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 of<Blirmal1 -
form a right idea of the outbreak and progress
of the war about to be narrated. Public opinion
had no more existence in Burmah than public
rights : the land and all it contained belonged
to the king, who was the completest despot in
the world. He had councils, but his will alone
decided upon peace or war, taxes and laws ;
and so arbitrary was its expression, that his
Majesty of Burmah had been known to chase
unconvinced ministers from the presence with
the argument of a drawn kreese. On another
occasion, it is also recorded that forty of the
highest officers of the state being contumacious
in privy council, were laid on their faces in the
public road, under the palace wall, and there
kept in the burning sun, with a beam of teak
on their distinguished bodies. 1 The standing
1 These bursts of royal fury were sometimes sudden. " His
Majesty seems good-natured and condescending," remarked
Mr. Gouger. " Pretty well, at times," was the reply ; " but he
20 Dalhonsie's Administration
Chap. XIV. army of a country so submissive needed not to
be large ; but in time of war the king called
out any one and every one taking the wives
and children of his subjects for hostages, to
secure valour and obedience. Troops swept
together thus, with the whip and bamboo staff,
naturally fell to pieces as quickly, as will be
seen in the actual progress of the campaign.
Still, the Burmese did not, as a people, want for
courage ; they had subdued Pegu, under Alorn-
pra,and driven back over the Yunnan frontier the
motley army of the " Elder Brother" of China ;
and if their deeds as slaves of the " Golden
Eoot" were not great against us in 1824, their
words and threats, at any rate, made up for it. 1
is not to be trusted, sir. He gives way to sudden bursts of
passion, when for a little he is like a raging madman, and no one
dares approach him. I was once present at a full durbar, where
all the officers then at the capital were assembled. The king
was seated on a gilded chair, as you have seen him, to all
appearance in his usual good temper, when something was said
by one present which irritated him. His majesty rose quickly
from his chair, and disappeared at a door opening to a private
apartment behind the throne. The council looked all aghast,
not knowing what to think of it ; but when he reappeared
armed with a long spear, the panic was universal. Sauve qui
pent. We made a simultaneous rush to the wide flight of steps
leading to the palace-yard like a herd of deer before a savage
tiger ; down the stairs we went pell-mell, tumbling over each
other in our haste to escape, without respect to rank or station.
His majesty made a furious rush at us, chased the flying crowd
to the head of the flight of stairs, and then, quite forgetting, in
his frenzy, who was the delinquent, launched his spear in the
midst of us at a venture. It passed my cheek, aud stuck in the
shoulder of an unfortunate man on the steps before me, without
doing him any very serious injury." Captivity in Ava.
' The famous Bandoola, alter defeating Captain Noton at
of British India. 21
Burmah, however, was really big enough to boast Chap. xiv.
of. The country upon which the " Golden Eoot"
planted itself in the ill-fated year when it gave features of
Lord Dalhousie a just cause of quarrel, ex- Burmah.
tended from the springs of the Irrawaddi in the
Sienechan Mountains to its mouth in the Gulf
of Martaban, and from the Bay of Bengal to
the villages of the semi-Chinese Shans. This
tract included Pegu and Burmah proper, the
very considerable dominions yet remaining to
these savage kings from the war of 1824. Its
river, the Irrawaddi, seeks the ocean by fourteen
mouths, and has deposited a delta larger than
that of the Nile. Prom its source at Manchi
to its embouchure at Rangoon it passes
through wild and unfamiliar tribes, many dia-
lects, and a most various country, containing,
besides innumerable modern towns and vil-
lages, the ruins of ancient seats of government,
which have a continuous and distinct history
of 1200 years. 1 "Where the hills rise at the edges
of this long and diversified valley, vast forests
of teak-trees, with their smooth, tall trunks and
Ramos, in 1824, swore, in contempt alike of geography and pro-
bability, that he would march and take London, sweep down on
Calcutta, and carry the Governor-General in chains to Ava.
The king actually provided him with chains of gold for the
purpose.
1 The country is thought to have been settled from Thibet
and the Yunnan districts of China, by the Karens or Shans ;
the former, according to Maltebrun, a people of Carides, in
Thibet.
22 Dalhousie's Administration
Chap. XIV. large rough leaves, mixed with bamboo jungle,
clothe the rocks. In the plains all the rich vege-
tation of the tropics is displayed, and most of its
sylvan inhabitants find a home the rhinoceros,
elephant, tiger, and ourang-outang wander in
the shade; deer and wild boars frequent the
open spaces ; while the woods are full of green
pigeons, jungle fowl, and parrots of brilliant
plumage. The Burmese villages which stud
the country are all built after one fashion,
well described by a graphic pen, 1 from which
these pages must more than once borrow:
" An easy, rolling slope, with knolls and tangled
thickets, gently declines from a range of heavily-
timbered hills. It is flanked on either side
with interminable jungle, affording secure cover
for the various forest life. In front of all
flows a wide, rapid, darkly-discoloured stream,
abundantly stocked with alligators, water-
oxen, and other amphibious game ; the back-
ground being filled with teak-forests and remote
mountains, with here and there some paddy-
fields between, which pasture the wild ele-
phants. Cover the ground with creepers,
cactuses, canes, and various luxuriant vegeta-
tion in a wilderness of profusion, and place, in
among these, native bamboo huts as thickly as
possible, with picturesque freedom of arrange-
ment. To complete the Burmese village and
1 ' The Golden Dagou." By an American.
of British India. 23
its landscape, on every hill-top, on every lofty Chap. XIV.
peak that overlooks the town, let a small
white pagoda be seen, perched like some beau-
tiful but lonely bird. Crown each of these
delicate aerial edifices with a coronet of tiny
gilded bells, which shall utter the mellowest
music to every passing breeze, and salute with
silver tinklings the incense which ascends to
visit them from lotus-laden lakes and plan-
tain groves." Such is this not unattractive
land, and its deity is Boodh, in his fourth in-
carnation as Gautama, the Impenetrable and
Calm, " the Timeless one in time" a God who
in the mystical creed of Burmah is not death,
nor sleep, nor annihilation personified ; but life,
eternal, sentient, self-conscious, only incorporeal
and passionless. Gautama, in stone, clay, lead,
or alabaster, sits everywhere over the land;
with drooping ears, and hand planted on his
knee, in that restful siesta of spirit into which
the good Buddhist will also be gathered when
Nirvana is accomplished, and his soul blends
into the universal, puffed out like a candle-
flame by death. Pour hundred millions of
worlds have waxed and waned since the first
Gautama was born into this one ; Sakya-Muni,
who founded Buddhism, is the fourth; and
after him comes Meban. " Nieban" is to be a
state of perpetual ecstasy, wherein those who
attain it will not only live free from the pains
24 Dalhousie's Administration
Chap. XIV. and troubles of this life, from death, illness, and
old age, hut be abstracted from all sensation ;
having no longer a thought or a desire.
The creed of This stagnant felicity, it is taught, may be
Buddhism, attained by the Buddhist if he takes refuge
with Boodh, approaches him with grateful
offerings, keeps his mental eye fixed ever in
ecstatic abstraction upon Boodh, strives ever
for the infinite in purpose and thought, and
repeats for ever the mystic triliteral word
which is the passport through the milky ways
of endless systems to the Centre of all things,
and their Circumference, to Boodh,to the eternal,
the self-conscious, the unconditioned Calm, the
All "the Incomparable, the Supreme; Teacher
of the three worlds, of gods, men, and devils ;
the Incomprehensible, Lord of the divine sages,
Deity of the felicitous advent, Illuminator of
the world, Author of light, Prince of healers,
Supreme protector who makes vacant the man-
sions of distress ; Scholar, Sage, whose un-
derstanding is pure and crystalline, who is
celebrated in the three worlds, who is profound
in the three sciences, who hath the thirty-two
characteristic signs complete, who with memory
of all things hath omniscience of what is and
is to come, who with tranquil purpose cleareth
the troubled times, whose heart is at rest, who
hath suffered much, who reposeth." A pro-
found ecstacy of thought, a grand abstraction of
of British India. 25
the rapt human heart, wiser and farther-reach- Chap. XIV.
ing than any dream of divinity emanating from
Pagan philosophy. To Buddhism Christianity
itself indeed has only added a human and sub-
jective side, though for that addition so long
an education was first necessary to mankind.
"Were missionaries as wise as zealous, it is upon
the magnificent ruins of such ideas as these
that they could rear the structure of a new faith
in the East, as the apostle made the altar of "the
unknown God" serve him for a Christian shrine.
Those who think such opinions of any heathen
creed too favourable, should do Buddhism the
justice to examine it in its purest sources. TJiey
will be struck more and more with the truth,
that this creed merits the name of the Chris-
tianity of the East. Its founder, Sakya-Muni,
the young Kshatriga prince, reflects in some
essentials, indeed, the character of the Founder
of the more perfect faith. He began to teach at
the same age, directed his teaching to the same
classes, taught almost the same doctrine, and
inculcated almost identical morals. What Juda-
ism also was to Christianity, that Vedantism
and the Manava Dhurma Shastra was to Bud-
dhism, and the development and organization of
Sakya-Muni's church curiously pre-enacts that
of the church founded by Jesus. Does this
offend any honest and earnest mind ? Should
it not rather gratify it, as showing that truth,
26 Dalhousie's Administration
Chap. XIV. which might be suspected were it a monopoly
and abrupt, has always been faintly shining ;
and that it pierces the windows of humanity in
proportion as the progress of education removes
the crust of ignorance from them ? As Judaism
was a religion of formal observances and propiti-
ations, so was the Brahmanism which Buddhism
revolutionized ; and as Jesus substituted moral
sacrifices for burnt offerings, so, with lower doc-
trine, did Gautama enjoin a pure and virtuous
life instead of Sanscrit liturgies, Brahmanism
like Judaism conceived a deity of Heaven in the
character of King-god : Buddhism like Christi-
anity began on earth, and traced duty and destiny
upwards. It has been well declared that this
wonderful faith consists of an opinion and a hope.
The opinion was as follows : That the visible
world is perpetually changing ; that death suc-
ceeds to life, and life to death ; that man and all
surrounding objects roll in an eternal circle
of transmigrations ; that he passes successively
through every form of life, from the most ele-
mentary to the most perfect ; that his position
in the scale of living creatures depends upon
the merit of his actions whilst in this world,
and that thus a virtuous man will after this life
be re-born in a divine body, and the sinner in a
degraded body ; that the rewards of heaven and
the punishments of hell possess only a limited
duration, like every other phase of creation ; that
of British India. 27
time exhausts the merits of virtuous actions, Chap,
in the same way that it effaces the stain of
sinful ones; and that the inevitable law of
change re-introduces upon this earth both the
good and the bad, to recommence their trial,
and to undergo a fresh series of transmuta-
tions. Such was the opinion admitted as fact.
The hope which Sakya-Muni conveyed to
mankind was the possibility of escaping from
this law of perpetual transmigration by entering
into Nirvana, or the state of extinction. The
gate to this extinction was death ; but a man
predestined to such supreme deliverance might
be known even in this life by his possession of
an unbounded knowledge, affording him a com-
plete view of the world as it exists ; that is to
sy, a vital knowledge of its physical and moral
laws, or, as it was more tersely expressed, " the
practice of the six transcendental perfections
namely, almsgiving, morals, science, energy,
patience, and charity." And let it not escape
notice that in gentleness of morality, too, and
tenderness of teaching, the one faith anticipated
the other. Sakya-Muni's preaching softened the
manners of half Asia, and shamed the frightful
ritual of the Soodra populations in India. It
lent itself to life like Christianity, it cast its
halo about all creation, it spoke with pity and
love of the " sparrows sold for a farthing," and,
shuddering at the pain suffered by man, strove
28 Dalhousies Administration
chap. xiv. to inflict as little as possible, that the total of
agony might at least not be increased. The
closer we examine its high and gentle tenets,
the more we must perceive that the thoughtful
authoress is right, who regards Buddhism as a
branch from God's own tree of knowledge i 1
" "We could almost imagine that before God
planted Christianity upon earth, He took a
branch from that luxuriant tree and threw it
down to India. It was from the tree of truth,
and therefore it taught true morality and belief
in future life, but was never planted. There-
fore it never took root, and never grew into
full proportions, and it was thrown upon earth,
not brought ; so that though man perceived it
heaven born, he knew not how to keep it alive.
When its green leaves drooped, he stiffened
them and stifled them with varnish; and
thus, very soon bedizened with tinsel, it shrank
into formal atheism or dead idolatry." " One
thing only" it lacked, like the young man who
came to Christ, and that was some recognition
of the individuality of the immortal soul. It re-
futed the material Pantheism of the Brahmins
with a spiritual Pantheism ; but it annihilated
all the sweet relations and objective joys of the
soul with its merciless but sublime " Nir-
vana ;" it pointed out that "Father's house"
which a Diviner voice also proclaimed to liu-
1 Mrs. Spiera' " Life in Ancient India."
of British India. 29
inanity in this our ceaseless agony. But it did Chap. XIV.
not know there were " many mansions" fitted
to conscious though conjoined individualities.
Add to Buddhism the belief which sanctifies life
with love eternal, instead of selfish piety, or re-
tain Sakya's morality ; but, for the stagnant and
absorbed felicity of the Buddhist, make such a
heaven as that to which St. Paul was rapt its
object ; and the apostle might have written his
epistles to the churches of Ceylon or Thibet,
almost as well as to Rome or Thessalonica. 1
But purely intellectual creeds can very seldom The Burmese
civilize races with savage passions and stronar 8avage !. ln .,
spite of soil :
necessities of daily life. "Wanting much upon their reii-
the human side, the doctrine of a supreme glon '
intelligent absorbing soul had struck no deep
root in Burmah. The people never learned
from it its high significance, its elevating doc-
trines, 2 its spirit of true charity, and its tran-
scendental hopes. The Burmese, with the purest
religion of Paganism, have remained barbaric.
1 What can be higher, for example, than the Buddhist doctrine
of the punishment of sin. " Sin is not punished, it punishes itself,
being a violation of the natural and benign order." " Mind
precedes action. The motive is all. If any speak or act from a
corrupt mind suffering follows, as the wheel the lifted foot of
the ox. If from a pure intention, enjoyment follows as the
shadow the substance." Such are the elevated teachings of the
" Darnma Padan," or footsteps of Buddha.
2 Or only the most educated. " When at Doonoobyoo,"
says the author of " The Golden Dagon," " I asked apoonghee,
' What is BoodhP' He answered, ' Boodh is you, and I, and
all men ; when you are I, and I am you, and both are at rest,
that is Boodh.' "
30 fialhottsie's Administration
Chap. xiv. Whatever achievements, therefore, are to be
recorded on the British side in this Burmese
war were obtained against a rude race by the
best soldiers and deadliest implements of de-
struction known to civilization. The dangerous
and doubtful word " glory" need not intrude
accordingly upon the narrative; indeed, the
kingdom which we wrested from the " Golden
O
Foot" was disputed against us far more by
fiery suns and by the cholera and fever which
they breed, than by the " "Woons" and their
red-turbaned levies. But barbarians as were the
races which they ruled, in lavish state and dis-
play the court of the Ava monarchs has always
rivalled the gaudiest ancient or modern ex-
amples. Golden umbrellas and white elephants
gorgeously caparisoned, with troops of dusky
harlots dancing in silk and rubies before their
languid majesties, are described by all the
foreigners who have been admitted to the palace
gates at Umerapoora. Luxury, however, like
authority, was almost a monopoly there. The
people from the lowest " Karen" to the highest
" Woon" were slaves of the king, and did not
dare, even if wealthy, to make a display which
art. would attract his eye. In art, nevertheless, the
Burmese have a right to rank well among the
uncivilized, and they have derived this at least
from their religion. Their war boats are carved
with ingenious arabesques, and singularly well
of British India. 31
constructed for speed and stowage. In casting Chap. Xiv.
bells they have long had nothing to learn,
whether for such ponderous monsters as swung
in the Great Dagon at Rangoon, six feet across
at the mouth, or the tinkling " sonnettes" sus-
pended upon every corner and ledge of their
pagodas, with a film of gold leaf fastened upon
the clapper to catch the wind, 1 and make the
breeze the bellman of the shrine.
Upon every pagoda, especially, a barbaric and
grotesque art displayed itself, in creatures mixed
of crocodile, cock, and tiger, carved in the stone ;
while the Boodh of each fane was frequently
represented by the native sculptor with a cer-
tain godlike repose of attitude and visage which
breaks through tradition, and declared a real
genius. As a rule, too, the Burmese were re-
markably well educated up to a certain point,
as many as sixty per cent, of the adults being
able to decipher the vernacular, while their
" poonghees" were sometimes deeply read in the
palm-leaf volumes of their sacred lore. In re-
1 To the Burmese, these bells were the objects of much pride
and veneration. At the dedication of any pagoda of conse-
quence the people would flock from all the country round about
to the founding of its great bell, and cast into the molten mass,
with eager devotion, bits of copper, brass, silver, and gold, and
even jewels. The silver scabbards and gold betel boxes of the
men, the polished jars of the housewives, their ear-rings, and
stores of pretty coquettish baubles, armlets, anklets, the toelets
of nautch girls ; even the small metal toys of the young chil-
dren, and here and there a bit of shining foil scratched with a
baby's name, are flung in without stint, that the " Nuts" may
be propitiated and evil averted.
32 Dalhousies Administration
Chap. xiv. gard of social manners, too, the married women
Social life. o f Burmah enjoyed certain liberties unknown
elsewhere in the East. They went and came
unveiled, they alone could not be seized by the
royal officers for slaves, and they had great and
unequal facilities of divorce against their hus-
bands, while the " mimas" or concubines had to
perform menial services for the mistress of the
house. On the other hand, the evidence of two
women could not be heard against one man in a
case at law, nor might they approach the court
of justice to testify, nearer than from a neigh-
bouring house-top; and, on the whole, the
Burmese estimate of the sex is fairly seen in
the maxim of a native lawgiver, that " to judge
iniquitously is a greater crime than to slay ten
thousand women, one thousand horses, or one
hundred priests." 1
Customs Taught by their creed to spare animal life
food, &c. &c. fl^ Burmese put godliness before cleanliness, by
eating the carcases of animals dead of disease.
This resource not sufficing, 2 however, they com-
monly supplemented it with a putrid pate of
dead fish pressed into cakes along with head, tail,
1 It is indeed on this side of Buddhism, the social relations,
that its deficiencies are naturally apparent. Here is one of its
maxims : " The good wives are of three sorts the wife that
is like unto a sister, the wife that is like unto a friend, and the
wife that is like unto a slave ; but the best of these is, the wife
that is like unto a slave."
2 Gautama indeed did not forbid flesh meat, but the killing of
animals. He himself, we grieve to observe, died of partaking
the hospitable pork of Chundo the goldsmith.
of British India. 33
and bones, which is called "ngapi." Lizards, chap. XIV.
serpents, and red ants form also a common
relish of their rice ; and a white erub, extracted
* \_7 *
from the heart of a certain tree trunk, is said to
be a royal dish. Diet so indiscriminate and
unwholesome tells its tale upon the people, who
are short in stature and coarse in appearance.
Their manners are as uncivilized as their food.
They eat with their fingers from a pumpkin
rind a cleaner way, however, than our own
custom of using each other's forks wrap a
waist -cloth about their bodies, while for their
dwellings the nearest jungle, a knife, and a
day or two's labour on the part of the family
suffices to erect one of the slight huts which
serves for a house. The bamboos are split,
arched over, tied with strips of cane, and roofed
with talipot leaves, the natural form of which,
like tiles, carries off the rains from the rooms
within, which are raised from the ground two
or three feet on bamboo-logs, leaving a space
tenanted by fowls and pariah dogs. Of such a
character are most of the Burmese habitations,
Ava itself not containing at the time of these
events more than a dozen brick buildings.
*
VOL. II. D
34 Dalhonsie's Admin (strati on
CHAPTER XV.
Chap. XV. THE second war against the kings of these bar-
On^in of the k ar j ans arose from an incident as trivial as
second Bur-
mese war. that dispute for a barren sand-bank which had
brought on the first. The barque " Monarch,"
Robert Sheppard, master, was proceeding in
May, 1851, into the Rangoon River, under
charge of Esoph, a Chittagong pilot, when that
unfortunate or reckless Pagan Palinurus ran
the ship ashore. " Through fear or shame,"
according to the master's statement, Esoph
sprang overboard, and was not picked up,
because, by the same account, a squall came on
and swamped the boat lowered for that purpose.
Arriving at Rangoon the master was arrested
upon a charge of having thrown his pilot over-
board, and in accordance with Burmese justice a
fine of nine hundred and ninety-seven rupees
was levied on him by the Governor of Rangoon,
although the charge was dismissed as " not
proven." A ship-boy was first beaten, indeed,
and kept in the stocks with the view of obtaining
damnatory evidence ; but the testimony of the
crew was unanimous to the effect that the pilot
of British India.' 35
had flung himself into the sea and perversely chap. XV.
disappeared. Falsely accused and fined, there-
fore, Mr. Sheppard made his complaint known
to Government on the 18th of July ; and it was
followed by another memorial on the 22nd of
September, preferred by a master mariner, who
had been accused at Rangoon of murdering one
of his coolies, threatened with decapitation,
eventually acquitted, but, as usual in such
cases, roundly fined. These two outrages, along
with others of a general kind, were set forth,
by the merchants of Rangoon in the form of a
petition, 1 sent to the Governor- General on the
27th of September.
1 As this is virtually the bill of indictment against the Bur-
mese, it may be useful to quote it :
" The respectful memorial of the merchants, commanders of
British vessels, and others resident in Rangoon, in the Burmese
empire, humbly sheweth
" That your memorialists have for a long time suffered from
the tyranny and gross injustice of the Burmese authorities.
" That trade is seriously obstructed, and almost suppressed
in consequence.
" That, contrary to the treaty of Yandaboo and good faith, a
much larger sum is on all occasions exacted from vessels in
shape of harbour dues, &c., than is right ; and that many vessels
are, in consequence, deterred from coming.
" That neither life nor property is safe, as the Governor has
publicly stated to his dependants that he has no money to pay
them for their services ; and has granted to them his permission
to rob the inhabitants, and to get money aa they best can.
" That, in consequence, robberies and false charges are of
almost daily occurrence.
" That the Governor has frequently demanded money without
any pretext, and has tortured the parties till his demands were
complied with.
" That now affairs have arrived at such a crisis that, unless
Dalhousies Administration
View of Lord
Dalhousie.
Vessels of
war des-
patched to
Rangoon.
Chap. XV. Thus " a case" was laid before Government,
upon which Lord Dalhousie, but by another
pen, proceeded to indite his grave opinion with
" a care and attention commensurate to the
consequences which might possibly result."
In his Lordship's opinion, Article 1 of the
treaty of Yandaboo (which treaty had never yet
been observed at all) was violate, and reparation
must be demanded for the act of the Burmese
Governor of Rangoon. And, unfortunately, as
there was time to spare for the Woons at last,
and silver to spend in the treasury, so there was
force at hand to be employed. Her Majesty's
ships the " Fox" and " Serpent" were at anchor
in the Hooghly under Commodore Lambert.
The " Fox," with the "Proserpine " and "Te-
nasserim " were therefore ordered at once to
Rangoon. Perhaps these last affronts had offered
too great a temptation to resist ; but Lord Dal-
housie, although justified and authorized in his
demand of reparation, was not justified, it would
seem, in making it, without warning, by ships of
war. Hitherto Colonel Boyle, the Tenasserim
Commissioner, had been the channel of all com-
munications with Ava, and to depart from the
protected, your memorialists will be obliged to leave the country,
and doing so must sacrifice their property.
" That your memorialists are here under the provisions
of the treaty of Yandaboo, and beg to state, with all due defer-
ence and respect, that they claim the right to seek your pro-
tection."
of British India. 37
usual procedure was in itself irritating. And in chap. XV.
fact, and in the simplest truth, it was not meant
to be otherwise; for although the language of the
Governor-General remained steadfast to techni-
cal propriety and peacefulness, a fighting sailor
was sent to confer ahout peace. This Com-
missioner was, indeed, ordered to satisfy himself
of the truth of the statements of the captains
before taking any decided steps, and then to go
through every form of parley. He was to
demand the disgrace of the Woon of Rangoon,
and compensation for Captains Sheppard and
Lewis to the extent of about 9,000 rupees. Of
course a shower of claims fell in so soon as it
was known that armed ships were this time to
be the remonstrants with Ava, but only the
cases mentioned were taken up. There can be
little doubt that to have made representations
through Colonel Boyle would have led to no
results, while to have sent an envoy to the
court would have been simply to arrange for
his sacrifice. Nor can it be denied that such
a show of strength and determination seemed
calculated to bring any barbarian power but
Burmah to its senses, and to conditions of
peaceful behaviour. But the government of Cal-
cutta could not thus deceive itself about Burmah.
It knew the arrogance of the " Golden Foot,"
it had fostered that arrogance ever since 1826
bv silence under affront, and it was well aware
38 Dalhonsie's Administration
\
Chap. xv. that the language which had been used 1 to us
before the last war was still employed by the offi-
cers of the " Fish Pond/' 2 To neglect to use the
regular method of intercourse, then, was so far
unfortunate, that it gave the Burmese a certain
right in turn to complain of inconsistency and
provocation, and to be off ended. An armed
flotilla despatched as a messenger of peace is
the last resource among civilized nations ; but
here we sent it in hot haste as our first step.
So little doubt was felt at Calcutta as to the
exciting effect of such a measure, that at the
date of the despatch of the vessels General
Godwin, the future commander in the war, ex-
pressed himself satisfied that " half measures
would not succeed with the Burmese." 3 But it is
enough to recollect the well-known antecedents
1 The Rajahs of Arracan declared in 1824, " that they acted
under the authority of a mandate from the Sultan of Ava, and
that any attempt of the British Government to recover posses-
sion of what thut Government had solemnly declared to be its
unquestionable right, would be followed by an invasion of the
eastern districts of Bengal, for which purpose the forces of the
Burman empire were advancing to the frontier." In a letter also
addressed shortly afterwards by the Rajah of Arracan to the
Governor-General, that chief had the audacity to declare that
the party on the island of Shapuree had been destroyed, in pur-
suance of the commands of the " Great Lord of the Seas and
Earth ; that if the British Government wanted tranquillity, it
would allow the matter to pass ; but if it should rebuild a
stockade on the island, the cities of Dacca and Moreshedabad,
which originally belonged to the great Arracan Rajah, would be
taken from it by force of arms."
1 Ava.
* Letters and Papers by Major-General H. Godwin, p. 2.
of British India. 39
of the court of Ava, and to glance at contempo- Chap. xv.
raneous comments, to see that war was intended,
and that the despatch of the "Fox" and her
companions was war. 1
To Rangoon Commodore Lambert pro- The ships of
ceeded, and anchored off that amphibious at
town on the 25th of November. If the
Governor refused him " satisfaction," he was
to forward a letter for the Prime Minister
of Ava. On the morning after the arrival of
the squadron, the Rangoon Governor requested
that the ships should shift their anchorage,
but was answered that " the present berths
pleased them." None of the British residents
came off ; the reason being that the Governor
had threatened the lives of any persons com-
municating with the ships, and he had also fined
a Madrassee captain for saluting the commo-
1 " The future destiny of this province," said the leading
Indian journal, "now trembles in the balance. If the King
of Ava is obstreperous it must become British, in spite
of our most pacific intentions. We are disposed to think
that the matter will not, after all, be hushed up so quietly
as some suppose. After the demonstration we have made,
and the irritation we have inflicted on the Burmese court,
we must plant a consular agent at Rangoon for the protection of
our merchants and our trade, or give up the commerce of that
port altogether. But the establishment of a foreign and inde-
pendent agent a 'barbarian eye,' as the Chinese designate
him in the Burmese dominions, is the concession which the
court of Ava will be disposed above all things to refuse; and
the course of future events will evidently turn upon this one
point, on which we must insist with a pertinacity exactly pro-
portioned to the resistance it may encounter." Friend of India,
December 11, 1851.
40 Dalhousie's Administration
Chap. XV. dore's pendant. After a day or two the Euro-
peans ventured on board and brought such a
list of complaints against the authorities, that
the commodore thought proper to inform the
Governor that he must ask fresh instructions
regarding this swarm of cases. The Woon
listened to the brief missive, smoking, and " in
a white waist- cloth ;" but pride or fear, it is
narrated, "made him shake too much to be
able to knock the ash from his cheroot." How-
ever, his deputy came off eventually to the
"Fox " to ask what accusations had been made,
and by whom ; and received in return a letter
addressed to the King of Ava, to reply to which
a delay of five weeks was allowed.
Behaviour of On the 1st of January an officer from the
the Burmese cour t o f ^ va brought communications to the
Government,
Jan., 1852. ship, one complaining almost plaintively 1 of
1 The Burmese Ministers to the President of the Council
of India.
"Their Excellencies the Great Ministers of State, who trans*
act all the affairs of the kingdom, bearing continually on their
heads the two golden feet, resembling the germs of the Lotus, of
His Most Glorious and Excellent Majesty, inform the Presidentof
the Council of India (war chief), that they have received theletter
paid to have been forwarded by the President of the Council
of India (war chief), which was enclosed in a tin ease and
velvet bag, with the seal of the Honourable the East India Com-
pany, from Commodore Lambert, of her Majesty's ship ' Fox ; '
also another letter from him (Commodore Lambert) to the
Ministers of Ava. These letters having been delivered to the
Governor of Kangoon, have reached the Golden Foot (City of
Ava).
" The purport and style of the aforesaid letter is not in ae-
of British India. 41
the rudeness of " the great war chiefs," chap. XV.
while the others promised the withdrawal of
the offending Governor, and due inquiry into
the cases of injustice, with a view to compensa-
tion. On the 27th of December Mr. Halliday
had written from Calcutta that merely to change
the Governor, and to promise inquiry, would
not suffice, but that a Resident must be allowed
at Rangoon. It is to be confessed that the
prompt change of Woon was productive of very
little improvement. The official selected was
the Viceroy of Pegu, who came from his palace
at Prome ; and he entered his new office with
all the parade possible. But he did not show
any official resentment against the old Woon,
and very shortly began to indulge in insults on
his own account. The commodore sent to de-
mand an interview, whereon " Maha Mengha
Meng Khoungyan" returned word that any day
of the week which suited the "war chiefs" would
be agreeable to him. But when a deputation
waited on him, they were refused admittance
cordance with friendship, or those usually addressed [to the
Burmese Government], viz., ' that the British Government shall
enforce the right it possesses.' However, taking into considera-
tion the great friendship existing between the two countries, a
suitable reply, so as to meet your wishes and to establish peace
and friendship, has been forwarded.
" We consider it proper that, in the event of any future com-
munication between the two great countries, the usual form and
style, according to custom and agreement, should be carefully
attended to."
42 Dalhotme's Administration
Chap. XV. because " the Governor was asleep." By and
bye it was announced that he was awake, but
that he would only see the interpreter. While
this parley was going on the British officers were
kept in the fierce sun, and the interpreter was
threatened with violence. It should be men-
tioned that some explanation of this conduct
was afterwards offered in the shape of charges
against the envoys for having comported them-
selves with disrespect; as, for example, by
riding into the Woon's " compound," a breach
of Burmese etiquette not to be tolerated. But
it is clear that affronts, if they were offered on
one hand, were welcome on the other. The
deputation related their adventures to the com-
modore, and he without more delay broke off
communication with the new Governor, and
declared the Rangoon, Bassein, and Saugoii
rivers to be in a state of blockade, pending
direct and satisfactory action from the court of
Ava itself.
Thedifiicuity If this was a just dispute, according to the
deepens. code of Touchstone, and the " reply churlish"
had been rightly followed by the " retort va-
liant," what followed cannot be quite so easily
defended. The court of Ava had promised in-
quiry, and the step of further reference to that
court, which Commodore Lambert took, should
seem to have pre-supposcd longer patience.
The Burmese had fair barbaric reasons for what
of British India. 43
had transpired hitherto. There was no suf- Chap. XV.
ficient or open cause to doubt that they
meant in their own due time and way to ap-
pease the " war chiefs," if it could be done
without sacrificing the Court's dignity in the
eyes of a people who only obey upon the con-
dition of respecting and fearing their masters.
The original Governor had been removed, the
withdrawal of the ships from their moorings
opposite the town had not been insisted upon ;
and if investigations into the alleged grievances
had still to be commenced, the new ruler at least
pretended to have been well disposed to hear
Commodore Lambert's list of them. Contrast-
ing the letters of the Governor 1 with the acts
1 " The Governor of Rangoon to the English Government"
is really very reasonable and peaceable :
" The declaration of Tha do Mengyee Maha Mengtha
Meng Khounggyan Menggyee of Shewedoung, commanding the
forces at Rangoon, and appointed to go and rule a large terri-
tory and brave army, having after due prostration at the royal
feet taken counsel of the Meng Tarahgyee Phooyah, who is all-
powerful Lord of the Universe, Master of the Tshat-tang Ele-
phant, and all White Elephants, and Lord of Life, he who is like
unto the Lotus Flower.
" The letter transmitted by the English authorities sets
forth the unjust oppression to which the merchants trading at
Rangoon had been subjected by the Governor of Rangoon, that
those who had been thus oppressed should receive redress, and
that it would be proper to remove the Governor of Rangoon.
In accordance with the Treaty of Friendship a person disposed
to cherish and protect the people and merchants was placed at
Rangoon, and despatches for the English Government, pur-
porting that the Myowoon of Rangoon would be recalled
to the royal presence, and that a decision would be passed
after due investigation, wore delivered to the officer com-
manding the man-of-war which had come to Rangoon ; and
44 Dalhomiea Administration
Chap. XV. of the squadron, especially as regards that which
followed the attempted interview, it is hard to
avoid the impression that war was all along in-
tended by us, and that the Burmese would
have disappointed our representatives had they
taken away the hope of a campaign before the
monsoon.
Construing all that had happened, at any
in pursuance of these letters the Rangoon Myowoon was sent
off to the throne, that his case might be inquired into and
decided.
" After this, when I was considering how I should invite Com-
modore Lambert, desiring to conciliate him to the utmost, and
thus establish a warm friendship, the interpreter, Mr. Edwards,
came to me and stated that the Commodore desired an interview
with me very much, and begged that he might be permitted to
come. As this was a proper and friendly overture, after having
settled with Mr. Edwards that he should join me beforehand,
that I might perfectly observe the etiquette which the visit
required, there came riding into my court-yard four subordinate
officers, with the American missionary Kincaid, and Edwards,
the interpreter. They had been drinking, and it happened that
I was asleep just at that time ; whereupon, telling the Yay woon
and the other officers present to awake me, they returned and
made a false representation to the commodore, who gave ear to
what they said, without duly considering the circumstances of
the case ; and unlike a son of a great country, and actuated only
by the wish to create a quarrel, he, on the first Lahpyeegyan of
Pyatho 1213 (6th January, 1852), at 2 P.M., covertly unmoored
and carried off the great ship ' Ye-thenah-ye-woon,' belonging
to His Majesty Meng Tarahgyee Phooyah, the all powerful Lord
of the Universe, Master of Tshat-tang Elephant and all White
Elephants, and Lord of Life.
" I desire that there should be justice, where there is misre-
presentation and injustice. This is not in accordance with the
purport of the letters which were forwarded in the first in-
stance. These mediators between two countries, Commodore
Lambert and his officers, have violated the functions of a great
embassy ; therefore have I written, desiring that the facts may
be known."
of British India. 45
rate, as studied insult, and precipitating events Chap. XV.
thereby, as cannot but now appear, Commodore
Lambert ordered all the British subjects 1 in
Rangoon to come on board the vessels of mer-
chandize and war in the river ; and this being
accomplished by dusk, he issued commands to
seize the " Yellow Ship." At daybreak of Jan-
uary 8th the " Hermes" was ordered to take
in tow and remove this vessel, which was an
unpainted teak frigate, built for the king by
European artificers and pierced for a heavy
battery, but at this time having nothing but her
lower masts in. All the finest trees of the
season had been set apart for her construction,
and she was a strong and splendid craft of her
class. Startled at such sacrilege tattoed diplo-
macy came on board the commodore's ship in
the persons of the Governor of Dallah and the
Under- Governor of Rangoon, assuring him that
no insult had been intended, and that the ship
was sacred. He declined to treat, however,
with anybody but Maha Mengha himself, and
that official in the evening sent a very depre-
catory letter. But war was no longer doubtful
to either party, and in the same night canoes
containing each a hundred men were seen pro-
1 They were certainly, by their own accounts, in a hard
plight. " Your petitioners, the merchants at Rangoon, both great
and small, amount to six hundred, who are in the condition of
being stranded in shallow water." Vide "Blue Book upon
Burmah."
46 Dalhousies Administration
Chap. XV. ceeding down the river carrying the red flag,
which in Burmah is the colour of battle.
Provoca- In effect, the Rangoon Government had before
w^'andtte warned the English fleet, that, if the "Ye-
commence- thena-ye-woon," or Yellow Ship, was touched,
its batteries would open, as also if any of our
ships passed them without leave. Accordingly,
upon the 10th our vessels moved down the
river to carry out the blockade, and to beard the
Burman the " Hermes " having the " Yellow
Ship" in tow, and others of the squadron the
merchantmen. Some of the men-of-war not
only steamed close past the stockades, as if to
challenge them, but passed and repassed them
with an unmistakable meaning, though with no
immediate effect. Next morning, therefore, the
" Hermes" was directed to steam by with her
prize, and as she came abreast of the "Da
Silva" battery, the English drum " beat to
quarters," her captain knowing very well what
would follow. Eleven guns opened upon the
" Hermes," and at once, as if also ready and
eager, the Commodore hoisted the signal to
engage the enemy, and the " Second Burmese
War" had commenced in earnest. It was a
sample of the campaign : the heavy shot,
and, above all, the shell of the British guns,
ploughed into and through the teak breast-
works and bamboo palisading of the red-
breeched barbarians on shore, while their
of British India. 47
missiles flew high and wide of the ships. Car- cha P- xv -
cases and rockets set fire to whatever shot and
shell had shattered. After two hours, not a
man remained in the stockades, nor a war-
boat on the stream. Totally unable to face
such a cannonade, the Burmese soldiers fled
into the jungle, which is always close at hand
in their country, although some acts of sin-
gular courage were shown at this first bout of
arms. One chief in particular, of high rank,
to judge by his " tattooing" and gold umbrella,
brought his war-canoe right opposite the
" Phlegethon," and tried to incite his men to a
boat attack. A 32-pounder was laid for him,
and would have blown him and his boat under
water, but the " Phlegethon's" captain shouted
from the bridge, " Let no one hurt that man."
The incident retrieves the description of a
scene not otherwise very glorious, being that of
a victory over defences, many of which were
found to be armed only with teak-logs hollowed
like pipes, and braced with rattans and iron
bands, in rude anticipation of Armstrong guns.
Open war was now the word ; the blockade Open war.
was made effectual ; the Governor- General hur-
ried down from the Punjab to Calcutta, and
everything was prepared to strike the long-
meditated blow before the rains, The King of
Ava was allowed till the 1st of April to make
ample satisfaction, because that was the earliest
48 Dalhousie's Administration
Chap. XV. day upon which ships and troops could rendez-
vous at the mouths of the Irrawaddi. His
majesty was called upon to disavow the
acts of the Rangoon Governor, and to make
further apology for his conduct ; to pay ten
lacs instead of 10,000 rupees ; to receive and
lodge a Resident at Rangoon, and to remove
the second Governor sent thither. Of course,
no idea that these terms would be granted was
allowed to delay the preparation of the troops
and the fleet. The Commander-in-Chief being in
Sindh, Lord Dalhousie, with more energy than,
and probably as much military skill as his, him-
self superintended the preparations, which were
on a large scale too large, indeed, to account
for, except upon the theory that the occupation
of Pegu was already a foregone conclusion with
him. General Godwin, designated to com-
mand, pointed out, in his first interview with
the Viceroy, that it was the wrong season to
begin hostilities, if merely a chastisement was
contemplated. " If a strong demonstration
only was intended, then," he said, "we should
not affect the Government of Ava, which had
no public establishments, and no particular in-
terest in the destruction or preservation of its
towns, as they could always be shifted at a few
days' notice." * The Governor-General listened
attentively, and simply observed " the tiling
1 Vide General Godwin's published Papers, pp. 4, 5.
of British India. 49
was determined on." The general received Chap. xv.
his appointment on the strength of large ex-
perience in the former campaign, 1 a selection
that provoked some ill-natured criticisms, not
deserved by a soldier who, to the prudence of
sixty- seven years, added the vigour and endur-
ance of seven-and- twenty. Whatever was feared
from the traditionary strategics of General God-
win, it was at least unfortunate to decry the
bodily energy of an old man, who, after travel-
ling out to India, journeyed 2,400 miles by
land, and slept in his clothes twenty-eight
nights of the fatiguing trial without a murmur.
Two curious difficulties arose at this June- Incidental
ture of affairs, both of them worth notice. The difficaltie8 -
Bengal contingents left Calcutta on the 29th of
March, and the war-steamers of Bombay were
ready to support them, but Madras was back-
ward. The Governor, Sir Henry Pottinger, had
not been consulted about the war, and so de-
clined to send troops, except upon the direct re-
sponsibility of the Viceroy. By the Charter Act
of 1852, all India was placed under one head,
and thenceforward the appointment of a sweeper
at Bombay, or the cost of a latrine at Madras,
had to receive the sanction of the Supreme
1 One journal of this date began a course of singular personal
opposition to the old soldier. " General Godwin," it observed,
"is appointed for having served in the old war a sufficient
reason, we should think, why he should not have served in
this."
VOL. II. E
50 Dalhotisie's Administration
Chap. XV. Government ; but distance and the distinction
of the services keeps the three presidencies as
much apart as though they were separate king-
doms, with independent satraps and policies.
Madras knows nothing of Bombay, nor Bom-
bay much of Bengal, and the differences of
legislature and social systems foster a certain
mutual jealousy and ignorance. Animated
by such a feeling, and piqued by finding his
Chinese reputation forgotten, Sir Henry Pot-
tinger declared that he would not embark a
soldier without distinct orders. This caused
some delay and difficulty. Had the Madras
Governor refused altogether, his conduct would
not have been without precedent, for the same
presidency declined to declare war on Tippoo
Sahib, when Lord Wellesley proclaimed hostili-
ties against the Prince of the Carnatic. How-
ever, the hitch was overcome by the irresistible
will of the Viceroy, and Madras eventually was
not very much behind Bombay, the steam fleet
being made ready for sea three days after orders.
But the Bengal officials had also their own obsta-
cles to surmount. Hitherto no Sepoy regiment
had been conveyed by water, and the wording
of the oath taken by native troops only bound
them to " march " whithersoever they might
be ordered ; thus implying that their obedience
was not to extend beyond terra firma. Dread
of the ocean and religion combine to make a
of British India. 51
high caste Hindoo shun " the black waters," Chap. XV.
which, beside usually rendering him helpless
with the mal de mer, take away his caste. To
this day, a Brahman in England is far stranger
than a Briton in old Rome, because of the irre-
moveable prejudice. No one, however, seems
to have anticipated difficulty in the matter ; the
less so, because an equally stringent religious
prohibition had been before disregarded by
native troops. The superstition forbidding a
Hindoo to cross the Indus was as strong as that
which keeps him from the Kola pani. But in
the first Aifghan war, the Sepoys did not hesi-
tate on the brink of the stream, although, in
fear of such an event, the officers had made pre-
parations for dealing with a general mutiny.
"With one accord, on that occasion, they shouted
"Kttmpanikaikhbal!" and following that same
" destiny of the Company," like the Roman
army the standard of Caesar, they crossed the
Hindoo Rubicon . Now, however, it was not
so ; the 38th Regiment N. I. refused altogether
to sail, even down to the Mahommedans, and
instead of recognizing the pregnant meaning of
that refusal, the Governor meekly sent the men
to Dacca, where cholera decimated them. Had
the able ruler of India been less pre-occupied
with " taking in kingdoms," he would have dis-
cerned in such an event that the weapon of his
extensive ambitions was losing its old temper,
52 Dalhousie's Administration
Chap. xv. ^d becoming day by day chiefly dangerous to
the hand that wielded it.
The energy But justice must be done to the superb
Dal " energies of the Governor-General, though the
present warned him too little of the future.
The war was so much his own war, that he left
nothing in it to chance, or, worse, to incompe-
tent subordinates. Fever and cholera had been
our deadliest enemies in the first Burmese cam-
paign, and account had to be laid for meeting
with these again. Accordingly, long before
this, Colonel Boyle had instructions to drain
Tenasserim for live stock, munitions, material,
and labour, and the invading army " carried its
barracks and home comforts behind it." Skele-
ton houses were fitted together at Moulmein,
and an immense force of carpenters got ready
to put them up at requisition as cover for the
force in the rains. "The care and provision,"
wrote General Godwin, in a private letter,
" which has been made to enable us to meet
the weather is parental. There are to be bake-
houses and a constant supply of fresh meat,
hospitals at Amherst to relieve me, and arrange-
ments to carry the sick thither." In a word,
having made up his mind to war, Lord Dal-
housie also made up his mind and his measures
for a swift and successful one.
Arrival of The Bengal troops and the Bombay squadron
reached the Irrawaddi on the 2nd of April, 1852.
of British India. 53
Lord Dalkousie's secret orders 1 to General God- chap. XV.
win directed him, should full reparation not
have been made by this date, to proceed at once
to action, without abating a jot of the conditions
of peace, or even pausing to debate them longer.
Nothing can be more masterly in grasp, more
prescient, or more practical, the justice of the
case admitted or pretermitted, than these same
secret orders. Not fettering his general, the
Viceroy maps his course out for him with a
steady hand, which guides without leading.
Martaban and Rangoon can be taken directly ;
no difficulty is anticipated there, and the
general may storm them in whatever order he
pleases. "But can they be held?" Lord
Dalhousie lays it down that "with a nation
so ridiculously but mischievously self-conceited
and arrogant," whatever is taken musics held.
Martaban may be safely occupied, but can
Rangoon be retained with the force under God-
o
win, in the face of a Burmese monsoon ? This
is a question upon which the Governor-General
remarks, that no " considerations of political
advantage would induce me to order the con-
tinuance of troops at that place now, if I thought
it probable that the scenes of 1824 would be
1 From this date much matter will be drawn from private
papers of the late General Godwin, in the author's possession,
including the Governor- General's autograph despatches and
private correspondence to him.
Dalhousie's Administration
Chap. XV. renewed." 1 But he justly considers that the
preparations made in Calcutta and Tenasserim
will obviate any marked recurrence of disease.
Only two other points in this remarkable de-
spatch need be alluded to one is, that if the
river has sufficient water, Lord Dalhousie dis-
cusses the idea of pushing on to Prome, with
fresh troops, before the monsoon ; the other is,
that he distinctly anticipates already a very
protracted war, and an advance to Ava itself.
" I fear," he writes, " that it must be regarded
as probable that operations will not be brought
to a termination till a campaign shall again have
led us to the gates of the capital."
The Madras contingent was not arrived at
the rendezvous by the 2nd of April, and while
awaiting it a flag of truce was sent by the
" Proserpine," to ask if the Burmese king had
made full concessions. At the third stockade
in the Rangoon river the steamer was fired
upon, and returned, destroying the batteries
and blowing up a magazine of the enemy as
she slowly made way against the flood tide. The
last dream of an arrangement died away with
the smoke of these guns, and the first steps for
capturing Martaban were taken directly after,
while the Madras forces were leisurely coming to
the scene of action. Martaban was a weak place
1 Sir Archibald Campbell's force lost 75 per cent, there in
the firat war.
Hostilities
renewed.
Martaban
captured.
of British India. 55
on the Burmese side of the Saugon river, op- chap. XV
posite to Moulmein. The "Proserpine" was
sent to the last-named place to warn the inha-
bitants of what was coming; and five war
steamers, with 1,400 men in them, or on board
the accompanying transports, followed on the
4th. At half-past six A.M. the fire opened from
the " Rattler," and by breakfast timeMartaban
was won, with the loss of nine killed and eight
wounded of the British forces. This easy tri-
umph was looked upon as certain beforehand,
if the steam-ships could be brought near enough
to the town wall through the labyrinth of shoals
before it ; a difficult work, which was accom-
plished with the accustomed skill of English
navigators. For the rest, it was not an affair
to dignify as a victory. The enemy fled in dis-
may again before our shot and shells, and the
nature of the fighting may be understood by
the conduct of a soldier of the 18th B/oyal Irish,
who was first to clear the river bank. Having
fired his musket and dropped it, he picked up
brickbats and stones and flung them at the
Burmese as they stood upon the edge of the
stockade, and with these inglorious missiles the
line of the Martaban defences was gained, the
naval force in this encounter being commanded
by Hear- Admiral Austen, who had joined the
expedition in the "Rattler" frigate from
Penang.
56 Dalhousie 's Administration
Chap. XV. Having garrisoned Martaban the command-
Preparations m general returned to Rangoon, and found
for attack on . ,
Rangoon, awaiting him there the Madras contingent.
Its pagoda. Meanwhile Commodore Lambert had been busy
in the Rangoon river, destroying the stockades
from the Bassein Creek to the King's Wharf
at Rangoon, in preparation for the attack upon
that city. Three more days were given to this
work by the united squadron, and on the llth
of April the forces had arrived between Ran-
goon and Dallah. Thirty -two vessels in all
came to anchor under the long flat bank upon
which the city stands, one after the other let-
ting her chain rattle out in front of the Bur-
mese batteries. Rangoon resembles Calcutta
in position more, perhaps, than any other
Oriental city, the pagoda of the Golden Dagon
answering very nearly to the cathedral. The
pagoda was a fortress as well as a temple, for
it presented a vast artificial mound rising in
terraces, each crowned with a multitude of little
shrines, and the whole tapering into a graceful
and lofty-domed citadel, to which the only
entrances were steep and picturesque nights of
stairs, commanded by broad landings, and im-
pregnable in the keeping of determined men.
A description of one of these remarkable build-
ings might answer for most of them, for Budd-
hism, though it almost created architecture in
the East, stamped a very monotonous character
of British India. 57
upon its works. In Pegu and Lower Burmali Chap. XV.
the pagoda is a bell-shaped structure, like the
" topes" of ancient India or the "chaityas" of
Thibet, and always supposed to cover a sacred
relic-. These rise either from the ground at
once as a mass of solid brickwork, or are raised
upon a diminishing series of platforms, with
countless chapels at the angles and along the
edges, until the topmost is reached, when the
gate opens to the presence of the presiding
Gautama. At Rangoon a covered flight of
steps led down this series of pyramid-like
courses of brickwork. In other examples, as
among the famous ruins at Pagan, a curious
antitype is found of the Christian church, even
to the cruciform ground plan and the steeple ;
and these perpetual anticipations of Chris-
tianity led the Jesuits to declare that the devil
had invented Buddhism and its temples to
parody and obstruct Christianity. The land is
covered with such monuments of a mystic and
ultra-philosophical religion. Captain Yule 1 esti-
mated those at Pagan alone as numbering about
a thousand, and the Burmese legend may al-
most therefore be believed which relates that
when the Emperor of China invaded Burmah,
its king pulled down for fortifications six thou-
sand shrines and pagodas. Warned, perhaps, by
this invasion, religion and fortification had been
1 " History of Mission to the Court of Ava."
58 Dalhousie's Administration
Chap. XV. since united in most of the city temples; and
that at Rangoon was, besides being a stately
fane, a fortress of the best class against any-
thing but siege trains and regular investment.
The attack It was Sunday when the force first found
on Kangoon itself assern bl e d, and the English leaders were
and Kem-
mendine. willing to respect the peaceful traditions of the
day ; but the " Salamander " had just come
into her station, and the "Woon mistaking
her movements, opened fire from the pagoda
upon his own people to keep them to their
guns. Dallah, on the opposite shore, took the
hint, and began an action with the nearest
ships, which soon became general. Erom pieces
of brass, bell-metal, and hooped teak, our heavy
artillery was courageously answered by both
sides of the stream. A fair breach was presently
opened in the Dallah stockades, but the Bur-
mese, wildly yelling with fear and excitement,
drag heavy cannon on cumbrous wheels of wood
to the gap. A storm of shell and grape sweeps
them and their battery away, and the Royal
Irish landing, carry the works. On the Ran-
goon side, the irresistible fire of the frigates
cleared also a space of a mile, sufficient for the
landing of the troops, which was contemplated
for next morning. The "Phlegethon" and "Ser-
pent" are pushed on to Kemmendine, above
Rangoon, a place whence, in the old war, the
.Burmese had been ingenious and persevering
of British India. 59
in sending down fire rafts upon the fleet, made chap. XV.
of cane and brushwood, and saturated with
petroleum. On the way upwards an enormous
timber gun was discharged at these vessels,
which at the second firing blew its big futile
fragments into the air, sending an immense
shot of stone high over the " Phlegethon," and
all its own hapless gunners right and left. Three
stockades at Kemmendine offered much resist-
ance, and give a fair idea of the art of Burmese
defensive warfare. A space of 500 feet square
was bounded with teak piles driven closely and
deeply into the earth; an embankment of
twelve feet on each side was piled against these
timbers, and the "enceinte" was entrenched
with covered ways and bomb-proofs, roofed
with massive beams and earth. Around
the outside, and on the slope of the embank-
ment, short bamboo stakes, sharpened to a
keen and hard point, were stuck in endless
numbers, forming a defence of vegetable
bayonets. These defences, however, were vain
against our guns : the two frigates set the
wood-work of the rude fort on fire. The Bur-
mese extinguished it eight times, nevertheless,
with bamboos filled with water, and an attempt
to storm the position even failed, by their stout
resistance. Two other ships were despatched to
assist in the task, and then at last the Kemmen-
dine stockades surrendered.
60 Dalhousie's Administration
Chap. XV. At daybreak of the 12th, General Godwin
Approach to landed three regiments and part of his artillery
to the southward of Rangoon, upon the space
cleared by the fire of the previous day and
night. No opposition was offered, and except
by the explosion of some old and damaged Bur-
mese cartridges, no casualty occurred. Informa-
tion had reached the general that the enemy
expected him by the southern gates of the
pagoda, where there were 100 guns mounted,
with 10,000 men to support them. Not to pro-
ceed by this route was therefore an obvious con-
clusion, and the force, with four nine-pounders,
marched towards the north-west porch of
the pagoda, through thick jungle. After ad-
vancing a mile or two, a Burmese battery sud-
denly opened upon the troops, the guns of
which were hid in the thick and tall green
cover of the bamboos, talipots, and bananas,
surrounding the town. The truth is, that the
easy successes of Martaban and the Rangoon
rivers had made the British careless ; and if
the Burmese had reserved their surprise till
the pagoda was reached, half the attacking
force might have been lost. It is amusing to
notice the tone of injury in which the general's
despatch complains of this stratagem, as though
the Burmese had no right to desert their usual
tactics, or to learn by disaster. 1 The " White
1 " This was a new mode of fighting with the Burmese, no
of British India. 61
House Stockade" in question was a strong chap. XV.
work, and without bringing heavy guns for-
ward, it was found impossible to push on. Two
twenty-four-pound howitzers, therefore, were
sent for at once, and tumbrils with " spherical
case;" but the heat of the sun was now so
intense that Major Oakes, commanding the
artillery, fell senseless of coup-de-soleil by the
side of his gun. After good practice with the
large pieces at the stockade, a storming party
was formed, supplied with ladders and grenades,
to carry the troublesome work. As it crept
through the jungle, the watchful enemy opened
a devouring fire upon its flank, and on emerging
into the open space surrounding the stockade,
an unlucky halt took place. As in New Zea-
land warfare, there should be no hesitation
when once a barbarian's fortification is in view ;
but on this occasion the troops hung a little
too long on the edge of the trees, and lost
many officers and men by the delay. Major
Erazer, however, led the stormers forward, and
being quickly supported, the stockade was sur-
mounted, and the Burmese disappeared in the
instance having occurred last war of their attacking our flanks,
or leaving their stockades, that I remember ever to have taken
place. I make this remark, as they are now not only good
shots, but bold in their operations, and clever in selecting their
ground and covering themselves. Our casualties for the past
three days will prove it, our dress exposing us, and their garb
and colour concealing them."
62 Dalhousie's Administration
Chap. XV. jungle behind. All this took place under a
cruel heat, and as the soldiers poured into the
work, many of them reeled down with parched
tongues, cracked lips, and throbbing foreheads,
hovering between life and death, till water could
be brought, and the welcome shower poured
upon their mouths and heads. Good officers had
fallen, and the troops were much fatigued ; a
bivouac was therefore ordered ; but all the
evening the enemy harassed the force ; nor was
it until the camp had been concentrated, like
an African kraal, inside the guns, that any
respite was obtained. An attack in force at
night on the part of the Burmans might have
been a serious blow to Lord Dalhousie's scheme.
The dark hours passed away quietly, however,
close to the abandoned stockade, which was
indeed, upon investigation, a singular piece of
defensive work. Its barbaric engineers had sur-
rounded a massive brick wall, enclosing a square,
with a line of teak piles driven close together,
filling the interval of ten feet with rammed
earth. Inside, a slope led to the top, upon
which there were some excellent brass guns;
and Gautama, the omnipresent and immovable,
of course presided within a building set in the
inner space ; battered with shot and shell, and
black with smoke, but for ever calm, timeless,
passionless. Here were found samples of the
unpleasant ammunition used by our barbaric
of British India. 63
foes for grape pieces of iron like dice sewn up Gha P-
in canvas bags dipped in melted pitch,wire rolled
into balls, and lead and glass melted together.
It is reported that European works upon
steam-navigation and anatomy were picked up
side by side with these scattered munitions of
the Burmese. The good fighting and capital
artillery practice of the day may thus have been
connected with the presence of a white leader,
which was the common story in the camp.
The night in the suburban jungle is described
with vivid recollections by those who passed it.
On all sides were to be seen men stretched on
heaps of cut grass and palm leaves among the
wheels of the howitzers, or washing off the marks
of the day's combat in the gun buckets. No wand
then the* alarm spread that the Burmese were
returning, as the sparks from Gautama who
had taken fire, in spite of his divinity showered
out like moving torches; the voices of the
tropical forest, growls, howls, and groans,
mingled with the roar of the distant cannonade
continuing from the fleet against E/angoon
town. Burning mortars, whizzing rockets,
rattling muskets ; the graceful curve, circular
0*0 *
halo, and stunning explosion of the flying shells,
made the night red ; for noisy missiles of all
kinds were crackling and bellowing about and
over the tinkling bells of Gautama, in his
golden pagoda, from twilight to dawn, while
64 Dalhousie's Administration
Chap. XV. the British lay in the trees outside the wall. If
Boodh had thought his worship worth pre-
serving, he should have hroken his endless
apathy that night !
The storm- All day on the 13th the troops kept their
Pagoda ' position, awaiting the arrival of more heavy
guns to storm the Golden Dagon, at once the
Pagoda and Citadel of Rangoon. The steam-
ships, however, kept up the same continuous
roar, and smartly enough to drive the Rangoon
Governor from his palace to the ramparts, and
thence, in dread affright, and with a wound in
the foot, across the river and beyond Dallah,
not to he heard of again. That the Burmese
resisted at all after such a fire, would seem to
show that courage was not what they lacked,
except for the fact that it was the king's custom
to keep his married soldiers to their posts by
holding their wives and children as hostages,
chaining the bachelors to their gun or embra-
sure. However, there were real fighting men
in the pagoda, the elite of the Ava monarch's
troops, " the ' Immortals ' of the golden coun-
try ;" a body of guards, exceedingly well got up
and gilt, and tolerably armed. The pagoda-wall
was not their only line of defence either. Old
Rangoon, since the last war, had been destroyed
wholesale, and a new town built, the mud em-
bankment of which was ingeniously blended with
the great mound of the pagoda into a continu-
of British India. 65
ous fortification. All round this embankment chap. XV.
ran a strong stockade of triple timbers, and a
broad ditch strengthened it at the points where
the Burmese had expected an approach. The
eastern staircase of the pagoda, however, was
the point for which General Godwin aimed; and
had he been able to proceed on the 12th, there
would not have been a gun in position there.
Being checked, however, he very wisely let the
naval broadsides occupy the town till ready to
proceed again ; but, meanwhile, something of
his intention was understood. On the 14th he
marched once more, " the men in as fine temper
as ever were men," and the heavy guns now
accompanying the force, for the general had
learned to respect his foe a little more. Within
a mile the angle of the pagoda came in sight,
and a fire opened upon the flank of the advancing
column. Two guns were left to occupy the
enemy, while the force still pushed on to turn
the defences of the town, and gain a position
opposite the eastern vestibule of the Great
Shrine. Meantime, in the rear, the eight-inch
howitzers were being dragged tumbling and
crashing through the thorns and long grass by
a party of seamen, who were labouring to the
front long after the 80th and Royal Irish had
arrived, and taken up ground behind some low
hills covered with jungle. These men had to
stand in the open sun, exposed to a dropping
VOL. II. F
66 Dalhousie's Administration
Chap. XV. fire from the' 'Golden Dagou,"and to the discom-
posing whistle of jingal balls from the neigh-
bouring parapets. Guns and wall pieces were
turned, too, upon the party which haled the great
howitzers to their station ; and at one time the
Burmese skirmishers came up so boldly under
cover of this fire that five hundred Europeans
and a gun had to be employed in keeping down
their assault. Some of the British troops were
four hours in this uncomfortable posture
relieved a little now and then in mind, if not
in position, by the retaliation kept up by the
light field guns brought along with the columns.
Soon, however, the heavy artillery took up the
business, firing against the eastern gate of the
pagoda. The great shot crashed, and the brave
Burmans fired their ancient ordnance in reply,
till nearly mid-day, when Captain Latter, the
interpreter of the force, observed a slackening
in the energy of the Burmese defence. " Our
men," he said, turning to General Godwin,
"are dropping ten for one here to what we
should lose in a storm :" at the same time, he
asked permission to lead the way. The storm-
ing party was already made up from the 80th
Queen's, the Royal Irish, and 40th Bengal
Native Infantry, under Colonel Coote. From
the British batteries to the pagoda gates, a
shallow basin of bushy ground had to be crossed,
about 800 yards in width. The troops traversed
of British India. 67
this at quick march, under a severe fire of guns Chap. XV.
and jingals, discharging missiles of all con-
ceivable nature, links of chain, bags of broken
metal, flints, bottles of nails, and boxes of ham-
mered bullets. The great temple rose, as has
been said, from a vast platform of earth and
brickwork, terraced in three immense steps.
Each platform had its brick parapets and em-
brasures, but the heaviest guns and the thickest
of the garrison were upon the highest, where
the masonry was also most solid. A broad,
steep flight of stairs led upward on each facade
of the building through these three platforms,
that on the side of attack being partly covered
in. Prom such a precipitous and narrow ap-
proach a well-directed fire of musketry would
have swept the bravest troops that ever fought ;
but the wild and fierce cheer of the British, as
they broke into their rush towards the stair
gates, cowed the Burmese. They melted away
from the steps, yielded the platforms, surren-
dered at last the great porch itself of " Shway
Dagoon ;" and as the glittering bayonets of the
stormers surged into the central sanctuary, like
a white wave at high tide breaking into a
seaside cavern, the Burmese '" Immortals"
went headlong out of the opposite portal, only
to meet the fire of the steamers, and to be
scattered helplessly to the four points of the
compass.
68 Dalhonsie'a Administration
Chap. XV. "With the great pagoda, Rangoon had also
fallen, and all the adjacent district. The last
to stand to their posts had been the regular
soldiers of the king, in their gilt and lacquered
caps ; for their impressed comrades fought no
longer than was needful for the safety of their
families, some of whom, mothers and children,
found fastened up as hostages among the guns,
would surely have been slaughtered, had the
rank and file run before their officers. The
ground between the foot of the staircase and
the temple door was covered with dead, and
among them lay some of the best of the British
party. The slain Burmese nearly all wore red
jackets, which had been a source of confusion
in the action more than once.
Their weapons, however, proved to be
very inferior ; the greater part of the muskets
were old flint pieces, long ago condemned
in England; those who possessed bayonets
had generally fastened them by way of pike-
heads on long bamboos ; and their bullets
were mere slugs of iron, cut from rods, and
loaded by the spoonful. But these facts do
not altogether extenuate the honour of the day,
for the Burmese fought well, as is proved by
the comparatively heavy loss of 159 killed and
wounded on our side, and by the heaps of their
own men slain, lying on the platforms and
staircase. There were, it is true, of these only
of British India. 69
200 counted ; but it is a point of honour Chap. XV.
with Burmese soldiers to remove the fallen as
soon as possible, which is done by thrusting a
bamboo through the loin-cloth, and so carrying
the body off.
Still, all the odds had been upon civiliza-
tion against numbers. The Tong had 18,000
men within the city; and yet of the 5,700
engaged on the British side, the storming party
of 800 had alone and easily accomplished the
work. Burmah was a good deal disappointed
at it ; and that rush to the dark staircase,
and plunge into the gloom behind it, with the
accompanying hurrah of victory, is a thing much
remembered still at Rangoon, among the now
peaceful people. General Godwin, to whom it
was the herald of a victory rather anxiously
planned, wrote very enthusiastically : " The
cheer of the storming party, as we entered the
pagoda, was worth all the stars in Europe."
But the scene which followed was as striking :
the pencil of Yernet or Haag would have found,
indeed, an unequalled subject in the picture
that closed the day; while the moralist or
historian might indite a volume upon its sig-
nificance.
For broken was the " stagnant Calm" that Scene in the
night ! perturbed the imperturbable IntelH-
gence ! laughed to scorn by the rnatter-of-fact
and iconoclasticEnglishinautne symbolic deity of
70 Dalhomie's Administration
Chap. XV. half Asia ! The artillery had been billeted to the
platforms and under the canopies of the pagoda ;
and marched out at the north gate to take up
their sacrilegious quarters there, caring nothing
for Boodh. The passage thither was between con-
centric lines of stockade, and by a paved causeway
of two miles and a half, over log bridges thrown
across ditches, through gates where the muzzles
of a dozen cannon were gathered into a watch-
ful focus ; through curious barbaric streets, full
of the devices of Boodhism once all peaceful
and picturesque, now encumbered with the
wreck of war, and disfigured with the blood of
dead and dying ; past poonghee houses, where
grotesque gods kept grim watch within, and
where, outside, griffin, crocodile, tiger, and cock,
and Gautamas of immense size glared serenely
and stonily upon the destroyers of their fanes.
Amid these strange scenes the "Golden
Dagon" was reached, and the cathedral of
Buddhism then and there transformed by our
careless warriors into an extempore barrack.
The troops to be quartered upon Boodh went
up by a lofty flight of dark stone steps, still
slippery with blood, under a low roof fantas-
tically sculptured, and between great balus-
trades, mottled green and black with moss and
damps, where great carved crocodiles basked,
their gaping jaws supported by colossal Nats.
They mounted to the upper of the vast terraces
of British India. 71
which encircle the base of the marvellous Chap. xv.
temple. Thence, leaving the staircase, they
passed out by a narrow gate upon the wide
platform of the upper terrace, where Shway
Dagoon, the gilded dome stood, in all its
glory ; acres of imitative shrines about his
monstrous knees, and on his towering head,
330 feet aloft, a crown of multitudinous tiny
bells under the golden tee, swaying with the
breezes into gusts of mournful tinkling.
Lesser pagodas, griffins, sphynxes, and all
manner of nondescript art and architecture
covered the ground about this central pyramid of
gilded brick-work; and among all these the
careless, merry conquerors wound their way; un-
conscious, like genuine Britons, that they were
making history, and bringing the noblest creeds
of the East and of the West into contact with
their rough but fateful hands. Very slightly
troubled, indeed, were the artillery men and
Royal Irish about civilization, or the " calm,
eternal eyes" of all those Boodhs that were
sternly gazing upon their rough toilet in the gun-
buckets. There, amid tall golden columns and
massive glittering giants of "elder gods," Pri-
vate Brown and Bombardier Jones, the unheroic
heralds of a new era, took their ease, and talked
the day's battle over. The " genius of shops" re-
clined in the high places of the Passionless One !
the fussy, restless Saxon was cheek by jowl
72 Dalhottsie's Administration
Chap. XV. with the rapt Gautama ! pipe-clay soiled the
shrines of the absent-minded alabaster Divi-
nities ! red coats and pantaloons were hanging
to dry on their sacred knees ! the unregenerate
fumes of the short black pipe, familiar to
camps, was rising as incense to the Master of
the three Worlds ! Some of the images had
been toppled over by cannon-shot, or else in
mere mischief by passing soldiers ; and it was
presently discovered that Gautama, in his
visible form, was commonly hollow, and held
treasures occasionally in that part which had
been the belly in anything less transcendental.
The strange, irreverent, but significant scene
was heightened, therefore, here and there by
the spectacle of soldiers busily engaged in exca-
vating a Boodh with pickaxes and bayonets,
as calmly as though they were delving a
traverse, and not digging a trench in "the
Ineffable."
Such was the spectacle ; bizarre, but not less
striking, and hardly less important for history,
than when the legionaries of Titus clattered with
their iron-studded sandals along the polished
floor of the Temple. But the graphic Muse
follows dismayed in the steps of the common-
place English private. Neither picturesque, nor
dramatic, nor poetical, but only always in a cer-
tain grim and easy-earnest mood to do his work,
and to rest after it ; he flung himself here to sleep
of British India. 73
and snore among the Gautamas caring nothing Chap. XV.
for the gilded and fretted roof, so long as it
kept the sun out ; and making these ancient
and awful deities serve him for hat-pegs or
a hayonet rack.
74 Dalhou#ie's Administration
CHAPTER XVI.
Chap. XVI. THIS capture deserved and received the thanks
Occupation of th Governor-General 1 and the approval of the
of Kangoon.
public; and though the liveliest possible journal-
istic abuse of General Godwin followed his suc-
cesses, it is necessary to observe that his arrange-
ments for camp and bazaar were as judicious as
those for the field and fighting. E/angoon rapidly
became a quiet and commercial city, for the
Peguese, it should be observed, were from the
first extremely well disposed to their invaders,
and even Burmese soldiers seemed very often
grateful to be wounded and made prisoners.
As old enemies of Burmah it was natural that
the population of Pegu should welcome a nation
that could not rule them much worse than the
" Golden Foot, " and, by the example of Ar-
racan and Tenasserim, would probably bring
them prosperity along with annexation. Ac-
cordingly the industrious Rangoon inhabitants,
1 His private expressions were warm enough to show how
much the Governor-General's responsibility was engaged in
Burmah. " It is impossible" he writes to Godwin " for any
one to be personally and officially more satisfied with a public
service, than I have been by that which you have just rendered
to our country."
of British India. 75
the salt fish dryers, river boatmen, grain dealers, chap. xvi.
and tradesmen were soon seen nocking back to
their shops and usual pursuits. Elephants,
ponies, oxen, and men returned, carrying the
cage-like frame-work of their houses, the women
bringing the rice and cooking-pots, and the
children the fowls and kittens. Even the
" ponghees" once more moved meditatively
about the place in their yellow robes ; doubtless
thinking that if Boodh had not seen fit to keep
the " Inglees" out of Rangoon, it was useless
to object. The people brought food in plenty,
and Pegu carpenters volunteered in numbers to
aid in putting together Colonel Boyle's wooden
barracks ; their only tool the universal " dhar,"
with which a Burman can cut a toothpick or
erect a stockade. So friendly were the citizens,
so good General Godwin's discipline, and so General
obedient his troops, that even the women came Go( ^ wm8
L good ma-
and went among the lines of the soldiery with- nagement.
out a single case, it is said, of aifront or out-
rage. And indeed this admirable order was
due and must be ascribed to the regulations of
General Godwin, and most of all to that among
them which excluded spirits of all kinds from
the lines. This simple maxim for preserving at
once health and discipline had its invariable
effects. The men behaved like men and not
brutes, and though some fell victims to the sun
and malaria, the camp was generally healthy.
76 Dalhousie's Administration
Chap. XVI. Drink has cost England more graves in the
East than all our wars since Clive, and if
drunkenness and the animal vices to which it
leads might be eradicated, India and her pro-
vinces would be as healthy a residence as the
Saxon soldier could wish. There are tropical
diseases, it is true, which smite like a scimetar,
and " begin with death," but the hundred
petty ailments of cold climates are spared to
the resident there. Yet drink, a slow poison else-
where, is a quick poison between Cancer and
Capricorn, under a sky which wants no excess
of carbon in diet to keep up the animal heat.
The Marquis of Dalhousie did not think it un-
dignified to note in his autographical review of
these eight years that he had " abolished the
morning dram;" and General Godwin deserves
the credit of all the good order and health of
Rangoon at this time, for this most sensible
and salutary precaution.
Till the middle of May the force remained
inactive, preparing shelter against the mon-
soon. An expedition was indeed sent after the
fugitive "Woon," whose existence had been
testified to by a letter of exceeding conceit, in
which " Maha Mengha" advised " Godwin
Woon" "to retreat while he could." But the pur-
suit after this personage ended in nothing ex-
cept the capture of some of his wives and rupees,
and the distant shelling of certain of his still
of British India. 77
adherent troops. Upon the idea of at once going Chap. XVI.
up the river to Prome Godwin had stated his
reasons to Calcutta for abandoning it, and
Lord Dalhousie had most completely accepted
them. 1 The energetic abuse showered on the
Soldier for the delays of this date must, there-
fore, be shared with the Statesman, whom no-
body can accuse of want of activity 3 or fore-
thought.
There was one more town to occupy, before Capture of
TJ "
the entire seacoastof theBurmese empire should
be in British possession. Bassein, situated
on high ground upon one of the mouths of the
Irrawaddi, yet sixty miles from the sea, is an
emporium whose advantages were first disco-
vered by the Portuguese, but have not yet been
understood. Thence in the sixteenth century
they sallied upon those buccaneering expedi-
tions which made their name hateful in the
Eastern seas, and reduced flourishing native
ports to be the haunts of tigers and serpents.
Bassein was made to be a great harbour, with
its fine roadstead and inexhaustibly fertile ad-
1 " Your reasons against an early advance to Prome are quite
conclusive to my mind. I think it has been shown to be clearly
objectionable. Till after the rains, I don't wish to move."
Extract from private letter, May 27th, 1852.
Nor the general either, if common justice be done to the
memory of a gallant man. At Eangoon he was with the advance
throughout, lived with it, slept with it ; and on the night of the
capture of the pagoda lay down to sleep on the ground, till his
aides rolled him on to & couch.
78
Dalhousies Administration
chap. XVI. jacent districts. Until this town fell not only
was the hlockade imperfect, but the south of
Arracan was in some danger of reprisals for
our victories. The Burmese had seven thou-
sand men in the place, against whom the ge-
neral thought it sufficient to take eight hundred
troops and four steam-ships. And in truth the
only real difficulty was in the navigation of an
almost unknown river; thus the Burmese, trust-
ing apparently to their shoals, suffered the
flotilla to take up position opposite the Golden
Pagoda of the city without resistance. The
51st even landed without a shot having been
fired, and it was not till a parley had been
held between Captain Latter and the Burmese,
who were gathered behind a mud wall of the
pagoda, that a brickbat hurled at the inter-
preter's head abruptly begun the engagement.
The stockades in front of the pagoda and that
building itself were taken by an irresistible
charge, which was continued beyond it to a
fortified position at the south of the town. In
forty minutes, and with a loss in killed and
wounded of only twenty-five men, Bassein fell,
fifty-four guns and thirty-two jingals being
among the spoil. On board the fleet, one man
was killed and nine wounded.
Thus the entire seacoast of Pegu had fallen
into the hands of the expedition. The power
of steam, utterly unfamiliar to the Burmese,
The whole
scacoast in
British
hands.
of British India. 79
together with our crushing artillery, had quite Chap. XVI.
crippled the " Golden Foot," and discon-
certed all his Woons. The Burmese armies had
almost disappeared. An attack, it is true, was
made on Martaban by a dacoit chief who had
staked his head on recovering the town, but it
was only to be repulsed. Bodies of men, now and
then appeared, too, upon the river, which scat-
tered like clouds of pigeons or paddy -birds so
soon as they came within range of the shells.
The whole maritime edge of the king's country
was in our hands, and not only were the rice
flotillas stopped, which load annually in the
Delta, and float up the Irrawaddi in the mon-
soon, but the supply of the "ngapi," or dried
fish, was also cut off, a far more trying matter
for the inland provinces. Beside this, the
Peguese had openly sided with the invaders,
bringing in food and goods ; and, excepting the
capture of Prome, which might doubtless have
been accomplished at the cost of much life by
sickness, all was done that could have been ex-
pected during the fair weather. None the more,
however, did the Court of Ava show signs of
that submission which had been anticipated.
Accordingly, Lord Dalhousie, in one of his able Lord Dal-
minutes home, reviewing the situation, de- housie>s 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, <fec., to the deceased and to his manes, in order to enable
his soul to ascend to the heaven of the Pitas, or great pro-
genitors of the human race.
of British India. 151
should be annexed. 1 The Royal widow pleaded Cap. xvui.
hard for her house ; in private interviews with
the British representative, she broke into passion
even stronger than her petitions, and cried from
behind the purdah, " Nera Jhansi denga nahi"
" I will never give up my Jhansi !" But she was
weaker than her words, and the little state was
made over to the government of the North-
west province, a palace as a prison being
allotted to the indignant queen.
The remarks which have been made, or will Jhansi in the
have to be made, upon other instances of dis- ^ utm y- The
Eanee of
regard for a time-honoured and graceful Hin- Jhansi.
doo custom, apply in extreme force to this one,
because the act of adoption was so legitimate,
natural* and complete. It must be considered on
the whole as the most indefensible annexation
of the group, and the one most quickly punished
by the Nemesis which rights the wrongs of
men. Eor in that terrible mutiny which fol-
lowed Lord Dalhousie's administration, Jhansi
wrote its rage and revenge in letters of blood
upon our history. Like Nana Saheb, of Bithoor,
Lukshim Baee treasured the memory of her
injury, and when rebellion was proclaimed, she
1 The reasons are not dissimulated. The Governor-General
writes : " The British Government will not derive any mate-
rial advantage from the possession of this territory, for it is of
no great extent, and the revenue is inconsiderable ; but as it
lies in the midst of other British districts, the possession of it
as our own will tend to the improvement of the general internal
administration of our possessions in Bundlecund."
152 Dalhousie's Administration
Cap. xvm. rose to cast into it all her energies and influence.
Those Europeans who were in her power were
slaughtered ruthlessly men, women, and chil-
dren she gave them to the gun and the knife,
or to worse than either, and afterwards, red
with their blood, she armed herself and took
the field with the Nana, and his lieutenant,
Tantia Topee. We found, then, that the wo-
man from whom we had taken, as incapable of
government, the regency of a State, could at
least command an army. Her name was the
centre of the revolt in the north-west ; she was
the swarthy Boadicea of the Hindoo and Mus-
sulman levies ; by her adroit intrigues Gwalior
was nearly lost, and Central India with it. For
weeks and months, after Delhi fell, her wonderful
power of generalship kept the British column
under Sir Hugh Rose at the strain of effort
and endurance, till at last she led her troops in
open battle against us at Calpee. Defeated there,
she made another masterly effort against us at
Gwalior, and it was not the fault of this
able and passionate woman that her army broke
that day, and fled in utter confusion. Armed
and dressed as a cavalry officer, she led her
ranks to repeated and fierce attacks, and when
the camel corps, pushed up by Sir Hugh in
person, broke her last line, she was among
those who stood when hope was gone. Flying
at length from the field where she had lost
of British India. 153
what she valued more now than Jhansi, or the Cap. XViu.
memory of her family, namely, her revenge, an
English dragoon, it is said, cut her down, taking
her for a sowar, and tempted by the necklace over
her jacket. At any rate her body, bleeding
and gashed with many wounds, was found upon
the plain; and Sir Hugh Rose wrote the epi-
taph upon this proud, vindictive, but injured
queen, when he declared in his General Order
that the " best man upon the side of the enemy
was the woman found dead, the Eanee of
Jhansi."
154 Dalhousie's Administration
CHAPTER XIX.
Chap. XIX. " I WOULD sacrifice every political considera-
tion ten times over rather than sanction the
The An- slightest infraction of British good faith." So
. 8 P^ e while in India, the great soldier whose
straight path of duty led him to the summit of
glory, and made the name of Wellington illus-
trious in Europe. Diplomats who separate ex-
pediency and honour must think the maxim
unpractical ; those who believe, on the contrary,
that the best course in every conceivable com-
plication and temptation is the honestest course,
will be slow to applaud the third of Lord Dal-
housie's annexations. It grew directly out of
the second. We had acquired Berar, the cotton-
field of India ; but lacking Nagpore, we pos-
sessed the domain without the approach, the
palace without the portico. To make the most
of Berar, Nagpore was necessary ; and, there-
fore, Nagpore, in 1854, was escheated, or, in the
words of Lord Dalhousie's minute, became ours
" by simple lapse in the absence of all legal
heirs." Most certainly this absence existed,
if all heirs were illegal whom the Governor-
of British India. 155
General refused to recognize; otherwise and by Cha P-
Hindoo law, Nagpore was not inherited, it is to be
feared, so much as, in Pistol's phrase, "con-
veyed." It is a singular instance of the effect
of climate upon political morality that in the
very year when we were repelling an aggression
upon the territories of our ally, the Sultan, in the
West, we were confiscating those of our ally, the
Maharajah Raghoji Bhonslah, in the East : the
Crimean war and the annexation of Nagpore
were contemporaneous.
The Bhonslahs were a great but not a sove- previous
reign house of the Mahrattas. In 1743, how- histor y of
ever, Raghoji, the first of his line, raised the
name to semi-royal dignity, and ruled an enor-
mous district from the Godaveri to the Ner-
budda, and from the Adjunta hills to the Bay
of Bengal. His successor fought against us at
Assaye, and lost some of his lands ; but in Pur-
tabji, the third in descent, we recognized a legi-
timate Maharajah again, as also in Appa Saheb,
who deposed him. This prince broke faith
more than once with the British Government,
and lay at our mercy in 1818, when Lord
Hastings dethroned him. At that date the
Government of India might have declared the
surcease of the house, might have partitioned
the country among its native allies, or even
annexed it out of hand without reproof. Or,
continuing its succession in the same line, it
156
Dalhousie's Administration
Chap. XIX. might have made the crown a mere life grant, or
limited the inheritance of it to the heirs male of
the hody of the infant son of Nana Goojur, pro-
claimed Maharajah. But hy acknowledging
this little prince as sovereign, we restored once
more the Raghoji Bhonslay line, with all its
rights and privileges; and hy express terms
bound ourselves as guaranteeing to him, and
" his heirs and successors," the diminished king-
dom of the Raghojis. This arrangement was
confirmed by a special treaty in 1826, when
the boy-king came of age; and the provinces
which we then took from Nagpore were only
ours upon just the same construction of the
words " for ever," in that mutual compact,
which we were prepared to extend, as regarded
what was left, to the young sovereign.
But at the close of 1853, the Maharajah
died, childless. He was but forty-seven years of
age at the time of his decease, and might,
therefore, still expect progeny. A Hindoo does
not abandon the cherished hope of an own son
till the pains of death warn him that he must
look to be freed from the pains of Put in some
other way. It is a common matter, therefore,
for him to defer the important act of adoption
till failing strength renders it impossible; and, in
fact, the act, like making a will among ourselves,
is generally and naturally the last of a busy life.
But the law, which attaches so much religious
The oppor-
tunity
offered to
Lord Dal-
housie.
of British India. 157
and civil moment to the ceremony, provides, chap. xix.
as has been explained, for the omission, by em-
powering the eldest widow to adopt a son in
the name of the deceased. This right is inde-
feasible ; we had repeatedly recognized it. We
did so in 1827, when the Dowager Ranee of Dim-
bul Rao Scindiah, adopted a successor; again, in
1836, when Junkaji, Scindia's widow, exercised
the same privilege; and in 1834, when the Rajah
of Dhar left that duty to his wife, as also in
1841, in the instance of the Rajah of Kishen-
ghur. We could not thus, with any show of
respect for precedent, refuse to acknowledge an
heir if thus appointed; and if not appointed, but
only designated, the family choice should have
been equally respected. No Hindoo prince
would live and die childless without a tacit un-
derstanding on this score with his household,
and there could be no doubt in this case that
Yeshwunt Rao, Aher Rao, the nearest collateral
heir, was the chosen heir in default of heirs
male of the body. His mother had given birth
to the lad in the palace, and his entrance into
life had been welcomed by a royal salute. At
all court ceremonials he had been previously
seen seated by the Maharajah's side, surrounded
by his own group of courtiers; and the same
Yeshwunt Rao the greatest argument of all,
in Hindoo eyes took the son's place at the
funeral-pile of his royal great-uncle. Even had
158 Dalhousie's Administration
Chap. XIX. these signs not designated the lad as heir, he
was heir-at-law in his own right, for the succes-
sion in Nagpore was Salic, in excluding females
to the favour of collaterals. Thus duly named by
the dead prince, and acknowledged by his sur-
vivors, Yeshwunt Aher Rao was a heir whom it
was impossible not to recognize without encoun-
tering the dishonourable shift that, whereas we
had refused to acknowledge a regular adoption
in Sattara, we escheated Nagpore because there
the adoption was not regular.
Lord Dal- The position assumed by Lord Dalhousie was
that there had been none at all, and this appears
to depend entirely upon a letter from the vene-
rable Banka Baee, the grandmother of the de-
ceased Raghoji. Why had she not, acting with
the senior widow, proclaimed the adopted heir ?
The reply is more easy than pleasant to make.
Unnapoorna Baee and Banka Baee suspended
the formal ceremony of adoption simply out of
timid respect for the " paramount power." The
idea of foregoing such a right altogether, or
of having it refused, is almost incredible to a
Hindoo ; and the ladies of the Nagpore Court
merely deferred the rites because they expected,
and had the right to expect, that the usual per-
mission would be conveyed, and everything after-
wards proceed in the amiable and punctilious
manner dear to the soul of Oriental royalty.
For this reason, and for no other reason in the
of British India. 159
world, the aged queen-mother and the royal chap. XIX.
widow put off the public procession customary at
adoption, and the solemn service of altering the
name of the " dutt pootra." And yet, while
they were mourning the business of the State
being, nevertheless, more or less attended to by
Banka Baee and the Wuzeer the Resident
seized upon the Government, and affixed seals
to the treasury, the jewel-chests, and even the
household stores of the Maharajah's family.
To justify this proceeding there is only one
defence upon record, that penned by the Gover-
nor-General. Its gist is, that because the adop-
tion was only " inchoate" and because the pro-
test of the Ranees against this act of violence
does not happen to contain a legal definition of
their rights, their rights must be held to lie in
abeyance. Surely, as well might the sorrowful
letter of an English lady, announcing her hus-
band's or her son's death, be held to disentitle
her to any interest in his estate, because she
had not specified, in the first nutter of her
grief, his goods and chattels and personalities.
" I wish," wrote Lord Dalhousie, commenting
on the queen-mother's letter, " to draw atten-
tion to the marked absence of any allegation
in this petition that an heir was appointed, or
exists to the guddee at Nagpore." And further,
" The Banka Baee throughout her petition
assumes for herself the tone of the representa-
160 Dalhousie's Administration
Chap. XIX. tive of the family, which she is not by any law,
custom, or precedent, European, Mahratta, or
Hindoo.
" She nowhere attempts to assert that any
heir of his body existed to the deceased rajah,
or that he adopted, or expressed a wish to adopt,
any heir, or that any such adoption was made
by his widow. She does not so much as at-
tempt to name, or even to affirm the existence
of any heir to the guddee, and with reason, for
no such heir exists.
"I regard her petition as strongly corro-
borative, or, I should rather say, as conclusive
proof of the facts on which the Government of
India relied when it discussed the policy to be
pursued towards Nagpore upon the decease of
the late Maharajah Eughonath Bhonslah."
The replies to all this, be it understood, lay upon
the surface for such as chose to perceive them.
The 13 a nka Baee did not say " an heir was ap-
pointed," because she had been preparing with
her grand-daughter to ask leave to appoint one ;
she assumed the tone of the representative of the
family because she was such in fact : she did
not mention that the rajah desired to have an
heir adopted, any more than surviving relatives
generally mention that their dead hoped for
salvation. The thing was too obvious to
Hindoo minds, nor could the Kliurreeta of
an aged Oriental princess be expected to
of British India. 161
resemble a Westminster Hall paper of pleas. Chap, xix
But even as regards this letter, no claim can
be set up which rests upon the " consent of
silence ;" it is only silent against the injustice
that had been done, in hopes that politeness
and submission will reverse it. It opens in the
ornamental style of Hindoo correspondence, not
unmixed with irony ; but it ends with a plain
demand for something plainly due and needing
only to be asked for to be obtained. " God be
praised," wrote the venerable lady, "that the
friendship and amity subsisting between the
British Government and the State of ISTagpore
since the time that Maharajah Raghoji Bhons-
lah ascended the guddee of Nagpore, is based
upon as strong foundation as the wall of Alex-
ander by the treaties concluded between the
said two Governments, a fact which is univer-
sally known. The chiefs of all the territories
of India, especially those of the Dsccan, envy
the existence of such friendship. It is owing
to such friendship that mutual correspondence
has hitherto been carried on, producing no other
fruits than what tended to the fulfilment of the
wishes of both the States. It is with extreme
regret I beg to state that my son Maharajah
Haghoji Bhoiislah, who was disposed to con-
ciliate the goodwill of the British gentlemen,
remaining firm in his attachment and devotion
to the British Government, has of late died,
VOL. II. M
162 Dalhousie's Administration
Chap. XIX. leaving us plunged into such grief as baffles
all description."
It goes on to complain that although no
provocation had been given, " yet the Govern-
ment as a friend, instead of taking compassion
upon me at a time when I was so severely
afflicted, evinced no such kindness and muni-
ficence towards me as can be sanctioned by
wise and sincere friends :" and lastly, signed by
Unnapoorna Baee, and the other Ranees of the
deceased Maharajah, it asks, "under these
circumstances, that your Lordship will be
pleased, with reference to the ties of friendship
of old subsisting between the two Govern-
ments, to continue the guddee of this State in
this family."
If such expressions of the old Ranee's natu-
ral wish and clear claims appear to want pre-
cision, there are the repeated petitions of her
vakeels after the annexation to complete them.
One after another, with her seal and sanction,
and with those of the royal ladies, they urged
that what had only been suspended to please tho
Sircar should not be construed by it as having
been therefore abandoned. 1 But the act was
1 They deny that the Maharajah was silent about a successor,
or that the Ranees were idle in obeying his dying command.
The vakeel, Hummunt Eao, thus addressed tho Governor-
General in Council : " The matter I refer to, and now submit for
your Lordship's consideration, is that tho late Maharajah, before
his decease, frequently represented to the Resident that there
of British India. 163
already consummated, and " vestigia nulla re- Chap. XIX.
trorsum" was ever the motto of the Marquis.
Seven weeks after the death of the Maharajah,
that is to say, before the funeral purifications
of the widows were fully completed, he issued
a minute, in which it was declared that " the
case of Nagpore stands wholly without pre-
cedent. We have before us no question of an
inchoate, or incomplete, or irregular adoption.
The question of the right of Hindoo princes to
adopt, is not raised at all by recent events at
Nagpore, for the Rajah has died, and has deli-
berately abstained from adopting an heir. His
widow has adopted no successor. The State
of Nagpore, conferred by the British Govern-
ment in 1818, on the Rajah and his heirs, has
reverted to the British Government on the
death of the Rajah without any heir. Justice,
and custom, and precedent, leave the Govern-
ment wholly unfettered, to decide as it thinks
was no probability of his having any issue, and that therefore
he should be permitted to adopt a son as successor to the raj
and territory of Nagpore, according to the treaty, and according
to the custom of the family.
" In connection with the same matter, I have further to sub-
mit for your Lordship's consideration, that since the demise of the
late Maharajah, the Maharanees have frequently requested the
Resident to be permitted to adopt a successor, and have trans-
mitted three memorials to your Lordship on the same subject,
urging that they might be at liberty to adopt a son as successor
to the raj and territory ofl^agpore, in such manner and on such
terms as might be .arranged between them and your Lordship,
agreeably to the treaty."
164 Dalhousie's Administration
Chap. xix. best. Policy alone must decide the ques-
tion."
This may be very statesmanlike, but is not
quite moral. The Rajah deliberately abstained
from adopting an heir till so late, because he
had some expectation of a son of his own body.
By Hindoo law the Viceroy was bound to con-
sult the senior widow as to his successor, who
would have been precisely the same successor as
that pointed out by British law, had British law
instead guided him, namely, Yeshwunt Aher
Hao. The real law by which Nagpore was
added to our dominions was, it must be pro-
nounced, the old, but not on that account more
respectable, law of the strongest. 1
Precautions But in all these cases the error of confound-
to be ob- mj * a r0 y a i family with a country must bo
served m en- ' . *
ticizing these guarded against, lest a wrong be done to the
annexations. Governor-General, wno i s by his position re-
sponsible for the native Governments which
he maintains. It is noble in the mouth of
Antony, and in the days of the Triumvirate,
as Shakespeare describes them, to read, " I am
dying, EGYPT," addressed in a proud style of
passion to the beautiful Queen of that land ;
but to use the name of a nation for its Govern-
ment is a figure of speech which modern man-
1 Very different (although also "unwritten") from that aypa<pos
vop6s proclaimed by Electra :
" 'Ou yap r\ (JMI Zfvs ty I Kr)pvl-as Ta5(
OvS' ij ffvvoixus TWV Ka.ru 6(ut> 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 <ppj)v avwfjLOTos." HlPPOLYTUS, 1. G12.
190 Dalhousie's Administration
Chap. XIX. English child. Thus did Ali Morad of Khyrpore
forge, or bear his part in forging, a document
which gave him a country instead of certain of
the towns in it, to which towns alone he had any
right. The Amir has told his own story in the
Blue Books, and told it cleverly, as an episode
of the stormy frontier of Sindh in the time
of Napier. He had formed a friendship with
us, which irritated his brothers, who raised war
against him ; a state of things which had been
long chronic, however, before we arrived in the
valley of the Indus. At Nownahar, while
Sindh was still independent, these hot desert-
chiefs drew their troops out for battle against
each other, and Ali Morad, " by the blessing
of God and my good fortune," was victorious.
Upon this Mir Roostum, the eldest brother,
came to treat, and " seeing him with his white
beard approach," the Ameer Ali consented to
be pacified with the cession of certain terri-
tories. To make sure of the cession, its record
was written as usual in the blank leaves of a
Koran, and certain villages, or " tuppas" were
so made over. One of them bore the same
name as the " pergunnah" containing it ; and
when at the annexation of Sindh Sir C. Napier
called upon our ally, the Amir, to state what
lands he held, that they might be exempted
from the list, there is little doubt that the
temptation to alter the village into the district
of British India. 191
was too strong for the Oriental nature. The Chap. XIX.
treaty was not. examined, and the entire tract
in question was at once recognized as the
Amir's ; but after awhile the hazaar talk about
the trick reached English ears, and the Com-
missioner desired to be shown the treaty. Then
according to the disclosures of the private
scribes, who afterwards betrayed their Amir, Ali
Morad was afraid that the erasure and cor-
rections of the writings would be observed,
and, therefore, cut the first of the four blank
leaves out altogether, inserting a fresh one
with the forgery this time clearly and legibly
perpetrated. The British Commissioner exa-
mined the book, but saw no flaw till the
knavish servants and accomplices of the chief
declared the circumstances of the deed, 1 and
the extraordinary spectacle was seen of a Bri-
tish army of ten thousand men on its march to
deal with an embezzlement.
When the Hindoo is detected in strategics Defence of
of this kind, his power of virtuous indignation l
1 Although the originally forged paper was actually left
loose in the book, vide " Confession of Sheik Ali Hoossein,
in Blue Book," p. 24, " I then took the Koran to Captain Pope,
who examined it, but did not detect any forgery. The extracted
paper, however, having been left in the Koran by mistake, fell
out into his hands, and he asked me what it was. Being at the
time in the service of Ali Morad Khan, I replied that it was
probably some rough copy, and he then replaced it in the Koran,
and did not entertain any suspicion about it. After this I went
to Bubburloo, and I took out the two extracted leaves and kept
them by me, and sent the Koran to Meer Ali Morad Khan."
192 Dalhousie'a Administration
Chap. xix. rivals that of his deceit. In Anglo-Indian
domestic life it is almost impossible to dis-
believe the frantic and tearful asseverations of
the faithful servant protesting his innocence of
a crime which five minutes afterwards, under
pressure of circumstantial evidence, he will
quietly, and with recovered composure and
dignity, confess. The fault is that the asseve-
rations, till they fail, are made to do the work
of proofs, as in the case of the Amir. He
protested that the charge was got up against
him by his old servants, with whom he had
quarrelled ; he declared that the British Grovern-
ment had been dishonest to him rather than he
to it, for certain forts and districts had not been
paid for, as Sir C. Napier promised. He put
forcibly enough the possibility of being himself
the victim of such a plot a fighting prince, igno-
rant of vakeels and Persian technicalities, busy
with shooting, hunting, and throat-cutting, and
trusting everything to them. It was quite
within the compass of possibility (he urged),
and in harmony with the character of Sheik
Ali Hussein, and the common occurrences at
the Courts of Oriental princes, that when that
person saw that his connection with the Amir
must soon terminate, he may have determined
to arm himself with, and have planned with
Peer Ali Gohur, the other secretary, the means
of preserving a hold over, and, if necessary, of
of British India. 193
revenging himself on his former sovereign and chap, xix.
master. If the charge against him All
Morad argued was the result of a foul conspi-
racy, the foundation of that conspiracy might
have been laid whilst Sheikh Ali Hussein
was in service with the Amir, and had access
to all his papers and documents. According
to the habits of an Oriental court the Amir
would not know or recollect the language and
minor details of the various documents pre-
pared by his orders, or advised and submitted
to him by his confidential servants. Their
language was not his language; nor, in the
due course of things, could it happen that, so
long as they enjoyed his confidence, he would
give much personal attention to the details of
correspondence, or even of treaties. It was,
therefore, perhaps, just possible that the Now-
nahar treaty, as originally written, contained
the word " pergunnah" instead of " deh," and
that the insertion of the names of two other
insignificant villages suggested the charge. Sir
Charles Napier almost exonerates the Amir.
"Lord Hardinge told me at Lahore," he
wrote, " that he had no objection to the treaty,
and had ordered it. All is Sir Frederick
Currie's fault, I believe. I think Ali Morad
has been ill-used by the Government, and faith
broken with him in regard to the forts. He
gave up Shahgur, &c., at Lord Ellenborough's
VOL. II. O
194 Dalhousie's Administration
Chap. xix. command, to the Jussulmere man with a posi-
tive and distinct promise of payment, which
was never fulfilled. If he tried to cheat us, we
did cheat him."
But the Amir spoiled the slight force of
this defence by the usual propitiatory grovel-
ling of a Hindoo at its close. " If the evidence
O
of traitors like these is accepted," he moans,
" then the whole world would become my ene-
mies, for ever since tlie time I abandoned the
cause of my brothers, and made friendship with
Government in the time of Mr. Ross Bell, my
brothers have raised their heads to the skies in
enmity towards me; and besides the British
Government I have no friends or well-wishers.
The whole world are my opponents and ene-
mies. Eor the rest you are possessed of all
wisdom."
Probable The three crafty njen who framed that
state of the charge which ended in the Meer's ruin, Sheikh
CtlSt?
Ali Hussein, Peer Ali Gohur, and the Moonshee
Ali Akbar, were, by their own showing, accom-
plices in the crime, and specimens of the worst
class of Hindoo courtiers. The latter was an
Arab adventurer, a cleverly villanous man, who
was present at Meeanee, and acted as a sort of
aide-de-camp there to Sir Charles Napier. He
afterwards obtained employment as a moonsliee
to Sir Charles Napier's Persian interpreter.
Sheikh Ali Hussein was also an adventurer a
of British India. 195
Delhi-Mahommedan one of two wily brethren chap. XIX.
who found their way into Sindh about the time
of the conquest of that country. An ill-look-
ing man in countenance, slightly pitted with
small-pox, but tall, and well-made ; with eyes
which gleamed out from under an overhanging
brow, cool, quiet, self-possessed, calmly bad,
this Sheikh was an Asiatic Machiavel in a small
way. The Peer was a native of Sindh, a hand-
some man, young, fair-complexioned, with
large, deep eyes, and a face which at once
attracted by its features and repelled by their
expression. The two last-named men had
obtained an enormous influence over Meer Ali
Morad. The Sheikh, in fact, was his Prime
Minister, and knew how to make the most of
his opportunities. Ali Morad managed his
affairs by their hands, and constantly entrusted
the Sheikh with his signet-ring, so that what-
ever was done in the administration of the
Khyrpore territory was done for a long time
by this Sheikh. What came out in evidence
before the Commission makes it most probable
that Sheikh Ali Hussein was himself the ori-
ginator and chief agent in the forgery. It is
impossible to be quite certain whether the
Meer was a party to it before or after the fact.
That he was aware, before the denouement
took place, that the forgery had been com-
mitted, there can be little doubt. If he knew
196 Dalhousie's Administration
Chap. XIX. it before the fact, i.e., before the forgery was
committed, it is prohahle, from the character
of the two men, that he was persuaded by the
Sheikh to take a share in it ; or if after the
fact (the deed having been done without his
knowledge or approval in the first instance), then
it is likely that he, through fear of the conse-
quences, and for lack of better counsel, con-
cealed the matter from our Government. He
was one of the weakest of men, ready to trust his
affairs to any one who came to him with a show
of faith, and when at last, as might have been
expected, the Meer and his minister quarrelled,
the latter was dismissed, but took, by this theory,
the Koran leaf, and bided his time for revenge.
Whatever share, however, his Prime Minister
may have had in this business, the Meer was
the person justly responsible, and upon him
fell the burden and the dishonour. A com-
mission concluded their examination with an
adverse report to Government. The case came
before the Court of Directors, who decided on
punishing the Meer by stripping him of his
Turban lands, and reducing him from his prin-
cipality, with its annual revenue of about
175,000 per annum, to the position of an
ordinary Jagheerdar, with an estate which did
not yield him more than 35,000 or 40,000
a-year.
To those who know the Asiatic character,
of British India. 197
even under the most favourable circumstances, Chap. xix.
this punishment cannot be regarded otherwise m j^^ 1 v 8 ere
than as most severe ; and especially so when one.
it is considered by whom this crime was com-
mitted, as also the time and the circumstances
under which it took place. Sindh and the
Beloochees, at the date when this forgery was
perpetrated, had but recently been conquered.
Peace, indeed, was not then thoroughly re-
established. Ali Morad was at variance with
his brothers and other relatives, and con-
stantly in open conflict with them. We had
still our frontier campaign waging with the
turbulent hill-tribes in Cutchee. The Talpurs
and their late subjects had not had opportu-
nity to know anything of us as a governing
power, and although the crime of which Ali
Morad was adjudged guilty was, according
to our standard of right and wrong, a most
grave moral oifence, it was little more than a
venial trick in Asiatic eyes, and considered
from an Asiatic point of view. The moral law
of the Kaloras and the Talpurs was, it must
be remembered, a very different one from ours,
and although we might claim to act by the
higher, the fault of Lord Dalhousie's proceed- The fault of
ing lay in this : that it made our Government ^ OT<i - Dal '
, , , . , . housie's pro-
judge, accuser, jury, and teed barrister in one. ceeding.
Whatever may be thought too of the justice of
his sentence, it has been fairly remarked, that
198 Dalhousie'a Administration
Chap. xix. in trying the Amir Ali Morad a sovereign
prince by a commission of its own servants,
by delivering sentence against him, and by
making that sentence equivalent to a forfeiture
of his rights and privileges as a sovereign, the
Government of India declared itself the abso-
lute master of every prince in India, all trea-
ties to the contrary notwithstanding. It not
merely arrogated the power of deciding dis-
putes and preventing quarrels, but claimed
to sweep down independent States by its
mere recorded verdict. It was an innovation
to announce ourselves defenders of morality,
with provinces for the price of our virtuous in-
dignation. We had, indeed, a constructive right
to march into Khyrpore with the eighth com-
mandment flying out for a banner at the head
of our troops; because, as we annexed all
Sindh, except our jackal Ali Morad's share,
to make the jackal's share larger, had been
to make the lion's smaller. But the lan-
guage of the Marquis of Dalhousie, instead
of quietly confessing this, was turgid with a
virtue that strove in vain to look disinterested. 1
If the Amir's act was a " great public
1 " The Amir's guilt has been proved. The Government of
India will not permit his Highness Mir Ali Morad Khan to
escape with impunity, and a great public crime to remain un-
punished. Wheiefore the Government of India has resolved,
and hereby declares, that Mir Ali Morad Khaii of Khyrpore ia
of British India. 199
crime" in Sindh, for a Sindliian robber-chief, Chap. xrx.
and at a time when lands were floating about
ownerless, and Ali Morad was our stauncli
Mend, wh j did not Lord Dalhousie, it may be
asked, ^indicate European yirtues by other
confiscations ? Why not have annexed Baroda
for khntpit ; or Holkar's dominions, because of
his extravagant zenana; or the Hill Country,
on account of the human sacrifices perpetrated
there; or GUna for its idolatry and opium-eating?
We should s ernly oppose, indeed, to Pagan vices
in the East lie example and reproof of Chris-
tian virtues, rat mankind was never yet con-
verted from dshonesty by an honesty that only
repudiates th* worship of Belial with the
chuckle of Maumon.
Thus painfuly, from respect to this great Eerie*- and
administrator, s much as from the inevitable d ?f ^ *?*
subject of
tedium of his lit, the narrative has now gone annexatk
through all the smexations of the Vicerojalty,
except that greatone, which demands separate
notice, as the las act of Lord Dalhousie, and
that which insteatly preceded the mutiny.
It will have seeme sometimes, doubtless, more
like counting out the spoil of brigands in a
wood, than detailin* the acts of "RngliRJi States-
degraded from the rank c Bais, and that all his lands and
territories, excepting tho^heneditary paaM8Riona only irhica
were clio;ted to him by hia dier. Mir Sorab Khan, shall hence-
iWUi be a poruoa of tiie Bris.h Empire in India."
200 Dalhousie's Administration
Chap. XIX. manship in the light of history. One domi-
nant passion has shown itself palpably, driving
the great and able man possessed of it to the
very verge of conventional justice, generosity,
and good faith, and even sometimes noi a little
beyond those boundaries. Lord Palhousie
had, in fact, deliberately conceived the idea
of a homogeneous Indian peninsula, with the
British sovereign for sole Seigneur, the native
princes for pensioned peers, and the native
zemindars, officers, public servants, and em-
ployds, replaced by "young genlemen from
Haileybury." With that steady purpose, he
broke the hearts but not the spiris of Lukshmi
Baee, Queen of Jhansi, and Thondoo Punt,
heir of Bithoor ; he brought tie grey hairs of
Banka Baee in sorrow to tb funeral pile;
overrode a pious law at Sattan and Nagpore ;
and took a sheriffs-officer's advantage of the
Nizam at Hyderabad ; thrust i*om his shadowy
throne that Carnatic prince M whose house we
owed our first footing in tie East ; and[ by
a technicality of law courts refused to the
Ranee of Tanjore the crowi and the treasure
that belonged to her. Eva now, all the ad-
ditions are not dwelt upontvhich go to make
up the Marquis's questionable catalogue. There
are fiefs which fall out of/the reckoning, like
pearls from the pockets/of Aladdin, as he
emerged from the treaure cave ; but the
of British India. 201
schedule of territory appended to this volume Chap. XIX.
will at once show the Viceroy's energetic propa-
gandism of his idea. "With the extent of territory
"conveyed" before him which that paper ex-
hibits, he was so conscious of his tendency, that
he recounts in a kind of apology the temptations
which he had resisted. Bhawulpore was one. Bhawuipore
The Nawaub, an old ally in the Moolraj re-
bellion, died, leaving his second son to ascend
the " gadi;" but the inheritance was disputed,
and appeal was made to the British Government.
" Nothing would have been easier," wrote
Lord Dalhousie, " than for the Government to
have made terms by which direct and pros-
pective advantage would have been enjoyed for
itself; but the Government has ever refrained
from all endeavour to aggrandize itself here."
Was there much credit, after all, in that, to-
wards the descendant of a prince who helped
us in a dangerous strait ? Is it really an
English statesman who speaks, or the wolf in
the fable, that paid the crane for taking the bone
out of his throat, by not biting off his head ?
Cashmere also tempted the self-restraint of Cashmere,
the Marquis, and the more so, because it was
made over to Golab Singh in the first place,
without due thought, when Jowahir Singh was
fighting with his uncle Golab. " Nothing,"
says the Marquis, " would have been easier
than for the Government of India, while act-
202 DalhoitiSie 's Administration
Chap. XIX. ing strictly within the obligations of treaty, so
to frame its policy as to place itself in a favour-
able position to draw its own advantage from
the contest, and perhaps to recover the pro-
vince unwittingly handed over to the chief who
has proved himself to be a veritable tyrant,
and who already appears to be the founder of
a race of tyrants. But the Government of
India was loyal both to the spirit and letter
of its obligations, and stood wholly aloof from
both parties." Was there then no " spirit" that
restrained, or should have restrained while
the letter permitted confiscation in other cases
as well as that of Jummoo ? These foils of vir-
tuous self-denial render the instances of aggran-
dizement rather darker the " pur pur ei panni"
make but indifferent patchwork of the policy.
But these few last relentings are all that can
be recorded against the Viceroy ; it was not
his fault that Kerowlee was not annexed, in
Rajpootana, Adjyghur of Bundelcund, In-
chulker-runjee of Colapore, and the fort and
grounds of Tanjore. Erom the offer of some
of these " vineyards of Naboth" the Court of
Directors turned with a satisfied appetite ; but
beside the already long list, Jeitpore, of Bun-
delcund ; Baghar, of the hither Hill States ;
Oodeypore, on the south-west frontier of Ben-
gal ; Tularam Senaputee's country, in Cachar ;
and Boodawul, in Caudeish ; seed-pearls,
of British India. 203
merely sweepings in the track of this royal Chap. XIX.
Antony, 1 but still comprising 5,000 square
miles were added, by overruling the Hindoo
laws, to the " red line" in India.
One other act of Lord Dalhousie must not be The Last of
passed over. He sought to abolish the Grand the Great
1 Moguls.
Moguls, and all who love the contrasts of his
history may well meditate here. In 1712, the
Governor of our settlements inBengal thus hum-
bly addressed the powerful Emperor at Delhi :
" The supplication of John Russell, who is
as the minutest grain of sand, and whose fore-
head is the tip or his footstool, who is the abso-
lute monarch and prop of the universe, whose
throne may be compared to that of Solomon's,
and whose renown is equal to that of Cyrus.
.... The Englishmen, having traded hitherto
in Bengal, Orissa, and Behar, custom free
(except in Surat), are your Majesty's most
obedient slaves, always intent upon your com-
mands. We have readily observed your most
sacred orders, and have found favour; we have,
as becomes servants, a diligent regard to your
part of the sea We crave to have your
Majesty's permission in the above-mentioned
places, as before, and to follow our business
without molestation."
1 " In hi^ livery
Walked crovrns and crovraets ; realms and islands were
Ad plates dropped from his pocket."
Antony and Cleopatra, Act v. sc. i.
204 Dalhousie's Administration
Chap. XIX. This was September 15, 1712. In 1849 the
grain of sand had grown to be a mountain
which overshadowed all India, and dwarfed
the ancient throne of Timour, Baber, and Ak-
bar to a mole-hill. A name that had come
down from the fierce, victorious Mongols of
* o
Central Asia a house which thrust out the
first invaders, and for four hundred years in-
heriting their title and seat, had ruled India,
and given her provinces away ; these, in Lord
Dalhousie's time, had dwindled to a rheumy old
man, chewing betel-nut all day, in a brown
study upon the past, and blank astonishment
at the present. The shadow of the splendid
state of his line still nickered about him ;
the ivory chair was in his hall still; and
curious people, who wished to gaze on the
" Great Mogul," came from a distance, and
went through the old forms of adulation to him ;
some, perhaps but these natives and Mussul-
mans still believing him a potentate. But in
1849 the heir of this faded magnificence died,
and the Viceroy advised the Court of Directors
to close the dynasty, and put an end to the
shabby imperial sham at Delhi. The Court,
however, remembering the days of John Hussell,
was tender about the old man's royalties ; it de-
ferred the annihilation of the Moguls till " Mo-
hammed Akbar Bahadur Shah's" demise ; and
with so much reluctance did it then convey
of British India. 205
authority to terminate the line, that the Vice- Chap. XIX.
roy declined to proclaim it, and recognized the
grandson, although not " porphyrogenitus," as
the heir-apparent. But he was to quit the
palace at Delhi upon succession, to reside in
the Kootub gardens, and, all vain images and
simulation of old authority abandoned, he was
to receive his real master, the Grovernor-
General, henceforward " on terms of equality."
The world well knows why that boy never
succeeded to this small remainder of the em-
pire of the Timours. In 1857, the old king,
partly dreaming, just before he died, of the
forgotten stories and ambitions of his race
partly used as a tool and puppet by the bitter
and crafty Mahommedans surrounding him
headed the rebellion against us. Till the
autumn he held the city his own city
in spite of us ; and the Mogul seemed once more,
in his last most dotard and degenerate repre-
sentative, to be the Lord of India. But the
superb devotion of Home and Salkeld, and the
rush of the British troops, forced the Cashmere
gate ; and then out of another fled this Last of the
Great Moguls, with his women and family ; took
refuge in a mosque of the suburbs ; was haled
out of it, in the middle of the rabble he called
his subjects, by Ilodson ; saw his princes, the
Shazadahs, pistolled under his eyes; and was
borne back to Delhi the Delhi of his imperial
206 Dalhousie's Administration
Chap. XIX. fathers a " very foolish, fond old man," the
last ray of his historic royalty gone. Thence
he was taken, after trial and condemnation
(Oh, mutata tempora ! oh, memory of John
B/ussell ! " whose forehead was the tip of his
footstool"), to Rangoon, his queens accompany-
ing him, and there the old Moslem has just
breathed his last, on the charpoy of a Bur-
mese bungalow, with no attendance but that of
his faithful Empress, and none to pity him but
her and her women. Time was, that when
the Mogul died, all India shaved the head and
wore white garments. Time was when the
ancestor of the poor old man who took betel-
nut with gratitude from the guard in his last
days, gave away the Mountain of Light as a pre-
sent to a favourite : the highest and the lowest
notes, indeed, of the octave of life are touched
in such a story. The bitter feelings which the
rebellion aroused are calmed by such a down-
fall. All may think pitifully of this white-
bearded enemy, over whose tomb Ilevenge itself
becomes of necessity compassionate ; over whose
tomb the verse of Hafiz, that sounded once to
him a jest, sounds now like the cry of the
Moslem mourners :
" The sum of all, in all the world, is nothing, after all ;
Get to thy grave with tears and prayers ; thither come
great and small."
of British India. 207
CHAPTER XX.
THAT part of the subject is now approached Chap. XX.
which deserves the most attention, and must act
receive the least. As the minor acts, the
everyday thoughts, and deeds, of life really go
farthest to make it up, so the less known and
debated part of Lord Dalhousie' s administra-
tion is really that which ought to have taken
precedence of wars and annexations in this
record. Why have the first, then, occupied
two-thirds of the imperfect chronicle, while
reforms that will be bearing fruit when Goo-
jerat is a tradition, and changes that will breed
changes when Burmah has forgotten Gautama,
are left to a few pages ? The writer finds it
difficult to reply without confessing to the
fashion and the fault that obscure real history
with the smoke of cannons and the shako
of the grenadier. But, perhaps, so long as the
hideous mission of war is unfulfilled, the in-
stinct that puts the soldier before the states-
man is not quite unreasonable. The advancing
line of civilization must yet be the van of
armies, the bayonet must yet plough the earth,
208 DalhouMc's Administration
Chap. xx. and blood yet irrigate it to make the har-
vests of commerce and order. The addition
of a new kingdom to the domain of a
paramount power like England is, perhaps,
really more important, is certainly more
striking and picturesque, than the slow amalga-
mation of those which have been already taken
in. If this view does not suggest an apology,
an explanation, at least an extenuation, refuge
must be taken in the practice of all annalists.
Rightly or wrongly, history is expected to be
one vast bulletin, and only here and there not
written in the red ink of the battle-field; while in
Indian annals especially to leave out the cam-
paigns of war for those of peace, has seemed
impossible. Yet the industry and faculty of Lord
Dalhousie were so great, and his field of action
so magnificently large, that the weightier por-
tion of his work has hardly yet been mentioned
in connection with his name, and can be scarcely
more than catalogued here. These wars and
annexations were in truth but the episodes of
a reign, the real epic of which would have to be
told from the voluminous daily papers of state
which received his signature. In these, too,
the personal character and capacity of this
great statesman come out more than in wars
fought at second-hand, and annexations done
to order. Were so many chapters to follow,
then, upon the civil and social measures of the
of British India. 209
Marquis as pages will, the reader might discern chap. XX.
what marvellous range of subjects, as varied
as the scenes of the great vice-kingdom, the
eight years cover ; what opulent ingenuity of re-
source, what untiring enthusiasm for the divine
and difficult art of governing, this man brought
to his splendid but fatal labour. Beyond all,
the reputation which may have seemed hitherto
tarnished, upon moral considerations, would
have put in for itself during such an examina-
tion, an eloquent plea for far more generous
judgment, and for far freer plaudits than have
been given to Lord Dalhousie's rule. Eor
this nobleman was no mere showy proconsul
haunted by greed of ground bending his
thoughts only to the acquisition of more square
miles and new revenues. In his Scotch blood
there lurked, indeed, a certain unselfish avarice
of empire, which foregone pages have suffi-
ciently illustrated ; but a nobler heat fired him
in the thousand efforts that are forgotten,
except by their results. The evidence shines
out through all the register of his career, that
the great annexer was even still a greater ad-
ministrator, and busy at sculpturing the edifice
while he reared it highest. Herein, too, con-
sists the ffreat excuse for his maxim of asrres-
vJ O~
sive wars and alarming minutes. Blind to the
signs of discontent, conceit, and fanaticism in
the sepoy army, and conscious of nothing so
VOL. II. P
210 Dalliousie's Administration
chap. XX. much as his own superb energy and its visible
effects ; he must have longed he did long-
as an ardent ruler, an uncrowned "king of
men" to clasp this vast India into one belt of
empire, and by his own vigorous sceptre, and
by that sceptre transmitted to successors, to
touch it all at once out of its " king's evil"
of ignorance, helplessness, stagnation, misery,
poverty, and evil governments. Nor has the
mutiny itself rebuked or refuted that idea (as
some think), so much as carried it out under
another form, for we shall be more completely
masters of India through the native princes
than without them.
Nor can this Viceroy be held, in aspir-
ing to a consolidated country to an " India
una" to have overrated his own power of
governing it, since he has left the list of
measures which decorate his minute. Some
of these the rebellion has swept away upon its
crimson flood ; some of them have been
modified by later necessities ; but there remain
others as massive landmarks, which held their
heads above the deluge of blood in 1857, and
are noble monuments now of the antediluvian
days of Hindostan. Let no one dream that
the mutiny abolished all Lord Dalhousie's work,
as well as meaner things. It rose because he
overlooked the signs of disaffection in his dark
legions, and swept away indeed the platform
of British India. 211
of his bridge to supremacy in Asia ; but the chap. XX.
piers and arches stood, and later comers have
begun to build upon them again, and are some-
times calling the old work new. In matters
of trade and commerce ; in the nice adjust-
ment of local governments and councils ; in a
review and re- establishment of the civil ser-
vice ; in purging official ranks of the relics of
their old morality and manners ; in new rules
of promotion, new openings to talent other
than hereditary in the India House ; in prison
discipline ; in education of young India, female
as well as male ; in weaving over the land the
first meshes of the railway net; in training
along it the first long pathways of the tamed
lightning, which runs our errands now faster
and farther than Ariel ; in vast postal reforms ;
in far-seeing preparation of India, by com-
mercial and maritime legislation, for the new
part she has to play in trade ; in encouraging
the growth of cotton, tea, and other novel pro-
ducts ; in exploiting mineral resources, pro-
jecting and surveying roads, opening rivers'and
canals ; in Titanic works of irrigation (a branch
of labour which is alone a boon to Eastern
lands, and has made dynasties endure there) ;
and, finally, in dealing with the sad super-
stitions and cruelties of the East its human
sacrifices, its bloody religious rites, infanticide,
thuggee, suttee, and the rest in a manner that
212 Dalhovsies Administration
chap. xx. may have hastened the rebellion, but certainly
brought nearer the abolition of them : by each
and all of these, and many other acts beside,
the Marquis of Dalhousie has left his name
engraved on the face of India ; and merely thus
to enumerate them is to show that in the space
that remains the briefest mention must suffice
for some, and that none can have a completely
just consideration.
Revenue. Revenue is one of those heads of the im-
perial testament of Lord Dalhousie, upon which
it is thus forbidden to linger. Yet though
the mutiny has torn up the old ledgers of the
Company, and though cancelled accounts are
not an inviting study, there might be found in
the great day-book of the Dalhousie rule some
remarkable data of government in India.
Above all, he adopted the undoubted truth,
that to make the most of India, we must
" greatly dare :" that we must scatter gold and
labour broadcast over her rich soil, to reap the
harvest which she is capable of producing.
For years Lord Dalhousie expended 2,000,000
sterling annually upon the public works which
are afterwards to be mentioned ; and although
his several territorial acquisitions added, by his
own showing, 1,000,000 sterling to the income
of our Indian empire, the expenses of his wars
and of his great works left him with an invari-
able deficit. A deficit had been the rule in In-
of British India. 213
dia, 1 and he left it still the rule, for Lord Can- chap. XX.
ning succeeded to a budget which showed a
balance on the wrong side of 1,850,000 ; and
the public debt stood, at the same date, at
about 55,000,000, while the annual income
was about 30,000,000.
A fatal blindness, or the habit of considering The army.
an enormous army necessary to his policy,
prevented Lord Dalhousie from the one mea-
sure which would have set fair his balance-
sheet, and perhaps obviated the mutiny. A
busy soldier does not count the jewels in the
1 Deficit followed deficit, as for example :
DEFICIT. SUBPtUS.
1838,9 . . 381,000
1839,40 . . 2,138,000
1840.1 . . 1,754,000
1841.2 . . 1,771,000
1842.3 . . 1,346,000
1843.4 . . 1,440,000
1844.5 . . 583,000
1845.6 . . 1,495,376
1846.7 . . 971,202
1847.8 . . 1,911,791
1848.9 . . 1,473,115
1849,50 . . . 354,187
1850,1 . . 631,173
The explanation of this was the chronic fact of war. In
thirteen years, in the face of an increasing revenue, 15,541,470
was run up. When a new system of government was framed,
in 1833, the military charges of India were about eight millions
sterling, or forty-nine per cent, of its net revenue. Twenty
years elapsed, and the military charges exceeded twelve millions
sterling, and ate up fifty-six per cent, of the net revenue. Out
of twenty years, fifteen years of war ; in thirteen years, a deficit
of fifteen and a half millions sterling, and twenty millions ster-
ling added to the debt ! India at peace may always return a
surplus revenue.
214 Dalhousie's Administration
Chap. XX. hilt of his sword, or try the temper of the
blade ; he thinks only of striking with it. So
Lord Dalhousie failed to see that his vast Ben-
galese army was the canker of his treasury,
and the danger of his empire. His capable hand
might have cut down its cost and numbers
by a third, without diminishing its strength ;
irregular cavalry could have replaced the costly
regular squadrons ; artillery and the new rifle
put into the hands of the European regiments,
and of none others, would have been a suffi-
cient guarantee against disaffection ; and if
Islam must still have made its struggle in
1857, we should not have seen the terrible
confession of peril involved in a regular cam-
paign against it under European generals. But
all can prophecy after the event has befallen :
the function, if it is to be exercised, should be
exercised beforehand. 1 Leaving, therefore, the
consideration of what should have been done
in 1851-5, let 1865 rather learn something from
those years. The Bengal army has gone, and
we have replaced it with native levies actually
larger. By a side-wind too we have transferred
the entire force, English and native, to the
1 Tt palliates Lord Dalhousie's neglect, too, to find men like
Sir Henry Lawrence declaring mutiny impossible upon its very
eve. " It was reserved for Sir Charles Napier," he indignantly
says, in a paper in the Calcutta Review of March, 1854, "to
brand 40,000 Bengal sepoys as mutineers." Sir Charles' mis-
take was to brand so few.
of British India. 215
Crown, and the Crown has taken advantage of Chap. xx.
those tremendous resources in China and else-
where. We have proclaimed the Queen the
Maharanee of India, amalgamated the forces
at home and in the East, and dubbed the
Governor- General Viceroy : yet, with a kind
of financial coquetry, the public debt of India
is not regarded as the debt of England, though
investments in it by decision of the Court of
Chancery are permitted to trustees. Thus we
lose for India 1,000,000 sterling per annum.
Again, notwithstanding the potential wealth
of India, the revenue of the British Indian
provinces, without the new and doubtful cotton
stimulus, is only about 30,000,000 ; and its
130,000,000 inhabitants are loaded as heavily
as they can be, in order to yield it ; whereas
more than double that amount is paid by the
inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland, who
in number are equal to only a fourth part of
those of British India. 1
Why is this ? Alas ! our statesmen shut The poverty
their eyes to a greater peril than that which,
1 The average paid by each individual in India, France, Prus-
sia, and England, is as follows :
s. d.
India (in 1854) . . . . 3 8
Prussia 19 3
France . . . . . . 1 12
England (in 1852) . . . . 1 19 4
The sources and amount of the Anglo-Indian revenue for
tliree late years will be seen from the following table, from data
216
Dalhomie's Administration
Chap. XX. in spite of warnings at Umritsur, Govindghur,
and Barrackpore, escaped Lord Dalhousie's keen
eyes. All peasant India, except where cotton
is grown, is in the condition of the plebeians
of Borne at the time of the secessions
"adscripta glebes" bound hand and foot in
debt to the Marwarries, the village usurers.
All peasant India borrows at fifty per cent,
per annum, to live and labour ; and our
courts are so constituted as to give un-
limited facility to the blood-sucking, usurious
shroff, and no countenance whatever to his
victim. Some day there will be a crash and
a " mons sacer" in India, from which no fable
of the " belly and the members," in the mouth
of a Menenius Agrippa of the Legislative Coun-
cil will win the millions of India back. And
when the people despair of us, the end of our
time will have come; for hitherto we have
only contended with three forces that of the
native dynasties, that of the faith and pride of
supplied by Lord Stanley, in his speech, delivred on the 14th
February, 1859.
IVCOKB.
1856-67.
1357-66.
1858-6.
Land Revenue . . .
19,080,000
16,271,000
18,392,000
Opium Monopoly . .
Salt Duty and Customs
4,696,709
4,443,798
6,443,706
3,785,782
5,195,191
4,398,960
Miscellaneous Items
3,000,000
3,071,380
2,966,091
31,220,507
29,571,868
30,952,242
of British India. 217
fading Islam, and that of the native soldiery chap. XX.
whom we drilled and fed to fight us. No omis-
sion of Lord Dalhousie's was so fatal, as it would
be now, to overlook the warning, that in the
mutiny the first act of the few country people
who joined it was to destroy the books and
accounts of the mahajuns and marwarries.
What is wanted for India is Government money
at ten or twelve per cent. " centesimce usurce"
or lower. By post-office savings' banks, by
" monts de piete" by any adequate scheme
that can be devised, the people of India should
be taken out of the hands of their slow de-
stroyers. The "ryot," or "koombi," or "gaum-
walla," the Hindoo small farmer, borrows
money to buy his seed, and borrows to pay for
that, and borrows again to pay his second
creditor with the means of a third; 1 the
secret being that industry is stagnant for cash ;
while, without imposing taxes odious and
strange, the normal revenue of India will not
provide for wars, though it can just main-
tain equilibrium in peace. India comprises a
million and a half square miles, and, by the
last census, holds 184,351,537 inhabitants. It
1 Could Ramchundra quote Catullus, he would certainly say
of his beegas
" Furi ! villula nostra non ad Austri
Flatus opposita est, nee ad Favoni,
Veruni ad millia quindecim et ducentos,
Oh ventum horribilem et pestilentem !"
218 Dalhousie's Administration
Chap. XX. equals in extent half Europe, leaving Russia
and Scandinavia aside. It is the richest and
most fertile land in the world for its extent,
and we cripple it, and ourselves with it, be-
cause the only bank of deposit for the peasant is
his wife's and children's brown arms and legs,
which he covers with silver bangles; and his only
bank of discount the squatting sonar or soucar,
whose " fire-pot" melts them down, and their
owner's soul and body afterwards. A wonder-
ful revolution in trade, the result of the Ame-
rican war, is deferring this question for us,
and pouring tens of millions in silver, yearly,
upon the plains of Western India. It only
defers it. India will secure some of the cot-
ton trade, indeed, after the shameful con-
spiracy of the South against human liberty and
the voice of the majority is defeated, because
she will engage against the Carolinas with free
labour against free labour. But the curse of
o
the poverty which we see, without relieving,
extends far beyond the cotton soils. It blights
India, and accuses ourselves. We borrow money
at six per cent, at home, when we might have
it at three or four and disperse it benevolently
at twelve, thereby purging the villages at the
same time of the rapacious shroffs.
Lor.i Dal- With this digression a moral drawn from
!i>, 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 Dalh<yusie*8 Administration
Chap. XXL Agra or Cawnpore, while his sick wife is in-
haling the mountain breezes of Mussoorie or
Simla ; by the English merchant at the head
of a large firm at the Presidency, who wishes
to know the prospects of the indigo crops on
the banks of the Brahmaputra, or in the plains
of Tirhoot ; by the editor, who looks anxiously
for the details of the last inroad by the Shi-
varanees, or of the latest fracas at the mess-
room of the 100th Regiment N. I. ; by the
Choudaries and the Chuckerbuttees, who desire
their local agent to report faithfully every turn
in the great suit for the possession of Chur
Nilabad, or every item disbursed in the hire of
lattials and the propitiation of the police ; by
the cadet, who calls on his father to aid him
in the purchase of ' a step,' or the fitting up
of a bungalow; by the Calcutta tradesman,
who can dun his remote debtors with less
original outlay ; and by dozens of fair corre-
spondents, who mutually interchange light
and pleasant gossip about the assemblies at
the Town Hall, the rides along Jacko, the
inconvenience of a Mofussil station in the far
west, or the agremens of the cold weather in
the City of Palaces. The Post Office Com-
mission alone, had Lord Dalhousie done no-
thing else, would suffice to place his name in
the list of Anglo-Indian reformers, alongside
that of Cornwallis."
of British India. 261
Schoolmasters and Educational Departments Chap.xxi.
are outdone indeed by a wholesale stroke like Effects of
this. The Hindoo who had formerly little th P 8tal
reform.
reason to desire to write his name, or to read
the cursive character of his province, except
in order that he might decipher his "janma-
putra," or horoscope, and keep himself from
being cheated by the money-lender, has now
the great incentive of the post. Simultaneously
with the railway which has made him a tra-
veller, and led to a far greater migration of
families than was possible before, the means
have now arisen by which he can defy the for-
getfulness, the uncertainty, the pains of ab-
sence. 1 India employs them well, too, as any
one may see, who watches the sack of letters
shot out at a native post-office, or stands by one
of the new pillar-boxes erected in the chief
Hindoo cities. Pillar-boxes in the moti-chowks
of Poona and Delhi ! Rowland Hill cheek-by-
jowl with the red Ling am and Shiva's bull !
Yet this modern convenience, hardly familiar-
ized among ourselves, is common now in
India ; and, as if to the manner born, Gunesh
or Babaji drop in their odd, oblong scrawls in
Modi-Mahratta ; Ali Khan, his solemn square
1 A thoroughly Hindoo use of the post has, however, long
annoyed the Indian Post Office. The natives not unfrequently
send their letters bearing postage. They write the object of
them outside, and the adressees receive, and then refuse to pay
the postage on them.
262 Dalhousie's Administration
Chap. XXI. inscribed with Persian ; the Saheb's putte-
wallah the long, official missives of the
Sirkar ; Parsee women, their billets in Guze-
ratee; while Canarese, Hindoo, Sindhi, and
Punjabi superscriptions go to make up the
mass. With such polyglot letter-bags, indeed,
as India, with her hundred tongues and tribes,
of necessity produces, it becomes a separate de-
partment to decipher the addresses, and mark
them on the envelope in such abbreviations as
the delivery peons can comprehend. At present,
too, with so vast a country as India, and com-
munications so imperfect, the modes are still
rude by which the ever-increasing mass of
native and English letters is distributed over
the land. Many a wild experience the missive
has to sustain which leaves the main arteries
of traffic for the bye- ways or villages of India.
It is hauled in a leather bag over swollen tor-
rents, or towed in a goatskin ; runners with
lighted torches by night, and jingling bells by
day, carry it through jungles, where the tiger
too often " stops her Majesty's mail ;" it will
travel on camel-humps, elephant howdahs, and
ox-pack, and be wrapped in many a dingy
pugree, 1 or dust-stained kiimmerbund, before
if tigers, dacoits, and the floods only spare it
the last perspiring link of this postal chain pre-
1 Of 43,570 miles of post roads in India, the mails were carried,
in 1862, over 32,448 miles on the backs of men.
of British India.
263
sents the epistle at its destination. But among chap. xxi.
a people so attached to home traditions as the
Hindoo, the boon of any communication is
immense : it is above all things cheap, without
which, in a country so poor in coin, speedy and
certain transit of letters could not have availed.
Lord Dalhousie had the right to boast that while
a letter could pass from north to south of the
British isles for one penny, the Hindoo clerk in
Government service at Peshawur, on the bor-
ders of Aifghanistan, might send a letter for
fcL to his father's hut at Comorin, or the
Purbhoo soldier at Debrooghur in Assam to
his brother serving at Kurrachee on the mouth
of the Indus. He had the right to be proud that
by an arrangement with the home Post-office,
" the Scotch recruit at Peshawur might write
to his mother at John 0' Groat's house, and
send his letter free to her for sixpence." These
are the measures 1 which make real history, and
not wars as the constant flow of the spreading
1 The subjoined table will show at a glance the impetus given
to correspondence in India :
Presidency.
One Year prior
to the Introduc-
tion of the 4 Ann a
Postage in
1854-55.
1854-55.
1860-61.
Bengal
Madras .
46,07,316
39,54,564
58,90,380
54,66,672
90,54,810
89,37,423
Bombay . . . .
35,11.056
63,04,260
1,23,75,436
North-western Provinces
70,09,740
1,11,36,288
1,67,09,741
Total . .
1,90.82,676
2,87,97,600
4,70,77,410
264
Dalhousie' s Administration
Chap. XXI. river fertilizes the country-side, and bears on-
ward its boats and barks not the violent, pic-
turesque cataract.
Remaining An eight years' administration of sovastacoun-
acts of Lord try as India presents, of course, in mere records a
Dalhousie.
mass proportioned to the land itself ; to traverse
them, is as much as can be done to examine
them is impossible without time and space for-
bidden to the present work. Eorty-four closely
written pages of official dimensions are over-
spread by Lord Dalhousie in the mere enu-
meration of the acts of his rule; and a catalogue
raisonnee, such as an exhaustive examination
of each important measure, with its origin,
merits, and issues implies, would swell this
work into as many volumes as it has chapters.
A hasty survey must be taken, therefore, of a
group of great legislative and economical re-
forms, many of which were concerned with
subjects of imperial and general interest.
India, to the botanist, the mineralogist, the
chemist, and the manufacturer, is still a trea-
sure-house, with many of its chambers un-
locked. Lord Dalhousie bore a large share in
providing the means at least to make them
useful when discovered, by preparing commu-
nications ; but he did not neglect direct efforts
to develop the immense resources of the coun-
try. Could he have known that the exported
cotton of India, which three or four ships
The re-
sources of
India.
of British India. 265
sufficed to bring to English ports during his Chap. XXI.
sway, would have figured for nearly two million
bales in the statistics of 1864 ; could he have
known that the chief almost the sole reliance
of the great Manchester trade of England,
during the crisis to come, would be the black
and red soil of Berar and Nagpore, he would
have devoted more of his thought and more of
his minute to the cotton-fields. It is a pity,
indeed, that the subject did not take a greater
hold upon his mind, for he would have scat-
tered to the winds by experiment and proof
that idle pretence that the cradle and mother
of the " wool-tree" cannot grow the best
staples ; he would have startled the knavish
mahajuns and bunyas, with trenchant laws,
from their tricks of spoiling the bales with stones
and rubbish to make weight for the market ; he
would have set up saw- gins, cotton presses,
and packing yards, and abolished, with quicker
extension of rail and canal, that long line of
creaking ox-carts and sweating bullocks which
^j <^j
brings the loose cotton down to the sea over the
dirtiest roads in the world, and in front of
the most apathetic drivers, thus giving it its
bad character. But he could hardly have done
more for India than Nemesis have done, and
the guilty folly of the Southern planters. Nine-
tenths of the cotton cultivation have gone at
present out of the hands of these conspirators
Dalhoiutie's Administration
against humanity and free institutions, never
to return, until free labour tills the fields of
the Carolinas, and then not in the dimensions of
the old monopoly which hung the sword of
Damocles above Lancashire, but on such fair
terms as free labour wins against free labour,
and one land against another. The end of the
great convulsion which has avenged deserted
India and the negro is not come yet, and
will not be come even when the great Republic
of the West has purged itself of slavery, and its
Constitution no longer protects the thing which
its first clause negatives and denounces. Scores
of millions sterling in silver have flowed like a
sudden stream into India, and cannot subside
upon her plains without depositing a new and
wonderful alluvium of improvement and pros-
perity. And when free labour is established in
America, India will then be no longer shut
out of our market. Even without the Civil
War she must have been invited to produce
staple for us ; for, spite of the glut of produc-
tion, there were clear signs before the rebellion
that the demand of the world was outgrowing the
supply sent forward by the looms. But meeting
her western rival on even ground, and stimu-
lated to skilful culture and careful harvesting
by that rivalry, prices being come again to their
just level, India may henceforth keep her re-
gular share in the market, which is equivalent
of British India. 267
to constant prosperity for her western provinces, Chap. XXI.
those rich fields annexed by Lord Dalhousie.
That interest can have been blind enough not
to discern this, and patriotism and duty dull
enough to neglect it, when at one blow the
accursed system of slavery was to be destroyed,
and India's old industry, with all its resulting
blessings and benefits, brought back 1 to the
country for which we are responsible, has been
one of the strangest phenomena of a day whose
moral perceptions are generally keen enough
when profit prompts them.
Another useful direction of the restless ito tea-
energy of the Governor-General was in favour plMlt
of the tea-plant. The introduction into the
Punjab of the bright green bush which makes
a beverage for half the world, has been touched
upon before. Assam was its earliest home
within the territories of the Company, who,
in times gone by, when they first directed their
Batavian factor to " procure six pounds of the
best tav he could s^tt," did not dream that the
leaf would grow over all the mountain slopes
of the East of India. But a botanist exploring
1 The products of India looms were justly admired at the
Exhibition. The Khssa ilusnul, Abrawan, and other specie*
of the muslins of Dacca, displayed a delicacy of touch,
and a fineness and transparency of texture, which might defy
the imitation of Lancashire and Mancherttr, Xew York and
Massachusetts " They are the finest "fj^nppH to he found in
the world of the production of a difficult effect by means appa-
rently quite inadequate."
268 Dalnousies Administration
Chap. xxi. the spurs of the Himalaya about Kangra,
found the plant wild, and the idea was at once
acted upon that where the wild tea would grow
the China varieties might be cultivated. They
were largely introduced into the upper districts
of the north-west provinces into the Deyrah
Dhoon, Kumaon, and Gurwhal. In a few
years the hill sides of those regions were seen
silvered over with the blossom of Thea viridis,
and the coarse " brick tea" of Thibet began to
feel a rival. Mr. Fortune, whose name is in-
separably connected with "bohea" and " sou-
chong" in their native homes, was com-
missioned to import plants and seed in large
quantities from China ; and, what was of equal
importance, to bring Chinese gardeners and
manufacturers to the new horticultural settle-
ment. The cultivation extended in a short
time along the Himalayan spurs ; and " tea-
gardens," in a more extended sense than the
usual meaning of the word, were established
as far north as Rawul Pin dee, while the na-
tive zemindars, being offered seed and plants by
Government, took up largely with the new cul-
tivation. " There is reason to believe," Lord
Dalhousie wrote modestly, " that the growth
of the tea-plant will be very widely spread in
future years, and that the trade in tea pro-
duced in India will become considerable." To
judge if his prediction has been fulfilled, turn
of British India. 269
but to recent reports of the progress of India, chap. xxr.
In 1859-60, nearly 80,000 Ib. of excellent tea
was produced in Government gardens only;
a hundred tons weight of seed were distributed
in the same year, and two millions and a
half of seedling plants sent out gratis. But
since then this industry has extended like a
circle in the water; European settlers have
embarked energy and capital in the trade;
Indian tea is well received in the home market,
favoured by the fiscal changes of Mr. Glad-
stone ; while in India, although still an ex-
pensive luxury, the tea-pot is becoming a house-
hold word 1 among a population hitherto
confined to cold water or milk.
The effort to produce silk, and thereby com- snv.
pete with Cabul as well as China, did not
prove so successful. The Himalayan silk-
worm is too wild to be fed in-doors, and the
mulberry-tree indigenous to the north-western
hills grows too small and too slowly to support
a remunerative crop of the insects ; but the
impetus has not entirely ceased. The experi-
ments are already renewed with the Cashmere
and Madrassee worms ; and there are prospects
of establishing a silk harvest which will find
an eager market at Moorshedabad and Delhi, at
1 So complete is the success of the experiment, that the
Government of India is now selling its plantations in the public
market. The thing in India " chulta" runs alone.
270 Dalhousie's Administration
Chap. xxi. R. 1,000 the maund. Max also engaged the
attention of the Governor-General. India is
very rich in fibrous plants, half of which, in
spite of Dr. Royle's admirable researches and
experiments, have not been yet utilized. It
is probable that in the fibre of the plantain
(Nusa sapientium) an excellent substitute for
linen rags might be found for the manufacture
of paper ; and the broad green ribands of the
plant in question wave in every garden-patch
of India. But to her jute, pine-apple fibre, and
the like, Lord Dalhousie saw no reason why
flax proper should not be added ; and the
plant was introduced into the botanical gar-
dens of Saharanpore. It was soon proved
that flax might be grown in India to any
extent, and of a quality even superior to the
Russian staple ; but the crimson wave of the
mutiny swept away the beginning of this effort,
like many others, though this, also, is again
being taken in hand, at the earnest suggestion
of the late Mr. Wilson. 1 True to his Scotch
1 " The despatch to the English market, of flax grown in the
Goojranwalla district, obtained at Dundee and Belfast from
35 to '15 per ton. The cost of transport from Lahore to
shipboard at Kurrachee is from 8 to 9 a ton. The price of
flax fibre is about 22 8a. per ton. It is calculated, howerer,
that both the cost of carriage and of the fibre may probably
be diminished. Some flax sent from the Kangra district
was valued in England at from 50 to 60 ; but it appears
that there is some doubt among the traders at home whether
the so-called flax of Kangra is not, after all, only a finer
species of Himalayan hemp ; further, the hemp is termed
of British India. 271
country training, Lord Dalhousie also encou- Chap. XXI.
raged efforts to preserve and improve the breed
of horses ; stud-farms were established along The stud.
the Deccanee and Punjabee rivers, and stallions
of high blood were lent without charge to
owners of good mares. Merino rams were also WO U P aQd
introduced into the Bombay Presidency, and
an attempt was made, by crossing with them,
to improve the breed of native sheep ; but it
had no success like that obtained in Australia
the quality of wool always deteriorating
back from the cross. No better issue, either,
has attended the praiseworthy attempt of the
Marquis to introduce sheep into Pegu, where
the greatest scarcity of flesh-meat had always
prevailed. The experiment started well enough
to warrant Lord Dalhousie in writing it down
as one of his numerous successes; but, since
then, instead of occasionally supplying a mutton
by them a kind of ' Rhea fibre.' This product is known by
botanists as the ' Urtica nivea ' of Linnaeus, or the ' Boehmeria
nivea' of Roxburgh ; and the latter is identical with the China
grass of Assam, a well-known article of commerce; but, what-
ever be the botanical order or species assigned to the Kangra
flax whether it be regarded as belonging to the Urticacece or
linace(K there can be no doubt of the decided opinion of the
traders at home of the value and superiority of its fibre. In the
opinion of Messrs. Kain and Co., of Dundee, if it could be put
on board at Kurrachee for 26 a ton, it would undoubtedly
leave, both to importer and exporter, a very handsome profit.
" The Kangra hemp was valued at from 30 to 32 a ton, and
it was considered an excellent material for cordage. The
sunn fibre (Crotolaria juncea) was not so highly appreciated."
Material Progress of India, 1859-60.
272 Dalhousie's Administration
Chap. XXI. ration to the European troops, the Thayetma
farm, though begun under very favourable
circumstances, has lamentably failed. It is
difficult to assign a cause; but, as a general
rule, in whatever locality in this country live-
stock are massed, sooner or later an epidemic
is sure to appear. The same result was ex-
perienced in the Burmese war, wherever ele-
phants and slaughter-cattle were kept. A fatal
epidemic first appeared in the flock in Sep-
tember, 1858 : and since then there has been a
gradual decrease by deaths, till few of the
Governor-General's sheep remain.
Forest trees Among the three works of grace which
* 6 secure f r the Hindoo's soul the delights of
Swerga, the "planting of groves" is enumerated.
It has been shown, in the case of the Punjab,
that Lord Dalhousie did not fail to deserve
Paradise on this score. It was an early care
of his Government to protect the forests al-
ready existing in many parts of India, and to
plant new nurseries of timber. For its extent,
the Peninsula is now by no means well-wooded.
Oudh, the Deyrah Dhoon, the slopes of the
Himalayas, those of the Western Ghats, and
some of the southern provinces, are its great
timber depots. But leagues and leagues of
the Great Indian Peninsula Railway are laid
with sleepers of red pine from the Baltic-
timber that had traversed 16,000 miles of
of British India. 273
ocean, from the cold hills of Norway to the chap. XXI.
hot plains of the Deccan. iFour principal
causes tend to denude the hills of their cloth-
ing. The upland villagers set the old grass on
tire to allow a new crop of fodder to spring
up, and the fire, of course, does not spare the
finest trees. The wild cattle and the antelopes
graze in the open jungle, and the young plants
are trampled down hy them. Hesin and gum and
camphor collectors deliberately fire thousands of
trees, and woodcutters fell timber-sticks in hun-
dreds, which they allow to remain rotting on
the ground, after the branches are lopped,
without the slightest attempt to convert them
to any useful purpose. Lord Dalhousie put a
stop, so far as it was possible, to this waste,
by appointing forest conservators in Pegu,
Tenasserim, Martaban, and Oudh. To stay
the process of killing the golden goose along
the teak-hills of Moulmein, rules were laid
down, one of which was, " That for every tree
felled and removed, five young trees, of a
proper size, shall be planted by the farmer, or
by the Government at the expense of the
tarmer. 1 Teak, which is so important a timber,
1 In the course of ten hours the officials examining one of the
forest departments measured and recorded upwards of 600
under-sized trees killed, but not felled, and upwards of 260
under-sized trees felled making, in all, above 860 under-sized
trees killed wantonly in one tract. Besides these, 164 full-sized
trees. 93 undersized, and !>9 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.
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