nizam was so reluctant to com- The Nizam mit political suicide, that force began to be reluctantly flifins tli^* contemplated, and a little more princely ob- treaty, stinacy would have caused the absurd spectacle 1 Meaning the Nawab of Arcot. 144 DalhoViSie ' Administration Cap. xviii. of the contingent established for the benefit of the Nizam, arrayed against him to despoil him of his finest territory. But a Hindoo does not push destiny to such extremities ; when his star wanes he accepts the omen with sub- mission. The Nizam announced that he would sign the detested treaty. It stipulated eternal friendship between the debtor and creditor; the creditor was to maintain henceforward, for certain uses of the debtor, 5000 infantry and 2000 cavalry, officered by English; and for the support of this force, as well as for the purpose of cancelling the old debt, certain districts were to be ceded to the British. Thus did we obtain all those fertile districts of Berar, the great cotton-garden of Hindostan, lying to the north of the hills which extend from Adjuntah to Woon ; the Raichore Doab, between the Krishna and Tombudra rivers ; the district of sixteen villages, border- ing on Ahmednuggur and Sholapore ; with a few other jewels picked out of the territory of the old Nizamate. It is some of the best soil in India: the Raichore Doab is irrigated by innumerable wells and tanks ; the Berar coun- try about Oomrawattee is the centre of the cotton cultivation, and by the advancing line of the Great India Peninsula Railway, Man- chester has already drawn from these provinces the bales which saved her from sharing the of British India. 145 penalty, as she once shared the crime of the Cap. xvin. Southern States of America. What is to be wished is, that the method of acquisition had been as fair as the spoil ; but it is impossible to deny that the Nizam was treated like a broken trader, whose books were badly kept. For the credit of the British Government, it should have been proposed to him more plainly than in the doubtful sen- tences of Colonel Lowe, to abolish the con- tingent, and charge the revenue of the country with an annual sum till the arrears were paid. The Nizam's question, " Why was the con- tingent kept up after the war ?" shows, that had we made it possible, he would have been glad to govern his own kingdom. Failing that, it would have been just enough to hold his terri- tory, as sheriff's officers, till the debt was paid, and then to have reduced the cost of the contin- gent to such a sum as the Nizam could meet. Flesh, and blood along with it, were taken by the Shylocks of Calcutta, with no Portia by to reprove the transgression of the bond. It is flatly impossible, unless one law of morality pre- vails in Europe, and another in Asia, to accept Lord Dalhousie's declaration, that " the con- duct of the Government of India towards the Nizam, in respect of the contingent and of all his other affairs, has been characterized by unvarying good faith, liberality, and forbear- VOL. II. L 146 Dalhousies Administration Cap. XVIII. ance, and by a sincere desire to maintain the stability of the state of Hyderabad, and to up- hold the personal independence of his Highness the Nizam." Relations of The prince thus " killed by kindness" died loathe** S De f re the rebellion, and his successor was pretty Mutiny. well disposed to us. 1 Thanks to him, and to the ablest native statesman in India the Wuzeer Salar Jung Hyderabad, the most fiery capital in the peninsula, was quiet during that perilous time. It swarmed with Arabs and B/ohillas, with turbulent Mussulmans of every turban and tribe, who had once already chased an English officer, bleeding and fainting, into his own house, because he ventured to interfere at the Mohurrum. The city was full of the " budmashes" of the land ; and had the Nizam chosen merely to let things alone, he could have taken bloody vengeance for his predeces- sor's experience of our bankruptcy laws as applied to princes. But Salar Jung, with his assent, kept Hyderabad quiet for us ; and in the face of that return of good for evil, it is rather discomfiting for an English pen to con- fess, that the restitution of the provinces, now the debt is paid, and ten times over, is neither likely, nor in the most distant contemplation. Annexation I n the case of the annexation of Jhansi, the of Jhansi. Hindoo law of adoption was defied more un- 1 Though he boggled sadly of late, as a Moslem and a despoiled man, at the silk ribband of the Star of India which we sent him. of British India. 147 warrantably, perhaps, than at Sattara. That Cap. xviii. it was a dependent state, " even more strictly than Sattara," is certain, to the extent that the little kingdom lay, of all other native dominions, at our mercy. But we had made it a " kingdom," declaring Ram Chundra, who ruled it under Lord William Bentinck, its Maharajah ; and the principle to which these pages adhere, as regards Hindoo states, is, that we are bound to treat what we have called a government as a government, until the power we thus maintain becomes notoriously oppres- sive to the people or dangerous to ourselves, when the higher or nearer duty discharges the lower and more distant. It was not alleged against the B,aos of Jhansi that their diminutive kingdom was badly governed ; on the contrary, the family was popular. Still less could it be offered in apology of annexation here, that the princes of Jhansi were hostile to us. They were Hindoos, which is as much as to say, in their own proverbial language, that "their hands being softer than the thorn-tree, they did not strike it, but sat down in its shade." They were even more obsequious to Calcutta than their independent neighbours. B/am Chundra B,ao asked it, as an immense and munificent mark of favour, that he might be permitted to hoist the English union-jack as the ensign of Jhansi ; and after displaying it from his palace, 148 Dalhmisie's Administration Cap. XVIii. he saluted the highly-respected emblem with one hundred guns. The entire house had observed the same prudent and polite be- haviour, which, though it certainly ought not to have weighed against evil government, had they been guilty of that, should have had its influence in what may be called personal deal- ings between the great capital of Calcutta and the little one of Jhansi. But in 1853 the then reigning Maharajah, Gungadhur Rao, was attacked by dysentery, and lay upon his death-bed. 1 He had been blessed with no male children, and the usual anxiety of a Hin- doo under such circumstances pressed heavily upon him. He sent, therefore, for a little cousin twice or thrice removed, Anund Rao, and, with the usual form of Hindoo law, declared him his adopted child. He wrote to the Resi- dent : " I am now very ill, and it is a source of great grief to me that, notwithstanding all my fidelity, and the favour conferred by such a powerful Government, the name of my fathers will end with me. I have, therefore, with reference to the following 2nd Article of the treaty concluded with the British Government, adopted Damoodhur Gungadhur Rao, com- monly called Anund Rao, a boy five years old, 1 He might have lived to have male heirs, and perpetuate a Hindoo throne at Jhansi ; but although complaisant in politics, he was orthodox, and would not taste the medicines of the English doctor. of British India. 149 my grandson through my grandfather (Na- Cap. XVin. beerah Juddee). I still hope that, by the mercy of God and the favour of your Govern- ment, I may recover my health, and as my age is not great, I may still have children; and should this be the case, I will adopt such steps as may appear to be necessary. Should I not survive, I trust that, in consideration of the fidelity I have evinced towards Government, favour may be shown to this child, and that my widow, during her lifetime, may be con- sidered the E/egent of the state (Malikeh) and mother of this child, and that she may not be molested in any way." It cannot be pretended here that the adop- tion was only " inchoate." The Article to which the dying Maharajah referred guaranteed the right of succession to the Jhansi house in perpetuity, either by direct heirs of the body, or by collateral or nominated successors in general. The heir, as has been said, was duly chosen from the dying man's " gote" or clan was adopted with the orthodox ceremony of the shastras ; the water was poured upon the father's hands ; and these rites completed, the prince died, and the boy, under his mother's regency, ought to have succeeded. That mother a princess of wonderful talent and energy, as was found afterwards, to our cost, in the mutiny earnestly begged that the boy 150 Dalhousie's Administration Cap. xvin. might be recognized in order to perform the funeral rites over the body necessary " to ensure beatitude 1 in the future world, to be his suc- cessor, and to perpetuate the name and interests of his family." But the Governor-General, raking up the history of the Soubadharship of Jhansi, and its dependence upon the old Peishwa Govern- ment, declared the occasion to be one which came within his maxim of lawful escheats. He thrust on one side the clear and complete act of adoption, and did not even condescend to notice the fact that, as a widow, in default of adop- tion by her late husband, has the right by Hindoo law to adopt in his name, and as Luk- shim Baee implored the Supreme Government to accept her husband's claim, the young Anund Rao was duly adopted, and had an overwhelming title to be recognized. It was sufficient for him that heirs male of the body were wanting, and he advised that Jhansi 1 Vide the Khurreeta of Her Highness Lukshim Baee, widow of Gungadhur Rao. The reader will not forget the doctrine of Hindooism . On the death of a man, the performance of his funeral obsequies (Kriya), and of the monthly and annual puri- ficational ceremonies, devolves on his heir. The principal times for performing ' Shradh' are firstly, eleven days after death; secondly, every month ; and thirdly, on the anniversary of death. The ' Shradh* consists in the offering of rice, flowers, water, Aijdj." of British India. 165 ncrs ought to outgrow. We speak, indeed. Chap. XIX. of "Austria," of " Prussia," of " Prance," but we need constantly to explain whether these ambiguous words mean a disjointed empire or the Kaiser : a solid, stolid, slow people, or the barrack-master anointed their king : a gifted nation, self-enslaved, or its silent and subtle master. So if " Nagpore" does not signify, in this case, the native inhabitants, if, as in the instance of Burmah, annexation was welcome rather than hateful to its population, the wrong done will be narrowed very much, or dis- appear altogether. But the Viceroy has hardly this defence; precautions had actually to be taken against the popular feeling for the Bhonslah House. Mr. Mansel wrote to Calcutta about a " floating feeling of national regret," and thought it " preferable to retain, at any rate for a season, the Kamptee subsidiary force, massed as it is, instead of distributing it in de- tachments over this extensive country, where in- tercommunication, during the rains, is so cut off over cotton-soil cart-tracts." Of course annexa- tion in India must always be unpopular with the quasi-aristocratic class, and acceptable rather than desirable to the shopkeepers and ryots, who are little creepers which love any strong tree. 1 Nagpore " acquiesced" in our assumption 1 The truth as it affects the whole population is well put by Mr. Mansel in the very despatch quoted. " The Indian native 166 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. XIX. of its five million inhabitants, though the Resident himself thought it would have been judicious to have preserved a titular sovereignty in the " City of the Serpent," and gained by his motion to that effect only the heartiest "wig- ging" ever bestowed upon " zeal." Manner of It would be grateful to close this brief review confiscation. of ^ Q measure which added the third of four kingdoms to British India, by recording that the manner of the usurpation atoned for its injustice. But that also was not the case. The treasure and jewels of the Royal House were seized, the trinkets and family tokens of the looks up to a monarchical and aristocrat ical form of life : all his ideas and feelings are pervaded with a respect for it. Its ceremonies and state are an object of amusement and interest to all, old and young, and all that part of the happiness of the world which is produced by the gratification of the senses, is largely maintained by the existence of a court, its pageantry, its expenditure, and communication with the people. Without such a source of patronage of merit, literary and personal, the action of life in native society, as it is and must long be, woull be tame and depressing. The British Government cannot be other than a mild despotism, and among the means of mitigating the despotism of foreign rule, I can conceive none more effective than the grant of titles of nobility and the maintenance of titular principalities. It is the bitter cry on all sides that our rule exhibits no sympathy, especially for the native of rank, and not even for other classes of natives. It is a just, but an ungenerous, unlovable system that we administer. The main energies of the public service in India are directed to or absorbed in the collection of revenue, and the repressing of rural crime, and the measures applied to the elevation of the native people are of little influence, while many of our own measures as in the absorption of a native state (if we sweep clean the family of the native prince and the nobility gradually from the land), are deeply depressing to the national character and social system." of British India. 167 Blionslahs were sold by auction, and the Maha- chap. xix. rajah's stud of elephants, camels, horses, and asses disposed of in the same way. Love of hoarding runs in Mahratta blood, and infested the renowned Shivaji himself; witness the trea- sure buried with a living human creature for its guard, in more than one of his forts. There is something natural, therefore, if out of har- mony, in the dolorous plaints of the ladies of the Court, who, having lost a kingdom, be- wailed to the Judge Advocate General at Nag- pore that a pair of their bullocks had gone for five rupees, and an Arab horse for twenty. 1 Indeed, a tumult arose in the palace-court to prevent the removal of the goods, which 1 The curious may like to see an instance of " putting up" at a Hindoo Distraint and Ejectment : MEMOBAHDTTM of Sales by Auction at Seetabuldee of the Live Stock of the late Rajah of Nagpore, commencing on the 4th September, 1854. DATE. DBSCEIPTION OF LIVE STOCK SOLD. Go's. Us. a. p. September 4 47 Bullocks . 5 135 Ditto 6 64 Horses and Ponies, and 10 Bullocks 7 50 Horses and Ponies, 8 50 Camels . 9 50 Ditto 11 6 Elephants & Ho wdahs 13 49 Ponies 19 4 Elephants 22 9 Ditto 23 40 Horses and Ponies . 28 4 Elephants October 9 3 Ditto 343 1,675 8 1,398 4 642 4 1,362 1,776 843 4 678 1,255 1,290 809 785 295 168 Dalhottsie's Administration CLap. XIX. nearly spoiled the business of the imperial " men in possession." But the goods and treasure were seized, and a further sum, in bags of gold and silver, to the value of 40,000, was disinterred from under the couch of one of the Ranees. But when certain other amounts were still missing, known to have been concealed in that very common Hindoo bank of deposit, the earth, the dying state of the Maharajah's widow had some humanizing effect, and the authorities ceased to excavate in the Zenana. Efforts of Meantime, the grey-haired mother of the Koyai Fa- palace made one more effort for justice, by ap- verse the de- pealing to what seems to a Hindoo like the tri- crce. bunal of another world, the " Company Baha- door" in London. The appeal had its usual slight effect upon the Press and Parliament here, and was a serious drain upon the treasury of the appellant in India, so that, wearied out, the Hindoo princesses yielded at last. " Unna- poornaBaee," wrote the BankaBaee, in a letter recalling her vakeels, "departed this life on the 14th November last ; and, well ! what has happened, has happened" The women of India have this Stoic courage in their nature, when by patient oppression you get to the bottom of their tears ; it made the Ranee of Jhansi a warrior, and it makes a Hindoo widow a suttee. Their last request had been that some of the of British India. 169 gold and gems hidden away should go to build chap. XIX. a bridge over the Kumaon river, so as to link their name with their country by one final act of goodwill. It was not granted. The utmost conceded to these very unfortunate Mahrattas was a certain allowance in the case of each, amounting altogether to 18,000. The aged queen-mother, who had thus been Conduct of deposed, despised, and despoiled, gave good for ^ e K y al evil at the mutiny. The Bhonslahs had influ- ring the ence enough in Central India to have caused im- Mutm 7 mense trouble there at the time of the seizure of Delhi ; for residing midway between Sattara and Hyderabad, they might have set on fire at once the Mahrattas of the Deccan and the Mus- sulmans of Nagpore. At that time, however, doubtless, not out of gratitude, but from a wise estimate of our power, joined with a rare fidelity to principle, she called all the leading men of Nagpore together, and strictly warned them not to bring disgrace upon her integrity towards the British Government. She was one of those who clearly saw that while we had three great bases upon the sea, Bombay, Cal- cutta, and Kurrachee, and no one to attack us upon that element, massacre was possible, but not extirpation. Sooner or later the sagacious old queen perceived that the ikbal of the Com- pany must triumph. 1 When the news of Cawn- 1 The astrologer of another Hindoo palace was consulted as 170 Dalhousie's Administration chap. XIX. pore and Lucknow came in, neither her judg- ment nor loyalty faltered; she denounced any who should move to aid this Mussulman con- spiracy, and swore that if her own children were concerned in such a plot she would give them up, asking nothing but their life. In the reigns of three Haghojis she had attained to " some- thing like prophetic strain" in the eyes of the people, and partly on this account, partly be- cause she suspected intrigue against us, and had made it impossible by her vigilance, Nag- pore obeyed her and remained quiet. Southern India was held down for us by two great natures by Salar Jung, the minister of the family which we despoiled of Berar, and by Banka Baee, the grandmother of the Prince, whose soul, according to Hindoo notions, we had doomed to hell. The western reader will think that more servility than virtue is argued by such instances ; and he may be right, for a "lively sense of favours to come," undoubt- edly mingled with the good service. It was all forgotten, however, in spite of promises, of reiterated pledges, that the Bhonslahs should be remembered in the days of England's triumph. By accident only was the death of the reverend queen communicated to the Secrc- to our fate, and did not ercn take the pains to make out a horo- scope. "Kill the Kaffirs to the last dog's son," ho said, " but the last dog's son )vill bring tho whole pack back again." of British India. 171 tary of State when it occurred; but Lorclchap.xix. Canning passed a severe sentence upon our treatment of her when he proclaimed Janogi Bhonslah the heir of Nagpore, without, how- ever, restoring his father's kingdom. In India, during the time of the Great Lord Dai- Moguls, the Nizam was Lord of the Deccan,^ e a ^ of and the Carnatic was a sub-province under the the Carnatic. Nizam. Its name is written in the first pages of our Indian history. The Company's earliest settlement, Tort St. David, was situated in this kingdom, and there we met, resisted, and thence finally expelled, French influence. It was our success in the Carnatic that cost Dupleix his fortune, and Lally his life. At its capital, Arcot, Clive won his earliest laurels, and it was in the Carnatic that Hyder Ali took terrible vengeance on its unhappy people for our faithlessness. In the Carnatic our influence, as our arms, competed with enemies more for- midable to our power than even the French, namely, Hyder and his son Tippoo. Gradually, however, we immeshed the land and its rulers in the net of our friendship and the noose of our protection. Of the debts and loans of the Nabobs of Arcot there is a ponderous litera- ture. For many years a very costly commis- sion and establishment were maintained to inquire into them, and large retiring pensions (uot quite undeserved) are still paid to the 172 Dalhousies Administration Chap. XIX. members and officers who survive so much arithmetic. Of their legality, of their classi- fication, of their liquidation, a volume of Oriental romance might he -written. But loner o o before their arrangement or discharge, the Carnatic had ceased to exist as a separate State ; its Nabob had been removed from the capital, practically deposed with smiles, and con- signed with compliments to a prison, misnamed the Palace of Chepank, situated under the History of guns of Port St. George. Mahommed Ali, our relations j ie first protected prince, was made Nabob with the Nabobs. of the Carnatic, to abate French influence, and to extend that of the British in Southern India. The Company provided a military force for the defence of the Carnatic, and the Nabob bound himself to pay its cost. The result of this relation was the, by this time, familiar one to the reader, that the Nabob had bought his throne too dear, and his want of punctuality was attributed to his misgovcrnment, instead of to our sharp dealings. The deeper and deeper he sunk in debt, the more we demanded better security. In 1792 Lord Cornwallis took away the substance of power from the old Subadhar of Arcot, and left him the comfort- able shadow of it in the shape of a pension of 21,421 star pagodas. 1 Omdut-al-Omrah suc- ceeded Mahomed Ali, and Lord "Wclleslcy, after 1 A star pagoda is worth eight shillings English. of British India. 173 crushing Tippoo Saheb, found, or considered chap. XIX. himself to have found, papers in the divan at Seringapatam, proving that Omdut had in- trigued in cypher with the great Islaniitish hater of England. Omdut-al-Omrah died rather conveniently before punishment, but left a son, Ali Hussein, against whom the Calcutta Government alleged the curious doctrine that he had inherited his father's unproved treason. Still AH might have succeeded if he would have stripped the throne of all the faded reality remaining about it. But the boy had spirit, so was set aside in favour of Azeem- ul-Dowlah, who, for a fifth of the revenue of the country, sold himself and the Soubahdarry together. So disappeared the Carnatic. All that now re- mained of its former greatness was to be seen in the beggarly and ruinous Palace of Chepank. There lived the nominal Nabob, treated with cheap salvos of artillery in his periodical visits to the Governor of Madras, received and fra- ternally embraced as an anointed Prince on State occasions ; sacred and exempt from the jurisdiction of British law ; but not suffered to stir an inch from the bounds of British bayonets, without leave first asked and ob- tained in writing : a king without occupation, employment, hope, or object in life ; in fact, a pensioned puppet. A Hindoo prince has 174 JDalhousie's Administration Chap. XIX. usually energies for three pursuits only. State- craft, religion, and debauchery. The Nabob had lost the first, and chose the third instead of the second, relieving the tedium of his life by dancing-girls and sham fights in his palace prison, girt by the tumble-down native town ; where dwelt in famine and filth the crowd de- scended from or hanging about the old Court. Azeem-ul-Dowlah died in 1819, and his eldest son, Mahomed Ghouse Khan, was allowed to succeed. And here the tedious clue of such details touches the present history, for Ma- homed Ghouse Khan was that prince whom the Nizam of Hyderabad regarded with such con- temptuous pity. " Like a pensioned servant," he was living at Chepank, wasting his youth in excesses; "Nawaub of theCarnatic" in much such a sense as the " King of the Gipsies" is a crowned Sovereign. Occasion of Mahomed Ghouse Khan died of dancing- resumption, girls and ennui in October 1855, at the age of thirty-one, leaving no child. The heir-at-law, therefore, alike by Mahommedan and English codes, was his uncle, Azeem Jah, who made application for the vacant " musnud." Govern- ment was very polite to the prince, and very sympathetic with his niece, the widow " Nabob Khyrc oon Nissa Begum Sahibah," but warned the Dewan of the dead Nabob not to recognize a successor, It seemed at this time as if death of British India. 175 was in league with Dalhousie, shaking king- Chap. xix. doms down from the pagoda-tree, so alluringly and incessantly did they fall to hand ready ripe. There was here, indeed, no kingdom to acquire in reality, but to abolish a title was a temptation, and the revenues of the phantom Nabobs were very desirable. In these words, therefore, the leading maxim of the Marquis was illustrated anew. "As the treaty by which the musnud of the Carnatic was con- ferred on his highness's predecessors was ex- clusively a personal one ; as the Nawaub had left no male heir, and as both he and his family had disreputably abused the dignity of their position, and the large share of public revenue which had been allotted to them, the Court of Directors has been advised to place the title of Nawaub in abeyance, granting fitting pensions to the several members of the Carnatic family." The narrative lingers with reluctance on a Observations case that has been twice rejudged, and one u P nifc> where, if there was scant justice upon one side, there was little dignity or desert on the other. The allegations defending this escheat are, how- ever, two ; namely, that the treaty of 1802 was a personal treaty, and that the Nabobs had been immoral ; to which Lord Dalhousie' s own hand added an opinion against shadowy kings and Nabobs in general, better than all his alle- gations, and based on four reasons : 176 Dalliousie's Administration chap. XIX. i. On the general principle that the sem- blance of royalty, without any of the power, is a mockery of authority which must be per- nicious. 2. Because though there is virtually no divided rule or co-ordinate authority in the government of the country (for these points were finally settled by the Treaty of 1801), yet some appearance of so baneful a system is still kept up by the continuance of a quasi royal family and court. 3. Because the legislation of the country being solely in the hands of the Honourable Court, it is not only anomalous, but prejudicial to the community that a separate authority, not amenable to the laws, should be permitted to exist. 4. Because it is impolitic and unwise to allow a pageant to continue, which, though it has hitherto been politically harmless, may at any time become a nucleus for sedition and agitation. These axioms are more or less sound ; the argument that the treaty was " a personal one" cannot be upheld. The Treaty with Azeem-ul- Dowlah is entitled, " A Treaty for settling the Succession to the Soubhadarry of the Territories of Arcot, and for vesting the administration of the Civil and Military Government of the Carnatic Payen Ghaut in the said Company," of British India. 177 and the fourth Article of the Treaty declares, chap. xix. that four-fifths of the revenues were for ever vested in the Company, and the remaining one- fifth for ever appropriated for the support of the dignity of the Nawaubship ; while the second separate explanatory article of the Treaty states, that "it is the intention of the con- tracting parties that the said sum of 213,421 pagodas, and the said sum of 621,105 pagodas shall be considered to be permanent deductions, in all times to come, from the revenues of the Carnatic." It has at least some force, too, that Lord Dalhousie's father-in-law, 1 while governing Madras, had observed in Coun- cil, " his Highness Prince Azeem Jah-Baha- door did not enjoy the place to which he was entitled in consideration of the position he lately occupied in communication with the British Government, and of that he still holds in relation to his Highness the Nabob, and to his succession to the musnud" Besides this, if the treaty were personal, and at an end, both sides of the contract should have been cancelled together. Either the succession should have been continued, or the bargain with the Car- natic Princes reconsidered from the old stand- point. It was not an alternative between Azeem Jah and annexation, but between Azeem 1 Marquis of Tweeddale. VOL. II. N 178 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. XIX. Jah and the representative of Omdut-ul-Om- rah, wlio was indeed no other than Azeem Jah. But, in point of fact, hy continuing the suc- cession twice in the same line, with whatever formalities and reservations, as well as by other acts of the Government of Madras, the cha- racter of a personal treaty had been withdrawn almost carefully from the compact of 1802 ; and was not predicated of it till chance tempted the all-absorbing Marquis with another ap- panage. 1 Lord Dal- ^^ e m anner in which these large admissions housie's de- of previous Governments were met and refined resumption! away by Lord Dalhousie, must be praised more for astuteness than strict honesty ; as when, to maintain the personal character of the Treaty of 1801, he puts his own interpretation on it into the mouth of the dead. 2 To account 1 Azeem Jah quoted, to avert his fate, a letter which should in itself have sufficed. It was from the Court of Directors, dated 14th January, 1829, and ran, " We disapprove of the principle of this arrangement ; but under the peculiar circumstances of the case, the Nawaub being an infant, and in delicate health, and the Naib-i- Mooktar (Azeem Jab) being the next heir, in case of hia demise, the appointment of Mr. Scott admits of justification." 2 " Lord Wellesley," he writes, " was not a man who did things without a reason. When, therefore, Lord Wellesley, while negotiating treaties with the Nawaub of Oude and others, and forming the treaties with those princes, their heirs and suc- cessors, is found negotiating a treaty with the Nawaub Azeem- ul-Dowlah alone, and omitting all mention in it of heirs and successors, it is very certain that Lord Wellesley did not intend to extend the provisions of that treaty beyond the life of Azeem ul-Dowlah himself." of British India. 179 for the accession of two Nabobs after Azeem- chap. xix. ul-Dowlah, he declares that they were permitted to succeed without reference to inheritance, and he proceeds to deal with the expressions quoted from the despatches of the Court and the Go- vernor by the same special pleading. " The uncle of the late Nawaub," thus pronounces our Marquis, "supports his present claim to the succession by reference to certain allusions which have been made to him, in former official papers, as the heir of his nephew Mahomed Ghouse. Undoubtedly these allusions were made ; no attempt need be used to evade them, or to weaken the full force of their meaning, such as it is. They may be readily admitted to indicate an expectation on the part of the British Government that, if Mahommed Ghouse should have no children, his uncle, Azeem Jah, would be allowed to succeed him as Nawaub. But to indicate an expectation, or even an intention, is not to recognize or confer a right. The words, therefore, which have been quoted, conferred no right on Azeem Jah, and conveyed no pledge or promise of the succession to him ; and, although they indicated a favourable in- tention on the part of the Government towards him, the Government has since had but too much reason to forego all such intentions in favour of himself and the members of the family." The utmost meaning of the last sen- 180 Dalhousies Administration Chap. XIX. tence is, that the Nawaubs were immoral and prodigal, and Azeem Jah somewhat especially so. But if that be fatal to royal and princely claims in India, two-thirds, nay, seven-eighths of the " musnuds" and " gadis" within its limits might have been purged by the Marquis without depending upon the sterility of Ranees or the incapacity of Maharajahs. Thus fails, then, this part of the plea for obliterating what Sir Thomas Rumbold called in 1780, "the first and most distinguished of our connections, the Soubadhar of Arcot." And if the spoliation is to rely upon the charge of treason against the great uncle and great grandfather of Azeem Jah, it is first necessary to repeat the doctrine of inherited crime alleged of old against Ali Houssein, and next to prove that treason was meditated between the Carnatic Nabobs and Hyder Ali or Tippoo Sultan. This cannot be done, and that it could, was never even credited by those who have most closely examined the evidence j 1 it was indeed flatly gainsaid by the 1 Sir John Malcolm saw proof, it is true, in the phraseology of correspondence. "If the very circumstance of Omdut- ul-Omrah'a having transmitted a cipher to Tippoo Sultan was not of itself sufficient to establish the treacherous nature of his views, the names which, it was discovered by the key to the cipher, were used to signify the English and their allies, removed all doubU upon this subject. The English were designed by the name of " Tara Wareeds," or New Comers ; the Nizam by that of " Heech," or Nothing ; and the Mahrattas by that of " Pooch," or Contemptible." But it is asking too much of Hindoo friendship that it should be sincere behind the back. of British India. 181 first lawyers of the House of Commons inChap. xvr. 1808. 1 There is no heroic suffering in this tale, it will be perceived ; it is simply one of an old and respectable family degenerating from power to poweiiessness and idle vice, and then thrust down lower still to comparative poverty. It is merely a story of injustice in corpore vili, which to the thoughtful mind is not less sad, perhaps, than any other and bolder form of injustice. 2 But again, as in the case of Nagpore, the act of Lord Dalhousie, illuminated by the red flames of the mutiny, has been reconsidered and re- pealed to some extent, and the Nabobs of the Carnatic enjoy and waste their pensions once more. A group of minor fish which were enclosed Other and in this wide net of the Governor- General, must * or *****- atiODg. now be briefly described. The Rajah of Tan- Tanjore. jore, like him of the Carnatic, was a titular prince only. The East India Company bar- 1 Sir John Anstruther and Sir Samuel Romilly. - The real reason for choosing Azeem Jah as the victim is thus naively stated by the Governor-General : " The political power is in the hands of the British Government, and in them solely it must be retained ; and it is injudicious to leave to any one needlessly the opportunity of asserting any co-ordinate authority. With respect to the Arcot family, the British Go- vernment must be prepared to settle the question of their position at this conjuncture for a long period; for though the Prince Azeem Jaii has no legitimate sons, yet he has brothers who have, and if the royal titles and privileges are now continued, they are likely to be permanent for some generations. I need not repeat my opinion that this opportunity should be, and can be, taken for abrogating those titles and privileges." 182 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. xix. gained for the territories of the family in 1799, and bought them on condition of preserving to the princes their titles and a stipend. This was a house in which, contrary to Hindoo cus- tom, no Salic law ruled the widow or daughter might succeed the husband or father ; and on the demise of Bara Saheb, the fifth Maharajah, his relict, Soojana Baee, did inherit as heir. But in 1855 the Maharajah Sivaji died, and left a widow and two daughters surviving. Yet, true to the steady policy of seizing every chance of aggrandizement, Lord Dalhousie refused to recognize any one of them as successor, equally, as it must appear, against treaty and precedent. A rich set of jaghires, the estates of the mother of Sivaji, yielding three lacs of rupees annually, was confiscated at the same time. The Ranee of Tanjore appealed from Calcutta to Leaden - hall Street, thence to the Supreme Court at Madras, and claimed 700,000 as the pro- perty of her husband. Madras decided in her favour, but the Company appealed to the Privy Council. The Privy Council reversed the Indian decision, and only upon the ground that, as the Governor- General had acted for the Com- pany in his interpretation of a treaty, a law court could take no cognizance of the Ranee's plaint. To the property and the titular digni- ties of Tanjore, Lord Kingsdown declared that the Company had " no legal claim :" to inter- of British India. 183 pret the treaty, and their obligations under it, Chap.xix. they had, he ruled, the old-established right of irresistible power. There is also a sub-group of small annexa- Angool. tions which must have a place here, as being necessary and justifiable, though not im- portant. Such a one was the earliest of all among the acquisitions of the Marquis, the assumption of Angool. The Rajah was a mere mountain barbarian with a title, but without much else except a breech-cloth. Angool itself was a small state of the tributary Mahals, under the superintendence of the Commissioner of Cuttack. The Rajah was strongly sus- pected of aiding the Meriah sacrifices, to which further allusion will have to be made and in 1848 he had the temerity to resist the authority of his seigneurs. His territory was taken from him, and was quietly settled by a Bengali deputy-collector, with the aid of half- a-dozen peons, while the example had its due effect on other tributary and barbaric Rajahs. The tract of land seized from Sikkim was Sikkim. very justly taken, again, as a punishment of unruly savages, to whom we had long paid a rent for Darjeeling in the Himalayas with a regularity which deserved better return. The facts of this " guerillita" and its conse- quences are soon told. Dr. J. B. Hooker, an eminent botanist, had been travelling in the 184 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. XIX. Higher Himalayas of Sikkim, prosecuting his researches with ardour and success. It was made an especial request by the Governor- General to the Sikkim Rajah, that every facility should be afforded to the naturalist in the prosecution of his enterprise. The Rajah, however, systematically placed every obstacle in his path to thwart his projects. Such was the untoward aspect of our relations with this Chief, when the Superintendent, Dr. Camp- bell, obtained the permission of Government to visit Sikkim, with the three-fold object of joining Dr. Hooker, accompanying him back to Darjeeling, and of obtaining an interview with the Rajah, in the hope of bringing him to reason, as regarded his future intercourse with us. The travellers arrived at Toomlong, where the Rajah held his court ; but that Prince took not the slightest notice of them, so that they left Toomlong the next morning, and, after three or four marches, gained the summit of the Chola Pass. On the first march they were overtaken by a deputation from the Rajah with a trifling present, and a request they would return forthwith, as it was ex- plained to be not the custom in Sikkim to notice travellers on the first day of their arri- val. They determined to proceed, being well aware that the neglect shown was premedi- tated. At the Chola Pass they were met by of British India. 185 three Thibetan soldiers, and a little further Chap. XIX. down by a party of about one hundred more, with two mounted officers, who left the saddle, and after a short parley, civilly but firmly re- fused to allow Drs. Campbell and Hooker to proceed to Yakla. On turning round to go back to Sikkim, they saw fifteen or twenty Sikkim soldiers, who commenced hustling and insulting them. They appealed to the Thibetans for protection, who interfered, and caused the Sikkimites to desist from violence while they were on Thibetan ground. As soon, however, as they were fairly in the Sikkim territory they were met by fifty or sixty Sikkimites, from the Soubah of Sing- tarn, and then commenced a series of indig- nities, personal outrages, and tortures upon Dr. Campbell painful to relate. No sooner had he arrived, weary and dejected, at the end of the march, Chumnako, than the Sikkimites seized and bound his hands and feet; they knocked him down, kicked him, pinioned his hands behind his back, tying the right wrist in the bend of the left elbow, so that he was unable to bend it, and cruelly tightened the cords, from time to time, to torture him. While seated, and before he was fully pinioned, though helpless, an immensely powerful fel- low bent his neck down upon the chest with all his might, three or four times, with the 186 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. xrx. evident intent of breaking it, but happily with- out that effect. They then threw him down again, and jumped upon his ribs. Shortly after, his feet were untied, and he was taken before the Singtam Soubah to be interrogated. The object of the interrogation was to prevail on him to affix his signature to certain docu- ments which the Soubah was to dictate. The Soubah was agitated and furious with passion. Dr. Campbell said, " If you keep up this cruel torture, I may be induced to say or to do any- thing ; but in such a case, the authorities to whom I am amenable will not be bound by my acts." The demand was repeated several times, but his answer was uniform. The Soubah, then, with furious gestures, pointing an arrow at his ear, shouted out, " Will you not hear?" and made signs which could not be mistaken, that his throat should be cut if he did not conform. Dr. Campbell retained his self-possession throughout this scene. The cap- tives were presently marched back to Toomlong, suffering indignities during the whole way. The soldiers were evidently bent on violence, and would have put their designs into execu- tion, if Dr. Campbell had given them the least provocation. Towards the end of the last march, he was so overcome with fatigue and ill-treatment, being refused either chair or pony, that he could proceed no further ; and of British India. 187 they compelled him to take hold of the tail Chap. XIX. of a mule ridden by a native. In this man- ner he was dragged forward, exposed to the gaze of the whole population, and lodged in a narrow crib, twelve feet by four, all commu- nication between the captives and their friends at Darjeeling being interdicted. However, at last a brief letter was received from him, at Simla, in which he detailed the gross injuries he had received from the Bajah. Of course these could not be tolerated. A force was pushed up, at the risk of irritating the savages to murder, but as the only resource, and the mountain bandit eventually released his prisoners. His exploit cost him the 6000 rupees payable, before that time, every year, for the sanitarium of Darjeeling, the whole of the Sikkim-Moorung hill and plain, a tract of much fertility, and now beginning to be covered with cotton and tea. The act has not kept Sikkim quiet, or civilized it, but nobody has ever challenged its justice or necessity. In the same year, the petty state of Sum- Sumbhui- bhulpore was left without an heir. The Rajah, pore> however, in his lifetime is said to have enter- tained no desire except that his country should pass to British hands, and it so lapsed without complaint or claim. A rich and productive, but malarious tract, its jungles and swamps prospered so much under its new masters, that 188 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. XIX. it quickly yielded a revenue of 50,000 rupees, all charges paid. No discontent was heard at annexation ; and here, too, though, perhaps, partly because " de minimis non curat lex, " morality has never heen invoked. AliMoradof To comprehend the case of the Meer AH Khyrpore. ]y ora d j O f Khyrpore, who fell also under the Hindoo men- wide sweep of Lord Dalhousie's maxim of dacity. rule, the reader must comprehend Hindoo mo- rality. It is by no means the same as that which governs, or should govern, western habits. It does not reach and out of sound of the sub- lime sermon upon the Syrian mountain it could not ever reach the higher laws of human conduct which we possess and disobey. But let not the occidental citizen be rashly self- satisfied : with a tenth part of his chances, the average Hindoo, thanks to natural aptitude and half- forgotten ages of deep, philosophical teach- ing, has a gentler, more patient, more dutiful and affectionate nature than the average Chris- tian. He is far more regular in prayer and alms, more faithful to his family, and more re- signed in affliction or pain ; his courage, except in the cities, is great, his physical endurance stands as an argument against animal food, and he is faithful to his master and his salt, as the rebellion proved far more than it disproved. But he lies, as Peter lied at cock-crow, as Jacob lied to Isaac, as Zopyrus lied to the Babylonians ; as of British India. 189 the Eutai, our noble ally at Soochow, lied to the chap. XIX. poor people within its walls, who were butchered for trusting the British guarantee ; in fact, as Asiatic races have been wont to do under Asiatic modes of society. " The lie of the mind," and the "lie of the mouth" too, are regarded as quite distinct in Oriental ethics, though Plato knew and taught that they were one. 1 Still, if the great Athenian's heart could not grasp other truths, the truth of marriage, the truth of chastity and natural love, and the truth of poetry, there can be no wonder that an Eastern civilization, stag- nating for centuries under despotism, has not reached practical veracity. One word of abuse in English, sooner than any other, brings the blood with a red flush even to the cheek of a coward ; but it excites no particular emotion in the Hindoo. Denominate him a " fowl" or a "pig," " soor" or " murgeh" and his soul rankles against the insult. But falsehood is so ready a weapon for his weakness, and the world is so strong, that the Hindoo only tells truth when quite convenient ; at other times he remembers his proverb, " An oath for the mouth, and a cake for the belly," and natters, promises, or pledges himself to the untrue with the almost innocent mendacity of a timorous 1 His countrymen, also, who hissed at the theatre that immoral line of Euripides : 6fj.(afj.ox\ ^ 5e , U aTan.i oversights that arc past and punished the sll i,i cc t of Lord Dalhousie's finances must be of British India. 219 abandoned. It is of no use now to pause over chap. XX. his blunder about the conversion of the five per cent, debt, and the shutting up of the four per cent, loan measures where the self-will of the man showed itself most, and his power of self -justification least. He was reproved in his own time for these mistakes, and the faint apology in his minute may be accepted as penitence enough from a proud spirit. Moreover, the details of these things have no longer any interest ; new men, new methods, new necessities, and new resources have arisen, and the pre-mutiny account is closed. If those who now rule India from a first-floor in Victoria Street will avoid the fallacy of believ- ing the present surpluses anything like per- petual, with the present army and home establishment ; if they will discard their dan- gerous ideas of economy at the wrong end, by starving the services and underpaying their native officials ; if they will truly govern India for the Indians, and not to maintain estab- lishments at home, it may be said that a happy as well as a new era has commenced. But in that halcyon time, if it is come at last, let the share of Lord Dalhousie in the public works which are regenerating the peninsula be re- membered against his deficits of revenue and o deficiencies of precaution. The external trade of India grew uninterruptedly under Lord 220 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. XX. Dalhousie's sceptre, mainly, perhaps, by being a rood deal let alone. Calcutta doubled its External trade of tonnage in his eight years ; and the commer- India under c j a j advance of Bombay under one of the best his rule. typical business men of our race, Mr. Richard Spooner, was still more extraordinary. 1 Bom- bay, and not Calcutta, is, it seems, destined to be the maritime capital of India, though the city of the Ganges may yield its proud crown tardily, and dispute the supremacy in com- merce long. But if only a portion of the cot- ton trade be continued to India, after slavery and oligarchy are crushed in the Southern States, Calcutta will quickly become merely the Venice of the Asiatic Italy, and Bombay her flourishing Leghorn. Not only does the great increase of the Bombay trade under Lord Dalhousie, and before the effect of the cotton crisis, point to this ; but the growing popularity of Poona, the old Mahratta capital, already chosen by the wealthy natives of the West as their inland capital, and all but designated as such by Government, tends the same way. If, indeed, it be always necessary to 1 So early as the year 1853, the number of ships employed with India, Singapore, Ceylon, Hong-Kong, and China, was English, 1,356 ; French, 171 ; Dutch, 505 ; making a total of 2,032 Teasels, amounting to 1,143,453 tons, at a valuation of about 30,000,000. The exchange of merchandize annually between Europe, India, the Indian Seas, and the extreme East, wa then computed at 1,300,000 tons, and a value of 40,000,000. of British India. 221 hold India by force, the sea should certainly Chap. XX. wash the compound of its Viceroy ; for from the sea we draw our strength ; and while we held the sea, as in 1857, it was madness in Mussul- man or Hindoo to challenge our supremacy. But when we dare to transfer the heart of our authority inland, the fair city of the Peishwas, with its delightful climate and rich surround- ing country, will be our natural capital ; linked with all India by roads, railways, and tele- graphic wires, and with Bombay by the grandest and boldest piece of engineering in the world, which conducts the railway down the slopes of the Syhadree mountains, and will make a new Athens of Poona, in years to come, with Bombay for its Piraeus, and the Great India Peninsula Line for the Long walls. It will be presently seen that Lord Dalhousie bore his part in the great changes of com- merce and public works that are pointing this way. For example, among the enactments AH ports in which his rule contributed to the expansion f ^ e ia ma ' of Indian trade, was the enfranchisement of the coasting industry of Hindostan. Although the great harbours of the Peninsula be few, there are innumerable inlets and lagoons favourable to fisheries and petty trade, to which the pattimars and bunder boats of the Malabar and Corornandel coasts resort now without let or hindrance. Aden was also made 222 Dalhouaie's Administration Chap, xx a free port ; laws for the collection of excise in The Straits were consolidated, and efforts were made, although partly vain, against the resolute frauds of the mahajun and ryot, to stop that deterioration of cotton in the pack- ing and pressing which has given India a had name in Manchester, after she has really ceased to deserve it. Lighthouses were placed in dangerous parts of the Eastern and Indian Seas, as at Pedra Bianca, in the Narrows of Singapore. Merchant Service Acts were passed to protect sailors from crimps and from the swarthy harpies of the Black Towns in Cal- cutta, Madras, and Bomhay. Perceiving, too, The iiivcr that Gunga herself had conspired against the city of palaces, and was silting up the Hooghly stream, so as to keep large vessels out of the river, Lord Dalhousie bent his energies to find another river mouth for Calcutta, and force the mud-banks to break the threatened blockade. Twenty-five miles from Calcutta is a deep salt-water creek, called the Mutlah ; and to avert the menaced calamity of a sus- pension of the trade of the city, the Viceroy began the works there. It was a labour which he indicated and commenced, without being able to complete ; and there are signs that we have forgotten it too long. Each year 32,000,000 sterling goes from Europe to Calcutta, and by this one inlet of the Hooghly. There is of British India. 223 none other practicable, for, though fifty mouths Chap. XX. pour out the Ganges water into the Bay of Ben- gal, they radiate through a delta where there is only one eligible spot in the swamp for a great commercial and imperial city, and that Calcutta occupies. But the Granges, for ten thousand monsoons, has brought down all the soil washed away from Hurdwar to Patna, and from Patna to Dum-Dum. Like its parent tide, the Hooghly-branch also sweeps away whole estates in a night, to deposit half of them at the next bend of the river, and bring the rest in a whirl of yellow sand and mud down towards the sea. Checked by any eddy or point, this alluvial matter becomes fixed ; and in that way Chundernagore, above Calcutta, where the French ships used to ride, has been turned into a port for budgerows only. Chinsurah, Avhere the Dutch transports safely anchored, has not six feet of water ; and Serampore can never again see a fleet at anchor where the Danish squadron moored. Calcutta was menaced with the same fate under Lord Dalhousie, and it actually impends over it now. Two of the three channels which he still left open are closed already, and the third, while these pages are penned, is threatened with almost instant congestion, so far as the class of ship is concerned used in the chief Calcutta trade. Bold efforts have followed these, instituted by 224 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. XX. ; the Government, to relieve the clicking mouth to tempt the tide into new channels even to turn another river into the failing Hooghly. So early as 1857, the peril was illustrated by the fate of the " Cleopatra," which touched the " Muckraputtihump," and in five minutes was swept bottom uppermost. At present, tremendous as the import of such a statement is, the commerce of Calcutta depends upon a single throat, the muddy fauces of which are contracted to all but the suffocation point already, and may soon strangle Calcutta the Superb. This is the most serious of all the dangers which threaten the supremacy of the City of Palaces, and Lord Dalhousie foresaw and fought against it, on what now seems to be the only plan of a successful campaign. The maxim, indeed, which he carried into con- s tructive matters as regards India was as down- ... right as that upon territorial accessions. " The ordinary revenues of the empire," he wrote, " are amply sufficient to meet all its ordinary charges, but they are not sufficient to provide for the innumerable and gigantic works neces- sary to its due improvement. It is imprac- ticable to effect, and absurd to attempt the material improvement of this great empire by an expenditure which shall not exceed the limits of its ordinary annual income." The old Court of Directors may claim some share The Vice- roy's bold- ne8 in public ex- penditure. of British India. 225 in the energetic way in which this rnaxim was Chap. XX. applied : they pressed upon their willing Governor-General the necessity of taking in hand " public works," and he, having just returned from a tour through his vast and populous charge, attacked the task in the " root-and-branch style" of his mind. In se- lecting Major Kennedy, too, as Consulting Engineer to Government for the introduction of the telegraph, the locomotive, and the rail, his judgment of personal character was shown. Chief and subordinates threw themselves to- gether into the great schemes which promised so much for India and for her masters. It was a dull eye, indeed, that could not see beforehand that railways in India were an ,, ., , Railways i essential preliminary to economy and efficiency India, in our military and civil administrations ; to the prevention of that curse of detached provinces which unequal rains had hitherto inflicted, local famine; and to the uniform dispersion of commodities ; to vigour and activity in manufacture and commerce ; to the increased consumption of English goods ; to the power of eventually competing with America in furnishing England with raw cot- ton ; in short, to the growth of everything connected with the extension of British inte- rests in India, as well as with the industry, the wealth, and the comfort of its vast popu- VOL. II. Q 226 Dalhousies Administration Chap. XX. lation. The military advantages of railways in India perhaps with something like a pre- sentiment were thought of, too, undoubtedly, by Major Kennedy and his master. To march from Calcutta to Peshawur has often occupied a regiment six months i. e., the entire work- ing time of an Eastern year, while by rail they could traverse the same distance, 1,146 miles, in 100 hours. When Lord Hardinge was on the Sutlej, certain officers were ordered up to him ; they travelled by palanquin dawk, occu- pied a month and a half upon the journey, necessitated the labour of 7,000 bearers, and then but thirty of them arrived before the fighting was finished. At the great crisis of Ferozeshah, out of all the grand army of India, but 17,000 men could be collected to oppose 60,000 with reserves ; but had the proposed railway from Calcutta to the North-west been in existence, sixty hours would have enabled the Commander-in-chief to concentrate on the point attacked 60,000 men, amply fur- nished with artillery and stores of every kind drafted proportionately from all the main stations, and without leaving any point or cantonment in the rear unprotected. In fact, the efficiency of an army in India, above all- is in direct ratio to the lines open for concen- trating it on the various points of possible attack or necessary defence ; and the strongest of British India. 227 argument for reducing the swollen " cadres" chap. XX to which we have once more mounted in the East, is that net-work of rails, of which Lord Dalhousie and his lieutenant wove the first meshes, In truth, the expense of all the lines now drawn across the land might have been charged to the military department with justice ; for, after all, the first condition of improving India is to hold it; and the system of Indian railways, in ease of con- centration, carriage of supplies and munitions, in averting disease and fatigue during sultry marches, and sparing the hateful necessity of pressing the carts and oxen of the country people their only capital for purposes of ser- vice has revolutionized the military history of India. Lord Dalhousie foresaw and fore- told all the advantages which we have since seen realized, and which were certain to he realized. It is, indeed, because the prophecy exactly accords with the fulfilment, that it can be quoted as history. The Governor- General wrote, in a clear and masterly minute : " It cannot be necessary for me to insist upon the importance of a speedy and wide intro- duction of railway communication throughout the length and breadth of India. A single O * ' glance cast upon the map recalling to mind the vast extent of the empire we hold; the various classes and interests it includes ; the 228 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. XX. wide distances which separate the several points at which hostile attack may at any time be expected ; the perpetual risk of such hos- tility appearing in quarters where it is the least expected ; the expenditure of time, of treasure, and of life, that are involved in even the ordinary routine of military movements over such a tract, and the comparative handful of men scattered over its surface, who have heen the conquerors of the country, and now hold it in subjection : a single glance upon these things will suffice to show how immea- surable are the political advantages to be derived from a system of internal communi- cation which would admit of full intelligence of every event being transmitted to the Govern- ment, under all circumstances, at a speed exceeding five-fold its present rate, and would enable the Government to bring the main bulk of its military strength to bear upon any given point, in as many days as it would now require months, and to an extent which at present is physically impossible. "And if the political interests of the state would be promoted by the power which en- larged means of conveyance would confer upon it of increasing its military strength, even while it diminished the numbers and cost of its army, the commercial and social advan- tages which India would derive from their of British India. 229 establishment are, I truly believe, beyond all Chap. XX. present calculation. Great tracts are teeming with produce they cannot dispose of. Others are scantily bearing what they would carry in abundance, if only it could be conveyed whither it is needed. England is calling aloud for the cotton which India does already pro- duce in some degree, and would produce suffi- cient in quality, and plentiful in quantity, if only there were provided the fitting means of conveyance for it, from distant plains, to the several ports adopted for its shipment. Every increase of facilities for trade has been at- tended, as we have seen, with an increased demand for articles of European produce in the most distant markets of India; and we have yet to learn the extent and value of the interchange which may be established with people beyond our present frontier, and which is yearly and rapidly increasing." " Ships from every part of the world crowd our ports in search of produce which we have, or could obtain in the interior, but which at present we cannot profitably fetch to them, and new markets are opening to us on this side of the globe under circumstances which defy the foresight of the wisest to estimate their probable value, or calculate their future extent." " I trust, therefore, that it may be considered 230 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. XX. as a matter determined, that the limited sections of experimental line which have heretofore been sanctioned by the Honourable Court are no longer to form the standard for railway works in India, but that these are to be undertaken upon a scale proportional to the extent of the British dominions in the East, and to the immediate benefits they are calculated to pro- duce." It is curious that Lord Dalhousie lked but to two points of the frontier as The Calcutta" dangerous," in proposing his "mother line" J^ e ' of India ; from Caubul and from Nepal he considered that assaults might come upon our sovereignty, and he asked the Calcutta and Lahore road to guarantee safety upon both frontiers. He little dreamed that his line would cross the heart of a hostile country at Agra and Benares, and that his electric wire, twisted into shot, and his rails broken up into " langridge," would fly about the ears of the soldiers they had summoned or brought to the scene of war ! The Great Next to the great central line, Lord Dal- n&\ nous i e saw that quick communication with way. Bombay across the peninsula was to be desired. GMt incline ^ a * ^ me a ^ so * s becoming a great fact, in- stead of a great idea; it has already mounted the steep and iron staircase of the Syhadree range, by bold aerial flights from rock to rock, by sudden divings into the heart of the basaltic of British India. 231 hills, and abrupt emergings among the palms chap. XX. and corinda-groves of the dark crags ; daily ex- hibiting a long train of passenger-carriages and goods-waggons scaling the precipices of Western India like a goat. It passes across the broad plains of the Deccan, under the sacred sculptures of Carlee, skirts the historical field of Kirkee, reaches Poona, the capital of the Mahrattas and destined inland capital of India, and thence flies off on its way to Jubbul- pore, over bajri-fields watered by the Bheema and Neera a marvel, wondered at and wor- shipped by villagers, and startling the ante- lopes and wild boars to those cotton fields which it tapped just at the crisis when the Manchester mills needed relief most, and, as far as the mill-owners were concerned, deserved it least. It is odd, however, that the Marquis should have fallen into the error of preferring for the " Great Western" of India the Can- deish instead of the Poona route ; but the giant obstacle of the Ghats led him to this for- getfulness of the face and character of India. 1 1 There were other things, however, not forgotten by Lord Dalhousie which ought to be remembered by English statesmen. " I hope," writes the Governor-General, " before long, to see the cost of the conveyance of troops to India reduced by still another step, and the time occupied upon the voyage equally curtailed, by obtaining permission to convey them across the Isthmus of Suez. At the present time, nothing would be gained by such a change. But when the railway in Egypt shall be completed from Alexandria to Suez, as it undoubtedly will be, 232 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. XX. Otherwise LordDalhousie, in his minute, proves himself almost as great an engineer as annex- ator or administrator, and shows the marks of his old apprenticeship at the Board of Trade. 1 He brought thence, indeed, a mass of solid and if a railway shall be formed from Bombay to Upper India, as I trust it may, a regiment may be carried in steam-transports from England to Alexandria, conveyed in twenty-four hours from thence to Suez, thence landed by the ships of the Honour- able Company at Bombay, and moved up to their station in Hindostan by rail, in less time, and with infinitely less trouble, than they now could march from Calcutta to Benares. The conveyance by rail across Egypt will, I venture to hope, remove any objection which might be felt there to the passage of foreign troops ; while, if the permission should be granted, a corps might leave England after the heat of summer was over, and might be quartered be fore Christmas upon the banks of the Sutlej, without any exposure in its way, and with four months before it of the finest climate under the sun ; so that the men would enter upon the first heats of India with constitutions vigorous and unimpaired by the accident of voyage or march." 1 Passengers by the Bhore Ghat have, perhaps, been saved from awkward accidents by the fact of that experience. The superintending engineer proposed to meet the difficulty of the descent by the principle of the atmospheric railway reversed. " I assume it to mean," wrote Lord Dalhousie, " that the speed of the descending train is to be checked by the repelling pressure in the atmospheric tube, in the same manner as the pressure has usually been employed for propulsion. If so, with complete deference to opinions better than mine, I must needs say, that according to existing experience of atmospheric railways, this seems to me to be a desperate nostrum." " It is now a good many years since an opinion unfavourable to the atmospheric lines was expressed by the Railway Depart- ment at the Board of Trade. Like many other opinions which proceeded from the department, this one was overruled by Par- liament. Atmospheric lines were constructed one to Croydon, one, I think, in Devonshire. The result of the Croydon line (and I believe of both) was a total failure. Those who used to travel the South Eastern Railway will remember the very common spectacle of the carriages standing on the atmo- of British India. 233 information about more than gradients, gauges, chap. XX. and the secret of making nature and art com- _ Lord Dai- bine in laying the best route of rails. As housie's old India laid her railways after England, it ex P ei%i ences useful. would have been strange if she could not benefit by the mistakes of our railway age, or if she failed to observe that, " had engineers and directors kept the interests of their em- ployers in view, they would have remonstrated against the extravagance and fraud attending the preliminary investigation of the merits of projects prior to their sanction and adoption frauds in valuation, law costs, &c. ; and had they done so, Parliament would have listened to their remonstrance, and would have granted reasonable protection to the most useful class of speculators who have ever risked money in the British empire, and who, as matters now stand, have been pillaged, by the inexcusable negligence of those in whom they confided, to the extent of many score millions of pounds sterling." The Indian Government did not overlook the justice and wisdom of endeavour- spheric line motionless, for want of power to move them. And all who do so will feel, as I do, some consternation at the thought of what would be the consequence of a similar failure of power in the Bombay atmospheric line, when a train should be descending the Thull Ghat, in a gradient of 1 in 37, with curves of 30 chains radius, for seven miles together. On the Croydon line, in such a case, the train simply stood still ; on the Thull Ghat it would be, I apprehend, in a vastly less secure position." 234 Dalhousies Administration Chap. XX. ing to protect this class of investment from futile processes, scandalous frauds, legal clii- The Railway caner y an d enormous expenses. How it lias system in India. succeeded in the attempt is another matter. 1 But, holding these views, Lord Dalhousie's fixed idea was, that private enterprise and Government control should combine to carry out the avatar of the " fire horse" in India. He divided public works into those of purely state utility and those of public profit and 1 As far as legal expenses go, Indian lines show well in com- parison with English, as will be seen by the following table : Railway Company. Total Capital of the Company. Law and Parliamentary Expenses. - ?" ~ - --: 11!! Eastern Counties . . . . Great Northern . . . . Great Western London, Brighton, and South Coast London and North- Western London and South- Western Midland South-Eastern East Indian Madras Great Indian Peninsula . . Bombay, Baroda, and Cen- tral India Scinde Eastern Bengal Great Southern of India . . Calcutta and South-Eastern 8. d. pr.cent. 11,611,085 268,201 2 3 2'3 11. I II, Id I lUl.'Jl'.t O (I L'".i:J 27,430,710 760,270 6 1 277 7,799,257 43,690 9 5 -56 34,041,013 '869,771 9' 2'55 9.506,225 313,702 20,712,981:597,890 10 10 11,044,592 1515,707 11 3 17,000,000 i 4,093 0| 8,500,000! 1,183 12,000,000 4,124 0; 2,500,000 3,000,000 1,250,000 500,000 250,000 3,033 2,383 926 466 1,174 3-6 4-669 02 01 03 12 07 07 09 46 of British India. 235 direct returns. Such enterprises as the Ganges Chap. XX. Canal, the Great Trunk Road, irrigation canals and tanks, he placed in the nrst class, as con- structions which, to be produced at all, must be taken in hand by an Indian Government. But in such an enterprise as that of covering the land with the iron lines of the steam carriages Lord Dalhousie's perhaps too sanguine glance saw an opening for teaching India the first les- sons of commercial and national union. " One of the greatest drawbacks of this country," he wrote, "has been its total dependence upon the Government, and its apparent utter 1 help- lessness to do anything for itself." But it does not appear that the Marquis had great expectations of Hindoo aid : he desired also to attract English capital to India ; and this, as it could only be done under governmental guarantee, would in itself warrant, he main- tained, the necessary governmental control. Indeed, Lord Dalhousie maintained, even at home, the principle of this union between 1 The advocates of paternal despotism may read what comes of it, where it is really necessary, in these confessions : " Until very recently, the only regular carrier in the country has been the Government ; and no man could make a journey but with Government establishments, and by the agency of a Government officer. " It was but the other day that the agent for Lloyd's in the port of Moulmein, where there is a considerable community of European merchants, formally complained that the Government of India did not keep a steam-tug to tow their ships to sea for them !" 236 Dalliousie's Administration Chap. XX. Government supervision and private capital, as being the true theory of a national railway system. He had upheld it as an English minister; and now in his Indian minute he declared, not without confirmation from the events of 1849, "that if that principle had been then more fully recognized, the proprie- tors of railway property in England and the suffering public would have been in a better condition." It marks the man, and his cen- tralizing cast of mind, that he should have thought such a plan feasible in England at any rate, to the extent of its application in India. But in India the idea was no longer exotic ; that country is, and must yet long con- tinue, an Oriental Erance a country fitted to be under a despotism, benevolent but irre- sponsible. There, without a Government gua- rantee of interest and Government aid in securing land and raising capital, the railways would never have been made. Here, checked by such control, we might have been spared the rise and fall of Hudson, but we should have seen a very different and less wonderful map in " Bradshaw." In India the system has borne good fruit, and obtains all but univer- sally. Railways, in accordance with Lord Dalhousie's minute, are constructed under the " guarantee" system, the companies receiving from Government the guarantee of a certain of British India. 237 rate of interest upon the capital expended. Chap. XX. The Government exercises a supervision and control, which is provided for in the contracts with the several companies. The land re- quired for the railway, and works connected therewith, is given to the companies, free of expense, by the Government. The guaran- tee, which is for a term of ninety-nine years, applies to all monies paid into the Government treasury and expended with the sanction of the Government. The railway companies re- pay the amount advanced by Government as guarantee, from the profits of the railways, under the following arrangement : The net receipts from the railways are paid into the Government Treasury. If they amount to less than the sum due for guaranteed interest, an addition is made to them from the revenues of India to complete that sum ; if they amount to more, half the excess is to be added to the dividend of the shareholders, and the other half applied to the repayment of the sums previously paid by Government on ac- count of guaranteed interest ; if the receipts should not reach the amount paid for working and maintaining the railway, the deficiency is chargeable against the guaranteed interest. If at any time the whole of the monies paid by the Government for interest (with simple in- terest thereon) shall have been repaid and 238 T>alhousie > 8 Administration Chap. XX. discharged, the companies are entitled, so long as this is the case, to the whole of the profits. The railways may surrender themselves to Government at any time after six months' notice, and Government may decree purchase of lines at certain dates, while at the expira- tion of ninety-nine years Government becomes the actual possessor of the lines and land, upon purchasing the rolling stock, &c. Such is the system which Lord Dalhousie intro- duced, and under it India is being fast covered with a net-work of lines, which must some day be the property of the Government, and con- stitute the most enormous business ever under- taken by one imperial firm. Under it, Cal- cutta and Peshawur are being linked together, and the three sister capitals of the peninsula : wonderful engineering works, stupendous bridges, 1 daring viaducts, tunnels that pierce the entrails of historical ranges are conduct- ing the marvellous parallel lines of George Stephenson over the face of a land where hitherto the creaking ox-cart, rattling, shuf- fling, and tinkling along in the dust, at a "koss" in the hour, had been almost the only con- 1 Some idea may be conveyed of the extent of the bridge- works on the East Indian Railway, when it is stated that the waterway of the Jumna and three other streams alone was 9,150 feet, or twice that of all the bridges over the Thames, between London and Westminster bridges, inclusive, before the invasion of city railways. of British India. 239 veyance. Lord Dalhousie lived to see some- Chap. XX. thing of the enormous effect produced in his kingdom by the " fire- carriage ;" but now 40,000,000 have been paid in, the passengers are counted by millions and goods by the thousand tons, while nine-tenths of the har- vest of all the gold sown is yet to be reaped in profit and increased intercourse. Lord Dal- housie declared that " the Government would never be called upon, after a line shall have been in full operation, to pay the interest gua- ranteed upon the capital;" in other words, that a line, when completed and in full work, would realize a steady profit of at least five per cent. But white ants, scarcity of timber, and the want of skilled labour, have interfered with his esti- mates; although the traffic has already immensely exceeded the figures of the less sanguine. As regards the part borne by native and English capital, the Hindoo has contented himself, as yet, with wondering at the Sahebs' fire-horse, and travelling by its means. Out of a capital of 52,430,000 estimated to be required for all the railways which have been sanctioned, 34,133,300 had been guaranteed by the Indian Government, and 27,079,712 raised, on the 31st December, 1859. Shares could be registered in India, as well as in England, but only 625,971 had been subscribed in the former country, being in the proportion of 1 240 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. XX. to 43. Out of every million of railway money raised, about 976,500 had been, there- fore, subscribed in this country. But if the Hindoo has not entrusted his rupees to the rail, he has confided his less valuable person. The companies very wisely comprehended, from the first, that their profit had to come from the swarming millions of the country, and charged only three-eighths of a penny per mile for the third-class carriage. The results have been astonishing ; l and year by year commensurate with the advance of the iron road; till Indian railway-stations present all the features of the crowds at London Bridge or Paddington, translated into the picturesque costume and surroundings of the East ; while municipal bodies along the lines of rail have been compelled to prohibit the companies from 1 The subjoined table presents them in a compendious form, for the first six years : Year No. of Passengers. ending No. 30th June. of Mile*. Railway. let Class. 2nd Class. 3rd Class. Total. ian M 35 Great Indian Peninsula 11,780 62,217 461,198 535,195 1854-56 156 | East Indian . . 121 Great Indian Peninsula 35 } 15,476 78,708 777,330 851,614 :----. 209 j Bait Indian . . 121 Great Indian Peninsula 88 } 16,918 86,153 1,242,801 1,345,872 f East Indian . . 121 \ 1866-57 274 } Great Indian Peninsula 88 Madras ... 66 > 23,001 91,088 1,710,747 1,834,836 / East Indian . 121 V 1867-58 332 I j Great Indian Peninsula 130 f 27,40(1 90,918 2,012,491 2,180,809 ( Madras ... 81 ) Kant Indian . . 142 ) 1858-59 Great Indian Peninsula 194 Madras ... 96 j 28,973 176,826 2,516,583 MIMM of British India. 241 carrying more that 300 passengers in the Chap. XX. third-class carriage. 1 Such is the boon which the Marquis of Dal- Effects of housie, at all events, introduced, if his vast i n( ji a . capacity may not be said to have engineered it, for India. And when the mutiny is set down as the fruit of his annexations and of his want of watchfulness over the Sepoy army, it is fair to recollect the service of the rail, although still uncompleted, in that great crisis. The rust of Achilles' spear was said to cure the wounds it inflicted ; and so the energy of the Governor- General in the same way neutralized its own errors. But the real work of the steam-engine in India is yet to be manifested. Those who have travelled on an Indian line, or loitered ' at a Hindoo railway station, have seen the most persuasive missionary at work that ever preached in the East. Thirty miles an hour is fatal to the slow deities of pagan- ism; and a pilgrimage done by steam causes other thoughts to arise at the shrine of Par- vati or Shiva than the Veds and Shastras inculcate. The Hindoo sees many villages and hills now beside his own ; he travels, that is, he learns, compares, considers, and changes his ideas. Railways may do for India what dynasties have never done what the 1 A bye-law to this effect was actually passed in the Bombay Presidency. VOL. II. R 242 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. XX. genius of Akbar the Magnificent could not effect by government, nor the cruelty of Tippoo Saheb by violence; they may make India a nation. That is a consummation which must be pre- ceded by our dismissal as rulers ; but it is the natural one for us to expect, and the right one to desire ; and when it comes, the name and the acts of Lord Dalhousie will have had their share in it. of British India. 243 CHAPTER XXI. EVER fixing the eye upon the cloud that Chap. XXI. dims the glitter of all this regality and material The electric development, the introduction of another great telegraph in safeguard and weapon in the mutiny has to be described. The Marquis of Dalhousie gave the electric telegraph to his immense procon- sulate. But it would be wrong, indeed, to speak of the taming of the lightning in India merely with reference to those campaigns, where it was made to play the part of scout, spy, and orderly-officer to the British regiments. Nevertheless, when too much stress is laid upon the fact, that these eight years were followed by the mutiny, the circumstances must be all recalled which preceded it. Attacked for morality, the Governor-General must at least have credit for administration, and for prepa- ration of a kind Avhich, when the crisis the inevitable crisis came, made a safe passage through it easier. In one sense, the electric telegraph saved India ; that is to say, it saved the English from berns? driven down to the O d sea at four or five points, and forced to wait 244 Dalhousie's Administration ciiap. xxi. there till succour arrived by the long water- road which our jealous allies made us travel. Had only cossids or hurkarus brought the news of massacre from station to station, it was in the bazaar, the betel-nut shop, and the " lushkur" that it would have been canvassed first ; and the method of communication thence to Englishmen would have been in too many cases a rush of frantic soldiery, bent upon insult and murder, and maddened up to those points with fanaticism and bhang. Instead of that, the telegraph Lord Dalhousie's tele- graph flashed the fatal secret only to that race which had stretched the wire across jungle and maidan ; and so the little knots of English had time to draw together. Through- out the campaigns of the North-west, too, the wire followed Lord Clyde like the snake of a serpent-charmer. In the morning, it ticked the news of Calcutta into his breakfast tent; in the evening, after the battle, it was with him at the advance-guard. "The accursed string that strangles us!" muttered one of our unhappy enemies as he pointed, on his way to execution, to that thin air-line of the English. The intro- ^ m troduce it into India was a newer auction of problem than would appear likely to those who are now long accustomed to the familiar w i re . miracle. The name of Sir William O'Shaugh- of British India. 245 nessy must never be unmentioned l when chap. XXI. that triumph over a series of singular obstacles n i j ^ i A i Sir William is recalled. Chemist, pathologist, physician, o'Shaugh- and Deputy Assay-Master to the Mint, Dr. nessy and , . , . his diffi- O Shaughnessy, at his own cost and pains, Cu i tie8 . appointed himself exploiter-general of electric telegraphs in India. He had a field for experi- ment subject to electric storms and perturba- tions unknown in Europe; a soil alternately baked into one electrical condition, and sodden into another ; winds that would lay the tele- graph posts in England across the lines from Birmingham to London in a night ; little timber, less iron, no skilled labour, no ap- pliances at starting, and the white ant. The ground which he selected to begin upon, on the principle of measuring difficulty by its maximum, was a lake from June to December, and a wilderness of fissured clay from Decem- ber to June ; the rivers he had to cross are navigated by "kedging;" i. e., by dragging 1 It was well written " But had not the Governor-General lent the whole force of his authority to expedite the measure, and sent the active and able Superintendent to England, then, instead of the four thousand miles which girdle India in ' forty minutes ;' instead of precipices scaled, large rivers crossed, deadly jungles encountered, and an army of signallers drilled and disciplined for their work, we might, at this moment, have been still waiting for a final report, on an experimental line, commencing with a native suburb and ending in a swamp, to be completed, after a huge amount of minutes, notes, and perusals, at some remote and undefined period, ^ hen ' financial difficulties' no longer stood in the way." Calcutta Revietc. 246 Dalhmisie's Administration Chap. XXL the anchors of the craft using them along the mud where the wire had to lie. His posts had to pass through jungles, where wild heasts used them for scratching- stations, and savages stole them for fire-wood and rafters for huts ; inquisitive monkeys spoiled the work of that great relative, from whom a " hippocampus major" alone is said to separate them, hy drag- ging the lines into festoons, or dangling an ill -conducting tail from wire to wire. Crows, kites, and fishing-eagles made roosting-places of the lines in numbers so great as to bring them to the ground, though once or twice a flash of lightning, striking a wet wire, would strew the ground with the carcases of the feathered trespassers by dozens. The white ant nibbled galleries in the posts, and the porcupine and bandicoot burrowed under them. But the greatest obstacle to Sir Wil- liam O'Shaughnessy's first experiment was the condition of the atmosphere of the penin- sula of India. A prodigious electrical excite- ment always rules there. On all lines laid out north and south there was found to be a natural current of electricity continuously flowing : this current deranges the polarity of needles, confers permanent polarity on soft iron, and produces chemical stains on pre- pared tissues facts sufficing to show Sir William that, no matter what instruments he of British India. 247 used, these would be constantly liable to de- Chap. xxr. rangement, irrespectively of the sudden vio- lence of the frightful thunder-storms occurring at particular seasons. 1 These thunder-storms put expensive appa- ratus out of the question, for they melted up the conductors then in use at home, " by dozens;" cheap instruments and gear that could be replaced by Hindoo school-boys had to be invented, therefore, and these this talented 1 Telegraphic engineers will appreciate the difficulty and its remedy. " I was driven step by step to discard every screw and lever, and pivot, and foot of wire, and frame-work, and dial, without which it was practicable to work. I successively tried and dismissed the English vertical astatic needle tele- graph, the American dotter, and several contrivances of my own invention. Every thunder-storm put the astatic needles hors- de-combat, by deranging the polarity of one or both the needles. The American temporary magnets became permanently polar- ized, and ceased to actuate the markers. At length, by August, 1851, when incessant interruption of this kind had almost driven me to despair, I contrived the little single needle horizontal telegraph, now in use in all our stations, and with which we work in all weathers without danger of interruption. It some- times becomes disordered, as every instrument must; but it is changed, or replaced, or ' cured,' in a few seconds by the sig- nallers on duty, and if totally destroyed, is but the loss of -Rs.,3, the cost at which the instrument is made by the boys them- selves, including their profit on the construction. " There is on the table before me, while I write, one of these instruments, which was in use on the evening of the 21st March, Sunday, at the Bistopore station, at half-past eight P.M., during a terrific north-wester: a flash of lightning struck the line, traversed the instrument, made its wires red-hot, and melted their ends into beads. In less than two minutes, Charles Todd, the signaller on duty, had placed another coil in gear, and reported by telegraph to Calcutta what had taken place in his office." Paper onJSstablishment of the Electric Telegraph in India. 248 Dalhousie's Administration chap. XXI. mechanician and chemist himself constructed. Even then there were serious indigenous diffi- culties : iron is a tempting commodity in the populous places 1 of India ; and if by accident brought to the ground, elephants, buffaloes, and bullocks would trample thin wires into tangle. Sir William surmounted all these things, at last, in a line from Calcutta to Diamond Harbour sketched by himself the excellent and economical character of which, as soon as appreciated by Lord Dalhousie, settled the question for India. It is worth while to notice the character and construction of that first electrical cord hung in India parent, as it was, of four thousand miles before 1857. For posts, Sir William used the bamboos of the country, which yielded with gentle deflections 2 to the tempests of 1 Perhaps the oddest larceny on record is the stealing of a large iron cannon in Cooly Bazaar by a pack of dacoits, who were never discovered. 2 " The use of the bamboo for supporting posts demands especial notice. At first I only tried it as scaffolding, to be replaced by teak or saul posts. I did not suppose it possessed of sufficient strength or durability to be permanently em- ployed ; but the hurricane of the 23rd and 24th October exposed our lines to an ordeal I never expected they could go through unharmed. While trees, the growth of centuries, were uprooted, houses of solid masonry levelled with the ground, the country inundated, the 'Precursor* and 'Powerful' steamers driven ashore, a fleet of ships and innumerable native craft wrecked or dismasted, not one of our posts was broken. It was the realization of the fable of the bulrush and the oak : the bamboo bent slightly to the hurricane, and rose erect when its violence had ceased." Paper on Establishment of the Electric Telegraph in India. of British India. 249 wind, instead of resisting and breaking ; Chap. xxi. thus upholding the rods of iron employed in place of wire. These rods being 1-inch in diameter, only needed support, and not a strain, so that bamboos could be used. They were not insulated, but simply clamped to the post, and yet found easily workable with small batteries. River portions of this wire were guarded against the " kedging" by a heavy iron cable, which carried away any assailing anchors. Dr. O'Shaughnessy constructed his own cables, invented his own instruments, and drilled his own subordinates, 1 till his enter- prise was sufficiently perfect to bring that very item of news in two minutes from Diamond Harbour upon which a former and less grate- ful section of this work has dwelt namely, that " the King of Ava sends no letter of sub- mission." Thereupon the Governor-General took up the great task in his great and earnest way ; robbed the Mint of its Deputy Assay- 1 Some of these have proved since rather too quick at learn- ing. Not long back, a party of Brahman signal-boys conspired with aParsee opium speculator in Bombay, to waylay the China telegrams. They camped in the jungle under the line, cut it, and took the ends into their tent, where they had a machine ready, and by means of it received and passed on message after message, till the Hong-Kong quotations arrived. The price per chest of opium was obtained, and sent privately to the Parsee, who boxight up all the stock in the bazaar for a rise, and when the news came in, repeated on the mended wire, realized thou- sands of rupees of profit. These ingenious highwaymen on the scientific road were, however, detected and punished. 250 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. xxi. Master ; sent him to Europe for staff, appli- ances, latest inventions, and materials, with a honorarium of H. 20,000 for his courageous labours. Under the same hand that began it the work soon went rapidly forward ; and Lord Dalhousie's minute justly says, "Whether regard be had to promptitude of execution, action, . . . speed, and solidity of construction, rapidity of organization, liberality of charge, early realization, or vast magnitude of increase of political influence in the East, the achieve- ment of the Honourable Company in the electric telegraph in India may challenge comparison with any public enterprise which has been carried into execution in recent times among the natives of Europe, or in America itself." Proud of his work, and with reason, Lord Dalhousie's minute dwells largely upon the details of it, as he lived to see them carried out; but since then the electric wire has spanned fresh provinces and linked new cities together ; and a submarine cable, as we write, is sinking into the shallows of the Sea of Sind- bad, to unite the systems of Europe with that of Asia. Roads in The Romans wrote the history of their con- quests with roads; and though it has been said that, when we quit India, " our only monument will be broken beer-bottles," there are Appian and Aurelian ways there, linking of British India. 251 the extremities of the land, all of British mac- Chap. XXI. adamization, to refute the jest. Regarding this enterprise in India as important almost as works of irrigation the old Company was much to blame for apathy. Inclusive of re- pairs and supervision, the Indian Treasury had expended on public works no greater sum than 346,092 per annum up to 1848. Even on the Great Trunk B/oad between Calcutta and Delhi, though marked out in 1795, there was no permanent bridge except- one, and that built by the charity of a courtezan 1 of Benares, in 1831 ; while down to 1849 the bridge over the Mogra, forty miles from Calcutta, traversed backwards and forwards by all the vast busi- ness of Bengal and the north-west, was a ricketty pontoon an affair of rotten planks. In Madras, the Cuddapah trunk road was so notoriously bad, that the Military Board used it as a trial-ground for years, to test the powers of new gun-carriages, which were pro- nounced safe if they passed through this daily ordeal of passengers. Thus, one of the finest cotton-fields of India was kept closed by the state of its roads and communications with the coast, its natural outlet for commerce. Canara is to-day as much locked up as the highlands 1 It is notable that, as in Egypt and Greece by the Aspasias and Rhodopes, some of the greatest works of benevolence have been carried out by the " kusbis" of India. 252 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. XIX. of Arabia ; so is Bellary and Tanjore ; and the head waters of the cotton rivers about Omra- wuttee have nothing but cart-tracks between them. There is one excuse to be found for this in the fact that during half the year all India is a high-road ; a foot passenger, a horse- man, or indeed an ox-cart, can take almost a bee-line across its vast plains; all the soil is baked hard, and there are no obstacles but nullahs. But in the wet season the tracks are deep in mud, the nullahs are foaming rivers, and, without roads and bridges, com- munication is in great part suspended. The native rulers especially the Mahommedan did not allow their dominions to be subject to this annual paralysis; and many splendid works, although in ruins bridges, metalled causeways, caravanserais, dhurrumsallas, and topes of trees for mid-day shade testify to their solicitude for travellers. The want of roads, they knew, produces in India the preva- lence of local famines, one of which was felt with great severity during the monsoon of 1823, in the country between Poona and Can- deish. Whilst grain was so plentiful in Can- deish as to sell at eight shillings a quarter, it had risen at Aurungabad to thirty-four shil- lings, and at Poona to sixty-four and then to seventy-six shillings a quarter, although only the monsoon had stopped the tracks between of British India. 253 Candeish and Poona ; so that half the agonies chap. XXI. of famine were felt by the inhabitants of one well-peopled district, whilst in another, not dis- tant 300 miles, the finest grain was purchase- able for next to nothing. So, too, even of late years, rice might be selling at Madras at double its ordinary value, and remain a drug at Tanjore, there being no means of equalizing the market. Lord Dalhousie saw this crying evil, if he The Grand could not at once meet it, and tried to make up Trunk ^o&d. for the shortcomings of his predecessors. Dur- ing his vice-royalty, the main artery of traffic, the Grand Trunk E/oad, was completed beyond Delhi, and generally the bridge-work of the line, except the great bridge over the river Soane. It has been described already how, upon the acquisition of the Punjab, this road was carried forward across the Doabs, from Loodianah to Umritsur by Lahore, and from Lahore to Wuzeerabad, Rawul Pindee, and Attock, to Peshawur. There is now approach- ing to completion a wonderful enterprise the tunnel under the Indus at Attock ; and when that is finished there will be an uninterrupted path for a carriage of the lightest build from the Khyber Pass to Calcutta. The wild dis- tricts of Cuttuck, Ungool, and Sumbhulpore, the homes of aboriginal tribes, hardly known, except for their cruel customs of 264 Dalliousie's Administration Chap. xxi. human sacrifice and infanticide, were partly other lines P ene d to the light by another road of Lord of communi- Dalhousie's making. Dacca's busy streets and the port of Akyab were connected by a very useful line, and a road was cut over the TounghoePass into Pegu, which has brought the new province into British India, and which cut as it was in spite of landslips and enormous forests was an imperial work. To this road Lord Dalhousie has proudly devoted nearly a page of his minute; and he describes at yet greater length another, which was of his own engineering, and will, some day although not, perhaps, taken over the best line of country- be the channel of an immense and novel com- merce. It is the road from Kalka, in the plains, to the hill station of Simla. From Simla the road passes to the valley of Chini, with a breadth of six feet. From Chini Lord Dalhousie designed to carry it to the uplands of Thibet, and thus to unite Central and Southern Asia. Even as the Marquis left it, the result was a monument of what may be done for a district by opening it up. All the trade of Thibet and Hindostan had theretofore passed and repassed, ascended and descended, on the shoulders of men and the backs of yaks and goats. The hill people led miserable lives, being always liable to be pressed into the service of travellers, as beasts of burden, by of British India. 255 their chiefs; and what really waited to be achap. XXL great trade in brick-tea, borax, silk, and lead, dribbled down from Thibet as by a gutter, instead of a river. In these valleys the Queen of England first became the ruler of Tartar tribes, and by them a wonderful intercourse with strange nations and in fresh products is likely, before long, to show itself. For the other new highways which this indefatigable Government prospected and commenced, the minute of its Chief is at once a catalogue and sufficient description. It is always strange to look back to the Postal beginnings of a great reform. How did men C7 O O do without it? Why did they tolerate the old and absurd order of things ; and where are the blushes of those, who having opposed it tooth and nail, are now its placid beneficiaries ? Of all reforms, this remark applies to that thorough postal change which Sir Rowland Hill wrought for England, and, by her example, it may be said, for all the world. Measured, results against results, his innovation must be ranked with the greatest gifts made to man- kind : the printing-press, the steam-engine, the railway, the telegraphic wire, are not more than equal to it in result. Imagine what it is, all over the civilized world, to have multi- plied communications, taking away half the effects of absence and distance, and, more than 256 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. XXI. that, to have given to education the immense incentives of affection, interest, commercial intercourse and energy, with all the stimulus of daily wants and wishes. How was the tax en- dured which practically forbade letter-writing except to the wealthy, and dammed up that enormous flood of epistolary blood which pul- sates up and down all countries now the cir- culation of the body social ? Yet there live states- men, or those so called, who declared 1 the scheme of Rowland Hill a chimera, although he himself ("Emeritus," if ever public servant deserved that title) has only just quitted the service in 1 Two false prophets are worth rescuing from their comfort- able oblivion. Colonel Maberly, the Secretary to the Post Office " Considered the whole scheme of Mr. Hill as utterly fallacious ; he thought so from the first moment he read the pamphlet of Mr. Hill ; and his opinion of the plan was formed long before the evidence was given before the Committee. The plan appeared to him a most preposterous one, utterly unsup- ported by facts, and resting entirely on assumption. Every experiment in the way of reduction which had been made by the Post Office had shown its fallacy ; for every reduction what- ever led to a loss of revenue in the first instance. If the reduc- tion be small, the revenue recovers itself ; but if the rates were to be reduced to Id., the revenue would not recover itself for forty or fifty years." The Earl of Lichfield, as Postmaster-General, of course voted with ministers ; but he salved his conscience by a detailed ex- position of his reason for doing so : "He had turned his attention to all Mr. Hill's calculations and opinions, and Lad then come to the opinion he had ex- pressed already in that House, and to which he still adhered ; and that opinion was, that it was totally impossible but that by the proposed reduction a considerable loss to the revenue must accrue." of British India. 257 which he gave so signal a gift to his country Chap. XXI. and his race. Thus Lord Dalhousie's act, in introducing the cheap postal system into India, was only a grand reform at second-hand, for Rowland Hill must have the chief credit of the change wherever it was copied ; and copied it has been everywhere. But it was still a splendid work for this vice-reign to make an Indian letter free of all the roads in all the country for fc?., or half an anna the tola; and to have arranged the system by which letters pass from India to England and back for sixpence. Eor the people of India the post, under the old system, did not exist at all. They were none Former state the better for us all the previous years of our p08ta comtnuu lea- rule, as to epistolary intercourse, than they tion in India. had been under the Mussulmans ; they were worse, indeed for we forbade private dawks, and made the public dawk too dear to be paid for. That was the reason why the Presidency Post Office showed regular deficits, and not because the vast mass of natives were unable to write. Very many acquired, in the village or town schools, quite sufficient mastery of the Persian, Devanagari, Pali, or other native cha- racters, to indite a " chit " or draw up a "hoondee;" and all had, at least, the public or professional writer or the pundit of the village at their service. .For a bunch of VOL. TI. s 258 Dalhousie s Administration Chap. xxi. bananas, or a handful of meal, the Hindoo could get his " patra" compiled ; but how was he to pay six or eight annas, our former charge, upon it ? His monthly income did not, on the average, exceed four or five rupees ; and this, therefore, equalled three or four days' sub- sistence. Of course, he did not write ; and if he did, it was by private and penal dauk, so that the Government revenue lost him alto- gether. 1 But there is no need to expose old systems of postage, whether bad, as that of India, or somewhat better ; they have perished before common sense, and a resistless and overwhelming experience. Perhaps, however, for a country where ties of home were strong, business incessant, and the population swarm- ing, the Company's system before Dalhousie was abnormally futile. The civil surgeon or a spare subaltern were postmasters, the native assistants notoriously useless and underpaid, the dawk moonshies forwarded or retained letters as suited them, and the letters them- selves crept along the road at two or three miles an hour, under heavy rates. In fact, Lord Dalhousie found scarcely better arrange- 1 In Bombay, a well-known case occurred in 1846, when a Marwaree was seized under warrant of the police, being sus- pected of exercising the illicit trade of letter-carrier. It was found, on examination, that he had upon him not less than 305 letters, for each of which he expected, on delivery, to receive two annas. The Post Office Act imposed a penalty of fifty rupees for every letter BO carried. of British India. 259 ments extant than those of the day, when to Chap. xxi. get a reply from Europe occupied a twelve- month, and Calcutta and Agra were nine dusty days apart. He instituted a commission of The nature three clear-headed civil servants, and their report, after a thorough overhaul of the evils and obstacles of the existing scheme, recom- mended one uniform postage of half an anna the quarter tola, payment by stamp, and other well-known features of the English revolution. Their report was adopted and acted upon, and India has since ceased to regret the cossids of Aurungzehe and Akbar. The reform deserved all that was said of it at the time by Anglo- Indians, and has fully justified the warm pre- diction of an eulogist of 1854, who wrote 1 : " The benefit of Lord Dalhousie's compre- hensive and statesmanlike reforms will be felt and gratefully acknowledged by every one. The debt will be thankfully owned by the Chunds and the Mulls, who, in the exercise of their large commercial business, write dozens of letters daily to their correspondents at Joudhpore, Muttra, and Benares ; by the young civilian on the eastern frontier of Ben- gal, who keeps up a gradually declining inter- course with his old college friend stationed at Khangurh or Mooltan ; by the unhappy hus- band, who toils away during the hot winds at 1 " Calcutta Eeview," No. 43. 260 Dalh9 crooks (valuable in ship-building), were found burning. VOL. II. T 274 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. XXI. was indeed going out of existence in the forest grounds which had been famous for it, when Lord Dalhousie's Scotch instinct stepped in to the rescue. Timber is the more important in India, because, as in France, it forms the only fuel for smelting purposes ; and rich mines of iron, of which there is no deficiency, where pro- mising ore exists in inexhaustible quantities cannot be worked, and are not worked in con- sequence. When charcoal can be procured in good bulk, the iron, like that of Sweden, is of the finest quality. Iron and coal are the two great necessities of India, and both exisl, without doubt, in her bosom, though ship after ship labours round the stormy Cape of Good Hope with rails, and though coals cost eighty shillings the ton, stored at Aden. Lord Dalhousie hoped to find coal in his new pro- vince of the Punjab, and prospected energeti- cally for it. The salt-range at Kalabagh, with Pegu, Tenasserim, Sylhet, and the Nerbudda Valley, were all examined, to discover workable seams of fuel fit for locomotives. Some good coal was found in inaccessible spots much useless coal 1 in those that were accessible. 1 The Murree coal of the Punjab is lignite. A good speci- men of it, analyzed in the laboratory of the Geological Survey of India, gave thirty -six per cent, of volatile matter. In all the specimens, woody fibre was recognizable. They were the sterna of British India. 275 The discovery of a good and attainable field Chap. XXI. was not reserved for the Marquis. In his search for iron, too, which, as oxide, colours some soils of India red, Lord Dalhousie was more persevering than successful. M. Marcadieu, who was deputed to ransack the khuds of the Himalaya above Simla, found iron in plenty, but not in the desirable neighbourhood of fuel and water. The same gentleman exa- mined to better purpose the great borax fields of the uplands beyond Spiti and Kooloo, where the salt lies like a hoar- frost upon the plains, among the haunts of the wild horse and ibex. But iron was discovered in the Nerbudda Valley, and actually manufactured at Burbhoom, while at Jubbulpore the city where regenerated Thugs pursue the trade of St. Paul, sewing up tents instead of applying the deadly " rumal " - iron and coal were found to- gether in promising quantities. The richest or roots of trees imbedded in thick beds of soft sandstone Suvalik formation of the Middle Tertiary period. When the stem has been crushed, the whole, two to three inches thick, is lignite ; in other cases, the core is mostly silicified wood, the bark alone being pure lignite. The coal sup- posed to exist at Kotlee, in the Maharajah's territory, was equally disappointing ; and though the lignite found near Shahpore, in the Salt-range, burns fairly, leaving a brown cinder of nearly the same dimensions and form as before it was burnt, the quantity of sulphur in it renders its use in locomotive boilers destructive, and it will not coke. 276 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. XXI. age of India will come when the metals in her hills, and not the diamonds of Gol- conda or the emeralds and garnets of the Neilgherries, are worked for as her chief treasures. of British India. 277 CHAPTER XXII. LORD DALHOUSIE was not wrong to say that one chap.:xxn. such work as the Ganges Canal would suffice to signalize an Indian administration. It was not an enterprise which he in person originated, canal, but it was almost wholly carried on under his sway, for out of the million and a half ex- pended upon this important labour, all but 170,000 were granted out of his treasury. The credit of this useful gift to the fields of the north-west belongs, and must always belong, in the first place, to Sir Proby Cautley ; but his master may claim to have been among the first to appreciate the results of such an- under- taking, and to have helped it forward with advice and aid. No warlike pre-occupation nor financial pressure was suffered to interfere with the progress of the Ganges canal ; and the main stream was opened in April, 1854, after eight years' labour. It extended more than five hundred miles in length, a channel of sweet water ten feet in depth, and one hundred and seventy feet in width, giving at once a navigable river to the rich fields around Hurdwar and 278 Dalhousies Administration Chap.XXlI. affordinga good supplyof the liquidfor irrigation, which has already turned a wilderness of parched and gaping earth into a garden of green crops. Imperfect as it has proved to he, taken with all its branches no work of the kind can he com- pared with it, even in those two great irrigatory schools of the world, Lomhardy and Egypt. It is twice the length of the lines of the last-men- tioned country, and five times longer than the canals of the Po and Adige. To the eastern side of the Doah it has given a new era of harvests, and gradual exemption from those periodical famines which, upon the failure of the mon- soon, afflict all the dry soil of India. Perhaps it is necessary to have traversed that land to know what water will do for fields that seem harren as a desert. In those broad plains, amid expanses of yellow glowing dust, dazzling bright with solar radiation, the eye is caught here and there by delightful green patches, where the bananas wave their deep green banners, and where the sugar-cane and pomegranate, and the papaw and custard-apple make a grove tenanted by birds of beautiful plumage. The secret spell of each oiisis is merely that dreamy monotonous song which you hear from the " bylwallah" driving his oxen up and down the slope of the well. At every descent of the cattle the leathern buckets rise and tilt their cool liquid over a tank, from which a network of little rills con- of .British India. 279 ducts it to the garden, and all the verdure Chap. XXII. of ten or twelve acres is the result of this constant trickle. Water in the East is, indeed, not poetically, hut practically 1 " silver." Every wave that flows to the sea out of the Ganges, or Mahanuddi, or Indus, over and above what is required for navigation, is a measure of grain lost to the soil. We had our credit to redeem, as regards Previous these most necessary works, and we have yet to toworL take measures for completing them ; while rail- f irrigation, ways and roads shall be at the same time not forgotten. The Mussulman rulers were bold engineers in this respect ; not only did they cover Hindostan with fine roads shaded with trees, in places which are now tiger-walks ; but they remembered the Arabic proverb, that "water is the earth's wealth." Irrigation was so 1 " The annual charge for interest and management of these works will be only sixpence per acre, while the increase of pro- duce will be about 1 5*. ; the water costs the Government about 1 for 300,000 cubic yards, while the people have been accustomed to raise it profitably from wells at 1 for 5,000 cubic yards, or at sixty times the cost to Government. If we consider the fact of rich Delta land being protected from floods, drained, irrigated, and supplied with water transit at an annual charge of sixpence an acre, and water procured at one-sixtieth part of the money that we know it is worth, we shall not be surprised at any profits." Profits upon British Capital. " 42,000 cubic yards of water per hour were flowing useless to the sea, worth, at the abovementioned rate, 50 per hour, or 1,200 per diem ; which, for 240 days (the portion of the year in which the district was not supplied at all), would produce 288,000 a year." India Reform, Public Works. 280 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. xxn. benevolently attended to, that the fees for wells and artificial reservoirs were always deducted from the produce of every village before the Government claim was paid, where- ever it had a charge for it. Throughout the whole of Central and South India these works existed in vast numbers. From Ganjam to Cape Comorin the most extraordinary remains of tanks are found, native governments having carried their operations upon that point so far as to divert whole streams, like the Vyjahaur, into one or more reservoirs. In Candeish, where fertile cotton ground exists, and along the banks of the river Taptee, immense labours are yet traceable, though they have nearly dis- appeared, or fallen into disuse. The Delta of the Godavery is covered with such ruins, and throughout Madras only one-fifth of the ancient fertilizing works were in employ under Lord Dalhousie. What her rivers are and may be to India is partly remembered, partly felt, partly prophesied, in the Hindoo's adoration of Gunga and Krishna. Not unreasonably does he call his wife, his sister, or his daughter by those pleasant names, or repeat in his songs the story of the divine birth of Ganges. 1 Like 1 Bhagirath, the issue of a mysterious conjunction of two queens, after a series of devotions unparalleled in the history even of Indian asceticism, prevailed upon Brahma to grant him a drop of those immortal waters that washed the of British India. 281 the ancient Misraimite he worships his Nile, 1 Chap.XXii. and though had government has interrupted its inundations, Lord Dalhousie's name is written large, once more, over the Mogul's in many a fair patch of green cultivation. The Ganges canal was the greatest of the irrigatory works of his time ; but those of the Punjah restored or de- signed afresh have been already mentioned, to which may be added the canals in the Derajat "argent fields" of heaven. Vishnu came forward and pre- sented him with a conch, the sound of which was to be followed by the Ganga. But Bhagirath was apprehensive lest the rush of the celestial Ganga from the sublime top of Baikuntha might annihilate the earth. Mahadeva, the third person of the Hindu Triad, soon eased him of his fears. He bore the irresistible weight of the Ganga on his matted hair, whence she, gently descending, cascaded into the sublunary plains. Bhagirath went before, sounding the conch-shell, and Ganga followed him. They went through many a spot, since rendered memorable in the Geography of Hindu pilgrimage, through Hurdwar, where the Ganges canal now does Bhagirath's work anew ; through Allahabad, where Ganga met her sister, the divinely fair Jumna ; through Benares, the holiest city in the world, the beloved " Kashi " of saints and gods, where the shock of earthquakes can never be felt ; through Patna, where she met two more of her sisters, and the holy places in Lower Bengal. Here the pro- gress of Ganga was interrupted Eight before Bhagirath lay a sage completely absorbed in meditation, Janhu, who swallowed up the stream iu anger at being disturbed ; but he relented, and let it proceed again out of his thigh to Kali Ghat, which the Feriughees call " Calcutta," and so by a hundred mouths to the sea. Cf. Scanda Pur an. 1 The Kurma Purana says, "Those that consciously die on the banks of the Ganges shall be absorbed into the essence of Brahma. And those who die unconsciously, shall surely go to the heaven of Brahma." Agni Purana says, "those who die when half their body is immersed in Ganga water, shall be happy thousands of thousands of ages, and resemble Brahma." In Scanda Purana, Shiva, addressing Parvati, says, " To him who dies in Ganga I give my footstool to sit upon." 282 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. xxn. in Cis-Sutlej, in Lower Bengal, and above all, the great annicut across the river Godavery, which dams up its heretofore wasted waters for the benefit of a million and a half of acres. 1 Other rivers also, as the Kistna, Cavery,Pennair, and Palur, were no longer allowed to pour their treasures of water past thirsty fields into the sea. Upon navigable rivers, too, Lord Dalhousie's Government did its best to place the sailing barge and steam-ship. The Ganges and Irrawaddy were churned by paddles for the first time in their upper reaches. The Indus was navigated to Mooltan, and its branch to Jhelum, but the day of that great river is yet to come, along with the new road which must be opened to India. The apathetic English half of the Indian Government has despaired of making the Godavery navigable : Lord Dalhousie did not, though he very reasonably 1 The results of the new works to 1853 stood : Cost of Works up to date 180,000 Increase of Revenue by compa- rison of years preceding the Works, with the last four years in Rajahmundry. . . 49,000 Add in Masulipatam .... 11,000 Returns to Government . 60,000 or 33 per cent. Increase of Exports .... 126,000 Diminution of Import of Food 20,000 Saving by Water Carriage . . 70,000 Annual increase of Property . 216,000 or 120 per cent. on the outlay. of British India. 283 doubted, whether cotton would come that way Chap. XXII. when the Kholapore railway and its feeder roads were finished. Thinking, however, as Colonel Arthur Cotton did, that the word " impracti- cable" should be regarded with Napoleon's con- tempt for " impossible," he included that pro- ject among those for which he left an estimate of fifteen lacs of rupees in his last budget. Upon these public works, the chief of which Lord Dai- have thus been glanced at, Lord Dalhousie hou "f 8 ex ~ permit ure. expended treasure royally, and in a wise con- trast to the parsimony of previous govern- ments. India had indeed waited too long for justice to her soil justice to her rivers justice to her social wants and the debt is now only in course of payment. But the Governor- General, as soon as he got his hands free of the Punjab war, and saw the Burmese "guerilla" pretty well settled, chose the best men he could find, and lavished all the silver he could charge against future budgets upon this, the best conceivable investment of talent, energy, and rupees. In 1854 he spent upon public works two millions and a half sterling in 1855, three millions, in 1856, two millions and a quarter. In the seventeen years pre- ceding this great instalment of our imperial debt, only 2,888,332 had been expended on all works of public utility, of which much had gone for repairs that ought never to have been 284 Dalhousie' s Administration Chap. XXII. needed, and superintendence that was absurdly costly. It is not, indeed, a very erroneous esti- mate which sets the average "public works ex- penditure" (after deductions) of the pre-Dal- housie period at 90,000, or an half per cent. of the public revenue. This is a very beg- garly account indeed to present, following the superb works of Moslem rulers, the glo- rious mosques of Beejapore, the lovely Taj- mahal, the thick-planted tanks, groves, and dhurrumsallas of the Mogul period, and the massive bunds and annicuts of the southern Rajahs. But there is no denying that the Com- pany was much too busy all its time with wars to think of the arts of peace, and that in trying to squeeze profits and a surplus out of war- budgets, it left works of utility and benevolence to public women (as famous for their public charities in India as in Egypt), Parsee mer- chants, and Hindoo or Mussulman devotees. Reform of Lord Dalhousie had, besides, to repair his engineering machinery before he set it to Public work. The poor account which can be given Works and f tbe labours of this department before his Army Com- missariat, time, is largely due to the fact, that it was administered by a Military Board, which is known to be the worst conceivable instrument for any action beyond the Articles of War. Lord Dalhousie swept away the system that gave to a commissariat captain, an artillery of British India. 285 major, and a colonel whose experience inchap. XXii. engineering had been, perhaps, confined to ditch-digging at Mooltan, the task of carrying out imperial improvements. In their place, his Commission advised the appointment of a Chief Engineer in each Presidency, under the local government, with executive and superin- tending engineers, obeying a scientific head. This scheme has been adopted throughout India, and is, at least, an immense improve- ment upon the Military Board. Lord Dal- housie instituted, also, the practice of yearly budgets in the Department ; he imported civil engineers ; he lent warm encouragement to the Thomason College at Roorkee, which has for its object to train students, native and European, in this branch. Similar institutions were founded at Calcutta, Madras, and Bom- bay, with subsidiary schools at Lahore and Poona. These useful reforms, which have already supplied India with many good native engineers, came out of the second of three Public Commissions, appointed within one year by the Governor- General. The first gave the land cheap postage ; the second a long- delayed impulse to public works ; the third reformed the Commissariat Department, and leads up to Lord Dalhousie's army reforms. In the arraignment of the Viceroy for causing the mutiny, this Commissariat Commission is 286 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. xxii. another plea upon the side of defence. As it was due to him that the electric wire followed Lord Clyde upon his victorious course an indispensable ally so it was also due that that department of his army upon which all de- pends in India, was equal to the necessities of the Oudh campaign. Lord Dalhousie made a clear sweep of the Military Commissariat Board, which had illustrated its faults by horrors like those of the first Burmese war, and injustice like that done to Jotee Persaud. An Indian Commissariat has, like an Indian Public Works Department, an immense field. It victuals the European troops, provides ele- phants, bullocks, and camels, and feeds them ; transports troops and petty stores, procures draught and carriage cattle, supplies maga- zines with small stores, and European soldiers with quilts. It caters for native troops, when on service by land or sea ; it furnishes harness, saddlery, camp equipage, and accoutrements ; buys physic for the hospitals ; superintends sudder bazaars; collects the excise duties in cantonments ; looks after the breeding of bul- locks and camels, and captures elephants in the jungles of Chittagong. Lord Dalhousie re- ferred this mass of work the only way of getting it effectually and economically ad- ministered to officers made sub-despotic in each Presidency. of British India. 287 But his army reforms, which were signal and Chap.xxil. salutary, brin' this review to an ominous omis- _ _. " TheVice- sion to afaultinhis masterly rule moredamag- roy's great ing, perhaps, to his administrative skill than the omi8810n - annexations to his political character. There is no need to dwell upon his subordinate military reforms his minute contains a catalogue rai- sonnee of them, and the mortality and shock- ing management of Indian barracks, since his day, prove that time did not allow him to com- plete this branch of reform. Still, were it possible to dwell upon the res bellicas of the Governor- General, it would be seen how his intellect touched nothing without leaving the stamp of sagacity and clear judgment upon the subject attacked. This very fact, however, reminds his critic more of the one great neces- sity for precaution and reform which he did not see which he utterly and unaccountably missed seeing. The Bengal army was already in revolt long before he quitted India; those black praetorians of ours were letting their wilful mind be known to all who liked to understand it. In 1848, Lord Dalhousie had a little rebellion on his hands, which ought to have taught him and his lieutenants that the sword was snapping in his hands. The charge must be constantly emphasized, that he was too busy with his conquests to attend to his instruments. He was warned by open dis- 288 Dalhousie's Administration Chap.xxil. affection like that at Govindghur and Bar- rackpore ; by flat contempt of commands, like the disobedience recorded at the outbreak of the second Burmese war ; and by the actual seizure of a British fortress on the part of the very soldiers entrusted to defend it in a hostile country. He was warned, moreover, by the condition of the Bengal army, which was palpably, audaciously, and ostentatiously con- vinced of the dependence of the Sirkar upon it. " Ferox viribus" it was insolent in its self- importance, and showing as much by the well- known soft impertinences of a Hindoo whose head begins "to be full of wind." The Bengal army had to be coaxed in Lord Dalhousie's time to go through the harder and more menial duties of a regiment ; some employments of the camp were refused altogether, or had to be per- formed for the proud Brahman and Islamite mer- cenaries by low-casts, paid by the Government. They had grievances, perhaps, which their pride exaggerated ; they saw themselves commanded by gentlemen, brave, kindly, honest, well-bred, but inconceivably bored by the toils of the parade and orderly-room ; taking not the least plea- sure in the pleasures of their men; ignorant of their names ; often ignorant of their Ian* guage except its rich vocabulary of abuse ; ready to lead them knee-deep in blood, and into a tornado of bullets, as the manner of of British India. 289 English officers is ; but impatient, in the piping Chap.xxil. times of peace, to be off to a staff-appointment. The proud and pampered native soldiers not only sneered at the young Sahebs who com- manded them, but they asked themselves why the real officers of the Sepoy army, the jema- dars, soubadars, and naicks to whose position every one might come should bear all the work of the force, and gain such miserable pay. In theory, the jemadar was the equal of the young man from Sandhurst ; in reality he drew twenty-five rupees - - twopence to his equal's shilling and was never invited into confidence, or made a brother officer. In the old days, the highest officers came in close contact with their native staff the dusky mistress of the Saheb's " Beebee-khana" was a homely link between him and the regiment, the kala log. He came to the country to stay there ; to the army to fight in war, and sit down in peace among its tents and huts ; the Sepoys were proud and pleased with their officer; their officer knew his men's nick- names, and all the gossip of their bazaar. New times had brought new and better morals in Lord Dalhousie's day, but it had snapped the chain that kept together an army of Mos- lems and high-caste Hindoos and their Kaffir captains. It had done the same in Bombay, and something like it in Madras ; but there, VOL. II. U 290 Dalhonsie's Administration Chap. XXII. the different constitution of the regiments, the mixture of high and low caste Brahman, Rajpoot, Mahratta, Purhhoo, Moslem, Jew, Goanese, and Koomhi prevented the mutiny from illustrating that change. But it ought not to have escaped Lord Dalhousie. He has heen praised enough to he blamed when blame is due ; and history, if not his own observa- tion, ought to have warned him against a mercenary army, whose real leaders (commis- sioned and non-commissioned) were come to be officers of their own class. It is unfair to such a man to raise for him the child's or woman's plea, " Who would have thought it ?" His actions have been examined here as those of a man of " large discourse, looking before and after," and his want of caution could never have been sheltered by his own pen under a subterfuge like this. He ought to have " thought it ;" he, placed on the pinnacle of India, commanding the farthest field of view, and the largest means of inquiry, ought not to have slept in peace, with this tame tiger quietly grinding its teeth and stealthily trying its talons. What Lord Dalhousie would have said, placed upon his defence, was that he left the armyto .the Commander-in- Chief, except when, as in the case of Sir Charles Napier, his reforms were aggressive, and his language impertinent. Had he looked into the state of of British India. 291 the Bengal regiments with the same keen, un- chap.XXH. deceived glance which saw the helplessness of its Military Boards, he would have foreseen, and, perhaps, averted the mutiny. He de- tected the wastefulness of the Commissariat Department, and reformed it ; he denounced and tried to alter the system of promoting by seniority; he dealt merciless justice to the senile and fatuous old brigadiers who claimed to be military geniuses on the strength of the dates in the Army List ; but he had not the time or taste though he certainly had warn- ing to survey the condition of the army which supplied escorts in his regal progresses, and guards to the palace gate whence he issued edicts. Had he done so, he would have found that the camp and bazaar were both full of dangerous whispers ; that his new post-office transmitted to and fro letters of sedition ; that regiment and regiment were drawing closer together towards the fulfil- ment of the repeated prophecy, that " a hun- dred years would end the raj of the English ;" while the officers were very often ignorant of the language of the Sepoys, and invariably of their sentiments. Those who think that the " mutiny was but a work of time," may not lament that the signs of these things escaped Lord Dalhousie. They see that, like all tempests, this one broke forth suddenly, 292 Dalhousie's Administration Chap, xxii from a little cloud and, like all tempests, has cleared the air of much that oppressed it ; and witnessing a new order of things, estah- lished as the result of the crisis, they easily for- give the Governor- General this one flaw in his foresight this overlooked joint in the harness of his administration. But, unless Eastern rule makes us fatalists by infection, it is clear that we might have obtained all the guarantee we now possess of continued power in the East, without the dreadful price of the hatred sown between us and the population of India by the mutiny; by the memories of Cawnpore and Delhi, on one side ; the massacre at point of bayonet and mouth of cannon, at the other events so sad, so distressing to humanity, that it is hard to say whether the savage cruelty of Hindoo Princes and Mussulman Moulvies, or the savage justice done by British bayonets upon their followers, is the most desirable thing to forget. We have re-conquered India from our own army, but lost our ancient repu- tation for humanity and justice in a paroxysm of lordly indignation, which was too much like fear in some quarters to have left dig- nified recollections. If all this were due to Lord Dalhousie, it would be a charge not to be answered by placid forgetfulness of by- gones. But although it seems just to think he could have drawn the tiger's teeth ; and of British India. 293 would have drawn them, had he stooped his Chap.XXii. ear to the beast's low growls, its sudden spring was not, perhaps, a thing to he foreseen. Yet to the smouldering hopes and hates of Islam he contributed the enmity of all those Houses of India which he had deprived of provinces, and the disquietude of those which still owned pro- vinces, and therefore feared to lose them. The rebellion was a Mahommedan mine, fired by the spark of an affront, or a fancied affront, to Hindoo scruples, and certainly Lord Dalhousie could not have foreseen the blunder of the car- tridges. It has been shown that he was warned by events, and he was warned also by prophets. In 1849, a regiment of Bengal troops seized the fortress of Govindghur, near Lahore; and Sir Charles Napier, who had, at least, as much right to judge an army as any soldier of his day, but one, protested that thirty regiments of the Ben- gal army were all as ripe for revolt as the 66th. He pointed out the exact danger of our army the presence in its ranks of high-caste Hindoos in great numbers, and of jealous Mussulmans. His plan of degrading the 66th, and replacing it in the Army List with a regiment of kookri- armed Ghoorkas, was founded upon a principle which might have averted the mutiny, by mingling all the races of India together in our army in proportions fatal to mutinous combi- nations. But it was couched in the usual style of 294 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. XXII. Napierian English, and encountered in Lord Dalhousie a personage who loved to have the monopoly of that sort of autocratic compo- sition. It offended, therefore, instead of warn- ing the Governor- General. Had his wisdom met the wisdom of Sir Charles upon the subject, 1857 need never have been the year of blood and tears that it is written down. Instead of that, the pride of the statesman confronted the pride of the soldier, and a miserable quar- rel ensued, which cost as many lives as that of Achilles and Agamemnon, although it seemed at the time only a matter of sharp and clever despatches. It almost looks as though blind- ness was doomed to settle down upon the eyes of the English, when so great a man as Sir Henry Laurence is found deriding the pre- dictions of Sir Charles Napier. Lord Dal- housie pushed them aside along with the ex- cited and dogmatic seer himself; and it is a heavy item to set against those measures which aided to suppress the insurrection the in- crease of the European army, the railway, the telegraph, the reformed commissariat, and other bequests of his rule. This much, how- ever, is certain, that the Governor-General, if he was remiss in foreseeing the storm, would have known how to meet it ; certain mistakes of the first period of Lord Canning's action would never have been made. Perhaps the precious of British India. 295 example of Lord Canning's clemency and cool Chap.XXH. justice might have been lost on the other side, but the world would have seen a splendid instance, in its place, of proud, despotic statesmanship at bay. The words of an eloquent eulogist and servant of the Viceroy are scarcely exaggerated, who speculates " how he would have been the first to apprehend the magnitude of the dis- order, and the last to evince apprehension in his personal bearing ; how, as the fiery cross spread from city to city and province to pro- vince, so rapidly one masterly state paper would have succeeded to another, and action to all ; how, on the first lull of the hurricane, he would have forged a series of remedial measures, either anticipating criticism or dis- arming it, filling up the void of public expectancy, or giving form, and substance to the unuttered sentiments or the half-expressed wishes of the best servants of the State ; how justly he would have discriminated between those who rebelled and those who were coerced into rebellion ; and how sedulously he would have laboured to silence the bad passions which the enjoyment of rapine and the hope of further license had left seething in one class, and the recovery of dominion, with the oppor- tunity of vengeance, had excited in another ; how, out of the wreck of institutions, he would have raised an edifice more compact and 296 Dalhousie's Administration Chap. XXII. durable than the ruin ; or on that blank surface, such as few reformers had even dared to hope for, he would have left the form and pressure of the choicest creation of adminis- trative science ; how he would have " breasted the bars of circumstance," or won fortune to his standard, by " grasping at the skirt of chances ;" how he would have been the pillar of the state, and the centre of hope ; how certainly his policy of reconstruction would have satisfied or sub- dued the intellect, while, swift in descent, noble in reward, and yet tempered with mercy, his deliberate justice would have won entrance into the heart. These things were not to be, and at a time when his voice might have been heard at home in the Senate or the Cabinet with effect, it pleased Him who raises up the humble and meek, and pulls down the mighty, that the stately column should be laid prostrate, and the silver tongue of the trumpet should be hushed." All this might have occurred, and would have gone far to silence the hesitating blame with which a rule so long and arduous as Lord Dalhousie's must be upbraided for not embrac- ing everything. But without so splendid a foil, and fresh from the sorrows and the dreadful me- mories of the Indian revolt, it is impossible to forget, that in his imperial minute Lord Dal- housie dismissed the Sepoy army with one sentence. of British India. 297 CHAPTER XXIII. OVER and over again, the reflection must force Cap.xxni. itself upon the reader of history, and its writer too, that really important events and changes topics are thrust aside for those which are showy neglected, and noisy. There are few thoughtful students who would not rather read in Livy more about the slow amalgamation of plebeians and patricians, and less about foreign conquests who would not give all the little wars of Thucy- dides for new chapters on Athenian art, society, and legislation, in the manner of his monograph upon the plague. The soldier has the page of the historian too much to himself; his big drum bangs through all our records ; his trum- pet blares in them ; there is not room enough alongside for the men of thought, of invention, of benevolence, of religious and philosophical mind, except after the muck of blood and Gol- gotha of battle-corpses are disposed of. There is no reading or relating those silent revolu- tions which pass upon society without bugle or bulletin, because of that pestilent fashion of chronicling all the civilized or uncivilized 298 Dalhoitsie's Administration Cap. xxiil. murder known as war. These very pages, while they deplore the crimson colour of his- tory, bear the same hue themselves, for they also have followed the universal custom, and are two- thirds full of " guns, and drums, and wounds." Neglecting measures of supreme importance and influence, they have dwelt upon it is confessed with regret the far less momentous campaigns of the field. Like others, whose greater name does not excuse the fault, the Author acknowledges that he, too, has made History a camp-follower a brazen " Fille du Begiment" whereas, to record the true dis- tinctions of these eight years, she should have lodged in the tent of the magistrate, listened at the council-board of statesmen, and marched the fields of India over with the collector, the schoolmaster, and the engineer. Lord Dal- There is little space left, for example, to house's narrate Lord Dalhousie's share in the struggle dealings with the against the old evils of heathendom, which, superstitions to its credit, the English raj in India has and crimes . .. . in India. never ceased to wage. A land full of pri- meval haunts and aboriginal tribes, with primitive religions among them of the earliest type, where the Deity was taught of as a Devil to be propitiated, not as a Creator and father to be loved regions never visited until our time, except by civilizations too proud to propagandize, and by a new faith too philosophical for the of British India. 299 ignorant, India has furnished and furnishes Cap. XX ill. horrible types of the passions, crimes, and superstitions of mankind. 1 Governed, too, 1 Two examples of Hindoo " revenge" are here gleaned from police-lists, almost at hazard, exhibiting the peculiarities of native character and ideas. A case of rape occurred within the jurisdic- tion of the Cantonment Joint Magistrate of Saugor. A syce, at- tached to the battery of artillery stationed there, detected another syce in adulterous intercourse with his wife. The adulterer was apprehended and lodged in the quarter guard. A conclave, however, of the chowdrees and syces assembled, and induced the officer in charge to render him up to them, to be dealt with according to their usages. Having got possession of the adul- terer, these men declared that the proper penalty for his crime was that the injured husband should hare intercourse with his (the adulterer's) wife, and this determination was at once carried into execution. The unfortunate woman was dragged out, in open day, from a house in which she had vainly endeavoured to conceal herself, and violated in the presence of her husband by the man whom he had previously injured, and this with the cognizance, if not actually in the sight, of from 50 to 100 men. A more depressing instance of the lex talionis was, perhaps, never recorded. They failed to perceive the cruel injury and injustice perpetrated on the innocent wife, who was not only wronged by her husband, but had also to pay the penalty for his crime. And again : a murder, accompanied by singular circumstances, occurred in the Meerut district. A Jat, named Hurdyal, who had incurred enmity owing to his gallantries, and for having purchased land shares in his village, was met by a man in the garb of a chupprassee, who told him that the magistrate was coming, with a party, to his well, and advised him to hasten there. Hurdyal went, and on reaching the well, the sham cbupprassee bade Hurdyal collect all his family, and light a good fire. This was done, and eight of Hurdyal's rela- tives and servants were gathered round the flame. In a short time a tremendous explosion took place, three men were blown to pieces, and two others severely burnt, Hurdyal himself escaping with a slight scorch. On an examination of the place, it appeared that a large and thick earthen vessel had been filled with powder and pieces of kunkur, and placed directly under the spot where the fire was usually lit, and then covered over with ashes and cinder, so that as these became heated, the powder 300 Dalhousie's Administration Cap. XXIII. until our day by despotic rulers, making selfish- ness, lust, and cruelty the ministers of their musnud or guddee, and worse than them, dominated by a fierce sun that kindles passions fiercer, India has certainly produced examples of crime as gross as any that degrade human nature. The resolute hand of English justice ever dealt roundly with these, while the mild and wise spirit of our legislature and religion has rebuked and rooted out such superstitious cruelties as were assailable with a thorough good will and intention. It has not been, heretofore, the rule of conquerors to be moral reformers, and it is fair, therefore, for us to claim the credit of the exception, especially as it would have been more to material profit to leave alone the prac- tices of the people. Instead of that, we have with far greater consistency than is generally supposed by those who take offence at the endowments which we continue to a Hindoo temple, or the inam which we pay to a Brah- man Bhut set our faces against the minor heathenries of India, and doggedly pursued her grosser and more ferocious superstitions, such as human sacrifices, female infanticide, and organized religious assassinations like Thuggee. ignited. The efforts of the police to detect the perpetrators of thia crime proved quite unavailing ; but there can be little reason to doubt that it was designed by a man of whose share in the village Hurdyal became the possessor by purchase, who \\ an sceu iu the vicinity ut the time, and afterwards absconded. of British India. 301 It has been told, in the earlier section of this Cap. xxiir. review of the Viceroyalty, how Lord Dal- Thuggism. housie's lieutenants dealt with Thuggee in Jullundhur and the North-west. The picture of that secret crime has been painted with all its details. The pleasant wayside feast, the trea- cherous smile, the quiet signal, the silent, savage "rumal," and then the festering corpses left under every camp fire, these have been described, as also how the country was purged of the mur- derous association. Eastward of the Sutlej the crime was quite extinguished, and although a spurious Thuggee migrated into the Punjab, it was hunted with so much determination as to make no stand at all, and as early as 1853 only one victim of the handkerchief was re- ported in the north of India. To see Thugs now, one must visit Julbulpore, where, in what will soon be the Birmingham of the railroad system of the Peninsula, the former votaries of Bhowanee are demurely busy at tent-making, and other innocent arts, the fruits of which have been admired at the Exhibitions of London and Paris. This extirpation of organized murder, and the equally successful abolition of female infanticide in the Punjab, have been sufficiently related. It remains to speak of two other dark stains which Lord Dalhousie did his best to remove from the land of India. One was the Meriah, or human sacrifice, a 302 Dalhousie's Administration Cap. XXIII. bloody Pagan rite, chiefly prevailing among the hill and jungle tribes of the province of Orissa. 1 TheMeriah ^ was another relic of those old faiths of the or human world's childhood which looked upon the Deity, or at least upon the most active of the many deities believed in, as a malevolent power never pleased but with blood and anguish. Moloch, the Mexican sun-god, the Druid sacrifices, the altars of Tartessus and of the Tauric Cher- sonese, the Gaul buried alive in the Roman Forum, the human funeral victims of the Iliad, and the customs of Dahomey, conjoin to re- mind us how common to ancient and modern faiths of the early sort that horrid idea has been. It almost seems as though the primi- tive conception of the Deity was this degraded and degrading one ; as if trembling at the thun- But by no means only there, as would appear from Lord Dalhousie's minute. Human lives were taken in many other parts of India at the commencement of all great undertakings. Shivagi buried alive a boy and girl together under more than one fort which he built in the Deccan. Among the Himalayan valleys, too, a custom still exists, which is a relic at least of the Meriah. Before harvest, the entire village busies itself in weaving ropes of grass, and all the lengths are joined together into one long coil, sometimes a thousand yards in extent, which is stretched from the peak of a precipice to the plain. A saddle of wood is fitted upon this, and a victim is bribed or compelled, who bestrides the saddle with stone weights tied to his feet. He bids farewell to his friends as moribund, is taken up the hill, and at a signal let go down the incline at railroad speed, the saddle being greased to prevent friction. Sometimes he is smashed at the bottom, sometimes he reaches the ground in safety, some- times the rope breaks midway, but in any case Bhowanee is supposed to be well pleased, and prolific barley crops will follow. of British India. 303 der, the whirlwind, and the pestilence, man, cap. XXIII. chipping flint arrow-heads in his cave or hut, only shuddered at his first idea of God, and murdered his fellow man with the bone daggers which we have just excavated, to gratify heaven with fresh agony besides his own. Was it so ? did this world move slowly out of so dark a shadow of the heart to the brighter Egyptian philosophy, which made the deities merely impersonations of the powers of nature, to the Zoroastrian and Chaldean creeds, in which fright had long ago yielded to wonder, and reve- rence, and love ? Greece, by such a theory, in- herited the duty, along with her sunny skies and beautiful, happy, gifted human race, of completing one side of the religious idea by moulding the gods after the fairest and com- pletest models of earth, from women lovely as the Foam-Born sweet, wise, and stately as Pallas from men majestic as Zeus light, bright, youthful and glorious as the Apollo Belvidere. By such a theory it would seem reserved for Christianity to carry our ideas from this far material point into the moral path, rescuing the thought of " the divine," already clothed with all the mortal beauty that could be ascribed to it, from those mortal vices that marred the gods of Homer and Plato. And for this reason, and because the correlative point in the moral conception of Deity is not yet reached, 304 Dalhousie's Administration Cap. XXIII. to that which the Greeks attained in their material embodiment of it, may we not console ourselves that pious men still attribute to a Providence known to be more majestic than Zeus, and " fairer than the sons of men," the clumsy justice of "Westminster, and the vindictiveness of Dr. Pusey's "eternal hell" ? Nature of These remarks, however, interrupt the ex- the meriah. pi ana ti on o f the Meriah a sacrifice of human blood offered to the Goddess of the Earth. The Khonds of Goomsur were found, during an expedition into their hills, to be in the regular habit of practising this rite. "The Meriah Pooja," or human sacrifice, took place once a year, in one or other of the confederate Mootahs in succession. The victims were stolen from the low country, or brought from some other distant part, and sold to those Mootahs where the sacrifices were to be per- formed. If children, they were kept and fattened until they attained a proper age. The cruel ceremony was then performed as follows : The appointed day having arrived, the Khonds assembled from all parts of the country, dressed in their finery; some with bears' skins thrown over their shoulders ; others with tails of peacocks flowing behind them, and the long winding feathers of the jungle- cock waving on their heads. So decked out, they danced, leaped, and rejoiced, beating of British India. 305 drums, and playing on an instrument not Cap.XXlll. unlike the Highland pipe. Soon after noon, the jani, or presiding priest, with the aid of his assistants, fastened the unfortunate victim to a strong post, which was firmly fixed into the ground ; and there standing erect, he or she suffered the cruel torture of bavins: the flesh o cut from the bones in small pieces by the knives of the savage crowd who rushed together, con- tending with each other for a portion. Great value was attached to the first morsel hacked from the victim's body, for it was supposed to possess singular virtues ; and a proportionate eagerness was evinced to obtain it ; but con- siderable danger to the person of the operator attended the feat, for equal virtues were attri- buted to the flesh of the lucky holder of this first slice. To guard against so disagreeable a post-appropriation, a village generally deputed a man of its number to endeavour to secure the much-desired gobbet ; and, accordingly, arm- ing one of themselves with a knife (mereri), they tied cloths round him, and, holding on by the ends, at the appointed signal, rushed, with three or four hundred others, at the miserable sacrifice. If their man should be successful in his aim, they exerted their utmost efforts to drag him from the crowd. Should he escape unhurt, the whole body turned their faces to their homes ; for, in order to secure VOL. II. X 306 Dalhousie's Administration Cap. XXIII. its efficacy, they had to deposit in their fields, before the day had gone, the charm they had so cruelly won ! Another and equally savage form of sacrifice frequently preceded the one already described. A trench, seven feet long, was dug, in which a human being was suspended alive by the neck and heels, fastened with ropes to stakes firmly fixed at each end of the excavation ; so that, to prevent being strangled, he was obliged to sup- port himself with his hands upon each side of the grave. The presiding priest, after going through some ceremonies in honour of the goddess, then took an axe, and inflicted six cuts at equal distances, from the back of the neck to the heels, repeating the number, one, two, &c., and at the seventh decapitated the wretch, whose body fell into the pit and was covered with earth, after which the orgies first described were enacted. Women were sacrificed as well as men. On the arrival of the troops in the Khond country, a female found her way into the collector's camp at Pattingia, with fetters on her legs. She had escaped during the confusion of an attack on the hiding-place of the people who had charge of her, and related that she " had been sold by her brother to a mootikoo of one of the Pattingia mootas." 1 1 The authority quoted here is a missionary work, Pegg's " Orissa." of British India. 307 These almost incredible cruelties were usually Cap. XXIII. committed in propitiation of the Earth God- dess, and to secure good harvests. But in Orissa, as in other parts of India, human sacrifices were made and, it must be added, are made now to secure personal favours, to avert epidemic diseases, to procure the gift of progeny, and, painful as it sounds, to ob- tain the favour of the English Government. 1 Among the Khonds a distinct trade had long The invete- existed in the supply of victims ; and our first rac y of the custom. remonstrances were met, on the part of those who possessed Meriahs, by just such objections as a London merchant would make against the proposal to give up his bonded goods or invoices without consideration. " Yes, but he is sixteen rupees to us," was the answer w r hich the Government Commissioner often received, when he expatiated on the enormity of the crime, or the youth and innocence of " Capt. C , a very respectable officer of the Company's service, related the following instance of human sacrifice, which he discovered not very long ago, in the neighbourhood of his own station. On the occasion of a new Resident arriving, one of the Company's tributary rajahs vowed to sacrifice twenty men to Kalee, if she would grant him a prosperous interview. He set out for the Residency, and twenty men were seized, shaved, fasted, and anointed. He obtained a favourable inter- view, and as soon as he returned home the twenty victims were beheaded, and their blood poured out before the image of Kalee. The politeness of a gentlemanly Resident had, unconsciously, cost the lives of a score of men. It is more than probable that human sacrifices exist under many tributary and independent rajahs." Peycfs Orissa. 308 Dalhousie's Administration Cap. XXIII. the victims. If the money were offered in exchange, there was the embarrassing certainty that it would be employed in purchasing two Meriahs instead of one, for the Sirkar could easily be cheated as to the current prices in this infernal market. The victims them- selves were not badly handled before sacrifice ; on the contrary, it was a point of honour to offer them to the goddess in good condition, " fat and well-favoured." They were often preserved for years, made much of, and treated as one of the family which had doomed them ; but once consecrated to the goddess, and the sacrifice fixed upon, familiarity and favour were changed into refinements of cruelty. The Meriah Lord Dalhousie's Government may be said tingt to have discovered this crime, and to have set on foot a stringent crusade against it; but it has unhappily survived his administration. The Commissions which have penetrated the hills of these slayers of men find plenty of assurance that the hideous practice is discon- tinued; but the difference in the number of male and female children proves that infanti- cide of girl-infants continues, and Meriah is occasionally confessed to be in vogue. What aided the efforts of Lord Dalhousie's Commis- sioners very much at first was that some ex- cellent harvests followed the suppression of the sacrifices. The apparent indifference of of British India. 309 Bhowanee to this absence of her usual meal of Cap.xxni. blood shook the faith of the barbarous moun- taineers more than any argument of the Saheb, and almost as much as his anger and punishments. But habit was far stronger than reason with the Khonds. ' ' The Khonds, when questioned," says the Commissioner of 1861, " acknowledged that the harvest had this year been an abundant one, and that sick- ness was not more prevalent than usual ; but nevertheless they could not conceal a feeling of distrust and uneasiness under the relin- quishment of human sacrifice." Old Meriahs who have been rescued, and then have re- turned to live among the hills, report to the authorities that sacrifices are not infrequent, and that they are only interrupted at all be- cause of the yearly visits of the Agency. Nor is this mere savage obstinacy. The tribes of Bundhasir, in Karoonde, are decidedly civilized people, paying rent for their lands, cultivating them with skill, and speaking the Ooriah lan- guage as well as their own. Yet they still hanker after Meriah flesh, as a Norfolk farmer longs for guano for his turnip-patches ; and they obey the angry prohibitions of Govern- ment with a very discontented obedience. In 1861, nothing but a bold coup-de-main of Eng- lish troops kept them from renewing this rite ; wiiich bad crops seemed to them to suggest. 310 Dalhonsie's Administration Cap.XXill.Por three seasons the rains had been scanty in the Karoonde and Jeypoor khond tracts, and the crops and cattle suffered much in conse- quence. The Khonds, dissatisfied and uneasy in their minds at the relinquishment of the Meriah, were only too anxious to revert to their long-cherished rite, and, with this object in view, appealed to the Rajah of Tooamool for permission to sacrifice, and asked him for a Meriah. This he declined to give, informing the Khonds that human sacrifices had been prohibited, and that he could not and would not countenance any attempt at its revival, but he offered buffaloes and sheep. The offer was declined by the Khonds, who immediately after held a consultation at ' Bissomghery ' of Tooamool, when it was arranged that, be the consequences what they might, a public sacrifice should take place at the full moon. The difficulty about a victim was got over by a Khond stating that he would hand over for sacrifice a * toorie,' who, though not intended as a Meriah, was a slave purchased for five rupees, and would serve. The offer was accepted, and the intended victim, an elderly woman, was heavily ironed. News was brought of this, and an attempt on the part of the Paut rajah to rescue the intended victim was unsuccessful, as the Khonds removed the Meriah, and se- creted her on the hills. Finding his own of British India. 311 endeavours unsuccessful, and many thousands Cap.XXill. of Khonds assembling, the rajah sent, and urgently requested the assistance of a sehundy guard from the English Commissioner. "W?thin an hour, a guard of fifty-eight sebundies, under a trustworthy sirdar, started, and, after an arduous march of fifty-two miles, accomplished in thirty-eight hours, over a very hilly and rugged country, succeeded in rescuing the intended victim as she was being removed to the post erected for her immolation. The assembled Khonds, whose numbers amounted to at least 5,000, found themselves, at the very last moment, deprived of what they fancied no power would dispute with them ; but annoyed at this sudden and unexpected visit of the sircar's troops, a most determined attempt at rescue was set up. The sirdar of sebundies, however, making a judicious disposition of his small party, and of fifty matchlockmen sent by the rajah, was enabled to defeat the attempt of the Khonds, though he was obliged, in self- defence, to fire when attacked by their force, which outnumbered the sebundies a hundred to one. Such are the difficulties of humanizing and enlightening India, and such, it is to be feared, they will continue, while Christianity is preached from the doctrinal side instead of the moral, to tribes and races steeped in 312 Dalhousie's Administration Cap. XXIII. doctrine, and therefore in its consequent evils, bigotry and superstition. The rite of The Government of Lord Dalhousie helped also to erase another well-known and ancient rite from the list of the evil practices of India. Sati had been denounced very early in our raj. Sir Henry Hardinge found time amid his wars to proceed against it strongly, but in this vice- reign it was well-nigh abolished as a custom in the land. Whenever Sati occurred in an inde- pendent State, remonstrances of a vigorous character were addressed to the native Govern- ment ; and where the deed was done by a vassal, the paramount power treated the matter as at once a criminal and political offence. Thus, when Ulwar, Bikanir, and Oodeypore furnished examples of the burning of widows, the Go- vernment of Calcutta made angry protests ; which, with the power to enforce them, fright- ened the Rajahs into humanity and heterodoxy. When Dongarapore, a State under our own ma- nagement, ventured upon Sati, the Thakoor's son himself taking part in it, that personage, although the chief's own heir, with the Brah- mans who conducted the ceremony, were con- demned to imprisonment for three years in irons ; and the Thakoor himself was for the same period fined half his annual revenue. These measures made it very clearly understood that the sovereign power would not tolerate of British India. 313 the spectacle of a living victim on the pile of Cap.xxm. the dead. It became impossible, when they were known and talked of, to immolate unwil- ling satis, or satis who, after consenting to perish, changed their mind; while those who gloried in the anguish, and themselves eagerly demanded the nuptial couch of flame, were in the first place naturally few in number, and in the second were obliged to conspire in secret with their immolators, to carry out a rite, the essence of which they felt to be publicity. Slowly, but surely, therefore, Sati, in presence of these obstacles, faded away; in the. last years of Lord Dalhousie's reign a case rarely appeared, and still more rarely is it now announced. In speaking of this extinction, however, the error must be avoided of regard- ing Sati as a ceremony ever very commonly practised. Pire scorches, and nerves will shudder and thrill at the idea of anguish, in India, as well as elsewhere ; and, consequently, Hindoo wives, however affectionate, have by no means numerously defied the terrible ordeal. Sati was not prohibited from 1815 to 1824, yet in all the three Presidencies only six thousand six hundred and thirty- two widows sacrificed them- selves during that period. It must not, there- fore, be looked upon as a ceremony of enforced and wide-spread practice, or one of which every village would be eager to demand the restora- 314 Dalhotme's Administration Cap.XXin.tion. To part with the Sati was a blow to Brahmanical pride, to the liturgy of Hindoo- ism, and to a few faithful and frenzied widows, but not to India generally. A country has never rebelled because its rulers forbade mar- tyrdom ; the candidates for that distinction so seldom constitute a corps d'armee. Eedeeming But Sati must not be classed with Thuggee, ri' ofthia Female infanticide, and the Meriah as an unredeemed evil, happily abolished root and branch. A noble truth underlaid those dis- tressing scenes at the pile ; a glorious constancy furnished the martyr ; a sublime faith enabled her light and shrinking Asiatic limbs to endure the torture of death by flame and smoke. It has been remarked that there were six thousand six hundred Satis in India in ten years, i. e., six hundred and sixty " burn- ings" annually before the suppression ; but the real wonder is that there were so many, for at least five hundred out of the yearly number must have been animated by an affection, a devotion, and a faith which might have ranked the names of those unknown women with Sophonisba's and Eleanor's. 1 Let it be re- 1 The author is not unaware that Diodorus Siculus twice refers to the rite, and ascribes its origin to the infidelity of the women, who poisoned their husbands so constantly, that to check the practice, they were compelled to die at the same time. (Lib. xix. c. 32, 33.) Strabo is of the same opinion, and Man- della, a German, quoted in the Asiatic Journal, January, 1823. of British India. 315 collected that to the Hindoo wife's love no cap.xxm. freedom of maiden choice or equal household dignities have contributed. Her bridal is not her own business to arrange or celebrate it is all settled for her while she is sucking at her mother's breast ; it is fixed by a solemn cere- mony when her only thought is of the sweet- meat woman and the tamarind cakes ; and it is consummated when she enters her teens, and before she has seen her husband's face thrice in her life. Yet out of this annihilation of personal right a feminine fancy springs often such is the force of circumstance, or so Provi- dence guides it to the good of all a love arises, as deep and pure in the Hindoo girl- wife's heart as if out of forty suitors she had chosen her dusky lord. Very gentle are the hearts of Hin- doo women, and purer and more faithful still would they be to the household but for this cus- tom of giving their hands away by proxy. But, in spite of it, so often does true affection gladden the Hindoo threshold, that the " Sati" was to be found, and has been found, in palace and cottage alike. Princesses and peasant's widows, all have turned their backs upon life, and their faces to the flames ; rich and poor alike, child- These are mere theories. It arose after the time of Menu (who does not speak of the custom) in the signal example of some wife who immolated herself upon her husband's pile, and was com- mended by the Brahmaus. 316 Dalhousie's Administration Cap. XXIII. less and with children, be it noted ; seven hun- dred in the year. " Sati" is a Sanskrit ad- jective, which implies " good," " chaste," "excellent," "virtuous;" and the wife who pillowed her husband's head upon her lap, while the fire and the thick smoke wrapped them together, proved herself Sati to the world, " leal and faithful," by an argument to which scandal itself always bowed down. Some- times the act was indeed dared to shame scan- dal, sometimes to avoid the sad and dishonoured existence of Hindoo widowhood. But the woman whose nature could of itself confront such an ordeal, was not such as generally to hear or fear much scandal in the city or zenana : a deeper reason induced the mass of these self- sacrifices. It was, besides the passion of bereave- ment, that the Sati, by her love and courage, could procure, and by Hindoo creed did procure, for her dead husband the blessings of heaven. She, who could ascend the pile, and, without an accusing conscience, fold to her heart the pale corpse of her lord, at the same time bidding those who witnessed her death pour the ghee and apply the torch; she, by right of that sublime abne- gation, and in the supreme triumph of her death- shriek, announcing agony, but not regret ; she, the " Sati," the good, the true, the pure, was declared to have saved the soul of him with whose corpse her own became a pile of light of British India. 317 grey ashes. 1 It may have been extravagant, Cap.XXHI. fanatic, heathenish, in one aspect ; hut in ano- ther, it was the act of a splendid fidelity, a fearless affection, a soul stronger than the body, a spirit victorious over matter. To India, sunk in the baser vices that accompany subjection and ignorance, the sight of the young widow, walking unaided to her couch of flame, must have been often full of silent and divine teach- ing to the spectators. Make what allowance we will for the miserable life which a Hindoo widow might expect ; for her despair at losing- jewels, gay dresses, honour and love; her place in the world and the household; remember as we may, and as she and the people would, that for her there was no more pleasure in the world now her husband was dead, that she must walk in hateful white garments till her turn came for the " goori," and the bearers ; must shave her dark long tresses away, and lay aside her golden head-disc, and be like as one among the living, but not of them ; recount all this, but recall, too, how sweet is the saddest 1 Cf. the " Hitopadesa " in my translation : " When the faithful wife, embracing tenderly her husband dead, Mounts the funeral pile beside him, as it were the bridal bed : Though his sins were twenty thousand, twenty thousand times o'ertold, She shall bring his soul to Swerga, for her love so true and bold." " The Book of Good Counsels." 318 Dalhousie's Administration Cap. xxiii. life ; and then how wonderful it must have seemed to the town or village when love thus transformed the simple matron to a martyr, and sent her forth to the funeral pile to die. At such times the people needed no instruction to honour her ; of their own accord they huilt a hower of champaks and mango branches for her, brought their own jewels to decorate her, spent their little store of silk and cloth in making pennons and colours for the procession, and on her way to the fierce death actually worshipped her as a being no longer of the earth, but elevated above it by the fervour of her faith and love. It need not be denied that this honour and wor- ship added sometimes to the Sati's temptation to die ; but that is only saying that, in these Hindoo women, " the last infirmity of noble minds" existed, as well as the grandest passion of humanity, in its most fervid manifestation. " Love stronger than death" redeemed this rite, it is urged, from the condemnation which has been showered upon it. Our wiser philosophy teaches lonely hearts that to suffer and to wait is better and surer, if not less painful than the pile. Our freer social code does not goad bereave- ment with the prospect that daunted v Hindoo widows ; our purer creed instructs us that the life of the body belongs to the Master of Life to take away in His own good time ; and that it must bo borne with when its joys are ended. of British India. 319 But by such lights as the Hindoo cottage and Cap. xxni. temple possessed, the Sati's sacrifice was sub- lime; and in sternly abolishing it, we have seemed to Hindoos, as we have seemed too often, to destroy without sense or sympathy. Par be it from these pages to deplore the fact that the Hindoo widow is burned alive no longer, and that now she even remarries again occasionally, in spite of the Shastras and Shastris. But justice must be done to the idea, lofty if not universal, that wedded love is not what Eno- barbus declared 1 it, a thing to wear out and renew again ; and that such a faith, sealed with agony and death, would justify itself. That admirable picture of Mahratta life and nature, the "Tara" of Captain Meadows Taylor no mere novel, but a careful historical and social study contains remarks upon the subject too just to resist : " Strange fortitude," he says, " which, having no dread of a horrible death, * o * carried its votaries even to the flames with a noble constancy. From the period to which we can trace it in a dim, legendary supersti- tion of the past; through the two thou- sand years since the Greek philosopher stood on the banks of Indus and Ganges, and 1 " Why, sir, give the gods a thankful sacrifice. "When it pleaseth their deities to take the wife of a man from him, it shews to man the tailors of the earth : comforting therein, that when old robes are worn out, there are members to make new." Antony and Cleopatra. 320 Dalhousies Administration Cap. XXIII. recorded it, to the time when it was made to cease under the stern power of a purer creed, how many have died, alike self-devoted, alike calm, alike fearless ! Women with ordinary affections, ordinary hahits of life, suddenly lifted up to a sublimity of passion to the death by an influence they were unable to re- press or control ; barbarous and superstitious was it, if you will, but sublime." Civilization, of course, thanks Lord Dalhousie for striking the last blow at this rite ; but civilization must condescend to understand that it would have been abolished long before, if, as generally given out, it had been merely got up by the Brah- mans. The sacrifices were prompt and volun- tary in the majority of cases, and, to the last, the victims were our chief difficulty, rather than their friends and sacrificers. 1 1 " Two satis were reported in the Saugor and Nerbudda territories. In the one case the corpse was left burning while the performers of the funeral rite went to bathe ; the widow took the opportunity of their absence to throw her- self on the pyre. She was removed, taken to her house, and tied down to a cot. Her relatives, then, instead of watching her, went about their own business. She extricated herself, returned once more to the pyre, and was burnt. The other case was very similar. Au old woman, it appeared, went to her husband's pyre after the relatives had left, and burnt herself upon it. These instances show how deeply the desire of self-im- molation must have been inculcated in the minds of the women, as in neither death was any artificial stimulus had recourse to, to excite them, first to entertain the idea of the crime, and after- wards to carry it into effect." Moral Progress of India, 1860-61. of British India. 321 To the close of this rapid review of the Cap.xxiir. administration has purposely been left that act Other acts which, above all, lies darkened with the shadow a ^ p J icies of Lord Dal- of the great rebellion; and which, in the opinion housie. of ill-informed persons, condemns Lord Dal- housie as the cause of that convulsion. With his last great measure the annexation of ,Oudh the retrospect of his rule must there- fore close, and the difficult verdict be de- livered. Towards this, therefore, the record hastens ; but to narrate and criticize at any adequate length, the annexation of the fourth and final kingdom appropriated by Lord Dalhousie, a series of momentous admi- nistrative deeds some not less interesting than those already noticed must be passed over. Foremost of all, it is to be regretted that the subject of education, including the Education, establishment of universities in Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras, and the first efforts of female instruction, must be left aside. Wil- lingly should this review have lingered over the famous educational despatch of 1854 the intellectual charter of India had space al- lowed any such notice of the topic as its dignity demands. And upon this point, too, the incompetence which will have been too apparent in other parts of this work need not, perhaps, have provoked the critic ; for the a,uthor has shared in the task of Indian VOL. II. Y 322 Dalhousie's Administration Cap. XXIII. education. It is one of his most cherished memories to have borne a personal part in the enterprise of imparting the wisdom and cul- ture of the West to the East ; a part which taught him, also, as teacher, something namely, not to undervalue the intellect and the moral nature of the Hindoo. On this subject, therefore, he might possibly have writ- ten with some confidence and profit ; and he abandons it with the greater reluctance unwilling to skim so grand a subject, and unable to allot to it its due space. At the same time, there can only be men- tioned a group of other themes examples of progressive legislation connected with Lord Dalhousie's sway : The appointment of a separate and subordinate Governor for Ben- gal ; reforms in the Board of Revenue ; sur- veys of the new provinces ; the expedition and simplification of civil and criminal justice ; new rules for the civil and uncovenanted services ; and the daily legislation of the period. Under this last head, the Act for the Conservancy of Towns, the Enam Commission of Bombay, with those which had to do with the minutiae of army regulations, might all deserve close consideration. A full list of and energy such of them as bear the impress of Lord displayed in Dalhousie's own band would well exhibit the versatility and muscle of his mind. It has of British India. 323 been remarked before, that the "minutes" ofcap.xxin. Lord Dalhousie, carefully edited, would add a valuable tome to English classics their rapid succession, their variety, their pith and pointedness, can hardly be over-praised ; while their lucid statement of facts, with the complete mastery of details exhibited in them, are not more striking than the enlightened sentiments, the comprehensive policy, and the enlarged statesmanship which pervade and animate many of them. Even on abstruse subjects, so quick was his mastery of technicalities, and so true his application of new principles, that some of his improvised minutes are really exhaustive treatises. All these must be left aside in their personal and public bearing; though many of them have survived the shock of the mutiny, and stand yet, like well-laid stones, in the repaired edifice of British govern- ment in India. Some closer retrospect must do justice to Lord Dalhousie' s administration in His kingly this regard ; though it would have to record, character - also, that this great man, with everything be- longing to a king except the title, showed some- times, in his vast energy of rule, the obstinacy as well as the firmness, the harshness as well as the justice, the arrogance as well as the dignity, of a monarch. And, indeed, the Marquis of Dalhousie, for these eight years, was a monarch. Generals and Boards in 324 Dalhousie's Administration Cap. XXIII. i n( ii a trembled at his minutes ; Directors at home succumbed passively and politely to his brilliant paragraphs and prosperous policy. His progresses through India were gorgeous pageants ; his palace in Calcutta the central oracle of the Eastern world ; while in his Durbar tent proud rajahs bowed to the Destroyer of dynasties, and great chieftains drew their swords half-way from the scabbard and clasped their hands in homage to the Scotch peer none there, at least, doubting his authentic royalty. of British India. 325 CHAPTER XXIV. WHAT is the right of a king to his kingdom ? Cap The question may startle minds of a placid and Oudh. proper type, but it must be encountered before any just verdict can be given upon the last kingdom, and greatest indictment against Lord Dalhousie. It would have been clamorously answered not many decades ago with the absurd doctrine of " divine right ;" a doctrine which has taken its last refuge in Berlin, and amid the Dahomeans. But few serious persons now maintain that a monarch can possess an abstract and inde- feasible title to the realm which he rules, other than that which is derived from the consent of his subjects, and which rests upon their continued and active assent. To pretend that he holds a diploma from the Almighty, that the ceremony of coronation is an irreversible sacrament, could only be an accepted doctrine if Providence had never permitted an unjust or vicious sove- reign to be deposed. Or if it is sought to evade this by declaring the guilt of those who depose a bad king to be equal to that of irreligion and rebellion against divine decrees, we are forced 326 Dalhousie's Administration Cap. XXIV. upon the dilemma that God can deliberately ap- point as his direct vicegerent a king like the de- bauchee Louis, or an empress like the infamous Catherine. But it could be, of course, only as a convenient theory that this doctrine was ever maintained : in practice its force must be com- mensurate with the patience of the people receiving it. Like the fairies who live by being believed in, kings rule by divine right, so long as their subjects tolerate that view of their dignities and themselves. Shakespeare knew as much when he put into the mouth of a mon- arch, whose deposition was already arranged, the sentiment that " Not all the water in the rough, rude sea Can wash the balm from an anointed king." And we come thus to the true and practical view of the matter, which is, that no king and no government has any right to rule, independent of the contentment of the mass of people with his or its authority. In discussing, therefore, the fall of the Oudh dynasty, as of any other, there is no need to linger over the question whether the Royal House sustained a wrong, apart from that loss of dignities, estates, reve- nues, and consideration to which a private right may be argued. The question will be whether the country sustained a wrong in the dethrone- ment, and this may be the case in many ways. of British India. 327 It may be the case not only if the people were Cap. XXIV. contented with the reigning family or regime, but even if they were discontented, so long as they did not overtly and distinctly desire the intervention of an alien power to afford them relief. In other words, a country has a right to be ill-governed, as well as well-governed, for all the term during which it expresses its con- tentment by submission ; and while the doctrine must be rejected that a throne and realm can be anybody's personal property, the interference of foreign force to dispossess the worst possible ruler, must be regarded with intense suspicion. These remarks will relieve the subject of the The true annexation of Oudh from some of that " person- P m to e considered in ality" with which Conservative writers and the Oudh orators have cumbered it ; though the duties and respective obligations of Government to Government, as between the Company and the Nawab of Oudh will still have to be considered. They will enable this vexed question to be taken out of the atmosphere of special pleading which has befogged it, into that of broad truth and common sense. They permit us the advantage of thinking more of Oudh and less of her kings ; more of fact and less of techni- cality ; more of principle and less of partisan- ship in examining the last of Lord Dalhousie's acts of State. In the closing days of his ad- ministration, the Governor-General, with the 328 Dalhousie's Administration Cap. XXIV. march of a column and the stroke of a pen, certainly transferred to the dominion of Britain this splendid kingdom of Oudh, and deposed its ruling family. Even if this be proved a bene- fit to the country, did the country desire or welcome the change ? was it forced upon us, or covetously contrived ? did we violate public obligations to bring it about ? did we seek our own aggrandizement, or the good of Oudh ? these, far more than the private woes of a Wajid Ali, are the points that should engage attention. And at starting it is necessary to premise that, though the latest and greatest of Lord Dalhousie's annexations, the case of Oudh must be separated from that of the Punjab or Pegu, from those even of Jhansi, Berar, Nag- pore, and Sattara. It connects itself with these positively by no link at all, except the common term " annexation," and the reputation of the ruler to whom the act is unfairly ascribed, as all his own, because of his habit of " taking king- doms in." The assumption of Oudh must be considered, therefore, as quite an isolated mea- sure; and to be equitable, as if carried into effect by another Viceroy altogether. The natural As a province the prize was tempting character- enough to create suspicion. Alexander's virtue S Of would never have been historical if the daughter of Darius had not been fair, and Lord Dal- housie would never have been attacked if Oudh of British India. 329 had not been rich, well-peopled, prosperous, Cap. and generally desirable. Oudh certainly broke the continuity of the map of British India with a blank that may have haunted the slumbers of Lord Dalhousie. Twenty-five thousand square miles of soil -fat and fertile all over, ex- cept to the westward and in theTerai jungles lying between the lower Himalaya ranges and the Ganges, and watered by four considerable streams, beside great rivers ; as to timber, rich in toon and sissoo and teak ; as to minerals, in salt, saltpetre, soda, potash ; as to agricultural products in wheat, barley, maize, bajri, rice, sugar-cane, indigo, cotton, and opium ; peopled by a fine race of Brahmans and Rajpoots, from whom the flower of our Bengal army had long been drawn ; and producing, even in Suraj-ood- Dowlah's time, two crores of rupees as easy revenue, Oudh was the garden, the granary, and the queen-province of India. Even blue books break into poetical excesses in describing the face of the country, which, according to them, " presents a remarkable contrast to the Trans- Gangetic provinces. With water every- where within twenty feet of the surface, and in some places scarcely ten feet below the ground, the province smiles with luxuriant vegetation, and is adorned with rich groups of mangoe and mhowa trees, whose picturesque forms add beauty to the scene. Pine clumps 330 Dalhousie's Administration Cap. XXIV. of bamboos, planted in profusion round the forts of the Talookdars, gracefully wave their ta- pering ends, whilst their closely interwoven stems form an impenetrable barrier to the ap- proach of an invader. The umbrageous tama- rind and small-leaved fig, the shrubby acanthus and fragrant orange, mingle their grateful shade and flowery beauty in the groves and gardens which abound in Oudh." its ancient In ancient times, Oudh was, in legal phrase, history. ^ j^,, countrv } ying to the north of the Jumna and Ganges, while its capital Ayoodhya was the seat of the dynasties of the Sun and Moon. Rama marched thence to recover his wife, the lotus-bosomed Sita,whom Havana, the giant, had carried into Ceylon. That Hercules of Oudh recovered her to Lucknow, thanks to the monkey, Hanooman, and to the bridge he built over the sea. These were the golden days of Hindoo legend, but the cow-eating Moslem came to seize Delhi and to absorb Oudh as a tri- butary province. Of Akbar's fifteen soobahs, Oudh formed one, and was governed in 1720, A.D., by Saadat Khan ; famous for a double treachery, being the author of the first, the victim of the second. 1 The third in descent 1 It is very doubtful, however, whether the incident can be regarded as historical upon which Lord Dalhousie founded his assertion, that " the dynasty of Oudh sprang from treachery at the first," nor is the point important. These are the facts alleged, however: " In the invasion of Iiidia, and the sack of of British India. 331 from Saadut Khan, was Sooja-ood-Dowlah, Cap. XXIV. "the infamous son of an infamous Persian pedlar," and he it was who fought the battle of Buxar with the British, and lost it. Oudh then lay at our feet its Souhahdhar was our prisoner, and a treaty was concluded of which, if vce victis was the burden, Sooja-ood'Dowlah had to thank his own ambition for it, and for our fatal connection with his house. Ear be it from this narrative to run through Our . carl y the tedious chapters of our relations with Oudh from 1765 to 1800. It may have been relevant to introduce them into Oudh pamphlets and Oudh treatises as against the English nation, but against the Government of Lord Dalhousie they can have no force until the date of our Delhi, by Nadir Shah, the King of Persia, Saadut Khan, the Governor of the Province of Oudh was summoned to defend Delhi, and assist the Emperor. His first act was to seek refuge with Nadir Shah, in order to supplant another arch-traitor and servant of the Emperor the Nazim. When Nadir Shah cap- tured Delhi, he sent for the Nazim and Saadut Khan, and, re- viling them in contemptuous language, exclaimed, 'But I will take revenge on you, knaves ! with all my wrath, which is the in- strument of the vengeance of God !' He then spat upon their beards, and dismissed them with all possible ignominy. The Nazim turned to Saadut, and swore that he would never survive the indignity ; so did Saadut Khan ; and both agreed to swallow poison. The Nazim, having concerted his measures in the pre- sence of his friends, said his prayers most solemnly, drank off a pretended potion presented by his servant, and presently fell overpowered. Saadut, who had carefully watched his great rival, and had been duly informed of his apparent death, immediately swallowed real poison, and expired. The Nazim, who had played his part well, survived for years." 332 Dalhoitsie's Administration Cap. xxiv. treaty obligations. He cannot be made re- sponsible for the adroitness with which Sooja- ood-Dowlah was saddled with charges for our army, nor called upon to explain how Asoph, his son, who reigned in his stead, inherited un- comfortable relations of the financial kind ; how Benares, the holy Kashi, was appropriated, and how, under too much pressure of the process which Lord Cornwallis and Sir John Shore ap- plied, Asoph-ood-Dowlah died of a broken heart or constitution. The accession of Soudah Ali, again, without absolutely " stinking of rupees," 1 is, doubtless, a passage exhibiting some flavour of venality, and showing the Government of the day as one of mere merchants, and not very honest merchants ; but it has nothing to do with Lord Dalhousie. We reach, indeed, little at all con- necting Oudh with his administration till the c? treaty of 1801, Yet, in adverting to the charges Eapacity of Q f ra p ac ity piled up against Sir John Shore and Govern- his antecessors, it must be confessed that much ments to- seems true. The fatal parasitic process here- wards Oudh. , . . tofore described, of laying a brigade and a tax, and incubating it into an army and a tribute, was commenced so early, and carried on so well, that under Lord Cornwallis, the expenses of Major Palmer, the private agent of the Government at Lucknow, were 112,950 per annum. The only counter-fact to be borne 1 "Dacoitee in Excelsip." of British India. 333 in mind is, that the Nawabs of Oudh were Cap. xxiv. already in the position of titular princes, with no sovereignty at all which the Company did not maintain for them and had not contemptuously continued to them after the victory of Buxar. The defeated Yassals of a defeated, if not a dethroned seigneur, it is absurd to speak of the Nawabs as though their submission to these exactions had been a virtue. Delhi and Lucknow were annihilated as capitals ; their rulers had become mere puppets by force of events. The question for any one not holding a brief for them is not whether these exactions inconvenienced the Nawabs of Oudh, but whether they caused anarchy and distress in the provinces which they nominally governed. It is because this appears to have been the case to some extent that the period previous to 1801 must always be painful to recall, and to a certain extent damaging to the case of the Company against the Oudh Nawabs. But these dubious incidents have nothing to The year do with Lord Dalhousie's acts, farther than i 801 ; an . d the treaty of that they preceded them. The year 1801 that date, brings us for the first time to dealings with this shadowy Government of Oudh which belong to the Dalhousian period, and which, therefore, it is necessary to recite. Let it be clearly understood that final judgment is not passed here, one way or the other, upon the 334) Dalhousies Administration Cap. XXIV. events preceding 1801, which have however, been criticized by some partisans, as if the Oudh Na- wabs had been mirrors of chivalry, and English gentlemen monuments of mendacity and kna- very. A double error, indeed, seems to run through all the ingenious compilations to which allusion is made that, namely, of regarding these puppet princes as something really royal, and that of forgetting all Oudh in zeal for the palace of its capital. 1 It may be regarded as an axiom, that an independent province of India, in which a British subsidiary force is once lodged, must, sooner or later, fall in. This has been the case with fair and honest native administrations ; but the administration of Oudh was so vile, its rulers had such here- ditary ignorance and impotence of governing, or rather ignored the duty of government with such unanimity, that the paramount power had really little choice, except to avail itself of the provisos of previous treaties, and, " neces- sity arising," to march more troops into the province, and exact more pay for them. The language of Saadat Ali justly described by Mill as "savouring of abjectness" shows that he and his antecessors had no such high- flown notions of their rights as they have 1 Thus the able author of "Dacoitee in Excelsis" compli- ments Saadat Ali, whom we pitchforked into the musnud, with his pocket-full of bargains with us, as "our reluctant ally." of British India. 335 been credited with. 1 They were Mussulman Cap. XXIV. princes of the last days of Mogulism ; which means that they would wriggle in the dust to a superior power, and ape the airs of a Tamer- lane to the weak. However, with the most menial of princes, That treaties faith once passed ought to be kept ; and in imply mutual fidelity. the treaty of 1801 a distinct compact was clearly made with these deputy rulers. "Whether previous pacts of the same nature had been observed or broken, is out of our scope ; but were it so, the abject position of the Oudh Nawabs, having been once overlooked, would not, of course, excuse insincerity on our part. Without admitting the ridiculous doctrine, that because Vattel laid it down that " a treaty implied equal sovereign rights," the Company and the Nawabs should be regarded as equal powers, these pages not only admit, but claim, that as regards those arrangements or orders which were called treaties, and issued 1 Vide " Memorial of his Excellency the Nawab Vizier," dated 1800: "Through the favour of the Company, and assisted by their power, I ascended my hereditary musnud j and it being, in all ages and countries, the practice of powerful and liberal sovereigns to spare neither expense nor trouble in assisting those whom they may have once taken under their protection, I, being solely dependent on the Honourable Com- pany, and confidently trusting to their magnanimity and gene- rosity, fully expected that, during my government, the affairs of the country would shine forth with a splendour beyond that of my predecessors," and, with a final spasm of submissiveness " the reputation of the Company will last until the Day of Judgment." 336 Dalhousie's Administration Cap. XXIV. to the Oudh princes to sign, the Company owed veracity and good faith in return for its The terms of * the treaty, vassal's obedience. What, then, were the terms of the " treaty of 1801" ? By the first Article, the Nawab Vizier ceded to the East India Company, "in perpetual sovereignty," certain "portions of his territorial posses- sions, in commutation of the subsidy agreed upon in the treaty of 1798 of the ex- penses attendant on the additional troops and of the Benares and Eurruckabad pensions." By the third article, the Nawab Vizier further engaged that he " will establish, in his reserved dominions, such a system of adminis- tration, to be carried into effect by his own officers, as shall be conducive to the prosperity of his subjects, and be calculated to secure the lives and property of the inhabitants ; and his Excellency will always advise with, and act in 1 A curious blunder has been made, by the assailants of Lord Dalhoueie, upon the subject of the loans without interest taken from the Oudh princes. The class of pensions, called " wusee- kas," peculiar to Oudb, explain them. From time to time the sovereigns of Oudh contributed largely to the British Govern- ment loans. It was contrary to the creed of a Mussulman, however, to receive usury, and the Kings of Oudh would not depart from the sacred law of the Koran. But it was manifestly impossible for the paramount power to accept on such terms aids from its feudatories, and it was finally agreed that the interest due on the loans should be disbursed in the form of monthly stipends to certain members of the Lucknow Court, to be continued to them and their heirs for ever. The provision thus made was called in Persian " Wusceka." of British India. 337 conformity to, the counsel of the officers ofcap. xxiv. the East India Company." The British Government, upon its part, bound itself, in the third article of the treaty, " to defend the territories which will remain to his Excellency the Yizier, against all foreign and domestic enemies; provided always that it be in the power of the Company's Govern- ment to station the British troops in such parts of his Excellency's dominions as shall appear to the said Government most expedient." The original cession of a large and valuable The treaty part of Oudh is not to be discussed here, nor the C0n8ldered - price which the Nawab was to pay for the insu- rance of the rest. These things belong to a pre- vious period that of Lord Dalhousie starts, as has been said, from the accepted terms of this contract. Can it be understood as signifying anything else than this, that, being relieved, whether reluctantly or willingly, of " all fur- ther demands," the Nawab was to cease to render the rest of Oudh a nuisance to India ; and that, upon condition that he governed his diminished country with decent order, and "in conformity with the counsel of" the East India Company, he was to be allowed to waste his revenue in order to play at royalty ? Harsh as it sounds, what else can be the serious meaning ? This was an agreement be- tween servant and master, not between poten- VOL. II. Z 338 Dalhomie's Administration Cap. XXIY. tate and potentate. None the less, doubtless, was our Government bound by its own stipula- tions, but, in truth, we think, it kept them. "It kept them," says the Marquis of Dalhousie, in his minute, "constantly, faithfully, completely." " The obligations thus imposed upon it by the treaty of 1801," he wrote, " have been observed by the Government of India for more than half a century. Throughout the whole of that eventful period, the British Government has been engaged in frequent wars with the most powerful native states of the East ; and it has more than once been required even to meet invasion, coming in formidable aspect, and from the most distant points. But, in all that time, no foreign foe has ever set his foot on the soil of Oudh. No great rebellion has ever threatened the stability of its throne. British troops have been ever kept in close proximity to the person of the king. Once, they have preserved the throne to its rightful sovereign, against the treachery of his own nearest kindred. Tor many years, in former times, they were perpetually called upon to uphold the king's authority, whatever might be the merits of the dispute whereby it was called in question ; and their aid, in later times, has never been withheld, whenever his power was wrongfully defied. In very recent years, the Minister has found himself unable, of British India. 339 without their service, to control a rebellious Cap. xxiv. chief within but sixteen miles of the capital ; and two years have not yet passed since their protection was invoked against a military mutiny at the very gates of the king's palace." We do not find these assertions of the ' Governor-General challenged, except generally. They are history ; and the ardent champions of as effete and worthless a family as ever ruled men controvert them only with rhetoric. They endeavour, instead, to excuse the inobservance of conditions on the other side, by maintain- ing the sovereign right of the Nawabs over what was left to them of Oudh. The very extracts which they quote drive them from this refuge ; for Lord Wellesley and his con- temporaries were careful even to reiteration in declaring the Nawab " an independent prince" as regards everything but complete dependence upon the Company. 1 By position first, then, and by contract next, the Nawabs of Oudh, unlike the Sattara or Nag- pore princes were bound to administer their province in such a way as to keep it peaceful, contented, and prosperous. If they failed to 1 Vide the strongest passage quoted to the contrary, Mr. Adam's letter, dated 12th November, 1814" The Nawab is to be treated in all public observances as an independent prince, but essentially he must be subservient to the British Govern- ment. In proportion as that point is secure, personal attentions involve no inconvenience." Could polite contempt go further ? 340 Dalhousie's Administration Cap. XXIV. do this they failed in their part of the agreement, and created a scandal against the Sirkar. This compact was recognized hy the Nawabs ; and it must never be forgotten, that if advocates at home saw independence and independent rights upon their musnud at Lucknow, its occupants were not so foolishly deceived. They clearly understood the tenure upon which they sat there, 1 and that they were at liberty to crowd their palaces with buffoons and eunuchs, and their zenanas with purchased beauties, so long as their neglected provinces did not cry out too loudly against them, and against the para- mount power which maintained them. Had the dynasty been one of noble rulers " Piromis after Piromis," Trajans succeeding Hadrians the argument of kingly right might have been urged with greater force. But this was a race of enervated Mussulmans, the best example among them the merchant from whose harem they sprang a race whose object in life was to waste it in dissolute pleasures, and whose regret, upon extinction, was not for their king- dom, but their lost riots and debaucheries. The very Saadat Ali, whose gentle innocence is so much sympathized with for the forced treaty of 1801, amassed somehow thirteen 1 The Vizier said, " I have been induced to cede the districts for the charges of the troops, merely to gratify his Lordship, deeming it necessary so to do, in consequence of Mr. Wellesley's arrival, resolving to conform to his Lordship's COMMANDS!" of British India. 341 millions sterling of treasure from a country Cap. XXIV. which yielded but one million and a half yearly ; while the vices of Nusseer-ood-Deen if " The Private Life of an Eastern King" be only "semi-fictitious" were flagitious even for Lucknow. These facts are combated in the Oudh brief by instances of fidelity to the Com- pany, of liberality in lending money to it, and of certain showy forms of benevolence and charity. To these it may be replied, that it argues the prudence rather than the magnanimity of the Nawabs, that they fawned on the hand that maintained them. Their duty to their people can hardly be written off against their loans to us ; while, as for works of charity, the chief moral obligation imposed by the Koran is to give alms, and a Mussulman compounds for all offences against the Prophet by a com- pliance with that. Those who would comprehend the state of Social state society in Oudh which we maintained by up- holding these princely Sybarites, will gain an idea of it from " Colonel Sleeman's Tour." And here should be swept away another of those insular misconceptions which have ob- scured the subject. Oudh was not a Mus- sulman kingdom ; it was historically and essentially a Hindoo realm, and the Islam- itish vice-royalty at its head was precisely the make-shift suited to it. To compound a 342 Dalhottsie's Administration Cap. XXIV. parallel, Oudh was an Egypt governed by Turks, with an aristocracy of thanes out of a Britain, ruled by Normans. The real and substantial lords of the soil were the Hindoo aristocrats, never wholly subdued by the Ma- hommedans, and becoming more than ever independent when we degraded the Mogul, and made mere stewards of his soubadhars. These aristocrats, or talookdars, as they were called, were hereditary landowners, frequently bearing the title of rajah, and always exer- cising the authority of princes over their own domain. In theory, they were subject to the Nawab, and paid him an assessment upon their estates ; in practice, they paid when it was convenient, or not at all paid when they could gain something by paying, or when it was cheaper than keeping a small army where- with to laugh at the beards of the king's collectors. Oudh was covered with thickets of prickly pear and jungles of bamboo and thorn, and these served these Oriental barons in the same stead as the Black Forest and the Rhine hills their mediaeval antitypes. In the heart of one of the natural fastnesses the Rajpoot lord would rear his fort of mud or masonry. It had no great strength to resist assaults, still less a regular bombardment ; but the green wall of cactus and bamboo around it was impenetrable to artillery or cavalry. Nar- of British India. 343 row, winding paths, where no force dared ven- Cap. XXIV. ture, led from the maidan outside to the space before the fortalice ; and every path was as familiar to the horde of the chieftain's fol- lowers as it was dubious and desperate for their pursuers. If the jungle was not made to hand by nature, the talookdar destroyed the crops about, and suffered the prolific and rank vegetation of the wilderness to make him a jungle. A great chief would maintain three or four thousand "Passies" in these rats' nests, and alternately, by their assistance, defy his nominal sovereign or fight with his neighbour. It cost little to keep up these banded knaves, for they cheerfully served for plunder, and the king's tax was escaped by their help. This was the condition of things over the major part of Oudh ; the land had no rest ; the miserable cultivators stole out at night to plough and sow ; the little talookdars were plundered by the great ; the great talookdars fought together, involving whole districts in their desolating quarrels ; and the Nawab, by intrigue, British help, and patience, got what money he could out of the general scramble, to spend it on his dancing-girls and court creatures. Bugbhur Singh is quoted by Kugbhur Colonel Sleeman as a good specimen of these Oudh lords, and of their method of proce- dure. He farmed the districts of Bondee and 344 Dalhousie's Administration Cap. xxiv. Bahraetch from the Court ; and because the rajah of the first-named place would not pay the additional tax which he demanded, he razed his town, harried 5,000 of his cattle, and carried off and tortured 1,000 of his towns- people. Eor six weeks he superintended the torments rubbing beards with wet gunpowder, and firing them ; searing tender parts of the body with hot ramrods, or mutilating it with knives, and tearing out tongues with pincers. Had we left the Moslem Court to face these turbulent tyrants when we destroyed Moslem authority in the north-west, the strongest ta- lookdar would soon have pulled the dynasty down, and ruled his fellows. Had we annihilated the native aristocracy, the king would have been a king indeed, and might have been able to defy us in course of time. Had we imposed a perma- nent settlement upon the land, there would have been peace throughout it ; but, at the expense of our guaranteeing and maintaining at great inconvenience and no profit a mutual observance of the pact, we should have charged ourselves with a Quixotic tax to keep up an artificial society. What we did do was inspired, perhaps, more by financial than philosophical or moral considerations ; but it was an intelligible policy; we set the puppet princes of Lucknow to keep order against the landholders, who, from the time of Pratheraj, had defied their best re- of British India. 345 sources ; and by the treaty of 1801 we engaged Cap. xxiv. to help the Court against its nobility for certain considerations. It was a bargain which failed, because immense virtue and ability were requi- site in the Nawabs to make it answer, and they were hereditarily vicious and imbecile ; our sin was that we knew what must be the upshot. Lord Dalhousie charged the Oudh Government with " deliberate" violation of its obligations. The word is a little unjust ; the Nawabs had a languid desire to satisfy the Sirkar here and on other points; but the Sirkar asked them first for money, and then for order ; and money, the palace orgies being to be paid for, was difficult to get without ex- asperating disorder by fresh tyranny, new exactions, and intolerable abuses. Does this condemn the Company for taking a rent "of its tenant ? It condemns it rather for letting Oudh on lease at all; for bolstering up a system which divided the house against itself, and made a carefully-prepared purgatory of Oudh, designed by nature to be the garden of India, and so, indeed, though imaginatively, called. The fault of this post-treaty period was not so much the use we made of our vassal's treasure- Ourreaifauit chest, or the slights we put upon his dignity f^ e t jj|f a ~ and privileges ; it was that we were sacrificing Oudh family Oudh to an experiment condemned beforehand at all< by reason and experience. 316 Dalhousies Administration Cap. xxiv. I* rather aggravates our offence against this unhappy country, that from 1801 to 1855, we recognized and hranded our mistake a dozen times. Lord Wellesley not only declared to the Board of Directors that Oudh could not be well governed under this protected Nawabarchy, but he gave Saadut Ali to understand the same. Lord Wellesley emphatically wrote : " I now declare to your Excellency, in the most explicit terms, that I consider it to be my posi- tive duty to resort to any extremity rather than to suffer the further progress of that ruin to which the interests of your Excellency and of the Company are exposed by the continued operation of the evils and abuses actually existing in the civil and military administration of the province of Oudh." No reform having been made none being probable the Governor- General, in the year 1813, reminded the Vizier that " the Bri- tish Government had a right, founded upon the basis of the subsidiary treaty, to propose such reforms in his internal Government as it deemed essential ; and that he was held, by the same treaty, under an obligation to follow such advice. He was also warned that, if he per- sisted in his refusal, he would violate an ex- press stipulation of the treaty ; and he was requested seriously to consider the consequences in which he might involve himself by such a course of conduct. of British India. 347 In 1827 the Resident at Lucknow reported Cap. xxiv. that the country had reached so incurable a state of decline that nothing but the assump- tion of the administration would save it from utter ruin. In 1831, Lord W. Bentinck told Nusseer-ood-Deen-Hyder, " King of Oudh" for we had given our puppet that fancy name that either he must improve his administration, or hand it over to British officers. And this brings the history of remonstrances, and help- less, "well-intentioned" replies to 1837, the year of the second and sorely- disputed treaty. In that year Oudh was thus described by the official who knew it best : " A sovereign regardless of his kingdom, except in so far as it supplied him with the means of personal indulgence ; a minister incapable or unwilling to stay the ruin of the country ; local governors, or, more properly speaking, farmers of the revenue, in- vested with virtually despotic powers, and left almost unchecked, to gratify their rapacity and private enmities ; a local army ill-paid, and therefore licentious, undisciplined, and habi- tuated to defeat ; an almost absolute denial of justice in all matters civil or criminal; and an overwhelming British force distri- buted through the provinces to maintain the faith of an ill-judged treaty, and to preserve peace." This wretched system we were deliberately 348 Dalkousie's Administration Cap. XXIV. supporting while we protested against it ; hold- ing up a fantoccino king 1 with one hand and threatening him with the other ; maintaining the premises of a vicious syllogism while we denounced the conclusion. What single argu- ment could be urged in defence of such ragged royalty? The strongest to be found among the apologies for the Oudh family is, that our own exactions forced the kings to be exacting, and thus crippled their Government ; but this cannot hold water for a moment, when we find the Nawabs amassing millions into their private treasury, to spend them again upon frivolities and vices, and always ready to bribe the British Government into good humour with a loan. Another argument is indeed urged with some force by the adroit author of " Da- coitee in Excelsis." He has maintained that these admonitions were neutralized by official recognitions of the " improving state of Oudli ;" and that, when one of its rulers offered to adopt reforms in administration, the British autho- rities chilled his awakening virtue with neglect or affront. To the first, it may be replied, that the notorious state of Oudh, and not the opinions of a particular Governor-General, con- 1 It may be seen in the Residency records that during the years from 1815 to 1822, " the British troops were constantly employed against refractory zemindars, and in the beginning of 1820 more than seventy of their forts were occupied and dismantled by the British troops." of British India. 349 demned its dynasty ; and when we examine Cap. XXIV. the alleged " reforms," we find that to have a larger army was one central and cherished idea of the palace, and to manage two provinces hy an European officer on 700 rupees monthly another ! Sir H. Eliot rejected such schemes rather foolishly in phrase, perhaps, but very wisely in judgment. From 1839 to 1847, three more " kings" reigned in Lucknow, and the last of these, Wajid Ali Shah, received another solemn warning that he must do that which was impossible in order to avoid that which was inevitable. For it is to be granted here that the earnest admonition of Calcutta was, by this time, as much a mere form as the penitent adjuration of Lucknow. At last, the mission Colonel of Colonel Sleeman ushered in the climax, and !! mission. it has been truly said that he was " the emissary of a foregone conclusion," but only in the sense of travelling to confirm what was sufficiently notorious. It will surprise calm observers of these events that the advocates of Oudh royalty should have seen any argument in Lord Dal- housie's commission to the Colonel. 1 As far as frank declaration of what was coming could justify what did come, the letter is simply a plain and outspoken one. The unworthy argu- ment that an officer of Colonel Sleeman's i Vide letter of Lord Dalhousie to Colonel Sleeman, Sept. 16, 1848, quoted in " Dacoitee in Excelsia." 350 Dalhomie's Administration Cap. xxiv. service and ability could be coaxed into pre- mature mendacity by such a letter, is upset by the fact that eventually he did not report in favour of simple annexation. That annexation was contemplated every one knew, and the King of Oudh as well as any. If the state of Oudh were what it was declared to be declared on all hands to be " quoted and signed" by all manner of "deeds of evil" as being the intention of interfering in some shape or other cannot appear a signally guilty act on the part of that great Protectorate, whose wards in Lucknow had laboriously proved themselves governmental failures. His Report. Colonel Sleeman went, therefore, round the kingdom after two years of his Residentship had passed to put an universal accusation into an official shape rather than to find grounds of accusation. His tour is too well known by his own able narrative to suffer condensation here, but its conclusions may be briefly stated. He found a country blessed by God, and cursed by man a land made to be a paradise, and meta- morphosed into a hell. He turned from a Court where dancing-girls and eunuchs dis- pensed justice and honour, to provinces where the Government troops pounced upon what private armed marauders had left to the patient peasant. At Lucknow, the expendi- ture upon nautches, ram-fights, and such im- of British India. 351 perial items of Government amounted to cap. XXIV. 140 lacs of rupees, while the regular receipts were grown to be less than 100 ; in the districts fertile land was being everywhere converted into jungle, to cover the strongholds of the aristocratic robbers who defied the king and plundered his so-called subjects. Total inse- curity for life and property was producing its consequences, manufacturing industry was dis- appearing, the little towns were fading into villages, the villages were vanishing; rebels and robbers might occasionally spare the inha- bitants, but the king's soldiers never. Where these public protectors came, the roofs and doors of huts were taken for fuel, the green crops for forage. No other supplies, it is true, were obtainable ; for, though large sums of money were paid for the king's troops, the eunuchs and court-dancers fingered so much of it that none, or next to none, came to the commissariat. Colonel Sleeman was not an enemy of native governments. On the con- trary, his appointment was looked upon with pleasure by the Oudh family itself ; yet this was his verdict on the state of the kingdom : " At present there is nothing but corruption, from the throne to the humblest individual em- ployed in serving it ; and whatever may have been the character of a man in any other country, or in private life, the moment he 352 Dalhousies Administration Cap. xxiv. enters the Oudh service he becomes corrupt, no matter what the grade in which he serves or the nature of his duties." He saw the Durbar borrowing money at 18 per cent, in the bazaar, the ministers and favourites making hoards against the crash they knew to be inevitable, the revenue slowly dwindling to nothing, the robber-lords more and more openly oppressing the people, and covering more and more of the country with jungle-strongholds, 1 and he pronounced the unavoidable judgment that "our Government can no longer support the present dynasty without seriously neglecting its duty to the people of Oudh." How to in- What had come to be considered in sober fact, t lon S before 1855 > was not whether the British question, not Government could protect any longer this rotten interfere rova lty' but how it should interfere to abolish it, without suspicions of interest and accusa- ' " There are in Oudh a dozen belts of jungle of the same kind, created by landholders of the same class, for the same purposes, and covering the richest soil in the country. They will not allow a stick or a bamboo to be cut in these preserves. I should not estimate the arable land covered by these belts of jungle beyond the Terai Forest, and out in the most open and salubrious plains of Oudh, at less than 300 square miles. In addition to these belts on the plains, the whole of the Terai Forest would, in a few years, under a tolerable administration, be brought into tillage, and rendered fertile and populous. The plain extends up, through this belt of forest, close to the foot of the Nepal Hills, and the soil is all of the finest kind. There are manifest signs of its having been, at no very distant period, well cultivated and thickly peopled." of .British India. 353 ill faith ; but wars and rumours of wars inter- Cap. vened. The Punjab and Pegu gave Wajid Ali a little more time to reign, and, if Colonel Sleeman had maligned him, to prove as much by the ameliorated condition of Oudh. But three years after this testimony, a man whom no one will suspect of false witness, James Outram, was named to be Resident at Lucknow. The apologists of the Oudh-kinglings do not go quite so far as to accuse the generous and gallant Outram (the Bayard at whose tomb the mourners lately stood) of mendacity ; they only charge him with parodying his predecessor. Of his report, they say, " the language is the lan- guage of Outram, but the sense is the sense of Sleeman ;" but they do not deny, because they cannot, that the " savoury meat" of evidence against the line of Wajid Allys lay just as ready to Jacob's hand as to Esau's. General Outram was, let it be remembered, The evidence an Indian statesman, who had defended the ^ . eneral Uutram. friendless Ameers of Sindh, and one who had always advocated the maintenance of native states while any vitality remained in them. The evil catalogue of vice and crime, therefore, which is gathered from his report must not be taken as spirited away by the whining tones of a vakeel or the ingenuities of special plead- ing. He found matters worse than Colonel Sleeman in nearly every branch of State. VOL. II. A A 354 Dalhousie's Administration Cap. xxiv. The contract system of revenue which we had partly, indeed, favoured was ruining the people i 1 the regiments were from six to ten months in arrear for pay, as well as the police ; the judges openly sold decisions ; and Mosahib Ali, a Court-musician, appointed "supreme head of all the Civil Courts" some time hack, still retained that office. Of the Oudh troops, the fresh report alleged, "It is impossible to con- ceive a greater curse to a country than such a rapacious, licentious, and disorganized army as that of Oudh is, and such as it has ever been from the earliest records extant of its cowardice, inefficiency, and extortion." Not only the regiments, but their hangers-on, * ' pioneers and all, ' ' plundered the people. "The Chamar, Lodha, Koormee, and all inferior castes are the prey of all, caught at every hour of the day and of the night ; made use of as beasts of burden ; beaten and abused, treated 1 Here is a specimen of the real assessment upon Chundore, in Sultanpore, rated to the Court at 5,338 rs. : Agaie (the Nazim's) assessment Ks. 7,200 to which add Agaie's nuzzurana 1,500 Aga Hyder's nuzzurana (the Nazim's brother) 1,200 as Chuckledar subor- dinate to Agaie. Bunday Husein's ditto l,100asNaibtoAgaHyder. Rambuksh's ditto 113 as Dewan to ditto. Total Rupees ... 11,113 /.-., the people paid more than 100 per cent, in excess of the State dues. of British India. 355 as if incapable of feeling pain or humiliation ; cap. XXIV. never remunerated, but often deprived of the scanty clothes they may possess ; they indeed are deserving of pity." No intelligence of these outrages could reach the capital, if any ear there had been open to it, for the " Akbar Nawisses," or official news-writers, like all the rest, sold rose-coloured reports cheap; and out of a monthly emolument of ten rupees, one of these gentry would realize, with bribes, three hundred. Crime, unreported, unchecked, unnoticed, did not merely " prevail" it raged. The criminally killed and wounded in Oudh averaged upwards of 1,600 annually ; whereas the Punjab, with double the amount of popula- tion, six times the extent of country, and sur- rounded by marauding tribes, displayed, in 1854, only 265 cases of " murder and wounding with intent to murder," and 621 cases of "homi- cides and felonies, attended with wounding and personal injury" total 886, the greater portion being merely wounded and injured ; while the killed alone in Oudh were 628. The details of this Eastern Newgate Calendar must be skimmed at risk of shocking the citizens of a land where an apple- woman's stall is guarded with all the majesty of the law. The majesty of Oudh law had no terror for Rugbhur Singh, already mentioned, the Talookdar of Bharaitch, who, being at straits for cash, seized 500 women and 356 Dalhousie's Administration Cap. XXIV. children and sold them by auction : nor for Saccaram, the Chieftain of Mahonna, who " committed a dacoitee on Poorah Ramzanee, wherein four men were killed, and the house of a man named Kunnee plundered, and him- self carried off, buried in the ground up to his neck, powder filled in his ears and fired, from which he died." The Resident who reported this to Lucknow had to complain at the same time that, " on the 2nd of October, Jaffir Ali and Maharaj, Karindahs of Rajah Rugbhur Singh, Tehseeldar of Gondah Bharaitch, with 1,000 Sepoys of the Nizamut, &c., attacked the bazaar, and plundered the ryots of five villages, and car- ried off captives Ramdun and Suddasookh, and thirty other persons, consisting of Maha- juns and Bunneeahs." Cruelty was so univer- sally practised in Oudh, that it was converted into a fine art. Jankee Singh, Jemadar in the service of Rajah Rugbhur Singh, tied Aleebuksh, a weaver, to his elephant's leg, in consequence of his having delayed to prepare some thread, and dragged him to the Nazim's camp, "by which his body was lacerated in several places ; after which he was confined, and compelled to give a razeenamah." Again, " Kurrun Husein, Jemadar in the service of Rajah Rugbhur Singh, Nazim of Bharaitch, sent for Akland Singh, farmer of the village of Hur- of British India. 357 kootnah, on the plea of arrears of revenue, Cap. XXIV. burnt his body with hot ramrods, and had him carried about on an ass, and then confined him." Madhopershad, a landowner, who in one raid burned twenty-six villages, and slew, robbed, and ravished left and right, received a dress of honour by way of penalty from the Court. This is merely a skimming from Colonel Sleeman's summary of the omcial state of Oudh. General Outram testified to the same atrocities. " In the village of Narain- pore, Zemindar Durshun Singh was com- pelled to sell three of his daughters, to enable him to meet the exactions of the Tehseeldar. One of these girls was purchased by a Sepoy for 100 rupees." Many more instances of cruelty and oppression are given in General Outram' s report, of females being grossly in- sulted, and of men being tortured. One most frightful punishment was placing the wrist between split bamboos, which were daily tightened, till the victim either paid the sum demanded, or the hand dropped off. " Three men lost their hands in this cruel manner in the villages of Peepapoor and Kullianpoor." In every report, in fact, and from every Anarchy quarter, instances of frightful tyranny and bar- Umver8aj - barity are recorded ; and, if an officer here and there declares that " crime has not increased of late," he generally appends, as an explanation, 358 Dalhousies Administration Cap. xxiv. that it was already at high flood. Year by year, the same profligacy prevailed at Luck- now the same unpunished outrages tortured the ryots ; any countryman could point out to the trembling traveller, "mushoor," or nests of professional thieves, from whom his throat was only safe when his purse was empty. The army, instead of preserving order, was more dreaded than the jungle-barons and their paid scoundrels. 1 Wherever a detachment of these royal ragamuffins appeared, the crops, the cottage roofs, the roof-trees, and the villagers themselves disappeared. Even if now and then a friendless rogue was apprehended, money would always make his prison-door open; as in this example: "Shah Mirza, a prisoner, charged with murdering the late Dhomun Byee, of Cawnpore, effected his escape from the jail, and managed to see his mistress, Punna, a courtesan. In a quarrel 1 Those who think that Oudh might have been purged, if the King had increased his army as he proposed, should reflect upon its condition at this date. " There are seven parks of artillery in the immediate vicinity of the capital, containing a variety of honeycombed cannon of every calibre and age. All the regiments of his Majesty which mount guard at the various palaces, imambarahs, and public edifices, have neither any respectable arms, accoutre- ments, nor clothing. Their horrible state of disorganization and inefficiency is only to be equalled by the derision which their raggedness excites, and the contempt with which they are regarded by the landowners and subjects of the King. No man has a whole coat to his back few have hats, or muskets which could be discharged." of British India. 359 which arose at her house about the string of Cap. XXIV. his kite, he wounded one Mahomed E/aheem with his sword, and escaped." The Superin- tendent of the King's Jail was, it seems, in the habit of taking money to set certain pri- soners at liberty in the evening, on their pro- mising to return to the jail by the morning, thus causing the commission of additional thefts and robberies in the city. At court, the eunuchs, buffoons, musicians, and concubines were so much in favour, that whatever they did had to be borne. Bho- lanath, a servant of eunuch Bashur, arrested Kishunlall for a sum of fifty rupees due to him, and kept him confined in his own house for three days, without allowing him a morsel of bread or a mouthful of water. On the fourth day he was allowed to go home, escorted by a guard of Sepoys, to take some food ; but he had scarcely done bathing when he was ordered to return. With an excuse to put on his dress, the man went into his house and destroyed himself and his family, consisting of a wife and three children, by setting fire to a room in which he had shut them up. Bholanath afterwards confiscated the property of the de- ceased, and placed some Sepoys at his house. " Through dread of the eunuch, the authorities at Lucknow did not take any notice of the circumstance." What was the use of com- 360 Dalhousie's Administration Cap. XXIV. plaining, indeed ? " Some fifty vegetable vendors brought Mussamut Moonia on a cot to the palace gate, and complained against Bhowanee Singh and two other Sepoys of Terbedyee's corps, for beating her till her skull was fractured, and blood gushed out of her nose, owing to her being unable to pay a rupee which she owed to one of them." But they got no satisfaction ! Thus it was in Oudh as in Israel, in the days when every man "did that which was good in his own eyes." " The servants of Nundkomar, Tehseeldar of Toolseepore, ac- cused an insane traveller of theft, and dragged him about with a rope tied to his feet, which caused the death of the unfortunate man." "Gunga Singh, Sepoy of Hurcharum Lai, Peshkar of Lahurpore, asked Sheopershad, shopkeeper of Mouza Rewtee, for a pie-worth of sweetmeat, and on his saying that he had not any, the Sepoy inflicted such a severe beating on him that he became senseless. The o wife of the poor man, on witnessing this cruelty, threw herself into a well, and died." " Newazee, zemindar of Mouza Buddee, in Mehmoohabad, seized upon Heeramun, one of the King's DAk-runners, and having inflicted a severe beating on him, placed a heavy block of timber upon his breast, by which he died. The dead bodv of the murdered man has been of British India. 361 lying for some time at the murderer's gate, cap. XXI V. but no notice has yet been taken of the out- rage." " Doorga Singh, a shareholder in Mouza Tejeenrow, seized upon Heenga, liquor- vendor of Ulmansgunj, burnt his body with red-hot irons, and made him promise to pay a ransom of sixty rupees for his release." This is the style of the Oudh police reports ; and tyranny being infectious, the small land- holders took the disease from the great zemin- dars. " Guneish, farmer of Mouza Hamara, in Mohumdee, seized upon one Lahorie, a poor proprietor, and insulted him, by getting his moustaches plucked by his servants. The poor man took the insult so much to heart, that he stabbed himself, and died." " Lokun, a Brahman, of Bhugwuntmugger, took in lease a tract of land in Mouza Goburha, and sub-leased it to Kalka and Mattadeen, Brah- mans, who cultivated the same. When the former demanded the rent of the land, the latter party beat him and his wife so severely, that they were taken up bleeding, and their bones broken." Such are the epitomes of rapine, massacre, and theft, which meet the eye in these columns ; and if any justice at all was done, it was only of the abrupt and Lynch-like order. Thus, for instance, " Shew- golarn, a banker of Roypore, in Sultanpore, arrested a thief who had entered his house, 362 Dalhotisie's Administration Cap. XXIV. and ordered one Jewun to strip him of every- thing he had ahout his person, and to behead him. The man took the thief to a jungle, tied him up to a tree, and cut off his head." With this slight diversion in favour of property and peace, the mournful list of examples may close. They have heen met in the only way to meet overwhelming and irresistible charges with round denials. The apologists of Luck- now call them " bugaboo stories ;" but they Absence of do no t disprove a single instance, and they emigration . out of Oudh res t almost singly for counter-argument upon no argument the fact that emigration was not common from Government. Oudh into the Company's territories. Now, no one familiar with India will find difficulty here, for to emigrate is a resource to which the Hindoo generally prefers any conceivable calamity. To the hut of his family, and to the burning-place of his relatives, Ramchundra will cleave long after it is safe or pleasant to live there; to these spots, like a river-bred salmon, he will struggle to return from how- ever distant a locality. There is not the shadow of an argument for the Oudh princes in the fact, that, like the Hindoos in the Car- natic under Tippoo, 1 misery could not make their subjects nomad. It is also maintained, 1 Who cut the " tilkas" or caste-marks from the foreheads of 10,000 Brahmans, skin and all, when they refused to wash them off. of British India. 363 indeed, that some provinces of British India Cap. XXIV. might ha,ve supplied as long a list of offences, but at least they would also have supplied the record of their punishment. But it is special pleading mere trivial argument to pretend that the anarchy of Oudh was not notorious, not horrible, not like a civil ulcer in the middle of the healthy provinces we ruled. There is some better show of reason, perhaps, for maintain- ing that the "eunuchs and fiddlers" of the Nawabs did not necessarily denote a worse state of things at the Court than existed else- where. Too much was made, undoubtedly, out of these officials in Lord Dalhousie's condemna- tion of a palace, which, like others in the East, had its harem as a matter of use, and its jingling concerts as a matter of fashion and taste. But then, eunuchs and musicians are not always, even in the East, the sole confidants of the monarch, as they were at Lucknow : nor can the fact, that "Wajid All wrote amid their venal and salacious applause some erotic poems in Urdu, prove him 1 a scholar or a sage. It hap- pened, it should, however, be observed, that the last Nawab of Oudh was rather more intelligent, or rather less openly debauched, than his pre- decessors ; yet, while his kingdom melted from him, and "Tekel Upharsin" was written against 1 He also gets some praise for this as a " Hindoo poet," from a French professor, who, we hope, never read the productions. 364 Dalhousie's Administration Cap. XXIV. his rotten rule, these are the items we find in a diary of the palace doings : Style of life January 17. This morning the king took medicine as usual ; held a conference with Huzrut Mahal and Soleeman Mahal ; sent some hreakfast to Shalee Begum and Taj Begum, and gave 1,000 rupees to Eahutoo Sultan, for the dresses of his fairies. February 15. The eunuch Basheer made a present of a pair of cameleopards to the king. This morning the king received the obeisance of his physicians, and gave twelve suits of clothes to his fairies. March 8. The king is said to be anxious to have an interview with some good fakeers. He married four girls of Mooltan by marriage of a temporary nature. Yesterday the king gave a pair of shawls and a kerchief to one of his companions, who had slipped down from the back of a cameleopard, which he had caused him to mount. This morning he amused him- self with witnessing some bucks let loose on does and she-goats. March 11. This morning the king received the obeisance of his eunuchs and courtiers, and amused himself with his pigeons. March 17. This morning the king received some pigeons from the eunuchs, Basheer and Dianut, and amused himself with witnessing horses let loose on mares. of British India. 365 May 11. Last evening the king amused Ca P- XXIV. Mmself with letting off some fireworks. This morning he made a present of shawls and kerchiefs to Mosahib Ali, fiddler, and " Su- preme Judge," with an African female. May 23. Six persons have been employed to catch cats for the king." These are bricks from the sorry building, raised daily by a royal debauchee in a fool's paradise. The attempts made to stucco them with apologies fail. It has no great bearing, indeed, upon our right to annex Oudh, that its kings took their pleasure in the stud-yard, and pandered at once to the passions of he-goats and their own ; or that they laid aside the sceptre to catch cats. But these particulars help at any rate to brush away the trifling plea that because the Nawabs were personally agreeable and suave, and because they had assisted us in the Burmese and Affghan wars, they had a claim, to be maintained. Manner is a skin- deep polish with the Mussulman the sepul- chre was nicely whitened, doubtless, on the out- side ; but in lending elephants and sicca rupees to the Sirkar, the Nawabs only fulfilled that pro- verb of their tongue and creed, which counsels, " Give him thy turban who can take thy head." Thus, then and it is the central point of the The central whole question we were maintaining by our own troops slavery, robbery, and torture in Oudh 366 Dalhousie's Administration Cap. XXIV. maintaining the news writers, the eunuchs, the corrupt judges, the knavish nazims, the ragged riotous palace-guard and army, with a Court whose evil gaieties glittered on the sum- mit of all this festering system, like the gilded scum on a cesspool. We were maintaining it, he- cause without our troops the Talookdars would have thrown allegiance off altogether, and the people under some one of them, or without any leader at all, would have emptied the palace of king and throne, and goats and cats and pigeons altogether. By the treaty of 1801 we had cer- tainly the right to bring such a state of things- disgraceful to our raj, and dangerous to India to a close. Let it be recalled, that by the terms of that treaty the Nawabs engaged "to establish such a system of administration, tobe carried into effect l>y his own officers, as shall be conducive to the prosperity of his subjects, and be calculated to secure the lives and property of his subjects." Certainly and notoriously this part of the con- tract or pact had not been kept ; had been dis- regarded utterly ; and had the treaty of 1801 been the last engaged in with the Nawabs, but half his difficulty would have encountered Lord Treaty of Dalhousic. But in 1837 Lord Auckland con- cluded another treaty with the Nawab Mo- hammed Ali Shah, ostensibly to provide against certain omissions in that of 1801, the terms 1 of 1 " That the Xing of Oudh shall immediately take into conside- of British India. 367 which arranged for immediate reform in Oudh, Cap. XXIV. and failing this for the assumption of the ad- ministration by the British Government by its own officers, on behalf of the Nawabs, or, as Dr. Twiss interpreted the treaty, as " Curator of the Nawabs." Now, this treaty, upon com- pletion in India, had been sent home, and had then been disallowed, wholly or partially, by the Court of Directors, but in such a manner that the disallowance of but one clause was published and communicated to the Court of Lucknow. Lord Hardinge in 1847, when re- monstrating with the Nawab, alluded to this treaty as existent. Colonel Sleeman, in 1851, spoke of " the power which the treaty of 1837 confers upon us," and in 1853, in a return made of Indian treaties, that of 1837 was included. Against this is the fact that "the 1837 treaty" was subsequently struck out of the Par- ration, in concert with the British Resident, the best means of remedying the defects in the Police, and in the Judicial and Hevenue administrations of his dominions ; and that if his Majesty should neglect to attend to the advice and counsel of the British Government, and if gross and systematic oppression, anarchy, and misrule should prevail within the Oudh dominions, such as seriously to endanger the public tranquillity, the British Government reserves to itself the right of appointing its own officers to the management of anysoever portions of the Oudh territory, either to a small or to a great extent, in which such misrule shall have occurred ; for so long a period as it may deem necessary : the surplus receipts in such case, after defraying all charges, to be paid into the King's territory, and a true and faithful account rendered to his Majesty of the receipts and ex- penditure." 368 Dalliousie } s Administration Cap. xxiv. liamentary return, and that documents exist to show that the Court of Directors certainly cancelled it altogether. Was the Lucknow Court aware of its repudiation? The only possible reply is that officially it was unaware, and if so prudent as never to ask a dangerous question upon the subject, that prudence can- not fairly be turned against it. There was too much suspicion already attaching to this just and imperative task of giving good government to Oudh, because we could not undertake it without benefiting ourselves. To add the slightest constructive grievance, therefore, to the artificial woes ready-conned for the whining pleading of the Lucknow vakeels, was a mis- take which was committed in cavalierly and arrogantly sweeping away 1837. The treaty should have been alloiced ; the last vestige of grace should have been conceded to these Moslem princes, and, instead of immediate and abrupt annexation, Oudh should have been placed under political management a course which would then have been the clear, undisputed, and absolute right of the British Government. Lord This, of four courses of action laid down, was very much like the one first recommended proposition to the Court by Lord Dalhousie ; and it is to be noticed that Directors. ne Distinctly rejected in its favour the project of immediate and wholesale annexation. Far milder in tone than the minutes of his col- of British India. 369 leagues in the Supreme Council, Lord Dal- Cap. xxiv. liousie's careful paper advised that " the king - should be permitted to retain his royal title and position, but be required to vest the whole civil and military administration of his king- dom in the Government of the East India Company for ever." This proposal was to be offered as an alternative to the king, which, if declined, would lead to the withdrawal of the British troops fromOudh. And this proposal, too, would have been technically fair, and above all question; but let two facts be plainly confronted before the course finally adopted is condemned. Firstly, such an administrative occupation must have been perpetual. It is nothing less than nonsense to think that an Indian state could be set in a true course, and the helm then abandoned again to the hands that had let the ship broach-to, without worse mischief ensuing than before. The examples of Hyderabad and Nagpore were fairly quoted by Lord Dalhousie against sucli a dream, where, after trial of supervised government, the first year of the old system ruined all again. Secondly, in the event of the king's refusal to give up his poli- tical administration, and of his preferring to see the British troops withdrawn, we should really have forsaken our part of the compact towards the Oudh people, in abandoning to terrible anarchy a country dependant upon us. We had VOL. II. B B 370 Dalhomie's Administration Cap. XXIV. no right to propose such an alternative. It speaks, indeed, much more for Lord Dalhousie's consideration thanfor his judgment though the first is impugned oftener than the last that he should have here endorsed the technically equit- able plan of action as the one of his selection. The resolu- The Court had more perception or less de- Court of licacy. It is idle to deny that Oudh was a bait Directors, tempting enough to make interest confuse itself very easily with duty. They dreaded, at home, lest the king should accept the alternative of the withdrawal of the British troops. Their Gover- nor-General, therefore, was directed to proceed "authoritatively," and it was left open to him in public despatches (but not, it is believed, by his private instructions) to assume the govern- ment of the country, or propose a new treaty to the king. Lord Dalhousie blended the two, by directing General Outram, the Resident at Lucknow, to present the draft of a treaty to his majesty, and to assume the administration and appoint officials, whether he signed it or no. If he refused, he was to be deposed sans faqon, and a proclamation issued to the people. A letter was addressed by the hand of the Governor-General to Wajid Ali, which summed up against his house its shortcomings, and pro- nounced its doom. One passage in it may be quoted as containing both the cause and the apology of the annexation together. " Advice, of British India. 371 remonstrance, and warning," wrote the Viceroy, Cap. XXIV. " have been exhausted in vain. I feel that the Government of India, which I represent, would be guilty in the sight of God and man, if it were any longer to aid in sustaining, by its countenance and power, an administration fraught with suffering to millions. Eor more than fifty years the British Government has faithfully performed the duties which the treaty of 1801 imposed upon it. For more than fifty years the Government of Oudh has continued to violate one of its gravest and most essential stipulations. Every effort to recall the Government of Oudh to a sense of its duty having been made in vain, the British Government has no alternative left but to declare that the violated treaty of 1801 is wholly dissolved." A strong column of troops was moved up to The annexa- support the delivery of that death-warrant the House of Oudh, the accompanying treaty. It was curt, stern, and matter-of-fact ; it left the Nawabs their title, their palace, a body- guard, and a reasonable stipend ; it took from them, and transferred to the British Go- vernment for ever, all jurisdiction in Oudh outside " the Palace of Heart's Delights" in the capital. It is not worth while to dwell long upon the faint struggles of the falling king. He pleaded surprise ; he made a great point of n tion effected. 372 Dalhousies Administration Cap. XXIV. the suppressed treaty ; lie got his mother, the Begum Zenab, to try to melt the Resident with the tears of an injured princess; he tried the same feat himself with tardy protestations of reform, while his women begged that a further period might be allowed, during which the king would be enabled to show to the world, by the adoption of vigorous reforms, how anxious and eager he was to obey and follow up the instruc- tions and advice which the British Government might point out. The Resident declared that it was useless to argue against the inevitable ; and then, like a naturalized Hindoo, the passion of the king's despair took its feminine and abject turn. He read the treaty with a burst of grief, and almost sobbed out: " Treaties are necessary between equals only. Who am I now, that the British Government should enter into treaties with me ? Eor a hundred years this dynasty has flourished in Oudh. It has ever received the favour, the support, and protection of the British Government. It had ever attempted faithfully and fully to perform its duties to the British Government. The kingdom is a creation of the British, who are able to make and to unmake, to promote and to degrade. It has merely to issue its commands to ensure their fulfilment. Not the slightest attempt will be made to oppose the views and wishes of the British Govern- ment ; myself and subjects are its servants." of British India. 373 In the same submissive petulance the army cap. XX I v. was informed of the change, and told " not to mutiny, because the servants of the British Government have power to punish you." The king made also an overture to be allowed to bring his case to England for appeal, which, in- deed, was afterwards done by the queen-mother, " faithful to the end," like most Hindoo women; but it came to nothing. The transfer of rule was effected without a shot being fired ; Amils and Nazims accepted their destiny ; dacoits hung up their useless swords and took to honest livelihoods ; robber-chiefs ceased, with a curse upon the strong Saheb, to burn, to enslave, and to plunder ; the people passed from the Nawabs to the political officers without a sign of emo- tion, and Lord Canning's first step upon Indian soil was greeted with the telegraphic message that " all is quiet in Oudh." The annexation of Oudh, thus accomplished, its juatifica- has been defended here. It has been defended, b when the other acts of Lord Dalhousie, igno- rantly coupled with it, have been more or less condemned, because it does not rank in the same category with them, and was a measure which stands alone, and stands, too, on good, sound, substantial, and salutary grounds. In the case of those native States whose territory Lord Dalhousie assumed, openly confessing aggran- dizement and subverting Hindoo law, under 374 Dalhowie's Administration Cap. xxiv. pretext of the failure of direct heirs, or of the alleged irregularity of their adoption, this history has not spared him. No anarchy was pleaded against Nagpore, none against Sattara, none against Jhansi or Hyderabad ; and the Na- wabs of the Carnatic, if they were as dissolute and useless as the Nawabs of Oudh, had long ceased to trouble subjects with their vices. What was indefensible in the conduct of the Governor- General towards these Royal Houses has, there- fore, been criticised with free protestations ; but the annexation of Oudh must not be confounded with them. Had Lord Dalhousie stripped Wajid Ali of his title and palace, he would have gone beyond his right ; he was within it, it is here maintained against all nice technicalities and diplomatic difficulties, when for the cause of humanity, and the just precautions of the British Government, he instituted an English administration in Oudh, in place of that which long years of the worst misrule had tried and condemned. Nor can anything be made against this view, as has been attempted, out of the suppressed treaty. Because it was drawn up to supply a defect in that of 1801, which did not especially stipulate how the English Government should proceed in case of necessity, the vakeels native and English of the Oudh Court maintain that, the defect ex- isting, the resource did not and could not exist. of British India. 375 It is hair-splitting ! The power that created the Cap. xxiv. resource on paper could cancel the defect in practice; could fairly conclude the treaty of 1837 (and it was concluded in India) ; had rights, in- deed, recognized as undoubted if abject sub- mission be recognition adequate to all that followed. Besides, the fact that the treaty of 1837 was cancelled in the same year, shows that no desirable power was supposed to be confer- red by it which did not already exist by that of 1801. God forbid that any one word on these numerous pages should support the cause of unrighteous might against that of weak right ; but there is a certain weakness which has not the dignity of the weak; there are injuries that whine for pity, without any claim to compassion, and among such must always rank the cause of the Royal House of Oudh. Let it be remembered that a fierce rebellion and a bloody war have both raged in Oudh since 1855, and yet that the province is now flourishing and contented, with dacoity almost extinct, 1 and violent crimes repressed ; and that those Talookdars, who lived by rapine, have become even complacent friends of the Sirkar, and model country magistrates. Let this contrast be made in full view of the 1 " Violent crime against property has not been rife. Dacoity lias not been prevalent to any large extent, though some cases have occurred." Statement of Progress of India, 1859-60. 376 Dalhousies Administration Cap. XXIV. awful interregnum of the mutiny, and the great convulsing war which followed it, and then the technical rights of the Oudh dynasty appearing so slender and so easily set aside, the moral rights will hardly cause humanity to regret the annihilation of the Line. 1 Eelations of But vindicating the measure as we do against this actto the . . -i i -i j -t r* mutiny. a sentiment which merely apes justice, and for- gets a people while it remembers a king, Lord Dalhousie's last act must be judged also by the event which followed it. At once it must be owned that the annexation of Oudh helped to precipitate the mutiny, and aggravated its ob- stinate and formidable character. 2 In the first 1 We may fortify this verdict with the opinion of the intel- ligent Lanoye : " C'est ce qu'elle a fait peu de mois apres mon passage. En decembre, 1855, le marquis de Dalhousie couronna la longue et glorieuse serie de ses actes administratifs en decre- tant la suppression de la monarchic de 1'Aoude, et sa reduction en province in do-anglaise. II est fort possible que cette mesure soit contraire aux textes des traites, au droit des gens selon Grotius et Puffendorf, mais a coup sur elle est conforms aux droits de Vhumanite et de la civilisation. Une royaute grotesquement se*- nile et impuissante pour le bien, une cour infectee de tous les genres de corruption et decrepitude, une capitale empestee des souffles impurs de Sodome et de G-omorrhe; des campagnes livrees au pillage, au meurtre et a 1'incendie, et la population agricole journellement decimee et mise a ranon pour sea mem- bres et pour son sang par des bandes impunies de chaffeura . . . Tels etaient les scandales auxquels le decret de lord Dalhousie a mis un terme, et qui ont trouve en Europe des defenseurs officieux." L'lnde Cotemporaine. * Both of the dissenters from the annexation-despatch of the Court allow that the state of Oudh was horrible, but one, Mr. Willock, uttered this pregnant warning," I am further opposed to the proposed step, because I consider the season as inop- portune for carrying out so important a measure. There is con- of British India. 377 place, it certainly confirmed the impression, Cap. xxiv. pretty well justified by the Dalhousie policy, that every native province which gave occasion would in turn suffer the same fate ; and thus made not the rulers, they were too subtle, too timid, and too comfortable under protection but their ministers and employes our foes. In the next place, it smote Mussulman pride, which never forgives, upon an old wound ; and, coupled with our policy towards the Mogul, offended all of Islam in India. In the third place, during our brief rule in Oudh before 1857, we took the very breath away from the Talookdars by our disgusting accuracy in accounts and painfully- correct administration ; so that, when the re- bellion broke out, there were not a half-dozen of them in our favour. Again, we let loose upon the land, by the necessity of the transfer, the greater part of those ragged ruffians, called "soldiers" by the advocates of the King of Oudh; knaves apprenticed to villany, and accustomed to help themselves to their pay. And lastly, we touched the privileges of our spoiled and pampered Sepoys in the annexation, for the 40,000 dark and lazy mercenaries whom we siderable excitement in the public mind in India, both amongst the Mahomedans and Hindoos. The notion is very prevalent that we desire to convert the general population of India to Christianity by force. . . . Under these circumstances, any public cause for additional excitement cannot fail to be prejudicial." 378 Dalhousie's Administration Cap. XXIV. drew from Oudh formed a camp-aristocracy, by their right of appeal to the English Resident on behalf of themselves and their families. 1 And besides losing this, they had a faint feeling of having lost caste also, as being no longer soldiers from " outside British India.*' It cannot be denied that, at the camp-fire, and before the shop-front, the annexation was discussed with many a fierce twist of the moustache and muttered threat about coming ven- geance. The mutinous literature of 1857 teems with indignant matter upon Oudh, and spurious sympathy for its deposed king. In fact, the annexation can no more be sepa- rated from the mutiny than the cold fit of fever from the hot. But it is to be noted none the less that annexations did not, as a rule, frighten native states into rebellion. The Nizam, Holkar, and Scindiah were well-affected, or at least quiet during the crisis. Jung Bahadoor, of Nepal, moved to our help with 1 A story of Colonel Sleeman's illustrates the injustice, and the abuse of this privilege. Gholam Jeelanee, a Lucknow shop- keeper, seeing the profit derived from it by many soldiers, bought himself a cavalry uniform, cap, pantaloons, boots, shoes, and sword, and, aa an invalid trooper, got the signature of the briga- dier to an immense number of petitions, which were duly for- warded to the Durbars. He followed the trade for fifteen years. At last he obtained possession of a landed estate, to which he had no right, and then had the hardihood to memorialize that the old proprietor had turned him fortli and killed his relatives. Inquiry was made, and all came out ; but for fifteen years Gholam Jeelanee had waxed fat upon his bargain of the uniform. of British India. 379 the sidelong gait of a strange dog, it is true, Cap. xxiv. who hesitates whether to fawn or to bite ; and the Punjab, under John Lawrence, proved our mainstay. As to Mahommedan enmity, it is our perpetual inheritance in India, and the best remedy for it will prove to have been such a death-struggle as the grey King of Delhi headed against us. As to the Talookdars for they, too, must be named trained to arrogant independence, the mutiny and its crushing issue was almost a necessity for us both ; it drew the teeth and claws of these jungle- tigers, who could hardly have been tamed in any other way, 1 and who reverted to injustice at the first chance, as by instinct. 2 As for the king's troops, with quiet years they would have disappeared into industries, as they have disappeared now ; and quiet years were expected by those who dis- missed them. The Sepoys of our own line bring the administrative question to the true point, 1 No chiefs were more open in their rebellion than the Eajahs of Churda, Binga, and Gonda. The first of these did not lose a single village by the summary settlement; the second and the Rajah of Gonda had their assessment lowered. None was more benefited by the change of government than the young Rajah ot Naupara ; but his troops fought against us at Lucknow from the beginning. The Rajah of Dhowrera was treated with equal liberality, but his people were turned upon us ; and Ushruf Bux Khan, a large talookdar in Gonda, was established in the pos- session of all his property by us, yet he was strongly hostile. 2 The rebel chiefs in Oudh committed the error of raising the assessment at least twenty-five per cent, above what had been fixed by the British Government. This at once put most of the village proprietors against them. 380 Dalhousie's Administration Cap. XXIV. which is, that Lord Dalhousie's fault, as regards the rebellion which followed him, was not that he prepared the incentive, but that he bequeathed the instrument. Had not Sir Charles Napier chafed him had his clear and strong eye looked up, from penning slashing despatches against a rival master-spirit, to the matter in dispute between them he would have seen that the Bengal tiger was crouching to the leap upon his masters, fat and lusty with long years of laziness, uncontrol, and indulgence. Here, and not in annexing Oudh, the Marquis was constructively and indirectly guilty of the mutiny, if a statesman's mind may be con- demned for not showing itself omnipotent if a ruler, worn out with superhuman duties and energies, can be arraigned for neglecting one of them. The verdict of History while it regrets that the annexation of Oudh was tainted with profit to the annexers will endorse the measure on its broad merits and necessities. Were it not so, it was after all more the act of the Government at home than of its well- abused Viceroy. It has been fairly said that " the just Indian councillor, the acute English lawyer, the generous soldier, all concurred in deeming the strongest remedies imperative." The feeling was participated in by those on the spot and by those at a distance ; by the men who learned the condition of Oudh of British India. 381 through the slow medium of books, and by Cap. XXIV. those who saw, with their own eyes, its wasted harvests, its scanty population, and its ruined homes. The pen of Colonel Slee- man, the avowed supporter of native adminis- trations, portrayed the desolation of the king- dom. The chivalrous Outrara was the officer on whom was forced the conviction that the State of Oudh no longer retained any principle of vitality. To the conquest of the Punjab, Lord Dalhousie's own act and deed, the home Government accorded a formal and languid acquiescence. The occupation of Pegu fol- lowed after the storming of Rangoon, as a natural consequence, and almost extorted consent. The lapse of Nagpore was a part of an avowed and condemnable policy, which ne- glected no "lawful" means of extending and consolidating the empire. But the annexation of Oudh, though Lord Dalhousie was the very last man to evade the responsibility of advo- cating and bringing forward the proposal, was a measure at which the home authorities had ample time to pause, if they had doubted about it. But the door of subterfuges and broken contracts was really closed ; the dethronement of these prodigals was due and consented to by the oldest and best reputed Directors in Leadenhall Street, and by the Cabinet of which Lord Canning was a member. 382 Dalliousie's Administration Cap. xxiv. Let Lord Dalhousie alone be blamed, then, for Nagpore, Jhansi, and Sattara, and the rest of his own acts, while his country complacently derives tribute from the territories which he poured into her lap; but praise or condemnation in the case of Oudh must be more equitably divided between us, though the real conditions of our rule of India, rightly estimated, vindicate us and him. Nowhere have these been better exposed than in a newspaper article 1 : " Sovereigns over almost all the sea-coast," says this writer in a journal not always so just, " we have left many rich provinces in the in- terior still under the nominal dominion of native rulers. With the exception of the Raj- poot princes, these potentates are not generally of high rank or remote antiquity. Their possessions rest usually upon a title no better than our own, with this remarkable difference, that though their dominions, like ours, were won by the sword, that sword, unlike ours, is drawn to oppress, and not to defend. We have emancipated these pale and ineffectual pageants of royalty from the ordinary fate that awaits on an Oriental despotism. The history of Eastern monarchies, like everything else in Asia, is stereotyped and invariable. The founder of the dynasty, a brave soldier, is a desperate intriguer, and expels from the throne 1 The " Times" of February, 1853. of British India. 383 the feeble and degenerate scions of a more Cap. xxiv. ancient house. His son may inherit some of the talent of the father ; but in two or three generations luxury and indolence do their work, and the feeble inheritors of a great name are dethroned by some new adventurer, destined to bequeath a like misfortune to his degenerate descendants. Thus rebellion and deposition are the correctives of despotism, and thus, through the medium of periodical anarchy and civil war, was secured to the people of the East a recurrence, at fixed in- tervals, of able and vigorous princes. This advantage we have taken away from the in- habitants of the states of India still governed ^j by native princes. It has been well said, that we give these princes power without respon- sibility. Our hand of iron maintains them on the throne, despite their imbecility, their vices, and their crimes. The result is, in most of the states, a chronic anarchy, under which the revenues of the state are dissipated between the mercenaries of the camp and the minions of the Court. The heavy and arbitrary taxes levied on the miserable ryots serve only to feed the meanest and most degenerate of man- kind. The political relations of the state everything not tending to the acquisition of revenue is left to the British Resident. The theory seems, in fact, admitted, that Govern- 384 Dalhousie's Administration Cap. XXIV. ment is not for the people, but for the king, and that so long as we secure the king his sinecure royalty we discharge all the duty that we, as sovereigns of India, owe to his subjects, who are virtually ours." This, verily, appears to be the theory of those who have defended Wajid AH and his antecessors, and this theory shall not be regarded with admiration here. We are responsible to Heaven for the people of India in almost all its extent ; and if we forbid them the right of revolution, we must exercise sometimes the delicate right of deposition, though the curse of suspicion and the currish yelp of calumny will cling and must cling to the remedy. of British India. 385 CONCLUSION. SINKING, sick, and weary with the splendid The depar- labours of this long Pro-consulship ; alone- jj^housie*' for the graceful consort, who had accompanied & Q *- India, him to India, had died in returning to Eng- land ; and with the hand of death heavy also upon his restless brain, his eloquent lips, and his skilful hand, Lord Dalhousie turned his face for "home." He had never been popular, as Metcalfe and Hardinge, Ellenborough, and Auckland were popular. A certain regal hauteur in his manner had forbidden close approach and chilled personal loyalty ; but, as the Untitled King came down to take ship at Chandpal Ghat, the banks of the Hooghly ransr with earnest farewells and wistful accla- o mation. Why ? He had not merely governed Europeans in India ; he had REIGNED over them as a monarch, whose will made itself felt with royal precision and severity ; but they cheered him with loyal and almost affectionate regret. To the native portion, too, of that vast and ex- cited crowd, he was the " Lat Bahadur" who had brought in the " lightning-string" and the "fire-carriage" who had turned the Hindoo world upside down with female education, suppression of Suttee, and many other hateful VOL. ii. c c 386 Dalhousie's Administration Conclusion, and revolutionary reformations. And besides these things he had snatched crowns from the foreheads of indigenous Princes, and brought more than one ancient Hindoo house to the common level. But Hindoo and Mussulman alike yielded to the emotion of the hour as the Marquis stepped from the soil of India ; doubt- less because an instinct superior to prejudice, resentment, or education told them how great a nature how royal, how capable, how capa- cious, how fitted to command was, under their own eyes, departing from the scene of its last earthly task. For this story has been indeed ill told if enough of the man has not glittered through his measures to prove that Lord Dalhousie did not owe his nobility merely to his title. His measures may be condemned or applauded. This imperfect chronicle has stigmatized some among them with sufficient boldness; but it must conclude by freely re- cognizing JAMES RAMSAY as cast in the noblest mould of governing men of large, liberal, and sagacious mind, cherishing grand designs for India, and meditating great duties to his Sovereign one worthy, in those gifts that are especially the Englishman's, to close a list which began with the name of CLIVE. Indeed, as the last echo of farewell rang in his ears, the great volume of history which that name com- menced was closing behind him. The hundred years of THE COMPANY were expiring: the of British India. 387 scroll that began with a grocer's invoice, and Conclusion, had gone on to decrees subverting kingdoms, was in act of completion. Did the last of its Governors precipitate the fate of that mar- vellous imperial firm that colossal shop ? The opinion of its great managing partners was shown to the contrary in the double period of power forced upon him, in the welcome that was given him, and in the pension that was voted him when this the most brilliant of their thirty " servants" landed at home. Neither they, nor he, nor the public understood then that his work had been to close a period to introduce by irresistible will reforms and changes that a feeble Government would never have car- ried to inaugurate the era which has followed of consolidation and non-aggressive govern- ment by giving British India the boundaries that were necessary to her quiet, and the prestige which could guarantee her peace. Eor the mutiny, if avoidable, and if connected at all with this rule, was not the consequence of his acts, but the penalty of his forget- fulness ; he remembered everything but the Bengal army ; and it has cost him half his reputation and half his labour. But the vast design of his mind ought to be appreciated a design, in the main just, necessary, and destined to be fulfilled. The pendulum of policy has swung away from it, in the impetus of alarm caused among us by the rebellion ; 388 Dalhousie' s Administration Conclusion, we are all for native states, now-a-days, and very delicate about the rights of rajahs who live on aphrodisiacs, and the advantages of an aristocracy which cultivates mainly the vices of one. But as the influence of our government leavens India more and more, we or the native rulers must hecome impossible, unless a great change comes upon them ; there cannot remain islands of ancient ideas in an ocean of modern manners and management; the native ruler swill rebel, if they are bold, and be defeated and dis- placed ; or imitate and propitiate us, if they are wise, and then become our legates, ere they dis- appear. We shall be expelled from India by losing our place among European nations, or we shall find ourselves responsible for the whole peninsula, and eventually its actual governors. The fault of Lord Dalhousie was not in seeing this future, and accepting it with too great activity, so much as in not taking enough care to make every step upon that destined path righteous and unchallenged. We are making a people in India where hitherto there have been a hundred tribes but no people. That work, fatal, but glorious to us as Lords in Asia, will not proceed to provinces here and particles there it will take in the whole peninsula ; and the conception which Lord Dalhousie cherished of a consolidated empire will have to be realized, to the blessing of the East, and the consummation of our grand of British India. 389 duties towards its grateful millions. To them Conclusion, is our first and chief office; with them we must lay our account to be tolerated or re- jected; for their sakes, and not to grow cotton for Manchester, or to draw pensions from Bath and Cheltenham, we have inherited Akbar's jewelled crown; wherefore the divine right of kings to govern villanously, or the dignities of a landed aristocracy who grind the ryots, must not block our road. We are introducing in India an idea unknown to the East, 1 as it was unknown to Europe before commerce and the Italian cities taught it the idea of popular rights and equality before an impartial and written law. If in that mission we violate justice, and let our ambition get before our duty, we shall spoil our own work ; which will else bring the circumference of civi- lization back to its starting-point, and, com- pleting the round of human intercourse, repay to the East the heavy debt due to it from the West, in religion, art, philosophy, lan- guage in almost everything but the science of government. This task has ended with the retirement of the Marquis of Dalhousie from the shores of India; for as a statesman and a public man he appeared no more ; and his private life and premature death do not belong to the present 1 China is no exception, though its oligarchy is redeemed by founded on mental culture. 390 Dalhousie's Administration Conclusion, record of his administration, which nowhere seeks to become a biography. As the pen is laid down, the Author may be allowed to speak, and he will use that privilege to confess sincerely the shortcomings of his work. To a subject worthy to occupy years of leisure, in its large relations to past and future history, he has been able to give none but the intervals of incessant labour due to many other toils, and to that modern stone of Sisyphus a daily journal. Midnight and daybreak, oftener than the usual times of study, have witnessed the composition of these pages and the sick-bed of one in- expressibly dear has often been their scene which must, therefore, too surely evidence for themselves haste and incompleteness. Under such circumstances, it would be presumption to offer them as exhaustive of the annals of this great Pro-consulate. They are not thus put forward but in the hope that something may be spared herein to the task of an abler pen something done intermediately for the reputation of a great Englishman, until his own declarations appear something registered to preserve past, and to help future legisla- tion forward. One merit the writer does claim that of the liveliest interest in the welfare of the people of India, and the deepest sense of British duty towards them an interest con- firmed, and a sense of duty quickened by pleasant days spent in Indian cities and fields. of British India. 391 With satisfaction, therefore, he recalls the Conclusion, fact, that the honoured name affixed to the first page of the first volume of this history a name, good over all India for courage, honour, and principle may be written on the last in still higher style. The tradition that Viceroys must be titled, which Lord Dalhousie did the most to uphold by his noble qualities, has been well broken through for John Lawrence, in tribute to whose unbounded claims to that proud seat, the earlier pages were inscribed. And not even he, lofty as the place is which he fills, will think it a dishonour, that, by the dedication of the second volume, his name is linked with that of one of " The English Ladies in India." He would rather be foremost in owning how strong has been the silent blessing how gentle the untold influence of those his countrywomen, who, by the side of their husbands, have given home, health, and little ones for India. In tears, and upon tombstones, is written our title to be there : so is also written the Author's to remember that land ; and to record this period of its annals ; and to write for the last word upon that record, Her name, which, as he writes, passes for him into a holy memory. THE END. APPENDIX, No. I. Return to an Order of the House of Commons, dated kth March, 1856. W i! ^ o S c f i. 1 15* ._ (3 H psg S c g. tr 1 5;va ^So ^^4 *? p-S^ CD CD ft' ^3 S t>^ CD CT 1 _ *^d O 5.T3 r. 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