This Book is out of print and scarce, and was found only by repeated adver- tisement throughout the Trade. EDW G. ALLEN &. SON, Ltd. BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF flcnrg W. Sage 1891 A 3o 6 ? , V> . Ot Cornell University Library DS 445.T92 Our Indian protectorate;an introduction 3 1924 024 061 933 Cornell University Library The original of tinis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924024061933 OUR INDIAN PEOTECTOEATE OTJE INDIAN PROTEtTORATE AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OP THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT AND ITS INDIAN FEUDATORIES BY CHARLES LEWIS T¥PPER INDIAN OITIL SEEVIOE LONDON LONGMANS, GEEEN, AND CO. AND NEW YORK : 15 EAST IB* STREET 1893 PEEFACE It is important for me to say that the following treatise possesses no ofl&cial authority. The whole of it has been written during various periods of leave. No government, no officer of government, either asked me to write this book or suggested to me that I should write it. It is as a private individual, temporarily relieved from official duties, that I offer the opinions expressed in the text. In so doing I neither wish to commit, nor have I the slightest authority to commit, the government I serve. The Indian Government allows its servants much freedom of discussion ; but necessarily this privilege is enjoyed on the understanding that official confidence must be scrupu- lously respected, and that information obtained in the course of official duties or by means of an official position must not be used in such a way as to cause pubUc inconvenience or embarrassment. Parts of this book deal with subjects of great dehcacy ; and throughout I have constantly had to face the anxious and difficult task of determining what portions of the information before me I might, without im- propriety, include in a published work. My object has been, so far as in me lies, to further the cause of good government and to strengthen the hands of authorities whose good intentions none but the ignorant can doubt. I trust that the sincerity of this desire wiU have guided me aright in the choice of material. The consideration of questions concerning an Indian feudatory state usually involves much historical detail. The treaty or other engagement, if any, with the state must VI OUR INDIAN PEOTECTOEATE be read ; and often the whole internal and external history of the particular state during a long course of years must be passed under review. In this work I have avoided all historical detail of this description. I do not attempt to recount in detail the actual relations between any one state or any one group of states and the British Government. But I have thought that an introduction to the detailed study of the actual relations in particular cases might be of use to those who, in India or England, may have to form opinions upon matters in which the Indian feudatory states are concerned. The information necessary to the formation of just and accurate opinions upon these matters is scattered about in a number of books of history, in some special works relating to India, and in a vast quantity of official documents, of which few are accessible to the public. It has been my endeavour to bring together in a compendious way the essen- tial portions of this information. The first six chapters of this work were written and privately printed in 1887. I have now revised them and added a few pages to the first and second chapters. The first chapter, which distinguishes between international law and Indian political law — defined as ' the rules and principles governing the relations which now exist between the British Government and the Indian feudatory states ' — is of an introductory character. I am largely indebted here to Sir Charles Aitchison, without whose advice, encourage- ment, and help this work could not have been attempted. I must also acknowledge my obligations to two volumes of ' Lists of British Enactments in Eorce in Native States,' compiled by Mr. J. M. Macpherson, Deputy Secretary to the Government of India in the Legislative Department. Chapters 11. and III. give a brief sketch of the pohtical history of the growth of the protectorate. In chapters IV., V., and VI. I turn from the history of events to the history of ideas, and show from our own proceedings the origin and character of the present policy PREFACE vii towards native states. I see that in the chapter on the annexation of Oudh^I use many of the quotations inserted by Sir William Hunter in his lately published little book on Lord Dalhousie in the ' Eulers of India ' series. The coin- cidence is accidental, as my quotations were all selected and privately printed in 1887. After reading Sir William Hunter's book I have slightly modified one or two passages to make it more clear than I had made it before that Lord Dalhousie did not leave the doctrine of lapse quite as he found it. I believe the existing system of relations with native states to be thoroughly sound, thoroughly beneficial, and capable of much useful development. But I do not expect that belief to be generally shared unless it can be shown that the system has other foundations besides the political history of the growth of British power and the proceedings of the British Government. The other foundations are discussed in chapters VII. to XV. inclusive. In five chapters on Indian ideas of sovereignty and Indian institutions and feudalism I trace the intimate connection between the existing system and the past of India before British rule. If this portion of the work runs into too much detail for general readers, my excuse is that I hope a good deal of the information collected may be of use to those who are engaged in studying the history of institutions. I could not have attempted these chapters without the help derived from Mr. Freeman's ' Comparative Pohtics,' some essays in Sir Alfred LyaU's ' Asiatic Studies,' and the books and minutes of Sir Henry Maine. In this part of the work I owe a great deal to the ofiicial writings of Sir James Lyall, who is the brother of Sir Alfred Lyall, and was lately Lieutenant- Governor of the Punjab, and my own immediate ofiicial superior. I also owe much to the Gonda Settlement Eeport of Mr. Benett. Some of the remarks and illustrations have been anticipated in papers read by me before the Society of Arts and the Institutions section of the International Folklore Congress. VUl OUE INDIAN PEOTECTOBATE I ought also to mention that the information given in chapter VII. on the subject of the KMn Khel — a leading section in certain Pathdn tribes from which the chief of the tribe is always chosen — has not before been collected, and is now published for the first time. I am indebted for it to the officers of the Peshdwar division — Mr. Udny, Mr. A. F. D. Cunningham, O.I.E., Mr. W. E. H. Merk, C.S.I., Major H. P. P. Leigh, C.I.E., and Capt. E. Inghs. The statements made in the text in regard to the Khdn Khel are taken mainly from the papers by Mr. Cunningham and Mr. Merk. History is no sufficient justification of a policy which is not justifiable on moral grounds. There is the strongest moral justification of the existing sj^stem in the character of the governments of our predecessors in India and the per- sistence, at the present day, of some tendencies making for misrule. This is explained and illustrated in four chapters on native rule. A short chapter on the limits of British interposition is then introduced to show on what principles tendencies making for misrule may be met and corrected ; and a description is given of some advantages of native rule, which, notwith- standing certain imperfections, it is an object of the whole system to uphold and perpetuate. I then return to the rules and principles of Indian politi- cal law, mentioned in the first chapter, and explain some of them in, fuller detail in chapters XVIII. and XIX. on the ' Constitutional Position of Native States ' and ' Some Obliga- tions of Native Eulers.' In connection with chapter XVIII. I have to thank Mr. C. P. Ilbert, C.S.I., formerly Law Member of the Council of the Governor-General, for much help and advice. In chapter XX. on ' India and Imperial Federation ' I indulge in some speculations as to the future, for which my apology is that they may perhaps possess a rather wider interest than the rest of the book. I have delivered a part of this chapter as an address at a meeting of the London PREFACE IX Chamber of Commerce and ^e City Branch of the Imperial Federation League. Having now completed my book, I must confess that the work has been more arduous and more difficult than I anti- cipated. Much has been left unsaid. I merely offer a general sketch of a large subject which I do not profess to exhaust. Many passages which on rec'onsideration appeared disputable or injudicious have been erased. It has been my sincere desire to avoid controversies and to leave unwritten any words that might wound feelings or give offence. At the same time I have done my best to produce on all points a reaUy true impression and to offer on some important ques- tions the best advice that has occurred to me after a good deal of labour and thought. C. L. T UPPER. Haerow-on-the-Hill. CONTENTS CHAPTER I INTERNATIONAL LAW AND THE INDIAN PKOTECTOEATE PAGE The work limited to the Indian protectorate — Characteristics of interna- tional law — The relation of the feudatory states with the British Government are regulated by Indian political law, not by international law — Relation of the law of nations to Indian political law — Sources of Indian political law — Its accepted principles — Position of a feudatory chief — The division of sovereignty and immunity from foreign law — Sir Henry Maine on the divisibility of sovereignty and the distinction between sovereignty and independence 1 CHAPTER II THE EARLY GROWTH OF THE PROTECTORATE Conversion of frontier into internalprotectorates — -Growth of the Indian protectorate little affected by certain wars — Early administrators had no distinct theory of public law in India, but subscribed to the fiction of the supremacy of Delhi — Decline of the Moghal empire and oriental methods of the servants of the company — The support of pageant princes — Lord Cornwallis attempts to establish a balance of power — Condition of India in 1798 — The theory of British supremacy supplants the theory of a balance of power — Reasons why the law of nations cannot be applied in India explained by General Wellesley, afterwards Duke of Welling- ton — The British Government refuses to assume the political position of the Delhi emperors — Use of subsidiary alliances as an instrument of Lord Wellesley's policy — Connection between Lord Wellealey's annexa- tions and his political system — ^Political influence has advanced side by side with extension of dominion — Present general extent and character of the Indian protectorate 20 CHAPTER III THE LATER GROWTH OF THE PROTECTORATE Extension of the protectorate to certain minor states — Political condition of India in 1813 — Political results of Lord Hastings' administration — Views of Sir Charles Metcalfe — The policy of non-intervention and its results — GwdJior affairs and the war of 1843— Summary — Comparatively recent origin of Indian political law .48 Xll OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE CHAPTER IV THE ANNEXATION OF OUDH PAQX Reasons for discussing the subject — Oudh was annexed for misrule — The state of the country before annexation — Reflections suggested by the former condition of Oudh — Discussions upon that condition show Indian political law in the making — Opinions of Mr. Dorin, Sir J. P. Grant, General Low, Sir Barnes Peacock, and Lord Dalhousie — Unsettled state of Indian political law at the time — Dangers to which it is exposed when its history and principles are inaccessible — Lord Wellesley contemplated active interposition in the affairs of Oudh — Views of Mr. H. C. Irwin . 63 CHAPTER V THE DOCTRINE OF LAPSE AND THE ADOPTION ' SANADS ' The doctrine of lapse threatened the extinction of the states of the pro- tectorate — It was applied in good faith — Lapses in the Bombay Presi- dency and the Punjab — No lapses in Rdjpiitdna — Cases of Sattdra — Karauli — Tehri — Jhdnsi — Ndgpur — The arguments from expediency in the case of the annexation of Ndgpur would not now be applicable in similar cases — Causes of the mutiny and rebellion in 1857 — Loyalty of the feudatory chiefs — Their misgivings — Means taken to reassure them — The Amnesty Proclamation of 1858 — The story of the adoption sanads — Consequences of Lord Canning's policy 83 CHAPTER VI PRESENT POLICY TOWARDS NATIVE STATES Illustrations of the adherence of the Government to the policy inaugurated in 1858 — The deposition of the Gaekwar of Baroda and the re-establish- ment of a native government in the state— The rendition of Mysore — The Delhi assemblage of 1877 and the assumption by her Majesty of the title of Queen-Empress — Her Majesty now stands in the place of the Delhi emperors '. . . . 114 CHAPTER VII EARLY INDIAN IDEAS OF SOVEREIGNTY In conceptions of sovereignty we are the heirs of the Moghals, and they were the heirs of the Hindu rajas — Summary of ideas of sovereignty — Tribal chiefship amongst Baluchis and Pathdns — The Nawdbs of Teri and Amb — The typical Hindu raja is the rightful recipient of a share of the produce of the soil — The typical Hindu raja of the Punjab Hills — The status of the rajas in the Gonda district of Oudh — The form of sovereignty in R^jptitdna described by Sir Alfred Lyall stands midway between tribal chiefship and territorial chiefship — No symptoms in India of the change from the absolute monarch to the constitutional king . 128 CONTENTS xiii CHAPTER VIII SOVEREIGNTY IN THE INDIAN PENINSULA PAGE Summary of indications from the history of the Deccan and Southern India —The empire of Vijayanagar— The poligdis—the Bahmani kingdom of the Deccan— Its disruption — Causes of the persistence of despotism in India — Ancient tenmes on the west coast— Rise and character of the principality of Coorg— Ancient tenures on the east coast — The legend of Tondeimandalam— The states of the Central Provinces— Difficulty of discriminating between British and foreign territory— Marhatta insti- tutions—Rise and policy of Slvaji— The Marhatta ministers— The Marhatta system — Origin of Marhatta territorial despotisms . . 153 CHAPTER IX THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE MOGHALS The Delhi emperors and Muhammadan law — Official rank not hereditary— The provinces in the time of Akbar— Character of the administration- Meanings of the term zaminddr — The zaminddrs of the empire— The Bengal zaminddrs — One theory of the origin of the office of zaminddr — Hindu elements in the Delhi empire — Zaminddrs were employed to exercise certain rights of the king— The actual position of the emperors — Similarity of type in the institutions of the Moghals— Brief general view of the Moghal empire compared with our own .... 185 CHAPTER X INDIAN INSTITUTIONS AND FEUDALISM The principle that underlies feudalism may be universal — Phases of thought regarding feudalism in India — The growth of history — Description of feudalism by Bishop Stubbs —Roman, ecclesiastical, and legal influences absent in the nascent feudalism of India — Value of the Indian evidence — Points upon which India supplies analogies — Indian analogies to ele- ments of feudalism in the interior structure of the manor or fief — Vand or jeola tenure of Kdngra and Kulu — Other elements of feudalism in the Kdngra and Kulu Hills 200 CHAPTER XI FEUDAL TENDENCIES IN INDIA Benefices about to be compared with jdgirs and zaminddris — Marhatta jdgirs — Jdgirs in the Deccan- — Bengal jdgirs — No comitatus in India — Break up of the Moghal and Karolingian empires — Lord dive's jctgi^r. — Jdgirs and zaminddris compared — Their resemblance to benefices — Commendation and Roman law — Early history of commendation — No XIV OUR IJMDIAX PKOTECTOKATE PAGE commendation in India, but many arrangements based on a similar prin- ciple — Settlers amongst Pathdns on the North- West Frontier — Desha cavel fees in the Carnatic — Rehwali in Rdjpdt^na — Sikh jdgirs resem- bling fiefs or benefices — Manorial character of Hill principalities — Extra cesses in the Hills — Droits seigneuriaux — The great Bengal zaminddris — The Gonda rdj connects the Hill principality, the Bengal zaminddri, and the French fief — Zaminddrs and tcdukddrs in Oudh — Subinfeudations — Summary of feudal tendencies in India — The dis- tinction between progressive and stationary societies — Isolation of the French fiefs — Feudal elements in our Indian protectorate and in the process of its formation ......... 213 CHAPTER XII NATIVE KULE UNDER THE MAKHATTAS Reasons for describing the condition of India under native rule — Circum- stances which facilitate the task — Mountstuart Elphinstone's report on the territories conquered from the Peshwa — Revenue management — Police — Means of dispensing justice — In criminal cases — In civil cases — Panchdyats — Takdza — Patronage — Presents — Ordeals — Deterioration under the last of the Peshwas — Testimony of the late Mr. W. G. Pedder 241 CHAPTER XIII NATIVE RULE IN THE PUNJAB British conquest followed the line of least resistance — Rise of the Sikhs — The government of Ranji't Singh— Condition of the Karndl district — Of the Cis-Sutlej states — Of the North-West Frontier and the Salt Range — Of the central districts of the Punjab — Of the country governed by Dewin S^wan Mai — Anecdotes of Avitabile — Rdjpilt rule in the Punjab Hills — Comparison of the governments of Ranjft Singh and the Mar- hattas 255 CHAPTER XIV NATIVE RULE UNDER MUHAMMADAN AND OTHER GOVERNMENTS Condition of Oudh districts annexed in 1801 — Sir John Shore's description of Muhammadan rule — Reasons why the character of a native govern- ment depends on the personal qualifications of the chief — The vmlsa of Southern India— The Khetrd,ns of Mat — In primitive times no history, but many typical events— Supposed advice of an Indian MachiaveUi — Cruelty and superstition in Europe — Superstition of Ranjlt Singh — Cruelties of Haidar Ali — Cruelties of Tippoo—Stiii— Evidence of bar- barous practices contained in the old regulations — Summary of causes of misrule in the India of our predecessors 272 CONTENTS XV CHAPTER XV NATIVE RULE UNDER THE PROTECTORATE PAGE Difficulty of stating the case — Instances of barbarous practices or punish- ments — Instances of a hwrh — Of samddh — Of penalties for kine- killing — Of superstition — Of mutilation — Condition of parts of Central India in 1867 — A corrupt and disorganised state — Another misgoverned state — A colony of thugs — Depredations by gangs of robbers— Many states are well administered 231 CHAPTER XVI THE LIMITS OF BRITISH INTERPOSITION Tendencies to misrule due to inherited character — Reasons for reluctance to interfere— Duty of suppressing disorders which threaten the general peace of the country — Duty of interference when rebellion would be morally justifiable — The government cannot become the instrument of oppression — Mere absence of improvement not a case for remonstrance — Interference in particular cases — Good government the best safeguard against interference .......... 301 CHAPTER XVII SOME ADVANTAGES OF NATIVE RULE Popularity of native governments — Value of show and ceremony — IntelU- gibUity of measures of government — High birth — Religious neutrality — British theories — Persons and systems — Advantage of permanence of the official staff in native states — Departmentalism — Loan of services of British officials to native states — Partiality — Our political theory — Prin- ciples of the land revenue administration — Relation of some of our legal principles to native ideas — ^Advantage of the exemption of native states from our legislation — Danger of taking results of our national experience to be principles universally applicable — Local option in native states — Posts and telegraphs — Public works — Investments of capital by native states and in native states . ....... 308 CHAPTER XVIII THE CONSTITUTIONAL POSITION OF NATIVE STATES Meaning of constitutional government — Of constitutional law — The British Empire a constitutional empire — The states subordinate to the Govern- ment of India, and the Government of India tf> Parliament — EasfeA and Western elements in Indian government — Connection between certain forms of government and certain stages of political growth — Movement of modem societies from feudalism to federalism — Important consequences of the divisibility of sovereignty — Branches of Indian constitutional law — Constitutional ties extending to India — Legislative xvi OUE INDIAN PROTECTORATE supremacy of the viceroy and his council — Political combinations due to self-preservation— Stages in Indian constitutional history resembling feudalism, absolutism, and federalism— Internal structure of Indian governments— Official organisation of the protectorate— Geographical classification of native states— States under local governments— Duties of political officers— Points for the orders of the Government of India — British India and Canada— The supremacy of parliament — Double allegiance— Summary of conclusions 332 CHAPTER XIX SOME OBLIGATIONS OF NATIVE RULEKS Grant or recognition of titles — Ceremonies — Precedence — Salutes — Coinage — Means of facilitating the administration of civU justice — Criminal justice —Trial of European British subjects — Extradition — Court of vaUls in Ild,jp\it4na— Interjurisdictional cases in Western Mdlwa— Rules relating to the imperial post — Obligations relating to military affairs — To fiscal affairs — Cession of lands and jurisdiction for railways — Summary 357 CHAPTER XX INDIA AND IMPERIAL FEDERATION Questions as to the ultimate aims of Indian Government and true direction of present tendencies — Double system of the Indian Empire — Meaning of imperial federation — Lord Salisbury's reply to the Imperial Federa- tion League — India is already represented in the supreme councils of the empire, and bears the cost of Indian wars and services — Represen- tative assemblies controlling the action of the supreme government not required in India — Independence of India impossible — Interest of India in imperial federation — Maintenance of the Indian Empire necessary in our own interest and in the interest of Indian populations — The Indian Kriegsverein — Can the principle of it be extended to the colonies ? — The distinctive characteristic of Indian society is not nationality but caste — Meaning of nationality — No nationalities in India at present — India cannot be made into one nation — The case of the Roman Empire suggests that many nations may arise in India in course of time — The same inference drawn from the composition of Indian society and the distribution of provinces — Meaning of India for the Indians — Danger of over-centralisation and advantages of decentralisation — No formal pro- posals made 377 Om iroiM PEOTEOTOMTE CHAPTEE I INTERNATIONAL LAW AND THE INDIAN PEOTECTOBATE In the ' Nineteentli Century ' for August 1891 there is an admirable article by Sir Alfred LyaU on ' Frontiers and Protectorates,' which enables me to define with suflEicient pre- cision the scope of the present treatise. As Sir Alfred LyaU observes, the English Crown has established many protec- torates of different kinds ; but any British protectorate, to whatever class it may belong, affirms the right of excluding a rival influence and the duty of defence. For present pur- poses I would fully accept this description. A protectorate must include both the right and the duty. If there is a mere exclusion of rival influence, a protectorate may be impending but is not yet completely formed ; and there is no protection without the acceptance of the duty of defence. But this right and this duty are, I think, the least that a protectorate includes. It may, and often does, include very much more ; so much more that nearly the whole of the sovereignty of the protected state, tribe, or territory may become vested in the protecting power. If the whole of the sovereignty has been absorbed, there is no longer a protectorate ; the state, tribe, or territory is in this case annexed, and the country has been incorporated in the dominions of the para- mount power. In the Indian empire an illustration is afforded of this process by the annexation of Oudh. From this treatise I exclude the consideration of all the protectorates except one. There are many African pro- tectorates, British and others. There are Asiatic protec- torates of the Enghsh Crown outside the limits of India and its frontiers, such as the protectorate about Aden and over B Z OUK INDIAN PROTECTOKATE Socotra. There are the Indian frontier protectorates ,far beyond the range of our administrative jurisdiction, extend- ing, as Sir Alfred Lyall says, from the Oxus on the north- west to the Cambodia on the south-east, touching the Eussian sphere of influence on the one side and nearly touching the French sphere of influence on the other. These protectorates include Afghanistan and Baluchistan and a fringe of states on the confines of Upper Burma. On none of these protectorates do I offer any remark. The time has not come to attempt any general view of the frontier protectorates ; nor would it be possible to discuss them even slightly without alluding to questions of external foreign policy on which it would be altogether inappropriate for me to say a word. I confine myself to our Indian protectorate as distin- guished from the Indian frontier protectorates. By our Indian protectorate I mean the protectorate, now long esta- blished and fairly well defined, over the very numerous internal states of India. These states may be generally described as autonomous states, enjoying various degrees of sovereignty, levying their own taxes, administering their own laws, and possessing territory which is, for purposes of internal administration, foreign territory, and has not been annexed to the dominions of the British Crown. It is because the principles of this protectorate appear to be fairly weU defined that I have thought I might usefully attempt to state and explain them. The first point which requires discussion is the relation of international law to the body of rules and principles which form the substitute for it in the Indian protectorate. International law consists of the rules which govern the mutual intercourse of independent political communities. Whether these communities be called states or nations, they cannot be the subjects of international law unless they possess certain attributes. They must be assumed to be equal amongst themselves ; they must have equal rights of legation and of making peace and war ; and they must, each and all of them, be exempt from the effective and habitual control of any political superior. The Eoman emperors pretended to universal dominion over the civilised world ; and the pretension, outlasting the empire in which it originated, was implied, perhaps, in the ' headship of the world ' assumed by Charlemagne when he ■#as crowned emperor at Eome in the first year of the ninth INTERNATIONAL LAW AND THE INDIAN PEOTECTOEATE 3 century, and more certainly^survived tkroughout Catholic Europe in the political and ecclesiastical claims of the papacy. The Eoman empire, as a political institution, finally faded from the political scene only in the early years of the present century. Before the Emperor Francis II. had resigned the imperial crown in 1806, the liberties of the whole of Europe had been threatened, in the falsely adjured name of free- dom, by the attempted supremacy of the first Napoleon. European international law, so far as it is adequately sup- ported by the strength of the great powers, is the bulwark of the West against political dictation by one power over others or the rest. It is the guarantee of the political rights of bodies politic ; it ofiers to nations those opportunities of self-development and commercial intercourse which, in muni- cipal afiairs, are afforded to individuals by wise civil laws and institutions ; and, as regulating the mutual relations of communities, it forms the modern substitute for the old- world theory of universal dominion, to which, indeed, it is the direct antithesis. The theoretical equality of nations, taking the place of theoretical subjection to some common superior, is an essential part of international law ; and the development of that law belongs to the same period of general history as the growth of constitutional government. The system is later by nearly half a century than the first charter granted to the East India Company ; and it does not precede by much more than a century the actual beginnings of British dominion in the East Indies, It may be said to date from the Peace of Westphalia, which closed the Thirty Years' War in 1648, the year before King Charles I. was executed. Edmund Burke, in his speech on the impeachment of Warren Hastings, claimed that the law of nations should be regarded as the law of India as weU. as of Europe, ' because it is the law of reason and the law of nature, drawn from the pure sources of moraUty, of pubUc good, and of natural equity, and recognised and digested into order by the labours of learned men.' There was, no doubt, a time in the history of British India, a time considerably later than the beginning of that history, when the principles of international law were apphed in dealings with other Indian powers, then, in point of fact, the rivals of the East India Company in the general scramble for dominion which ensued upon the destruction of the Mochal empire. Lord Cornwallis endeavoured without 4 OUR INDIAN PEOTECTOEATE success to establish a balance of power in the Deccan. Lord Wellesley elaborately justified his intention of making war on Tippoo Sultan of Mysore by arguments which might have been used by a European chancellor resenting warlike preparations, deliberate threats, and overt hostile alliances by a neighbouring European power. International law, probably with some modifications to adapt it to the peculiar conditions of Asia, is still the rule of conduct in the relations of the British Government with independent Asiatic countries beyond the continent of India, such as Siam, Kashgar, and Persia. But within the frontiers of India the law of nations does not determine the respective rights and duties either of the British Government and the continental native states, or of those states amongst themselves. These native states of the continent of India are the feudatory states, of which the British Government is the suzerain. How far the language of feudalism is appropriate to the case will appear in a later chapter ; the terms ' feudatory ' and ' suzerain ' are sanc- tioned, at all events, by Indian usage, and have the great merit of convenience, especially if their use be carefuUy dis- engaged from any suggestion of unreal analogies. In more modern phraseology, Dr. Travers Twiss has sketched the position with approximate accuracy (' The Law of Nations,' p. 27). ' The native states of India,' he says, ' are instances of protected dependent states, maintaining the most varied relations with the British Government under compacts with the East India Company. All these states acknowledge the supremacy of the British Government, and some of them admit its right to interfere so far in their internal afiairs that the Easf India Company has become virtually sovereign over thejd. None of these states, however, hold any political intercourse with one another, or with foreign powers.' The relations are, no doubt, extremely varied; but they are governed even more by usage than by compact, and the power of intervention in internal afiairs, very variously exer- cised by the British Government, does not rest upon any vir- tual sovereignty in particular cases, but upon the fact that the sovereignty is, it must be granted in very difierent propor- tions, shared in every case without any exception whatsoever. International jurisprudence clearly distinguishes the in- ternal relations of states subsisting between governments and their subjects from the external relations of states with each other in the great community of the world. Municipal law deals with the former, which can be modified in any INTERNATIONAL LAW ANB THE INDIAN PROTECTOHATE 5 particular state without the consent of any other ; the latter are dealt with by internationlEl law, which in great measure derives its validity from the consent of nations embodied in diplomatic documents or implied in practice and custom. Where there are no external relations there can be no inter- national law, and the feudatory states have no relations of this description, except with the British Government. They have no rights of legation to any other government ; they are unable to make peace or war ; their political sub- ordination to the British Government is unquestioned. They cannot therefore be subjects of international law ; and, so far as that law regards independent states as able and justi- fied in the last resort to appeal to war for the assertion of rights which are other than those of mere comity, it is inapplicable to a political system which regards the levy of war as a criminal oifence, punishable even hj judicial tri- bunals. Independent political communities cannot be sub- jected to punishment in the strict sense of the term; they cannot be legally liable for an offence to a penalty imposed by a pohtical superior. But feudatory states, or their rulers, can be, and are, punished when occasion requires by fine, by the deprivation of salutes and other honours, by sequestra- tion for a time, by the diminution of judicial authority, and, in extreme cases, by the deposition, or even execution, of the ruler and the annexation and incorporation of the state in the territories directly administered by British officers. When Muhammad BahMur Shah, the titular King of Delhi, surrendered on a promise that his life would be spared, he was tried, in January 1858, as a rebel and a traitor. The third count in the indictment against him was, ' that he, being a subject of the British Government in India and not regarding the duty of his allegiance, did, at Delhi, on May 11, 1857, or thereabouts, as a false traitor against the state, proclaim and declare himself the reigning king and sovereign of India, and did then and there traitorously seize and take unlawful possession of the city of Delhi ; and did, moreover, at various times between May 10 and October 1, 1857, as such false traitor aforesaid, treasonably conspire, consult, and agree with Mirza Moghal, his own son, and with Muhammad BaJsht Khan, subaddr of the Eegiment of Artillery, and divers other false traitors unknown, to raise, levy, and make insurrection, rebellion, and war against the state ; and further, to fulfil and perfect his treasonable design of over- throwing and destroying the British Government in India, 6 OUK INDIAN PROTECTOEATE did assemble armed forces at Delhi, and send them forth to fight and wage war against the said British Government.' That the offence with which the King of Delhi was charged was described as waging war was due, of course, to the scale upon which it was committed ; but it was none the less a breach of allegiance. The Nawdbs of Jhajjar, Ballabgarh. and Farakhnagar were condemned and executed for compli- city in the rebellion, and their states were confiscated. The Nawdb of Farakhabad was tried on a hke charge, and sentenced to death and forfeiture of property, and only escaped execution because of a doubt whether he had not surrendered on a promise that his life would be spared. The Indian Penal Code provides for the punishment of the offence of waging war against the Queen as for any other violation of law which can come under the cognizance of the ordinary tribunals ; and, moreover, testifies to the duty of protection on the part of the suzerain by assigning penalties for waging war against any Asiatic power in alliance or at peace with the Queen, committing depredations on the territories of any power so at peace, and receiving property taken in wars or depredations of this character. The fact is, that for the adjustment of the relations of the continental states of India a new system has grown up, very different from any which was possible in the days of Edmund Burke, but, it is believed, quite as much in accord with the principles of reason and morality as the Western system, which determines the relations of European inde- pendent states and other like states of the civilised world. To the rules and principles which constitute the new system I shall, throughout this treatise, give the name of Indian political law. That expression, though occasionally used in official documents, has not yet acquired any general currency. It is therefore open to all the objections of novelty. I am aware that the expression may not be regarded as a particu- larly happy one ; for the word ' political ' is used in the tech- nical sense in which it is commonly used in India, but not elsewhere. In India we have long meant by political business, business connected with the native states ; and by political officers, officers charged with that business. If there were diplomatic relations between independent states in India and the British Government, the political officers would be diplo- matists, and their business would be diplomacy. There are no independent states within the protectorate ; so the rela- tions between the states and the paramount power are not INTERNATIONAL LAW AND THE INDIAN PROTECTORATE 7 diplomatic but political. I adhere to the expression Indian political law, mainly because it appears to me less objection- able than any other with which I am acquainted for the description of the same thing. Such a phrase as Indian international law is misleading. Indian states are not nations ; and any compendious name for the Indian substi- tute for international law should mark the fact that the rela- tions between the British Government and its Indian feuda- tories are governed by another law, and not by international law as generally understood. The term ' interstatal law ' is more cumbrous and, perhaps, even more objectionable on substantive grounds. It would, I suppose, literally mean the law applicable to the relations of the Indian states one with another ; but it is of the essence of the whole system that they have no such relations. As already said, they have no foreign relations except with the paramount power ; and if the law regulating the only set of foreign relations which they have is described as interstatal law, that seems to put the paramount power on a level with the states and to count it as one state amongst the number, which is quite contrary to the fact. Possibly the expression ' interstatal law,' if used at aU, might be used to denote certain rules for extradi- tion, and for the disposal of cases in which more than one state or the subjects of more than one state are concerned. But the states themselves cannot frame such rules by diplo- matic discussion and agreement. They must proceed through the intervention of the paramount power ; and any such rules must be founded on agreements separately made with the British Government by each state concerned, or must be authoritatively prescribed by the British Government itself. Accordingly, by interstatal law I should mean only a part, and a smaU. part, of Indian political law. For aU these reasons I ■ use the expression Indian political law to denote the rules and principles governing the relations which now exist between the British Government and the Indian feudatory states. It does not follow from anything I have said,, that within" the sphere of Indian political law intefnationaL law has absolutely no application. In internal relations ' the feuda-- t'ory states enjoy in different degrees a large measure of autonomy, of which the most characteristic mark is immunity, not in aU cases an absolute immunity, but in the great majority of cases a substantially Complete im- munity, from foreign law. The states exercise distinct jurisdictions ; they are internally governed by different OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE authorities, each possessing its own municipal law, and they are permanently united in the bonds of peace. Differ- ences are therefore settled by peaceful means, and war and embargo and reprisals, the legal means of redress akin to war, are not, as in international law, the ultimate sanction of just observances. Thus we have, on the one hand, to sweep away as irrelevant the large mass of international law which is concerned with the rights and duties of belligerents and neutrals, and similar rights and duties arising out of actual or prospective war ; while, on the other hand, there remains a body of usage and argument, largely concerned with matters of comity, derived from the peaceful intercourse of nations, and adjusted to the decision of those questions which naturally arise from the severance of laws, jurisdictions, and internal politics. Some part of this residuum falls away, not from any effect of principle, but as a mere consequence of political geography : with a few exceptions- on the western and southern coasts, the feudatory states have no seaboard ; and none of them are, properly speaking, maritime states. Hence maritime questions have but a small place in Indian political law. But, as between the suzerain and the feuda- tories, there are in India, as in Europe, legations, nego- tiations, treaties, and other agreements. The position of Eesidents and political agents, though it does not exactly resemble, is analogous to that of ambassadors and other public officers representing states ; boundary disputes have occasionally to be determined; there is ex-territorial, juris- diction, and there are usual demands on both sides for the extradition of persons accused of offences. In these and similar matters the determining rule must be sought pri- marily in Indian law or usage or agreement ; but if that law is silent or does not apply, and if precedents fail and compacts do not meet the case, or if it is desired to support upon broader grounds a decision which might be established from these materials, it is a perfectly legitimate process Of Indian policy to turn to international law for the purpose of ascertaining how far rules elicited and formulated by Western experience may be usefully apphed to solve an Indian diffi- culty. If in any question between itself and a native govern- ment the British Government appeals to international law, the other party has no ground of complaint, because the nature of the appeal at once places it for the purposes of the particular case in a higher and better position than it is politically entitled to claim. No native state can quote the INTERNATIONAL LAW AND THE INDIAN PEOTECTORATE 9 principles of international law against the British Govern- ment, because to do so would be to assert the position of equality, which all those principles presuppose. But the British Government may, if it pleases to do so in a particular case, argue out a difference of opinion with a native state on a footing of assumed equality ; and whatever else the British Government may be entitled to claim from its feudatories, they can never pretend to owe it less than would, on the principles of iriternational law, be conceded by one indepen- dent European state to another. Subject to these limitations j international law stands to Indian political law very much in the relation of the Eoman law to the law of nations. It does not of its own force bind either party ; an immense deal of it has necessarily no application to the case : it has originated under totally different circumstances, and been developed with a view to totally different ends ; but in some questions it may often be found an important and useful guide, because the matter of it, over a somewhat narrow field, either actually coincides or without far-fetched analogy may be made to coincide with the matter of Indian political law, and because its rules, though belonging to a different civilisation, are often supported by reasonings applicable to all civilised societies and by the experience and assent of the Western civilised world. I shall by-and-by endeavour to show that the Indian political system is intimately connected with the past, not merely of British India or of the British Government in India, but of the Indian continent in times preceding British rule. I am here considering Indian political law merely as so much positive law — as the law whichj as a matter of fact, now obtains, and which has to support it the sanctions which can be exercised by a supreme political authority. It is not open to the objection sometimes raised against inter- national law, that it is in fact no law, because nations have no common superior capable of enforcing the supposed pre- cepts. The superior is there, and the precepts can be enforced without difficulty. But if in this respect Indian political law has a more definite shape than international law, it is much more indefinite in the matter of expression. Some of the sources of political law are, indeed, open to any one who brings industry and perseverance to the pro- secution of research. A great deal of matter is to be found in the published despatches of the Indian Government, in various Parliamentary blue-books, and in the well-known 10 OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE histories of India. The great work of reference is the collection of treaties, engagements, and sanads by Sir Charles Aitchison. Amongst other works bearing on the subject may be mentioned Malcolm's ' Central India ' and ' Pohtical History ; ' Sutherland's ' Sketches of the Eelations subsisting between the British Government of India and the different Native States ' (Calcutta, 1833) ; and Prinsep's ' History of the Political and Military Transactions in India during the Administration of the Marquess of Hastings ' (London, 1825). Political law has occasionally taken the form of statute law, as in the case of some of the old Eegu- lations, of certain provisions in the Penal Code and the Codes of Civil and Criminal Procedure, and of the Indian Extradi- tion Act, 1879 ; and I must not omit to mention that ques- tions involving issues of political law have sometimes, though rarely, been decided by the Indian High Courts and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. But the source of this law, which has supreme importance, is without doubt usage — the actual practice of the Indian Government itself in its dealings with its feudatories. This usage is ascer- tainable partly from some matters of history and notoriety, but mainly from the records of the Government and a variety of minutes and notes and compilations of a confidential character prepared by competent authorities in the course of their official duties. The records and documents of this description are not, of course, open to the public ; but it is weU-known in Indian official circles, and may, without objection, be mentioned here, that the rapid and systematic development of Indian political law during the last thirty years is largely due to the labours in the Indian Foreign Office of Sir Charles Aitchison himself. Sir Mortimer Durand, the present Foreign Secretary, and Colonel Sir West Eidge- way, sometime at the head of the Afghan Boundary Commis- sion ; and in the Indian Legislative Department, to the exertions of Sir Dennis Fitzpatrick, now Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab, and of successive Law Members of Council, Sir Henry Maine, Sir J. Fitzjames Stephen, Lord Hobhouse, Mr. Whitley Stokes, and Mr. C. P. Ilbert. In speaking of the systematic character of Indian poli- tical law, I mean that there are certain broad principles, now acknowledged on all sides, from which deductions may be safely drawn in particular cases; and that in a great number of leading cases deductions have been drawn from these principles, or the principles themselves have been INTERNATIONAL LAW AND THE INDIAN PEOTECTOEATE 11 directly applied, or decisions have been arrived at which are in harmony with the principles and add to the available list of intelligible and useful precedents. The objects, for example, of the political system are distinctly perceived. Thus, while the great end of international law is the. pre- servation in undiminished vigour and independence of the political communities subject to it and by reason of whose assent and course of action it exists, the great ends of Indian political law are the maintenance of the supremacy of the paramount power, whose guardianship is the security for the peace of the whole Indian continent, the preservation of the autonomy of the feudatory states, and the assurance to the diversified populations of those states that they shall enjoy freedom from gross misrule. And the acknowledged principles directed to the attainment of these ends are fairly numerous. Thus the feudatory states have no power of confederacy ; their territories can only be increased through the British Government, which has the right to regulate their armaments ; the invasion of one state by the forces of another would be a breach of allegiance ; the states are bound to act in subordinate co-operation with the British Government and to acknowledge its supremacy. On the other hand, the British Government is bound to protect and defend them from aU external enemies ; and it follows (to borrow the language of Sir Charles Aitchison) — ' first, that the British Government not only may do, but is bound to do, everything really necessary for the common defence and the defence of native states ; second, that the native states are bound to permit everything to be done that the British Government determines to be necessary for the efiicient dis- charge of that duty ; third, that they are bound to abstain from every course of action that may be declared dangerous to the common safety or the safety of other states ; fourth, to co-operate with the British Government to their utmost means.' In the correspondence relating to Manipur which has been laid before Parliament, the Government of India has declared that it is their right and duty to uphold native chiefs recognised by them, except in cases of gross mis- rule, and to punish unlawful revolt against their authority. Political officers also are instructed generally to use their influence to maintain the existing order of things in native states, and civil war in a native state would in no case be permitted to continue. The dismemberment of native states by will, partition, or inheritance is not 12 OUR INDIAN PEOTECTORATE allowed ; and it is the desire of the British Government to perpetuate native governments in accordance with their laws and customs relating to the succession to chiefships. The sovereignty of the chiefs being limited in various degrees, what are the actual limitations in any particular case is si question of fact ; but no chief has a right to mis- govern his territory. Minute and frequent interference is prohibited ; for it would obviously destroy the responsibihty of the chief and the autonomy of his government. As a rule, isolated cases of alleged injustice or contumacy are disregarded ; but barbarous practices are not tolerated, and a course of oppression would shortly meet with some appropriate remedy. It will perhaps make the position clearer if I show how these principles would affect an individual ruler. For ob- vious reasons, I will take no actual case, but rather attempt to sketch a type to which the majority of cases approximate ; and I will suppose that the chief is an important one, not of the numerous class in whose territories a great part of the criminal jurisdiction is exercised by officers of the British Government. Such a chief would have the power of life and death over his subjects ; and though there is no such thing in native states as legislation, as we understand it, he could promulgate laws or ordinances at his pleasure, and would in all probability be found to have adopted the most important Anglo-Indian codes with some slight modifications ; the whole patronage and administration of the state would be regulated by his wishes ; and, generally, on his internal sovereignty there would be few limitations other than those general limitations directed against misgovernment which apply to every state in India. In addition to the universal duties of allegiance and subordination, he might be bound to keep troops ready to serve with the British Army when required. He might or might not have to pay tribute. His state would have to pay a fine on any succession which was not in the direct line. The privilege of adopting a successor on failure of heirs would be recognised by imperial grant or sanad. The raja, as I may caU the supposed chief, would not have the right of building new fortresses or strongholds, or repairing the defences of existing fortresses or strongholds, except with the previous permission of the British Govern- ment. He would give, free of all charge, lands required for main roads of communication, railways, telegraphs, and British cantonments ; and in these cantonments and on rail- INTEENATIONAL LAW AND THE INDIAN PEOTECTOEATE 13 ways constituting parts of a ^rough line of communication he would leave all jurisdiction to be exercised by British authorities. In employing a military force for the mainte- nance of internal order and his personal dignity, or for any other purposes, he would not exceed the strength which might be fixed from time to time by the Governor-General in Council. He would abstain from entertaining in his service (except upon permission) any person other than a native of India. He would not interfere with the afiairs of any other state or power, and would have no communication with any other state or power, except through the medium of the British Government. He would, on demand duly made, cause to be arrested and surrendered to the proper officers of the British Government any person within his territories accused of having committed an offence in British India. Plenary jurisdiction over European British subjects in his territories would be vested in the Governor-General in Council; and in respect of these persons the raja would exercise only such jurisdiction as might be delegated to him by that authority. The connection of most of these rights and obligations with the general principles already mentioned is, in most instances, sufficiently obvious : in some cases I shall hereafter offer explanations of that connection. Questions of mihtary service, tribute, and adoption would usually be settled by treaty or other written engagement ; but every other item of duty in the list just given could, I think, be enforced as a rule of pohtical law, or, to put the same thing another way, as a part of general political usage, whether the obligation had been accepted or declared in any written instrument or not. Perhaps the most striking feature which the Indian pro- tectorate presents to the student of politics is the remarkable illustration which it affords of the divisibihty of sovereignty. It has been said that the indivisibihty of sovereignty belongs to Austin's system ; but Austin himself was constrained by facts which would not easily square with his definitions to admit that sovereignty might be divided. 'A political society,' he says (vol. i. p. 187), 'which is not independent is a member or constituent parcel of a political society which is. Or (changing the expression) the powers or rights of subordinate pohtical superiors are merely emanations of sovereignty. They are merely particles of sovereignty committed by sovereigns to subjects.' And further on {ibid. 14 OUR INDIAN PROTECTOEATE p. 211), when he came to discuss semi-sovereign states, he contended that every government 'deemed imperfectly supreme ' is either entirely subject to another government, or entirely independent, or jointly sovereign with the other government, and therefore a ' constituent member of a government supreme and independent.' It needs no discus- sion to show that this strained language is quite inapplicable to the Indian states of the protectorate. 'Particles of sovereignty ' are not committed by the paramount power to its feudatories ; on the contrary, one of the chief marks of Indian sovereignty is the exercise of certain powers of government without the delegation of any authority to exer- cise them under any British enactment. And it would be almost ludicrous to argue that any ruling chief is a con- stituent member of the supreme government of the British empire. Nor, if we take the description of a sovereign government quoted, with some approval, by Sir Henry Maine from the late Mr. Montague Bernard, do we find a definition which fits the Indian facts. ' By a sovereign government,' said Mr. Bernard, ' we mean a government, however constituted, which exercises the power of making and enforcing law within a community and is not itself sub- ject to any superior government.' AU the Indian states are subject to a superior government ; and of their powers of internal sovereignty, that of taking revenue is certainly more conspicuous than that of making laws. The immunity which they enjoy from foreign or British laws is, as I have said, not quite absolute ; and that is a point requiring some ex- planation. In the first place, by a succession of Acts of Parliament, the Legislative Council of the Governor-General has been empowered to make laws for servants of the British Govern- ment and European British subjects in native states, and for native Indian subjects of her Majesty wherever they may be. Articles of War may also be made for her Majesty's Indian Army, wheresoever serving ; and laws may be made for all persons employed or serving in or belonging to her Majesty's Indian Marine Service whose vessels are within the limits of Indian waters as defined by statute. Apart from the requirements of the army and navy which have been met, these powers have been exercised mainly under the heads of criminal law, Christian marriage and the divorce of Christians, succession to private property, railways, the post office, telegraphs, and income tax. By far the most INTERNATIONAL LAW AND THE INDIAN PEOTECTOKATE 15 important provisions are those of the criminal law, which will be discussed in anothei* chapter. The immunity from foreign law is not, of course, infringed by these enactments. Every independent state can make laws binding on its own subjects wherever they may be. But the jurisdiction exer- cised under these enactments has some resemblance to the British consular jurisdiction in the East generally ; though in India, so far as the jurisdiction is exercised by British officials, the sovereignty is really shared between the British and the native governments. In the second place, British laws made by the Governor- General in Council in his executive capacity — not by the Indian Legislative Council — may be in' force in parts of native states. This may occur when the jurisdiction has been ceded by the native government, as in the case of lands occupied by railways on through lines of communica- tion. Another class of cases in which this state of things exists might be described by saying that we have adopted in India the doctrine of exterritoriality. We hold that, within the limits of British political residencies and of British cantonments situated in native states, the laws of British India may be applied by the act of the Governor-General in Council without any cession of jurisdiction by the native government. They are so applied habitually in the case of British cantonments ; and we may, if we please, justify an arrangement of obvious necessity by borrowing from inter- national law the doctrine that there is a continuation or prolongation of the territory to which the military body belongs. Such an argument might silence but would hardly satisfy a native durbdr ; and it seems safest and best to advance the actual ground as the ostensible one, and to claim the right of administering our own laws with respect to our own armies in our own way, as a part of the pre- rogative of the paramount power charged with the military organisation and defence of the empire. Thirdly, British laws may be brought into force in native state territory by the chief himself, or by an officer of the British Government acting on behalf of the chief in conse- quence of his minority or other disability. Some of the Punjab states, for instance, have adopted the Indian Penal Code and the Codes of Criminal and Civil Procedure, doubtless with some modification. The states of Puddukottai, Sandur, Cochin, and Travancore, under the government of Madras, either follow certain British enactments as laws of the state or have 16 OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE made regulations after tlie fashion of British laws and for the most part based upon them. In all this, of course, there is no exception to the usual rule of immunity from foreign law because the law, though it happens to coincide with foreign law, is in fact the home-made copy edited by the chief of the state or some officer acting in his behalf. There are thus two conspicuous exceptions to the usual rule : first, when the legislature passes certain laws of personal application, and these laws are administered by British officials within the limits of the native state ; and, secondly, when the Governor-General in Council in his executive capacity makes laws of territorial application. In the second case, it has hap- pened occasionally' that the Governor-General in Council has had to supply a complete body of law for a great extent of native territory for very prolonged periods ; and where this is the case it seems a very unnecessary refinement to put forward a theory of delegated power or jurisdiction ; more especially as in at least one very conspicuous instance the British Government was so far from acting with the consent of the raja that it had set him aside for misgoverning his state. For half a century British laws were applied in My- sore by the authority of the Executive Government ; and the laws so introduced were maintained in force as one of the conditions of the restoration of the state to native rule. In the assigned districts of Berar, which are held by the British Government in trust for the payment of the troops of the Hyderabad Contingent and certain other charges, the surplus revenues being paid over to the Nizam, British laws have been and still continue to be brought into force as orders of the Governor-General in Council. In this case, and sometimes also in the case of laws introduced in British cantonments in native states, language is used implying that a law is extended to the foreign territory ; but this language, though sufficiently expressive for popular use, is technically wrong. The local extent of the British law remains un- altered; it could be altered only by legislation. The Governor-General in Council in his executive capacity makes for_ foreign territory under British administration a law which may be an exact copy of a British law, but is more commonly a copy with certain unimportant modifications designed to suit it to the locality. It will be understood that I do not attempt to exhaust, but merely to illustrate the circumstances under which British laws may come to be in force in native states. As INTERNATIONAL LAW AND THE INDIAN PROTECTORATE 17 regards other limitations on internal sovereignty, the varia- tions are extremely numerous, and range from almost com- plete autonomy to the merely nominal preservation of the last remnants of sovereignty. Not to discuss the position of such states as Hyderabad, Sindhia's and Holkar's do- minions, Baroda, and Kashmir, the Phiilki^n rulers in the Punjab — the chiefs, that is,of Patidla, Jhind, andNdbha — have powers of life and death in their territories, and the British Government has undertaken by written agreement to enter- tain no complaints from their subjects. In such an empire as India, where the paramount power is practically respon- sible for misrule supported by its authority, autonomy could no further go ; indeed, the concession to the Phiilkian states must be understood to be limited by the general rule, esta- blished by practice throughout the empire, that gross mis- government will not be allowed. At the other end of the scale we have petty chiefs, if such they can be called, in Kdthiawdr, who are not permitted to exercise any civil juris- diction, and whose powers in criminal cases are limited to passing sentences of fifteen days' rigorous imprisonment and twenty-five rupees fine. Between these extremes we have numerous gradations. The commonest case is that of a chief who may pass every sort of sentence, such as might be passed in British territory, except a capital one, but whose capital sentences require the confirmation of some British oJficer, usually a Lieutenant-Governor or Chief Commissioner, but sometimes a commissioner of division. In some very petty states the chief has powers no greater than those of our district officers or of magistrates subordinate to such officers. Wherever the criminal jurisdiction of any state is not com- pletely vested in the chief and his officers, so much of it as does not belong to him and them is termed the residuary jurisdiction, and is vested in the British Government. Such jurisdiction is exercised by servants of the British Govern- ment in general conformity with British laws ; and to the extent of the apphcation of these laws in this manner the immunity of the state from foreign criminal law is neces- sarily impaired. This partition of criminal jurisdiction stands by no means alone as an illustration of the division of sovereignty, but it is the most conspicuous and clearest illus- tration of that division; and it is with an eye to criminal jurisdiction that we can most readily perceive how true it is that in any given case the actual distribution of the attributes c 18 ODE INDIAN PROTECTOKATE of sovereignty between tlie paramount power and its feuda- tories is a question of fact. The remarks made throughout this chapter have implied the doctrine of the divisibility of sovereignty and the distinc- tion, which foUows upon that doctrine, between sovereignty and independence. In later pages I shall have more to say on the divisibility of sovereignty ; in this introductory chapter I may quote an undoubted authority alike for the doctrine and for the distinction which is its corollary. In a minute on the Kdthiawir states, dated March 22, 1864, Sir Henry Maine writes : ' Sovereignty is a term which in interna- tional law indicates a well-ascertained assemblage of sepa- rate powers and privileges. The rights which form part of the aggregate are specifically named by the publicists, who distinguish them as the right to make war and peace, the right to administer civil and criminal justice, the right to legislate, and so forth. A sovereign who possesses the whole of this aggregate of rights is called an independent sovereign, but there is not, nor has there ever been, anything in international law to prevent some of those rights being lodged with one possessor and some with another. Sove- reignty has always been regarded as divisible. ... It may perhaps be worth observing that, according to the more precise language of modern publicists, " sovereignty " is divi- sible, but " independence " is not. Although the expression " partial independence " may be popularly used, it is techni- cally incorrect. Accordingly, there may be found in India every shade and variety of sovereignty, but there is only one independent sovereign, the British Government. My reason for offering a remark which may perhaps appear pedantic is that the Indian Government seems to me to have occasionally exposed itself to misconstruction by admitting or denying the independence of particular states, when in fact it meant to speak of their sovereignty.' It was a privilege of the great genius of Sir Henry Maine to hght up vast spaces of remote and obscure subjects by the electric radiance 'of luminous ideas. Again and again, as though by a turn of the hand, he brought together facts or conceptions seemingly of opposite poles ; and from the unexpected contact has often streamed a bright, far- reaching and lasting illumination, guiding the humbler re- searches of his contemporaries or followers. The words I have quoted from his Kdthiawdr minute connect some prin- ciples of European international law with the paramount INTERNATIONAL LAW AND THE INDIAN PKOTECTORATE 19 position of the Indian Government. The course of a modern nation amid archaic societies and states of a type no longer seen in Western Europe may often be dark or dubious. But the theory of the divisibility of sovereignty, not indeed invented but applied by Sir Henry Maine, stands out, as it were, on an eminence crowning the whole expanse before us, and, like a glowing core of hght, immensely facilitates a straight and safe voyage over the wide and confused sea of Indian politics. 20 OUB INDIA^V' PKOTECTOKATE CHAPTER II THE EARLY GROWTH OF THE PROTECTORATE In the article which I quoted at the beginning of the last chapter Sir Alfred Lyall points to one of the tendencies which have combined to form the Indian protectorate. In India we have habitually interposed a zone of protected country between our own virtual or actual possessions and the territories of possible enemies. Eventually we have often overleapt this zone, and the frontier protectorate has been converted into an internal protectorate, the protected states coming to be surrounded by British territory. Sir Alfred Lyall nistances Oudh, which came to be surrounded by British districts in 1801 and continued to be a protected state till its annexation in 1856, the Edjpiit states in Central India, and the feudatory states on the Sutlej. These in- stances are sound and may be slightly amplified, and others may be given. In 1765 the dominions of the defeated and prostrate Wazir of Oudh were, with certain exceptions, restored to him because it was considered expedient that they should be preserved as a barrier against the Marhattas. When the French force of the Nizam of the Deccan, orga- nised by the then lately deceased M. Eaymond, was dis- banded by the armed diplomacy of Lord Wellesley in 1798, the dominions of the Nizam became a protected state inter- posed between the possessions of the Marhatta powers and territories of which the East India Company was in one part the virtual and in another part the actual sovereign. By a long series of events — by cession of territory in payment for a subsidiary force, by conquest from the Marhattas, by the lapse of Nagpur — the dominions of the Nizam have been en- circled by British districts. When the Peshwa ceded terri- tory in Bundelkhand in 1803 the British Government retained a part in its own possession ; and the chiefs who held the rest were maintained in their territorial rights so that their country might be a kind of barricade against the inroads THE EARLY GROWTH OF THE PROTECTORATE 21 then meditated by Holkar. In the same year Lord Welles- ley, when giving instructions to Lord Lake in anticipation of the outbreak of the Marhatta war, informed him that it was not his intention to extend the actual possessions of the Company beyond the line of the Jumna, including Agra and Delhi, with a continued chain of forts to the west and south of the Jumna from the mountains of Kumaun to Bundel- khand, sufficient to secure to the British power the free navigation of the Jumna and the possession of both banks of that river. Within this line it was his intention to establish the system of the Company's government in all its branches, whilst he meant to regulate connections formed beyond that line on the principle of defensive alliance or tributary dependence in such manner as to form between the actual possessions of the Marhattas and the Company a barrier of petty states exercising their internal government in alliance with the Company and under the protection of its power. A little later on, in 1805 and 1806, when Lord Cornwallis in his second brief tenure of office and his successor, Sir George Barlow, were reversing the policy of Lord WeUesley, Lord Lake at their bidding formed a belt of petty chieftaincies on the further side of the Jumna, not indeed as protected states, for the object was to abstain from interference west of the Jumna, but still as ' buffer-states ' between ourselves and the possessions of Sindhia in Hindustan. In 1809 the for- mation of the Cis-Sutlej protectorate stemmed the aggres- sive incursions of the Sikh Maharaja, Eanjit Singh. The object of the treaties made in 1817 and 1818 with the E^jput chiefs of Edjpiitdna was the establishment of a barrier against the predatory sj'^stem of the Pinddris and against the extension of the power of Sindhia and Holkar beyond the limits which the Government designed to impose. The enor- mous sweep of British conquest which took in successively Sindh, the Jullundur DoAb, and the rest of the Punjab in 1843, 1 846, and 1849, closed in on the west and north around Central India and Edjpiitdna taken together and the Cis- Sutlej chiefships the big ring of British dominion which had already arisen or was then arising on all other sides. Actual conquest thus alternated with the extension of preponderating influence in making the protectorate what it is. But the conversion of frontier protectorates into internal protectorates was only one of a long series of complicated historical causes which have jointly brought about the existing position. To explain these causes in full detail Tl OUR INDIAN PEOTECTORATE would be to repeat a great part of the political history of India for the last hundred and thirty years, and some part of the history of India which preceded the rise of the British power. It would be necessary to show how and why it was that the East India Company became a political power in the course of the wars with the French in the Carnatic, and a great territorial power as a consequence of the virtual conquest of Bengal ; and how and why it was that the Bri- tish Government, aheady a great territorial power — for the supreme political authority of the Company had then passed to the Board of Control— became the paramount power by the wars and negotiations of Lord WeUesley, by the policy interrupted by his immediate successors, but carried to com- pletion by Lord Hastings. I say a great part of the pohtical history of more than a century, because there are some wars and conquests in which the Indian Government has been engaged which have no bearing on its position as a para- mount power in respect to its feudatories. For the purpose of explaining the origin and development of the Indian pro- tectorate, we might, in great measure, leave out of account the wars with Nepal and Burma and Afghanistan. Important as these wars were in extending the empire, the events which gave rise to them belong to a different order ; they were con- nected with the external poHtics of British India, and with the right of every independent political authority to preserve its territories inviolate from foreign interference or aggres- sion ; they formed little part of the succession of occurrences which have given shape and consistency to the internal organisation of the empire in regard to the relations of the governing body with the Indian maharajas, rajas, and nawdbs. Perhaps the onty result of these wars which it would be necessary to notice would be the inclusion within the protectorate of a number of Hill states dehvered by our- selves from the overlordship of Nepal. But I entertain no such ambitious aim as the production of a new political history of India written with the object of explaining the growth of the protectorate. I shall merely venture to offer some observations which, I hope, may be found suggestive and not unsound, so far as they go ; and I may be able to indicate without any undue trespass on time or attention that the first cardinal principle of the whole system — the maintenance of the supremacy of the paramount power— originates in the policy of Lord Wellesley and Lord Hastings ; that the second cardinal principle, the preserva- THE EAHLY GEOWTH OF THE PKOTECTOEATE 23 tion of the autonomy of the feudatory states, was clearly expressed in the proceedings* which followed the mutiny during the viceroyalty of Lord Canning, and has since been very emphatically affirmed by acts and proclamations of the Government; and that the third cardinal principle, the denial of any ' right divine to govern wrong,' has been estabhshed by the course taken by the Government on many occasions, and notably in the annexation of Oudh and the trial and deposition of the Gaekwar of Baroda. Just as it is the object of European international law to preserve the peace of Europe, so the peace of the Indian continent is now actually maintained by the effectual enforce- ment of the theory of the supremacy of the paramount power. But if we look back to the second half of the last century, when the dissolution of the Moghal empire left poli- tical authority to be the booty of predatory violence, there was, in fact, no law of territorial possession though there were many territorial powers. The theoretically acknow- ledged suzerainty of the Delhi emperors was habitually set at defiance by usurpation and rebelhon, and the limits of states and of the internal authority of rulers was no more than could for the time being be defended or asserted at the sword's point. It would be a mistake to suppose that the soldiers and administrators, who laid in those days the foundations of the British Indian empire by exploits in the fiield and treaties with native potentates, entertained any distinctly conceived theory of public law as regulating the relations of the states with which they were brought in contact. So far as they in practice acted upon any theory at all, they subscribed, in common with the considerable country powers, of which, indeed, the East India Company soon formed one, to the fiction of the supremacy of the House of Delhi — a fiction which had survived the decline of the imperial power, when the always intermittent control of the kings of Delhi over their provincial viceroys had ceased to be a pohtical principle capable of actual enforcement. Asaf Jah, the Nizam of the Deccan, was certainly independent of the Delhi court when he died in 1748 ; and the Nawdb of the Carnatic was, according to the idea of native govern- ments, the deputy of the Nizam. But, as is shown by the history alike of the Madras and of the Bengal presidencies, it was still thought necessary to conduct affairs of state in the shadow, so to speak, of the throne of Delhi. Thus when, by the overthrow of the French, Muhammad Ali was esta- 24 OUR IXDIAX PROTECTORATE blished, in 1763, as the Naw^b of the Carnatic, he conferred on the Enghsh, in consideration of their services and the debts which he had contracted to them, districts yielding an annual revenue of some four-and-a-half lakhs of pagodas. The Delhi emperor was really quite impotent to sanction or regulate the gift ; but the Company obtained from the court of Delhi a jirmdn in confirmation of it. So also the grant of Masuhpatam and other districts known as the Northern Sirkdrs, made by the Nizam of the Deccan himself in 1759, was confirmed by the Emperor of Delhi in 1765, just at the time when the Company became Dewdn, or chief revenue officer, of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa. And, indeed, it is in the history of those parts of India that the longevity of the political fiction of the supremacy of the House of Delhi is most conspicuously seen. Surdj-ud-Daula, the naw4b respon- sible for the tragedy of the 'Black Hole,' though his inherited authority had originated in usurpation, was, so far as he could pretend to the legitimate title of a ruler, the suhaddr, or governor, of an imperial province. The English fought with him, made treaties with him, joined a confederacy formed among his chief officers to depose him, defeated him at the battle of Plassey, and set up Mir J4fir Ali in his stead. They next deposed Mir Jafir Ali in favour of his son-in-law, Mir Kdsim Ali, and then deposed Mir K4sim Ali and set up Mir JAfir Ali again. Another great official of the empire practically exercising independent power — Nawab Shuja-ud- Daula, the Wazir of Oudh — under the pretence of espousing the cause of Mir Kdsim Ali, invaded Behar. His army was completely routed at the battle of Buxar, and he subsequently threw himself on the generosity of the English. As I have said, the whole of his dominions were restored to him ex- cept Allahabad and Korah, which were given to the Delhi emperor. The Delhi court had for years exercised no sub- stantial authority in Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, and the English were in fact in the position of successful usurpers. They had ousted by force of arms a governor who, if he originally had a slightly better title than their own, had forfeited all claim to their consideration by attacking their settlenient and permitting disgraceful cruelties to be practised on their people. And they did precisely what other usurpers in the same part of the empire had done before them. They applied to the Delhi emperor for patents. Clive thought it worth while to obtain from the emperor, who was entirely in his power, a. firman or royal grant appointing the Company THE EAELY GROWTH OF THE PEOTECTOEATE 25 dewdn or revenue minister of the provinces where it was already supreme. « The tediousness of Indian history is proverbial; and there is perhaps no period which, at first sight, appears less instructive than that of the decline and fall of the Moghal empire. It seems a phantasmagoria of rapine and treachery, a confusing dream of intrigue and bloodshed, where reckless aspirants for ephemeral power are continually engaged in internecine contests, unredeemed by any enno- bhng principle, and usually to all appearance motiveless, except so far as motives are supphed by lust of plunder and mere aggrandisement. But, amidst all the confusion, a few principles of action stand out in clear relief, and give some semblance of human dignity to struggles otherwise hardly removed from_ those which, in a lower order of beings, bring about the survival of the fittest. "We can see how, in the absence of any strong controlling authority, the states of India were not only torn by mutual dissensions, but exposed to the desolating ravages of invasion from without ; how there were, to some extent, wars of creeds, the Muhamma- dans against the Hindus or the Sikhs, and wars of races, the North against the South ; above all, how there was a contest between civilisation brought from the West and institutions of an early type which, for reasons to be given at length later on, I may call prse-feudal. In this period of anarchy Northern India feU a prey to the standing danger of barbaric irruption ; and the incursions of Nddir Shah and Ahmad Shah Abddli recall the means by which the more martial part of the population has been recruited in former ages, and the days when an Alaric or an Attila poured into the India of Europe their hosts of Goths or Huns. The Moghal empire was inherently weak. Even at its best, it had to struggle with the difficulties of foreign rule by men who were not merely of a different creed from the mass of those they governed, but were sometimes intolerant of the religion of their subjects ; it had to contend with the consequences of a bad law of succession, leading to revolu- tions and civil wars on the death of almost every emperor; and it was impossible to hold distant governors in check, when office generally tended to become hereditary, when public morality practically did not exist, and when there were no metalled roads, no railways, and no telegraphs. In addition to all this, the emperors had to reckon with two opposing creeds, each resembling the other in the fact that 26 OUE INDIAN PEOTECTOEATB something like national enthusiasm was combined with a similitude of military organisation. In Northern India the Sikhs and in Southern India the Marhattas represented the revival of indigenous faiths antagonistic to the spread of the state rehgion; and though neither the Sikhs nor the Marhattas ever attained to the position of nations in the European sense of the term, they more nearly approached to the status of nationality than any other political commu- nities of which modern Indian history takes count. As one province after another fell away by overt rebellion or persis- tent disobedience, and as the already tottering empire was shattered to fragments by the repeated blows of Afghdns and Persians on the one side and the Marhattas on the other, on the coasts of India adventurous powers of the West, having gained their footing by the unaccustomed passage of the sea, had begun, as between themselves, the world-wide contest which in every quarter of the globe has ended with the expansion of England. The French and English, in espousing the causes of princes and pretenders, fought alike for self-preservation and supremacy. Civilisa- tion was in the end to triumph over anarchy ; and one of the means of its success was to be military discipline, before which the rougher methods of native warfare were destined to give way. It has often been pointed out that Dupleix was the first to perceive the certain consequences of the break-up of the Moghal empire, and the conditions upon which territorial power was to be acquired. As soon as the strength of military discipline was felt in the incessant hostilities of the Deccan and Hindustan, it became certain that one or other of the contending European powers would win, in the general scuffle for political authority, at least some local preponderance, and possibly or probably some extensive dominion. The Enghsh, indeed, set the example of inter- ference in the affairs of native states, but were drawn some- what against their will into the hostihties which arose out of the intrigues of Dupleix for supremacy in the Deccan. But as a rule they were ready to fight the French in any part of the world ; and in the absence of steamships and telegraphs, a true perception of the essential conditions of the struggle underlay Chve's unhesitating message from the card-table to Colonel Forde, whom he instructed to fight the Dutch immediately, though at the time in Europe Holland was at peace with the British Crown. In the life-and-death contest THE EAELr GROWTH OF THE PBOTECTOKATE 27 wMch was then taking place no risk could be run of the effective competition of any%)ther Western power upon which the country princes might rely in designs of coercing the British. It may be freely admitted that there were incidents in the early wars and negotiations of the Company which would not bear the test of international morality ; but I do not propose to enter here upon discussions of which readers of Indian history are a little tired. No one at this date will defend the trick practised upon Omichund ; yet if his treachery was punished by deceit, supported by the falsification of papers, still the expedient of silencing a treacherous associate by a forged deed was one which the native courts of the day would have regarded rather as adroit than culpable. If, for the sake of argument, we assume that Warren Hastings, though acquitted by the House of Lords, was guilty of the offences placed at the head and front of his alleged offending ; that he was not justified in employing the troops of his Govermnent against the Eohilla chiefs, though they may have been dangerous to the British and to their protected dependent-chieftain, the NawAb of Oudh ; that he made unwarrantable demands on Chet Singh, the Eaja of Benares ; and that when he agreed to the Oudh contributions being raised from the Begums he connived at or joined in an act of spoliation — we have not, under any of these counts, a single act which would have troubled the conscience or shocked the sense of right of any Marhatta chief or imperial governor. It would serve no useful purpose to dwell upon what may be blots in the • early pages of that long record of Indian achievements of which, as a whole, the English nation is justly proud. I refer to these matters merely because I have to remark that just as, in the first instance, so far as we accepted any theory at all, we accepted the current Indian theory of the relations of states, so our first methods of policy were Oriental in aim and, to some extent. Oriental in execution. In Western and Central India the Peshwas usurped the authority of the House of Sivaji, and were themselves sup- planted by Sindhia, a general and chieftain of the Marhatta Confederacy. In Northern India Sindhia himself, while affecting to be the prime minister of the empire, was in reality the master of the House of Tamerlane. In Southern India a successful Muhammadan general held in durance the Hindu Eaja of Mysore. At the time there was nothing singular in -the appearance on the scene of a new set of mayors of the OUE INDIAN PROTECTORATE palace. The territorial founders of the British Indian empire posed as the supporters of some puppet prince, a JSTawdb of Arcot or a Nawdb of Murshidabad — a pretender set up by themselves, and by themselves deprived of all but the page- antry of independence. They behaved like the other vassals of the empire, of whom they made themselves one. Pro- fessing, vrhen it suited them to do so, to act under the nominal authority of the Great Moghal, they were not really guided by any theory of international law or by any theory of Indian pohtical law. They were guided by the exigencies of the time and the stern necessities of self-preservation. Like other Indian potentates of the day, they alternately ignored the imperial authority or sought the excuse or condonation of imperial recognition. Like their rivals, they placed their military force at the disposal of those who were able to pay for it. The usual resource of a nawdb or raja who found himself in political difficulties was to call in the Marhattas ; and when the French and English also became military powers, the country princes called in the English and French, just as they had called in the Marhattas before. The French and English responded to the call, and, like the Marhattas, added to the general confusion by continually fighting each other. The readiness of the native states to accept military assistance from any competent quarter led to the second of the steps by which was gained the English supremacy. If the first general measure of policy which put power into British hands was the support of nominal naw^bs, whose professed adherents gradually came to exercise all real authority, the second measure was the gift of subsidiary forces to native states ; but here, I think, we may fairly draw a broad line of distinction between the acts of the East India Company through its officers and servants and the acts of the British, Parliament and Crown. Pitt's Act of 1784, by creating the Board of Control, directly connected the Supreme Government of India with the British Govern- ment of the day. The trial of Warren Hastings began on February l-S, 1788, and judgment was pronounced seven years afterwards, on April 23, 1795. It was a judgment of acquittal; but, broadly, the debates of that time showed that the British nation would not permit the politics of its Eastern empire to be regulated by Oriental ideas of political morality. The Acts of 1784 and 1793 recited that the pur- suit of. schemes of conquest and extension of dominion in THE EARLY GROWTH OF THE PROTECTORATE 29 India is repugnant to the wish, honour, and policy of the nation, and practically bound^he Government in India not to undertake wars except for purposes of defence, and not to make any but defensive alliances except with the sanction of the home authorities. Acts of Parliament were, indeed, impotent to stem the tide of dominion and supremacy, already expanding in directions determined by laws as sure in their operation as those of the physical universe. But the statute-book .bears witness to the better information and awakened conscience of the English people ; and from this time onwards it became impossible for the conduct of our affairs with native states to be regulated otherwise than upon some definite plan, which should be manifestly consistent with equity and humanity. The first plan was the work of Lord Cornwallis, the first English peer who was Governor-General, and it was doomed to almost immediate collapse. Probably he never fully realised the extent of the difference between the East and the West — a remark which now imputes no disparage- ment, because it is since his day that the deep chasms lying between the old world and the new, between ancient and modern societies, have been illuminated by comparative pohtics and comparative jurisprudence. At aU events, he imported into the discussions about the permanent settle- ment the Western ideas of the day on the subject of landed property; and as he succeeded in putting these ideas into practice in Bengal, so, in the Deccan, he adopted, with reference to the considerable native states, the Western theory of a balance of power. I am aware that Sir John Malcolm (' Political History,' vol. i. p. 85, note) asserts that Lord Cornwallis knew too weU the elements of which the native governments were formed ever to ground his mea- sures upon an imaginary balance of power, and that there is reason to believe that the suggestion of the possibility of a balance of power came from the Court of Directors. But it can be established by many proofs that even if Lord Corn- wallis never described his policy as one of a balance of power, it was, in point of fact, of that description. It will suffice to quote a memorandum, written probably in November 1804 by Major-General Wellesley, afterwards the Duke of Wellington. Speaking of the Peace of Seringapatam con- cluded in 1792, he says that it resulted from the war in which the three great powers — the Enghsh, the Peshwa, and the Nizam — ^had. joined, in consequence of each having 30 OUE INDIAN PROTECTORATE received injuries from Tippoo Sultan. ' The object,' he adds, ' of the British Government was, if possible, to preserve the power of each in the situation in which it was left by the pacification.' That is the same thing as the establish- ment of a balance of power. It is only just to Lord Corn- waUis to mention that he foresaw the difficulties and dangers to which the alliance would be exposed from the claims of the Marhattas for chauth over the Nizam's territory; and endeavoured without success to induce them to submit these claims to the arbitration of the British. In a very few years the Marhattas attacked the Mzam for the purpose of enforc- ing their claims ; the British Government of the day did not interfere, and under the treaty with the Marhattas, known as the Treaty of Kurdla, 1795, the Nizam was obliged to cede half his territories, pay a great sum of money, and give up his prime minister and appoint another recommended by his enemies. By dissensions amongst the Marhattas aU the power of the Peshwa fell into the hands of Daulat Eao Sindhia, who was in possession of the person of the King of Delhi and, by virtue of his position as deputy of the first minister of the empire, of the king's authority as weU. There was ' thus established in the hand of one Marhatta aU the territory and all the power on the west side of India, extending from Hardwar to the Toombudra, along the frontiers of the Company, the Nabob Vizier, the Nizam, Tippoo Sultan, &c.' The principal instrument and support of the power of Sindhia was a force officered and commanded by Frenchmen. A similar corps, officered in a simUar manner, was the only support of the state of the Nizam. Tippoo in the south had inherited a large army and a bitter hatred of the Enghsh name. He had already made overtures to the French with the avowed object of the extirpation of the English. Napoleon was believed to be entertaining designs on India ; and on the northern frontier the proba- bility of an early invasion by Zamdn Shah was reckoned amongst the factors of the situation. Such was the condition of affairs when Lord WeUesley assumed the governor-generalship in 1798. The proposed balance of power had no existence, and French influence was strong and menacing. The Peshwa and the Nizam were completely overshadowed by Sindhia ; and the state of Mysore was at least as formidable as it was before the victories of Lord CornwaUis. Events seemed to portend the realisation, after a new fashion, of the dreanas almost realised teE EAELY GROWTH OF THE PROTECTORATE 31 by Dupleix ; it was again a question whether the supremacy throughout the whole contineift would fall to the English or the French. Dupleix was at one time the governor of the country between the Kistna and Cape Comorin ; but the danger now was of a different kind. Lord Castlereagh thought there might have been a formidable combination of the native powers against us, of Sindhia, Tippoo, and the Nizam, sup- ported by France. Looking to the diverse origin and bitter antagonism of these Hindu and Muhammadan powers, there was perhaps a greater probability that Sindhia would ac- quire pre-eminence in India by aid of his French officers and drilled troops, and that the instrument of his success would eventually become the means of his political extinc- tion, his own real power and the nominal authority of the Delhi emperor alike falling into French hands. Be that as it may, there can be no doubt that the menaces of French influence were very serious. Not only was Tippoo engaged in seeking an offensive alliance with France, but there was also the chance of the establishment of French states in the Deccan and Hindustan. The corps of M. Eaymond under the Nizam amounted to 14,000 men ; attached to it was a park of forty pieces of ordnance ; and a foundation had been laid of a corps of cavalry to act with the infantry. There was also a beginning of territorial power in M. Eaymond's revenue-free grant, or jdgir ; though the grant was resumed on his death, which occurred in the first half of 1798. In 1803 General Perron held the possessions of Sindhia situ- ated between the Jumna, the Ganges, and the mountains of Kumaun with a force commanded by European officers and amounting to 8,000 infantry and an equal number of cavalry. It was recorded by Lord WeUesley that Perron had formed this territory into an independent state, of which Sindhia,'s regular infantry, the force above described, might be termed the national army ; but these expressions are not very exact, for Perron was stiU in the service of Sindhia, and was in- cluded in our hostilities against his master. Formidable as then appeared the chance of French supre- macy in India, it soon vanished so completely as to be now almost forgotten. It should be some consolation to those who, in existing political conditions, are apt to confess panic at slight symptoms of interference by Western powers in Iridian affairs, that the varied dangers by which the India^ Government was beset in 1798 had been practically over- 6Z OUR INDIAN PEOTECTORATE come wlien Lord Wellesley left India in 1805. They were not overcome, it is true, without the exercise of great poli- tical skill and much expenditure of blood and treasure ; but by sagacity in the council chamber and strategy and courage in the field they were, in a brief space of time, notwith- standing some misfortunes, successfully dissipated. By nego- tiation supported by a sufficient military force, Eaymond's corps was disbanded, its place being taken by battalions of the English. In September 1803, Perron was permitted on his own application to retire within the Company's territories ; and a few days afterwards his army, under Louis Bourquin, was completely crushed by Lord Lake at the battle of Delhi. The attention of Zamdn Shah was diverted from any attack upon the north of India by distractions in his unwieldy kingdom and dangers on his western frontier, largely due to British negotiations at the Court of Persia. Pour years before the battle of Delhi, Tippoo had been conquered and killed and his dominions partitioned. With the battle of the Nile, the victories of Abercrombie and Hutchinson and the col- lapse of the French expedition to Egypt ended all risk of a Prench invasion of India. I have been particular in referring to the possibilities of the estabhshment of a Prench dominion in India, because the despatches at the end of the last century and the beginning of the present century show that this alternative was con- tinually present to the minds of the statesmen of that time. ' It has not been a matter of choice,' wrote Lord Castlereagh in March 1804, ' but of necessity, that our existence in India should pass from that of traders to sovereigns. If we had not, the Prench would long since have taken the lead in India to our exclusion.' We may consider this to have been substantially true, even though we allow that the Indian statesmen of that time, perceiving how hard it was to understand in England the real requirements of the situation in India, may have some- what exaggerated arguments based on the proceedings of the Prench, because arguments of that kind would probably persuade or influence the home authorities. And we may, I think, add to what_ Lord Castlereagh recorded, that it was not a matter of choice but of necessity that the British were compelled to stand forth as the paramount power. Mani- festly one of the elements in that necessity was the impera- tive claim of self-preservation, pointing to the destruction of Prench influence in the three principal native states. THE EARLY GROWTH OF THE PROTECTORATE 33 We cannot perhaps fix the date of the resolve of the British Government to be sup-erne in India with absolute precision. The Duke of Wellington, writing in 1806, said the British Government had become paramount in India by the conquest of Mysore. Sir Charles Aitchison ('Treaties,' &c., vol. V. p. 7) considers that the campaigns against the Marhatta chiefs in 1803 and Holkar in 1805, which com- pletely broke up the Marhatta Confederacy, established once for aU the supremacy of the British power. Sir George Barlow, afterwards for a short time Governor-General, when discussing the policy of the Treaty of Bassein, wrote on July 12, 1803 : ' With respect to the French, supposing the present questions in Europe not to lead to an immediate rupture, we are now certain that the whole course of their policy has for its object the subversion of the British empire in India, and that at no distant period of time they will put their plans in execution. It is absolutely necessary for the defeat of these designs that no native state should be left to exist in India which is not upheld by the British power, or the pohtical conduct of which is not under its absolute con- trol.' It is curious, I may remark- in passing, that this com- pendious description of Lord Wellesley's aim should have been recorded by an officer who abandoned it. The fact probably is, that the theory was accepted and acted upon in India at the time of the Treaty of Bassein, and took practical effect in a manner that was generally unmis- takable as a consequence of the successful wars with the Marhatta chieftains which that treaty brought about. It wiU be worth while to explain this remark somewhat fuUy, because the circumstances show how supremacy was forced upon the British Government by the irresistible pressure of events. In 1797 Tippoo sent envoys to the Mauritius to obtain assistance in his project of expelling the English from India. This incident, with some others, was made the occasion of a declaration of war ; and Lord Wellesley, before the war began, in a paper of August 12, 1798, elaborately justified his intentions by arguments drawn from international laWj and contended that we were entitled by ' the law of nations ' to reduce the power of Tippoo as an effectual security against his designs. Lord Wellesley went on to use language which implied that it was still an object of the Indian Government to re-estabhsh the balance of power in India as it existed at the Peace of Seringapatam. As we have seen, it was part of D 34 OUR INDIAN PROTECTOKATE the policy of that treaty to preserve to Tippoo, no less than to the Marhattas and the Nizam, some degree of power, so that the interposition of the force of the British Government might always turn the scale ; and, generally, it was the inten- tion of the alliance between the British Government, the Peshwa, and the Nizam to provide against the enmity of the Mysore Sultan. But the event of the war was the annihila- tion of the Mysore state. There could no longer be any question of restoring the balance of power; a principal motive for the whole system had ceased to exist ; and one of the powers included in the arrangements had disappeared, for the new Mysore state, formed by Lord Wellesley, was altogether dependent on the British Government, and had not to be taken into account in the pohtics of the Deccan. In this new and perhaps unlooked-for conjuncture of affairs, what was to be done ? what was to be the new principle of policy suited to the altered circumstances of the case? It seemed certain that the predatory turbulence of the Marhatta chiefs would shortly bring them into conflict with the Company. If we abandoned our ally the Nizam to their mercies, they would certainly conquer his country, make their frontier in the Deccan coterminous with ours, and soone,r or later violate our territories. If we undertook to defend the Nizam against all comers, the Marhattas in- cluded, the Marhattas would unquestionably press their vexatious claims against him, and we should become em- broiled with them all the same. The so-called Marhatta empire was at different times a government of which the Peshwa was the actual head and Sindhia and other chiefs the powerful officers, and the union of a number of chiefs pos- sessing territory and political power and acknowledging the Peshwa as a merely nominal suzerain. It consisted of a predatory and warlike confederacy, of which the members, loosely held together by certain political ties, were frequently at war with each other. The Marhattas claimed the chauih of all India ; nominal^ a fourth part of the land-revenue, practically as much as could be exacted by violence and terrorism. This was, in fact, the blackmail, on the payment of which they insisted, for the exemption of towns and fields from ravage and devastation. In political contact with such a power making such a claim, how was it possible to apply the law of nations ? They, at all events, would not be bound by it ; and in the absence of any common superior, how was it to be enforced against them without their assent ? Their THE EARLY GROWTH OF THE PROTECTORATE 35 demands virtually amounted to a claim to the political supremacy of the whole continent. The question between the Company and the Marhattas could not possibly be settled without a war ; and the immediate object of the Treaty of Bassein was, to give us, on the outbreak of the inevit- able hostilities, resources and a strategical position which would otherwise have been at the disposal of our certain enemies. Thus to some degree French ambition, but to a greater degree Marhatta claims and Marhatta strength, and the general incapacity of Oriental governments to regulate their mutual relations by any weU-ordered system, go to explain why the theory of British supremacy supplanted the theory of an Indian balance of power. The keen vision of Lord WeUesley surveyed the situation in every part, and the courage and comprehensive foresight of his policy command the respectful admiration of those who follow his explana- tions of it. Without hesitation upon the conclusion of the last Mysore war he offered to allow the Peshwa to participate in the acquisitions made by the destruction of the power of Tippoo, on condition of admitting the arbitration of the British Government in disputes with the Nizam and receiving a subsidiary force. The offer was declined; but in 1802 the united forces of the Peshwa and Sindhia were defeated at Poona by Holkar, who is generally described in the de- spatches as a freebooter, but was at the head of a large body of predatory troops and had already laid the foundations of territorial power. In October 1802 the Peshwa fled and took refuge at Bassein under the protection of the Company, and the treaty was signed on the last day of the year. It established between the British Government and the Peshwa one of those subsidiary alliances which were a main instru- ment in Lord WeUesley 's hands for the establishment of the British protectorate, and it placed the nominal head of the Marhatta empire in undoubted political dependence on the British power. The natural result was a hostile league of the Marhatta chieftains, and a war precipitated, but not caused, by the particular stroke of policy which changed the nominal head of the Marhatta Confederacy into a real depen- dent of the Company. Opposition was crushed in the field of battle by Lord Lake at Delhi and Laswdri, in Hindustan, and by General WeUesley (afterwards the Duke of WeUington) at Assaye and Argaom, in the Northern Deccan. In reporting (July 13, 1804) the general pacification which foUowed these 36 OUR INDIAN PROTECTOEATE victories, Lord Wellesley observed that the British power in India had finally been "placed in a 'commanding position with regard to other states,' affording 'the only possible security for the permanent tranquillity and prosperity ' of the British possessions. These words well sum up the position attained and the leading motives, other than those of self-preservation, which had led to its attainment. By no one have the reasons why it was impossible to apply the law of nations in India been more clearly explained than by Lord Wellesley's still more distinguished brother, the great Duke. It is unfortunate that General Wellesley's reply to Lord Castlereagh's stric- tures on the Treaty of Bassein is not dated, but it was pro - bably written in November 1804. I may be permitted to quote from that paper at some length. ' European governments,' General Wellesley says, ' were, till very lately, guided by certain rules and systems of policy, so accurately defined and generally known, that it was scarcely possible to suppose a political event in which the interests and conduct of each state would not be as weU known to the corps diplomatique in general as to the states- men of each particular state. The Asiatic governments do not acknowledge, and hardly know, such rules and systems. Their governments are arbitrary ; the objects of their pohcy are always shifting ; they have no regular established system, the effect of which is to protect the weak against the strong ; on the contrary, the object of each of them separately, and of all of them collectively, is to destroy the weak ; and if by chance they should by a sense of common danger be in- duced for a season to combine their efforts for their mutual defence, the combination lasts only as long as it is attended by success, the first reverse dissolves it ; and, at all events, it is dissolved long before the danger ceases, the apprehen- sion of which originally caused it. . . . These observations apply to the government of the Marhattas more than to any other of the Asiastic governments. Their schemes and systems of policy are the wildest of any ; they undertake expeditions not only without viewing their remote conse- quences upon other states and upon their own, but without considering more than the chance of success of the immediate expedition in contemplation. . . . The picture above drawn of the state of politics among Asiastic powers proves that no permanent system can be adopted which will preserve the weak against the strong, and will keep all for any length THE EARLY GROWTH OF THE PROTECTORATE 87 of time in their relative situations, and the whole in peace ; excepting there should be one^^ower, which, either by the superiority of its strength, its military system, or its re- sources, shall preponderate and be able to protect all.' The British Government was the preponderating power, and the Treaty of Bassein is evidence that it knew the fact and was prepared to act up to its responsibilities. The virtual condemnation pronounced by Parliament upon the somewhat Oriental theory of politics illustrated by the early action of the Company forced the governors of India, who now represented the British nation, to adopt some generally consistent and sufficiently satisfactory theory of their political position in the land. The theory of the Mar- hattas was as incompatible with the principles of international law as was the theory of the First Napoleon. Europe united in arms to resist the attempts of the French republic and empire to impose the supremacy of France upon the other Western states. At the very time when England took the lead in that contest, she was herself playing a Napoleonic part in another continent. The inconsistency in appearance was none in fact : when Wellesley and his stiU more famous brother and Lake were fighting Tippoo or the Marhattas and spreading over the territories which were not actual]}'' annexed a network of protective alliances, they were destroy- ing French influence and sweeping out of the land the possi- bilities of French supremacy. Moreover, there was not in India a single one of the political conditions which in Europe for many years made the principle of a balance of power an effective guarantee for international tranquillity. In India there was, and is, no national life ; at most there have been the beginnings of two nationalities. In India there was, since the downfall of the Moghal empire, not one considerable govern- ment of any stabihty, the government of the Company itself alone excepted ; there was no possibility of any lasting quasi- international combination for pacific purposes framed on a common assent ; and the governments of the several native states had not enough either of administrative and political strength or of public morality to act persistently and for any length of time up to what might be called international obligations. Europe was saved by its civilisation from the domination of one power of the West; a more advanced civilisation was the efficient cause which made one Western power supreme throughout India. It is noticeable that at the moment when the question of 38 OUK INDIAN PROTECTORATE supremacy had just been decided in the field the British Government resolved to forego any advantage there might be in claiming to succeed by right of conquest to the suze- rainty of the Great Moghal. There had been no like for- bearance on the part of the Marhattas and their generals, who sought to use the prestige of the House of Delhi in fur- therance of their own aims. Mahdaji Sindhia obtained for the Peshwa from the King of Delhi the grant of the office of vakil-ul-mutlak, or executive prime minister of the Moghal empire, and was himself appointed to execute the functions of that office under the title of deputy. Daulat Eao Sindhia succeeded to the office of deputy vakil-ul-mutlak, and to the consequent control which his predecessor exercised over the house and family of the King. By a successful intrigue Perron obtained the ofiice of commandant of the fortress of Delhi, which was the residence of the royal family, and thus secured the possession of the person and of the nominal authority of the Emperor. These examples apart, there were temptations of substantial advantage in the possible use of the traditions of the empire which it required moderation to resist. ISTotwithstanding the King's total deprivation of real dominion, almost every state and class in India still ac- knowledged his nominal supremacy. The current coin of every established power was struck in the name of Shah Alam. Princes and persons of the highest rank and family still bore titles and displayed the insignia of rank which they or their ancestors derived from the throne of Delhi, and the King was still considered to be the legitimate fountain of similar honours. The arrangements, however, actually made after the battle of Delhi, and the explanations given of those arrangements, were ahke inconsistent with any intention on the part of the Company to stand forth as emperor, as they had formerly stood forth as dewdn. The Emperor sought the protection of the British Government ; and it was arranged that certain territories near Delhi should be assigned as part of the pro- vision for the maintenance of the royal family ; that these lands should remain under the charge of the Eesident at Delhi ; that the revenue should be collected and justice ad- ministered in the name of Shah Alam under regulations fixed by the British Government ; that the King should appoint a dew4n and other officers ; and that two courts should be estabhshed for the administration of the Muhammadan law to the inhabitants of the city of Delhi and of the assigned THE EAELY GROWTH OF THE PROTECTORATE 39 territory, death sentences, however, being subject to confir- mation by the King. • In describing these arrangements on June 2, 1805, Lord Wellesley wrote : ' It has never been in the contemplation of this Government to derive from the charge of protecting and supporting his Majesty the privilege of employing the royal prerogative as an instrument of establishing any control or ascendency over the states and chieftains of India, or of asserting on the part of his Majesty any of the claims which, in his capacity of Emperor of Hindustan, his Majesty may be considered to possess upon the provinces originally com- posing the Moghal empire.' The benefits claimed were the preclusion of hostile projects, which might be founded on the restoration of the authority of the Emperor under the direction of agents of France ; and the confidence and good feeling amongst states and people which the British Govern- ment could secure by becoming the lenient protector of the representative of the House of Timur. The Delhi emperor was not to be a Nawdb of A root or a Nawdb of Murshidabad for the purpose of consolidating British dominion throughout the continent; for, indeed, the days when it was necessary to proceed under the countenance of some native power- had passed away. As I have said, the main instrument of policy now was the formation of subsidiary alliances. It must not, of course, be supposed that there were no subsidiary alliances before the time of Lord Wellesley ; but he greatly improved and extended the system and was at special pains to avoid the evils which had arisen, particu- larly in Oudh and the Carnatic, from the previously defective nature of the British alliances with tributary governments or states. The subsidiary alliances were generally formed upon one model, and have been very well described by Mr. H. T. Prinsep, whom I shall follow here and presently when I come to speak of the final pacification of the interior of India under Lord Hastings. The British Government sup- plied a specific force for the. protection of the state and the maintenance of the ruler's legitimate authority. ' This force,' says Mr. Prinsep (' History,' vol. i. p. 5), ' was not ordinarily to be employed in the duties of civil administra- tion, nor in the collection of the revenues ; and the British Government generally agreed not to interfere in such matters. A subsidy, equivalent to the payment of the force, was furnished by the protected state either in periodical money payments, or by territorial cession, more frequently . the 40 OUE INDIAN PEOTECTOKATE latter. A certain native contingent, as it was called, was also to be maintained in readiness to act with the British troops and for the efficiency of this the protected state was answerable. But the most material provision of the treaties was, that the states accepting them engaged to discontinue all political negotiation with the other powers of India, except in concert with the British Government, and to submit all claims and disputes with others to its arbitration and adjustment. This article, though an indispensable cor- relative of the stipulation for protection, gave to the British a controlling power in all matters of external relation ; while the obligation to maintain the protected prince's just authority- implied the right of interfering, with advice at least, in matters of internal policy likely to bring it in question. Hence all the subsidising states were more or less in depen- dence, a reference to the British Government being always necessary either to prevent or punish the aggression of neighbours, to quell insurrections or enforce the submis- sion of powerful vassals and guarantee their just treatment, or, finally, to regulate the succession on a sovereign's demise.' This, it will be observed, is a description of the state of things in 1813, eight years after Lord Wellesley had left India. The deliberate aim of his policy of subsidiary alli- ances will best be stated in words used with his authority. In a despatch to the resident at Hyderabad, dated Feb- ruary 4, 1804, it is said : ' The fundamental principle of his Excellency the Governor-General's policy in establish- ing subsidiary alliances with the principal states of India is to place those states in such a degree of dependence on the British power as may deprive them of the means of prosecut- ing any measures, or of forming any confederacy hazardous to the security of the British empire, and may enable us to preserve the tranquiUity of India by exercising a general control over those states calculated to prevent the operation of that restless spirit of ambition and violence which is the characteristic of every Asiatic government, and which from the eariiest period of Eastern history has rendered the peninsula of India the scene of perpetual warfare, turbulence, and disorder. The irremediable principles of Asiatic pohcy, and the varieties and oppositions of character, habits, and religions, which distinguish the inhabitants of this quarter of the globe, are adverse to the estabhshment of such a balance of power among the several states of India as would THE EARLY GROWTH OF THE PROTECTORATE 41 effectually restrain the views of aggrandisement and ambi- tion and promote general tran^illity. This object can alone be accomplished by the operation of a general control over the principal states of India established in the hands of a superior power, and exercised with equity and moderation through the medium of alliances contracted with those states on the basis of the security and protection of their respective rights.' Briefly, while states were still in that primitive condition in which predatory violence is the sole substitute for political principle, the only possibility of keeping the peace between them lay in the supremacy of one civilised authority : the effective establishment of a balance of power belongs to a much later stage of political progress ; and one instrument for acquiring the necessary supremacy in India was the use of the subsidiary alliances above described. In some such terms, after nearly ninety years as fertile, perhaps, in political theories as anj other equal period in the history of literature, we may explain to ourselves the leading idea which animated Lord WeUesley as the founder of the Indian political system; and the explanation suggests itself that perhaps the old-world theory was right after all, and that the universal or at least general dominion of one state is the right principle upon which to base the relations between a number of states where one of them far excels the rest in its degree of civilisation. The policy of Lord WeUesley, the very next year after it had been thus emphatically described, was as emphatically repudiated by his successor. In August 1805 Lord Corn- wallis wrote of a ' belief which, however unjust, appears to be too generally entertained of a systematic design on the part of the British Government to estabhsh its control and authority over every state in India. It is,' he said, 'the primary object of his lordship's' {i.e. his own) 'policy to remove this unfavourable and dangerous impression by abstaining in the utmost degree practicable consistently with the general security of the Company's dominions from all interference in the internal concerns of other states. His lordship considers even the preservation of our actual alliances to be an object of inferior importance to that of regaining the confidence and removing the jealousy and sus- picions of surrounding states.' Lord Cornwallis returned to India only to die; but the principle of non-intervention, approved at the time by the British Government, was accepted 42 OUR INDIAN PROTECTOEATE and acted upon by his successors, Sir George Barlow and (in a much less degree) Lord Minto, with the result that the anarchy of the interior of the continent — an anarchy which the vigorous prosecution of Lord Wellesley's measures would have speedily dispelled — was prolonged for another twelve years, and even aggravated. But before English opinion had become terrified at Lord Wellesley's audacity, his far-sighted policy had borne lasting fruit. He remained long enough in India to give to his grand ideas the physical basis of an inexpugnable strategic position. A glance at the map of India will show that the vast terri- tories of Native India, that is, of the feudatory states, lie, like enormous islands, surrounded by a sea of British dominion. The coasts, the great rivers, the dividing lines between the realms of powerful princes, every strategic point of any imperial consequence, all these are red. In physical fact as in political theory, the British Government is supreme. Nor is this commanding position due to happy accident or blind chance. To secure the coasts and the rivers was a part, and a consistent part, of Lord Wellesley's general design. External and internal means of communication were alike to be in British hands. In the conquest of Mysore, in 1799, one of Lord Wellesley's objects was to cut off that state from communication by sea with French allies. In the partition and settlement which followed the conquest, he reserved to the British Government the province of Kanara, the district of Coimbatur, and all the territories lying below the Ghauts between the former possessions of the Company in the Carnatic and in Malabar respectively. To these he added the forts and posts on the table-land forming the heads of all the passes above the Ghauts. He annexed Tanjore and so much of the Carnatic as was not already under British administration, thus completing the acquisition of the whole line of the Madras coast. He separated the Mysore state, reconstituted under an entirely dependent Hindu raja, from the dominions of the Nizam by a broad belt of territory ceded by the latter in payment for the cost of the subsidiary force. Later on, the victories over the Marhattas and other circumstances were made the occasions for similar measures in consolidation of British dominion. The Do4b of the Jumna and the Ganges was annexed, partly by conquest from the Marhattas in 1803 and partly in 1801, on the same principle as that which was applied in the case of Bellary and Cuddapah, that is, by cession from Oudh to THE EAHLr GROWTH OJ? THE PROTECTORATE 43 provide a subsidy- for the forces supplied by the British power. On the eastern coast he annexdR Cuttack, including the sea- port of Balasore, and thus established ' between the province of Midnapore and the Northern Sirk4rs a continuation of the British dominion and authority,' thereby completing the line of connection between the territories under the Governments of Bengal and Fort St. George respectively. The possession of Cuttack, he pointed out, would have enabled the Eaja of Berar to interrupt the communication between our northern and southern possessions, to facihtate the invasion of Bengal and the Northern Sirkdrs, and to obtain the aid of the French and other European officers and troops who might have been landed in that province. On the west coast we acquired at the same period the port and territory of Broach and the seaports belonging to Sindhia, which, Lord Wellesley said, affi^rded to that Marhatta chieftain and to the French officers in his service the means of intercourse with the Government of France, and to the French an easy access to the Marhatta states in a quarter where our military power was less formidable and our political influence less firmly established than in other parts of India. It was reserved for another Governor-General, for Lord Dalhousie, the equal of Lord Wellesley in commanding abihty and strength of will, to link the north with the south of the Bombay Presidency by the lapse of Sattdra, to complete the separation of the Deccan from Central India by the lapses of Jhdnsi and Nagpur, and to incorporate the Indus Valley and extend the empire to the mountain base of the Himalayas and the Sulaimans by the annexation of the Punjab in retribution for un- provoked rebellion and in the just maintenance of imperial security, and of Oudh, as a penalty for misrule. It is not by mere chance that the big ring of British dominion has closed round the protected states. Various pohtical circumstances have thrown these vast acquisitions on our hands ; and as they came they have been so shaped by great Indian Governors, that we have territorial guarantees for the ■ effective enforcement of our political system. As political influence has advanced side by side with actual acquisition of territory, and acquisition of territory has strengthened political influence, it may be worth while to finish here this very rough and general sketch of the growth, not of the protectorate, but of Indian dominion. Indeed, the growth of each is intimately connected with the growth of the other. Glancing at the great Indian provinces, 44 OUR TXDIAX PEOTECTORATE it is not difficult to bear in mind the great names with which their incorporation with British territory is associated. Bengal, Behar, and the northern part of Orissa we owe to Clive ; Warren Hastings added the province of Benares to the territories of the Company. Almost all the rest of the North-West Provinces and the Presidency of Madras, as a province of the empire, were, as akeady shown, acquired by Lord Wellesley. He also annexed a great part of Bun- delkhand. Lord Hastings wrested Kumaun and Garhwal from the Gurkhas, thus rounding off the North-West Provinces and extending them to their existing area. He further made the Bombay Presidency out of the dominions of the Peshwa and parts of the Gaekwar's dominions and of the present districts of Surat, Broach, Kaira, and Ahmadabad, which had been ceded by the Peshwa to Lord Wellesley under the Treaty of Bassein in 1802. To Lord Hastings also is due the foundation of the Central Provinces by the appropriation of the Saugor and Nerbudda territories, the river valleys in the very midst of India from which the Pinddri bands set forth on their yearly expeditions of devastation. Forced into the first Burmese war by what Sir Charles Metcalfe called ' the clearest case of self-defence and violated terri- tory,' Lord Amherst conquered Aracan, Tenasserim, and Assam. Sir Charles Napier took Sindh in 1843 during the period of Lord Ellenborough's administration. In 1846, after the first Sikh war. Lord Hardinge annexed the JuUundur Do4b of the Punjab. Then followed, under Lord Palhousie, an extension of the empire comparable only to that effected by Lord Wellesley fifty years before. By both of these great men vast territories were acquired, alike in peace and in war ; but the main instrument which Lord Wellesley used for the acquisition of territory without blood- shed was the subsidiary alliance, while that employed by Lord Dalhousie was the doctrine of lapse. In one noticeable instance however — that of Berar— Lord Dalhousie adopted the method of his great predecessor. The Hyderabad dis- tricts W'Cre assigned for the support of the Hyderabad Con- tingent, and placed under British administration in 1853. By conquest Lord Dalhousie extended British rule over the north and west of the Punjab in 1849, and over Pegu in 1862. The outlying provinces of the Punjab and Burma were thus brought to the shape or to the position in which they stood in reference to the rest of the empire till quite the other day. By lapse he acquired, amongst other states, THE EAELY GROWTH OF THE PROTECTOEATE 45 Jlidnsi, Satt^ra, and Ndgpur : the latter state and the Saugor and Nerbudda and some otfcer territories now form the Central Provinces. Oudh was annexed in 1856 ; and for more than twenty years after the mutiny there was no exten- sion of British Indian dominion of any great consequence. There were similar pauses of .about twelve years after Lord WeUesley, and of about seventeen years after the first con- quests from Burma. As I have pointed out, in the early days one of the chief causes which thrust territorial power upon the Company was the certainty that if they abstained from grasping political authority, it would assuredly have been seized by some rival' European nation. It is interesting to note that our two most recent acquisitions are substantially due to similar possibilities. Sibi and Pishin are British districts, and the Agent of the Governor-General at Quettah is also Chief Commissioner for British Baluchistan. Upper Burma was annexed in 1886. The empire has thus been increased on both western and eastern frontiers ; and it will not, I think, be denied that the expansion on the west was the consequence of repelling Eussian influence, while the expansion on the east was even more directly due to the interference in the affairs of Burma, if not of the French nation, at all events of French adventurers. Eoughly and broadly, then, it may be said that Clive made Bengal ; Lord WeUesley, Madras and the North-West Provinces ; Lord Hastings and Sir Charles Napier, the Bom- bay Presidency ; and Lord . Dalhousie, all the provinces for- merly described as the non-regulation provinces, except Assam and Burma — that is to say, the Central Provinces, the Punjab, Oudh, and, in a sense, Berar. With Assam we may connect the name of Lord Amherst, who acquired it from the Burmese in 1825. Burma was annexed in three instal- ments — part by Lord Amherst in 1826 as a consequence of the same war that gave us Assam, part by Lord Dalhousie in 1852, and part by Lord Dufferin. For the purposes of this very rapid and general view I have omitted all acquisi- tions which are not of the first consequence ; amongst many others, Cachdr in 1830 and 1853, Coorg in 1834, Jaintia in ^ 1835, numerous lapses throughout the century in the Cis- Sutlej states and the Bombay Presidency, the Cis-Sutlej chief- ships sequestrated after the first Sikh war in 1849, the Dudrs conquered from Bhutdn in 1865, and many small confiscations at various dates for misconduct or rebellion. The point in all this deserving most attention is, that any 46 OUR INDIAN PKOTECTORATE one supposing the British empire in India to consist merely of the territories thus annexed would have an exceedingly imperfect idea of the political situation. The British empire in India consists of the British dominions and the Indian protectorate; and without the dominions the protectorate could not exist. What, then, is the general extent and character of the Indian protectorate at the present day? According to an official return prepared in 1886 by the Secretariat of the Government of India, there are 629 feuda- tory states, of which 108 have an area of upwards of 500 square miles. By the latest figures the total area of India is computed at 1,583,276 square miles; and the feudatory territory at 638,672 square miles ; and the population under native rule is about sixty-five and, a half millions out of a total popula- tion of two hundred and eighty-six millions and a half. It will be seen from the map that, if we put aside the Central Provinces — an intrusive block of British territory in the very midst of Native India— almost the whole of the interior of the continent from the Sutlej to the Kistna consists of native states ; and to these we may add a great part of the apex of the southern triangle — namely, Mysore, Travancore and Cochin, and the small state of Pudukottai. To the north and south we have two great states created by the British Government — Kashmir and Mysore. Just above Mysore, proceeding northwards, lies the Nizam's territory, the sole important fragment still remaining of the empire of the Moghals, all the other provinces of that empire that were left at the close of the first half of the eighteenth century in anything like integrity having been incorporated in the structure of British dominion. The EAjpiits, the chiefs of the middle country and the Hills, never thoroughly subju- gated by the Moghal emperors, are divided laterally and vertically from each other. The western group is severed from the eastern group by the intervening wedge of Marhatta conquest, the states of Sindhia and Holkar ; and from the northern Hill group, partly by British territory and partly by the possessions of the Cis-Sutlej Sikhs, whose rise presents an analogy in many respects remarkable to the rise of the Marhattas. Thus on the face of India as it exists to-day live and move the surviving specimens, as it were, of dynasties and polities once predominant, or nearly attaining to predomi- nance. There are the old Hindu principalities in the Punjab HiUs and Eajpiitdna and Central India, and far south in THE EARLY GROWTH OF THE PROTECTORATE 47 Cochin and Travancore ; there is in the Deccan, under the rule of the Nizam, at least oi^ considerable remnant saved from the wreck of the Moghal empire when it was destroyed, partly by common plunderers, partly by those whose first duty was to maintain its integrity; there are the states raised by the successful spoliation of that empire as it fell or of the no-man's land that ever edged its uncertain borders, the Sikh states saved by British protection from absorption by the Sivaji of the north, Eanjit Singh, and the Marhatta states, the Bhonsla and the Peshwa having disappeared, and the Gaekwar, Holkar, and Sindhia being the three survivors ; last of all, there is a new species, the states created by the British Government, of which Kashmir and Mysore are examples, as also Loh4ru, Dojdna, and Pataudi, petty states near Delhi, dating from the time when Lord Lake was charged to interpose a belt of neutral territory between the frontiers of the Company and the Marhatta power. In this way political geography, like geology everywhere, bears in India continued witness to the past ; the primitive formations crop up in large masses in the Edjput states of E4jput4na and Central India and the Punjab Hills, and far south in Travancore ; side by side with them in the centre of India are still traceable territories devastated by that volcanic eruption of irrepressible pillage which burst upon the Moghal empire in its days of decadence , while almost all the rest of the country levelled to our hand by Muhammadan dominion has been overspread by the recent deposit of the tide of British statesmanship and conquest, carried forward sometimes by imperceptible progress, sometimes by gigantic storm-waves, which leave, as ridges to commemorate the eras of considerable advance, the boundaries of the British- made states, of the Chief Commissionerships, and the pro- vincial governments. 48 CHAPTEE III THE LATER GROWTH OF THE PROTECTORATE It is fortunate that for the most part the narrative of the formation of the protectorate has been admirably told by Lord Wellesley in his despatches, and by Mr. H. T. Prinsep, the secretary of Lord Hastings, in the book from which I have already quoted a passage. To complete a brief general account of the growth of the pi'otectorate, I must now touch upon some of our relations with the minor states generally, and upon the circumstances of the time of Lord Minto and Lord Hastings. The latter was not only at one with Lord Wellesley in perceiving that unquestioned British supre- macy was the only possible guarantee for the peace of the Indian continent, but he also extended the system of well- defined relations with protected states which Lord Wellesley had begun, and which circumstances compelled Lord Minto to continue. I shall also have to refer again to some of the less important annexations, w^hich in the last chapter I merely mentioned and passed by. It is a drawback, but an inevi- table one, that the narrative becomes tamer as it advances. What has now to be said is like the third act of a play, when we have already guessed the plot and are wishing the characters would end their tedious elaboration of it, and pair off and make their bow. The first and second acts, when we had upon the stage such striking figures as Lord Clive and Lord Wellesley, and when the Duke of Wellington himself was part of the cast, were much more interesting. Some of the smaller states had been brought within the protectorate before Lord Wellesley left India. I have already mentioned his policy of establishing a barrier of petty dependent states between our then frontier of the Jumna and the countries over which the Marhattas were left for a time to carry their depredations. The protectorate of the Orissa Tributary Mehals fell to us with the conquest of Cuttack. In 1803 a few of the KdthiawAr chiefs applied THE LATEE GROWTH OF THE PROTECTORATE 49 for British protection, and offered, on certain conditions, to cede their estates to the Brilifeh Government. The offer "was not accepted ; but in 1807 the joint forces of the Gaek- "war and the British Government advanced for the purpose of effecting a settlement of the country. The supreme authority in Kdthiaw4r was not, however, vested in the British, Government alone till the Peshwa, in 1817, had ceded to it all his rights in that peninsula, and the Gaekwar in 1820 had engaged to send no troops to the province and to make no demands on it except through the British Go- vernment. In 1808 Mr. Metcalfe, the British envoy at the court of Eanjit Singh, was endeavouring to negotiate with the Maharaja a treaty of alliance against France. The Maharaja replied by claiming the right of sovereignty over the whole Sikh country; and the rejoinder of the British Government to this amloitious demand was, to take the Cis- Sutlej chiefs under its gladly welcomed protection. Some additional chiefs of Bundelkhand were also admitted to protective alliances about this period ; and these measures and, to a less extent, the intervention in Kdthiawdr con- stitute exceptions to the then prevailing policy of political abstention. With these slight modifications, and a few more which need not be mentioned, the relations of the British with the native powers of India were, when Lord Hastings assumed the office of Governor-General in October 1813, 'precisely in the condition in which they were placed at the close of the Marhatta war in 1805-6.' Mr. Prinsep, the maker of that remark, divides the states of India at this time into four classes : ' First, those with whom the British nation had formed subsidiary alliances. Secondly, those enjoying its protection without any subsi- diary contract, and consisting for the most part of small principalities, scarcely meriting the name of substantive powers. Thirdly, acknowledged princes with whom the British Government was at peace, and connected by the mutual obligation of treaties, but with whom it had no closer intercourse or recognised means of influence, except in so far as the residence of a British representative at the court was sometimes a matter of stipulation. Fourthly, independent chieftains and associations never yet acknow- ledged as substantive states, and to which the British nation was bound by no engagements whatsoever.' The states of the first class connected with the British by subsidiary alliances were those of the Nizam of the Deccan, 50 OUR INDIAjy PROTECTORATK the Peshwa, the Gaekwar, Mysore, and Travancore. _ In strictness, Oudh might be added to this list, but the cessions exacted by Lord Wellesley had been so considerable that Oudh was ' in too great dependence on the British Govern- ment to be regarded as one of the political states of India.' The protective engagements had a controlling character, ' nor did they difier materially from the subsidiary treaties, except inasmuch as there was seldom any consideration exacted for the protection to be afforded, and never any obligation on the British Government to maintain a specific force for the purpose. The principal members of this class were the Eajas of Bhurtpur, of Dholpur Bdri, of Alwar or Macheri, and various other chiefs round Delhi and Agra, with whom arrangements had been made in the close of the Marhatta War in 1805-6. The Eajas of Oorcha and Tehri, of Dattia, of Punna, and others of the Bundela race, together with the Marhatta chiefs of Jalaun and Jhdnsi, and one or two more taken under protection on the conquest of Bundel- khand or subsequently ; also the Eaja of Eewa in Baghel- khand, and the Sikh chieftains between the Jumna and the Sutlej, to whom allusion has before been made as added to the list in the time of Lord Minto. The Musalmdn NawAbs of Edmpur and Kalpi in Hindustan, of Karniil and EUichpur in the Deccan, and numberless others, whom it would be tedious to recapitulate, belong also to this class. The two Edjpiit states of Jaipur and Jodhpur had been included in this system by Lord Wellesley ; but in the settlement of 1805-6 they were left without the pale of our relations, from an apprehension that these were already too extensive. The Eaja of Jaipur was considered by his conduct in the war with Holkar to have forfeited all claims to our further pro- tection ; while the Eaja of Jodhpur had refused to ratify the treaty concluded with Lord Lake by his representative ; so that no impediment arose out of any existing engage- ments with either state to counteract the desire then felt by the British Government to withdraw from the con- nection.' The passage I have already cited from a despatch of Lord Cornwallis, in which he disclaimed the policy of his predecessor, supplies an instructive commentary on these remarks. ' The states and powers of the third class, that is to say, those not directly under our influence and with whom our connection was that of mutual amity alone, were the Sikh chieftain Eanjit Singh, the Gurkha nation, which ruled THE LATER GROWTH OF THE PROTECTORATE 51 Nepal, and the three Marhatta governments of Central India, namely, the Sindhia, Bhffiisla, and Holkar families.' The fourth class consisted of the predatory bands of the Pathdns and Pinddris. The principle of the Marhatta government was plunder ; and the effect of the peace of 1805 was to circumscribe the area of their depredations. Within the limits assigned to their power we did not interfere with their mulk-giri, or country-taking expeditions, their recog- nised' and habitual procedure for collecting what they claimed as revenue at the sword's point by means of an army in the field. Within the theatre of war so narrowed disorder increased ; and fresh bodies of armed plunderers appeared, subsisting on what we might now perhaps call dacoity com- mitted on a colossal scale. The Pind4ris adopted the old Marhatta or Parthian method of warfare ; and their object was general rapine carried out by roving expeditions directed against British and native territory. The Pathdns had horse, infantry, and artillery organised more or less in the European style ; and they moved about, chiefly in EAjpiitdna, for the purpose of preying on governments and powerful chiefs. In 1814 Amir Khan, the best known of the Pathdn com- manders, was at the head of a force of at least 30,000 horse and foot, furnished with an artillery weU manned and served. It is not easy to compute the numbers of the Pinddris, partly because the same bands or individuals would at one time be associat/cd under the leading adventurers of the class, and at another employed in the loose cavalry establishments of Holkar or Sindhia. But on a general combination of Pinddri bands in 1811 there was an assemblage of not less than 25,000 cavalry, with several battahons of newly raised foot. I have extracted these particulars at some length for the purpose of stating in a compendious way the , net political results of Lord Hastings' administration. When he left India, the aim of Lord Wellesley had been attained. The British protectorate extended over the Simla Hill states, the Cis-Sutlej states, the whole of Edjpiitdna and Central India, the states of the Bombay Presidency, and the other powers of peninsular India which had been brought within the system in former times. As predatory associations, the powers of the fourth class had disappeared. The Pinddris were destroyed or so shattered as never to unite again. Amir Khan became a petty territorial naw^b, the tracts wr anted to him by Holkar being guaranteed to him in per- petuity under British protection. His guns were nearly all b?i OUB INDIAN PROTECTOHATE surrendered, and his army disbanded, except the pick of his battaUons, which were taken into British pay. Of the states and powers of the third chass, Eanjit Singh had avoided all rupture with the British, and was consohdating his power beyond the Sutlej, practically recognising that river as the dividing line between his dominions and the tracts and states under British supremacy. The time when the unpro- voked aggression of the Sikhs was to lead to the conquest of their country across the Sutlej was not to come till his death had removed the only native ruler who was capable of keeping the formidable Sikh army in check. The Gurkha race had been defeated in arduous campaigns, and had yielded territory in Kumaun and Garhwal, with the suzerainty over the chiefs of the Simla Hills. Sindhia, Holkar, and the Eaja of Ndgpur had become feudatories of the empire. On the treachery and defection of Appa Sahib the Ndgpur terri- tories of the Bhonslas became ours by conquest ; some dis- tricts were annexed, and the rest were conferred upon a youth connected with the ruling family through the female line ; and the state of Nagpur. thus re-granted by the British Government, was administered by British officers under Sir Eichard Jenkins during some ten years, for the greater part of which time the new raja was a minor. The Peshwa, Bdji Eao, was an exile at Bithiir, a few miles from Cawnpore, drawing the enormous pension of 100,000Z. a year for life. He lived till January 28, 1861, and his adopted son, Dandhu Pant, was the Nina Sahib who authorised the atrocities of Cawnpore. The territories of the Peshwa, with the excep- tion of SattAra, conferred by the British Government on a representative of the House of Sivaji, were annexed. The other states of the first class stood in much the same position as before. At the commencement of the Pinddri War in 1817 a close alliance was formed with BhopAl, which agreed to furnish a contingent of horse and foot. A great addition ' was made to the number of the simply protected states, the addition, indeed, practically including all the remaining states except Khairpur, Kashmir, the Trans-Sutlej states, Bahiwal- pur, and some frontier states elsewhere. It remains to note that the settlement of our relations with the different groups of states was effected in the case of Central India through the agency of Sir John Malcolm ; in the case of Western India, through the agency of Mr. Mountstuart Elphinstone, the his- torian of India and Governor of Bombay ; and in the case of Edjputdna, through Sir Charles Metcalfe. Sir David THE LATER (iROWTH OF THE PROTJCCTORATK 53 Ochterlony was the British agent who made the arrange- ments with the Cis-Sutlej chiifs ; and in him also, after native Garhwal was restored to its raja, was ultimately vested the superintendence of the affairs of the hill chiefs who had been under Gurkha supremacy. The British system of relations was introduced in this quarter in the first instance by Mr. Fraser, the political agent with General Martindell's force in the Nepal War. In this way the political system was built up in Southern India and the plains of the Jumna and Ganges by Lord Wellesley, and on the Bombay side and throughout the interior of the continent north of the Deccan by Lord Hastings. On January 1, 1823, the Marquis of Hastings left India ; and there is not much that need detain us in the history of the next twenty years. The government was busied with Asiatic rather than Indian wars, with the conquest of three out of five provinces of Burma, and with disastrous attempts to set up in Afghanistan, as a counter- poise to Eussian influence, a djmasty favourable to the British Crown. An interval, however, of comparative repose and internal progress was interposed between the conquest of Assam, Arracan, and Pegu, and the conquests of Sindh and the Punjab. Lord William Bentinck was a later Lord Corn- wallis. The judicial system Avas remodelled ; the foundation of the revenue system of Northern India was laid ; education was encouraged ; sati, or the self-immolation of women, and thagi, or wholesale murder by strangulation for purposes of plunder under the sanction of a perverted rehgion, were suppressed ; and about the same period energetic measures were directed against human sacrifice in certain savage parts of the country, and against female infanticide in more civil- ised localities, where the dictates of humanity were over- powered by E^jpiit notions of honour. It is perhaps inter- esting, but it is a mere accidental coincidence, that the pacification of India by the proceedings of 1818 followed closely upon the pacification of Europe at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 ; and I mention the fact here only because it is sometimes useful to keep sight of the main currents of European and English politics when we are considering the development of Indian affairs. Indian political law made at this time exceedingly little progress. The inevitable consequences of our position and the real nature of our responsibilities to the populations of ■native India were realised by few, and actually disclaimed by 54 OUK INDIAN PROTECTORATE the most powerful authorities. Yet just as parliamentary and official prohibitions have been impotent to stem the extension of British dominions, so no abnegation of the political functions, which we have in part inherited from various predecessors and in part assumed, has, in the _ end, availed to prevent their deliberate acceptance, their definition, and, in their definition, their substantial change. One states- man who discerned clearly the necessary tendency of contem- porary events was Sir Charles Metcalfe. In 1806 he wrote a scathing denunciation of 'the fundamental principle' of Sir George Barlow's administration ; the principle that we should withdraw from all connection and alliance with the states situated west of the Jumna, and get rid of our posses- sions so placed, except a strip of a few miles in breadth along the western river bank. 'I have occasionally,' he said, ' heard something of a commercial policy belonging to the company separate from its interest as a sovereign state. Without entering here into the question how far the com- pany may have benefited by becoming a potentate, and granting, without discussion, the full justice of aU the lamentations which are uttered on this subject by many worthy directors and proprietors, I must be allowed to say that it cannot be helped — the evil is done. Sovereigns you are, and as such must act, if you do not mean to destroy the power of acting at all, to demolish your whole corpora- tion, your trade, and your existence. Execrate the memories of Clive and Watson, and those who first brought you from the state of merchants. Burn them in effigy, hang their statues, and blast with infamy those malefactors. Your progress since has been inevitable and necessary to your existence. " To stop is dangerous, to recede is ruin," said Lord Clive at an early stage of our power. We have arrived now at that pitch that we may stop without danger, but we cannot recede without serious consequences. ... I repeat you are, in spite of yourselves, sovereigns, and must be guided by those rules which the wisdom of the world has apphed to the government of empires. ... Tor my part I wish to have your influence increased. It is generally sought for, and I am certain in its operation it gives the most real and essential benefit to all chiefs and states, and to the sub- jects of aU chiefs and states over which it is exercised. There is a loud cry that we are in danger from extended dominion. For my part I can contemplate universal dominion in India without much fear.' Events in the Marhatta empire and in THE LATBK GROWTH OF THE PKGTECTOKATE 55 the gathering places of the Pathdns and Pinddris and the provinces which they ravaged Sjion proved that we could not stop without danger, even in 1806. Nearly twenty years later, at a time when the Court of Directors maintained that ' the settlement of 1818 had in no degree extended our right of interference in the internal concerns of other states, except as it had been provided by treaty,' Sir Charles Metcalfe had occasion to advise the government as to the course which should be pursued with reference to passing events in Bhurtpur. Confidence had been shaken by want of success in the Burmese War ; and there may have been in many quarters a disposition to try conclusions with the British Government. A child, named Balwant Singh, whose right to succeed had been recognised by the Governor-General in Council, had come to the throne of Bhurtpur ; and his guardian had been killed, and his per- son and government seized by Durjan Sdl, a relation and a pretender. Sir David Ochterlony had promptly ordered a force into the field to coerce the usurper. His proceedings had been disapproved, to the great increase of the strength and contumacy of Durjan Sdl. The question was, what should now be done ? ' We have by degrees,' said Sir Charles Metcalfe — I quote here from Marshman, vol. ii. p. 408 — ' become the paramount state in India. In 1817 it became the established principle of our policy to maintain tranquillity among the states of India ; . . . and we cannot be indifierent spectators of anarchy therein without ultimately giving up India again to the piUage and confu- sion from which we then rescued her. . . . We are bound, not by any positive engagement to the Bhurtpur state, but by our duty as supreme guardians of tranquilhty, law, and right, to maintain the legal succession of Balwant Singh. . . . Our supremacy has been violated, or slighted, under the impression that we were prevented by entanglement elsewhere from sufficiently resenting the indig- nity. ... A display and vigorous exercise of our power, if rendered necessary, would be likely to bring back men's minds in that quarter to a proper tone ; and thei capture of Bhurtpur, if effected in a glorious manner, would do us more honour throughout India, by the removal of the hitherto unfaded impressions caused by our former failure, than can be conceived.' This advice was accepted and acted on. Lord Lake had been baffled before Bhurtpur in 1805. It was quickly taken in 1826 by Lord Combermere. 5G OUR INDIAN PliOTECTOEATE The interpretation placed by the Court of Directors on the political results of the settlement of 1818 is one of an immense number of instances of British moderation in deal- ings with native states. But neither moderation nor the theory of non-intervention in internal affairs availed to pre- vent the absorption of some states, and the direct assump- tion of the administration of one of the most important states in India. In 1793 a treaty had been made with the then Eaja of Assam ; but the country lapsed into anarchy, and fell under the dominion of the Burmese. Its conquest in 1825 was confirmed by the treaty of Yandabu in 1826 ; and with the cession followed the supremacy over certain states and tribes in that quarter. Of these states the whole of Jaintia and a great part of Kach4r were annexed during the admin- istration of Lord William Bentinck, ' chiefly,' as Mr. Wilson says (' History,' vol. ix. p. 324), ' through the folly and criminality of their native rulers.' The Eaja of Jaintia, in 1832, failed to comply with a demand for the apprehension of persons concerned in the kidnapping of four British sub- jects for the purpose of ofTering them as victims to the god- dess K41i. His territory in the plains was therefore confis- cated ; and upon this he voluntarily relinquished his subjects in the hills in return for a pension. In 1830 Govind Chandra, Eaja of KachAr, who had been restored after the Burmese War, was assassinated. He had made himself ob- noxious to his people by the employment of strangers and by extortion, and the people had repeatedly solicited annexation ; and as there was no descendant, lineal or adoptive, the state was annexed, with the exception of a hill tract in the hands of a rebelhous subject. This tract was also annexed in 1853. In 1826 Lower Assam had been forthwith placed under British management ; but the upper part of the valley was made into a separate principality under Eaja Purandhar Singh, with whom a treaty was made in 1833. The Eaja's government was mild but weak. He fell deeply into arrears in the payment of his tribute, and declared his inability to meet the engagements by which he had bound himself. The management of the country was therefore resumed by government in 1838. During the same period events of much the same character were bearing wit- ness to the impracticable nature of the doctrine, that we should abstain from interference in the affairs of native states ; though at the very same time that doctrine was in other quarters applied with pohtical results of great evil. THE LATER GROWTH OF THE ]'ROTECTORATE 57 The Eaja whom we had set up m Mysore misgoverned his country, in spite of warnings, ior years. In 18B0 half of it was in revolt. It was necessary to send a British force to queU the insurrection; .and the administration was, in 1831, entrusted to British officers, and remained in British hands for fifty years. The Eaja of Coorg murdered many of his kinsmen, committed various other barbarities, and set the British Government at defiance. His state was therefore annexed in 1834. In 1838 the NawAb of Karniil (a Path An chiefship founded by Aurangzib, which passed as a feuda- tory to us in 1800 wiien the Nizam ceded Bellary and Cud- dapah in payment for the subsidiary force), was found to be engaged in treasonable military preparations on an extensive scale. His town and fort were taken in arms, himself imprisoned, and his state became a British district. These annexations, though small, are not without im- portance ; for they were made at a time when the circum- stances under which intervention in feudatory affairs is requisite had by no means been defined. It was thought that the native' princes became indolent by trusting to strangers for security, and cruel and avaricious from the assurance that they had nothing to dread from the hatred of their subjects as long as their protection was guaranteed hj an irresistible power (Marshman, iii. p. 15). Non-interfer- ence, it was supposed, would make the princes efficient instruments of government. It is easy now to see that we must interfere to prevent evils threatening the existence of the state itself or the general tranquillity of the country ; and that, as the native rulers are virtually maintained by British pdwer, the correction of gross misrule is an imperial responsibility. But this platitude, as it now seems, could only become a political maxim in virtue of a long experience fraught with manjr miseries to the subjects of native states. The annexations I have mentioned, occurring when they did, suggest that non-intervention would, in the end, produce exactly that consequence which most of all it was intended to obviate. Leave aU the native states alone to follow their own devices without guidance and without warning, and many would speedily blot themselves out by the sheer force of misgovernment, to the ultimate disturbance, as we may now believe, of the political equilibrium of the empire. Amongst instances of our reluctance to interpose, which might be quoted from the records of those days, I will refer only to the history of the state of Gwdlior between 1827 and 58 OUR INDIAN PROTECTOEATE 1843. In March 1827 died Daulat Eao Sindhia, with whom had been effected the settlement of 1805. His state had passed during his hfetime from independence to vassalage. He left no son, natural or adopted ; but a successor, a boy of eleven years of age, was adopted by Baiza Bai, Daulat Eao's widow, in accordance with Marhatta custom. Baiza Bai endeavoured without success to obtain a formal recognition of her right to be regent for hfe, and held the youthful Maharaja in such irksome restraint that he fled from the palace and took refuge with the Eesident. The Baiza Bai was unpopular ; the army espoused the cause of the young Maharaja, and the ambitious lady was compelled to retire from Gw41ior territory. The Maharaja was, indeed, acknowledged by the British Government. But, says Sir Charles Aitchison (' Trea- ties,' iii. p. 255), ' to such a length was the principle of abso- lute neutrality carried at this time ' (1833) ' that government declared it was matter of indifference whether the Maharaja or the Bai was at the head of the Gwdlior state, and that the only object of government was to preserve the general tranquillity and its own reputation, recognising such ruler as might be placed by the popular voice at the head of the administration.' Baiza Bai from without the Gwdlior terri- tories continued her intrigues. She was not supported by any strong party; but the rule of the Maharaja was very weak. ' The court was one constant scene of feuds and struggles for power among the nobles ; the army was in a chronic state of mutiny. The weakness of the internal government prepared the way for the hostilities with the British Government which broke out shortly after the Maharaja's death, and resulted in an entire change of the British policy towards the Gw41ior state.' The Maharaja died in February 1843. Again the widow, Td,ra Edni, adopted ; and the adoption was recognised by the British Government. The boy was eight years of age ; and the maternal uncle of the Maharaja just deceased was chosen by the chiefs as regent. He was opposed and expelled by one DAda Khdsjiwala, a mere usurper ; and the latter acted with hostility towards the British Government, which demanded his surrender, ' security for the tranquillity of the frontier, and the reduction of the mutinous army, which possessed the real power in Gwalior and overawed the govern- ment of the state.' The DMa was surrendered on the advance of a British force. But the army resisted, and was totally defeated in the battles of Mahardjpur and Punniar, fought on the same day in December 1843. Territory yielding eighteen THE LATER GEOWTH OF THE PEOTECTOEATE 59 lakhs a year was ceded for the maintenance of a contingent force ; the arnly was largely ]igduced ; and it was arranged that the government during the minority should be con- ducted according to the advice of the British Eesident. The Baiza^Bai was eventually allowed to return to Gwdlior, where she died in4«62. This narrative is instructive, partly because it is a good illustration of the necessity of imposing a limit on the mili- tary forces of native princes, and partly because it exhibits one set of natural consequences which flow from the refusal of the paramount power to interfere. The struggle with the Sikhs was known to be impending, and it was impossible to leave the mutinous forces of Gwdlior on our line of commu- nications or in our rear. Interference of the most drastic kind was forced upon us by the pressing necessities of self- preservation. We had allowed disorders to grow up of a type only too familiar to the readers of Indian history. The result was two pitched battles and a fresh annexation of territory. It is in this way, amongst others, that native states would gradually accomplish their own ruin, if there were no timely resolve on the part of the British Government to preserve them by friendly but strong interposition. The year 1843 was that of the annexation of Sindh. Upon this event it is not necessary for me to make any com- ment. It belongs quite as much to the history of the British in Asia as to Indian history, and the only connection it has with the growth of the protectorate is that the annexation did not extend to the stiU-existing Sindh state of Khairpur. In six years more the whole of the Punjab had been an- nexed. With the annexation of the Jullundur DoAb our protectorate extended to a number of hiU states to the north and west of those of which the British Government became the suzerain after the Nepal War. I also have to note that the creation of the state of Kashmir dates from the close of the first Sikh War in 1846 ; and that the failure of the government then established in the Punjab to hold the country in check by means of a Eesident and a native administration was not without some, though a slight, influence upon the decision to annex the province of Oudh. Upon that annexation I shall have to remark at some length in the next chapter. It is time now to sum up what we have so far gathered as to the relation between international law and Indian political law and the growth of the British protectorate. The 60 OUR IXBIAK rKOTECTORATE early administrators of the company no more acted upon the principles of international law than did the country powers for or against whom they fought in the contest for dominion which everywhere prevailed in the continent of India when the Moghal empire ceased to be strong. The first British peer who was Governor-General, Lord Cornwallis, attempted to apply the law of nations in India; and even Lord Wellesley himself appealed to it when the name served a political purpose of the hour. But it was soon perceived that in British supremacy lay the only hope of general tran- quilhty, or even perhaps of preserving the acquisitions already made. The first methods used were the support of pageant princes, the formation of subsidiary alliances, and actual conquests in arms. The policy of Lord Wellesley was reversed by his successors, but the inevitable course of events was only slightly retarded. Stringent doctrines of abstention did not prevent the extension of the protectorate ; and it was obviously unnecessary to call in the maxims of international law to justify the suppression of the Pind4ris'. Speaking generally, we may say that the protectorate has been formed without reference to international law, and depends upon a different order of ideas. Sometimes native powers were compelled to accept military aid or protection as part of a general design for the pacification of the whole country ; sometimes that aid and that protection were eagerly sought by them when threatened with extinction by the Sikhs or Marhattas ; and sometimes the British Government inherited by right of conquest the supremacy exercised by its predecessors. The paramount power of that government is not derived from the law of nations or from the Moghals, or, indeed, from any of the potentates who maintained a fluctuating and often nominal suzerainty over different parts of the country in former times ; it rests on conquest, agree- ment, and usage, and the necessity, in the general interest, of keeping the peace. But it may safely be said that what- ever suzerainty, real or nominal, belonged to the KMlsa in the Punjab, to the Gurkhas in the Hill states, to the Peshwa in so much of India as was overrun by the Marhattas, or to Delhi emperors has now become vested in the British Govern- ment in such a way that we can at least claim aU those acts of allegiance which were due to our predecessors, and the per- formance of which we have not expressly waived ; though how much more we could claim in any given case would be a question of fact to be answered by an examination of the THE LATER GROWTH OF THE PROTECTORATE 61 relations existing in that particular case between the govern- ment and its feudatory. Follof?ing the practice of Europe, we have, in an immense number of cases, though not by any means in all, recorded the results of the proceedings, military or diplomatic, which established our supremacy in docu- ments known as treaties or agreements; in many other cases, adopting the usage of India, we have acknowledged rights on the part of feudatories by sanads or imperial grants ; while in many cases the relations between suzerain and feudatory are not described in any formal instrument at all, but must be gathered from history, from official correspond- ence, and from those general principles of Indian political law which effectively maintain the British protectorate. It is importaint to observe that the principles in question cannot be considered to have become fixed till within quite recent years. The fundamental principle of all, the universal supremacy in India of the British Government, was indeed laid down by Lord Wellesley ; but, as I have shown, it was immediately repudiated by his successor, and for the greater part of this century — for years after it had been made operative by the wars and pacification of Lord Hastings — its consequences were left to be matters of conjecture or con- tradictory action, and were never so pursued as to form a body of doctrine that might be regarded as a part of the constitutional law of the whole British empire in India and elsewhere. Occupied with wars and conquests, the early administrators had little leisure for the elaboration of sys- tematic rules, which might have hampered them in the urgent necessities of self-defence and the suppression of political disorder ; and if, without the experiences of 1857 to guide them, they had attempted to work out their prin- ciples to results, the probability is that we should have been met now by the obstacle of authoritative expositions of policy unfavourable, in their ultimate tendency, to the autonomy of native states. We have, indeed, in the case of the doctrine of lapse, been compelled to encounter such an obstacle ; but, as will appear below, we have successfully surmounted it. As it is, the accepted principles are not the deductions of text writers from any general propositions, established or assumed, but generalisations from the course actually adopted by the government on typical and important occasions. They are, for the most part,;,to be gathered from specific cases, like the rules of judge-made law on topics untouched by 62 OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE legislation. And the fact that Indian political law has, in the main, been formed in this way raises a strong presump- tion that it will be found suitable for its purposes. Having been so formed, it obviously could not exist in any consider- able volume until a good many states had become feudatories, and a sufScient number of cases had arisen in practice to admit of safe rules for future guidance being drawn from their results. If we distinguish between the Indian political System and Indian political law, we may say that the former was almost wholly constructed in the first twenty years of the present century ; while the latter, though based upon occurrences of year after year from the middle of the last century to the present day, only really took shape during the twenty years nest after the mutiny. The provinces, so to speak, of Native India were nearly all of them added to the British protec- torate by Lord Wellesley and Lord Hastings. A good deal more was, however, effected by Lord Minto than we are sometimes apt to remember. Before the conquest of Mysore we had dealt with native potentates in one of two ways : we had either negotiated with them, or made wars or treaties on an equal footing, for they were then rival independent powers ; or we had subjugated them, leaving them the mere pageantry of royal state, while we took or supplied all the substance of political or military authority. In our relations with the Mysore state itself, the Nizam, and the Marhattas, we copied, to some extent, the procedure of international law ; and in our relations with the Naw4b of Arcot and the Nawdb of Murshidabad, rather that of the Peshwas and the mayors of the palace. Our dealings had been with the great and practically independent officers of the dying empire ; and with the great Indian powers originating in the violence to which its moribund condition afforded the opportunity. With few exceptions, the alternatives before the smaller states were subjugation by or continued subjection to the Sikhs or the Marhattas or the French wielding their power ; or, on the other hand, acceptance of British protection, with that degree of political dependence which that protection necessarily implies. Many of them willingly or eagerly elected for British protection ; and it is satisfactory to reflect that in great part the protectorate of native India is due to the deliberate political assent of the states concerned. Again and again the character in which the British Government has appeared has been that of a deliverer and a preserver. CHAPTEE IV THK ANNEXATION OF OUDH This chapter traverses well-worn ground, but there are good reasons for repeating here the oft-told tale of the last great measuj-e of Lord Dalhousie's administration. The story- illustrates the worst features of native rule under the protectorate, and thus enables me to shorten a later part of this work ; and it also serves to fix a date for the origin of Indian political law as now understood. It is clear from the discussions which I am about to summarise that before the mutiny there was no coherent system of settled principles and rules such as we now apply in our relations with the feudatory states ; and that thirty-seven years ago ideas on that subject were in a nebulous haze, and had not as yet been concentrated by events into definite shapes with a permanent inter-connection. In the process of concentra- tion much matter has been whirled away into the outer limbo of forgotten politics ; but we may hold that one important part of the lasting residuum was derived from Oudh experiences amongst others. Tardily, indeed, but at last, the conscience of the British Government awoke to its duty to the people of Oudh. The annexation illustrates the principle, that if there is misrule on the part of a govern- ment which we uphold, we ourselves are ultimately respon- sible for it. Oudh was not annexed on account of any treasonable acts on the part of its rulers. On the contrary, they never wavered in their friendship to thie British Government. In war they were active and useful allies, at least in the matter of supplies of grain, cattle, and money ; for their armj^, with the exception of some corps commanded by British officers, was always a rabble, and sometimes more dangerous to its friends than to its foes. In peace the officers of the Oudh Government attended with sufficient alacrity to those matters which depended exclusively on the requirements of 64 OUR INDIAN PEOTECTORATE the paramount power. Tliey gave up criminals who absconded from British territory. They supphed our troops on the march through Oudh. They protected our posts. They co-operated actively with us in the capture of Thags, and in the settlement of petty frontier disputes about lands. An Oudh Frontier Police was estabhshed, which was of great benefit to the neighbouring British districts. During the Nepal war the King of Oudh lent us, free of cost, nearly three hundred elephants. During the Nepal and Burma wars, he lent us three million pounds sterling, at times when we were extremely in want of money and could not procure it elsewhere. In 1842 the grandfather and father of the eventually deposed king between them lent us nearly half a million sterling, which was of great use in enabling Lord EUenborough to equip and push on the army of General Pollock to retrieve our disasters in Afghanistan. The Court of Directors stated that a more shocking picture of a country given up to lawless violence, and to the extremes of rapacity and cruelt}^, never had been placed before it, than that which appeared in the reports of Colonel Sleeman, the last of the Oudh residents but one. Yet Colonel Sleeman, who could speak with authorit}^ on such a point, believed that no native sovereigns in India had been better disposed towards the British Government than the rulers of Oudh ; or had, in time of difficulty, rendered aid, to the extent of their ability, with more cordiality or cheerfulness. Lord Dalhousie declared that the Government of India would feel itself guilty in the sight of God and man if it any longer sustained by its countenance and power a system fraught with suffering to millions. But he recorded that the rulers of Oudh had aU along acknowledged our power, had sub- mitted without a murmur to our supremacy, and had aided us, as best they could, in the hour of our utmost need. Oudh was annexed solely for the purpose of ending mis- government in all interior affairs; misgovernment which had lasted in spite of censure, remonstrance, warnings, and threats, for a period of forty years. I say forty years, because I wish to exclude the period from 1798 to 1814, when Saadat Ali was Nawdb, and I may add that under Muhammad Ali Shah (1837 to 1842) there may have been some improvement. But from the earlier time, when Slmja- ud-Daula laid his turban at Lord Olive's feet and owed the restoration of his territory and the promise of support to the pleasure of the British GoA^ernment, it may be said in THE ANNEXATION OF OUDH 65 general terms that corruption in all departments rarely, if ever, ceased, and there had been Jjttle, if any, remission of the extortion, tyranny, and cruelty of local chieftains and local officials. Oudh, when our connection with it began, was in a condition not unusual in Indian provinces at the time of the disruption of the Moghal Empire. That condition was never thoroughly reformed. Indeed, there is only too much reason to believe that, under the British protectorate, it deteriorated. Warning after warning was given without avail ; respite after respite demonstrated the vanity of every hope that at last there might be some effort towards improvement. In 1779 "Warren Hastings told the Wazir that the disorders of his state and the dissipation of his revenues were principally due to his detestable choice of ministers. In 1793 Lord CornwaUis, addressing the Wazir, said : ' The revenues are collected, without system, by force of arms : the dmils ' (the local revenue officials) ' are left to plunder uncontrolled ; the ryots have no security from oppression, nor redress for injustice exercised upon them.' In the following year Sir John Shore wrote in much the same strain. In 1801 Lord WeUesley had formed the conclusion that no effectual remedy could be provided against the ruin of the province of Oudh until the exclusive management of the civil and military government of that countr)'^ should be transferred to the Company, suitable provision being made for the maintenance of the Wazir and his family. ' No other remedy,' he observed, ' can effect any considerable improve- ment in the resources of the state, or can ultimately secure its external safety and internal peace.' Writing to the Wazir a little later in the same year, he said : ' I have repeatedly represented to your Excellency the effects of the ruinous expedient of anticipating the collections, the destructive practice of realising them by force of arms, the annual diminution of the jumma (revenue) of the country, the precarious tenure by which the dmils and farmers hold their possessions, the misery of the lower classes of the people, absolutely excluded from the protection of the Government, and the utter insecurity of life and property throughout the province of Oudh.' Lord Wellesley annexed more than half the country and endeavoured, without success, to provide for the better government of the residue. But the misgovernmen,t of the districts left to the Wazir was not permanently abated. A scheme was devised upon the principle of assimilating the administration of Oudh to that 66 OUR INDIAN PEOTECTORATE of a British province, and dividing the territory into districts with revenue and judicial officers acting under separate controlling officers at the capital. About the year 1810 this scheme was submitted to the Nawdb, with a letter from Lord Minto strongly urging its adoption. The Nawdb refused to accept the scheme ; and it was entirely dropped by Lord Hastings in 1814, as a measure of conciliation and of preparation for the approaching Gurkha war. It is said that after Lord Hastings' departure the British Govern- ment again determined to interfere authoritatively for the correction of confusion and misgovernment. However this may be, during the years from 1815 to 1822 the British troops were constantly employed against refractory zaminddrs ; and in the beginning of 1820 these troops occupied and dismantled more than seventy of the Oudh forts. The Government of Oudh was unable, without assistance, to suppress even the gangs of armed robbers who haunted the jungles and made frequent and desperate inroads into British territory. In 1826 Lord Amherst had an interview with the King in the hope of inducing him to amend the administration of his country. In 1831 Lord William Bentinck informed the King that matters had come to that pass that, in the event of improvement and reformation not being effected by his Majesty's officers, the settlement of the country would need to be made by British officers : and this intimation was accompanied by a significant allusion to the stories of Bengal and Benares, Arcot and Tanjore. The same Governor-General recommended to the Home Government that the British Government should undertake the management of the country in the name of the King for such period as might be found necessary for restoring order and for establishing an efficient system of administration. The Court of Directors authorised the Government of India to carry this measure into effect, if they still considered it necessary to do so. In the despatch of July 16, 1834, which conveyed this permission, the Court observed: 'The administration of Oudh, instead of being conducive to the prosperity or calculated to secure the lives and property of the inhabitants, has become progressively more and more oppressive until the country presents a scene of anarchy and tyranny unparalleled in any other of the more considerable native states ; and, instead of always advising with the officers of the British Government and acting in conformity to their advice, the Prince has, THE ANNEXATION OF OUDH 67 during all this long period, disregarded the most earnest remonstrances and the most soj^mn admonitions, perpetually addressed to him, both by the British representative at his Court and directly by your Government.' ' Unfortunately,' writes Sir J. P. Grant in a valuable minute to which I shall refer again presently, ' the measure thus authorised was not carried into effect at the time in the unfounded hope of amelioration.' We may at least conjecture that if it had been, the result might have equalled that attained in the not dissimilar case of Mysore. But ' the Afghan and other wars,' continues Sir J. P, Grant, ' suspended the considera- tion of the Oudh question for several years ; ... at last, in 1847, the Governor-General, Lord Hardinge, at a solemn interview, gave the present ruler of Oudh a term of two years, within which period, if his administration were not reformed, he was assured that the measures which had been so long threatened would be carried into execution.' Nothing was done. The Punjab and Pegu wars and the reluctance of the Government to resort to the necessary extremities caused a delay of some years. At length General Outram was sent to Oudh as Eesident, with instructions to report whether the improvement peremptorily demanded by Lord Hardinge seven years before had been in any degree effected. The report of General Outram showed no im- provement whatsoever. In the language of Lord Dalhousie, the misgovernment of Oudh was even more gross and palpable than at the first: the condition of the King's territory and people was even more miserable than before. Upon this report and the consultations which followed it, her Majesty's Government resolved upon the annexation of the country. It is idle now to inquire whether Oudh might not still have been one of the feudatory states of India, if the whole of Lord WeUesley's pohcy had been carried out, and not merely a part of it ; if the scheme of Lord Minto had been firmly insisted upon at the time; or if Lord William Bentinck's proposal for a temporary sequestration had been acted upon by his successor. I shall have to dwell a little longer upon the actual nature of the evils which existed in Oudh, because the record against that state of wrong and dis- regarded human suffering is the most forcible illustration I can adduce of the anarchy and oppression which may ensue when the British Government protects a native potentate against attack from without and internal disorder, removes 68 OUE INDIAN PEOTECTOKATE the natural check upon Eastern rulers of general revolt, and unhappily relies, as the sole security for good govern- ment, upon advice, expostulation, and censure. Measures, not mere words, are required if we would save native states from the loss of their autonomy. This is a commonplace now, but the whole history of Oudh proves that it has been long indeed in becoming an accepted principle. What, then, was the general condition of Oudh in the period which immediately preceded annexation ? In 1839, Dr. Butter, an officer -who had excellent opportunities of becoming acquainted with the facts, wrote : ' The adminis- trative state of the country may be summed up in a few words : a sovereign regardless of his kingdom, except so far as it supplies 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, invested with virtually despotic powers, left, almost unchecked, to gratify their rapacity and private enmities ; a local army, ill-paid, and, therefore, licentious, undisciplined, and habituated to defeat ; an almost absolute denial of justice in all matters, civil or criminal; and an overwhelming British force distributed through the provinces to maintain the faith of an ill-judged treaty and to preserve peace.' In 1849, while the minister was framing a plausible balance-sheet, more than one- third of the revenue remained uncollected at the end of the year ; all the public establishments and stipendiaries were deeply in arrears ; the treasury was empty ; scores of landholders, with large armed forces, were in open rebellion. There were 246 forts or strongholds, mounted with 476 pieces of cannon, aU held by landholders of the first class, chiefly Edjpiits. Large quantities of the most fertile lands in Oudh were converted by the landholders into jungles around their strongholds, some of them extending over spaces from ten to twenty miles long by from four to eight miles wide. Into these mazes of desolation and iniquity no man dared enter without the permission of the robber chief. The strongholds were dens of plunderers, infesting the whole country, defying the Government, imposing intolerable taxes upon traders and travellers, and making life and property everywhere insecure. The revenue was collected by force ; and landholders who failed in their resistance to the wretched soldiers of the Nawdb, took to plunder, burnt as many villages and murdered or robbed as many travellers as they could, to THE ANNEXATION OF OUDH 69 obtain subsistence for their armed followers and to avenge themselves on the Government«,nd- its supporters. Oudh has an area of 24,000 square miles, and was then supposed to have a population of about five millions. During the seven years ending 1854, according to the statis- tics of reported crime, there was an annual average of more than 147 gang robberies and 212 cases of kidnapping. According to the like statistics during the same period, there was an annual average of 1,573 persons killed and wounded, and of 78 villages burnt and plundered. The actual suffering was much greater, for innumerable crimes were never reported at all. General Outram estimates the corrected average of killed and wounded at above 2,000 a year. Outside of Lucknow there were no courts of justice of any kind. There were six hundred and sixty news-writers distributed over the face of the country, drawing, on an average, less than ten shillings a month apiece. It was their duty to make a true report of all occurrences to the Durbdr or heac'-. quarters of Government, through the Darogah, or head of the department. They sold their reports to the officers, civil and military, who abused their authority, and shared the pro- ceeds of this iniquitous traffic with the Darogah, who, in turn, shared his plunder with the minister and other influen tial persons at court. Colonel Sleeman reports a case in w^hich the wives and children of the landowners and culti- vators of whole towns and villages were driven off in hundreds like flocks of sheep to be sold into slavery. A great many perished of cold and hunger. The emissaries of the news- writers were present, and received so much a head on all who perished or were sold. Frightful tortures were common. There were numerous cases of men being burnt on the body with hot ramrods ; the mode of punishment for recusancy was to place the wrist between split bamboos, which were daily tightened. If the victim failed to pay the demand, he was left in this situation till his hand dropped off. Three men lost their hands in this manner in the year 1854 in the villages of Pipapur and KaliAnpur. In 1847 the following were amongst the crimes committed by high Government officials or their subordinates: five hundred women and children, were sold by auction; in a gang- robbery four men were killed and a fifth was buried up to the neck in the ground and his ears filled with powder, which was fired and kiUed him ; a revfenue-collec'tor with a thou- sand sepoys attacked a bazaar, plundered five villages, and 70 OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE carried off thirty-two captives; a weaver who delayed to prepare some thread was tied to the leg of an elephant and thus dragged, his body being lacerated, to the camp of the local official ; a farmer of a village, on the plea of arrears of revenue, was burnt in the body with hot ramrods. I need not go on with the list. In all these cases the matter was represented by the Eesident to the King, but no answer could be obtained. In Lucknow, where there were tribunals, justice was openly bought and sold. The King's eunuchs, the King's fiddlers, the King's poets, and the King's creatures plundered the people as much in the capital as the revenue ofiicers plundered them in the distant districts. These minions had their separate courts of so-called justice, and on the pretence of adjudicating claims under the authority of the King, imprisoned and ruined whomsoever they pleased. Ofiicials bought their places and recouped themselves by rapacity. The revenue officials gave large fees to the court officials, but were not safe in their positions for a year, so much depended on Durbdr influence and Durbdr intrigue. The King left all power ostensibly to the minister ; but the minister was hampered on every side by the interference of the despicable crew of strumpets and parasites who hung about the King. The position of the minister, if unenviable, was profitable. His salary was more than ten thousand pounds a year, and his perquisites were reckoned at more than seven times that sum. Bad as the civil administration was, the army was perhaps even a worse plague to the miserable subjects of the King than the systematic corrup- tion of all authority and the systematic prostitution of all justice. The rebels and robbers sometimes spared the villagers ; but the King's troops, who dared not face the high- handed marauders, showed the common people no mercy. Three-fourths of the officers commanding regiments were singers or eunuchs, or their creatures, or the creatures of court favourites — men or boys who never saw their regiments and never left the court. Numbers of the army existed only on paper, their pay being the perquisite of the commanding officers and their crew. The officials embezzled the money supplied for powder, for the repair of gun carriages, for the purchase of bullocks. The bullocks actually purchased were starved, and the price of the grain supposed to be supplied to them misappropriated. Other bullocks used for artillery purposes were taken from the villagers by force. The pay- masters received their offices on contract. With the con- THE ANNEXATION OF OUDH 71 nivance of the Government and its officers, the troops — of whom it was said that none Imd a whole coat to his back and few muskets which could be discharged — were for ever engaged in pillaging the farmers and cultivators. Outlay for grass, wood, and fodder was disallowed ; every corps on reaching its ground therefore sent out a foraging party. The doors and roofs were torn from the houses to be used for fuel. The covering of houses, doors, and windows, and stores of grass and straw were to be seen moving towards the camp from every village within two or three miles. The Chumilrs and like inferior castes, it was said, were the prey of all, caught at every hour, of day or night, used as beasts of burden, beaten and abused, never paid, and often robbed even of their scanty clothing. All this time the King had utterly disregarded the responsibilities of his high station. At first, he sometimes held a durbdr or levee ; but in 1849, and afterwards, he passed most of his time in the female apartments ; and the only persons, except the females, who saw and spoke to him, were the eunuchs, the fiddlers, and the songsters, who meddled in every afiair and influenced every decision. His aversion to business became incurable. All he required from his minister was not to importune him on affairs or allow others to do so. He virtually appointed his favourite fiddler to be the supreme head of the civil courts in Lucknow. Blinded by his minions to the iniquities committed in his name, he made himself deaf to the miseries of his people. He never read or heard read a report or a complaint or public docu- ment of any kind, except perhaps the letters of remonstrance of the ilesident or the Governor-General. When he went out to take the air in his carriage, no one was permitted to approach him with a petition, though the streets werfe crowded with people clamouring for a redress of the wrong$ they suffered in the town or the provinces. He did not even attend to the abject wants of his own family. In 1854 the King's own uncle had not received his stipend for three years, and upwards of seventy thousand rupees were still due to him. One of the first petitions General Outram received was from 216 ladies of the royal house, representing that their stipends were overdue for periods averaging from three to four years. These unfortunate, persons were literally starving. While the royal family was in want, while justice was being sold at his doot-, while corruptilon was rampant in publie. postsvand public officers were defrauding the Government, bribing their 72 OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE superiors or the minions of the King, and robbing the people whom it was their duty to protect, while the royal army was pillaging the country, and the chief landholders were levying war on the troops and the villagers and each other, the King was receiving the obeisances of his doctors and courtiers, distributing shawls and handkerchiefs to his fiddlers and females, letting off fireworks, gazing at flights of pigeons, and enjoying the performances of dancing-girls. It may be that the last King of Oudh was the worst, or one of the worst, of a long line of imbecile or dissolute rulers. It may be that we see Oudh at its worst during the dark period which pre- ceded its deliverance. But culpable apathy in the ruler was no more a novelty in Oudh than gross misrule in the state. ' The sovereigns of Oudh,' wrote Lord Dalhousie, ' have been enabled for more than half a century to persist in their course of oppression and misrule. Their eyes have never seen the misery of their subjects ; their ears have never been open to their cry. Secure of the safety of his person, secure of the stability of his throne, each successive ruler has passed his lifetime within the walls of his palace, or in the gardens round his capital, careful for nothing but the gratification of his individual passion— avarice, as in one ; intemperance, as in another ; or, as in the present King, effeminate sensuality, indulged among singers, musicians, and eunuchs, the sole companions of his confidence, and the sole agents of his power.' Early in 1856 troops were moved up to Lucknow from Cawnpore, and at the latter place was assembled a body of civil officers to take charge of the divisions and districts of the province. On February 7, 1856, General Outram took over the administration. Before this the King was offered a draft treaty, of which the first article vested in the East India Company for ever the civil and military administration of the territories of Oudh. Notwithstanding much pressure, the King persisted in refusing to sign ; and the annexation was effected without his assent, and in spite of his protests. In 1859 he accepted a pension of twelve lakhs (or, roughly, 120,000Z.) a year ; and he was allowed to retain the title of King of Oudh, which, on his death, ceased absolutely. In 1862 an act was passed to exempt him from the jurisdiction of the criminal courts except in capital cases, and to provide for his trial and examination if necessary. Wdjid Ali Shah, the ex-King of Oudh, lived till lately in th€ suburbs of Calcutta in a residence purchased for him by THE ANNEXATIOjN"^ OF OUDII 73 the British Government. He died on September 21, 1887. The province of Oudh becam^part of British India. It was administered for some time by a Chief Commissioner and commission on the non-regulation system of the Punjab. In January 1877 it was partially amalgamated with the North- western Provinces, by the union of the offices of Chief Com- missioner and Lieutenant-Governor. But there are differences still between the Oudh and Korth-Western administrations which, under one and the same Local Government, rapidly tend to disappear. The whole story suggests the reflection that, if the main- tenance of native potentates under the British protectorate necessarily produces a condition of public affairs characterised by the turpitude, oppression, insecurity, violence, and cruelty which the above picture of Oudh displays, time given to the elaboration of Indian poUtical law is time worse than wasted. Assuredly, the British nation would never wittingly assent to the direct or indirect employment of British troops to uphold so monstrous an engine for the infliction of human misery as, under that supposition, the Indian political system must be. If we conscientiously believe that there is no mean between the direct administration of a state as British ter- ritory by officers of the British Government and the relin- quishment of the state to the native prince and his ministers, secured by the military strength of the empire against foreign and domestic dangers, and under no check save that of advice or censure, which they are at liberty to disregard, we had better abandon aU attempt to consolidate the existing system of relations with feudatories, and seize every oppor- tunity which presents itself and is consistent with good faith to convert the remaining foreign territories into British districts by systematic annexation. Any political risk which this might involve would be preferable to the insupportable moral responsibility of deliberately maintaining the mis- government of millions. From other parts of this book it will, I hope, clearly appear that we are not really in the dilemma of upholding misrule or endangering the empire. We have realised much better than in times past the nature of our duty towards the inhabitants of native states. At the present day the Government has the means of fulfilling that duty, and uses them, in case of necessity, without hesi- tation. The chief interest of the annexation of Oudh to the students of Indian political law lies in the discussions of the 74 OUR INDIAN PEOTECTOKATE Indian Government which set forth the justification of the measure. In the minutes recorded at that time we can see Indian pohtical law in the making ; and the contrast between the ideas prevalent then and now will show something of the progress made in the interval. There was no substan- tial difference of opinion as to what should be done. All were agreed that the British Government must permanently undertake the whole government of the province. As to the basis of the right to do this, and, in consequence, as to the manner in which it should be done, there was consider- able divergence of view. Mr. J. Dorin preferred to ' assert the right of the Govern- ment of India, as the paramount power, to adopt its own system of government in respect to any portion of the Indian Empire that is hopelessly ground to the dust by the oppres- sion of its native rulers.' He therefore advised that the King should be required to abdicate his sovereign power, and to consent to the incorporation of Oudh with the terri- tories of the British crown, ample personal provision being made for himself and his family. The minute of Sir J. P. Grant assumed the existence of a theory of the Indian constitution apart altogether from the obligations of treaties and the precepts of international law. His argument was that, whatever were the rights and obli- gations of Lord Wellesley in 1800 towards the ruler and people of Oudh, such would be the rights and obligations of the British Government in 1855, when the treaty of 1801 was justly abrogated. No King of Oudh, no ancestor of any King of Oudh, was ever an independent sovereign. The JSTaw^bs of Oudh never threw off their legal subordination to the Moghal Emperor. The position of the NawAbs of the Moghal Empire was no more than the position of an here- ditary viceroy ; ' and by the theory of the Indian constitution, they and their family had no claim to hold it longer than they continued to govern their provinces tolerably well. By the practice of the Indian constitution they never did hold it longer, for when they misgoverned, if the Emperor was too weak to dethrone them, some ambitious ameer did the Emperor's duty.' Shuja-ud-Daula, the suhaddr of Oudh, unjustly attacked the British Government of Bengal. He was conquered and restored to power in 1765 under certain stipulations. These stipulations gave him no independence. In virtue of them every Nawdb of Oudh has been, in fact, what Mr. Hastings formally designated the son and. successor THE ANNEXATION OF UUDH 75 of Shuja-ud-Daula, a vassal of the Company. The JSTawabs or subaddrs of Oudh have ieen supported solely by the arms of the British Government ; they knew and admitted that their existence depended on that of the British Empire. Oudh was recognised by them and by everybody else as a part of that empire. It was bound to contribute to its defence. The Oudh army was a useless rabble, the country was grossly misgoverned. Lord Wellesley, not in pursuance of any treaty, nor under any of those circumstances in which a sovereign state may be legitimately asked to disarm, but as a measure of military reform indispensable for the good of Oudh and its people, compelled the Fawdb to disband his army. He further endeavoured to induce the Nawdb or suhaddr to give up to the British Government absolutely the whole civil and military administration of his subaddri. The Nawdb refused, and he was then compelled to cede about half his territory. This compulsion was not exercised either under any treaty or in virtue of any natural right, as between separate nations, entitling one to sequestrate terri- tory of another in payment of a debt, for the subsidy to be secured on the ceded districts was not in arrears. It was exercised by military preparation, by instructions to the Eesident that in the case of the refusal of the Nawdb to grant what was required of him ' the British troops were to march for the purpose of establishing the authority of the British Government within those districts,' of which the cession had been demanded, and by the Eesident actually issuing to the Oudh officials orders to remit no more revenue to the Oudh Government. The Nawdb further engaged, under the treaty of 1801, thus forced upon him, to establish in his reserved dominions such a system of administration, to be carried into effect by his own officers, as should be conducive to the prosperity of his subjects and be calculated to secure the lives and property of the inhabitants. In aU this Lord Wellesley was fully justified by the relative positions of the British Government and the ruler of Oudh. Lord Wellesley's position was that of the head of an empire. The legal posi- tion of the subaddr under the Emperor of Delhi, and his actual position under the Governor-General in Council, was that of a subject prince administering in a subordinate capacity one of the component parts of that empire. The principle of Lord WeUesley's action was that the relative positions of the parties thus explained gave the British Government the right, and imposed upon, it the obligation. 76 OUE INDIAX PROTECTORATE in tlie proved case of extreme misgovernment on the part of the ruler of Oudh, to make whatever organic change of administration in the whole or in any portion of that country, due consideration for the character of the British Govern- ment, the general good of the empire, and, especially, the rights and interests of the people of Oudh, rendered neces- sary. ' Lord Wellesley's principle,' said Sir J. P. Grant in another part of the same paper, ' lies at the bottom of our relations with nine-tenths of the native states in alliance with us.' In 1801, Lord WeUesley provided finally for the welfare of one-half of Oudh, and instituted an experiment for the welfare of the other half, with which his successors should deal, as masters, if it should break down, exactly as he had dealt, as master, with the former constitution of Oudh when it broke down in 1801. The stipulation of the treaty of that year, which had regard to the welfare of the people of Oudh, had not been performed by the Oudh Government. The treaty was therefore at an end ; and the parties were in 1855 in the same position as in 1800. ' When the British Govern- ment succeeded to the empire of the Moghal it acquired permanent dominion over Oudh by a double right. It has never been imagined that it would have been thought justi- fiable in the Moghal, if he had had at command the neces- sary physical force, to neglect to relieve his Oudh subjects from the incorrigible misgovernment of his subaddrs. I am unable to see on what ground we, who stand in the Moghal's place, and who have at command the necessary physical force, can doubt that we have the same right, and the same duty, as the Moghal would have had. Such, I contend, has been the theory of the relation of the rulers of Oudh to the British Government ; and, most assuredly, our practice has accorded with no other theory. In 1798 we deposed a nawdb, Wazir Ali, who had actually ascended the masnad, and commenced to rule, on the ground that, in our judg- ment, he was not the son of the late Nawdb, who had acknowledged him as such. And in 1837 we set aside, by force, a son of the late King, on the ground that, in our judgment, he was illegitimate, and we, by force, enthroned the brother of the late King instead. These were, doubtless, very proper acts on our part ; but if such acts were not founded on the assertion of our having supreme dominion over the kings and people of Oudh, I ask on wlut doctrine were they founded ? by what reasoning they can be justified H I§ it only when the people are concerned that we should THE ANNEXATION OF OUDH 77 hesitate to assert our supreme dominion ? ' Accordingly, Sir J, P. Grant recommended ^at, with or without the King's consent, Oudh should be incorporated with the territories immediately administered by the British Indian Government, the treaty of 1801 being declared violated and at an end. General Low agreed that the treaty was annulled ; but thought the King should be persuaded to sign a new treaty, making over his whole kingdom permanently to the exclusive management of the British. If the King should refuse to sign a new treaty, we should still, as Sir J. P. Grant held, be in possession of those peculiar rights over the rulers of Oudh which were ours before the treaty of 1801, as that document did not in any respect cancel our previously existing rights. So far, it will be noticed, the arguments were drawn from Indian history, Indian practice, Indian theory. Neither Mr. Dorin, nor Sir J. P. Grant, nor General Low dreamt of applying to the case the maxims of European international law. The whole structure of Sir J. P. Grant's argument shows that he regarded them as entirely inapplicable. It was otherwise with the two other members of the Govern- ment of India who took part in this memorable discussion. Sir Barnes Peacock argued that ' if a treaty between two nations be broken by one of them, the injured nation has the option either to consider the treaty at an end, or to uphold it, and insist upon the performance of it, and, if necessary, resort to force for that purpose,' and he supported this position by quotations from Vattel. He preferred to uphold the treaty, as our title to the provinces ceded in 1801 depended upon it. He thought the King should be required to consent to vest the whole civil and miUtary administration of his kingdom in the East India Company for ever, to be carried into eJBfect by their officers in his name. Thus, Sir Barnes Peacock considered, we should obtain a sufficient guarantee for future good government, without deposing the King or compelling him to abdicate, and to vest the whole of his territories in the British Govern- ment. The King should not be allowed to exercise any option. If he should refuse his consent to the offer to be made to him, the East India Company should exercise that power which was. Sir Barnes Peacock believed, in strictness vested in them in consequence of the violation of the treaty, and remove the King and his heirs for ever from the throne. 78 OUE INDIAN PEOTECTORATE Lord Dalliousie pointed out the objection that the treaty required the administration to be conducted through the officers of the King. His lordship advised that the treaty ' should be declared nuU and void, that our troops should be withdrawn, and that our protection of the Government should cease, and that all our relations with it should be broken off.' A new treaty should then be offered to the King, of which the most essential article should be that, while retaining the sovereignty of his kingdom, he should vest the whole civil and military administration of it in the East India Company. Lord Dalhousie believed that in less than a month, ' either the King's subjects would have marched over the King's troops and pillaged Lucknow ; or the King, to save himself, would have been glad to agree to whatever engagements might be offered to him by the British Govern- ment.' His lordship's colleagues, however, and the Court of Directors considered that in the interval of delay during which the Eesident and British troops would be withdrawn the most terrible evils would, at least temporarily, be brought on the people of Oudh, whose benefit was the sole motive, as well as the sole justification, of the proposed measure. Lord Dalhousie, having regard to a recent out- break of fanatical violence in Oudh, yielded ; and the measure actually effected was substantially that suggested by General Low. Without withdrawing the troops or Eesident-, a new treaty was offered, and, on its rejection, the administration was authoritatively assumed. The point for particular attention, however, is the reason assigned by Lord Dalhousie for the course he originally advocated. He believed it to be most in accordance with established usage, most in conformity to international law, and, therefore, least liable to criticism or cavil, and least open to the attack of those who might be expected to con- demn and oppose the action of the Government of India. The view propounded by Sir J. P. Grant, ' namely,' as Lord Dalhousie incorrectly described it, ' that the King of Oudh was no independent sovereign, but only a subaddr, whom the British Government as paramount power, in succession to the King of Delhi, was entitled to remove at its pleasure,' his lordship emphatically repudiated. ' The theory itself,' he said, ' is, in my humble judgment, destroyed at once by the simple fact of the acknowledged existence of treaties concluded between the British Government and the rulers of THE ANNEXATION OF OUDH 79 Oudh, for treaties can be formed only between independent powers. The apparent argunj|gnts in support of the theory- drawn from the proceedings of Lord Wellesley could, I affirm, be readily refuted from his lordship's own despatches. So entirely did I dissent from the view which had been taken by my honourable colleague, and so erroneous did it seem to me that, if, unfortunately, it had found favour with the Honourable Court, I must have declined to take part in the establishment, or enforcement, of any policy which might have been founded upon it.' Sir J. P. Grant promptly re- plied that he had never intended that the British Government was entitled to remove the rulers of Oudh at its pleasure. So long as they performed their treaty obligations, the treaty made with them could not be annulled. The succession to the Delhi Emperor was not reaUy material. As a matter of fact, in 1800 it had not occurred. The Court of Directors had not these subsequent explana- tions before them. They judiciously refrained from express- ing any opinion on the principles laid down by the several members of council, and prohibited the complete severance of our connection with the Oudh Government unless it was certain that the King would forthwith accept the proposed new treaty. If this was uncertain, they took the respon- sibility of authorising and enjoining the only other course by which our duties to the people of Oudh could be fulfilled — that of assuming authoritatively the powers necessary for the permanent establishment of good government throughout the country. This somewhat elaborate abstract of a famous debate shows that, though the principles of Indian political law and its relation to international law were unsettled, the supreme Government acknowledged its duties to the people of Oudh and resolved to act up to them by the exercise of authority. As to the foundation of the authority thus to be exercised, there can be no doubt that in one point Lord Dalhousie was in error. There are many treaties with Indian Eulers who are not independent. Of all the theories put forward, I beheve that any one who has passed an official life in India, and has had occasion to study Indian history and to deal with native states, wiU at once assert that the theory of Sir J. P. Grant, though not at all beyond criticism, is nearer the facts than any other. Sir J. P. Grant perhaps did not assign sufficient weight to the 80 OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE de facto, thougli limited, sovereignty of the Nawdbs of Oudh, a sovereignty which had actually existed for half a century at least, if not more. As I have already pointed out, when the Emperor of Delhi fell into our hands we were so far from taking on ourselves his theoretical suzerainty that Lord Wellesley himself expressly disclaimed any intention to make that political use of the occurrence. Indeed, hornage continued to be offered on the part of the British Govern- ment to the Great Moghal till the cold season of 1842-3, when it was prohibited by Lord EUenborough. An amusing account of the last occasion on which British officers made their obeisance and offered tribute in the shape of bags of gold coins to the Delhi Emperor will be found in Kaye's ' Sepoy War.' The surprise and indignation of Lord Ellen- borough at an act which made the Governor-General appear as the vassal of the imperial house of Delhi was naturally extreme. Since that time, no doubt, her Majesty the Queen- Empress has succeeded to the- throne of Delhi, vacated by the treachery and rebellion of the last occupant. Whatever additional claim on the loyalty of feudatories may result from this accession, it is not the basis of the suzerainty exercised in India for years, while homage was still being paid to the Delhi Emperor. Another lesson to be drawn from the story of Oudh is that Indian political law is, or may be, exposed to a double danger. It may be ignored by lawyers, who may turn to text-books of international law because they are not acquainted with any other law applicable to the relations between the British Government and the feudatory states. It may be ignored by statesmen, because they may believe that if their action should become the subject of party conflict in the parliamentary arena or before constituencies, political opponents at least wiU be prone to draw their weapons of attack from an exclusively Western armoury. Obviously the best resource against these dangers is, if possible, so to state the general principles and history of Indian political law that they shall become easily accessible for perusal to those who may have occasion to consider the questions to which they apply. Before leaving the case of Oudh I have to add a remark upon Lord WeUesley's policy. It is probable that he looked, forward to a much more active interposition by the Govern- ment of India in the internal affairs of Oudh than was ever actually practised before annexation. The sixth article of TlIK ANNEXATION OF OUDH 81 the treaty of 1801 obliged the Naw4b always to advise with, and act in conformity to the counsels of, the officers of the East India Company. There is no doubt that Lord Welles- ley intended the advice to be systematic, comprehensive, and authoritative. ' It is my intention,' he said in a minute of August 16, 1802, written nearly a year after the signa- ture of the treaty, ' as soon as the state of public affairs may admit, to prepare a detailed plan for the administration of the Wazir's dominions, founded on that which shall be established within the ceded provinces.' ' The whole minute,' says Sir J. P. Grant, ' shows that, whatever Lord WeUesley would have done under his own treaty, had he remained in power to see how Oudh affairs have gone on since he left the country, he would not have left them in the state they have been in for the last fifty years.' We have seen that a regular scheme for the government of Oudh was formally proposed to the Nawilb by Lord Minto. It was dropped by Lord Hastings for other reasons besides those I have mentioned. The conduct of the then Eesident appears to have been injudicious. Any one who cares to pursue this uninviting topic wiU find ample details in Mr. Prinsep's History (vol. i. pp. 217-21). If, however, in 1802 Lord Wellesley thought it practicable to make a Native Euler govern well through his own officers, this is some support to the behef that, in 1892, the Government of India need experience no substantial difficulty when it has occasion to require chiefs to act up to their obligations of good govern- ment. I may mention that this chapter was written in 1887, without any reference being made at that time to chapters IV. and V. of Mr. H. C. Irwin's very able and interesting book ' The Garden of India.' In these chapters Mr. Irwin gives a very fuU account of the administration of Oudh under the Nawdbs and of the annexation. After reading what Mr. Irwin has said, I have slightly revised two passages to avoid any injustice to two of the Nawdbs. It is unnecessary to enter upon any matter on which I might venture to differ with Mr. Irwin ; but I wish to make one extract from his work. * It is difficult,' he says (p. 175j, ' to rise from a study of the blue book of 1856 without feehng that the motives which led to the adoption of that measure ' (i.e. the annexa- tion of Oudh) ' were not mere vulgar lust of conquest or mere greed of pecuniary gain. There can be no doubt that Lord Dalhousie and the members of his Council, and General 82 OUB IXDIAX PROTECTOHATE Outram, were, one and all, firmly convinced that by assum- ing the administration of Oudh they were acting in the interests of humanity, and conferring a great blessing on several millions of people. And they were certainly right in their belief that the misrule and oppression prevailing in the province were intense.' In these opinions I entirely agree. 83 CHAPTEE V THE DOCTRINE OF LAPSE AND THE ADOPTION ' SANADS ' The doctrine of lapse, so largely applied but not invented by Lord Dalhousie, was the bane of the states of the Indian protectorate. It actually extinguished some states ; not- withstanding the distinctions formally but imperfectly made between states of different classes, it threatened or might, on strong grounds, be held to have threatened the gradual extinction of all. The antidote was the distribution by Lord Canning of the sanads or written grants declaring the desire of the Crown that the governments of Euling Chiefs should be perpetuated, and assuring them that adoptions regularly made by themselves or future Chiefs would be confirmed by the British Government. The present system of relations between the British Government and its Indian feudatories to a great extent depends on the maintenance of the altered policy which these sanads expressed. It is therefore necessary to examine in some detail both the bane and the antidote. I heartily rejoice to think that the doctrine of lapse has been abandoned ; but here again, as in the case of the annexation of Oudh, I believe it to be a very grave error to attribute to the great or distinguished men who made use of that doctrine either mere ambition or mere greed of territory or revenue. Unquestionably those men were actuated by the highest political motives. Their first desire was the desire of all those, native or European, who have the interests of the British Empire at heart. They wished to see the Empire strong and the millions who inhabit India prosperous and well governed. And they believed — though at this date under changed circumstances we may weU differ from them on this essential point — that these ends would be best attained by the substitution, whenever it might be consistent with justice and good faith, of direct British administration for native rule. I shaU adduce in iUustra- 84 OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE tion of these remarks the cases of Satt4ra, Karauli, Tehri, Jhdnsi, and ISTagpur. When Lord Dalhousie landed in India in 1848 there was no novelty in the lapse of foreign territory to the paramount power ; and in the Bombay Presidency, where we had succeeded to the comparatively recent dominion of the Marhattas, it had been the practice, on the failure of heirs to chiefships, to grant or refuse permission to adopt according to circumstances. In a series of despatches dating from 1834 to 1846, the Court of Directors had laid down that the permission of adoption, when optional, should be the excep- tion, not the rule, and should never be granted but as a special mark of favour and approbation. When refusal to permit adoption would be, with reference to the tenure of the state and the custom of previous governments, an act of harshness or an injury, permission, they said, should be given, but not otherwise, except as a reward. On these principles, on failure of natural heirs, permission to adopt had been refused in the cases of the petty states of Colaba and Mandavi and of certain jdgirs in the Deccan and Southern Marhatta country, which had accordingly lapsed ; while the chief of Sangli had been allowed in his lifetime to adopt a son, and an adopted son had been allowed to succeed to the Jamkhandi jdgir. Among the Sikhs, Cis- Sutlej and Trans-Sutlej , ' adoption, though carrying with it all the right of succession to private property enjoyed by the son of the body, had never been acknowledged as conferring any right of succession to a chiefship. In the Punjab proper, the Maharaja of Lahore, and south of the Sutlej, the British Government claimed, as paramount, the right of inheriting all estates to which there were no near male heirs, among whom the adopted son had no place ; and the families of Umballa, Ferozepur, Bildspur, Eupar, and many others had vainly endeavoured to secure for adopted children a share at least in the estate' ('Punjab Eajas,' p. 226). In 1837, in the case of the Phulkidn states, namely, Pati41a, Jhind, and N4bha, females had been excluded from the succession ; and the British Government, ' although allowing the right of collaterals, had only admitted their right to such property as had been held by the common ancestor from whom they derived their claim.' Eanjit Singh ' asserted the rights of a sovereign more jealously than ever the British Government had done, and neither allowed the claims of adopted sons nor of the nearest THE DOCTRINE OF LAPSE AND THE ADOPTION ' SAN ADS ' 85 collaterals' {ibid. pp. 225-27). On these principles a great part of the tfhind stateifnow included in the British districts of Ludhidna and Umballa, lapsed in 1835 and 1837 ; and ,a great part of the Kaithal state in 1843. Nor were these solitary instances. ' The number of lapses,' says Sir Lepel Grifl&n, 'that had fallen to the Government from the time of its first connection with the country north of Delhi was very great ; and chiefship after chiefship had been ab- sorbed in the British territories ' {ibid. p. 226). In Edjputdna, on the other hand, lapses had not occurred. The EAjpiit princes, though feudatories of the Moghal Empire, and harried by the claims and incursions of the Marhattas, had preserved attributes of sovereignty greater than those possessed by the petty states of Western India and perhaps greater than any that had ever been acquired by those Cis-Sutlej Sikhs, who were mdlguzdrs, or revenue-paying tributaries of the Delhi Emperors. Moreover, the constitu- tion of Edjpiit principalities in EAjpiitAna supplied prin- ciples directly conducive to the perpetuation of Edjpiit dynasties. In this part of the country the general rule was, and stiU is, an election or adoption, most commonly an elec- tion, by the chiefs and councillors of the state after the decease of the chief, requiring an adoption by his widow to complete the arrangement, an essential point being that the ceremonies and rejoicings should be performed in public. ' The confirmation of the suzerain,' wrote Sir Henry Lawrence, then Agent to the Governor-General for the states of E4jputdna, after a very elaborate inquiry in 1853, 'is necessary in all cases : he is the arbitrator in all contested adoptions ; he can set aside one or other for informality, irregularity, or for misconduct ; but it does not appear by the rules or practices of any of the sovereignties, or by our own practice with the Istamrdrdars of Ajmir, that the para- mount power can refuse confirmation to one or other claimant, and confiscate the estate, however small. ... A Edjpiitdna chiefship, great or small, can never escheat to the suzerain except by rebellion.' Such being the diversity of custom, political constitution, and practice in difierent parts of India, the first case to come before Lord Dalhousie in which the general question of permitting adoptions was raised, was that of the Sattdra raj or principality in Western India. He had, indeed, a few months before decided to permit the lapse of one native state to another, of Ahmadnagar to Edar, both on the Bombay 86 OUK INDIAN PROTECTORATE side ; but that decision is only referred to here because it proceeded on a well-known paper by Mr. Willoughby, described by Lord Dalhousie as a text-book of adoption. The Sattdra ray' was a creation of the British Govern- ment. When the Peshwa was conquered and his territories were annexed in 1818, we found the representative of the house of Sivaji in a prison and we set him on a throne. The rajas of Sattdra had at that time ceased to be rulers ; they were powerless, pageant monarchs maintained in confinement by the Peshwa for political objects. We gave them the principality partly because it was thought the measure would be popular with the Marhattas, partly because the state would provide an asylum for those who might be unwilling to serve us, and partly, perhaps, because the danger of formidable confederacies amongst the Marhatta chiefs had not entirely passed away, and it may have been con- sidered expedient, as a counterpoise to their power, to main- tain a nominal sovereignty in the House of Sivaji. The first raja under the British protectorate was found guilty of engaging in treasonable intrigues and was deposed in 1839. He was exiled, and died at Benares in 1847. The second raja died on April 5, 1848, leaving no issue, but having, just before his death, hastily adopted a distant relative. The adoption was set aside, and the state annexed. But this annexation did not proceed upon any ground of mis- government or of failure on the part of the late raja to discharge his duty to the paramount power. ' Unquestion- ably,' wrote Sir George Clerk, then Governor of Bombay, ' a native government conducted as that of Sattdra has for some time been is a source of strength to the British Government.' Mr. Eeid, a member of the Bombay Council, referred to the probability of a ' conviction that under the mild and excellent government of the late raja his country flourished in a degree with which our neigh- bouring districts cannot well sustain a comparison.' On the question of right the decision proceeded on the proposition that the consent of the suzerain is indispensable to the validity of an adoption involving succession to a principality ; and that the right to grant this consent implies the right to withhold it. The first proposition was regarded as esta- blished by evidence, applicable at all events to the Bombay Presidency and the states of Gwalior, Indore, Bhopdi, ]Srdgpur,Mehidpur, and others in Bundelkhand and Edjputdna. The second proposition was taken as an inference from the THE DOCTRINE OF LAPSE AND THE ADOPTION ' SANADS ' 87 first, though it is directly opposed to the conclusion sub- sequently arrived at by Sir Hen^y Lawrence in regard to the states of Edjpiitdna. It was, however, said by Lord Dal- housie that the power to confer or refuse sanction to the adoption was possessed by the British Government 'by virtue of its authority as the sovereign state of Sattdra, a position which it holds equally as the successor of the emperors of Delhi, as the successor by conquest of the Peshwas, the virtual sovereigns of the rajas of Sattdra, and, lastly and especially, as the creators of the rdj of SattAra under the treaty of 1819.' On the question of expediency I quote at length the further words of Lord Dalhousie : ' I take,' he said, ' this fitting occasion of recording 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 to neglect such rightful opportunities of acquiring territory or revenue as may from time to time present them- selves, 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 Hindu law. The Government is bound in duty, as well as in policy, to act on every such occasion with the purest integrity and in the most scrupulous observance of good faith ; where even a shadow of doubt can be shown, the claim should at once be abandoned. But where the right to territory by lapse is clear, the Government is bound to take that which is justly and legally its due, and to extend to that territory the benefit of our sovereignty, present and prospective. In like man- ner, while I would not seek to lay down any inflexible rule with respect to adoption, I hold that on all occasions where heirs natural shall fail, the territory should be made to lapse and adoption should not be permitted, excepting in those cases in which some strong political reason may render it expedient to depart from this general rule. There may be conflict of opinion as to the advantage or propriety of extending our already vast possessions beyond their present limits. No man can more sincerely deprecate than I do any extension of the frontiers of our territory which can be avoided, or which may not become indispensably necessary from conditions of our own safety and of the maintenance of the tranquillity of our provinces ; but I cannot conceive it possible for any one to dispute the policy of taking advantage of every just 88 OUR INDIAN PEOTECTORATE opportunity which presents itself for consohdating the terri- tories that already belong to us by taking possession of states which may lapse in the midst of them, for thus getting rid of those petty intervening principalities, which may be made a means of annoyance, but which can never, I venture to think, be a source of strength, for adding to the resources of the public treasury, and for extending the uniform application of our system of government to those whose best interests we sincerely believe will be promoted thereby. Such is the general principle that, in my humble opinion, ought to guide the conduct of the British Government in its disposal of independent states {sic) when there has been total failure of all heirs whatsoever, or where permission is asked to continue, by adoption, a succession which fails in the natural line.' I shall show presently that, in substance, the policy which Lord Dalhousie could not conceive it possible for any one to dispute has been completely rejected, both in word and deed, since the Government of India was assumed by the Queen-Empress. The words of Lord Dalhousie deserve attention because the prevailing ideas as to expedi- ency can never be without effect on the system of rela- tions with native states and the confidence and loyalty of feudatories. On questions of adoption in connection with principalities, and of the customary law of inheritance to chiefships, a mass of learning has accumulated. Here and there, as with reference to the states of Edjpiitdna, a few well-established principles are to be discerned. But for the most part the amorphous aggregate of conflicting texts and precedents may be bent either for or against the continued existence of states at the will of any able dissertator ; and if the maintenance of states were left to depend upon the interpretation of so-called customs, originating when the measure of right was the length of the sword of the suzerain, or formed by British precedents occurring before it was generally apprehended that, in primitive law, the tie of adop- tion is equally binding with the tie of blood, there would be keenly-felt peril most subversive of loyalty in every discus- sion of a succession, and the dearest interests of our faithful feudatories would be the continual sport of chance. Uncer- tainty and agitation vanish with the knowledge that the British Government sincerely desires to preserve the native states in their integrity ; and that desire springs partly, no doubt, from a sense of justice, but in the main from radically THE DOCTRINE OF LAPSE AND THE ADOPTION ' SANADS ' 89 altered views on the question of expediency. Briefly, we now believe that it is the interest of the British Government to maintain the principalities, and that if we were to get rid of them we should be injuring ourselves. Sattdra, then, was annexed in consequence of the convic- tion mentioned in the papers that, for the permanent good of the people and the advancement of intelligence, British administration is ' incomparably better than the government of any native state.' The excellerice of the late raja's administration arose from his personal qualities, it was said, not from the nature of the institutions of the state. ' In my conscience I believe,' wrote Lord Dalhousie, 'we should ensure to the population of the state a perpetuity of that just and mild government which they have lately enjoyed, but which they will hold by a poor and uncertain tenure indeed, if we resolve now to continue the raj.' It was also observed that the district was fertile and the revenue productive ; and that it consisted of a strong and hillj^ country inhabited by a bold and hardy population, and interposed between the .Deccan and Southern Marhatta districts of the Bombay Presidency and between its two principal military stations, Poona and Belgaum. All these considerations were in a certain sense secondary considera- tions. A perusal of the record cannot fail to bring home to any impartial mind the conviction that if Lord Falkland, who had succeeded Sir George Clerk as Governor of Bombay, and Lord Dalhousie and their advisers had doubted for a moment that annexation was the best course to adopt in the interests of the people, motives of political and fiscal ad- vantage, standing by themselves, would never have induced them to agree to it. In the Karauli case there was no lapse. Karauli ia a state about the size ^ of an average British district in the Punjab, or rather smaller ; it is situated about fifty miles to the south-west of Agra, and is an old EAjpiit principality which was taken under protection, and acknowledged the supremacy of the British Government when the Peshwa, in 1817, ceded the tribute formerly payable to him. It was in the Karauli case that Sir Henry Lawrence made the report upon Edjput successions from which I have already quoted. Lord Dalhousie, before that report had been received, recorded that the circumstances of Karauli appeared ' to resemble those of Sattdra in all essential particulars.' As Sir Alfred Lyall has justly pointed out ('Asiatic Studies,' 90 OUR INDIAN PROTECTOEA.TE p. 206), it was in all essential particulars that the circum- stances differed. The raja, Narsing Pdl, died on July 10, 1852, having adopted, the day before his death, a distant kinsman named Bhurt Pdl. The Governor-General and Mr. Lowis considered that the arguments preponderated in favour of declaring Karauli a lapsed state. Colonel Low and Sir Frederick Currie were of an opposite opinion. The matter was referred to the Court of Directors for orders, who determined to sanction the succession of Bhurt PAl on the grounds that the Sattdra state was one of recent origin, derived altogether from the creation and gift of the British Government, while Karauli was one of the oldest of the Edjpiit states, which had been under the rule of its native princes from a period long anterior to the British power in India ; that probably there was no part of India in which it was less desirable to substitute British for native rule, ex- cept upon the strongest reasons ; and that no such reasons existed in the case. It subsequently appeared that the adoption of Bhurt PAl had been practically set aside ; and the succession ultimately fell to one Madan P41 as the nearest of kin to Narsing PAl, as accepted by the rdnis of Karauli and by all the nine most influential Thdkurs, who, under a purely native administration, would probably have been the electors, also by more than three-fourths of the thirty-eight heads of branch families entitled to vote in important state matters, and, as far as could be judged, by the almost general feeling of the country. The state of Oorcha, or Tehri, is rather larger than Karauli. It is the oldest and highest in rank of aU the Bundela states, and was the only state in Bundelkhand which was not held in subjection by the Peshwa. When the Raja of Tehri presented a nazr (tributary offering) to the Governor-General in 1807, he is said to have remarked that it was the first time his family had acknow- ledged the supremacy of any power. The chief died without an heir, natural or adopted. But here the Government of Lord Dalhousie took measures for the continuance of the state under a native ruler. The neighbouring Bundela chiefs were asked to point out the nearest collateral heir to the late raja capable of adoption, and the boy so indicated was adopted by the widow. In the course of the corre- spondence the Government of India declared that in the states of Rajputdna it is a standing rule that the chiefs and councillors of the principality shall be consulted in all THE DOCTRINE OF LAPSE A.\D THE ADOPTION ' SAXADS ' 91 doubtful cases of succession. This was in 1855, nearly three years after Lord Dalhousie's mistaken observation about Karauli. The state of Jhansi lapsed in 1854. This territory had been severed from the state of Oorcha by the Marhattas in the middle of the eighteenth century, and in 1804 a treaty was made by the British Government with the Marhatta suhaddr or governor. In 1817, after the Peshwa had ceded his rights in Bundelkhand to the British, another treaty was made which was interpreted as guaranteeing the inheritance of JhAnsi to the descendants of the suhaddr whom we found in possession in 1804. Collaterals were allowed to succeed, but in 1853 the raja (the title was changed from suhaddr to raja in 1832) died childless, and the state lapsed because there existed no male heir of any of the chiefs who had ruled Jhdnsi since our relations with it originated. These details illustrate the great diversity in the circum- stances of native states with reference to questions of succession, and show what grave cause native chiefs had for anxiety in regard to the perpetuation of their dynasties so long as it was the honest conviction of the British Govern- ment that the acquisition of territory was, in the general interest, a thing to be desired. True, distinctions were drawn between states of different histories ; but who could tell what weak spot in his title might not be pointed out in the ingenuity of learned argument ? So long as there was the disposition to believe that the discovery of defects of title was a piece of good fortune for the empire, the voluminous records of a long series of discussions might easily be made to supply proofs of the defect. Towards the close of Lord Dalhousie's administration there seems to have been a not unnatural impression that the native states of India would be gradually but quickly eaten away by the pressure of encircling British dominion, much as the petty principalities of Thrace and Asia Minor crumbled in the iron grasp of Imperial Eome. It is not a mere conjecture, but a fact on record, that many natives in Edjpiitdna about this time told a high officer of the British Government that they thought the annexation of Sattdra a case of might against right, and expressed the hope, not unmingled with dread, that the Edjpiit families might be saved from like disgrace and disaster. Similar language was held in MAlwa ; and the usual question was what crime had the Eaja of Sattara committed that his 92 OUR INDIAN PEOTECTORATE country should be seized by the Company ; the belief being thus implied that annexation might be justified as a penalty. Colonel Low in one of his minutes on the proposal to annex NAgpur — a proposal to which he was strongly opposed — expressed the opinion that probably, in course of time, the whole of India would become a British province ; ' but,' he said, ' many eminent statesmen have been of opinion that we ought most carefully to avoid unnecessarily accelerating the arrival of that great change ; and it is within my own knowledge that the following five great men were of that number, viz. the Marquis of Hastings, Sir Thomas Munro, Sir John Malcolm, the Hon. Mountstuart Elphinstone, and Lord Metcalfe.' It will be noted that four out of these five eminent men had no small share in laying the founda- tion of the British protectorate. Colonel Low went on to give reasons for his view in a passage which contains one of the prophecies of the mutiny. He dwelt on the impolicy of annexations, except for breach of engagements, at least until there should be ' numbers of men in every large district so prosperous and wealthy and so thoroughly satisfied with their condition ' as to be ' sincerely attached to our Govern- ment and both able and willing for their own interests to afford important aid to us, by the exertion of their influence, in the event of our Indian possession being invaded by powerful foreign foes, or endangered by any internal insur- rection, or want of fidelity in our native army.' It is not very rare, even at the present day, to trace in the comments of contemporary observers a somewhat similar vein of speculation in regard to the future of Indian states. Tor instance, the writer of ' The Armies of Native States of India' (reprinted from the 'Times,' 1884), after telling the story of the chief (presumably a Cis-Sutlej chief) who said that the grip of Eanjit Singh was death by cholera, and the shadow of the British death by slow consumption, adds (p. viii) ' the prediction, though not realised at the time, may prove true.' Such remarks are disturbing to our loyal adherents, and misleading to all. They entirely overlook the existence of the system which it is an object of this work to explain. The answer to all such misgivings is that Indian political law is conservative of Indian native states, just as international law is conservative of the states of Europe ; and if the principles of Indian political law are properly understood and maintained, the prediction will certainly prove erroneous. THE DOCTEINE OF LAPSE AND THE ADOPTION ' SANADS ' 93 This would not be the case if the doctrine of lapse had not been ejected from the strong position in which it was at one time established. The doctrine has been defined as ' the claim of the British Government to treat as an escheat any state in which the ruling family becomes extinct.' That is perhaps the broadest definition of the doctrine that could be given. It was considerably narrowed by the great statesman who made the most vigorous use of it. If Lord Dalhousie's term of office and life had been prolonged for thirty years, and the mutiny had never happened, it seems a fair inference, from his ready acquiescence in the decision of the Court of Directors in the case of Karauli and his action in regard to Oorcha or Tehri, that he would not have claimed as escheats heirless states of long standing in EAjpiitdna and Bundelkhand. In his minute regarding NAgpur he quotes and affirms nearly the whole of the passage I have cited from his minute regarding Satt4ra, and continues : ' I have perceived that in the course of public criticism a far wider interpretation has been given to these words of mine than they were intended, or can be rightly made to bear. I by no means intended to state, nor did I state, an opinion that the settled policy of the British Government should be to disallow every succession resting upon adoption made by a native prince according to the forms of Hindu law. The opinion which I gave was restricted wholly to subordinate states — to those dependent principalities which, either as the virtual creation of the British Government, or from their former position, stood in such relation to that government as gave to it the recognised right of a paramount power in all questions of the adoption of an heir to the sovereignty of the state. In the case of every such state I held that sound policy at this day required that the British Government should take advantage of any lapse that might occur, whether it arose from failure of all heirs whatsoever or from failure of heirs natural, so that succession could pnly pass by permission being given for the adoption of an heir. But even in the case of such lapse I declared that no advantage should be taken of it, unless it could be done in accordance with the " most scrupulous observance of good faith." I repeat, therefore, that in the minute quoted above ' (the Satt4ra minute) 'I gave no sweeping opinion adverse to the right of a native prince to adopt a successor according to the authority of Hindu law. The opinion which I gave referred 94 OUT! INDIAN PROTECTORATE exclusively to " subordinate states " — to " a depeudeiit prin- cipality like that of Sattdra " and others that have been named.' There is an ominous gap in this explanation, because no definition is given of subordinate and dependent principalities ; but possibly the meaning is elucidated by the despatch of the Court of Directors in the Karauli case, where it is said (incorrectly) of the Karauli state that it stands to us only in the position of a protected ally. At all events, it is a fair inference from this passage that in his matured opinion Lord Dalhousie held that there were, or might be, some states where the ruler had the right of continuing the succession by adoption ; and the doctrine of lapse, as Lord Dalhousie finally shaped it, probably amounts to this, that in certain by no means clearly defined cases it is optional with the Supreme Government to refuse to permit an adoption to be made, or to refuse to acknowledge an adoption actually made, when the object of the adoption is to continue a native dynasty ; and further, that when this option can be exercised the decision should, except for special reasons, cause the lapse of the state. This is quite consistent with the terms of the despatch of the Court of Directors in the Sattdra case, in which they expressed themselves fully satisfied that, by the general law and custom of India, a dependent principality like that of Satt4ra cannot pass to an adopted heir without the consent of the paramount power ; that they were under no pledge, direct or constructive, to give such consent ; and that the general interests committed to their charge were best consulted by withholding it. There is some importance in realising the connection between the law of adoption as applied to chiefships and the doctrine of lapse, because we can thus see that Lord Canning subsequently applied in exactly the right place the prop which was required to restore the shaken confidence of native rulers. As Oudh affords the most signal instance of annexation effected as the consequence and punishment of misrule, so the case of Ndgpur presents the most conspicuous illustra- tion of a lapse decreed on grounds of general expediency. Jhdnsi and Satt4ra were of comparatively small extent. The state of Ndgpur comprised an area of 80,000 square miles and had an estimated population of four millions. The chief of Jhdnsi had been a Marhatta subaddr ; the chief of Sattdra had been elevated from a prison ; but the rajas of Berar, whose territory at one time stretched from the THE DOCTRINE OF LAPSE AND THE ADOPTION ' SANADS ' 95 Nerbudda to the Godavery and from the Adjunta Hills to the Bay of Bengal, had been leading members of the great Marhatta confederacy. N4gpur was the considerable remnant of their once more extensive dominions. Still, as in the case of Sattdra, the state had fallen to the British Government by conquest ; Appa Sahib, the ruler at the time of the famous battle of Sitabaldi Hills in November, 1817, was faithless to his alliance and requited the terms conceded to him by renewed treachery ; and when, on his second defection in 1818, the state was conferred on a Marhatta youth descended from one of the Eaghoji Bhonslas through a female, this was an act of favour, dictated by policy, not the recognition of any pre-existing right. The cases, indeed, superficially appeared to differ in the circumstance that, whereas the Eaja of Sattdra when at the point of death actually made an adoption, the Eaja of N4gpur died on December 11, 1853, without any heir and without having made or proposed an adoption. But there would have been no difficulty in arranging that an adoption should take place if the Government of the day had been minded to continue the Bhonsla dynasty. In point of fact the determination was that under no circumstances should an adoption be recognised as carrying with it a title to the succession. ' I should have felt it my duty,' said Lord Dalhousie, ' to advise that an adoption at NAgpur (if it had been made) should be disallowed.' As there was an honest conviction that it was entirely at the option of the Government, so far as justice and right were concerned, either to allow or disallow an adoption, the decision was in reality guided by policy alone. In Ndgpur there had been no such gross misgovern- ment as existed in Oudh. But there had been serious exac- tions after the Marhatta war in 1802. Appa Sahib had plundered and oppressed the country, and much land had fallen out of cultivation in his time. During more than ten years, when the raja whom we set up was a minor, the administration was conducted with marked success by British officers under Sir Eichard Jenkins. In 1830 the raja was placed in power, and the condition of the country under British officers was gradually reversed. In 1837 the people, it was said, wished for British rule, were dissatisfied with the raja's management, and contrasted it with the past. In 1853 it was reported that justice was as taxable as any commodity in the bazaar ; that functionaries 96 OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE were selected by no rule but caprice, tlie favour of the seraglio, or purchase ; and that there was a hatred of a fixed constitution or of settled principles which would impose a check upon arbitrary power. The public voice, it was stated, was greatly in favour of escaping the chance of a rule like that of the late chief in his later years. Lord Dalhousie argued — not quite fairly, for the second Sattdra raja succeeded, if the first was disloyal — that we had thrice tried the experiment of setting up princes over territories gained in war, and always with disastrous results. We were compelled to assume the administration of Mysore. We were compelled to dethrone and exile the first Eaja of Sattdra. The Eaja of Nagpur, trained under our auspices and aided by the excellent system of administration due to Sir E. Jenkins, nevertheless 'lived and died a seller of justice, a miser, a drunkard, and a debauchee.' A large space in Lord Dalhousie's minute is devoted to the desirability of annexing JSTAgpur in the interests of England, because the great field of supply of the best and cheapest cotton lies in the valley of Berar and in ISTdgpur and adjoining provinces. Li the previous year, 1853, we had acquired not the sovereignty, indeed, but the posses- sion and administration of the valley of Berar. Now there was another opportunity of relieving another enormous territory from the .disadvantages of arbitrary imposts, of transit duties strangling trade, and of the possibility of over- assessment of the land revenue, taking from the cultivator the whole value of his crops. To revive the raj of JSTAgpur under a Marhatta sovereign would perpetuate the obstacles to a full, cheap, and excellent supply of cotton wool for the English market. Probably his lordship had here in view rather arguments which were likely to prevail with English critics of his policy than arguments which in fact bore upon the decision of an Indian question of the first consequence. Lord Dalhousie was not the man to be led by a sinister and selfish argument. His arguments were his slaves and not his masters ; and in the exigencies of prospective self- defence he may have condescended to use some which his own judgment in reality despised. The better supply of cotton for English manufacturers was assuredly not the leading motive of the annexation of N4gpur. ' I place,' said Lord Dalhousie, ' the interests of the people of NAgpur foremost among the considerations which induce me to advise that the state should now pass under British govern- 97 ment ; for I conscientiously declare that, unless I believed the prosperity and happiness of its inhabitants would be promoted by their being plaS^d permanently under British rule, no other advantage which could arise out of the measure would move me to propose it.' After reading the whole manuscript record relating to the annexation of Ndgpur, I feel certain that this emphatic declaration was nothing but the simple truth. The strongest part of Lord Dalhousie's case for the annexation of NAgpur was that which depended on the general interests of India. The absorption of the N4gpur state in the British dominions would, he pointed out, ex- tinguish a government having separate feelings and interests, absorb a military power which, though no longer formidable, might be the cause of embarrassment or anxiety, render coterminous several British provinces, uniting Orissa with Khandeish and part of the Berar " frontier with the Saugor and Nerbudda districts, and bring the direct line of commu- nication between Bombay and Calcutta almost throughout its whole length within British territory. In any case in which right was clear and good faith maintained, these were cogent considerations, if the peace of the Indian Empire depends upon the British protectorate, and if the strength of that protectorate depends upon the consolidation of the British power. The point in all this which is of practical interest at the present day is, that if we suppose some new conjuncture of afiairs to arise, placing some other state in the position of Ndgpur in 1854, there is not a single one of these arguments from expediency which would now hold good as a ground for annexation. Even the question of right, if it should be ritised, which is highly improbable, would be debated in a different way and an entirely different spirit. Much has been learnt since that time of the nature of the primitive institutions and early society. Lord Dalbousie argued from the reports of political officers on Marhatta and Indian customs affecting succession, as though the conclusions had the certainty and effect of an enactment in the statute-book. We recognise much more clearly now how flexible a thing is the custom of early societies, and how readily, when it is applied from within and not. from without, by the persons who make it, to the regulation of their own affairs of state, it is bent by an almost unconscious general assent to the exigencies- of each political occasion. If the great object, H 98 OUK INDIAJ?} PROTECTOKATE the perpetuation of the dynasty, is secured, surely, it might be thought, only dim-sighted pedants, not keen courageous men, would haggle over the legal formalities ; and where custom is vague and has often been broken by fraud or violence, what lusty, fighting baronage, what high-born military caste would see any grievous sin in a new precedent ? Lord Dalhousie did not believe in the temporary sequestra- tion of states as a remedy for misgovernment. In the Oudh discussions he adduced, as an argument for the permanent establishment of British administration, the illustration of Ndgpur and its deterioration after 1830, and the illustration of JEyderabad administered (in accordance with arrangements made by Sir Charles Metcalfe) by British officers between 1821 and 1829, but where the Nizam, on the cessation of this interposition, had set aside the system of Sir Charles Metcalfe and caused the condition of the country to revert to its former state of disorder and misrule. Lord Dalhousie quoted also the words of Lord Wellesley : ' Instability in the constitution of a government is the source of languor and weakness in all its operations. The subjects of a temporary government are perpetually agitated by the expectation of change, and the government itself cannot establish any systematic or comprehensive plan of adminis- tration. In such a state mutual doubt and uncertainty destroy that confidence which forms the most solid founda- tion of the reciprocal duties of allegiance and protection between the people and the governing power.' And it is clear generally from these two great state papers relating to Oudh and Ndgpur that Lord Dalhousie did not believe in the strength of political influence as a security for the just and civilised government of the people of native states. But in his public works policy he himself began to supply that strength with the most powerful instruments of its efficiency. Eailways and telegraphs have been trans- forming the conditions of government in Native India no less than in British India. All the important groups of native states are now traversed by railways, and all the most important political officers have, at their head-quarters, a telegraph office within easy reach. Darkness can no longer dweU on the face of the land ; and if dark or violent deeds call for prevention or requital, without any delay or embarrassment force can be summoned and concentrated where it is required. The mere knowledge that this is so arms advice with an authority which it could hardly possess THE DOCTEINE OP LAPSE ASH THE ADOPTION ' SANADS ' 99 when a letter or traveller took fourteen days to journey from Calcutta to Delhi. Moreov^, the experience of Mysore seems to show that temporary sequestration, even in extreme cases, may succeed if it is continued long enough to train up a generation of administrators capable of the inteUigent and honest service of the state. Considerations based on the needs of EngUsh trade would now be deemed puerile ; there is no reason why trade should not be freely developed in the dominions of a native prince. Land will be given for railways to the British Government on its apphcation ; the removal of arbitrary imposts interfering with important trade can be secured by political influence ; and lastly, the governments of native states, when they rightly apprehend the position, have no interests separate from ours, except in much the same way as a Local Government may often, for local reasons, differ with the Supreme Government on minor questions of policy. The native states are part and parcel of the Empire ; though some of them may be, with a different form of government, as autonomous as Canada or Queens- land. Their armies, if properly organised, should be not a source of embarrassment or weakness, but a source of strength. Territorially the empire is completely consolidated. Por the purpose of consolidating our possessions within the frontiers of Lidia there is no occasion to. add an acre of land to British dominion by any other means than voluntary agreement. We can plant our cantonments where we please, and run our strategic hues of railway communication over any part of the country. If a cantonment or a railway happens to fall in a native state, we acquire the jurisdiction without the sovereignty. The fate of the doctrine of lapse is the fate of exploded philosophical creeds and exploded superstitions. Nobody would take the trouble to refute it now, for, whether it be sound or unsound, it has become totally unnecessary. The year after Lord Dalhousie left India one big wing of the imperial structure to which he had made so many additions was shattered for the time by a sort of dynamite explosion. There had been warnings, as, after the crash, men saw ; but few, if any, political outbursts have been as sudden or as unexpected as the violently destructive shocks of 1857. Probably no adequate explanation has yet been given, perhaps none is yet possible, of the events of that time — events which had a double character, the mutiny of a mercenary army and, in consequence of the break in 100 OUE INDIAN PROTECTORATE political authority due to that mutiny, the reversion in some districts and provinces of the chiefs and tribes and village communities of an archaic society to their normal condition of private warfare against each other and against the repre- sentatives of the state. Neither military revolt, nor the armed outlawry of discontented men, nor violent and contu- macious resistance to constituted authority, nor the prose- cution with bloodshed of hereditary feuds or of expeditions in quest of plunder, were novelties in India ; but the pecu- liarity of 1857 was the combination of all these symptoms of anarchy on an unprecedented scale. Perhaps the simple explanation is correct, that all the disturbances had their ultimate origin in the disaffection of the army. This dis- affection may have been partly due to the men becoming iU disciplined and idle and spoilt, and losing their respect for their ofEcers, under circumstances which induced the best men to leave military for civil employment. Possibly we should add to this that the soldiers may have been corrupted in many cases by the money of political pensioners who had lost high station by political changes and were ready to play for desperate stakes. But this is a conjecture of which I have found no proof. As to the immediate cause of the outbreak I entertain no doubt. The men, by whomsoever tutored, certainly believed that the order to use the greased cartridges was deliberately issued by the British Government for the purpose of breaking their caste. The vitality of historic traditions and ideas is shown by the facts that the sepoys attempted to seize the supreme power in the empire by setting up the King of Delhi as a puppet emperor, and at Cawnpore the adopted son of B4ji Eao as a Peshwa ; and they undoubtedly intended to give effect to their designs by the ignorant and ruthless policy of exterminating the Europeans in the country. Again, it does not seem to me to be established that the annexations of Lord DaUiousie had any considerable effect in producing the mutiny of the army and the insurrection in certain quarters of the civil popula- tion. It is true that the Edni of Jhdnsi was a conspicuous rebel; it is true that the Oudh sepoys in the Company's army were reckoned by very many thousands, and that there were disorders amongst the chiefs and people of Oudh, and not merely amongst the soldiery in the province. But the EAni of Jlidnsi took the occasion of the mutiny, like many other discontented persons, to avenge her supposed wrongs in arms ; it cannot be said that her proceedings THE DOCTRINK OF LAPSE AND THE ADOPTION ' SANADS ' 101 were a cause, they were merely a consequence of the mutiny. No one acquainted with the condition of Oudh in 1855 can be the least surprised that, by 1857, the elements of anarchy, then so rife, had not been eliminated. The connection with the sepoys may have induced many villagers to join the wrong side, but it does not explain why the sepoys should have revolted. The establishment of British dominion in Oudh could not harm them, though it might ruin many persons whose influence had formerly been as great as their corruption. Berar, ISTdgpur, and Sattdra were not theatres of disorder ; the Punjab, though there were two unimportant local insurrections, was the prop of our power. With some very few exceptions, most of which, if we leave out of view the King of Delhi, were trifling, the feudatory chiefs were staunch. The contingents of the Central India states, with the exception of a few smaU bodies of men, and all the contingents of Edjpiitdna, except the Merwarra Battalion and the Meywar Bhil Corps, recruited for the most part from the indigenous tribes of the Mers and Bhils, joined in the mutiny. Their organisation connected them with the mutineers. But the chiefs of states, the rajas and maharajas and nawdbs, with their irregular troops and feudal levies, gave us hearty and invaluable support, especially in the Punjab and Edjpiitdna. If the annexation policy of Lord Dalhousie had reaUy had the effects which have sometimes been attributed to it, these feudatory chiefs would hardly have proved so conspicuously loyal. Never- theless, there is reason to believe that feelings of anxiety and distrust were abroad, though they existed in India before the commencement of Lord Dalhousie's administration. 'While the renowned English Company,' said Sir Eichard Temple, in an old report, 'was one of many competitors in the field of conquest: — ^while it was struggling with others for existence — it had its followers and adherents, who fought under it and clung to it faithfully. When it succeeded in one quarter after another, its adherents rejoiced that they had sided with it ; all men courted it and sought its friend- ships. But when that success spread and gradually enve- loped the whole peninsula, then all men began to fear and wonder whom the conqueror would devour next.' As a broad general account of a tolerably widespread feeling at some uncertain date, these statements may perhaps be accepted. At all events, it \7as a natural and necessary thing that, 102 OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE after the suppression of disorder, the loyal services of feudatory chiefs should be acknowledged and measures taken to restore their confidence. The first measure then adopted, the publishing of the Amnesty Proclamation of November 1, 1858, has really determined the development of Indian political law ever since. The principles now accepted, if not directly derived from the announcements made at that time, must always be consistent with them ; and the most important political cases and occurrences of internal India for more than thirty years bear witness to the sincerity of our desire to fall short in no particular in performing our share of what may be termed the covenant between the Crown and the people and chiefs of India. The Amnesty Proclamation was promulgated throughout India with formalities and rejoicings ; it was publicly read by officers of Government and in native durb4rs at all principal places ; and copies of it were supplied to village accountants for purposes of accessible record. It is frequently referred to by natives of various classes and ranks in appeals, peti- tions, and addresses, and is, no doubt, regarded by educated Indians as a charter of popular rights and of the rights of dependent principalities. The proclamation announces that the Queen has taken upon herself the government of the territories formerly administered in trust for her Majesty by the East India Company ; appoints Lord Canning the first Viceroy ; con- firms in their several offices, civil and military, all persons employed in the service of the East India Company ; and continues : ' We hereby announce to the native princes bf India that all treaties and engagements made with them by or under the authority of the Honourable East India Company are by us accepted, and will be scrupulously maintained ; and we look for the like observance on their part. We desire no extension of our present territorial possessions ; and, while we will permit no aggression upon our dominions or our rights to be attempted with impunity, we shall sanction no encroachment on those of others. We shall respect the rights, dignity, and honour of native princes as our own ; and we desire that they, as well as our own subjects, should enjoy that prosperity and that social advancement which can only be secured by internal peace and good government.' The remaining paragraphs deal with the conditions of the amnesty for mutinj^ and rebellion ; the duty of impartiality in matters of religion; and the admissiou THE DOCTRINE OP LAPSE AND THE ADOPTION ' SANADS ' 103 of subjects of whatever race or creed to offices for which they may be qualified by edjjpation, ability, and integrity. The document was communicated to the chiefs of India ; and the language of heartfelt satisfaction in which they acknowledged it shows that they clearly and gladly recog- nised its great and permanent significance. The passage I have quoted at length contains vital provisions of Indian political law ; and I shall select, from amongst many, a few conspicuous instances of the faithful application of these provisions in the afiairs of feudatory India. The first of these is the distribution in the vice- royalty of Lord Canning of the adoption sanads, which gave to native rulers a practical assurance of the sincerity of the assertion that the Queen desires no extension of her terri- torial possessions. The story of the adoption sanads has been told by Sir Lepel Griffin in the 'Punjab Eajas' and amplified by Sir Charles Aitchison in the 'Calcutta Eeview,' No. cvi. of 1871. The narrative, however, may appropriately be repeated here with some condensations. The Punjab chiefs did admirable service in the mutiny, and conspicuous amongst them were the Phiilkidn chiefs. The Patidla chief was the acknowledged head of the Sikhs, and his unhesitating adherence to the British cause was of great political impoi-tance. Immediately upon the receipt of news of the occurrences at Delhi and Meerut he marched at the head of his troops to the neighbourhood of Umballa and thence to Thanesar, which district he took under his protection. Karndl and Umballa and the grand trunk road from Karndl to PhiUor were guarded by his forces. He led or despatched troops to Sirsa, Eohtak, HissAr, Indore and GwAlior, and many other places, and even as far as Oudh. He had upwards of five thousand men in the field, of whom five hundred served in the siege and assault of Delhi. He assisted in restoring order in the state of Dholpur. He furnished supplies and carriage, kept the roads clear, and aided fugitives. Eaja Sariip Singh of Jhind was the only Punjab chief who was present before Delhi ; the Maharaja of Patidla and the Eaja of KapiirthaUa wished to be allowed to go there but could not be spared. The services of the allied houses of Jhind and N4bha were of the same invaluable nature, but need not be detailed. In 1858, the -three chiefs who had deserved so well of the British Government joined in presenting a paper of 104 OUR INDIAN PROTECTOKATE requests. Of these requests, one was for the right of adopting a successor to the chiefship in default of male issue, or, in the case of death without male issue or making an adoption, for the selection of a successor from among the descendants of the common ancestor by the surviving chiefs. The request was at first refused by the Government of India, on the ground that the concessions sought would be important innovations on the custom which had always prevailed among the chiefs of the Cis-Sutlej territories. This was true ; lapses, as I have already said, had been frequent ; the dissipated lives of the chiefs made childless- ness common ; and there was a perpetual dread of the partial and ultimately the entire loss of dominion by the pro- cess which they had long seen before their eyes. The Home Government, however, took a more favourable view ; but, before its despatch of December 1, 1859, could be received, Lord Canning's policy had undergone a change, and the experience of his famous tour through the Upper Provinces had shown him how near this question of adoption lay to the hearts of the feudatory chieftains. The concession was made to the Maharajas of Eewah and Chirkdri in Novem- .ber, 1859, to Maharaja Sindhia in the next month, and to the Phulkidn chiefs in January, 1860. It took some time to work out the new policy, and the adoption sanads were dated March 11, 1862, the day Lord Canning left India. The nature of the policy will best be stated in the language of the celebrated despatch of April 30, 1860, from which I shall quote at length, as it is little accessible, and merits the careful study of every student of Indian political law. Lord Canning during the course of his march through Upper India was forcibly struck by the want of some clear and well-understood rule of practice in our dealings with princes and chiefs on the subject of adoption as affecting states and principalities. How encumbered with doubts that subject was will already have appeared to some extent from the particulars I have given in regard to Satt4ra and Jh^nsi and N4gpur. ' It is not,' Lord Canning observed, ' that the measures taken under the orders of the late Court of Directors in dealing with doubtful or lapsed successions have not in many instances been liberal and even generous, and there certainly is not at the present moment any disposition on the part of the native states to doubt the general goodwill towards them of the paramount power. THE DOCTRINE OF LAPSE AND THE ADOPTION ' SANADS ' 105 But there appears to be a haze of doubt and mistrust in the mind of each chief as to the policy which the Government will apply to his own state in the event of his leaving no natural heir to his throne, and each seems to feel, not without reason, that in such case the ultimate fate of his family is uncertain.' To this feeling he attributed the extraordinary satisfaction with which his recent assurances had been received by the chiefs to whom they were conveyed. The policy respecting adoption had been incoherent, the discussions voluminous ; since 1849 the official correspond- ence on not less than sixteen or seventeen cases of doubtful succession and of adoption had been printed by order of Par- liament. Parliamentary blue books were read in native states ; and our inability to agree upon fundamental points was thus palpable to those most deeply interested. We were disagreed about our duty, our policy, our rights, and about the law and past practice by which we professed to be guided. Some, as Lord Dalhousie, thought we were bound not to neglect rightful opportunities of acquiring territory and ' getting rid of petty intervening principalities.' Others held that the absorption of such states would be a source of weakness to ourselves. Lord Auckland's declaration in the case of the Colaba succession, that we ought to ' persevere in the one clear and direct course of abandoning no just arid honourable accession of territory or revenue, while all existing claims of right are at the same time scrupulously respected,' failed to determine what acquisitions were just or what claims of right existed. We appealed to the Hindu law ; but a high authority asserted that, comprehensive as it was regarding rights to private property, it did not provide for chiefships. We looked to the practice of former rulers and erroneously supposed that it supported a pretension to with- hold assent to adoption, even in the case of so-called independent states, though no single instance had been found in which adoption by a sovereign prince had been invalidated by a refusal of assent on the part of the paramount power; and the probability was that the generally prevailing practice had been truly described in the state- ments of Sir Henry Lawrence, which he limited to Edjputdna. We established distinctions between ' depen- dent ' and ' independent ' states — ' dependent ' states being -those like Sattdra or Jhdnsi, created or established by the Moghals or the Peshwa or ourselves, and sometimes invested 106 OUE INDIAN PROTECTOEATE "with less than sovereign authority ; and ' independent ' states, those Uke the Edjputdna states and some in Bundel- khaud, which had survived under successive paramount dynasties and suffered little interference from any. But having established the distinction, we laid down no certain rules for our guidance in dealing with states in either category. We raised points of nicety depending on differences of origin, race, and tradition upon which it was perhaps impossible to arrive at sure conclusions : such as whether, in a Edjput state, the widow might adopt without having received her husband's permission ; whether in a Bundela state the chief might adopt a stranger to the exclusion of collaterals ; whether in Hindu states generally the senior widow of a chief is allowed to adopt unreservedly, or is limited to a choice within certain degrees of affinity. We did not even determine with certainty what was the meaning of the language of our own treaties ; for it was doubtful, at all events in states other than those which were both dependent and in the same position as Satt^ra, and perhaps even in those also, whether the words ' heirs and successors ' and similar expressions frequent in these docu- ments were to be interpreted to include heirs by adoption or not. No wonder the minds of princes and people were disquieted by aU this inconsistency and uncertainty and conflict of opinion amongst those whose authority was practically absolute in dealing with their dearest interests and rights. Such is the general tenor of Lord Canning's argument. ' And now,' he continued, ' I would beg her Majesty's Government to consider whether the time has not come when we may, with advantage to all, adopt and announce some rule in regard to succession in native states more distinct than that which we have been seeking to derive from the sources above mentioned ; not by setting aside the Hindu law, wherever that avails, and not by diminishing in the least degree the consideration which the feudatory states have experienced at the hands of former ruling dynasties, but, on the contrary, by increasing this consideration and at the same time making our future practice plain and certain. ' A time so opportune for the step can never occur again. The last vestiges of the royal house of Delhi, from which, for our own convenience, we had long been content to accept a vicarious authority, have been swept away. The last pre- tender to the representation of the Peshwa has disappeared. THE DOCTRINE OP LAPSE AND THE ADOPTION ' SANADS ' 107 The Grown of England stands forth the unquestioned ruler and paramount power in all India, and is, for the first time, brought face to face with its Sudatories. There is a reality in the suzerainty of the sovereign of England which has never existed before, and which is not only felt but eagerly acknowledged by the chiefs. A great convulsion has been followed by such a manifestation of our strength as India had never seen ; and if this in its turn be followed by an act of general and substantial grace to the native chiefs, over and above the special rewards which have already been given to those whose services deserve them, the measure will be seasonable and appreciated.' The precise method by which Lord Canning proposed to recognise the right of adoption' will sufiiciently appear from the reply of her Majesty's Government, which I shaU tran- scribe below. As regards the effect of the measure. Lord Canning said : ' It would show at once and for ever that we are not lying in wait for opportunities of absorbing territory, and that we do deliberately desire to keep alive a feudal aristocracy where one stiU exists.' It ' will not debar the Government of India - from stepping in to set right such serious abuses in a native government as may threaten any part of the country with anarchy or disturbance, nor from assuming temporary charge of a native state when there shaU be sufiicient reason to do so. Neither wiU the assur- ance, worded as proposed, diminish our right to visit a state with the heaviest penalties, even to confiscation, in the event of disloyalty or flagrant breach of engagement.' Finally, Lord Canning met the objection that tile measure would cut off future opportunities of accession of territory in these memorable words : ' I regard this not as an objec- tion but as a recommendation. . . . Notwithstanding the greater purity and enlightenment of our administration, its higher tone and its surer promise of future benefit to the people, as compared with any native government, I still think that we have before us a higher and more pressing duty than that of extending our direct rule ; and that our first care should be to strengthen that rule within its present limits, and to secure for our general supremacy the contented acquiescence and respect of all who are subjected to it ; the supremacy will never be heartily accepted and respected so long as we leave ourselves open to the doubts which are now felt, and which our uncertain policy has justified, as to our ultimate intentions towards native states. We shall not 108 OUR INDIAN PEOTECTORATE become stronger so long as we continue adding to our terri- tory without adding to our European force ; and the addi- tions to that force which we already require are probably as large as England can conveniently furnish, and they will certainly cost as much as India can conveniently pay. As to civil government, our English officers are too few for the work they have in their hands, and our financial means are not yet equal to the demands upon us. Accession of territory will not make it easier to discharge our already existing duties in the administration of justice, the prosecution of public works, and in many other ways. ' The safety of xDur rule is increased, not diminished, by the maintenance of native chiefs well afiected to us. Setting aside the weU-known services rendered by Sindhia and sub- sequently by the Maharajas of Eewah, Chirkdri and others, over the wide tract of Central India, where our authority is most broken in upon hj native states, I venture to say that there is no man who remembers the condition of Upper India in 1857 and 1858 who is not thankful that, in the centre of the large and compact British province of Eohilkhand there remained the solitary little state of Edmpur still administered by its own Muhammadan prince ; and that on the borders of the Punjab and of the districts above Delhi, the Chief of Patiala and his kinsmen still retained their hereditary autho- rity unimpaired. ' In the time of which I speak these patches of native government served as breakwaters to the storm which would otherwise have swept over us in one great wave. And in quiet times they have their uses. Eestless men who will accept no profession but arms, crafty intriguers bred up in native courts, and others who would chafe at our stricter and more formal rule, live there contentedly ; and should the day come when India shall be threatened' by an external enemy, or when the interests of England elsewhere may require that her Eastern Empire shall incur more than ordinary risk, one of our best mainstays Avill be found in these native states. But, to make them so, we must treat their chiefs and leading families with consideration and generosity, teaching them that, in spite of all suspicions to the contrary, their independence is safe, that we are not waiting for plausible opportunities to convert their country into British territory, and convincing them that they have nothing to gain by helping to displace us in favour of any new rulers from within or from without. THE DOCTEINE OF LAPSE AND THE ADOPTION ' SANADS ' 109 ' It was long ago said by Sir John Malcolm that if we made aU India into zillahs ' (or British districts), ' it was not in the nature of things that our empire should last fifty years ; but that if we could keep up a number of native states, without political power, but as royal instruments, we should exist in India as long as our naval superiority in Europe was maintained. ' Of the substantial truth of this opinion I have no doubt ; and recent events have made it more deserving of our atten- tion than ever.' The next month Lord Canning wrote a second despatch, adducing in support of the despatch of April further con- siderations drawn from the circumstances of the Punjab Hill chiefs. But this did not add materially to the argument. The Secretary of State (Sir Charles "Wood, afterwards Lord Halifax) replied in these terms : ' In several recent communications your Excellency has informed me that, during your viceregal progress through Central and Upper India, you availed yourself of every op- portunity that presented itself to you, for a formal decla- ration in DurbAr that the British Government desired to perpetuate in undiminished power and prosperity the houses of those native princes and chiefs who, throughout the recent period of trouble and disaster, had been true to their alle- giance to the paramount state. To the Maharajas Sindhia and Holkar, to the Maharaja of Eewah, the Maharaja of Kashmir, to the great chiefs of the Cis-Sutlej states, and to others of less note, you pubhcly conveyed the gratifying assurance that, in the event of failure of direct heirs the British Government would recognise, as chiefs of their several houses, the heirs adopted by them in accordance with the law and with the usages of their respective families. ' These measures have already received the approbation of her Majesty's Government. But gratifying as they were to the princes and chiefs who were thus assured of the con- tinuance of their houses, it was not improbable that they would be regarded by the native community at large as special acts of grace in consideration of good service rendered to the paramount state, and that some feelings of doubt and disquietude might be excited in the minds of those to whom the same assurances had not been conveyed. Your Excel- lency, therefore, lost no time in placing upon record and laying before her Majesty's Government the sentiments which you entertain with respect to the propriety of a more general 110 OUR INDIAN FEOTECTORATE measure of recognition, calculated to give renewed con- fidence to all the princes and chiefs of India whose minds had been unsettled by some recent decisions of the British Government. ' These sentiments I have now before me in your Excel- lency's letters No. 43 A of the 30th April and No. 46 of the 10th of May, and I have the gratification to inform you that I am commanded to communicate to you her Majesty's ap- proval of the principles which they enforce and the recom- mendations which they contain. ' Observing that such an opportunity as the present can never occur again for the final settlement of a question which has long excited continued conflicts of opinion and some inconsistencies of practice disturbing to the native mind, your Excellency now proposes to give to every chief above the rank oijdgirddr who now governs his own territory, no matter how small it may be, or where it may be situated, or whence his authority over it may in the first instance have been derived, assurance that the paramount power desires to see his government perpetuated, and that, on failure of natural heirs, his adoption of a successor according to Hindu law (if he is a Hindu) and to the customs of his race, will be recognised, and that nothing shall disturb the engagement thus made to him so long as his house is loyal to the Crown and faithful to the conditions of the treaties which record its obligation to the British Government. ' To the Muhammadan chiefs the assurance to be given would, according to your recommendation, be that the para- mount power desires their governments to be perpetuated, and that any succession to them which may be legitimate according to the Muhammadan law will be upheld. ' Presuming that in this latter case the recommendations of your Excellency relate only to instances in which there is a failure of direct heirs, and do not contemplate any departure from the policy of recognising the claims of primogeniture, her Majesty's Government approve the views thus expressed. They concur also in opinion with your Excellency, that no general notification of the intentions of your Government should be issued, but that in each case the assurance should be conveyed to the individual chiefs in whose favour you purpose to guarantee the privilege in question. You will carefully register the names of these chiefs, and forward me a roll of them as soon as it can be prepared. THE DOCTRINE OP LAPSE AND THE ADOPTION ' SANADS ' 111 ' With respect to the case of the . jdgirddrs, and others of a similar character, of whose position your Excellency writes in the 27th paragraph t>f your letter, I am disposed to think that, except in very special cases, no assurance should be given. The distinction between territorial rights of ancient date and independent tenure, and lands held by favour of the Government of the day as rewards for good service, and generally granted only for a limited number of generations, is sound and intelUgible. You will reserve to the paramount state the right of dealing with such cases as they arise, and that your recommendations wiU be framed in a liberal spirit is the wish, as it is the conviction, of her Majesty's Government. ' In the sentiments expressed in the concluding para- graphs of your Excellency's letter of the 30th of April I entirely concur. It is not hj the extension of our empire that its permanence is to be secured, but by the character of British rule in the territories already committed to our care, and by practically demonstrating that we are as willing to respect the rights of others as we are capable of maintaining our own.' The sanads were distributed accordingly. The usual form in the case of a Hindu chief runs thus : ' Her Majesty being desirous that the governments of the several princes and chiefs of India who now govern their own territories should be perpetuated, and that the repre- sentation and dignity of their houses should be continued, in fulfilment of this desire this sanad is given to you to con- vey to you the assurance that, on failure of natural heirs, the British Government wUl recognise and confirm any adoption of a successor made by yourself or by any future chief of your state that may be in accordance with Hindu law and the customs of your race. ' Be assured that nothing shall disturb the engagement thus made to you so long as your house is loyal to the Crown and faithful to the conditions of the treaties, grants, or engagements which record its obligations to the British Government.' The form for a Muhammadan chief is substantially the same ; except that the assurance conveyed is that, on failure of natural heirs, any succession to the government of the state which may be legitimate according to the Muhammadan law wiU be upheld. There is one point in connection with these assurances 112 OUR INDIAN PKOTBCTORATE that I hope will never be forgotten. Looking to the whole circumstances detailed in the despatches, I think we may say broadly that the feudatory chiefs of India earned con- cessions meeting their heart's desire by the loyal support which they gave us in our time of greatest need. For the chiefs themselves the value of the sanads pro- bably consists much more in the policy which gave rise to them, evinced by the declaration of her Majesty's desire that the governments of the several chiefs shall be perpetuated, than in the assurance that the British Government will recog- nise adoptions regularly made in proper form by chiefs themselves. It is likely that chiefs, always reluctant to adopt, have, since the distribution of the sanads, made fewer adoptions than ever. The sanads do not express any pledge to recognise adoptions irregularly made or made by the widow of a deceased chief, with or without his permission ; and this, it is said by Sir Charles Aitchison in his article in the ' Calcutta Eeview,' was intended ' to induce childless chiefs to make timely and formal adoptions, whereby to prevent disputes as to the succession and frustrate zendna influence and death-bed pressure in the selection of incompetent or improper heirs.' If so, that particular intention may have failed, and may be said to have implied too sanguine a view of human nature. Men not at the point of death, at almost any age or in almost any state of health, with young wives or the possibility of marrying young wives, are naturally unwilling to confess that prospects of an heir are hopeless ; princes do not care to give to actual or possible opponents a rallying point for their intrigues or their contumacy. Adoptions may be rarer, because it is now practically certain, come what may, that the native government, in some shape, will be continued ; there is therefore less reason than before to perform an act which is always disagreeable and some- times both disagreeable and impolitic. When adoptions occur, they are, in almost every case, either irregular or open to the imputation of irregularity, as doubtfully in accord with some doubtful custom, or made by the widow of the chief, the latter having omitted to adopt a successor ; and they are often merely the consequence of the selection of the successor by the widow and leading men or the Government, not the cause of the recognition of the right of some indi- vidual. But one important consequence of the policy which sug- gested the sanads has been that the practice of the Indian THE DOCTRINE OF LAPSE AND THE ADOPTION ' SANADS ' 113 Government in regard to successions to chiefships, formerly- varying with, discrepant conceptions of right and expediency, has become uniform and well defined. Where there is a natural heir whose title to succeed is indisputable according to law and usage, he succeeds as a matter of course, unless he be obviousl)'- and totally unfit ; though in this, as in every other case, a succession is thoroughly understood to require formal confirmation and recognition by the paramount power. Wliere the succession is disputed, the Supreme Government steps in and decides authoritatively in accordance with policy and the usages of the race and family. Where ■a regular adoption has been made in accordance with the terms of the adoption sanad, the succession of the heir by adoption is confirmed and recognised exactly as if he were an heir by blood. Where all heirs, natural or adopted, fail, and the Supreme Government recognises such successor to the rulership of a native state as, on general consideration, may seem best, whatever conditions appear fitting and desir- able may be attached to the succession . It is to be hoped that another consequence alike of the distribution of the adoption sanads and of that greater certainty in dealing with successions to chiefships which is a fruit of the whole policy, is a more assured conviction in the minds of ruling chiefs that we have no desire to annex their territories. With few exceptions they were loyal before they knew this in the way they know it now. But we may trust that the loyalty of most of them has acquired a new depth and sincerity. They may now see more clearly than they did before that their interests and those of the empire are identical. I wiU mention one circumstance amongst many which goes to support this view. The last Afghdn war and the posture of afiairs in the spring of 1885, when, on the occurrence of the Panjdeh incident, war with Eussia seemed imminent, elicited offers of personal service, men, money, and supplies from aU parts of India, of which it was impossible to mistake the genuine cordiality. 114 OUR INDIAN" PROTECTOKATK CHAPTEE VI PRESENT POLICY TOWARDS NATIVE STATES The Government has shown in many other ways, besides the distribution of the adoption sanads, its steady adherence to the policy happily inaugurated in 1858. From a multitude of illustrations I shall take three, aU important, aU matters of history, and the more convincing in regard to the real intentions of Government because the whole circumstances are generally known. Each of these illustrations carries with it a somewhat .different political lesson. I refer to the deposition of the Gaekwar of Baroda, the restoration of Mysore to native rule, and the Delhi Assemblage of 1877. Confidence is a plant of slow growth, and it must be admitted that in 1875 the native princes looked very anxiously to our proceedings in Baroda. They were content with the deposition of Mulhar Eao Gaekwar mainly because the native administration was restored and no suspicion could be entertained that we had derived any benefit from our interposition, except so far as the correc- tion of misgovernment in any native state is always a benefit to the empire generally. I shall briefly recapitulate the main facts of the famous Baroda case and indicate the chief political principles which it illustrates or affirms. Mulhar Eao Gaekwar had succeeded his brother Kliande Eao in 1870. His country was misgoverned, and the first Baroda Commission appointed to investigate the general condition of the state reported in February 1874. The nature of the misgovernment which had taken place may be gathered from the fact that the Gaekwar was authorita- tively advised to adopt measures relative to the future treatment of the relations and dependents of his late brother; to the realisation of revenue ; the prevention and punishment of torture ; the regulation of penalties in criminal cases ; the spoliation of bankers and trading firms ; the corporal punishment and personal ill-treatment of women and their PRESENT POLICY TOWAEDS NATIVE STATES 115 abduction for forced service in the palace. The Gaekwar was given till December 3, ^875, to effect the necessary- reforms. The instructions constituting the commission asserted that he was responsible for the good government of his country, and that in isolated cases the Government would look to him to take the necessary measures to redress grievances or remove evils that might be brought to his notice. But when evils of the kind believed to exist pervaded all departments of the administration, it became the duty of the British Government to institute an inquiry and, if necessary, use the power it possessed under treaty of offering advice to the Gaekwar and requiring him to conduct the affairs of Baroda in accordance with its advice. The British Government could not undertake to protect him from the consequences of general misgovernment. In reply to an objection on his part, that the appointment of the commission was not warranted by the existing relations between the Baroda state and the British Government, Lord Northbrook argued that intervention in Baroda affairs was in accordance both with the terms of Baroda treaties and with constant usage ; and that the particular intervention in question, though amply justified by the language of treaties, rested on other foundations. The British Govern- ment was the paramount power and the Baroda state, as admitted by the Gaekwar himself, was dependent on its protection. A subsidiary force of British troops was main- tained for the defence of the state, the protection of the person of its ruler, and the enforcement of his legitimate authority. ' My friend,' Lord Northbrook went on to say, ' I cannot consent to employ British troops to protect any one in a course of wrong-doing. Misrule on the part of a government which is upheld by the British power is misrule for which the British Government becomes in a measure involved. It becomes, therefore, not only the right but the positive duty of the British Government to see that the administration of a state in such a condition is reformed and that gross abuses are removed.' The Gaekwar was distinctly informed that, if he failed to reform his administration within the eighteen months allowed for the purpose, he would be removed from power. He was thus given a fair chance of amendment. He made no effort to amend, and some time before the expiry of the period of probation it was necessary to intervene again. An attempt was made to poison Colonel Phayre, the 116 OUR INDIAN PROTECTOEATE Eesident ; and the Gaekwar himself was suspected on very- strong grounds of comphcity in the crime. Sir Lewis Pelly was deputed to Baroda, and instructed in January 1875 to arrest the Gaekwar. The arrest was effected just outside the residency, and the Government of India, as an act of state, not in pursuance of any law or in the exercise of any- right acquired by treaty, temporarily assumed the admini- stration of Baroda. It was declared in the proclamation then issued that evidence had been adduced that the Gaekwar had instigated the attempt to poison Colonel Phayre ; that to instigate such an attempt would be a high crime against the Queen, a breach of the condition of loyalty to the Crown under which the Gaekwar was recognised as ruler of Baroda, and an" act of hostility against the British Government ; that it was necessary to inquire into the truth of the charge ; that the Gaekwar was suspended from power ; and that, in accordance with the desire of the Queen that the government of the princes and chiefs of India should be perpetuated, a native administration would be established in such manner as might be determined upon after the conclusion of the inquiry. The charges referred also to bribing and holding secret communications with the servants of the residency, but of course the main charge was that of instigating the attempt to poison the Eesident. The second Baroda Commission appointed to try these charges was not constituted as a judicial tribunal. Its function was to report to the Govern- ment of India, with whom the decision was ultimately to rest. But the proceedings were, in fact, conducted publicly as in a court of law, and counsel were permitted to appear. The three European members of this commission, Sir Richard Couch, Chief Justice of Bengal, Sir Eichard Meade, president of the first commission, and Mr. P. S. Melvill, unanimously found Mulhar Eao guilty on aU the charges ; Maharaja Sindhia and Sir Dinkar Eao found the graver imputation not proved, while the Maharaja of Jaipur found the Gaekwar not guilty. Maharaja Holkar had expressed complete concurrence in the course taken by the Govern- ment of India, but had excused himself from serving on the commission. Mulhar Eao was thus left under the gravest suspicion of having committed the heinous crime imputed to him. He was deposed by proclamation, but the decision was not based on the report of the commission, nor did the Govern- PBESENf POLICY TOWARDS NATIVE STATES Il7 ment assume that the truth of the imputations against him had been proved. His deposijj^on was made to rest on his notorious misconduct, his gross misgovernment of the state, and on his evident incapacity to effect the necessary- reforms, as also upon the opinion of the Government of India that it would be detrimental to the interests of the people of Baroda, and inconsistent with the maintenance of the relations which ought to subsist between the British Government and the Baroda state, to restore him to power. The widow of the late Khande Eao was then permitted to adopt a boy of the Gaekwar house, selected by the British Government ; and this boy was installed as Gaekwar, suit- able provision being made for the administration of the state during his minority. In the discussions connected with the selection of the person upon whom the sovereignty of the state was to be conferred by the Government of India, it was laid down that the considerations to be borne in mind were the relationship of the several claimants to Khande Eao Gaekwar ; personal fitness for rule, if an adult were chosen ; general intelligence and capability for educa- tion if a minor were preferred ; and lastly, acceptability of the person selected to the leading nobles and people. It was held that under no circumstances would the Government of India have been justified in selecting for the succession a person who, whatever might be his other claims, was lacking in the primary requisite of personal fitness for rule. As soon as the succession was arranged, it was recognised by the Maharaja Holkar by the transmission of a dress of honour to the new chief. The advice spontaneously offered by that Maharaja at a comparatively early stage of the affair, about the time when the report of the first commission was under consideration, that is, in the early months of 1874, is worth quoting, be- cause it shows the ideas entertained by native princes as to the general authority and responsibility of the paramount power. ' Presuming,' he said to General Daly, the Governor- General's Agent for Central India, ' that things are worse at Baroda than in other native states, and that the Gaekwar by his acts shows himself unfit to rule, I would depose him and appoint in his place the most worthy of the three members of the family who were in Khande Eao's eye for adoption. 1 take for granted there is no thought of annexa- tion ; that there will be no interference with treaty rights ; that the Queen's Proclamation will be upheld. This being 118 OUR INDIAN ['ROTECTORA,TE SO, it is the duty of the paramount power to save the state.- The person for the time being is little : the state with its rights is the point for consideration. Half measures in such a case will work no good : I mean an attempt to work the state by a British officer will be construed into another covering for annexation. I would rather have a clean removal and a clean succession.' He added that the successor should not be suddenly left to his own devices ; but be for some time guided and strengthened by patient and judicious counsel. The halting verdict of the second commission probably saved the ex-Gaekwar from the penalty which would have followed upon conviction of the crime alleged, if proved against a private person. It is not likely that on the point of procedure the Baroda precedent will be followed on any future occasion. The manifest inconveniences of a quasii judicial trial in a political case of this nature are to6 obvious to need description. The true value of the case, from the point of view of Indian political law, lies in the number and importance of political principles which it establishes, and in the fact that most or all of these principles received the express or implied concurrence of several leading chiefs, who either took part in the pro- ceedings or signified that they recognised their propriety. In the case of a state of the first consequence, and apart altogether from treaty rights, the Government of India declined to support misrule by its forces, suspended and ultimately deposed the erring ruler, and selected as the successor a person chosen with a view to the probability of his ruling well. While the extensive authority of the paramount power and its determination not to permit misgovernment, for which it was indirectly responsible, were thus exhibited, the rulers and chiefs were assured by the signal fact of the restoration of a native administration that the desire to avoid further acquisition of territory was perfectly sincere. The story of Mysore conveys a similar moral ; and' its commencement carries us back to the early days of the century, already sufficiently characterised, when Lord Wellesley, in the strength of conquest, but nevertheless under pressure of necessity, was laying out the plan of the yet unacknowledged protectorate. On the conquest of Mysore it was necessary to pbtain a reasonable indemnification for the expenses of. the war and an adequate security against PHKSENT POLICY TOWAEDS NATlVJfi STATKS 119 tlie return of the dangers which had provoked hostilities. A large portion of the conquered territory was therefore divided between the Company and th« Nizam. To have so divided the whole would have afforded the Marhattas grounds of jealousy, unduly aggrandised the power of the Nizam, and involved the establishment of an inconvenient frontier. There could be no hope that the dynasty of Tippoo would ever entertain anything but enmity to the British cause. It was thus determined to rescue tlie family of the old Hindu rajas of Mysore from the obscurity and durance in which they had been placed by the usurpation of Haidar Ali, and to set a child of that house upon the throne of a state entirely created by British authority. It was expressly recorded by Lord WeUesley at the time that no positive right or title to the throne existed in an)^ party. In correcting the draft of the treaty of 1799 prepared by Colonel Kirkpatrick, Lord WeUesley, as is well known, struck out all reference to the heirs and successors of the Maharaja, and in his despatch of August 3 of that year his lordship thus described the intentions of the treaty : ' In framing this engagement,' he said, ' it was my determination to establish the most unquali- fied community of interests between the Government of Mysore and the Company, and to render the Eaja's northern frontier in effect a powerful line of our defence. With this view I have engaged to undertake the protection of this country, in consideration of an annual subsidy of seven lakhs of star pagodas ; but recollecting the inconvenience and embarrassments which have arisen to all parties con- cerned under the double governments and conflicting authorities unfortunately established in Oudh, the Carnatic, and Tanjore, I resolved to reserve to the Company the most extensive and indisputable powers of interposition in the internal affairs of Mysore, as well as an unlimited right of assuming the direct management of the country (whenever such a step might appear necessary for the security of the funds destined for the subsidy"), and of requiring extraordi- nary aid beyond the amount of the fixed subsidy, either in time of war or of preparations for hostility. Under this arrangement I trust I shall be enabled to command the whole resources of the Eaja's territory, to improve its cultivation, to extend its commerce, and to secure the welfare of itg inhabitants. It appeared to me a more candid and liberal^ as well as a more wise .policy, to apprize the.Eaja distinctly, at the moment of his accession, of tlie exact nature of his 120 OUE INDIAN PEOTECTOEATE dependence on the Company, than to leave any matter for future doubt or discussion.' The Eaja or Maharaja was a child of tender years, and the administration of the state was conducted till 1812 by the Br41iman Purniah. The Maharaja ruled till 1831 ; he dissipated the treasure which Purniah had amassed, and he grossly misgoverned his territories. To paraphrase slightly the language of Sir Mark Cubbon, the government became venal, all establishments fell into arrears, local officials were uncontrolled, the highest offices were put up to sale, valuable lands were alienated and new taxes and monopolies were invented ; there was no security for property ; nothing fit to be called the administration of justice ; the people, harassed by swarms of petty officers and monopolists, could obtain no redress. At length in 1829 an extensive insurrection broke out, and British troops had to be employed to suppress it. These events led to the assumption of the administration by the British Government on October 19, 1831 ; and, as I have said, it remained in British hands for fifty years. At first the province was governed on the native system by a British commissioner, Sir Mark Cubbon, and four Euro- pean superintendents for the several divisions. But in later years the administrative structure of Mysore was assimilated to that usual in non-regulation provinces ; the full com- plement of British officials was introduced ; and here, as elsewhere, patriarchal methods of rule fell into desuetude. The Maharaja whom Lord Wellesley had placed upon the throne lived tiU March 27, 1868 ; he applied again and again for the restoration of his state, but without success ; for the obligations of the British Government to the people of Mysore were held to be no less sacred than its self-imposed obligations to the Maharaja. He asked that his right to adopt might be recognised ; but the Government of India refused him their authority to adopt a successor to the state. He did not cease to press the question, and in 1865 actually adopted a boy of less than three years of ^ age. At last, in 1867, the Home Government determined to maintain his family on the throne in the person of his adopted son, upon terms corresponding with those made in 1799, so far as the altered circumstances of the time would allow. Lord Cran- borne explained in the House of Commons that this decision was influenced by the belief that the existence of well-governed native states is a benefit to the stability of British - rule, for the reason, amongst others, that it affords PRESENT POLICY TOWARDS NATIVE STATES 121 opportunities for statesmanlike capacity of natives of India ; and Sir StaiSTord Northcote said in his explanatory minute that he believed it to be both 'Bur duty, and, in a large sense, our interest, to maintain the existence of separate native states, and to exercise our influence to secure them good government at the hands of native rulers. He further pointed out that to give effect to this policy we had in the past found it necessary, and might find it necessary again, to assume the administration of misgoverned states ; and that in accepting and acting upon this view of our position it was important to prove ourselves to be influenced by no desire of territorial aggrandisement, but by a genuine wish to promote the welfare of the country. It fell to the government of Lord Lytton in 1881 to carry- out the decision of 1867. In general there is this objection, amongst others, to renditions of British Indian territory to native rulers, that whereas British rule is now, at any rate, a rule of law and system, native rule, in so far as it has not been modified by British influence, is in theory conducted at the mere volition of the prince, while the prac- tical checks which limit usual Indian despotisms are very different from the codes and acts, the official discipline, and the constitutional practices which secure personal rights in British districts. Thus, if by a decision from Simla or Calcutta a British Indian subject is changed into the subject of a native state, he is practically thrust all of a sudden into a new legal atmosphere ; and the chances of his suffering in some way in his rights and liabilities and expectations are proportioned to the difference between the general system of the particulat- native state and the British system of which he is no longer a partaker. Mysore territory, it need not be said, was and is foreign territory ; but the people had been living under British laws and British methods of adminis- tration for a long course of years. It was therefore just as desirable to guard rights and expectations here as it would have been if the province had been annexed in 1831 instead of being sequestrated. > . Precisely this necessity for satisfying hopes and ideas which had become usual under British administration gave a specially novel and interesting character to the Mysore experi- ment. It was decided that the re-establishment of native rule should not interfere with the maintenance of the British system; that the Maharaja, in fact, should not exercise a despotism checked -by imperfect civil and military organisa- 122 OUR INDIAN PROTECTOEATK tion, imperfect instruments of power and primitive ideas of what ought to be expected from the despot, but should con- duct the administration on those fixed principles which had guided the British Chief Commissioner who had preceded him. This was an inevitable peculiarity demanded by the plainest dictates of justice and good sense ; in other respects there was nothing unusual in the position assigned to the Mysore state. The special powers of interposition reserved by Lord Wellesley have been duly maintained ; but the state stands generally on the same footing as other important native states under the British protectorate. All that is new or old in the system of relations established with Mysore is summed up in the Instrument of Transfer, a document of the first political importance, which deserves the careful study of all interested in the present subject. The first seventeen clauses of the instrument comprise the princi- pal conditions, territorial, financial, and military, affecting the state ; and none of these conditions are dissimilar in principle from those upon which are founded the subordinate relations of all other native states with the British Government. Other clauses provide that all laws and rules having the force of law in force in the Mysore territories, when the Maharaja was placed in possession of them, shall be maintained and efficiently administered, the Maharaja having no power to repeal or modify them except with the previous consent of the Governor-General in Council ; that except with that consent no material change shall be made in the established system of administration ; that title-deeds granted and settlements of land revenue made shall be duly upheld ; that the Maharaja shall conform to such advice as the Governor-General in Council shall offer him with a view to objects connected with the advancement of his Highness's interests, the happiness of his subjects, and his relations to the British Government ; and that in the event of the breach or non-observance of the conditions set forth in the instru- ment, the Governor-General in Council may resume posses- sion of the Mysore territories, and assume the direct adminis- tration of them, or make such other arrangements as he may think necessary for the good government of the people of Mysore, or for the security of British rights and interests within the province. As regards the manner in which the measure was receivecl by the people of the state, I believe the Brdhmans and most of the leading men were in favour of the rendition., PRESENT POLICY TOWARDS NATIVE, STATES 123 The mass of the people were probably at first uneasy as toits possible effects. There would have been no difficulty in organising an agitation agaillst it, just as there was no difficulty in organising the rejoicings which took place when the Maharaja assumed charge. As a fact, there was no such agitation. The leading men would not countenance it. Since the rendition, the people have been fairly satisfied, They have begun to think that there is not much difference after all ; and no doubt the recognition of the Maharaja as successor to the throne, and his establishment in the palace with the usual Oriental retinue and display, were measures popular with every one. Generally the administration is conducted by native officials. The British officials were for the most part pensioned or provided with employment elsewhere ; but there are still some European officers in high positions in the state. I understand that the machinery works smoothly at present, though inclined to be a little slack. In order of time the Delhi Assemblage preceded the Mysore rendition of 1881 by several years. But I have given the event of January 1, 1877, the last place in this chapter, because it sums up the result of that whole process of organising and developing our Indian protectorate which it has been my attempt to describe. In no way are we here concerned with the parliamentary and other public discussions of the time as to the expe- diency of the assumption of the title ' Empress of India ' by her Majesty the Queen. We have merely to look to the political significance of the assemblage itself, of the assump- tion of title there announced, and of the declarations made on the occasion. The Assemblage and the adoption of the imperial title were very natural consequences of the transfer of the go- vernment of India from the Company to the Crown and of the Proclamation of 1858, which informed the princes and peoples of India that the transfer had been effected. The Act of Parliament which empowered her Majesty to add to her title (39 Vic. cap. 10) recites that whereas it had been enacted that the government of India, formerly vested in the East India Company in trust for her Majesty, should become vested in her Majesty, by whom and in whose name India should henceforth be governed, it was expedient that there should be a recognition of the transfer of government so made by means of an addition to the royal style and 124 OUE IXDIAN PEOTECTOEATE title. In the despatches of the day it was said that the native princes are directly concerned in the renown of the empire, the safety of its frontiers, the development of its com- merce, the friendliness and dignity of its intercourse with foreign states, and the maintenance of its peace ; that if any one of these imperial interests were attacked or menaced, it would be the duty of those chiefs to assist us in defending it ; and that the occasion might properly be associated in their minds with the acquisition on their part of a new and more lively interest in the affairs of the empire. The intention was that the proclamation of the imperial title should add to the strength of the foundations of the British rule. In presenting to the chiefs who attended the Assemblage banners which it was supposed they would appreciate, because of the importance attS,ched by native potentates to similar marks of distinction conferred on them by the Moghal emperors, the Viceroy reminded each of them of the close union between the throne of England and the house of the chief, and of the earnest desire of the para- mount power to see the dynasty of the chief strong, pro- sperous, and permanent. The speech made by the Viceroy at the time of the proclamation described the new title as one meant to be to all the princes and peoples of India a perma- nent symbol of the union of the Crown with their interests and of its claim upon their allegiance. The opening words of the speech were an allusion to the proclamation of 1858 ; which, it was said, had conveyed to those peoples and princes assurances of her Majesty's goodwill, cherished by them as their most precious political possession. The promises then made needed no confirmation ; but the Assemblage itself was conspicuous evidence of their fulfilment. ' Princes,' said the Viceroy, ' and chiefs of this empire, which finds in your loyalty a pledge of strength, in your prosperity a source of splendour, her Majesty thanks you for your readiness, on which she reckons, if its interests be attacked or men- aced, to assist her Government in the defence of them: . . . Her Majesty regards her interests as identified with yours; and it is with the wish to confirm the confidence and perpetuate the intimacy of the relations now so happily uniting the British Crown and its feudatories and allies, that her Majesty has been graciously pleased to assume the imperial title we proclaim to-day.' ' The Government of heT Majesty,' the Viceroy continued, ' in every quarter of the elobe over which its dominion is established, trusts less t'6 PRESENT POLICY TOWARDS NATIVE STATES 125 -the Strength of armies than to the willing allegiance of a contented and united people, who rally round the throne because they recognise therei?i the stable condition of their permanent welfare. It is on the gradual and enlightened participation of her Indian subjects in the undisturbed exercise of this mild and just authority, and not upon the conquest of weaker states or the annexation of neighbouring territories, that her Majesty relies for the development of her Indian empire.' These words breathe the very spirit which animated Lord Canning when he effected a pacification no less momentous than that effected by Lord Hastings forty jj^ears before. With pageantry and formalities not unsuited to a state of society in which ceremonies and display retain a powerful hold on the popular imagination, it was announced, not merely at Delhi, but at native courts and in British districts throughout the length and breadth of the land, that the Queen had openly accepted the position which she and her predecessors had virtually held since the victories of Lord Lake placed the King of Delhi in actual dependence on the Company, and which she had both virtually and technically held since the date of the Amnesty Proclamation. There was nothing reaUy new in this formal publication of a long- accepted fact; but the opportunity was properly taken to assert the strength, the tranquillity, the unity, and the per- manence of the empire, and was rightly used to remind the feudatory chiefs of their duty to support its interests. By those whose capabilities and position enabled them to form a judgment on the event, the proclamation of January 1, 1877, was in most cases welcomed entirely in the spirit in which it was intended to be received. According to Eastern ideas, to attend a formal gathering convened at the behest of a ruler is a customary mode of signifying homage. Sixty-three ruhng chiefs were present at the Assemblage, including the Nizam of Hyderabad, the Maharaja of Mysore, the Gaekwar of Baroda, the Maharajas of Gwdlior and Indore, and the other principal chiefs of Central India, EAjpiitdna and the Punjab, together with chiefs from Bombay, the North-Western and Central Provinces, Bengal, and Sindh. It was reported that the aggregate populations under the direct rule of the chiefs present at Delhi approached forty millions, while their united territories exceeded the combined areas of England, • Italy, and France. Chiefs who did not come testified their 126 OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE loyal acquiescence in the propriety of the proceedings by letters of congratulation and the celebration of rejoicings in their several states. It may be said generally that in British districts the bearing of the leading men who attended the local assemblies was loyal and cordial ; while many of the addresses, particularly those presented by people in Upper India, evinced a clear idea of that actual situation of affairs which the ceremonies and announcements of the hour were meant to symbolise. The inhabitants of Poona and of other places in the Deccan wrote that ' the native princes, great and small, are protected by the strength of the paramount power from internal dissension, and their continuance as the feudatory members of the empire has been assured to them beyond all risk of change ; ' and the memorialists referred to the new title as legalising de jure what had long been true in fact, namely, that the British power is paramount over all other powers in India, which are protected by its sovereign rule. The inhabitants of Calcutta and of other parts of Bengal described the assump- tion of title as formally defining ' the exact position of India in the body politic of the British Empire ; ' and as at once incorporating ' her, with her princes, chiefs, and people, as an integral member of that empire.' Some addresses from the North-Western Provinces and the Punjab still more significantly dwelt on the constant anarchy and barbarous bloodshed of the times which succeeded the downfall of the Moghal Empire and on the benefits received from the British nation in security against invasion from without and the suppression of intestine warfare. With these general recognitions of the unquestioned strength and right of the British protectorate we may close our review of recent developments of Indian political principle. The lesson of the annexation of Oudh is a lasting one, because political abstention which leads to anarchy is in itself a mistake, and involves an intolerable wrong to populations for whose welfare the British nation is ultimately responsible. But the policy of annexation, except as the supreme punishment for political crimes, the policy evinced in the discussions on Sattdra, Karauli, Tehri, and Jhdnsi, and in the refusal to recognise a native succession in N4gpur, has been eliminated from amongst political ideas accepted by any responsible authorities in India. This is shown by the proclamation of 1858, by the distribution of the adoption sanads, by conspicuous proceedings at Baroda, PRESENT POLICY TOWARDS NATIVE STATES 127 in Mysore, and at Delhi. It is no part of the plan of this work to enter upon any discussion of current political events in India ; but the late restoration of powers to the Maharaja of Kashmir and the re-establishment of a native administration in Manipur after the recent lamentable occurrences, suffice to prove that the counsels of the Indian Government are stiU inspired by the same principles. One of the addresses of January, 1877 — it was presented at Maldah, the head-quarters of a district in Bengal — quaintly but concisely expresses a popular view of the real position : ' This golden India,' so the address runs, ' has been ruled by three nations. In the first period the Hindu kings of the solar and lunar race (as they were called) reigned over from the beginning up to 1206 a.d. In the second, Moghals and Pathdns reigned over the country from 1206 to 1802 ; and thence up to the present the English nation governs it.' The dates might be the subject of learned discussion, but the observation is substantiallj'- true. In the next month Mr. A. P. MacDonnell, now Chief Commissioner of the Central Provinces, reported of the people of Durbhanga, in Bengal, where he was then collector : ' Among the mass the news has permeated every- where. But wherever the news has created a clear concep- tion in the ryofs mind (and that is not always or every- where), the conception he has formed is that not her Majesty the Queen, but his Eoyal Highness the Prince of Wales it is who is the Padshah.' The Durbhanga ryot was not quite correct in his facts ; but he was right in his general idea, for the title of Padshah was that assumed by the Delhi emperors. I shall now leave for a while the later political concept tions which are our practical guides, and turn to those early notions of kingship in India and those theories of government acted upon by the Moghals which characterised the first and second of the periods defined by the people of Maldah. I hope to show that in native India the primitive Hindu raja still survives, and that the texture of the British protectorate, which now envelops the land, has been woven from materials left to us by our predecessors on a pattern consonant with the history of India and with much that is lasting in Indian ideas of kingly power and imperial supremacy. 128 OCR INDIAN PEOTECTOEATE CHAPTEE VII EARLY INDIAN IDEAS OF SOVEREIGNTY It would be a grave misconception of the character of our Indian empire to imagine that its institutions are the mere inventions of foreigners arbitrarily imposed upon conquered populations and subject states. I shall fully admit in a subsequent chapter that some of our necessary principles of action are not in harmony with Indian ways ; but, on the whole, I believe that our empire has been largely though not exclusively developed by forces and from elements which are alike indigenous. It seems to me to have arisen, like other Oriental empires, out of the pre-existing circumstances of the societies upon which it has been formed, to draw from the territories over which it extends most of the materials of its composition, and to derive from its Oriental surroundings some of its most important principles of life and growth. If this view is correct, if in truth our Indian dominion and political preponderance are so rooted and sustained, two consequences may follow. The intimate connection between the empire as it is and the former institutions of the country, which have been absorbed and improved by its establishment, should presage its stability ; and the impulse which many of us may feel to condemn foreign domination as almost neces- sarily unjust may be altered into a belief that foreign supre- macy, when largely due to and moulded by the character- istics of the subject societies, may sometimes be not only inevitable but salutary. Administrative and political arrangements are, indeed, much more the result of little-observed social forces than of deliberate design, and often survive the paroxysms of change which, on a superficial view, appear fatal to them. De Tocqueville has shown very well that administrative cen- tralisation in France was not brought into existence by the Kevolution, but preceded and partly caused it. The scheme of the British Indian empire, taken as a whole, comprises BABLY INDIAN IDEAS OF SO-VEEEiaXTY 129 the direct administration of certain provinces by officials appointed by a central power, and the suzerainty of the same power over a large number of states enjoying considerable, though varying, degrees of internal sovereignty. The chief ideas which enter into that scheme were not generated by the British conquest of the provinces directly administered, but preceded it, and may, indeed, be reckoned amongst the causes which made British supremacy inevitable. Moreover, the Delhi empire itself, at its height, might be described almost in the very words just used to describe the British Indian empire ; and it actually perpetuated some Hindu institutions when it seemed, and probably intended, to destroy them. I hope at least to show that in conceptions of sovereignty we are the heirs of the Moghals, and that they were the heirs of the Hindu rajas, whom they rooted out of the Punjab and Hindustan. I know that Mr. Benett, whose admirable report on the Gonda district of Oudh I shall quote in several places, says, in another paper, that the mistake which vitiates almost all our pohtical theories in India is that we are the successors of the Musahndn emperors. But were we only that, he adds, we should not be where we are. The commissioner, he observes, has supplanted not so much the ndzim — the local official of the Delhi emperors — as the raja. Certainly we are not by any means the successors only of the Moghals ; they won their inheritance by the sword from the Hindu rajas and we have succeeded both MusalmAns and Hindus. Speaking of the complete political dissolution of India in the eighteenth century, Sir iJfred Lyall (' Asiatic Studies,' p. 190) observes : ' The Moghal empire had made a clean sweep of indigenous political institutions within its sway; and in their turn the Marhattas, aided in the work of destruction by the Afghans, Sikhs, Jdts, by rebels and commanders of free companies generally, made a clean sweep of the Moghal empire.' As usual. Sir Alfred Lyall does not allow the vigour of his style to impair historical accuracy. The pohtical institutions to which he refers are the old Hindu states in those parts of the Delhi empire which the Moghals succeeded in bringing under their direct administration. Sir Alfred LyaU does not mean that in the Delhi empire as a whole, including the subjugated or partially subjugated states, we cannot trace many degrees of interference and non-interference, from the raja being left in possession of his principality, subject only to demand for tribute or 130 OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE service and submission, to the ejection of all hereditary middlemen and the collection of the dues of the state from the village proprietors by Government officials. Nor does Sir Alfred Lyall mean that the Moghals entirely succeeded in bringing under their direct sway many remote or outlying parts of the country, such as the Punjab frontier, the Punjab hills, parts of Central and Southern India, and generally, with the exception of the Nizam's dominions, nearly the whole of the country shown in the maps as belonging to native states, where indigenous political institutions, the states themselves included, have lasted on to our day. The case of Oudh, to which the remark I have quoted from Mr. Benett especially applies, is in point. There were parts of Oudh where the Muhammadans by no means completely succeeded in grind- ing down to the dust aU the indigenous Hindu principalities ; as we found when, after annexation, we had to turn Edjput feudal chieftains, amongst others, into Oudh talukddrs. Still less does Sir Alfred Lyall mean that Muhammadan conquest altered the old constitution of Hindu society, which lasted on through the many centuries of the Delhi empire, and has lasted on through the single century of our own. And the old constitution of Hindu society influenced Muhammadan ideas of government and the Muhammadan style of government in many ways. The best of the Muham- madan emperors or kings rallied around them tributary Hindu rajas, and employed Hindu ministers or officials to arrange their revenue affairs on Hindu principles of adminis- tration ; and some of the emperors were, indeed, themselves partly Hindus by blood, for their fathers married daughters of the great chiefs of EAjputdna. In the India of our predecessors, sovereignty was terri- torial or tending to become so ; it was based on the land and on the idea of a double ownership in prince and peasant; and it not infrequently included some notion of suzerainty, often very vague, so that sometimes in the divi- sion of sovereignty which this notion implied the fragment left with the suzerain was almost invisible. All these ideas are still current in the India of to-day ; but we have, so to speak, called them in and re-issued them. The ideas of the old stamp wanted edge; they were perhaps incapable of sharp definition ; they were of different mintage in different parts of the country. The old buUion is stiU in use ; but we have amalgamated with it a little Western material, and have given the new coinage a clear-cut rim and a fresh and EARLY INDIAN IDEAS OF SOVEREIGNTY 131 uniform image and superscription. The tendency to terri- torial sovereignty lias been Igd somewhat suddenly to its result, and all our states are territorial sovereignties. With the basis of Indian sovereignty, the customary division of the produce of the soil, we have not interfered; but our own example and influence tend to beget in many places clearer definition and separation of public and private rights. The suzerainty of the paramount power has become well defined and is a substantial reality. I may add that in India, before and during our time, as in many other lands and ages, the sovereign was and is the fountain of honour. In illustrating these remarks I must necessarily resort to localities outside the rim of that monotonous platform where Muhammadan supremacy beat down the old Hindu princi- palities. I shall adduce evidence from the Punjab frontier, the Punjab Hills, and a strip of Oudh territory on the borders of Nepal ; I shall then compare some of this evidence with that 'contained in Sir Alfred Lyall's paper on Rdjpiitdna, and in the next chapter I shall extend the inquiry to the Indian peninsula. To follow the unfamiliar details thus brought together may, I fear, tax the patience of any who are not specialists ; but it seems right to explain pretty fully the grounds of the opinions just given, even at the risk of being tedious. In the history of institutions there is, of course, a phase of sovereignty which is earlier than territorial sovereignty. As we know from Sir Henry Maine, sovereignty was not always associated with a definite portion of the earth's surface. He points out that the older ideas are reflected in the titles of the earliest monarchs in Western Europe, which were ' Eex Anglorum, Eex Francorum, Eex Scotorum ' — King of the English, King of the Franks, King of the Scots. On the Punjab frontier, particularly in the southern portion of it, we find excellent specimens, if not of early kingship, at least of the sort of personal leadership in semi-political groups out of which we may suppose early kingship might arise. Tribal chieftainship, which, I take it, precedes territorial despotism, is extremely well marked amongst Baluchis, and is occa- sionally traceable, though in a rudimentary form, amongst Pathdns. In historic times, and perhaps in remote ages of which history has no record, the tide of conquest or immi- gration has swept again and again from Central Asia or Afghanistan over the fertile and thickly populated plains of India ; and, although in the countries of these Muhammadto 132 OUR INDIAN PROTECTOEATE tribal societies we cannot of course trace any early ideas of kingship which are specifically Hindu, it is, I think, in the hills and comparatively inaccessible tracts left aside by suc- cessive streams of invasion, or passed or touched without being overwhelmed by its rising or subsequently receding flood, that we are most likely to find trustworthy and en- during testimony as to the character of society and politics in the remote past of India or amongst the tribes and castes of which Indian populations are composed. This is an- other reason, in addition to that afforded by the unsparing demolitions of Muhammadan supremacy, for ransacking out of the way parts of the country in the search for kingship or sovereignty in its early forms. Where the Himalayan system of mountains sweeps round the north-west corner of India it breaks up into rugged masses of successive chains of hiUs, the first of them, with only one wide break, fronting our dominions from Pesh4war to Karachi, and the others, with the intervening plains and vaUeys, constituting Afghanistan and Beluchistan. From Sukkur to Sibi there is a wide open plain, much of it a desert of the Indian type, and much of it, when peace is secured, available for cultivation. To the north of this region, between the territories which are held in the grip of the Amir of Afghanistan and the British districts, the hills and valleys are inhabited by a multitude of Pathdn tribes, which, though K4bul may sometimes claim from some of them a very shadowy allegiance, and most of them have direct relations with ourselves, are really independent and free from aU interference in their internal concerns. The Pathdn country also extends far east of the Sulaiman Eange, and includes our districts of Peshdwar and Kohdt, the Bannu Valley, and a part of the Dera Ismail Khan district. Below Dera Ismail Khan lies the Baluch country, which stretches away to Kheldt. Many of the Baluch tribes acknowledge the supremacy of the Khdn of Kheldt ; but he is dependent on the British Government, and the Baluchis generally are controlled either by the authorities of the Dera Ghazi Kh4n district and their superiors in the Punjab or by the Governor- General's Agent for Baluchistan and his subordinates. The contrast between the democratic constitution of the northern or Pathdn tribes and the remarkable supremacy in Baluch tribes of their hereditary tumanddrs or chieftains, has been the subject of comment in many official documents. A Baluch is more unlike a Pathdn than a Frenchman is un- EAELt INDIAN IDEAS OF SOVEREIGNTY 133 like an Englishman ; but, notwithstanding great and striking differences, it may be said that all or most of these tribes, Baluch and Path4n alike, possess certain features in common. In all, the tribal organisation of clans and sections united by the fact or fiction of common descent is well preserved ; all have a tribal territory, where the tribesmen claim the chief rights in the soil ; in all, revenge for injuries is a sacred duty, and the vendetta is maintained from generation to generation. There is the fiercest jealousy of female honour ; but elopements are one of the most frequent causes of lasting blood feuds. Where the controlling hand of the British Government has not interposed to allay tribal dis- putes, warfare between tribe and tribe is common or inces- sant. Many tribes may be said to be predatory — that is, to look to the plunder of strangers as a principal means of sub- sistence. Internal tribal affairs are dealt with by tribal councils, and feuds are sometimes composed by the exchange of betrothals or by money compensation for loss of lives or cattle. AU'these are weU-known marks of primitive societies in the tribal stage. The predatory instincts of the Baluch tribes have been repressed in the pacification of Baluchistan and the Dera Ghdzi Khdn border, which has been effected during the past twenty years, chiefly by the abihties and force of will of the late Sir Eobert Sandeman. Over the clans and sections of clans of these tribes are headmen, whose oflice is hereditary like that of the tumanddr or chief in the tribe at large ; and he con- sults with these headmen in matters of importance. By means of the subordination of the headmen, obedience and responsibihty run through the whole tribe. In the old days the chief was entitled to one-fifth of the tribal plunder. When the Baluchis came down from the hills and settled on the plains, they parcelled out, according to their tribal sec- tions, the lands which they acquired ; and it is said that the tumanddr retained a considerable private estate for himself and his family; and it is probable that "where he was a strong man he had the right to provide for the cultivation of waste lands and of lands deserted by their occupants. An almost identical constitution has been attributed to Pathdn tribes ; and the tribal chief, where there is one, is, as with the Baluchis, the leader in war. But the stubbornly independent character of clans, sections, and individuals, leaves the Pathdn chief, if any there be, little real authority. The habit of implicit obedience which distinguishes the 134 OUE INDIAN PEOTECTOEATE Baluchis is altogether wanting ; and the Pathdns generally do each what is meet in his own eyes. In some few Path4n tribes there is a system very like civilised party government : the leading men of one faction direct affairs for a time, and are then turned out, generally without fighting, to make room for the leading men of the other faction. For centuries no strangers have been safe in the Pathdn hills ; and even the men of one clan cannot ordinarily pass safely through the lands of their neighbours. In the Baluch country the strength of the chief results in something like government within the tribe. If you can command the tumanddr, you can control the tribe. But with Pathdns the case differs. Family feuds and clan jealousies are continually rife, except when they are momentarily forgotten, if all sections unite for the time to repel a common enemy. There is good reason to believe that in the normal constitution of a Pathdn tribe there is no tribal chieftainship, the common affairs and such rough substitute for government as may be supposed to exist being conducted hj jirgas or councils of the elders of the numerous clans and sections which, in combination, form the whole tribe. I have, however, obtq,infed from the Peshdwar division information which clearly shows that in some few tribes there is a rudimentary or atrophied chiefship and a khan khel — one particular section or extended family in which the chiefship is supposed to reside, and from which the chief, if any, would be taken. In the Hasanzai clan of the Yusafzai tribe there is a khdn khel in which is vested the nominal chiefship of three clans prominent in the recent history of Black Mountain expeditions — the Hasanzai, Akazai, and Madakhel. The Khdn or chief is elected by these three clans. He has some but not much authority ; and the Khanship, the election notwithstanding, probably descends by primogeniture, except when a brother succeeds in pre- ference to a minor son. In the Madakhel clan there is a khd7i khel section to which some of the leading elders belong, but this clan has no special hereditary chiefship with rights attached to it. I have counted thirteen other tribes or clans possessing a khd^i khel ; and the fact that a khdn khel is found in tribes like the Dur4nis or Ghilzais, which have furnished dynasties, or in tribes hke the Mohmands and Khataks, which have come in contact with the Moghal and Persian empires, and have had chiefs appointed or recognised by some distant suzerain, suggests that the true Pathdn institution is the maliki, the headship of elders of sections, who meet, on tribal EAELY INDIAN IDEAS OF SOVEREIGNTY 135 affairs, in demociratic tribal councils. The Khanship of the Mohmands beyond British territory, which is recognised by the Amir of Afghanistan and*by ourselves, is something more than a rudimentary chiefship. For an instance of an apparently atrophied chiefship I may quote the Orakzais. The present representative of the hhdn khel of this tribe hves in the Peshawar district and enjoys a grant of land revenue made by the British Government. But the influence of the leading family in the tribe generally is faint. It is curious to note some of the results of the contact of our formal and legal system with these fluid, primitive, tribal institutions. The late Nawdb Sir Khwdja Muhammad Khan of Teri, in the Kohdt district, was the chief of the Western Khataks. The Teri country is a British tahsil, or sub-divi- sion ; and we gave the chief a lease of it on a small quit-rent and made him a magistrate and sub-collector under British laws. The TandoHs of the Hazdra border, south of the scene of the late Black Mountain expeditions, are not Pathdns ; but they are a frontier tribe of a Pathdn type, separated only by the Indus from the Pathdn country. The possessions of their chief even reach across the Indus. That chief, the Nawdb of Amb, holds a curiously comphcated status, illus trative of the subtle variations of Indian sovereignty. Across the Indus, in his tiny territory of Amb, he is subject to the British Government only in the same way that any raja or nawdb of the Indian system is subject to the paramount power. On the near or east side of the Indus he governs, in purely patriarchal style, his domain of Feudal TanAwal, which is nevertheless British territory and theoretically, though not practically, subject to aU the laws which are in force in the Hazdra district. South of this tract Ues the Nawdb's jdgir : certain villages, that is, of which he holds the land revenue assigned to him by the British Government, but in respect of which he is in exactly the same position as the numerous other jdgirddrs or assignees of land revenue in other parts of the Punjab. He thus holds the triple status of a feudatory chief, a governor of part of a British non- regulation district, and a grantee of certain British revenues. In such ways have we sometimes availed ourselves of the services of these frontier chieftains, and, with due allowance for the special requirements of a very primitive part of the empire, permitted the exercise of powers on their part in some cases absolutely identical with those of our ordinary paid officials. 136 OUR INDIAN PROTECTOSATB It is now necessary to refer to some elementary matters which would require no explanation to officers of Indian ex- perience, but which, nevertheless, deserve to be mentioned here, because, without a clear comprehension of them, what follows could not be understood. In the formation of states and empires predatory violence may pass by degrees into legitimate taxation and the levy of tribute. The existence of legitimate taxation — that is, of an acknowledged right on the part of some recognised authority to receive a portion of the income of the community — is, I take it, one of the marks which distinguishes societies possessing settled govern- ment from merely predatory societies. Without taxes the king can neither arrange for the civil administration nor pay the military force which preserves the state from external attack and internal commotion. When the right to take the tax has not been admitted, the chief who claims it, except as regards his own clan, is merely in the position of a success- ful plunderer. Now, I think the most fundamental idea con- nected with the position of the typical Hindu raja is that he is the rightful recipient of a share of the produce of the soil, which in an agricultural country is of course the great source of income. Just as the barter of commodities pre- cedes purchase and sale by means of a currency, so payment of the king's dues in kind precedes their payment by a money commutation, either estimated with regard to the outturn of the harvest or fixed for a term of years. The king is not the only sharer ; the husbandman must have his subsistence, and in proportion as he is able to retain more or less surplus over his bare subsistence he has a more or less valuable proprietary right. There are other classes, also, who have claims upon the crop. Perhaps one of the safest things that can be said about Indian affairs is that all gene- ralisations upon them, if stated without limitations and excep- tions having reference to local peculiarities, must be wrong. But if there is any safe generalisation possible, I think it is that the theory of a permanent right of occupation on the part of the cultivator conditioned on payment of the king's share of the produce is, or has been, practically universal throughout the land. Even here, however, it is necessary to add that there were parts of the country where this ori- ginal theory had been so obhterated by the weakness of the cultivator and the rapacity and violence of his masters, that we found ourselves unable to act upon it when we took over the business of a ruling power. EA.RLT INDIAN IDEAS OF SOVEREIGNTY 137 Now, if we look at Indian societies from the point of view of the rulers rather than of the subjects, we find that under a great variety of denominations there are in the main two sorts of grants which are made by the king — a word I use here to cover the cases of pddshdhs, naw4bs, maha- rajas, rajas, ranis, and the like — alL who have exercised sovereignty. In the first place, the king grants waste or deserted lands for purposes of cultivation, on the condition of the pajTnent of his share of the produce, often with a remission or reduction in the case of lands actually waste, not merely deserted by recent occupants. In this case the grantee acquires that conditional right of occupancy which I have just described. Secondly, the king grants the right to take the whole or a part of his own share of the produce of lands already occupied — that is, the hdkimi hissa, the hissa or share belonging to the hakim or ruler. In this case the gran- tee may be regarded as merely taking the place of the king ; and under native governments and often under our own the grantee coUects the tax through his own agents. By usurpa- tion, or even by direct additional grant, the grantee may also take various extra cesses, which may or may not be of his own imposing ; he may also take firewood and other things in kind, service without payment, and so forth. Sometimes these grants were assignments for the support of troops ; as, for instance, when a king in want of cash practically told his commanders that they must find subsistence for them- selves and their troops by saving him the trouble of collect- ing his dues in certain locahties, an arrangement which, having originated in impecuniosity and plunder, might be regularised by custom after a time. Sometimes grants of this kind were assignments for the support of religious or chari- table institutions, for temples or shrines or travellers' rest- houses. In this case they were commonly perpetual. Again, the grants might be rewards for service, provision for junior members of the ruling family, the means of sub- sistence for rajas who had been conquered and deposed, or salaries connected with high Muhammadan titles or offices in the empire. In these cases the grants might be perpetual or purely personal ; but resumptions were frequent and often arbitrary, and if succession was allowed, a heavy fine or bribe was often taken. The king's share was usually repre- sented by a money payment ; and a very frequent name for the grant of it is a jdgir — (I have already mentioned the Nawdb of Amb as a jdgirddr, or holder of a jdgir) — a word 138- OUR INDIAN PKOTECTORATE which, is said to be derived from the Persian jd, a place, and giriftan, to take, the jdgirddr taking the place of the ruler. Keeping to the plan of going to out-of-the-way parts of the country for the best evidence as to original arrange- ments, I insert here, as another elementary preliminary, a description taken from the frontier district of Dera Ghdzi Kh4n of the division of the produce, say, of some twenty or thirty acres. Pirst of all, a varying share of the grain, usually one-fourth, is set aside as mahsul, that is, as the hdkimi hissa or government share of the produce. Who- ever takes this is responsible for the payment of the revenue, unless he is himself the ruler or it has been remitted in his favour. Of the remainder, a smaU portion, usually a six- teenth or a seventeenth, is a proprietary due ; for proprie- tary rights were in this district of old standing. The pro- prietor may or may not be the actual cultivator. Various small shares are then set apart for the tumanddr, or tribal chief (who also takes the mahsul), for the remuneration of village servants, the weighman, potter, carpenter, black- smith, winnower, shoemaker, and watchman ; or for charity, as for some local shrine or holy beggar or village priest. What then remains goes to the cultivator, who, in the particular case I have before me, got about seven-twelfths of the whole. If we bear in mind this sort of division of the produce, and remember that the mahsul or hdkimi hissa, the king's share, may be variously assigned, in kind or cash, may be divided, part going to one person and part to another, may be farmed out for a stated sum or for a percentage on the collections, or may even be sold by auction to the highest bidder ; and if we further recollect that the proprietary rights of the cultivating classes are strong or weak accord- ing as more or less is left to them after the king's share is taken, we shall have the clue which will enable us to understand many of the most important complications of sovereignty in India. With this explanation I pass on to the typical Hindu rdj or principality of the Punjab Hills. The principalities of these hills are of very great anti- quity ; they were little affected by Moghal dominion and not so much affected by Sikh dominion as to obscure their original character ; and they have been fully, and, if I may be allowed to say so, most admirably described, in the K4ngra Settlement Eeport of Sir James Lyall, lately Lieu- tenant-Governor of the Punjab. EARLY INDIAN IDEAS OF SOVEREIGNTY 139 ' Below the south-eastern provinces of Kashmir, and a good ftiany miles above the line of rail from Sahdranpur to Amritsur, is a mountainous rd^ion comprising parts of the "Western and Central Himalayan ranges and the comparatively low Sewdliks abutting on the plains. Some of the remoter mountains rise to 15,000, or 18,000, or even 20,000 feet above sea level, and much of the country consists of forests and grazing grounds or impracticable precipice and crag. But in valleys and on hiU-sides at the lower elevations there is much cultivated land; and terraced fields surrounding picturesque and scattered homesteads are often the fore- ground to vast woods of pine and cedar crowned in the far distance by perpetual snows. This country, traversed by the Sutlej, is the source or gathering ground of many rivers ; from it the ChenAb, the E4vi, and the Bids, make their way westwards to the Punjab plains ; and at or not far from its south-east corner the Jumna and the Ganges debouch on the flat country of Northern Hindustan. It includes Kdngra Proper, Kulu, Lahoul, and Spiti, the Simla district, and the Simla Hill states. But with Lahoul and Spiti we are not here concerned, as they are Thibetan, not Indian districts. This land of mountains has immemorially been divided into numerous petty states. The tradition, for instance, is that between the Sutlej and the Chendb there were twenty- two principalities, eleven on either side of the Edvi. Of the eleven principalities south of the Eavi — viz. Chamba, Mandi, Suket, Kangra, Siba, Goler, Jaswdn, Niirpiir, Kulu, Dat4r- pur and Bangdhal — only the first three are still feudatory states of the empire. In some, but not all, of the other cases the representative of the ancient family holds a part, generally a very small part, of the old principality in jdgir, and is usually an honorary magistrate. None of these political jdgirddrs, as they are called, retain any vestige of sovereignty. The set of eleven rajaships to the south of the Edvi is described as the JuUundur Circle ; and at the head of it was the Katoch Eaja of Kdngra. The circle on the other side of the river is called* the Dogra Circle, and the headship was vested in the chief for the time being of Jammu, which is now incorporated in Kashmir. The Katoch Eaja of Kdngra was the head of a very ancient and famous EAjpiit dynasty, which before the Muhammadan invasions of India held in sovereignty all Kdngra and the JuUundur Dodb, and which may be com- pared with the most illustrious families of EdjpiitAna. The 140 OUR INDIAN PEOTECTOEATE Datw41 Edjpiits of Datdrpur, the Golerias of Goler, the Jasw41s of Jasw4n, and the Siviyas of Siba were offshoots of the same stock. In ancient Hindu times the chiefs of the smaller Eijpiit states of these hills seem to have held the same position under the Katoch kings that the more impor- tant thdkurs or barons hold under the rajas of Rdjput4na ; but in Muhammadan times they became independent of the Katoch raja and were recognised by the emperors as rajas and zaminddrs of their states. The emperors do not appear to have subjugated these Hill rajas till the time of Akbar the Great (1556 a.d.). Wlien strong they took tribute from them and sometimes annexed part of their states as imperial domains, but out of respect for the strong root they had in the country never entirely ousted them. The custom of primogeniture prevailed in all these families. The eldest eon became chief and lord of the whole territory ; the younger branches got only small maintenance grants of land or money and merged in the clan. Sometime about 1788 A.D. the great Katoch chief, Sansdr Chand, successfully endeavoured to revive the ancient sovereignty of his family over all the EAjpiit states between the Sutlej and the Edvi, no doubt intending to continue the chiefs in part possession under himself as jdgirddrs or feudatories. The Eaja of Bildspur called in the Gurkhas against him, and Eaja Sansar Chand, when in desperate circumstances, sought the fatal aid of Maharaja Eanjit Singh. It was afforded ; but this was the prelude to the complete conquest of the lower hills carried out by the Sikhs between 1813 and 1828. On the conclusion of the first Sikh war, when the JuUundur Do4b was ceded to the British Government, the question of the treatment of the Hill rajas who had been dispossessed by the Sikhs came under consideration. In many cases rajas deprived of their territories by the Sikhs had accepted from them jdgirs for their support. When we succeeded the Sikhs in this part of the country after the first Sikh war we did not treat the Hill rajas with liberality. The principle we observed was to restore nothing that the Sikhs had taken. Small principalities were in great disfavour in those days, because many of the Cis-Sutlej states had been previously mismanaged, and had either aided or sympathised with our enemies in the war just brought to a close. Discontent led to rebellion in some cases during the second Sikh war, followed in neces- sary course by confiscations. These Hill rajas have thus, EAULY INDIAN IDEAS OP SOVEREIGNTY 141 been unfortunate in comparison with their brother Edjput chiefs holding the twenty pettv states of the hills, surround- ing Simla. The Simla states are for the most part very- small ; thirteen of them have less than 100 square miles of territory ; and of these four have less than ten square miles^ Here we succeeded the Gurkhas in 1815 ; and, as we have annexed or acquired very few tracts in this part of the Hills, the status of the rajas has not been investigated in the same detail as in Kulu and Kdngra. But there is good reason to beheve that in the Simla HiUs the tenures of land, as between the rajas and the people, closely resemble those which have been fuUy described for the adjoining territory. I wiU now transcribe a most valuable passage from Sir James LyaU's Kdngra report. ' Under the rajas,' he writes, ' the theory of property in land was that each raja was the landlord of the whole of his rdj or principality, not merely in the degree in which everywhere in India the state is, in one sense, the landlord, but in a clearer and stronger degree. The Moghal emperors, in communications addressed to the HiU rajas, gave them the title oi zaminddr — i.e. landholder. Documents are preserved in some of the rajas' families in which this address is used. The raja was not, like a feudal king, lord paramount over inferior lords of manors, but rather, as it were, manorial lord of his whole country. Each principality was a single estate, divided for management into a certain number of circuits. These circuits were not themselves estates like the mauzas (villages) of the plains ; they were mere groupings of holdings under one collector of rents. The waste lands, great or small, were the raja's waste ; the arable lands were made up of the separate holdings of his tenants. The rent due from the holder of each field was payable direct to the raja, unless he remitted it, as an act of favour to the holder, or assigned it in jdgir to a third party, in heu of pay, or as a subsistence allowance. So also the grazing fees due from the owner of each herd or flock were payable to the raja, and these were rarely or never assigned to any jdgirddr. The agents who collected these dues and rents, from the wazir down to the village headman, were the raja's servants, ap- pointed and paid directly by himself. Every several interest in land, whether the right to cultivate certain fields, to graze exclusively certain plots of waste, work a water-mill, set a net to catch game or hawks on a mountain, or put a fish-weir 142 OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE in a stream, was held direct of the raja as a separate holding or tenancy. The incumbent, or tenant at the most, called his interest a wdrisi or inheritance, not a mdliki or lordship. 'The artisan and other non-agriculturists resident in villages held their Idhri bdsi, or garden plots, of the raja, not of their village employers and customers, and paid their cesses, and were bound to service to him only. They were not the only class bound to service ; the regular landholders were aU liable to be pressed into service of some kind, mili- tary or menial. The rajas kept a tight hold upon the wastes ; certain portions of forest were kept as rakh, or shooting preserves, and trees, whether in forest or open waste, could not be felled except with the raja's permission. No new field could be formed out of the waste without a pattah, or grant from the raja. No wazir or other revenue agent, and no jdgirddr, could give permission to reclaim waste. Such a power was jealously withheld, as it might have led to the growth of intermediate lordships. I have heard it said that, from a feeling of this kind, wazirs or kdrddrs were never chosen from the royal clan, and jdgirs were generally given in scattered pieces. Certain rights of common in the waste round and about their houses were enjoyed, not only by the regular landholders, but by all the rural inhabitants ; but these rights were subject to the raja's right to reclaim, to which there was no definite limit. All rights were supposed to come from the raja; several rights, such as holdings of land, &c., from his grant, and rights of common from his sufferance.' Although the raj a was not a lord paramount over inferior lords within his own country, he might, as will have been seen from what I have said as to the history of the country, be a lord paramount over other rajas holding states similar to his own. In another part of his report Sir James Lyall writes that the hilly portion of the Katoch kingdom was ' portioned out among subordinate chiefs or princes, of whom some of the strongest became independent when the Katoch kings lost their prestige and were driven into the hills by the Muham- madans. Probably the eleven principalities of the Jullundur Circle first took definite form about this time.' There is a tradition that the time of the rajas in Kulu was preceded by a thdkurdin or period of government by thdkiirs, petty chiefs here of a few villages. But Sir James Lyall thinks that without a lord paramount, and with no bond of confederacy, such diminutive states could never have existed side by side EAELY INDIAN IDEAS OF SOVEKEIGNTY 143 in lawless days for any length of time ; and he surmises that, ■v^ith intervals of perfect independence in periods of con- fusion, they must have been more or less subject and tributary to some stronger power, probably that of the Suket raja. I mention these practical qualifications of the assertion that the raja was not a lord paramount, lest it should be thought that the evidence from the Punjab HiUs is against the belief in a tendency of Indian rajas to range themselves, whether by compulsion or otherwise, under the hegemony of some paramount power ; whereas the real effect of the evidence is either to confirm such a belief or to suggest it. Though I know nothing that throws more light on one form of the primitive Hindu rdj or principality than the descrip- tion I have quoted from Sir James Lyall, it must be re- membered that the account he gives is strictly limited to the hill country and is not intended to apply to the plains. No doubt the Hill raj a was much more of a landlord than any Indian government ever was in the Punjab outside the hills. Various reasons are suggested by Sir James Lyall to explain the difier- ence. The formation of petty principalities, the sole lord- ship of the chief, the custom of primogeniture in his family, and the contempt of the plough and the business of farming which here exists amongst E^jpiits and Brdhmans, may be partly due to the invasion of the hills by these races as con- querors, and the military order which the invaders would have to maintain to keep down a subject race. Probably also the physical difference between a mountainous and an open country has contributed to the difference of tenures. The proprietors of old villages in the plains of the Punjab would truthfuUy or merely boastfully assert that their ances- tors found the land waste or acquired it by purchase or conquest ; they would rarely attribute their first title to the grant of any superior authority. But the hill peasant's strongest idea of hereditary right is that of a right derived from the written grant of the raja. Free tribes occupying an empty land or driving out the indigenous inhabitants would readily settle, in a flat defenceless country, in large villages of considerable strength. But in the hills the houses had to be scattered to be near the cultivated fields, and 'no single hamlet was strong enough to stand by itself, so aU had to put themselves for protection under some territorial chief and to unite under his leadership to defend themselves against outsiders.' On the other hand, it is noteworthy that the existence in great tracts of country of strong village 144 OUR INDIAN PSOTECTOEATK communities facilitated mutations of political power. Perhaps one reason wliy these HiU Edjput principalities manage'd to last so long was that the absence of the village commune gave great strength to the raja's hold upon the soil. The villages of the northern plains were capable of managing their own internal affairs and resented interference in them. They had to pay the king's share of the crop when the king for the time being was strong enough to exact payment. Hence, so long as they could avoid giving up more than the cus- tomary share, it mattered little to them whether they paid to one ruler or another. Conquest and annexation meant in the old days little more than a demand for revenue from a greater number of villages, and the ejection of some pre- decessor who made a like demand before. But the readiness with which political conquest might incorporate these tiny republics in ever-varying circles of political jurisdiction did not prevent the growth of sentiments of loyalty and devotion to successful chiefs who won the position of rajas, especially when there was between them and the people they headed or subjugated any tribal or religious tie. The Hill raja was not only, in a special and restricted sense, the landlord, of his territory ; he was also the fountain of honour. Instances have been quoted in which a raja pro- moted men of castes (not much, indeed, below E4jputs) to be Eajpiits, the consideration being service done or money paid. Br4hmans were divided into classes of different degrees of purity ; and the classification was effected by the rajas, and held binding on the brotherhood. So late as 1872 the power of admitting back into caste persons placed under ban for defilement was a source of income to those ancient rajas, who, under our rule, lost territorial status and became assignees of British revenues with magisterial powers. What is a Edjpiit, is a complicated question that I will not pause to discuss ; but undoubtedly in the hills persons of other than Edjpiit descent have become recognised as Edjpiits in the course of a generation or two. Anyway, the descendants of the twenty-two royal houses of the Jullundur and Dogra Circles, though one or two of these houses are known to be of Brdhman origin, are emphatically and essentially Edjpiit. They are distinguished by the title of Mian, and are entitled to the peculiar salutation of Jai dia — (the expression means ' Vive le Eoi ! ' or ' Hail the King ! ') — offered to no other caste. The raja, however, could extend this honour to high-born Edjputs not strictly belonging to a royal clan. EARLY INDIAN IDEAS OF SOVEBEIGNTY 145 During the Muhammadan ascendency these rajas built forts, made war upon each other, and wielded the functions of petty sovereigns. On succession fees were paid to the Delhi emperors, and dresses of honour sent from Agra or Delhi. The rajas were sometimes employed by the emperors or others in important trusts. In 1646 the Eaja of Niirpur was sent at the head of 14,000 of his EAjputs against the Uzbeks of Balkh and Badakshan. Another raja was twice deputed by Aurungzib to the charge of Bamian and Ghorband, on the western frontier of the empire, eight days' journey beyond Kdbul. So also in 1758 the K4ngra raja was appointed by Ahmad Shah Durdni to be governor of the JuUundur Dodb and the Hill country between the Sutlej and Edvi. In our own times rajas have been called to the Legislative Council of the Governor-General. The late Maharaja Sindhia had an honorary commission as general in the British army ; rajas have commanded their own troops as our auxiliaries ; and under the recent war service arrangements they may, in time of need, command their own troops as our auxiliaries again. It is true that we do not allow the building of forts or warfare between states, but the general position of the HiU rajas under the Delhi empire, so far as it goes, suggests that the framework of our present Indian political system was, as I have said, an inheritance from the Moghals. The theory or tradition that the headship of the JuUundur and Dogra Circles was vested in paramount rajas shows, too, that in this part of India ideas of suzerainty preceded Muhammadan conquest. I am about to describe from the Settlement Eeport of Mr. Benett the status of the rajas in the Gonda district of Oudh ; and it is noticeable that the same feature — the tendency of the smaller rajas to unite under the hegemony of the most powerful state — is dis- cernible also in that quarter. The rajas, says Mr. Benett, on doing this, ' did not in any way sacrifice their indepen- dence within their own territories, though they rendered themselves liable to the payment of tribute, and to a call to service against a common foe. ' When the Chinese pilgrim saw eighteen subject rajas draw the barge of the King of Kanauj, we may be sure that for political purposes the lord paramount dealt with each of the subject states as a separate unit through its raja, without himself interfering in its internal government. The tendency is a very old one, and is reflected in the title of Eijadhirdj, and in the institution L 146 ouE mniAN protectorate of Tilakddri rajas, whose investiture was sought by all the chiefs within, the confederation.' The Gonda district lies on the edge of the main sweep of the Delhi empire in Northern India. It is situated to the north of Oudh and on the border of Nepal. What Oudh is to the rest of India, that Gonda is to the rest of Oudh — pre-eminently a Hindu country. This district was formerly parcelled out into small territorial divisions, each forming a political unit in itself, each, in fact, being a rdj or princi- pahty of much the same type as those of the Punjab HiUs. A certain portion of the produce was reserved everywhere as the right of the state or raja, whose rights further extended to a number of miscellaneous manorial dues and ordinary taxes. The Gonda rdj, like the rdj of the Punjab HiUs, rested on a territorial basis ; and the raja was always theo- retically or actually a Chhattri or Edjpiit, except in one instance, that of Utraula, where a Muhammadan freebooter founded a dynasty and took the title of raja. Here we have as a known fact, what is a conjecture in the Punjab Hills, the immigration of a set of conquering Edjpiits into a country then mainly inhabited by people who may be described as autocthones — sons of the soil — some of those humble castes or tribes which in the absence of any trace of an earlier population we are in the habit of calling aboriginals. This Edjpiit immigration appears to have occurred about the beginning of the fourteenth century, so that the dynasties cannot compare, in point of antiquity, with those of the Punjab Hill states. In type, however, they are hardly less archaic. As in the hills, so here, the population is scattered in hamlets, not congregated in strong, almost fortified, village homesteads. In other parts of the province of Oudh the people were driven to seek safety by holding together in that way ; but the wars of the few great rajas who held Gonda were not very frequent or destructive, and the raja was usually strong enough to keep in check the turbulent spirits who took to gang robbery as a profession. Thus the people were able to make their homes near their fields, where they could better defend their crops from the ravages of wild animals ; and this practice was strengthened by the habit of taking up small assignments of forest by single families. Every rdj was confined to a definite tract of country enclosed by recognised boundaries ; the raja could, and did, in time of need call out his people as a militia ; civil disputes EAELY INDIAN IDEAS OF SOVEREIGNTY 147 were mostly settled by panchdyats, or caste councils, whose orders were enforced by caste penalties ; but in many cases •the raja was the judge, as in cftitests between neighbouring villages about boundaries or grazing rights. The rajas of Gonda and Utraula, Mr. Benett teUs us, when dispossessed of the direct collection of the revenue in nearly every one of their villages, used still to spend hours daily in court as judges in the peasants' disputes. Waste lands were abso- lutely at the disposal of the raja ; and he was the sole owner of forest produce, subject to certain rights in grazing and fuel which were reserved to the cultivators. He could assign his rights, and the assignees were known as birtias, the cession itself being termed a hirt. There were also grants of a part of the raja's rights to Brdhmans or ascetics, grants of his rights in wood, water, and roads, and of a fourth of his share in the grain-heap on division of crops ; and grants, limited for a stated period, for the purpose of bringing waste land under cultivation. The rdj was indi- visible, and the rule of primogeniture necessarily obtained, though exceptions may sometimes have been made on the ground of the fitness or unfitness of particular candidates, the chieftainship being kept in one family. The basis of the whole society was the grain-heap, in which the several members had their customary and definite interest. I need not detail the division of shares. It will suffice to say that the raja's share was known as the hissa sirkdri — the govern- ment share ; the deductions from the whole as bhaita ; and the husbandman's share as hissa rayati, the share of the ryot or cultivator. Provision was made for shares for the plough- men employed by Brdhmans and E4jputs, whose caste forbade them to drive the plough ; for the cutters and threshers, for the village servants and village priest, and for a headman, appointed by the raja, whose services were often dispensed with where there was a birtia to intercept a part of the raja's share of the crop. Anyone who will now turn to the admirable account of the Edjpiit states of EAjpiitAna given by Sir Alfred LyaH in his 'Asiatic Studies' (pp. 181-227) will, I think, at once per- ceive that, in the history of early institutions, the peculiar form of sovereignty there described stands midway between tribal chiefship and territorial chiefship. It is later in type than the tribal chiefship of the Punjab frontier; it is ear Her in type than the territorial chiefship of Gonda and the Punjab HiUs. Indeed, an attentive examination of Sir Alfred L 2 148 OUE INDIAN PEOTECTOEATE Lyall's clear and telling analysis will show us the transition from the earlier to the later form in actual process. 'A Eajput state,' Sir A. Lyall tells us, 'where its peculiar structure has been least modified' — that is, in Western Edjpii- tdna — ' means the territory over which a particular clan, or division of a clan, claims dominion for its chief and political predominance for itself by right of occupation and conquest. A E4jpiit chief is the hereditary head of a clan whose members have for centuries been lords of the soil, or of the greater part of it, within the state's limits.' There is a connection here with the soil ; but the raja is a tribal chief, and is supposed to be the eldest male of the oldest line, the nearest legitimate descendant in the direct male line from the founder of the state. There is a wide and obvious difference between this idea and the idea of a raja in the Punjab Hill states and Gonda, where he is a lord of the manor, including the wastes, and society is held together, not by the cement of blood or kinship as in prsefeudal Edjputdna, but by customary rights to share in the produce of the land. In the western states of E4jput4na ' the whole territory is understood (for there are exceptions to every rule in Asia) to be divided off and inherited among the branch families of the dominant clan and their offshoots. The chief himself possesses the largest portion, though not always a larger portion than the aggregate holdings of other families, and apportions very large grants to his nearest agnatic kins- folk, providing of course for his wives and his predecessors' widows, and sometimes for their relatives.' The hereditary heads of the branch septs hold large tracts, and in the west exercise almost complete jurisdiction within their own domain, though not over all the domains of their family. But in some of the eastern states they are little more than grantees of land or of rents assigned to them, paying some sort of fee to their suzerain, having a right to maintenance, as the chiefs kinsmen, but without political power. 'In the Eastern E4jput states, which were most exposed to the disintegrating ravages of the Moghal and Marhatta, the tribal organisation has been much effaced politically, and the chief has centralised his power and acquired almost complete jurisdiction over the whole of his territory.' ' It is manifest that these eastern states have long been rapidly sliding into the normal type of ordinary Oriental government, irrespon- sible personal despotism.' In other words, if we contrast Eastern and Western E4jput4na, we see that there is a transi- EAELY INDIAN IDEAS OF SOVEEEIGNTY 149 tion in progress in the east, and it takes the form of a change from a tribal chieftain to a territorial despot. In the JuHundur Circle of t^ Punjab Hills the same goal was reached by a different route. Instead of the king ousting the jurisdiction of his barons, the barons established jurisdic- tions independent of the king. The Datw41s, the Golerias, the JaswAls, the Siviyas, offshoots of the original royal stock, succeeded in setting up separate principalities for them- selves. Perhaps this was partly due to the nature of the hill country, the lofty slopes, extensive forests, impracticable rivers, and secluded glens of a bewildering mass of moun- tains facilitating the severance of political jurisdictions, and loosening the ties of fraternity in the immigrant conquering tribe. In Gonda, and in some cases in the Punjab Hills, I think the severance of jurisdiction was caused by the independent immigration and conquests of tribes of different stocks. At any rate, I do not think it will be seriously ques- tioned that ' a group of tribal suzerainties rapidly passing into the feudal stage,' such as we see in E4jput4na, is, on any working hypothesis as to the probable course of political development, an earlier formation than the manorial princi- palities of Gonda and the K4ngra Hills. It remains to show that the EAjpiit organisation de- scribed by Sir Alfred Lyall is a later political growth than the organisation of the tribes of the Punjab frontier. The thdhurs or barons of EdjpiitAna, rendering military service to the chief 'and such general obedience as he can enforce, but regarding themselves as his brethren, holding by as good a right as he, and ready if their privileges are too far infringed to take the quasi-constitutional course of rebellion or outlawry, form, in cases of dubious succession, a sort of irregular diet for the election of the chief. Perhaps it is not altogether fanciful to see in these occasional convocations of heads of sections a survival of tribal councils like those which habitually advise the Baluch chieftains and practically conduct whatever may be the rather remote approximation to government in Pathdn tribes. At all events, when the Karauli heads of branch families met and elected a man of full age descended from an ancestor of the Jate chifef, they did just such a thing as might be done by the ^iV^-as or tribal councils of the Hasanzai, Akazai, and Madakhel. And both the Pathdn councils and the Edjpiitdna coUege of electors would be restricted in their choice very much in the same manner. Though no rule is absolute in primitive society, it 150 OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE is understood in EAjpiitdna that the chief must belong to certain famihes of the founder's kin. The Hasanzai and others would have to choose from the leading section, the hhdn khel. But whereas the khdn Jchel amongst Path4ns is a rare institution, the rule in Edjpiitdna that the successor must be chosen from among the branches of the founder's original stock seems well and widely established. I cannot but think that well-established chieftainship is later in growth than rude tribal democracy, and it is manifest that one of the marks of increasing civilisation is the approximation to a settled rule of succession to political power. Again, it is broadly true that a Pathdn tribal country is inhabited by Path4ns, though Hindu traders and various menial classes are to be found, and cultivators who are not Pathdns seek Pathdn protection. But the Edjpiits of a Eajpiit state such as is described by Sir A. LyaU are an aristocracy of birth and conquest. It will probably be admitted that a simple swarm of human beings, actually or believing themselves to be related by common descent, is a less complex, and therefore also probably an earlier, organism than a society where historical causes, invasion, conquest, and the maintenance of the dominion of the conquering race, have produced discrimination between a noble class and others. And the Path^ns are, moreover, entirely without that elaborate jus connuhii which distinguishes E4jputs, and is obviously useful to a dominant race preserving its political power even more by its prestige than by the sword, because it maintains that purity of blood which is the title of the dominant race to social reverence. Pathdns intermarry very closely, aA'^oiding only the prohibited degrees of Isldm. Edjputs must marry Edjpiits, but their brides must not be taken from the same clan. I do not think that it would be correct to say that Path4ns are either endogamous or exogamous. They have not reached the stage where rules of exogamy or endogamy have importance. E4jputs have reached the stage where these rules are not only most elaborate, but are insisted upon as a vital point of honour. Nor is it difficult to see that these complicated marriage customi must be a fairly late development — if, at least, we suppose that tribes are in the first instance indifierent where their wives come from, but usually take them within the clan till pressure in the wife-market compels them to steal them from outside ; that as they advance a little the healthy rale grows up prohibiting the marriage of very near rela- ^- EARLY INDIAN IDEAS OP SOVEREIGNTY 151 tions ; and that, as families within which this rule is observed spread out into septs and clans, the original prohibition in an extended form is handed do#n from generation to genera- tion. The reasons for it, if ever consciously perceived, would be forgotten ; but the customs founded on it might have great and lasting effect if they happened to be of use to a dominant tribe ruling over subjects of a different origin. Sir Alfred Lyall insists, with much justice and truth, on the profound error of the popular notion that an Indian state under a distinct political designation denotes a terri- tory occupied by a people of one nation under a king or ruler of their own nationality, as in nearly all European countries at the present day. I mention this because it seems worth while to point out that, in suggesting the prob- ability of progress from tribal chiefship to territorial chiefship or sovereignty, I by no means overlook the obvious fact that territorial sovereignty is one thing and territorial sovereignty, which is also national sovereignty, quite another. By terri- torial sovereignty I mean sovereignty which is associated with a definite portion of the earth's surface, and I mean nothing more. In the general conclusion which Sir Alfred LyaU's argument from the absence of nationalities is meant to substantiate I entirely agree. It is that the British Government has been pre-eminently the preserver of the old native states, which but for it were in imminent danger of destruction. I may add that this is also broadly true — not- withstanding Lord Dalhousie's annexations — of a good many of the modern states. We rescued the old Simla Hill states from the Gurkhas ; some few only of the old Punjab Hill states from the Sikhs ; and the old Edjpiit states of EdjpiitAna from the Marhattas and Pinddris. We rescued the principal Sikh states — all of recent origin — from Eanjit Singh ; and though it would not be true to say that we rescued any of the newly formed Marhatta states, seeing that we fought with the Marhattas for the supremacy of India, yet, had it not been for us, the Marhatta states would probably have fallen under the dominion of the French, or have been torn in pieces by Pinddris or their own soldiery. If the Edjpiitdna thdhurs had broken away from their chiefs and set up separate principalities, we mighl; have had in Eajasth4n a repetition of the Kdngra hegemony of the Katoch raja and the JuUundur Circle. It is clear that the germ was there, which might have ripened into the relation- ship of suzerain and feudatory if tlie political connection 152 OUR INDIAN PEOTECTOEATE had outlasted the tie of common descent. Considering these cases, we may see that if the pohtical system which we have established in India generally does not precisely agree with principles that have been operative in these purely Hindu societies, it at all events proceeds on a principle so nearly analogous to them that it cannot fail to be easily understood. As for our inheritance in this quarter from the Moghals, I quote Sir Alfred Lyall again. ' Whereas,' he writes, ' up to the reign of Akbar the Edjpiit clans had maintained a warlike independence, from the beginning of the seventeenth century we may regard their chiefs as having become feudatories of the empire, which was their natural and honourable relation to the paramount power whose territory encircled them, and with whose military power they had no pretence to compete.' This is said of the Delhi empire, and it appears to me to accurately describe the position of these chiefs in relation to the British empire at the present day. If the evidence collected in this chapter suggests the gradual transformation of the tribal chieftain into the terri- torial despot, European history suggests a third phase in the progress of sovereignty — the change from the absolute monarch to the constitutional king. Of that phase I see no symptom in India. We may, indeed, persuade ourselves that in the public durbdrs or levees of chiefs there is an undeveloped germ of a king's council, and perhaps in the very earliest and the very latest political growths there are some traces of an assembly. There are traditions of old tribal assemblies on the Malabar coast and in the Carnatic. There are the tribal councils of Baluches and Pathdns. And in Mysore, a state of our creation fitted out with the latest improvements, there is a curious annual assembly of nomi- nated members summoned to discuss, but not to vote upon, the state programme of the year, and probably possessing no more real power than those democratic assemblies of rural parishes in France which De Tocqueville characterises as empty semblances of freedom. Putting aside such peculiar and transitional forms as those of the Edjput states, so skil- fully described by Sir Alfred Lyall, it may be said that most Indian states are in the middle phase. Many Edjpiit states outside Edjput4na, and I think all states of Sikh, Muham- madan, or Marhatta origin, may be rightly termed territorial, but not national, chiefships or despotisms. 153 CHAPTEE Vni SOVEREIGNTY IN THE INDIAN PENINSULA That our present conception of an empire comprising dis- tricts under direct administration and dependent states held by subordinate or tributary chieftains is really indigenous, appears to me to be confirmed by the history of the Deccan and Southern India. That history also exemplifies the pre- servation of important parts of the old rural economy of the country, notwithstanding frequent changes of masters ; the continued employment of Hindus by Muhammadan kings ; the formation of sovereignties in India by the rebellion or usurpation of officials ; and the tendency of states to split up into numerous petty principalities when a central power is broken or removed. This tendency may be the precursor of suzerainties, because in troublous times petty chiefs may find it hard to stand alone, and may seek protection by sub- mission. Of suzerainty itself we may detect traces, sometimes pretty clearly defined, in the old Vijayanagar empire, in the conquests of some of the chiefs of the Central Provinces, and in the relations of the Gond rajas, the Nizam, and the Marhattas to the Delhi emperors. By examining the old tenures of the east and west coast of the Madras Presidency we may see that the idea of the raja as a lord of the land, the owner of the waste and the recipient of a fijfed share of the produce of the cultivated land in money or kind, is by no means limited to the Punjab Hills and the Gonda district. And a glance at the organisation of the Marhatta empire and the rise of the great Marhatta states will illustrate again the intimate connection in India between sovereignty and a share of the rental of land, and the manner in which plun- dering commanders making predatory claims may tend to become territorial chieftains. About the time when our Edward I. was consolidating the kingdom of England, Ala-ud-Din, who afterwards sue- 154 OUE INDIAN PROTECTORATE ceeded by many atrocities to the kingdom or empire of Delhi, led to the sack of Daulatabad (identified by Wilks with the Tagara of Ptolemy) the first Musalmdn force that ever crossed the mountains south of the Tapti. This was in 1294 A.D. ; and other gigantic raids followed, Malik Kdfur, a general of Ala-ud-Din, persuading Eaja E4mdeo of Daulat- abad to accompany him to Delhi in 1306, and subverting the' T3all41 dynasty at Dwdra Samudra, some 100 miles north west of Seringapatam, in 1310-1311 — i.e. a year or two previous to the date of the battle of Bannockburn. The BalMl rajas were, or pretended to be, EAjpiits ; and the Balldl territories at their srreatest extent included the whole country where Kanarese is spoken (that is, Mysore and some surrounding districts), as well as the Tamil country and parts of Malabar and Teling^ma. Telingdna is the old name for the northern and eastern districts of the Madras Presidency where the spoken language is Telugu. From 1325 to 1351 A.D. the throne of Delhi was occupied by Muhammad Tughlak, described by Elphinstone as ' one of the most accomplished princes and most furious tyrants that ever adorned or disgraced human nature ; ' and in the early part of his reign the Muhammadan empire east of the Indus was at its greatest extent. His tyranny, perhaps also his madness — for some of his cruelties and follies alike suggest that he was not quite sane — drove almost every part of his empire into rebellion ; and the history of his reign is a history of attempts, both successful and unsuccessful, to put down rebellions. Amongst the successful rebels was one Hasan Gdngu, by descent an Afghan of low rank and a native of Delhi. He had been the tenant or slave of a Brahman astrologer named Gdngu, from whom was derived his second name and the name of the dynasty which he founded, that of the Bahmani kings of the Deccan. After two unsuccessful expeditions, the Delhi Pathdns in 1323 had at last captured Warangal, the capital of the rajas of Teling4na ; and two fugitive officers of the treasury of the dethroned king established a new government on the ruins of the Ball41 power in the Kanarese country. The capital of the power so founded, Vijayanagar, gave its name to the most famous empire of the south. The confusions of the, time of Muhammad Tughlak led to a combination of the newly-formed power of Vijayanagar with some branches of the royal house of Telingdna, who seized the opportunity to recover Warangal and to revolt against their Muhammadan SOVEEEIGNTY IN THE INDIAN PENINSULA 165 masters. Indeed, the Eaja of Warangal sent a body of 15,000 horse to assist the Muhammadan Hasan GAngu in his eflforts to shake himself ftee from the yoke of his co- religionists. This union of Hindus and Muhammadans of the south against the Delhi empire only endured till its object — inde- pendence of the imperial authority — had been secured. The natural antagonism of the opposing creeds and the predatory militarism of Oriental despots led forthwith to incessant wars fought on both sides with varying success. In 1421 a.d. Warangal fell again before the Muhammadans, the conqueror this time being one of the Bahmani kings. Vijayanagar lasted for more than another century, and may be said to have extended either direct dominion or paramount autho- rity over the whole of India south of the Tumbadra and Kistna rivers. It has been stated that at the end of the fifteenth century its direct dominion reached to the southern border of the Mysore plateau ; and what remained of the Pdndyan kingdom, roughly corresponding to the Madura and Tinnevelly districts and the Chola kingdom, which may once have had limits coinciding with those of the Tamil language, acknowledged its supremacy and paid tribute. It is not easy to obtain any clear idea of the interior system of the Vijayanagar empire, but there is no doubt that it included the direct administration of some territories and the suzerainty over more or less dependent chiefs or tribu- taries. As is frequently the case with Oriental monarchies, its strength and power of cohesion appears to have become relaxed just about the time of its greatest nominal extent. ' A provincial viceroy,' says Wilks, ' at Seringapatam rather compromised for periodical presents than exacted a fixed revenue from the wadeyars, or governors of thirty-three townships, who now seem to have begun to assume the name of poligdrs, a title which properly belonged to the chiefs of Telinga colonies planted in the neighbouring provinces, for the purpose of overaweing the aborigines ; to which ofl&cial designation they added, when they dared, the title of raja.' Eather later than the middle of the sixteenth century four of the MusalmAn kingdoms which had been formed to the north of the Kistna on the break-up of the Bahmani kingdom of Hasan Gdngu, coalesced against the Vijayanagar power and completely overthrew it at the battle of Talicota, fought on the plains between the Kistna and the Tumbadra. The 156 OUR INDIAN PEOTECTORATE Structure, wMcli had already been tottering to its fall, was- thus shattered in 1565 into innumerable fragments. Petty- principalities asserted independence on every side ; and we may date from this period the rise of the southern poligdrs who appear so frequently in the pages of Madras history. Doubtless the existence of many minute jurisdictions was no novelty, but fresh leases of independence were assumed about this time. Some of these poligdrs, as in the case of the Beydars in the north of Mysore, were heads of clans. The P4ndyan kings of Madura, who were themselves tributary to Vijayanagar, had under them many petty chiefs. The son of a usurping governor of Madura was recognised by the Vijayanagar raja as king of that part of the country ; and, extending his authority over the Tinnevelly district, he distributed the depopulated portions of it amongst his northern followers of the Tottiya caste, who became the pro- genitors of many of the poligdrs. Hard fighting was the condition of the lives of all of these petty potentates. They fought with the Deccan Musalmdns, with the Marhattas, with the Sultans of Mysore, with the officers of the Delhi empire, or rather of the independent kingdom founded by one of those officers, the great Nizam, and, lastly, with the British Government. In the southern Tamil country we found thirty-three poligdrs; and in 1803 only thirteen of them were still in possession ; the lands of fourteen were under the charge of a European collector ; those of six had been forfeited, given away, or sold. In the districts ceded by the Nizam in 1800 there were eighty poligdrs. Seven years later only half of them were still managing their own estates ; the rest had been pensioned, or expelled, or thrown into confinement, or otherwise deprived of authority. Such was the varying fate of men whose ancestors had been descendants of Hindu royal houses, or the usurping officers of Hindu governments or heads of clans owing a dubious allegiance to Hindu powers that had resisted Musalmdn aggression. I have quoted Wilks's definition of poligdrs in the Kanarese country, and I will now cite that of Grant Duff in Maharashtra, or the country where Marhatti is spoken. Poligdr, he says, in the ' Marhatta country means one who has become independent, who refuses to pay revenue, and levies contributions from all those from whom he can enforce them.' The Deccan appears to have been no exception to the general rule in India that the country before Muham- SOVEEEIGNT"? IN THE INDIAN PENINSULA 157 madan conquest was divided into many small states. When Hasan Gdngu in 1 347 founded the Bahmani dynasty, which lasted for about 150 years, ifl*is probable that most of the poligdrs whose territories lay in accessible parts were in- duced either to join him or to submit to his government. The Bahmani kingdom, however, affords another illus- tration of internal weakness coinciding with increase of territory. When Hasan Gdngu died his kingdom com- prised nearly the whole of the Mahardshtra, a small part of Telingdna, together with the Eaichur Dodb or space between the Kistna and Tumbadra rivers. His successor divided the kingdom into four tarafs or governments, to each of which was appointed a governor or tarafddr: In the course of 130 years the territory was greatly increased by conquests from the neighbouring rajas of Vijayanagar and Terngdna, the Concan poligdrs, the Eaja of Orissa, and others; but the four tor-a/js were still maintained. In 1478 Khwdjah Jehan Gdwan, a minister of one of the kings, split each taraf in two, making eight governments in place of four; but he was shortly sacrificed to the malice of his enemies, and the principal governors from the time of his death paid no respect to the authority of the Bahmani king and gradually assumed independence. In this way five independent states arose from the dismembered monarchy ; and, as we have seen, four of them combined for the over- throw of Vijayanagar. Of these five kingdoms, Berar was annexed to Ahmadnagar, and the greater part of Bidar was absorbed in Bijapur. Thus eventually there were three great states which practically divided the Deccan between them — Bijapur, north of Mysore, and Ahmadnagar, north of Bijapur, held the west ; and the whole of the east was gradually brought under the dominion of Golconda. Sultan Kuli Kutb Shah, the founder of the Kutb Shdhi or Golconda dynasty, was a Turkman of Hamadan, in Persia. He came to India as a soldier of fortune, and was employed, when the Bahmani monarchy broke up, by the king or his minister as governor of Telingdna. His conquests were chiefly from the remaining dominions of the Warangal family and from other chiefs of Telingdna and the Eaja of Orissa ; a part of the territory about Eajamandri, which was originally con- quered from Orissa, continued to be governed by the Orissa rajas as a dependency of Golconda. Thus these Muhammadan kings of the Deccan were usurping governors who partitioned a kingdom acquired by 158 OUR INDIAN PEOTBCTOEATE rebellion against the Delhi empire. Under their rule the country was divided into sirkdrs or districts, which were sub- divided into tracts designated by various synonyms, of which the best known is pargana. The revenues seem generally to have been farmed, sometimes by single villages ; when they were not farmed, Hindu agents were usually employed. The great revenue settlement made by the celebrated Malik Ambar, a regent of the Ahmadnagar state, in the first quarter of the seventeenth century, abolished farming in some parts and committed the management to Brdhman agents under Muhammadan supervision. In Bijapur the body of the officers of revenue and finance were generally Hindu, and the fourth king directed the public accounts to be kept in the Marhatta language instead of in Persian. The Marhattas were freely employed. They garrisoned hill forts and served as cavalry, sometimes in the immediate pay of the Govern- ment, sometimes under a jdgirddr or district official. The Delhi emperors used to confer on their new nobility — Amirdn Jadida, the omrah of M. Bernier's travels — rank of which the various degrees were expressed as the command of so many horse. The supply of the horse was under the Delhi emperors always more or less a fiction ; but this sort of rank, termed mansah, was conferred on Marhattas by the Deccani kings ; they were really expected to find troops, and assignments of revenue were made to them for the pur- pose of maintaining the troops. To the great gratification of the Marhatta chiefs, the Deccani kings also conferred old Hindu titles upon them, such as raja and rdo. Thus these mushroom monarchs, sons of roving blades and successful officials, became fountains of honour like the ancient rajas of the land, whose royal pedigrees reach through immemorial times to mythical heroes. The farmed revenues in these Deccan kingdoms were col- lected by dmils or government agents, who also regulated the police and decided money suits. Suits relating to hereditary office or landed property were determined by panchdyats or juries, sometimes consisting of fifteen persons. The Bijapur state had officers over the dmils, who were termed mokas^ saddrs; and sometimes the mokassaddrs were under the authority of a subah. The office of mokassaddr was not hereditary, though there is an instance in which it remained in the same family from father to son for three generations. Speaking of the Vijayanagar empire and the Deccan at the time of the battle of Talicota, Wilks remarks that no SOVEREIGNTY IN THE INDIAN PENINSULA 159 change in the form or principle of government was the con- sequence either of foreign conquest or successful rebellion ; and he then proceeds to inquireftato the causes of the immemo- rial despotism of the East, rejecting the exclusive influence of climate. He contends that ' the broad and prominent dis- tinction between the characters of Eastern and Western polity, between despotism and regular government, seems to consist in the union or separation of the divine and human code ; ' the union of these codes stereotyping society by making change and therefore progress impious. He admits that the separation of these codes is not of itself sufficient to give rise to civil liberty. Patton, in his interesting treatise on ' Asiatic Monarchies,' deals at length with the same problem. His theory is that in Asia, the property in the land being vested in the prince and the land rent forming his principal revenue, great landed proprietors could not come into existence so as to abridge the power of the crown. Perhaps there is little risk in the supposition that the persistency of despotism in India, like the growth of civil Uberty in Europe, is a fact to be accounted for by the concurrent operation of a good many causes of considerable complexity. The reasons why some states have been progressive and others are stationary are a very fascinating subject of inquiry ; but it clearly will not suffice to assign the union of divine and human laws as a principal reason for the difierence, because it is now pretty generally admitted that this union is of itself characteristic of a certain stage of social growth. If we assume that all or most advanced societies have somehow passed through that stage, we are precluded froni accepting the mere existence of that stage as the reason why others remained in it. No doubt if sacred books, like the Institutes of Manu and the Koran, came to be compiled and to get currency as scriptures at a time when the monarchical form of government was the only form known, the support given to despotism by its ac- knowledgment in such works might improve its chances of durability. To this extent, perhaps, we may subscribe to Colonel Wilks's view. Patton, though fully aware of what he terms a possessory right on the part of the cultivator, seems led by his general theory to exaggerate the share of proprietary rights actually enjoyed by rulers in India ; and he does not meet the obvious argument that rebellious governors, powerful assignees of government revenues, successful freebooters at the head of veritable armies of plunderers, hill bandits with stroncT forts, tribal chieftains, and the innumerable ruffians and 160 OUE INDIAN PEOTECTOEATE adventurers of an extraordinarily diverse assortment of creeds and races, who at one time or another have won in India, by violence or usurpation or both, territorial power, might, if they had ever combined, have formed as powerful a check on the power of the rajas as ever the barons at Eunnymede were on the power of King John. The rarity of combinations amongst people of conflicting creeds and great diversity of origin is perhaps one of the reasons for the stability of des- potism in India, considered, of course, as an institution, not as the possession of any particular individual or dynasty. Where combination has existed or may exist, its strength is apparent, as in the case of the E4jputdna thdkurs and of the alliances which established the Bahmani kingdom in the Deccan or overthrew the Vijayanagar empire. It is curious that India, the home of despotism, is the home also of such democratic institutions as the panchdyat and the fully organised village community retaining at least some common lands and ad- ministering a common village fund. And, though still more curious, it may perhaps be true that the existence of these institutions has had much to do not only with the frequency with which masters have been changed, but also with the disposition to leave the masters alone, so long as they refrain from unendurable exactions, prevent other chiefs from ravaging the village lands, and allow plain men to settle their own civil cases amongst themselves by their own committees. There are several ways, however, in which the com- monest sort of tenures of land may have contributed to the maintenance of despotism. Where the soil has been occu- pied by clans and septs and heads of families of cultivating tribes settling down in village communities, succession to hereditary rights of possession is usually regulated by the principle of equal partition amongst sons or, failing sons, according to ancestral shares claimed by different branches of the family or families which founded the village. It is obvious that such a system tends to prevent, just as primo- geniture tends to favour, the accumulation of landed property in the hands of individuals ; and the theory that new grants of the soil itself for cultivating possession or grants of the dues and powers of the king over occupied or unoccupied land, must alike emanate from the sovereign, would form an additional safeguard against the danger to the authority of the monarch which might spring from the acquisition of extensive estates by individuals who would not be restrained by official or family influence from attempts at rebellion and SOVEEEIGNTY IN THE INDIAN PENINSULA 161 independence. As often as the monarch was weak, these influences, where they existed, were commonly insufficient to prevent rebellion ; aU the mor^ therefore, might a law of primogeniture have raised obstacles to the power of the king. The chief item of the king's income being, moreover, his share of the crop (commuted or not for a money payment), it was necessary to parcel the country out into circles under revenue agents or collectors ; and what in modern phrase we might term the quasi-bureaucratic hierarchy so formed would contribute alike to the durability and efficiency of despotism, partly by the distribution over the land of officials interested in maintaining the existing order as the source of their emolument so long, but only so long, as the king was able to support them, and partly by the strength in informa- tion and action which the central government would derive from the presence of its more or less obedient agents and reporters in every quarter. Finally, the claims of the king upon the land, and the readiness with w^hich the harder sort squeezed the functionaries who had been allowed or enjoined to substitute their demands or oppressions for those of the government, made the king the richest man in his dominions ; and hoards of grain or, better stiU, ready cash have always been a most powerful prop to an Indian throne, for in troublous times when an ambitious son is tired of waiting for the succession, or some petty subordinate chieftain or powerful jdgirddr is discontented on account of some en- croachment on his rights or question of punctilio, or some neighbouring raja is in arms to enforce a dormant boundary claim or broken betrothal, victory has a knack of declaring in favour of the largest battalions ; and, as a man cannot keep troops together for long without either paying them or securing their subsistence by plunder, the actual means of paying them is the best lure to his standard that he can hold out. Thus a good hoard is the best insurance against the multiform risks of royalty ; and the position of the king as claimant of a share of every crop supplies him with the means of making this prudent investment. In considering those ideas of sovereignty which are based upon the land we may look downwards from the chief to the cultivator, or upwards from the cultivator to the chief; the nexus is the same from whichever point of view we regard it ; and, whether we analyse the status of the prince or of the peasant, we find that a great part of the matter under analysis is the tenure of land. In this way I am led M 162 OUK INDIA^' PROTECTORATE to some remarks on the ancient tenures of the west and east coast of the Madras Presidency. At first sight the tenures of the west coast of Southern India, where there is perhaps the strongest form of private property in land that has yet been discovered in our Indian dominions, seem to present a marked contrast to the tenures of the Punjab Hills, where the raja is in a peculiar sense the proprietor or over-lord of the lands of his state. But on further inspection it is not diffi- cult to recognise the usual principles in operation. Both the west coast and the Tamil country are good fields for inquiry, because they are remote from the thoroughly subju- gated provinces of the Delhi empire, and were little affected by the sweeping tide of Muhammadan supremacy. Nor did the conquests of the Muhammadan sultans of Mysore oblite- rate those features of society which it is necessary for us to note. The particularly strong form of private property in land which is found on the west coast, and in some adjoining tracts, is known as janm, or more usually jenm, a word which means birthright. The facts to which I have to refer are taken from a paper by Sir James Lyall, written when he was Eesident in Mysore and Chief Commissioner of Coorg, and had therefore excellent opportunities of applying to the tenures of Coorg and the surrounding countries the insight and skill with which many years before he had analysed the tenures of Kdngra. ' The theory,' he says, ' of land tenure which prevails in Malabar, including Wynaad, is that in the beginning all land, whether cultivated, waste, or forest, belonged in full private property or jenmi right to some individual or family. All present holders are either jenmi landlords or hold of a jenmi ; the British Government owns only lands or rights in lands which have escheated to it from some jenmi, and is jenmi landlord as regards them. The land revenue now taken by the British Government in continuation of that which was imposed by the Mysore sultans Haidar and Tippoo when they conquered Malabar, and which appears to have been taken by the Perumal emperor or viceroy in very ancient times, is by this theory a simple imperial land tax, not in any sense a rent. When the Imperial Government disappeared, as it did for long periods in ancient times, the tax disappeared and was merged in the jenmi's rent, and there was no land revenue.' It will at once be asked, how can this description be SOVEREIGNTY IN THE INDIAN PENINSULA 163 reconciled with the theory that raja and ryo^, prince and peasant, are joint proprietors of the soil? Here we have to all appearance the direct antithesis to such joint property, all the land belonging in full private right to families or indi- viduals. The answer, I think, is, that the jenmis, in the first instance, shared the sovereignty amongst them ; they were in the place of the raja ; the sovereignty was in a sort of joint tribal commission, and thus a tax imposed upon them was more of a tribute than a land revenue. Kanara and Malabar were anciently one country with similar tenures and organisation of society ; and Sir James Lyall believes that this country must have included more or less distinctly the Wynaad, Coorg, and the Mulnad of Mysore, which compose the strip of country along the top of the Ghauts above Malabar and Kanara. In all this country the unit of property was the holding of rice fields to which was attached waste or forest land for the supply of wood, grass, and vegetable manure. This auxihary land was known as bane, and was not taken into account in the levy of rent or revenue. There was no communal ownership of waste in villages. Waste, if not attached as auxiliary land to some holding, was the property of some superior lord or raja. In Malabar it appears that many centuries ago ' two sections of the population confronted each other as equal powers — one the warrior clans of Nairs, who formed the military caste of the country and wielded the power of the sword, the other a clan or clans of sacerdotal Brdhmans, whose superiority in intellect and learning enabled them to impose their priestly authority upon all other classes, in- cluding the JSTairs. They entered into very close social and ceremonial relations with the Nairs (which still exist), and agreed to divide the land and its lordship with them. Accordingly the land was divided, certain subdivisions going to the Brdhmans as their property, and others to the Nairs. The Brdhmans, as was natural from their instincts and ideas, held their shares in democratic style, aU members of the clan having equal rights in the lordship or property of the soi4. 'The Nairs, on the contrary, had, as was equally natural, the instincts and ideas of feudal subordination to chiefs, to which they owed their military success, and which are to be seen in the Edjput clans and other military races of India. In their case, therefore, it was the chiefs of the separate clans or confederations of Nairs who were recognised as the lords of the soil, the other Nairs being content to receive 164 OUE INDIAN PEOTECTORATB allotments to be held of them on feudal or military service tenure. In this way the lordship of the soil, or what is now known as the ancient jenmi right, came to be held by the chieftain families of the Nairs and by the sacerdotal Brdhman families. It was something more than a mere property in the soil, being as it were a share in the kingdom of the country, and in the lordship over inferior races ; certain rank and powers were, therefore, also connected with it. The Nair chieftains, if their territories were large, seem to have sometimes granted away their rights and powers over certain tracts to subordinate chiefs or captains of the Nair militia, to be held by the latter in military subordination. The main body of the Nairs were content to get household or family allotments in lease from the chiefs or captains to whom they chose to attach themselves; they gave the chief a fee or nazrdna called "kanom" or "kanike" in token of allegiance on receiving the allotment, but paid no rent and were only bound to military service. They did not tiU the ground themselves, but cultivated through slaves or serfs.' The bulk of the occupied land held by the JSTair chief- tains was granted away on this kanom, or, as it was called, kanakka tenure; the rest was the private demesne of the chief, which he cultivated through low-caste serfs or slaves, or leased to ordinary rent-paying tenants of the non-military classes. When an imperial authority was superimposed either (as tradition says) on the application of the jenmi lords or in some other way, a share of the rent or produce was assigned as its due, and was paid by all lands, including those under kanakka tenure. When the imperial authority disappeared this tax, or a part, was probably taken from lands under kanakka tenure by the jenmi lords as rent whenever they felt strong enough to demand it. The power of the imperial authority, when there was one, seems to have been very hmited; and the assent of certain territorial assemblies (mentioned in old deeds as the council of the six hundred) seems to have been required to acts affecting the land. Sir James Lyall supposes that these assemblies were composed of the jenmi lords and the feudal miUtia of the circles. It is easy to see that such a society as Sir James Lyall describes might readily break up into petty principahties ; and that where these principalities were not formed or fell to pieces, all sovereignty might be lost, and the jenmi holdings might become mere private property. Both of these results SOVEREIGNTY IN THE INDIAN PENINSULA 165 are actually traceable. A class of jenmis of small holdings gradually grew into existence, men to whom the original jenmi lords conveyed by sale Sr gift certain plots in full property free of all rent or service. The number of jenmis at the present day is large, and includes many classes of people. On the other hand, the Wynaad, a tract 1,239 square miles in area, lying above the Ghauts south of Coorg and Mysore, and west of the Neilgherries, seems at one time to have belonged in jenmi tenure to the family of the Paik rajas. The estate of this family was confiscated for rebellion, and the Government is consequently the jenmi proprietor of aU. land in the Wynaad, of which the jenmi right had not been previously alienated by the Paik family. When the Portuguese appeared on the Malabar coast at the end of the fifteenth century they found the country held by numerous petty chiefs, of which the best known was the Zamorin of Calicut ; and this had probably long been the case — from the early part of the ninth century, or earlier. Coorg, however, presents the best illustration of the sort of movement which may have gradually changed much of the land of the jenmi tenure into a collection of small rajaships. One of the kingdoms -which arose on the dissolution of the empire of Vijayanagar after the battle of Talicota in 1565 was that of Bednur. The raja was a poligdr or military feudatory of Vijayanagar, and he extended his rule over Kanara, which had previously been under the sway of the rajas of Vijayanagar. About this period Coorg, where the original state of property was like that of the Wynaad, appears for a long time to have been divided into petty independent chiefdoms known as hombus. A Bednur prince came to Coorg and settled in a tract called the Haleri Ndd. Assuming at first the pious garb of a priest, he subsequently converted religious offerings into a regular tax, assembled a force and asserted himself as a ruler. The Ndyaks, as the rulers of the kombus were called, at first submitted, but were afterwards put to death or expelled. From this Bednur prince were descended the Coorg rajas, from whom we annexed the country in 1834. The Ndyaks were the jenmis of their little chiefdoms and formed the military class ; the ancestors of the present martial Coorgs held their family lands under the Ndyaks as the bulk of the ISTairs did under the Nair chiefs in Malabar. In this way by sup- planting and exterminating the Ndyaks who were jenmis before them, the Bedruir rajas of Coorg became jenmis of 166 OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE the whole country ; and they proved most despotic rulers. There is perhaps in India no worse record of bloodthirsty executions than there is against the now extinct rajas of Coorg ; and it seems that practically divine honours were paid to them by a people they held in thraldom by actual terror of death. Coorg some time before annexation got the name of a prison, from which no man was suffered to escape lest he should report to an angry and avenging government the misdeeds and murders of its tyrant kings. As soon as a raj or Hindu principality was thus esta- blished in Coorg by the destruction of a class which might have lived on as intermediaries between the rajas and the people, some of the usual features of such principalities clearly appear. I do not mean that those features were necessarily new ; for the Coorg rajas took the places of the Ndyaks whom they destroyed. I mean that if the Ndyaks had survived in subordination to the raja, the powers of the raja would have differed from what they, were; that we know at least what those powers were in regard to the land ; and that they resemble in some important particulars the powers of the Punjab Hill rajas. Thus the full or normal cash assessment was supposed to be equal to a share, one- tenth or one-sixth, of the crop ; the raja gave the principal class of cultivators written grants entitling them to hold their rice fields with attached waste for ever on paj'^ment of the revenue assessed ; and all unoccupied land in Coorg was considered as the property of the sovereign. The greatest peculiarity of the tenures was that the true Coorgs of families deemed fit to reader military service might hold at half-rates ; they probably paid nothing in former times in consideration of their liability to such service ; and they might on this tenure take up as many holdings of rice fields as they could themselves cultivate, though they were not allowed to sublet. Even this peculiarity has some parallel in the Punjab Hills in the remission of revenue granted to men who were similarly liable to be called into the field by the raja. The whole of this description of the former state of the Malabar country and Coorg appears to me to confirm the opinions that tribal chiefship preceded territorial despotism, and that when chiefship had become territorial before our time the basis of it was the land. We may also perceive here, as in many other places, vague marks of imperfect suzerainty, some distant imperial authority laying an inter- SOVEEEIGNTY IN THE INDIAN PENINSULA 167 mittent claim to a tax upon the land. In the ancient organ- isation of the society, we see a tribal ownership of the soil, a tribal division of sovereignty, ^n a state growing up out of and upon that organisation, we see a territorial despotism of the usual description. On the opposite side of the peninsula lies a country, now partly comprised in the districts of North and South Arcot and Chingleput, which was formerly known as Tondei- mandalam. The tradition is that this country (said to have been some 18,300 square miles in area) was originally in- habited by the Karambas, a pastoral and half savage tribe, whose chiefs resided in forts having districts of greater or less extent under their authority. There were twenty-four of these districts, known as cottams, a word which appears to mean a fort or stronghold ; and the greater part of the land was a thick forest. One of the Chola rajas, whose empire at one time extended at least over the whole Carnatic and perhaps also over Kanara on the west coast, is said to have formed the design of dispossessing the Karambas and settling upon the land the superfluous population of other parts of his dominions. Accordingly a son of the raja is supposed to have come into the land with a host of VelUler tribesmen, an industrious cultivating Sudra set, and to have subdued, ex- pelled, or exterminated the former shepherd occupants. The lands were parcelled out to these Vell41ers ; they settled down in village communitibs ; and tanks and watercourses, on which cultivation is very greatly dependent in that quarter, were constructed. All this, of course, is mere tradition, but there is no doubt about the nature of the tenures for which this tale is supposed to account. They were very thoroughly investigated at the ecd of the last century and the beginning of the present cen- tury, before the old condition of things had been obscured by the general introduction of the ryoticdri settlement. Generally in the Tamil country (of which lower Tondei- mandalam below the Ghauts is merely a part) the lands were held in certain shares, perhaps corresponding with the number of families that first undertook the cultivation. The number of shares, according to the supposed original distri- bution, was never forgotten. The old shares were merely subdivided as families grew ; and sometimes, if families died out or p,arted with their property, more shares than one might come to be held by one person. The proprietors en- titled to these shares were known as mirdsiddrs,. from the 168 OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE word mirds, wliich means inheritance ; and their hereditary right of possession conditioned on payment of the govern- ment share of the crop, or its equivalent in money when de- mandable, was known as mirdsi right. Frequently in Tanjore, and occasionally in other districts, the whole mirdsi right of a village became vested in a single individual. But usually a number of mirdsiddrs held the village jointly or in severalty. These mirdsiddrs may be described as peasant proprietors, sometimes cultivating the lands themselves, but more often conducting the cultivation by means of serfs or hired labourers, and arranging for the tillage of parts of the arable waste by tenants, the resident tenants having a permanent, and outsiders of other villages a temporary, right of culti- vation. The properties were generally small, but varied greatly in size from five to ten acres to one or two thousand acres. Where the mirdsiddrs held jointly, the tenure was the most perfect form of communal ownership that I have traced in the course of some Indian researches. All the cultivated lands belonged to the whole body of mirdsiddrs, each, in proportion to the share or part of a share he held, being entitled to participate in the common property. The number of shares belonging to each mirdsiddr being known, the lands were either cultivated in common and the net pro- duce, after payment of the government share and other charges upon it, divided according to the shares of the pro- prietors ; or the land itself was thus divided, either annually, or every five or six or ten years, the fields to be held by each for that period being ascertained by lot. This exchange of lands is an almost decisive mark of a truly communal tenure, and suggests alike the derivation of the communal village from the tribe and the comparatively recent tribal or- ganisation of the society where it is perceptible. It is referred to in the old reports as a thing perfectly well known, and I have marked many passages where it is mentioned. In many villages, especially in Tanjore, Tinnevelly, Madura, Dindigal, and the other Tamil provinces to the south of the Coleroon, the mirdsiddrs, instead of dividing the cultivated lands of the village periodically, according to the share or parts of a share held by each, appear on some occasion when they had divided them in that manner to have declared the division per- manent, and thus to have converted the ancient collective tenure of the cultivated lands into one in severalty. The communal tenure was especially frequent in Tondei- mandalam; and in that country the mirdsiddrs had two SOVEEEIGNTY IN THE INDIAN PENINSULA 169 special privileges : they held part of the cultivated lands free from any government demand, and they received certain dues in kind from the produce %f all the cultivated lands in the village paying tax to government. In the villages where the cultivated lands generally were held in severalty, rights of common, and the like, including fisheries, possibly mines and quarries, certainly pasturage and firewood, the produce of these exempted lands and the dues in kind were still enjoyed by the mirdsiddrs jointly in accordance with their ancestral shares. The Madras Board of Eevenue in 1818, after giving the account of the Tamil tenures which I have just abstracted, goes on to explain that the Muhammadan occupation of the Carnatic had degraded the mirdsiddrs almost into the posi- tion of permanent tenants ; and that ' the Musulmdn Govern- ment, by absorbing the whole landlord's rent, became not only the sovereigns but the landlords of the country, en- forcing in practice their favourite maxim, that the state is the exclusive proprietor of the soil.' The Board, however, admits that those privileges which were still held in common in villages where severalty had been established in the cul- tivated lands continued to be enjoyed, and sometimes to be sold, by the mirdsiddrs. In Tondeimandalam, as on the west coast, there is a tradition of popular assemblies. It is said that the agricul- tural colonists subdivided the cottams of the shepherd chiefs into nddus or districts, five or less to each cottam, and the office of ndttdn or head of the nddu was conferred on the principal VeUdler. The ndttdns of a cottam with the chief proprietors of their respective nddus formed an assembly called the mahdnddu, of which, in 1814, the tradition only remained. The principal object of the assembly seems to have been the consideration of agricultural improvements and the extension of irrigation. Whether it possessed any administrative powers it is impossible to say. Sir Thomas Munro, who was probably the greatest authority we have ever had on land revenue matters in the Southern Presidency, seems to have been rather impatient of legends such as that of the colonisation of Tondeimandalam. He regarded knowledge of the ancient state of landed pro- perty in India as useful only in so far as it might throw light on its present state and aid us in finding a way for improving it. He was, on grounds' chiefly of economic expediency, to a large extent the author and by a long. way 170" OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE the most powerful and successful advocate of the ryotwdri system, which is a system of severalty in small holdings and of direct dealings between the government and the cultivator. He ridiculed the idea of a prince having planted a colony of three hundred thousand agriculturists in uncleared jungles where no such population could exist without tanks and watercourses for the cultivation of the land. He also repu- diated, as based on unfounded assumption, the theory that private landed property was the ancient Hindu system until destroyed by Muhammadan invasion, pointing out that the assessment was as high in the territories of Hindu as of Muhammadan chiefs, and that this could not have been due to the progress of Muhammadan arms, because over many of the petty states the Muhammadans never established more than a nominal dominion. He suggested that the mirdsi tenure was probably a gradual growth in a country long peopled and cultivated, and originated in local circumstances, perhaps more in the great number of tanks and watercourses constructed at the public expense than in any other. The government could be reimbursed for the expenditure upon these works only by the regular cultivation of the lands ; and the privileges of a moderate rent and a hereditary right in the soil were obvious means of effecting this object. The interchange of lands might be due to the principle that the mirdsiddrs should be enabled to pay their rent or revenue regularly by taking turns in the tillage of the fully watered lands. It is worth considering whether the joint proprietorship of the raja and the cultivator may not have sometimes ori- ginated in the construction of irrigation works from state funds or by labour impressed by state authority ; but the claim of the raja to a share in the crop is found in innumerable locali- ties where there are no irrigation works, or where these works are wells or channels sunk or cut by private persons. The most developed form of the Tondeimandalam legend, if we make allowance for the natural tendency to ascribe to some ancient king or leader as a single act a course of policy which may have guided successive rulers, deprives Sir Thomas Munro's caustic objections of some of their sting. We are not to suppose that all the Vell41ers came into the jungle country in a body. One tribe of them, according to the fullest and clearest ver- sion of the story, was already scattered over' the country when the son or brother of the Chola raja appeared on the scene. Another tribe that accompanied the prince for the SOVEREIGNTY" IN THE INDIAN PENINSULA 171 most part went away again, disgusted by their difficulties. A third tribe, the Tuluva VelMlers from Kanara, who con- stituted by far the majority of*the settlers, were induced to remain by the grant of the privileges peculiar to the Tondei- mandalam mirdsiddrs — the right to hold certain lands free of payment, and the share in the crop of all taxable lands. Admitting that the tale is a legend, absolutely unhistorical, it is stiU useful for our purpose, as showing what, in the popular idea, is the relation of the raja to the mass of his subjects. To induce the cultivation of waste lands by liberal concessions is just what is to be expected of a wise raja, and the nature of the concessions is approximately, though not exactly, similar to some we have ourselves made in attracting cultivators to waste lands rendered culturable by government irrigation works in the Southern Punjab. From what we know of the constitution of villages and the distri- bution of the great landholding tribes in the Punjab gene- rally, there seems to be nothing incredible in the tradition that Tondeimandalam may have been brought under cultiva- tion in some such way as the legend relates — that is, by tribal settlements on the inducement of special privileges — if only we allow that the work must have been one of many generations. The subjugation or expulsion of the former occupants was probably also a very gradual process. The tradition of the old local assembhes appears to favour the view that the country was, in point of fact, peopled by tribal immigration. In the Punjab Hills and in Eajpiitdna conquering Edj- piits have imposed their sway upon a cultivating population too numerous and too valuable to be disturbed. In Tondei- mandalam, on the theory of the legend, we have the converse case — the incursion not of an aristocracy, but of a prole- tariat. Yet here — and notwithstanding the Muhammadan conquests which swept again and again over the Carnatic, some centuries of Muhammadan supremacy, and evidence of Muhammadan oppression, which is not disproved by other evidence showing that Hindus were oppressors too — we trace in the rural organisation of society before we altered it the usual characteristics of the Hindu rdj. It will have been noticed that as yet, beyond the mention of certain rights of common, I have said nothing as to the rights of the mirdsiddrs in waste lands. "Whatever the mirdsiddrs might do with certain lands entered in the village registers as cul- turable waste, it seems certain that they could not claim to 172 OUR INDIAN PROTECTOEATE break up the immemorial waste except with the consent of the ruler. Sir Thomas Munro asserts the government claim to the waste in a most uncompromising fashion. He says that the government, from ancient times, had everywhere — even in Arcot, as well as in other provinces — granted waste land free of every rent or claim, and appeared in all such grants to have considered the waste as being exclusively its own property. In all villages, he contended, whether held by mirdsiddrs or not, the inhabitants reserved to themselves the exclusive use of the waste. But this right was good only against strangers, not against the government, which pos- sessed, in his opinion, by the usage of the country, the abso- lute right of disposing of the waste as it pleased. The raja's or Muhammadan ruler's lordship of the waste is thus, in this part of the country, well attested. The raja's share of the produce had its distinctive name, melvdram, which may be translated ' head-rent,' mel being a particle used in composi- tion signifying priority or superiority, and vdram meaning a share of the crop. Lastly, whatever we may hold as to the amount of truth, if any, in the Tondeimandalam legend, there is no doubt that, in the popular idea, and, indeed, in actual practice, the sovereign was regarded as the authority from which the mirdsi right was derived. The Central Provinces, to which we may now pass, form, as the name implies, a sort of middle country. They occupy the north of the Deccan and a small part of the tableland of M41wa, and are bounded on the west and north by the states of the Central India Agencj^ on the north-east by Lower Bengal, on the east by Orissa and a part of the Madras Presidency, on the south by the territories of the Nizam of Hyderabad and by Berar, while on the south-west they just touch Khandeish, acquired from the Peshwa. Generally, the Central Provinces comprise an important fragment of the Marhatta empire, and are interposed between old provinces of the Delhi empire and parts of India which were under Marhatta sway. As a separate administration, these pro- vinces are only thirty years old. They were formed in November 1861, chiefly from the lapsed state of N4gpur, the Saugor and Nerbudda territories, and Sambalpur, previously part of the south-west frontier of the Lower Provinces, under the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. Before the Marhatta conquest the north and west of these provinces were under the rule of the Gond rajas of Mandla, Deoghar, and ChAnda. These rajas were not of Aryan origin, but may be considered SOVEEEIGNTY IN THE INDIAN PENINSULA 173 to have been Hindus, though one of them — the Eaja of Deoghar — is said to have embr«ed the Muhammadan faith in the time of Aurangzib. There is reason to believe that all yielded a certain allegiance to the Delhi empire. A great part of the north-eastern division of Chhattisghar formed the principality of the Haihaibansi Edjpiit rajas of Eatanpur. To the east again and south-east lie the Sambalpur Gurjat chiefships and the native states of Bastar, Khaker, and Kharond. Bastar claims to be an offshoot of the old Telin- gdna stock of the Eastern Deccan, The family is supposed to have been driven from Warangal by Muhammadan encroachments about the beginning of the fourteenth century. The Kliaker chiefs appear to have been Gonds. They at first held under the Marhattas on the sole condition of furnish- ing five hundred men for service when called upon — a lia- bility in later days commuted for a money tribute. Very little is known of the origin of the Kharond or Kalahandi chiefs, but it may be safely said that they claim Edjpiit descent. The principal Gurjat chiefships were Patna and Sambalpur. The Patna state, of course, is not to be con- founded with the town of that name in the British province of Behar. The Patna raja is a Chauhan Edjpiit ; and the tradition is that his forefathers emigrated more than thirty generations ago from the Gangetic Do4b, and, through the influence of the ruler of Orissa, established themselves as chiefs over eight small holdings or chiefships, known as ghars or houses, to the south of the Mahanadi. The first raja of Sambalpur is said to have been the brother of the twelfth raja of Patna. Both chiefs were heads of a group of chiefships, and at one time the supremacy appears to have been shared between them. In 1755 aU fell under the dominion of the Marhattas as tributaries. The Sam- balpur and Patna groups comprised eighteen chiefships, and were known as the Athdra Ghar, or eighteen houses, just as the adjacent country to the west was called and is still known as, the Chhattis Ghar, or thirty-six houses. The state of Sambalpur lapsed to the British Government in 1849. When officiating as Chief Commissioner in 1863, Sir Eichard Temple found the question of the tenure and status of the various dependent chiefs within the limits of the Central Provinces in very considerable confusion. The chiefs were known by a variety of names — zaminddrs, jdgirddrs, thdkurs, Gurjat chiefs, and rajas. Their holdings or terri- 174 OUE INDIAN PEOTECTOBATE tories were sometimes called states, sometimes estates, and their payments to government were promiscuously denomi- nated rent, revenue, quit-rent, and tribute. In some cases this diversity of nomenclature really pointed to diversity of status, but in others it did not, and no classification had been efiected. The Patna and Sambalpur rajas had fought their own way to a local supremacy ; but the Gond and Chhattisghar rajas had been in the habit of either granting away waste or other lands to be held under them or recognising more or less the territorial position of nominal subjects whom they could not entirely subdue. One part of the country, for instance, at the time when it was incorporated in the Mar- hatta kingdom of Nagpur, was parcelled out among a number of petty Gond zaminddrs of wild and irregular habits, con- stantly engaged in hostilities with each other, or in rebellion against their nominal chiefs, whether of Mandla, Deoghar, or ChAnda. The Marhattas expelled many of these Gonds from the plains to make way for a more settled administra- tion. The grants of the Chhattisghar rajas were very gene- rally to Gonds of royal stock or to Edjpiits in reward for military service or on condition of military service to be performed. The Marhattas changed the requirement of ser- vice into a tribute. They also themselves made numerous grants to Gonds and Edjpiits, both confirming old grants and creating new ones, often of waste lands. These Marhatta grants were made as rewards for service or to engage help in maintaining tranquillity in a wild, unsettled country which could not easily be brought under authority. They were on various conditions, such as bringing the waste under culti- vation, keeping down wild beasts, preventing thefts and apprehending criminals, guarding hill-passes, and the like. Two of them were grants to Bairdgis, devotees or family priests. The old Gond grants were for similar purposes : some of them were reward grants for bravery in killing wild beasts, one grantee having accounted for 120 tigers. The thdkurs of the Sdtpura range (known as the Chhindwdra jdgirddrs) were preserved from the usual complete subjection to the Marhattas by the unproductiveness of their hiUs and forests and the natural strength of their country. The Marhatta policy was to support one of the most powerful of them to keep the rest in check and be responsible for their conduct. But it had httle success, for they hved almost entirely by plunder. They were mostly too poor to pay any SOVEREIGNTY IN THE INDIAN PENINSULA 175 tribute or revenue ; but where it was excused, annual oifer- ings of bamboos or honey wei* exacted. Indeed, towards the end of the Marhatta times some of them were made stipendiaries to enable them to live, if possible, without de- predation. Sir Eichard Temple massed together 115 of the holdings or territories just described in a report, which, as Indian reports go, is not a particularly long one. Diverse as these chiefships or zaminddris were, they had a good deal in common. Many, but not aU, of them originated in the actual grant of the ruler of the day ; a fact which shows that the raja was considered competent to dispose of waste lands. The chiefs or zaminddrs were nearly all of them required to make some payment to the Marhattas or their predecessors, which usually fluctuated according to the strength or weak- ness of the over-lord. With few exceptions, no government, native or British, had ever maintained at its own cost any establishment whatever, police, fiscal, or other, within these chiefships. The chiefs or zaminddrs had been expected to save the central government all trouble by managing their own affairs, civil, criminal, and revenue, as best they might. No doubt this was rather shocking to some of our energetic officers when we first began to intervene ; and by the time Sir Eichard Temple reported, the rough powers of justice, formerly freely exercised, had been greatly restricted ; and even the rajas of Bastar had been required to submit their death sentences for the confirmation of the Chief Commis- sioner. Occasionally these possessions had been broken up under the sanction of the Marhatta Government, or divided inter vivos amongst sons or other relatives. But, as a rule, they devolved by a very loosely applied rule of primo- geniture, an eldest son having the preference, if there was no particular reason for setting him aside. The mass amalgamated in Sir Eichard Temple's report was duly triturated in the official sieve ; and in the sequel, after much further disquisition, fifteen of these holdings were recognised as feudatory states. In the rest the chief or zaminddr had to accept a position little removed from that of an ordinary subject. Nor was this decision surprising. Many of the possessions were obviously mere proprietary holdings, some consisting of a single village. Even the tracts finally recognised as feudatory states varied greatly in extent, from Sakti with 115 to Bastar with 13,062 square miles. 176 OUK INDIAN PBOTECTOKATE In our everyday ideas the distinctions are clear enough between sovereign powers and the powers which a landlord may exercise over his property, and between territory which is British and that which is subject to the jurisdiction of a foreign ruler. But in the history of the recognition of these feudatory states of the Central Provinces we see how hard it may sometimes be to draw the line between tracts which must be regarded as under British laws and those which must be considered foreign for purposes of legislation and internal government. Before the submission of Sir Eichard Temple's report of 1863 this difficulty was, if not at its height in this part of India, at any rate in a fair way to be solved in the manner least agreeable to the chiefs or zamin- ddrs and most expensive to the central administration. But the chief point of interest about the past of the Central Pro- vinces is that we can trace a complete chain of political sub- ordination down from the Delhi emperor through the raja to the hereditary holder of two or three hundred villages on condition of military service. We have, indeed, somewhat similar chains of authority to this day, for intermediate between the supreme government and almost all the chiefs in India are Lieutenant-Governors, or Chief Commissioners, or Governor-General's Agents. And we see how the usual tendency of petty chiefships to form groups under the leader- ship of some successful state exhibits itself in practice. Supremacy may not be hard to win if the conqueror is con- tent with a light payment from a man who manages his own afiairs and is prepared to leave him alone in their future management. In early days rulers have few nice scruples about their moral responsibilities ; busied with the really serious affairs of plunder and aggression, they may easily leave the trifles of civil government to chiefs who will do them sufficient homage and perhaps join them in their forays, or to refractory subjects whom it would be difficult or im- prudent to coerce. Thus jurisdictions are formed ripe to become independent states, if there is no one strong enough to control them ; but ready to be part of a group under a supremacy, if that seems politic, or cannot be helped, or is likely to lead to profitable adventures. The recklessness of primitive rulers about internal administration fosters its usurpation by their nominal subordinates ; and it is with actual or potential states as it is with village communities ; so long as the fairly sufficient home rule is not destroyed, the mere change of allegiance is of little import. All this SOVEREIGNTY IN THE INDIAN PENINSULA 177 goes to explain how readily, in primitive times, empires are formed, and how readily they faU»to pieces. The history of the Marhattas, to which we may next turn, illustrates the facility with which a successful adventurer may found an empire in the East. The first ghmpse that we get of Marhatta institutions shows us a system of rural government of a familiar Indian type which has, indeed, with certain modifications lasted to our own day. In Maharashtra — the country where Marhatti is spoken, roughly the space between the Sdtpura range, above the Tapti, and the neigh- bourhood of Goa — we find, as in most other parts of India, the village headman and the village accountant, and a re- markably full array of village ofiicers and servants. Between the village' headman and the raja, over several villages, there were always two hereditary officers, the deshmukh, desai or zaminddr, and the deshpandya, deshlekuk or kdnungo. Desk means country, and mukh, mouth, and mukhya, chief ; and, according to the Marhattas, the word deshmukh implies not that the officer is the district or local chief, but that he is the spokesman of the district. The functions of the deshmukh and deshpandya seem to have been the same for their circles as were those of the village headman and the village ac- countant respectively for the villages under them. They were paid by grants of land estimated at a value of 5 per cent, on the revenues they collected ; but this gives merely a general idea of their allowances, which were exceedingly variable and often complicated. These hereditary officers, before the Muhammadan conquest of the Deccan, had often obtained more or less power and independence, and assumed the titles of naik or IbsAbt, poligdr or raja, according to cir- cumstances. Sivaji, whose civil arrangements, hke his military organ- isation, exhibit systematic policy, probably perceiving the dif- ficulty of controlling such hereditary local officers, did not aUow the deshmukhs and deshpandyas to interfere in the management of the country, though he maintained them in the enjoyment of their emoluments. Similarly though he confirmed many jdgirs he bestowed few new ones. He appointed civil officers, tarafddrs or talukddrs, over small districts, and suhaddrs or mdmlatddrs over considerable tracts comprising one or more forts. Starting with the prestige of being the son of a great jdgirddr and officer of the Pijapur kingdom, he acquired his power by plundering expeditions and the seizure of hill forts ; and it was these 178 OUR INDIAN PEOTECTOEATE forts especially which enabled him to maintain and extend his acquisitions. They received proportionate care. Each was placed in charge of a separate establishment maintained by permanent assignments of rent-free lands in the neighbour- hood. The members of these establishments described the fort as ' the mother that fed them ' ; and this hereditary provision for their support gave them every inducement to be active in the duties of bringing in supplies, watching passes, and misleading or cutting off the spies or parties of the enemy. Sivaji stopped the farming of the revenue, which he assessed by his own agents on the actual state of the crop, claiming two-fifths of the produce as the govern- ment share. After the death of his father in 1664 he assumed the title of raja, and — always a sign in India of the assertion of kingly prerogative — -struck coins in his own name. But Aurangzib, the Delhi emperor, specially provoked by the robbery of holy pilgrims proceeding to Mecca, sent a strong army to the Deccan under Eaja Jai Singh, a Edjpiit prince, and Diler Klian, an Afgh4n commander. Sivaji, after some hostilities, thought submission his best policy, and, surrendering a great part of his territory, accepted the residue as a jdgir dependent on the emperor, at the same time obtaining certain revenue assignments on the kingdom of Bijapur and the rank or mansah of 5,000 horse for his son, then eight years old. A little later, in 1667, when Prince Sultan Mauzum, a son of Aurangzib, had been reappointed Viceroy of the Deccan, Sivaji procured by his intervention, amongst other favours, the grant of the title of raja from the emperor. The year before this Sivaji had in person presented his nazr at Delhi ; that is to say, made to his superior, the emperor, the complimentary offering in money which betokens fealty or submission. He had been disgusted with his reception and the rank assigned to him, and escaped from Delhi by a stratagem. He subsequently turned the tables on his adversaries ; had many successes against the Moghal armies and the kingdom of Bijapur; and in 1674, when strong enough, again assumed the title of raja, this time without the emperor's leave. On this occasion the names of some of the principal offices under his government which had been expressed in Persian were altered into their Sanskrit equivalents ; and Sivaji being weighed against gold, which was distributed to Brdhmans, thus purchased Edjpiit rank, the Brdhmans now pretending to prove that he was by descent a Kdjpiit. SOVEREIGNTr IN THE INDIAN PENINSULA 179 The list of the eight great officers of the Marhatta prinni- pality given by Grant Duff (from%^hom I take most of these particulars) is interesting as showing the degree of advance in the business of civil government, so far as that can be inferred from the severance of official functions and their assignment to different ministers of state. There was a peshwa or prime minister, with the new title of mukh pardhdn ; a general superintendent of finance and accounts ; a general record keeper and superintendent of correspond- ence ; a sort of private secretary, who also superintended the household troops ; a commander-in-chief ; a foreign minister; a superintendent of judicial affairs; and an expounder of Hindu law and the Shdstras. This description of the weU-known eight pardhdns or ministers of the Marhattas might, indeed, if we omit the last, serve as a sort of typical description of the headquarter estabUshment of an Indian raja or nawAb at the present day. Both now and in the history of the last two or three centuries in India we constantly perceive the distinctions between civil and military command ; the household of the prince . and the general arrangements of government ; revenue, finance, and the administration of justice ; and home and foreign affairs. The ministers also being servants of the raja, the list indi- cates some of the functions which the raja, through his subordinates, is expected to discharge. But here, as in most things Indian, we must not expect either uniformity or precision in arrangement or consistency in practice. We may recognise a pretty frequent tendency towards a tolerably civilised distribution of the functions of government ; an ideal, so to speak, more or less consciously accepted, never fully attained, and forgotten or ignored without the slightest pang whenever the pursuit of it would be practically incon- venient. Sambhaji and Eaja Earn, who in succession wielded the power of the Marhattas after Sivaji's death, imitated the example of their father and declared their independence. But Shao, at the end of whose time all real power passed into the hands of the Peshwa, acknowledged himself a vassal of the throne of Delhi and affected to consider himself merely as a zaminddr or head deshmukh of the empire. He was appointed to the rank of 10,000 horse by the emperor Ferokhsir ; an empty compliment to the head of a con- federacy far more powerful than any force at the disposal of the emperor, and significant only as showing the vitality of 180 OUR INDIAN PEOTECTOEATE the ideas connected with the Delhi empire in the very hour of its dissolution. Ballaji Wiswandth, the first of the great Peshwas, was raised to his commanding position by Shao. The discipline enforced by Sivaji had long been relaxed, and the Marhatta armies had become the well-known gigantic predatory bands, demanding or about to demand tribute or plunder at the point of the spear from almost every province that had owned the sway of the house of Timur. The problem which that exceedingly astute Brahman, Ballaji Wiswandth, had to face was how to direct this prodigious force to the making of a Marhatta empire without allowing the control of it to depart from Br4hman hands. He solved the problem by a scheme most characteristically Hindu, and for complexity and ingenuity perhaps unrivalled in Indian annals. The more we look into Indian institutions the more often do we find that they are at the root connected with the possession of land or of the revenue derived from it. The principle of the Marhatta military confederacy was a com- plicated system of land revenue assignments. The full details of that system may be studied in Grant Duff by those interested in the subject. I have only to refer to them here as briefly as I can, consistently with clearness, in order to show what a tangled network sovereignty in India became before the failing and already merely theoretical supremacy of Delhi had been succeeded by the effective over-lordship of the present paramount power. Chauth means one-fourth, and sirdeshmuhhi one-tenth of the total land revenue demand of a given tract of country. I mentioned that Sivaji obtained from Aurangzib certain revenue assignments in the kingdom of Bijapur. These were the chauth and sirdeshmuhhi of certain districts above the Ghauts. The first imposition of chauth in a province immediately subject to the Moghals dates from the incursion in 1670 of one of Sivaji's generals into Khandeish. In this raid the village authorities were made to promise in writing to pay to Sivaji or his officers one-fourth of the yearly revenue due to government. Eeceipts were promised which would exempt them from piUage and ensure them protection. Such was the origin of the Marhatta claims which eventually embraced the chauth of the whole of India. In 1720 Ballaji Wiswandth obtained from the emperor Muhammad Shah three imperial grants. . The first was for the chauth of the whole revenue of the six suhahs or provinces SOVEEEIGNTT IN THE INDIAN PENINSULA 181 of theDeccan, including tlie Hyderabad and Bijapur Carnatic and the tributary states of Tanjoi^ Trichinopoly, and Mysore. This was on condition that the Marhatta Eaja should main- tain 15,000 horse to assist the military governors in preserv- ing tranquillity. The second was for the sirdeshmukhi of the six subahs, or 10 per cent, over and above the chauth. The third confirmed the raja in the possession of the districts, principally those held by Sivaji at the time of his death, which were the seat of the actual sovereignty of the Marhatta power. Outside these grants there were conquests in Berar and claims to tribute in Guzerat and Mdlwa. The Marhattas knew very well that they could not at once overcome the provincial governors, some of them, especially the Nizam, already far on the way to independence. Their policy there- fore was to bleed as freely as possible where they could not or dare not kill. The plan of BaUaji Wiswandth was to buckle a set of Brdhman reins on the whole team of free- booter generals. The raja, some of the principal officials, and the military chiefs were to have a sort of joint interest in certain nominally fixed shares of the revenues of other states ; it was proper, of course, to afiect that the interest was legitimatised by an imperial grant ; but where letters patent did not apply, a district was easily placed under tribute by usage. As for the shares, the rules were two, that every chief should take as much as -he could, and — honour among thieves — that the booty should be fairly distributed according to custom. This supposed custom of distribution was exactly what BaUaji Wiswandth invented. In the co- operative society for the pillage of the empire the raja was honorary chairman and the Peshwa, with Brdhman assistants, the real director-in-chief. The sirdeshmukhi, the 10 per cent, of the revenue, was first set aside. That was the raja's watan, his hereditary property — name soothing to a Marhatta ear. Of the remaining claims one-fourth was appropriated to the head of the state in addition to the sirdeshmukhi : this was known as the raja's bdhti or item of revenue. The balance was termed mokassa. Mne per cent, of the mokassa was at the disposal of the raja in two shares ; namely, 6 per cent., called sahotra, which was assigned by Shao to the minister above described £is the general record keeper and superintendent of correspondence ; and 3 per cent, as nargounda, which was granted by the raja to difierent persons at his pleasure. The rest of the mokassa was 182 OUR INDIA:!? PROTECTORATK distributed to a great number of chiefs as military jdgir, burdened, according to circumstances, with dues to the head of the state, both in money and in troops. The old Mar- hatta jdgir ddrs had districts assigned to them subject to military service and the payment of sirdeshmukhi, but not of chauth. Particular quarters of the country were assigned to particular officers, who were also allowed particular claims on portions of revenue or on whole villages in the districts of each other. There were separate sets of agents for the collection of the sirdeshmukhi, the hdhti, the sahotra, the nargounda ; and any number of places, therefore, for Brdhman clerks. Of course none but Br4hmans could deal with the almost infinite intricacy of accounts and claims which resulted from this complicated system. In the Moghal provinces one-fourth of such revenue as remained after realisation of the chauth and sirdeshmukhi went to the Moghal local officer, the faujddr. The rest was either collected for the imperial treasury or more often alienated in jdgir to some Moghal commander for the support of troops. Such, in very general term^s, was, in 1720, the theory in Western India and the Deccan upon which conquests were to be shared — a theory more or less reduced to practice according to the chances of usurpation and the fortunes of war. The Peshwas soon usurped the authority of the raja, and made him first their pageant to give weight to their authority with recalcitrant generals in the field, and finally their prisoner at Sattdra. The Nizam asserted his independence in the Deccan, and on one occasion, when the emperor had secretly instigated a suhaddr to oppose him with the promise of his place, defeated his rival in a de- cisive battle, and, with an admirably Oriental adherence to forms, sent the suhaddr s head to court with a congratu- latory letter on the victory of the emperor's army thus suc- cessfully commanded by himself. Throughout the greater part of the eighteenth century the Peshwas and Nizam-ul- mulk and his successors stand confronting each other as the chief figures on the scene in Western India, often in open conflict, never either of them quite strong enough to beat the other down. It was natural that the Marhattas should turn their arms to Mdlwa and Guzerat — indeed, the admission of their claims on the Nizam's territory ought theoretically to have saved it from depredation — and it is easy to see that the localisation of the assignments of the military leaders would sooner or later give them opportuni- SOVEEEIGNTT IN THE INDIAN PENINSULA 183 ties of founding separate states. Thus B4ji Eao, the Peshwa, when he began his incursions iirto Mdlwa, about 1725, 'by virtue of the authority vested in him by Shao, granted deeds to Powar, Holkar, and Sindhia to levy chauth and sirdeshmukhi, and to retain half the mokassa in payment of their troops.' Though the pretence of the raja's authority was maintained, these chiefs, the founders of the present Marhatta houses of Dhdr, Indore, and Gwdlior, were officers of the Peshwa, acting under his commission. The origin of the Baroda family was not dissimilar. Dabdri, the hereditary com- mander-in-chief, who had made conquests in Guzerat, assembled an army of 35,000 men and set out for the Deccan to deliver the raja from the thraldom of his ministers. B4ji Eao in 1731 defeated his army. Dabdri fell, and the Peshwa left his infant son in nominal possession of the Marhatta rights in Guzerat, under the guardianship of Pilaji Gaekwar, the ancestor of the Gaekwars of Baroda. I mentioned in a former chapter that Sindhia obtained from the Delhi emperor a patent granting to the Peshwa the hereditary office of vakil-ul-mutlak (a term, by the way, which Wilks translates 'absolute vicegerent'). Sindhia brought the insignia down to the Deccan, and the Peshwa was invested with the khillat or dress of honour under unusually elaborate ceremonies. The condition of the grant was that the Peshwa was to appoint Sindhia and his posterity his perpetual deputies. The Peshwa, a usurping minister, thus in theory became the deputy of a powerless emperor, and all the real power was vested in a military chief of a practically independent territory, who affected to be the deputy's deputy for the management of the imperial affairs. Add to this that the Marhattas still had their claims on the adjoining territory of the Nizam, where sovereignty had been acquired by successful rebeUion. It was these claims that led to the last general reunion of the Marhatta chieftains, who, notwithstanding the establishment of their separate governments, had been taught to hold that all and each were interested in what could be exacted from the Nizam. There were outstanding balances for chauth and sirdeshmukhi extending over a series of years. The Nizam, taking advan- tage of the alliance against Tippoo, had procrastinated and met claims by counter-claims, and generally evinced a determination not to pay. The prospect of sharing in the expected advantages brought to the standard of Nana Farnavis, the Poona minister, all the chiefs of importance. 184 OUR INDIAN PEOTECTOEATE Sindhia and Holkar were on the spot. The Eaja of Berar set out to join. The Gaekwar sent a detachment of his troops, and the great southern jdgirddrs attended the summons. ' This,' says Grant Duff, ' was the last time the chiefs of the Marhatta nation assembled under the authority of their Peshwa.' I need not further pursue Marhatta history. Enough has been said to show that the Marhatta military confederacy was a conspicuous illustration of the genius of Hindu insti- tutions, especially as moulded by Brdhman hands, and to afford some instances of the formation of states connected by some real ties and some political fictions ; while the fiction — for such it had become — of the supremacy of the house of Delhi was still used by the most formidable of the half-confederated and often hostile military chieftains as an instrument of his power alike in the original territory of Marhatta dominion and in the portions of the fallen empire over which he asserted or had obtained direct or practical authority. We must now pass to the other side of India, and consider the nature of the sovereignty of the Moghals. 185 CHAPTEE IX THE SOVEEEIGNTT OF THE MOGHALS ' By the theory of the Muhammadan law,' says Elphinstone (' History of India,' p. 482), 'the ruler of the faithful should be elected. by the congregation, and might be deposed for any flagrant violation of the precepts of the Koran ; but in practice the king's office was hereditary and his power ab- solute.' Elphinstone further explains that the king was con- sidered bound to observe the Muhammadan law, but that there was no authority which could enforce his obedience to it, and that ' when he was determined to persevere there was no remedy short of rebellion.' A sort of common law, however, ' not derived from the Koran but from the custom of the country and the discretion of kings,' the existence of great officers and departments of state, and of village and other rural institutions were doubtless checks upon the royal prerogative. It is certain that the sovereign could and did interfere in the decisions of courts of justice. The emperors, like the rajas, were regarded as a sort of ultimate court of appeal in cases of every description, judicial and others. And while the emperor was at the apex of power in his own realm, he was entirely independent of any other authority. Eajas, as we have seen, were frequently tributary without loss of internal sovereignty. The Delhi emperor was tributary to no one. He held by right of conquest and right of descent. It is said that Mahmiid of Ghazni, who possessed but a small part of India, received a letter from the Khalif of Baghdad congra- tulating him upon his successes against the infidels ; and more than two centuries later Muhammad Tughlak, undoubtedly an Indian emperor, went through the form of acknowledging the sovereignty of the nominal Khalif in Egypt, and solicited investiture from him. But this is mentioned by Elphinstone as the whim of a man who was probably in some degree insane. I have traced no similar act on the part of any later 186 OUB INDIAN PKOTECTOKATE emperor ; and I think it may be safely said tliat the Delhi empire, from the middle of the fourteenth century onwards up to the time of its fall, was not even theoretically dependent on any other power. The position of the emperor was thus much more the result of what he found practicable and of what was expected of him in the country than of any application, as constitu- tional principles, of the doctrines of Muhammadan law. It was indeed the application of one such doctrine, the re- imposition of the jizia or poll-tax on infidels, which contri- buted in the days of Aurangzib to the approaching dissolu- tion of the empire. The emperor may, I think, be considered as holding the place of a raja, who was also a rdjadhirdj, that is, who not only directly ruled his own territories, but also received the submission or tribute of other dependent kings. One continual element of weakness was the absence of any fixed rule of succession. ' The Koran,' says Colonel Wilks, ' recognises no rule of inheritance to kingdoms ; and although the succession of the firstborn seems among Muhammadans, as among most other sects, to have been considered as the order of nature, the sword is nevertheless the only legal arbiter universally acknowledged.' The whole history of the Moghal empire at the height of its strength illustrates the truth of this observation. The sickness or death of the reigning emperor was almost uniformly the signal for an internecine contest among his sons. Notwithstanding the checks imposed by the custom of the country, the general frame of the imperial government difiered, or perhaps I should say was meant to differ, in some important respects from any Hindu model. In Hindu go- vernments ofiice was usually hereditary ; under the Moghals it was a matter of personal appointment in the case of the more important posts, though the hereditary claims of the minor rural ofiicials were recognised by their Moghal masters. The sipah salars, afterwards called suhaddrs, of the great pro- vinces or suhahs into which the empire was divided, were fre- quently changed ; and the emperors were as well acquainted as are the governors of our own provinces with the expediency of transferring local officers from one post to another as a means of escaping an official difficulty or bringing about an official improvement. The Hindu aristocracy, the Br^hmans and Edjpiits of high position, are an aristocracy of tribe and birth ; the new aristocracy, if such it can be called, created by the Muhammadan emperors, was an aristocracy of office. THE SOVEEEIQNTT OF THE MOGHALS 187 -No doubt the sons of distingijjslied men obtained important appointments, and provinces and great commands were habitually bestowed upon princes of the blood. Edjpiit dependent princes were also, as I have said, freely employed as governors and generals. But the mansah, the military rank which was conferred upon individuals by the direct act of the sovereign, did not pass by inheritance from father to son. On the death of a mansabddr — a commander, as already explained, nominally of so many thousand or hundred horse or even less, but actually furnishing some specific number, sometimes not a tenth of his nominal command — the em- peror conferred some rank — ■'■ generally ' (so Elphinstone tells us) ' a moderate one at first — on his son, and added a pen- sion if the father's merit entitled him to it.' Mansabddrs .often obtained assignments on the revenue of villages for the support of troops ; and on the weakness of the central authority jdgirs of this description may have become here- ditary. But where this happened there was a departure from accepted theory. It appears also that an officer ex- clusively employed on civil duties might hold the military rank of a mansabddr. As is well known there were fifteen subahs or provinces in Akbar's time, but the number varied with the fluctuation of the imperial boundaries. Of course a mere enumeration of the provinces does not go far towards any general idea of the Moghal empire in the days of its strength. But the provinces, as a rule, were smaller than ours ; and, with our vastly improved means of communication, we can doubtless afford to unite larger territories under single local govern- ments or administrations. Thus Bengal (including Orissa) formed one subah ; but Behar, which, with these two pro- vinces, is now under one lieutenant-governor, was then a separate charge. In the list in the 'Ayin Akbari ' Oudh stands as a separate subah ; and with us it was under a Chief Com- mander of its own tiU almost the other day. The subahs of Allahabad, Agra, and Oudh, taken together, correspond with the Lieutenant-Governorship of the North-West Provinces and Oudh. The Delhi, Lahore, and Mooltan subahs cover the ter- ritory of the Punjab ; Tatta coincides with Sindh, Mdlwa with the Central India, and Ajmir with the E4jputdna Agency. The position in Ajmir corresponded closely with that which now exists — that is to say, Ajmir itself, with some small territory in the neighbourhood, was directly administered, and the ad- joining states were under E^jput chiefs, feudatories, as already 188 OUB INDIAN PEOTECTOEATE said, of the empire. In M41wa, however, where there is now no direct administration, if we exclude the Jhdnsi division of the North- West Provinces, the position has been altered by the intrusive conquests of the Marhattas and the rise of the state of Bhopdl. Bundelkhand, then, as now, mostly held by old Edjpiit families, was tributary at the time of Akbar's accession. The boundaries of the suhah of Berar are difficult to trace ; but it probably included part of the Central Provinces as well as the Berar of the present day. Khandeish and Guzerat occupied what is now the northern part of the Bombay Presidency, excluding Sindh. It must not be supposed that these correspondences of area are at aU exact. I merely endeavour to give a slight sketch of the Moghal distribution of territory as compared with our own. The subah of Kashmir, including Kdbul, must have com- prised an enormous area ; but probably most of it was very loosely held. As to the character of the direct administration, the subaddr had command of the troops and administered justice, exercising powers of life and death. He was, in fact, in- vested with aU the executive powers of the state. It was part of his duty to increase cultivation, to befriend the in- dustrious husbandman, to appoint collectors of revenue, and, as we should say, to supervise public works, amongst which were the reservoirs, wells and watercourses, gardens and rest- hous6s for travellers. As the province was in charge of the subaddr, so several parganas (tracts more or less resembling our tahsils or sub-collectorates, but usually smaller) were in charge of the faujddr. The duties of this officer within his district were somewhat similar to those of the subaddr, whom he was bound to assist. It is particularly mentioned that he was to coerce refractory zaminddrs. There were separate judicial officers, the mir ddil and the kdzi, but they probably left to the executive branch cases affecting the safety of the state, the pubhc tranquillity, the land revenue, and the pos- session of land. The dmil or dmilguzdr appears to have ap- proached most nearlj^ to the modern district officer. He was charged with the collection of revenue and the management of the land, including its valuation, the grant of agricultural advances, the promotion of the cultivation of the waste, and some miscellaneous functions, the nature of which may be inferred from the contents of his monthly reports, which were to include 'the condition of the subjects, jdgirddrs, neighbours, and rebels, together with the market prices of THE SOVEREIGNTY OP THE MOGHALS 189 goods, the rent of houses and^i^shops, the state of dervishes and artificers, and every other remarkable occurrence.' The tepuhchi was a sort of revenue assistant to the dmil, and had to obtain information from the kdnungo as to revenues for past years and the nature and capacity of the country. In cities the kotwdl was an officer of pohce who saw to the pro- tection of the inhabitants and to the execution of minute regulations resembling municipal bye-laws. Where there was no kotwdl the duties of the post fell to be discharged by the dmil. There were other officials such as treasurers and clerks, and, of course, the village accountants. But further detail is not required. The territorial divisions of which subahs were made up were known hj various names, but the primary division was into sirkdrs, and of the sirkdr into paryanas. We are fami- liar with the term Northern Sirk4rs in the history of the Madras Presidency. These particulars are mainly taken from the 'Ayin Akbari,' but a further insight is afforded by the description given by Grant Duflf (vol. i. p. 294) of the manner in which the Moghals took possession of a conquered district at the time when the Deccani kingdoms of Bijapur and Golconda were succumbing to the mistaken policy of Aurangzlb. The Moghal conquests in the Deccan were arranged in six subahs ; there were several faujddrs to a subah, and the dmil of Akbar's time appears now to have been termed the khdlsa dewdn. Akbar abolished, or tried to abolish, the system of farming the revenues, and his instructions to dmils insist on their transacting business with each husbandman separately, thus anticipating by two and a half centuries the ryotwdri system of Madras. But these district dewdns of the Deccan farmed out the lands to deshmukhs and realised the amounts from them. They also collected the revenue alike in lands paying revenue to the state and in those of which the re- venue was assigned in jdgir. The tenure of the jdffirs granted to Moghal commanders in the newly acquired territories was seldom permanent ; they were usually for a term of years, on specified districts, for support of troops. The Marhatta commanders, on the other hand, had a permanent tenure; The faujddr was allowed about 25 per cent, of the govern- ment collections for the maintenance of the district establish- ment. In Bengal, about a cejitury later, before we had made the native government a mere instrument in our hand, the 190 OUE INDIAN PROTECTORATE raja or zaminddr of the district was the judge of the fauj- ddri or criminal court ; but he had to refer cases of a capital nature for the orders of the government at Murshidabad. He was also the judge of the civil court, and had been the judge of a special court for dealing with cases relating to the revenue or rent of lands ; but the jurisdiction was trans- ferred to a district deputy of the dewdfi or revenue minister at headquarters. This distribution of judicial business under the heads of faujddri or criminal, dewdni or civil, and mdl or revenue, has lasted to the present time. I have frequently used the expression zaminddr, and it is now proper that I should define it. In the Punjab zaminddr means simply a peasant proprietor, generally a member of one of the land-holding tribes who possess the country parcelled out amongst village communities. In the Gonda district of Oudh there are village zaminddrs who differ from the zdminddrs of the Punjab, because their tenures appear to have usually originated in the grant of the r4ja's rights over groups of villages. In the absence of any rule of primo- geniture the expanding families of these grantees found it necessary to take to cultivation. There are also village zaminddrs of Benares, referred to in the Bengal regulations of 1795, and identified by the authors of the Fifth Eeport with the headman of villages in other parts of India. And in the official parlance of British India zaminddr means a person with whom a permanent settlement has been made, or who has acquired an estate permanently settled under the Bengal or Madras regulations. Not one of these meanings is that which the word conveys when the zaminddr is con- sidered as one of the institutions of the Moghal empire. Apart from feudatory Edjput states and others that were tributary, there were in most provinces of the Moghal empire Hindu chiefs who retained hereditary jurisdiction ; ' the most submissive of this class,' Mountstuart Elphinstone tells us ('History,' p. 485), 'paid their revenue and furnished the aid of their troops and militia to the governor ' {i.e. the suhaddr), ' and were subject to his control in cases where he thought it necessary, but were not interfered with in the ordinary course of their administration. The most independent only yielded a general obedience to the government, and afforded their aid to keep the peace ; but these last were confined to strong countries, or large tracts bordering on a province.' These half-subdued chieftains were sometimes the descendants of ruling families who had sought refuge in THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE MOGHALS 191 hills or wilds when Hindu di^n^'Sties were overturned by Muhammadan conquests ; sometimes tribal chiefs of savage or semi-savage communities never brought under real con- trol ; sometimes the governors and officers of broken Hindu kingdoms who had asserted a precarious independence when aggression, strong enough to destroy but not to rule, had been followed by confusion and anarchy. Such were some of the zaminddrs of the empire ; ' and the theory was that they collected the revenue, both what they could be made to pay and what they were permitted to retain, on behalf of the government. In the ' Ayin Akbari ' the zaminddrs whom the faujddr was instructed to coerce when necessary were in general of these descriptions— men holding a fort or forts of their own, and with a rough militia, theoretically part of the imperial forces, but often as likely to be employed against them as with them. To these classes must be added farmers of the revenue, employed to carry on administration from motives variously corrupt, of greed on the part of govern- ment or its servants, or of reckless and cynical dislike of trouble, or sometimes, less ignobly, from the sheer impracti- cability of getting in revenue in any other way. The farmers might be petty rajas, no longer sovereign, and more or less ousted from their domains, compromising the theory of their complete dispossession by a sort of heavy quit-rent to the governor ; or they might be hereditary Hindu officials of the country side, like the deshmukhs of the Marhatta country, who, we have seen, were sometimes made revenue contractors, and are identified by Grant DuflF with the zaminddrs of Bengal. Or, again, the worst kind of farmer might be a mere moneyed man, some merchant who took over the business of oppression as a trade to fill his purse. This does not, of course, exhaust the list. Court favourites, successful officials, and generally persons of influence might obtain the appoint- ment of zaminddr. The emperors, no doubt, afiected to apply the name of zaminddr to the feudatory or tributary chiefs ; for instance, to the Punjab Hill rajas and to the rajas of Tanjore and Trichinopoly. But it is well to distinguish between chiefs or rajas who were sovereign in their own territories and paid tribute, and zaminddrs proper, who were, by appointment officers of the empire, paid revenue, and were remunerated for the trouble of collection by a per- centage on the revenue or by grants of land, or by both. As time went on the general duties of the office became well defined. Besides paying the revenue, the zaminddr 192 OUR INDIAN PEOTECTOEATE undertook to increase cultivation, prevent robberies and murders, make good stolen property, keep high roads in repair, and refrain from unauthorised exactions. Like other men, he seldom acted up to the ideal that was set before him. The article under the head Zamindae in the glossary to the Fifth Eeport prepared by Sir Charles Wilkins, the orientalist, though mainly applicable to Bengal, wiU serve as a summary of this subject: — A zaminddr, he says, is 'an officer who, under the Muhammadan Government, was charged with the superintendence of the lands of a district financially considered, the protection of the cultivators, and the realisation of the government's share of its produce, either in money or kind ; out of which he was allowed a com- mission, amounting to about 10 per cent., and occasionally a special grant of the government share of the produce of the land of a certain number of villages for his subsistence caUed ndnkdr. The appointment was occasionally renewed ; and as it was generally continued in the same person so long as he conducted himself to the satisfaction of the ruling power, and even continued to his heirs, so in process of time and through the decay of that power and the confusion which ensued, hereditary right, at best prescriptive, was claimed, and tacitly acknowledged, till at length the zaminddrs of Bengal in particular, from being the mere superintendents of the land, have been declared the hereditary proprietors of the soil, and the before fluctuating dues of government have, under a permanent settlement, been unalterably fixed in perpetuity.' The term ndnkdr, from the Persian ndn bread, and kdr, business, literally bread for work, was applied also to assign- ments of land or revenue made for the subsistence of village or pargana officers. Besides these grants for subsistence there were throughout the empire many other land revenue assignments, under a great variety of names in different parts of the country. Most of these could be brought under the heads of religious or charitable endowments or of service grants, like the jdgirs granted on the condition of providing a certain number of troops when required. The authors of the Fifth Eeport trace the oflace of zaminddr itself as far back as the time of the Hindu rajas. They say it originally went by the name of chaudari, which was changed by the Muham- madans for that of krori or collector of a kror of dams (Es. 250,000) in consequence of the land being divided into charges yielding that amount ; and it was not, they represent. THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE MOGHALS 193 till a late period of the Muharojaadan Government tliat the term hrori was superseded by that of zaminddr. But it seems quite clear from the manner in vfhich zaminddrs are spoken of in the ' Ayin Akbari' and other evidence, as, for in- stance, the information given in the Fifth Eeport itself regard- ing the zammiiars of the Northern Sirkdrs, that the zaminddri status originated in other ways besides the conversion of the old Hindu chaudaris into Muhammadan officials. On what was really Hindu in the status of the emperors something more remains to be said. The evidence of Abul Fazl, a highly esteemed officer of the latitudinarian Akbar, is perhaps open to some suspicion on such a point ; but it is worth mentioning that in the exordium of the ' Ayin Akbari,' after enumerating the four kinds into which the people of the world may be distributed, namely, warriors, artificers and merchants, the learned, and husbandmen — a classification evidently suggested by the Edjpiits, Vaisyas, Brdhmans, and Sudras of the Hindus — ^he goeg on to describe the king as a person who puts each of these classes in its proper place. This entirely accords with the spirit of the Institutes of Manu, so rigidly conservative of the limits of caste ; and with the conception of the king in the Institutes as the protector of the several castes. The Institutes of Manu, now commonly described as a BrAhmanical account of Hindu institutions, as, in Br^hman- ical opinion, they ought to be, are accepted by Elphinstone as giving a correct view of those institutions in some remote age ; and in this estimate of their historical value we may be content to follow him. They obviously reflect Brdhman- ical ideas which prevailed in some part of the country during some far distant period long antecedent to Muham- madan supremacy. We may therefore usefuUy note that some of the ideas which they express were still more or less operative in the time of the Moghal empire, and indeed that some of them have lasted on right through that time to our own day. The king, according to Manu, must be a man of the military class, or, as we should now say, a EAjpiit. The emperors did exactly what a modern raja does whose pedigree is open to criticism ; they married into Edjpiit families. In the forefront of the duties of the king Manu places the administration of criminal justice — the king is indeed described as the god of criminal justice. To this day the exercise of criminal jurisdiction is popularly r^arded as the chief niark of governme»tal authority. The 194 OUE INDIAN PROTECTORATE hakim, the giver of orders, the local administrator, what- ever else he may be, is at all events a magistrate or a judge. The local distribution of officials, the distinction between civil and criminal justice and the division of public business amongst several ministers are all inculcated in Manu ; and all are features of the British system and were features of the system of the Moghals. The Institutes prescribe that the king shall appoint a lord of one town with its district, a lord of ten towns, a lord of twenty, a lord of a hundred, and a lord of a thousand. ' Let the lord,' it is said, ' of one town certify of his own accord to the lord of ten towns any robberies, tumults, or other evils which arise in his district and which he cannot himself suppress ; and the lord of ten to the lord of twenty. Then let the lord of twenty towns notify them to the lord of a hundred ; and let the lord of a hundred transmit the information himself to the lord of a thousand townships.' Do we not see here the zaminddr reporting to the dmil or faujddr, and the dmil or faujddr reporting to the subaddr ? Nay, at the present time does not the village headman report to the tahsUddr, the tahsUddr to the deputy commissioner, and the deputy commissioner to the commissioner of division? The lords of towns are to enjoy the produce of certain portions of land, very much as the village and pargana officials and zaminddrs had their ndnkdr and the subaddrs their jdgirs. There are to be superintendents for large towns, the forerunners, perhaps, of the Muhammadan city superintendents — the kotwdls. We see in the Institutes traces of taxes on petty shopkeepers and of forced labour — both of them things with which we have had to deal. The king, it is ordained, is to take ' of grain an eighth part, a sixth, or a twelfth, according to the difference of the soil and the labour necessary to cultivate it.' The principle of the land-revenue settlement made by the Hindu minister Todar Mai under Akbar was to ascer- tain the quantity of produce due to the government, and to commute it for a money payment ; and for this purpose lands were classed according to their fertility, and allowance was made for the expense of reclamation. Our own land revenue settlements proceed on a principle which is funda- mentally the same, though we have obscured it by describ- ing our due as a share of the rent instead of a share of the produce, and have rightly striven to avoid discouraging agricultural improvement. In the earlier days of our rule the question whether the THE SOVEKBIGNTY OF THE MOGHALS 195 king or the zaminddr was the proprietor of the soil was an absorbing matter of official controversy. The issue was reaUy a false one ; for in truth neither the king nor the zaminddr was the sole proprietor. Proprietary rights were in general shared between the king and the cultivator or immediate occupant; and the zaminddr was employed for poli- tical or administrative reasons to exercise certain rights of the king in an assigned tract of country. It is right, however, to note that the authorities for the opinion that the sovereign was the owner of the soil are arrayed by Mill (' History of India,' i. 308) ; and Wilks remarks that the European travellers who visited the court of Aurangzib in the latter part of the seventeenth century unanimously denied the existence of private landed property in India. Here, as in many other difficulties, I seem to have found precisely the clue which I wanted in Mr. Benett's report on the Gonda district of Oudh. From the proximity of Oudh to the seat of the empire and the long duration of native rule under the protectorate, that province is likely to supply good evidence of the working theory of the Moghals. The Nawdbs of Oudh were originally subaddrs or governors of a province under the Delhi emperor. The theoretical posi- tion of the Muhammadan government of Oudh ' was accu- rately formulated,' says Mr. Benett (p. 53), 'by the maxim' that the state was the sole zaminddr ; the problem was how to reduce this to practice, in spite of the existence of a numerous and powerful body of zaminddrs already in posses- sion.' The zaminddrs already in possession were the old rajas and the so-called village zaminddrs, to whom the rajas had assigned their rights. The rights claimed by the Moghals were therefore the ancient rights of the Hindu rulers of the country. These were the rights which they deputed their official zaminddrs to exercise on their behalf and in their interest ; and the case was the same whether they left an old raja in possession as zaminddr or talukddr, or put in a speculator. The emperors no doubt assumed the right of dealing with the waste, as is clear from the instructions to officers in the ' Ayin Akbari ' and the terms of the zaminddri sanad of appointment. When in the extensive plains of India one- third of the land capable of cultivation lay waste, it was unlikely that the power of government or its officers to make grants of the waste lands at pleasure would be called in question by anyone. I need not enter here on problems o 2 196 OUE INDIAN PEOTECTOEATE subsequently arising from pressure of the population on the soil, or where large tracts of country have been completely parcelled out by tribes, retaining tribal cohesion and settled in village communities. It is easy to see how, under such circumstances, a sense would be felt of property in the village waste ; and how, where that sense of property was felt, village boundaries, like the boundaries of petty principalities, under different conditions, would be well known and jealously guarded. Apart from the rights over the waste assumed by the emperors, the position seems to me to have been very accurately summed up in the answer made by Ghulam Husain Khan, the author of the ' Siydr- ul-Mutu4kharin,' to one of the interrogatories of Sir John Shore, afterwards Lord Teignmouth. The emperor, said this intelligent witness, the son of a N4zim of Behar, is not so far lord of the soil as to be able, consistently with right and equity, to sell or otherwise dispose of it at his mere wiU and pleasure. He is proprietor of the revenue, but he is not proprietor of the soil. Hence when he grants jdgirs (and other analogous tenures) he only transfers the revenue from himself to the grantee. Assuming that the revenue was a share of the crop commuted for a money payment — and we have seen that this was actually the case in the settlement made by Todar Mai under Akbar — ^these words substantially describe the status of a Hindu raja. It will be easily seen that they imply a joint proprietorship. I know of no stronger proof of the vitality of the old Hindu idea that the cultivator, duly meeting the demand of the state, must not be dispossessed of the land he occupies than the fact that in Bengal, after centuries of Muhammadan rule, after the old zaminddrs had been ousted in a wholesale way by one of the emperor's viceroys, and their successors had been ousted in an equally wholesale way by our sale laws, and we had omitted for about ninety years to give the needful pro- tection to the cultivator, we have been compelled to recognise by the legislation of 1885 the occupancy rights of settled ryots. After all, notwithstanding the immense variety in detail of forms of government, the political imagination of man- kind does not seem to be very fertile in the invention of radically distinct types ; or perhaps we should rather say that in the arrangements of states, as in the organisation of species, there are certain leading types of structure which underlie individual variations of form in vast groups or families. Thus in countries where the idea of representative THE SOVEKEIGNTY OF THE MOGHALS 197 government has fixed its hol^ we . see it regulating not merely sovereign assemblies, but also the governing bodies of colonies and dependencies, local and municipal boards and committees, and the innumerable companies and socie- ties which are formed on principles of voluntary association, for trade and political objects, for instruction, charity, relaxation, and the propagation of religion. So it is also with countries where administration is bureaucratic or cen- tralised, based on the principle of territorial charges assigned to or it may be inherited by a hierarchy of individual officers. In the Indian village the hereditary headman, the patel, lamharddr, or muhaddam, as he is variously called, is the principal executive functionary, and the karnam, or patwdri, the village accountant, is theoretically acquainted with all particulars relating to the occupation of the village lands, their capabilities, produce, and revenue, and the manner in which the produce is shared. For Marhatta dis- tricts, comprising a good many villages, similar functions, as we have seen, were discharged by the deshmukhs and deshpandyas. These were identified by Abul Fazl with the chaudaris and kdnungos of the Moghal provinces. The same distinction between police and general management on the one hand, and revenue affairs on the other, is per- ceptible in the. appointment of faujddrs and dmils, or of faiijddrs and local dewdns, for subdivisions of subahs ; and of nawdb ndzims and subaddrs, and principal dewdns for provinces. The zaminddr, it is true, united some of the functions of both faujddr and dviil. But he merely repre- sented an extremely old idea applied in a novel fashion. He stood in the place of the old petty tributary raja. Some- times he was such a raja by descent. Within his zaminddri he took the government dues, arranged for the cultivation of waste lands, and, so far as he acted up to his duties, protected the people. The Muhammadans, though they destroyed many principalities and ousted the rajas, or reduced them to merely ofiicial positions, did not invent verjr much. In the zaminddris they, copied the old Hindu rdj ; in other subordinate territorial charges they copied the pld hereditary village and rural offices of the Hindus. Natur- ally as foreigners and conquerors, they gave the most im- portant posts — as a rule, though not invariably — to nien of their own races and faith ; and they resisted the hereditary tenure of office, except in the lower ranks, where Hindus were in possession ; though in the end the hereditary prin- 198 OUE INDIAN PEOTECTOKATE ciple was too strong for them and led . to the peculiar status of the zaminddr, as we found hmi, and to the actual or substantial independence of the great provincial governors. We are now able to bring before our minds a general idea of the Moghal empire at the time of its vigour. It consisted of extensive provinces under high officers of the state, portioned out into districts and other subdivisions, administered by local officials, the higher authorities amongst them being appointed by government, while the village officers held by the hereditary tenure which had come down from Hindu times. In addition to the provinces thus directly administered, there were a great number of dependent principalities of varying size and importance, not disputing the theory of their allegiance, but usually measuring their obedience by their strength or remoteness and other oppor- tunities of resistance, and thus exercising various degrees of power. In many hilly or broken parts of the country there were wild tribes, never really subdued, who not infrequent^ disturbed the neighbouring settled tracts by raids and depredations. In the directly administered territory the land revenue of large tracts was often alienated on conditions of military service, and other grants of land revenue were made as remuneration for services of a civil nature, and in support of religious persons, or of religious or charitable institutions. The village officers also enjoyed their heredit- ary assignments. Attempts were made, sometimes success- fully, to settle the land revenue for terms of years on a system which had prevailed in the country in Hindu times, and does not differ greatly in principle from that which is fol- lowed now. But in the difficulties which arose in the govern- ment of so vast and various an empire resort was often had to that conclusive proof of administrative incapacity or indifference, the adoption of the plan of farming the revenue ; and in many parts of the country the administration, such as it was, came to be in the main carried on by the zaminddrs whose status and functions have been described. If Aurangzib, instead of first undermining and then over- turning the Muhammadan states of the Deccan, had brought them into the imperial system, as a bulwark against the rising Marhatta power, the empire thus composed might have had a longer existence. It was, however, dismembered during the course of the eighteenth century by the incursions and conquests of tlie Marhattas, the invasions of Nddir Shah and Ahmad Shah.Durani, the turbulence of the Sikhs, and THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE MOGHALS 199 the rebellions of the provincial governors. "We thus received a shattered framework of the pattern sketched above ; and in putting together the pieces on a new model we have retained a good deal of what is old. Now, as then, the empire is con- stituted of great provinces officially administered and of de- pendent states exercising various degrees of sovereignty. In the directly governed territory there are still in many places large jdgirs and other assignments of land revenue. The zaminddrs, changed into proprietors of permanently settled land, still survive, but without administrative functions. The Governors, Lieutenant-Governors, Chief Commissioners, and Governor-General's Agents have taken the places of the subaddrs, the district officer has superseded the dmil. The villages with their petty officers live on. The Mnungo, after being abolished as useless in Bengal, has been revived else- where and made much of as part of the latest revenue policy of the government of India. The Boards of Eevenue and Finan- cial Commissioners may be compared with the old provincial dewdns ; in the supreme government itself the secretary in the revenue department may be fairly enough described as the head kdnungo of the empire. The Foreign Office is known as the munshi khdna, a name that may be said to show its con- nection with the mir munshis or foreign ministers of native states. It is hardly necessary to add that in some matters — in the recognition and application of principles, in precision of ideas distinguishing and conferring or acknowledging sovereign or delegated powers, in the discriminating defini- tion of responsibilities, in the automatic co-operation of departments and local authorities, which is efficient in pro- portion to the excellence of official discipline, in military strength, and in the command of the country derived from railways and telegraphs and other public works — between the present and the past there can be no comparison. 200 OUR INDIAN PEOTECTOKATE CHAPTEE X INDIAN INSTITUTIONS AND FEUDALISM Almost everywhere in the India of our predecessors we see the land as the basis of political institutions. If I am asked why sovereignty was territorial or tending to become so, why it was based on the land, and why it often included some vague notion of suzerainty, the most general answer I could give would be to say that the Indian evidence I am about to set forth seems to confirm the remark of Bishop Stubbs that, though feudalism was of distinctly Frank growth, the principle that underlies it may be universal. In previous chapters I have avoided as much as possible the discussion of the numerous cases where some intermediate authority was interposed between the ruler and the people, because I wished to take first the simpler cases where the nature of the tie between prince and peasant was particularly clear. Here, however, we shall frequently have to encounter the more difiicult analysis of complicated facts which were the Indian substitutes for sub-infeudation or the formation of fiefs. And as we follow that analysis I hope it will be sufficiently proved that, though there was not anywhere in India a completed feudal system, there were, in almost every part of the country, strong tendencies making for feudalism, or, if I may say so, for various types of feudalism, the types differing from one another in diff*erent regions. Towards the end of the last century Mr. Lionel Place was the officer in charge of that part of the possessions of the East India Company on the Madras coast which now forms the Chingleput district. In the course of a well- known report published in the collection of papers on mirdsi right he writes, on June 6, 1799: 'Were I called upon to define the term mirdsi and its properties, I think it bears.aa exact analogy to a fee. I would call mirdsi a freehold estate of inheritance, and a mirdsiddr a tenant in fee simple, hold- ing of a superior lord on condition of rendering him service. INDIAN INSTITUTIONS AND FEUDALISM 201 His lord is the sirkdr (or gov^nment), his estate the usu- fructuary right of the soil, and the service he owes, a renter of a stated portion of the produce of his labour.' The elder Mill is extremely severe upon a somewhat similar application of feudal terms. In 1773, as a part of the long series of dis- creditable occurrences which culminated in the imprisonment and death of the governor, Lord Pigot, the officers of the Madras Presidency attacked and took Tanjore. The dis- possessed Eaja of Tanjore had assigned the seaport town of Nagore to the Dutch as security for money lent to him. An excuse was sought to oust the Dutch, and it was argued that, as the Eaja of Tanjore held his lands of the Nawdb of Arcot in fee, he could not, agreeably to the feudal system which, it was said, prevailed all over India, alienate any part of his country to any other power without the consent of his liege lord, the ruler of the Carnatic. On this, James Mill observes that such an idea as that of land held in fee could hardly enter into the mind of a native Indian, and that such a thing as a feudal system or a liege lord never had a moment's existence in India, nor was ever supposed to have, except by a few pedantic and half-lettered Englishmen, who knew little more of the feudal system than the name. Colonel Tod, however — who was anything but a pedant, and studied the European part of his subject in Montesquieu and Gibbon's miscellaneous writings and Hallam — persists, with an express acknowledgment of the danger of seeming resemblances, in describing the Edjpiit system as a ' pure relation of feuds,' and devotes five chapters of his invaluable work to a sketch of a feudal system in E4jputdna. Mountstuart Elphinstone, also, after explaining that the Marhattas had fiefs but no feudal system, goes on to say that it is impossible not to give the name of feudal to the institutions of the Edjpiits. ' With them,' he says, 'the founder of a state, after reserving a demesne for himself, divided the rest of the country among his relations, according to the Hindu laws of partition. The chief to whom each share was assigned owed military service and general obedience to the prince, but exercised unlimited authority within his own lands. He, in his turn, divided his lands on similar terms among his relations, and a chain of vassal chiefs was thus established, to whom the civil govern- ment, as well as the military force of the country, was com- mitted.' "With characteristic insight Elphinstone adds: ' This plan differs from the feudal system of Europe as being founded on the principle of family partition,' Finally, Sir 202 OUR INDIAN PROTECTOEATE Alfred Lyall (' Asiatic Studies,' pp. 211-13), with admirable force and clearness, points out how and why Colonel Tod was wrong. What held together Edjpiit political society was the tie of blood, not the tie of contract as between vassal and lord ; and the institutions described were by origin primitive and, in fact, prse-feudalic. In the comparison of feudalism with Indian political insti- tutions these passages show very clearly phases of thought which may often be successive. On first examination of some part of the chain of relations linking the Indian peasant with the prince or his representative, and the prince with the paramount power, we are prone enough to assume in what we discover identity with things we have known or heard of in Europe. Presently we find out our mistake, condemn our fancied analogies as wholly unreal, and perhaps are even tempted to believe that it is positively mischievous to try to decipher any analogy. In the end, we probably come to the conclusion that the likeness which first attracted our attention is more than superficial; that there are sound analogies of a certain kind, but that they differ very materially from those of which we originally imagined the existence. The degree of value which we are likely to attach to dis- coverable analogies depends a good deal on the view we take as to the object of historical studies. History itself has a growth of its own ; the annalist gives place to the literary historian, who intersperses narrative with general reflections, or makes it the means of intellectual enjoyment by the attractions of picturesque description and style. In its later development history becomes philosophical ; assigns greater prominence to the causes of characters and occurrences ; deals with the influence of ideas and the general political condition of nations at different epochs ; and attempts to portray the origin and nature of civilisation in the progres- sive societies of the West. Then, as in many other depart- ments of research, the whole field is seen to be too wide for the span of individual effort ; and the co-operation on which further progress depends is secured by the specialisation of study. Extraordinary elaboration is bestowed upon com- paratively limited periods of national growth ; constitutional history is more decisively separated from political history ; numerous works appear which are professedly or practically histories of, or historical studies upon, philosophy and intel- lectual development, art and architecture, language and INDIAN INSTITUTIONS AND FEUDALISM 203 literature, commerce, agriculti^e and laud tenures, laws, customs, and institutions. All this development is going on with prodigious rapidity in our own day in an intellectual atmosphere charged with ideas generated by the investiga- • tions of physical science. We thus begin to feel that the old notions of the objects of history are changing ; that history may ere long be transformed into a handmaid of science ; and that the materials provided by historians may be used for the construction of theories of social progress. We are looking, in fact, for a new unity of mankind founded on laws of human development believed to be common to the whole race. We are, perhaps, prepared to accept the ideas that there are successive phases in the passage from mere savagery to civilisation ; that these phases are ascertainable ; and that they will show a certain general resemblance to each other in whatever continent they occur. At the same time, if this is our view, we should not suppose that, in the history of every society, every possible stage of progress will be distinctly marked, or that the growth in any particular instance will in every detail exactly resemble the growth in any other. On the contrary, we should provisionally con- jecture that it is with societies as with other organisms ; similar circumstances will produce similar capacities, and preserve them by the law of the survival of the fittest ; but no two societies will be exactly alike ; and particular insti- tutions, Uke organs in the animal frame, will be fully deve- loped in one case, rudimentary in another, atrophied in a third, and in a fourth perhaps wholly absent. StiU. these varieties wiU not be such as to leave us in a wilderness of single instances ; and we should believe that as inquiry advances we shall see more and more clearly the types to which the varieties of social growth tend to conform. Taking such a view, we should neither expect to find the exact parallel of feudal institutions anywhere in India, nor should we be surprised to find institutions so nearly resem- bling those of feudal Europe that the likeness has deceived even learned investigation. But on any theory of human society which admits that the same causes under difierent conditions will not produce the same effects, it is easy, after reading what has been written by Sir Henry Maine and Sir Alfred LyaU, to point out precisely why it is that what we may term the nascent feudalism of India does not and cannot exactly resemble feudalism properly so called. I have not been able to find any compendious.de-- 204 OUR INDIAN PEOTECTOEATE scription of feudalism better or shorter than that given by Bishop Stubbs in his Constitutional History ; I will there- fore quote it in this place. ' In the form,' he says (vol. i. pp. 251, 252), which feudalism ' has reached at the Norman conquest it may be described as a complete organisation of society through the medium of land tenure, in which from the king down to the lowest landowner all are bound together by obligation of service and defence, the lord to protect his vassal, the vassal to do service to his lord, the defence and service being based on and regulated by the nature and extent of the land held by the one of the other. In those states which have reached the territorial stage of development the rights of defence and service are supple- mented by the right of jurisdiction. The lord judges as well as defends his vassal ; the vassal does suit as well as service to the lord. In states in which feudal government has reached its utmost growth the political, financial, judicial, every branch of public administration is regulated by the same conditions. The central authority is the mere shadow of a name.' It is probable that a full explanation of the origin of this complex system of proprietary, personal and public law has yet to be written. But it is certain that, though the spread of feudalism was at one time rapid, its growth was extremely slow. It was historically the product of the Frankish con- quest of Eomanised Gaul ; and the events and circumstances which gradually gave it shape extend from at least the fifth to the tenth century. Indeed, if we endeavour to separate into its component materials the amalgam formed in these ages by the fusion of customs and institutions of diverse origin, we see that the materials of feudalism date back to far earlier times. Teutonic usage itself exhibited a spontaneous impulse towards feudal arrangements. The history of the Eoman law, which was combined with the barbaric customs, carries us back to a tribal stage of society comparable with, if not similar to, the social formations described by Caesar and Tacitus, or those in Ireland and Scotland which have been encrusted with a new political surface in very recent historical times, or others again now open to view in many parts of our Indian empire. The old personal relations between chiefs of warrior bands and their immediate fol- lowers, the Eoman law of patron and client, the practice of commendation, the conquests and colonisations of German tribes in their own country, the military tenure of the INDIAN INSTITUTIONS AND FEUDALISM 205 Eoman veterans on the river Rentiers of the empire, the great Eoman estates cultivated by gangs of slaves, the spread of primogeniture, and the grants of immunity uniting the possession of land with the right of judicature — all these elements may have had their part in the resulting combina- tion. It is one thing to perceive some of the ingredients into which feudalism may be resolved; it is another far more difficult thing to say which of the ingredients is Eoman and which barbaric in origin. But it is safe to assert that nothing in feudalism which clearly belongs to the influence of late Eoman law could possibly appear, as a consequence of that cause, in the political institution's of India before British rule. In any feudalising tendency which these institutions may show, that influence at least is entirely absent. Tor this reason alone the nascent feudaUsm of India could not precisely resemble the perfected feudahsm of the West. And there is another influence which has had no share in the formation of Indian political institutions, but which powerfully affected society in the centuries when European feudalism was growing, and that is the influence of the Christian Church. It was natural that the protection of the Church should be sought in days of tumult and anarchy ; it was consonant with the principles of the Church that slavery should at least be mitigated. Much more than this, the Church preserved the Latin language and contri- buted to the preservation of the idea of formally enacted law. The three things which most clearly distinguish the inchoate feudahsm of India from the perfected feudahsm of Europe are the absence of the influence of Eoman law, the absence of the influence of the Church, and the absence of the idea that society ought always to be governed by enact- ments of some kind. This idea, I think, was a heritage from the Eoman empire ; and the Church was probably a principal agent in preserving it. Though the growth of institutions of a feudal type cannot have followed the same course in India and in Europe, be- cause the beginnings of feudalism in India were not sub- jected to the influences of the late Eoman law and the Chris- tian Church, it is not safe to use coincidence between Indian and Teutonic customs as a touchstone to discriminate between what is barbaric and what is Eoman in the composition of Western feudalism. We may be tempted to argue that, be- cause a given practice is certainly Indian, therefore it is not 206 OUK INDIAN PEOTECTOEATB Eoman ; and that if it is part of feudalism, it must have been imported into the feudal system by the German conquerors of the empire. But the argument is not sound ; for early Eoman customs might coincide with Indian customs, and, surviving in the late Eoman law, might reach feudal Europe by that route. The coincidence, however, of a Teu- tonic and Indian custom wiU always suggest hesitation in admitting the purely Eoman origin of the feudal institution in which the custom is embodied. The fact is that such coincidences really point to probable similarities in modes of social advance at least as wide as the spread of Indian and European races ; and these indications are strengthened where the analogy can include the early Eoman law. I take it that for those who believe that the principles of evolution apply to human society the special value of the Indian evi- dence consists in its capacity for pointing the way towards general laws of human development, or, at aU events, to laws of growth common to the most remarkable societies of the East and West. We may regard feudalism from the separate points of view of the jurist or economist on the one hand, or of the constitutional historian on the other. We may look into the interior of the manor or fief and endeavour to decipher the condition of the peasantry and their relations to the seigneur or lord of the manor ; or we may inquire how feudalism determined the relations of vassals and suzerains ; how the great fiefs were related to one another and to the central power ; in what sense feudalism supplied for a time the place afterwards fiUed in Europe by international law and consti- tutional law. Or, again, we may take some of the leading characteristics of feudalism, such as tenure by military ser- vice, some of the weU-known feudal incidents or the general scheme of basing all public and some personal relations on property in land. From aU these points of view India will supply us with analogies. The comparison of the manor with the Indian village community has been carried to a certain length by Sir Henry Maine ; and, though more re- mains to be said on that subject, this treatise is not the place for any full discussion of it. In Indian history and in India of the present day tenures abound in which one element is the condition of military service ; we may instance the Muhammadan jdgirs of the Deccan, the interior arrange- ments of the Marhatta Confederacy, and of some of the Punjab Hill states, and the tenures of the Edjpiit thdkurs or INDIAN INSTITUTIONS AND FEUDALISM 207 barons ; but tenure on condition of military service does not by itself make feudalism. The supposed similarity of certain Edjpiit customs to the feudal incidents of relief, escheats, aids, and wardship was one of the circumstances that misled Tod when he made his positive assertions as to feudalism in Eaja- sthan. The comparison of the native states of India with the pr£e-feudal or feudal states of Europe has not, so far as I know, been regularly attempted ; but it is perhaps one of the next objects which should engage attention in the process of illus- trating problems of Western history by experience gained in the East. At one end of the scale is the village community or the Eoman villa or farm, changing in Europe in.to the manor, and then finally melting away in the vast landed estates of an existing aristocracy. At the other end of the scale are the gradually consolidated monarchies of France and England, and the great empires of Charlemagne and the Moghals, of Eome and Great Britain. Between the village or manor and the monarchy or empire stand the dukedoms, the counties, the actually or nominally dependent princi- palities, or others destined to dependence or absorption in course of time, the Saxon kingdoms vaguely acknowledging the supremacy of a Bretwalda, the counts of Flanders, Cham- pagne, and Vermandois, the dukes of Normandy, Brittany, Burgundy, and Aquitaine regarding themselves as the peers of Hugh Capet, the Edjpiit states paying tribute or rendering service to the Delhi empire, the rebellious governors of that empire affecting to legitimatise revolt by the language of submission, and the hundreds of protected and dependent states forming part of that highly complex result of the fusion of modern ideas with archaic or quasi-mediseval customs which is known by the name of the British empire in India. In this wide field of research I shall only attempt to follow up a few topics of interest not too remotely connected vdth the general subject of this book. I shall first mention certain Indian analogies to some of the constituent elements of feudalism in the interior structure of the manor or fief ; and I shall then compare at some length various Indian grants of rights over land with the benefices, that is, with fiefs in their early form before feudalism was fully developed. The next step will be to point to some Indian practices quite distinct from commendation, but nevertheless producing or tending to produce similar political results ; and lastly I shall sum up some results of feudal tendencies in India and 208 OUR INDIAN PKOTECTORATE briefly indicate in what relation they stand to our Indian protectorate as it now exists. In the account of the Punjab Hill raja extracted in a previous chapter from Sir James Lyall's Kdngra Settlement Eeport it will have been noticed that the raja is described as, in a certain sense, the manorial lord of his whole country, and that the regular landowners, no less than the artisan classes, were liable to be pressed into service of some kind, military or menial. In looking more closely into the tenures in the part of the country to which this description applies — that is to say the Kdngra Hills and Kulu — we find a great deal of evidence which may be usefully considered in connec- tion with Sir Henry Maine's book on ' Village Communities,' and Mr. Seebohm's excellent work on the ' English Village Community.' In particular, in many of the territories far back in the Himalayas, some of them bordering on Thibet, in parts of Chamba, in Bangdhal, in Kandwar, in Spiti and Lahaul, in parts of Laddkh, in Niirpur and JaswAn, a tenure or traces of it have been noticed which may be described as a family holding of an allotment from the arable lands. In Kulu the theory appears to have been that each head of a household was entitled, in return for rent or service due to the state, to a lot or share of arable land sufficient to support one household. In Bangdhal, where we probably have the primitive type of the tenure, it is known as a vand. Each household has an equal share in each of the patches of culti- vation which are scattered over the steep hill sides and made up of small terraced compartments. To ensure equality the share is taken in several little plots situated in every corner of the cultivated patch ; and if the patch was injured by landslip, flood, or avalanche it was re-divided by lot. The people of the village are not of one stock. They do not hold on ancestral shares like, for instance, the old VellAler mirdsiddrs of the Madras Presidency. In language which has now become popular, the village is not a mark. Under the rajas the vands were held almost rent free, in considera- tion of the holder furnishing one man for each vand for military service. The people, however, were frequently im- pressed to carry loads. The vands were not divided among sons ; the elder sons went out into the world or were pro- vided by the raja with other vands. The youngest son stayed at home to succeed his father. In Kulu the tenure was called a jeola. Usually half of it was held revenue-free in lieu of military service ; but sometimes a family holding only INDIAN INSTITUTIONS AND FEUDALISM 209 one jeola furnished two men for service and got the whole jeola revenue-free. Here also the lot was handed down undi- vided from generation to generation and the paternal house and land passed to one son only. Sir James Lyall notices in his report that this tenure bears some resemblance to the Saxon hide, and adds that it was probably popular in origin, ' the theory of the land belonging to the raja being superinduced, as the right of the feudal lord was in England.' The tenure is certainly like the hide in so far as that was originally the normal holding of a free family. It also resembles the hide in being used as a unit of assessment, both for military service as above explained and, when the Moghals asserted themselves in the hills, to a certain extent by the officers of the Moghal empire for purelv fiscal purposes. At all events in Jaswdn and elsewhere, Todar Mai, the already mentioned finance minister of Akbar, is said to have invented as a means of assessment the bher which paid twenty-six rupees and a small grain rent, and was nearly, though not quite, identical with the vand. The tradition is worth mentioning because it suggests that a Roman official making his assessment in Britain might easily take the family holding, which afterwards became the hide, as the handiest unit of assessment instead of the more usual unit of the jugum, that is, the area which was supposed to be ploughed by a single or double yoke of oxen. In the mode of descent the tenure resembles the servile virgate or yard-land, which, as defined by Mr. Seebohm, was ' the normal holding of the villanus with two oxen in the common plough of eight oxen — ^a bundle of mostly thirty scattered strips in the open fields.' But though in impartibility and in com- position from scattered plots the vand ot jeola and the virgate are alike, the vand or jeola is not a servile tenure. Mr. Seebohm relies much on the argument that the permanent succession, generation after generation, of a single holder to the indivisible bundle of strips called a yard-land or virgate seems to have implied the servile nature of the holding. The village communities taking equal lots would, he thinks, have made equal division among heirs. The virgate appears to have been kept undivided in the lord's interest ; he did not want more than one man at a time to till the allotment. It is at all events remarkable that we find the same indivisibility in a place where the tenure is undoubt- edly free. The jeolas of Kulu are held by Kanets, and by Brdhmans who have taken to the plough ; and the Zanets, p 210 OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE though, not a high caste, are not serfs, but the owners of an inheritance, a wdrisi, in the soil. The jeola is their property. Below them socially are the Ddghis, bound to menial ser- vice, but also owning property in the same way. Mr. Seebohm points out the connection between the tenure of the Saxon gebur or serf and the custom of his being provided by the thane with an outfit of which the most im- portant part was a yoke of two oxen. Possibly this clue, if followed up, might lead us back to the times when society ' was tribal and pastoral, and its wealth consisted almost entirely of cattle ; when, perhaps, as in the Irish tribe, the free tribesman by taking stock became the vassal or man of his chief, owing him not only rent but service and homage. However this may be, the jeola tenure appears to be entirely unconnected with the gift or loan of cattle. A class of people is, indeed, found in Kdngra who are employed to cultivate the lands of BrAhmans, or RAjpiits, or traders with ploughs and oxen furnished by the landholder. They are known by various names taken from the share of the gross outturn which they are allowed to retain. But these men are engaged for the year only and have no tenant right. The case is one of the beginnings of contract, not of a status arising out of any sort of commendation. The single succession in the jeola tenure may have originated in the equality of tribal families and the difficulty, as the families increased, of finding fresh allotments in a mountainous country where cultivation is restricted to the practicable slopes. But it was certainly manipulated by the Kulu rajas to serve their own purposes, to regulate and simplify the demands for rent and service, and to make these demands correspond with the amount of land held by difierent people. There are traces of impartibility of tenure in the Welsh tribe. On the death of the free owner of a family holding the heirs retained it jointly for three generations, and the homestead went to the youngest son, the others having new homesteads found for them on the family lands. If the Eomans when they came to settle on tribal lands in Britain found customs of this kind in existence, it is not hard to see that the officials administering the ager puhlicus and the owners of the villce into which some of the cultivated lands would be divided, might seize upon such customs and more or less authoritatively give them a new shape to suit their own views and interests as to the con- ditions of cultivation. The arguments of Mr. Seebohm are directed to show that INDIAJST INSTITUTIONS AND FEUDALISM 211 there is no room for the theory ^at the Saxons introduced everywhere free village communities on the system of the German mark, which afterwards sank into serfdom under manorial lords. The Kdngra evidence and a great deal of other evidence from other parts of India at least suggest the possibility that institutions of a manorial type with dis- tinctions not unlike those between the lord's demesne and the land in villenage, or, in Saxon times, between the thane's inland and the geneat-land, may arise in tribal territories, in which the early tribal tenures still prevail, and the later village community, settled on the land and held together by the tie of common descent, real or imagined, has not yet been developed. It has been supposed that in England the manorial group succeeded the village group, and that one element in the change was that the waste or common land of the community became the lord's waste. But that the waste, actually or potentially, belongs to the lord's domain, subject to the rights of pasture and gathering firewood, enjoyed by certain tenants, hardly differs, if allowance be made for the importance of other kinds of forest produce besides firewood in the Kdngra and Kulu Hills, from the theory of the Kdngra and Kulu rajas ; and one of the chief characteristics of that part of the country is the absence, in the interior of the hiUs, of the true village community found in great numbers and almost typical perfection in the adjoin- ing Punjab plains. I will not here pursue any speculations as to the origin of the Enghsh manor. If I were to do so I should probably be led to the conjecture that the Eomans like ourselves came .upon a variety of tenures in different places, some of them still purely tribal, some of them perhaps village holdings with a tribal and sectional connection of descent amongst the villagers ; and that the Eomans again like ourselves, by the application of their law and the strength of their grip upon society, crushed varying tenures into single types over great ranges of country. But any such conjectures apart, we can plainly see in the K4ngra and Kulu Hills not, indeed, feudalism itself, but many of the elements which go to make up feudalism. There seems no reason to reject the local tradition that the Edjpiits, BrAhmans and Khatris of these hiUs are the descendants of invaders or settlers from the plains, and that the Thdkurs, E4ttis, Kanets, and Girths are either indigenous in the hills or of mixed race and indigenous by the half blood. There are at least p 2 212 OUE INDIAN PEOTECTOEATE traces here of the conquest of race by race or of tribe by tribe that lies at the root of feudahsm. While tribal organ- isation still for many purposes prevails, the land has super- seded kinship as tlae basis of society. Military service is exacted in lieu of land rent ; and the unit of assessment — for military tenure, as shown by later money commutations, is really a form of taxation in kind — is, as in early Saxon times, the family holding. All these elements of feudalism co-exist or lately co-existed in a part of the country where, so far as is known, there never were any village communities, and where there never was any Eoman occupation, nor ever could have been any Eoman estates. I may add, with reference to the great share taken by the churches and monasteries in the process of European feudalisation, that the hill rajas freely alienated lands as endowments in perpetuity to temples and idols. The theory was that the raja divested himself of his lordship or proprie- torship and conferred it upon the idol or shrine, and the cultivators thenceforward paid rent and did service in respect of the alienated lands to the shrine, and not to the raja. I gather from Mr. Seebohm's work that in a some- what similar way when surrenders were made to the Church in the eighth century under the Alamannic laws, the old Eoman tributum, which appears to have been still payable to the Prankish king, was transferred from the king to the Church. It will not escape recollection that the idea of suzerainty was not absent in these hills, and that the rajas who were manorial lords might be grouped in circles more or less vaguely acknowledging some rather theoretical over-lordship of a chief of Jammu or Katoch Eaja of Kdngra. To this extent there was at least some semblance of the completion of the feudal hierarchy. But enough has been said on compara- tively minute details relating to an exceptional and out-of- the-way part of the country. It is time to look more broadly to India as it was in the period which just preceded the establishment of British supremacy. 213 CHAPTEE XI FEUDAL TENDENCIES IN INDIA In Europe tlie benefices whicli were in the end converted into fiefs were often in the first instance temporary holdings. Guizot maintains that, at all epochs when feudalism was forming, benefices are met with for every period^at will, for a term, for life, and in perpetuity — and he wiU not go further than to say that they were at first usually for life, and throughout tended to become, and at last were acknowledged to be, hereditary. I am about to compare the benefices with the jdgirs and zaminddris of India, and the first point in the comparison is that in the eighteenth century there are many instances of jdgirs of different periods of duration, and that some jdgirs and most zaminddris tended to become here- ditary. In the Marhatta country jdgirs were usually held on a permanent tenure, and some of them have become petty states under the protectorate. There were grants held by military chiefs on conditions of service, some of them from the time of the Muhammadan kings of the Deccan ; other grants enjoyed by the descendants of the original ministers of the Marhatta rajas, and continued under the rule of the Peshwas ; and, lastly, grants made by the Peshwas them- selves to Marhattas and Brdhmans. By the Sattdra treaty of 1819, the possessions of the jdg^rddrs^Nli\iYR the territories of the raja were guaranteed by the British Government, and there are now six chiefs, known as the Sattdra jdgirddrs, with territories of which the largest has an area of 885 square miles. These chiefs have not powers of life and death, and serious criminal cases, involving the punishment of death or transportation for life, are tried in a court over which a British officer presides in association with the jdgirddr. The grant of adoption sanads in 1862 to aU the ^aXXhca. jdgirddrs except one shows that they were regarded as possessing a measure of sovereignty. 214 OUE INDIAN PKOTECTOEATE To the south and east of the Marhatta country lay the Muhammadan kingdoms of Bijapur and Golconda. When these fell before the arms of Aurangzib in the last half of the seventeenth century, the Moghal commanders, as I have mentioned in a previous chapter, received from the newly acquired territories jdgirs, which were assignments for a term of years, on specified districts, for the support of their troops. The administration was entrusted to other ofiicers of the Moghal empire, the faujddrs and dewdns. The jdgirs of the Muhammadans were, however, more often granted for the lifetime of the holder, lapsing on his death to the state, though not infrequently renewed to his heir on payment of a fine, and sometimes specified to be hereditary assignments. In the absence of this specification the jdgir was considered to be held by a life tenure. Mr. J. Grant, in his ' Analysis of the Finances of Bengal' — one of the papers taken into consideration in making the Permanent Settlement — mentions, as the only heritable jdgir known in that province, the grant of a fargana to two doctors learned in the Muhammadan law. But in Bengal the greatest jdg'ir of all, assigned on 296 entire or broken par g anas in twenty-one of the thirty- four sirkdrs or districts into which the country was divided, remained under the management of the family of the JSTawdb- Ndzims for the full space of a century ; and in the successions which took place we see the working of a vague hereditary principle, and of the prevalent habits of usurpation. The story of this jdgir may be briefly told as an illustra- tion of the violence of the time and of the way in which independent power might be acquired by individuals. Jdfir Khan, a BrAhman by birth, who had been brought up in the Muhammadan faith, was appointed DewAn of Bengal when Azim-us-Sh4n, the grandson of Aurangzib, was viceroy of that province. After the death of Azim-us-ShAn, Jdfir Khan ac- quired the province for himself, partly by purchase, partly by resisting in the field two rival subaddrs, who were successively deputed from Delhi to supersede him ; but he did not entirely throw ofi'his allegiance, and continued to make the usual pay- ments to the emperor. His desire was to leave his power to his grandson Sarafrdz Khan; but on his death, in 1725, his son-in-law Shiija Khan, father of Sarafrdz, seized on the subadArship and obtained patents from Delhi. On the death of Shiija Khan, in 1739, SarafrAz Khan succeeded him, but was dispossessed and killed in an action with Ali Verdi Khan, who had been the deputy of his father in the govern- FEUDAL TENDENCIES IN INDIA 215 ment of Behar. . This jdgir was intended to defray a large part of the mihtary expenses of the government, the house- hold expenses of the nawdb, and the greater part of the civil charges. Other jdgirs in Bengal were assigned to the dew4n of the province and to the commander-in-chief of the empire for the support of their ranks of 4,000 and 6,500 horse ; to the faujddrs of the frontier provinces ; to twenty-one persons of inferior rank bound to perform military services when required to do so by the nAzim, each with a small established number of followers ; and, in small allotments, to certain religious and learned men for their subsistence. Eevenues were also assigned for a naval establishment of cruisers and boats to guard the coasts of Bengal, for a military establish- ment of guards and garrisons for the eastern frontier pro- vinces, and in Tipperah and Sylhet, for the expense of catch- ing elephants. It is noticeable that at one time the jdgirs assigned for the general service of the naw4b and for the support of the rank of the dewdn were transferred to fresh lands for financial reasons. ' The duchies and counties of the eighth and ninth cen- turies,' writes Bishop Stubbs, ' were still official magistracies, the holders of which discharged the functions of imperial judges or generals. Such officers were of course men whom the king could trust, in most cases Franks, courtiers, or kins- men, who at an earlier date would have been comites or antrvjstions, and who were provided for by feudal benefices. The official magistracy had in itself the tendency to become hereditary, and when the benefice was recognised as heritable the provincial governorship became so too.' Eeading this, and making allowance for variations in the working of similar tendencies in difierent continents, we almost seem to be reading an account of Indian jdgirs and zaminddris. I have traced nothing in India that is truly analogous to the comitatus, the chosen band of trusted de- pendents immediately surrounding the chief or king, that so largely influenced the growth of feudalism in England and was merged, on the Continent, in vassalage. The practice of entertaining bdrgirs, troopers supphed with a horse by the state or individuals, instead of silahddrs, who provide their horses and arms at their own expense, more nearly resembles the rudiments of a standing army substituted for a feudal militia than the old German gifts of horses, weapons, and food to the comrades of the chieftain. Depredators who made plunder 216 OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE the means of wealth, and wealth the means of military and then of territorial power ; leaders in the uprisings of in- digenous races and creeds against Muhammadanism brought by the sword from Afghanistan and Central Asia ; chiefs of mere banditti or of bands of free lances selling their services to territorial hereditary despots — all doubtless must have had some chosen folk around them. And the picture that Bernier draws of the omrah, the great nobles of the Delhi empire, in constant attendance at the emperor's daily durbdrs, and taking their turns of duty to watch his gate, though it wears a mediaeval look, is clearly no representation of the comitatus. In all this we see military association, combination for pur- poses of plunder or adventure, and the ceremonial of a settled government. We do not see a principle like that of the comitatus traceable through several ages and at length cul- minating in a territorial nobility. But it was in the ninth century that the empire of Charlemagne broke up ; and when the Moghal empire fell to pieces the stage of Indian history became fuU of Marhatta generals and Musalmdn governors, asserting prac- tical independence and establishing hereditary rights, while they continued to pay lip service and homage to a distant Peshwa or emperor. In Europe just before the great spread of feudalism which occurred in the tenth century, and in India just after the strong hand of the last of the great emperors had ceased to hold the reins of power, the transition was common from the province to the principality, from military leadership to more than semi-sovereign power, from delegated official authority to the exercise of substantial independence, covered, so far as the fiction might serve any practical pur- pose, by professed allegiance to a former superior. Through- out, it will be observed, both in India and in Europe, the land or the right to a share of its produce or revenue was the basis of political institutions. The analogies between the dissolution of the Moghal and the dissolution of the Karo- iingian power noticed by Sir Henry Maine hold good to a remarkable extent, not only in the social effects which pro- duced a vast number of petty principalities, but also in the actual process by which the change was effected. The Bengal ^^9'""'^ were given to supply both the military and the civil service of the country. Amongst the causes which led to the grant of benefices Guizot enumerates the practice of remunerating all sorts of services by the distribu- tion of large domains ; and Montesquieu notes that the counts JJ'EUDAL TENDENCIES IN INDIA 217 in the eighth century were equ^y civil and military officers, and that, in the ninth century, they had benefices annexed to their counties and had vassals under them. The jdgirs of the Moghals were, however, sometimes unconditional ; there were technical terms which distinguished jdgirs granted on condi- tions or for specified purposes from those which were exempt from conditions. The celebrated _;'(i^zV of Lord Clive was a siyur-ghdl or unconditional grant ; application may have been made for it on the ground that when the JSTawdb of Murshidabad obtained for Clive a high title from Delhi, no jdgir had been assigned for the support of the dignitj'^ ; but the jdgir was undoubtedly intended as a reward to Chve for his valuable services to the native government ; and it was not a military tenure, nor was it encumbered with any condi- tions as to services to be performed. So also, looking back to the tendencies towards feudahsm in Anglo-Saxon England, we find that the bestowal of folkland or public land by the king was made in consideration of past services, without giving rise to a new connection, like the later obligation of military service derived from the grant of a fief. The case of Chve's jdgir is interesting because it shows that the self-same lands could be granted both in jdgir and as a zaminddri. In December 1757 the East India Company obtained from the NawAb-NAzim of Bengal the grant of the zaminddri of the Twenty-Four Parganas, subject to the payment of the land revenue thereon asse.ssed. This grant was confirmed by a sanad from the Dew4n of Bengal made out in the next year ; and for the short period during which the zaminddri was in possession of the Company before the grant of Clive's yii^fr, this revenue was payable and was actually paid to the native government by the Company. The efiect of the jdgir grant was that the revenue became payable to Clive instead of to the Naw4b, Mir JAfir. As is well known, a claim was set up on the part of the Company to Clive's jdgir in addition to its own zaminddri ; and the dispute was com- promised by a ten-years tenure to Clive with reversion in perpetuity to the Company, aU being duly comfirmed by fresh sanads or written grants from the Nawdb and the Delhi emperor. The fact is a jdgir is the converse of a zaminddri, and a zaminddri the converse of a jdgir. In both cases an individual was interposed between the sovereign and the cultivator or peasant proprietor. If the middleman was a zaminddr, he had to pay over to the state the amount of the land revenue less his own remuneration for collecting it, 218 OUR INDIAN PEOTECTOEATE which might be assigned to him in money or land. If he was a jdgirddr, it was the right to receive the amount of the land revenue that constituted his tenure ; and he might have, and usually had, services to perform in consideration of this emolument. The administrative authority exercised by jdgirddr or zaminddr would vary with the purposes of the grant and the history of the connection between the inter- mediary and the lands which were the subject of it. The authority would be greatest where the beneficiary was the representative of a depressed or conquered line of rajas, or of old hereditary ofiicials who had been governors or deputies in times gone by ; or, again, where the weakness of the central power and the general turbulence of an unsettled society practically compelled every strong man to attempt independence. Either the jdgir or the zaminddri might be a sort of survival of sovereign or semi- sovereign rights. The zaminddri revenue might be the fullest tribute that exaction could extort from a conquered raja ; the jdgir might be an assignment for the support of a raja out of possession. One large class oi jdgirddrs in the Punjab at the present day consists of the representatives of the Cis-Sutlej chiefs who misbehaved in the first Sikh War and were deprived of the police and other jurisdiction which they had previously exercised, but were allowed to continue in receipt of the revenue of their former territories. From both jdgirddrs and zaminddrs fidelity, especially in time of war, was expected by their political superiors. These grants thus more resembled the benefices which preceded feudalism than the fiefs which constituted it. But though there are points of analogy they did not exactly resemble either the benefice or the fief. Both in mediaeval Europe and in India there was a double ownership of the soil ; but the severance was effected on difierent lines, in a different manner, and with different consequences. In India proprietary rights were shared, as I have often said, between raja and proy'a, between the king and the peasant proprietor. The theory, though frequently violated on both sides, was that the raja was entitled to a fixed share of the crop, and that the peasant duly paying his tax should not be dis- possessed of the land he occupied. Grants made by a raja or emperor therefore dealt with the chief rights of the state in an agricultural country under an essentially tax-gathering rule. In the jdgir one assortment, in the zaminddri another assortment of the rights of the state were made over to FEUDAL TENDENCIES IN INDIA 219 an intermediary, often witli th^object of arranging for the military or civil service of the government. The peasant was in theory unaffected, though in practice, when the tract assigned came into the hands of speculators or others who had no hereditary connection with it, he was often exposed to new and closer oppression. In Europe the peasant ,was commonly a serf, attached to the soil, and granted with it. The double ownership existed as between the suzerain and vassal, between vassal and rear-vassal. It had nothing to do with sharing the crop ; nor did it pre- suppose on the part of the vassal any hereditary rights other than those which were derived from the feudal compact. It was, indeed, in that compact itself that the double owner- ship originated ; and in the maturity of the system it exhi- bited its character in some of the well-known feudal incidents, in the reliefs payable on successions, in fines upon alienation, escheats, aids, and wardship. Generally it may be said to have entitled the superior to certain services, particularly military services, to certain perquisites, and to re-entry, temporarily or permanently, in certain cases, notably on breach of conditions of the tenure or failure of heirs. The Indian grants resembled benefices in their revoca- bility, in their appropriation for the support of services, military or civil, in their occasionally unconditional character, and in their tendency to grow into hereditary possessions and to become the basis of territorial power. They further resembled benefices in so far as the king transferred what was originally his, not what was surrendered to him for the purpose of restoration on new conditions. Montesquieu sees the origin of the feudal jurisdiction^ in the fact that the freda, the payments made by the criminal for protection against the person injured or his family, were amongst the most considerable emoluments of the holder of the fief. When the king's judges could no longer make any de- mand in a district, they never entered it. Justice, therefore, had to be administered by the lord who took the profits. Thus the freda were a part of the king's revenue, and in granting them he granted what was his. In the Indian grants also the king granted what was his ; there was no commendation, no contract. The emperor or the raja paid his public servants, arranged for some part of the admini- stration, provided for his troops, his nobles, his relations, his favourites by the grant of certain rights of his own over the land. I have nowhere traced in India anything 220 OUR INDIAN PROTECTOEATE which could be rightly described as the surrender of an allodial property to be received back in the form of a fief. Such surrenders, however, were intimately connected with the practice of commendation, and it is possible to point to certain Indian practices which at least show that the principle of commendation is deeply embedded in human nature, though its operation may take very different forms according to the circumstances which call it into exercise. Personal relations more or less resembling those of lord and serf or of lord and vassal, and based either on conquest and its results, or on self-surrender for the sake of security, appear to have existed in Europe from a remote antiquity. Speaking of feudalism, Sir Henry Maine tells us that 'the duty of respect and gratitude to the feudal superior, the obligation to assist in endowing his daughter and equipping his son, the liability to his guardianship in minority, and many other similar incidents of tenure, must have been literally borrowed from the relations of patron and freedman under the Eoman law.' There was also another relation under that law in which patronus was one of the terms, the relation of patron and client. The libertus or Eoman freed- man was the cliens of his patronus, and any Eoman citizen who wanted a protector might establish this relation by his own act. It appears that the client contributed to the marriage portion of the patron's daughter, if the patron was poor ; and to his ransom, or that of his children, if they were taken prisoners. The clients, it is also said, accompanied their patroni to war as vassals. Two of the three feudal aids retained by Magna Carta were the contributions for the marriage of the eldest daughter of the lord and for the redemption of his person from prison. These resemblances between Eoman law and feudal inci- dents do not seem strange if we look to the early history of commendation. Mr. Seebohm traces self-surrender into actual or approximate slavery in Gaul in the time of Caesar, and, six centuries later, in the history of Gregory of Tours, the motives being to escape debt or excessive taxation or oppression. He quotes from Salvian to show how in the fifth century the pressure of Eoman taxation caused multi- tudes to become rebels and outlaws, and many who could not fly from the Eoman districts, to surrender themselves to the care and protection of great men, accepting the position of their dedititii. In the same century, but at an earher date, the Theodosian code had forbidden the fiscal ofiicers of FEUDAL TENDENCIES IN INDIA 221 the empire to induce tenants q§ the pubUc lands of their districts to place themselves under their patrocinium or over- lordship ; an(i in the seventh century the laws of the Alamanni, framed in ecclesiastical interests, permitted freemen to surrender themselves and their property to the Church, and expressly referred to the restoration of the property in the character of a benefice. Now, in Eoman districts the estates of the powerful men to whom poor people surrendered themselves in the time of Salvian must have been Eoman villce, cultivated by slaves and coloni. We know that there were also freedmen upon such estates ; and, at all events in the south and east of France, the historical connection between the Eoman villa and the feudal manor is demonstrated by the fact that the Visigothic and Burgundian invaders shared the villce and lands of the Eomans like legionaries quartered on a district. By Eoman laws enacted in the first twenty years of the Christian era, freedmen whose emancipation was defective in certain particulars were placed on the footing of Latini; that is, they might marry and trade with Eomans as citizens, but could not vote at elections or fiU public ofiices ; or if they had been punished in certain ways, they could only be raised to the level of dedititii, or of people who had been conquered and had yielded unconditionally without being actually enslaved. In both these cases, though the Latinus is said to have been able to make a wiU by an old and cumbrous form, it seems clear that the property of the emancipated slave reverted on his death to his former master. In the legislation of Justinian the Latini and the dedititii had disappeared ; and certain rights of succession, the patron stiU having a large share except when the property was trifling, had been conferred on freedmen who were Eoman citizens. In both of the cases I have quoted, on the authority of Mr. Seebohm, from Salvian and the Alamannic laws, the person who surrendered his land took back only the possession of it for life, and could not pass it to his heirs. Thus throughout th^ patron or protector takes the whole or part of the property on the death of the person under his care ; a legal position which deserves to be weighed with the feudal escheats and the feudal fines on succession. We must not, of course, forget that the ties uniting serf and vassal, vassal and lord, lord and suzerain were composed of many strands derived from German as weU as Eoman repertories. The old German tribesmen, besides their house- 222 OUR INDIAN PEOTECTOEATE hold slaves, had semi-servile cultivators, compared by Tacitus with the coloni of his day, probably men of other tribes or races who had been vanquished in war. The gifts of arms and horses conferred upon the comites reverted to the giver on the death of the recipient, just as the property of a freed- man under the early Eoman law reverted to the patron, or the property of the dedititius, described by Salvian, was lost to his heirs. More than this, the feudal relation of vassal and lord had its religious sanctions and its moral ideal. While the humanity and delicacy of what was truly chivahous in feudalism owed much to the Christian Church, the courage, the military ardour, the spirit of adventure, the soldierly fidelity of lords and men, assuredly derived an unbroken descent from the old German assemblies. Making allowance for all this, it seems impossible to doubt that commendation, and the particular consequences that grew out of it in Europe, were largely due to Eoman conquest, to the Eoman systen],s of administration and property, and to Eoman law. These Eoman elements in the final composition were entirely wanting in India ; and that, I think, is the reason why in India commendation with the Western set of feudal consequences is not to be found ; though, as I have said, we do find arrangements based on a similar principle. It has, for instance, been conjectured that the clientela was an old Italian institution that existed amongst the people from whom the Eomans arose, and that the clientes were originally Italians who had been conquered and reduced to subjection. Evidence can be adduced from the north-west frontier of India which suggests that the germs out of which may grow such relations as those of patron and client, patron and freedman, lord and vassal, may be common to many societies. The Yusafzais, Muhammadzais, and others settled on the Pesh4war plain towards the end of the fifteenth or beginning of the sixteenth century. They first begged and obtained land from the Dildzdks, the previous occupants, and soon afterwards fought and expelled them. The Pathdn families of these tribes located themselves in adjacent villages, the rest of the tribal tract being held in common, and used chiefly for pasturage. In course of time these Pathdns allowed cultivators from other parts, who had no share in the tribal inheritance, to settle amongst them. These settlers were called fakirs or hamsdyas, persons under the same shade ; and lands were given them on a service tenure. They were required to attend the land-owning Pathdn tribes- FEUDAL TENDENCIES IN INDIA 223 man in his raids and fights, to furnish grain and grass for his guests, to provide the guest-house with beds and blankets, to keep turn in watch and ward, and occasionally to work in building and reaping. As clan encroached on clan, hamlets were established on the boundaries of tribal tracts, occupied partly by poorer tribesmen, partly by these hamsdyas or fakirs, who held on condition of warding off attacks and joining expeditions, the other services being ex- cused on account of the distance from the original settle- ments. No tax, no rent, no share of the crop, was paid. But in course of time khdns, strong men, tribal leaders, assumed the right of collecting fees from these hamsdyas on the occasion of births and marriages. "We thus see in a primitive tribal society some of the characteristic marks of serfage, side by side with a purely military tenure curiously like the tenure of a vassal. Here there is no Eoman influ- ence, no ecclesiastical influence ; but unquestionably there is feudalism in the making. It seems a paradox to say that the principle of com- mendation may sometimes be the same as the principle of blackmail. Yet in both cases a sacrifice is made to a stronger party for the purpose of averting a greater evil. In commendation some mutual benefit may be supposed to ensue, the weaker party obtaining protection in exchange for the surrender of himself and his land. In blackmail the advantage is entirely on one side, the stronger party having exacted some payment as the price of forbearing to seize lands or plunder goods or cattle. Unfortunately, the weaker party may have no choice, and the motives of the plunderer and the protector, may be the same. Oppression and pro- tection may come from the same hand. One plunderer may agree to keep others at bay if assured of steady fruits from his own violence. For instance, in the Carnatic the desha cavel or district watching fees were levied by poligdrs from defence- less villagers as the price for forbearing to plunder them. To explain the manner in which the rekwali of Edjpiitdna — taxes paid or services rendered in consideration of protection — came to be imposed upon parts of the country. Colonel Tod quotes Lord Lovat's Eeport on the Highlands of Scotland in 1724 : ' When the people are almost ruined by continual robberies and plunders, the leader of the band of thieves, or some friend of his, proposes that for a sum of money annually paid he will keep a number of men in arms to protect such a tract of ground, or as many parishes as submit to the 224 OUR INDIAN PKOTECTOEATE contribution. When the terms are agreed upon, he ceases to steal, and thereby the contributors are safe ; if anyone refuses to pay, he is immediately plundered.' The considera- tion in rekwali took various forms ; there were payments in money or kind at harvest ; personal services in agriculture, the husbandmen finding implements and cattle and attend- ing whenever ordered ; fees on marriages ; dishes of good fare at wedding feasts ; and portions of fuel and provender. Sometimes the person protected sank into a position hardly distinguishable from that of a serf. Often the arrangement was based on the grant by the villagers to the chief of their ancient proprietary rights in a portion of their lands. Tod identifies rekwali with the salvamenta of Europe, paid by those who had preserved their allodial property to ensure its defence. The true nature of rekwali is clear from its being levied from passing caravans wherever they halted for the day. Further down in Western and Central India, similar principles were in operation on a vaster scale. Out of the claims, conquests, and military assignments of the Marhattas arose their loose though complex military con- federacy ; and, in the end, a still surviving group of terri- torial despotisms. In its origin the Marhatta chauth was a payment to obtain protection as well as exemption from pillage. And in this case the difference between East and West is striking and characteristic. In Europe, an individual, by voluntary compact, assumes a new personal status ; he takes upon himself a new legal clothing of German make and Eoman materials. In India, a community agrees to pay to a new master a part of that share of the crop, or its cash equivalent, which by immemorial custom had been taken by the ruler of the day. In the Punjab Maharaja Eanjit Singh in some of his annexations placed some of the chiefs whom he subdued in positions which would not be altogether misdescribed if we were to say that they held fiefs under the Sikh power. Here, however, there was no voluntary submission. The fiefs, if such they may be called, resulted, as a sort of com- promise or concession, from a conquest in arms. The case of the Naw4bs of Dera is a good illustration of these arrange- ments. The territories of these naw4bs included a large tract of country on both sides of the river Indus near Dera Ismail Khan. The nawdbs had been governors under the Durdni kingdom, and had become practically independent as it broke up. In 1821 the then Nawdb, Hdfiz Ahmad Khan, FEUDAL TENDENCIES IN INDIA 225 was besieged by Eaiijit Singh in Mdnkhera, a town to the east of the Indus. The Nawdb surrendered on condition of retaining a part of his dominions, with a suitable jdgir. The country to the east of the Indus and the southern tracts on the west of that river were annexed to the dominions of the Maharaja. When ISTawdb II4fiz Ahmad Khan died the Sikhs exacted from his son on succession a fine of a lakh of rupees. The annexed country was administered partly by kdrddrs, or Sikh fiscal officers, partly by the bailiffs or agents of Sikh sarddrs to whom a great part of it was granted in jdgir. Each of these Sikh sarddrs possessed judicial and executive authority within his jdgir, and was uncontrolled by the local Sikh officials. Here we see side by side in the same part of the country results of conquest which almost amount in one tract to a fief and in other tracts to a number of benefices. One part of the conquered territory is suffered to remain in the possession of its chief as a dependent principality subject to a fine on succession. In other parts of the territory there was merely a grant of revenues and jurisdiction which by conquest had come into the hands of the sovereign. A good many instances might also be adduced from the Punjab Hills of the Sikh practice and policy of providing for deposed rajas or inducing their submission by the grant oijdgirs. We may now pass on to some of the results of the pro- cesses tending to feudalism which have been described. The English manorial group in its perfect form consists of persons holding land of the lord by free tenures, and of others holding land of the lord by tenures which were servile in origin, the lands held by these two classes respectively being known as tenemental lands and the lord's domain. The Punjab principalities in the interior of the Hills, where a sense of peasant ownership in the village wastes had not grown up, may be regarded as having been truly manorial in so far as they exhibited a somewhat similar distinction. The forests and wastes may be considered to have .been a kind oifolkland converted into a terra regis, and in this sense may be held to have been the domain of the raja ; while the cultivated lands, heritable by the occupants, may be looked upon as bocland, appropriated by the actual or theoretical grant of the raja to particular families, or as tenemental lands held by a free tenure. These comparisons, I admit, are very incomplete ; there are, for instance, in Kulu and Kdngra extensive and complicated rights of the settled peasants and of partljr nomad shepherds and graziers over the forests and Q 226 OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE wastes wliicli would require explanation were the compari- sons pursued. I make them in this slight and imperfect way because at all events in many parts of India, if not in all, there is, notwithstanding the double ownership of raja and ryot, of the state and the village community, in cultivated lands and village wastes, a real and very practical distinc- tion between the lands which are held to belong to peasant proprietors, or ryots, and the larger forests or wastes which are held to belong to the sirkdr, or government ; and further, because the manorial character of the claims of the Punjab Hill raja upon the waste explains some of the imposts which were formerly levied in territory now become British, and which vividly recall certain aspects of feudalism. In addition to the rent or revenue immemorially due extra cesses were taken in these hills which varied greatly in different parts of the country, but generally took the form of percentages in cash or grain calculated on the regular demand. Some of these were the army tax ; the war tax ; a tax for the cost of writing receipts for the revenue ; a weigh- man's cess ; a watchman's cess ; a kanimgo's cess ; and a cess to cover the cost of conveying the government grain collec- tions to the state granary. Besides these cesses, and included in the forest dues, were taxes on the houses or implements or stock-in-trade of shopkeepers and artisans, a hide from the tanner, so much per loom or per press from the weaver or oil-presser, so much per house on barbers, washermen, potters, blacksmiths, carpenters, tailors, sawyers, goldsmiths, and shopkeepers generally. These classes hved on the raja's land, got timber and firewood from his forests, and grazed their cows and goats on his waste. Moreover, of every kind of income from produce the rajas took or claimed a share. They asserted a right to the best hawk netted in the forest, to the largest fish caught in a weir, to a share of the honey of the beehives and of the fruit of the best fruit- trees. Does such a Hst, we might almost ask, come from the Punjab Hills before British rule, or from France before the Eevolution ? The list of Droits Seigneuriaux given by De TocqueviUe is doubtless far from identical in detail. This is to be expected ; but we can see easily enough the same principle at work. In the Punjab Hill states and in the feudal manors of the Ancien Regime there was the crude taxation of petty sovereignties in a society where rights over land formed the mould to which social and political institu- FEUDAL TENDENCIES IN INDIA 227 tions alike shaped themselves. Eeading over the list of seignorial dues in De Tocqueville we are tempted to believe that, if we had not known, as an historical fact, that Prance was at one time full of small semi-sovereign states, we should have been able to infer it from the nature of the imposts which the Revolution swept away. De Tocqueville, with characteristic caution, expressly declines to attempt any research into the origin of the dues which he enumerates ; but the name at least of the- cens — the perpetual quit-rent in kind or money annexed to the possession of certain lands — suggests that it may have been a survival of the Eoman tributum, just as the capitatio survived in the taille. Sewage, giving the lord the right to reclaim his quasi-servile depen- dent wherever he might go, and the corvee, enabling the lord to employ for his own profit a certain number of the days of labour or of the oxen or horses of his peasants, look as though they were connected with the mediseval serfdom, and through it with slavery on the Eoman villa and perhaps also with the sordida munera of the colanus. Then there is a long list of dues consisting of a certain portion of the produce, or more rarely of money, which the lord • of the manor levied upon lands subject to the cens or upon those who held them ; the names by themselves convey little, but they were terrage, champart, agrier, tesque, hordelage, and marciage, the last consisting of certain payments due on the natural death of the lord. Similar to these was the parciere on crops of fruit and the carpot on the vineyards. Almost any officer of Indian experience wo aid, I think, identify these dues with the ahwdh, the extra cesses which we see in Kdngra, and which have had so famous and so odious a history in Bengal. Without following the whole detail, I must bring together, for reasons which will presently appear, some of the rights or dues which belonged to those seigneurs only who were also hauts justiciers. Those I will name are (1) droit de blairie, empowering the seigneur, upon the theory that the whole territory originally belonged to him, to grant permission for the grazing of cattle ; (2) droit de leyde, a tax levied upon merchandise brought to fairs or mar- kets, and the police fines levied in connection with it ; (3) chemins; the seigneurs, hauts justiciers, had rights of police on the bye-roads, and their judges took cognizance of all ofiences committed on them, except in royal cases ; (4) eaux et la peche ; these seigneurs were lords of the non- navigable rivers ; they alone had the right of erecting water Q 2 228 OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE mills ; no one could fisli, even with, a rod, in tliese rivers without their permission. Peages, tolls on bridges, rivers and roads, and bacs on ferries, do not appear to have been limited to the hauts justiciers, but they had to be authorised by the king. I shall return to the significance of some of these rights or dues below ; but meanwhile I may point out that in Kulu and K4ngra, though landholders and others had certain rights of use in the forests and wastes, the old rajas levied a grazing-tax on all classes, reserved certain blocks of forests as shooting preserves, granted Giijars and Gaddis — professional herdsmen and shepherds — exclusive grazing rights in particular runs or beats at certain seasons, and often imposed a prohibition of grazing in all forests for three months during the rains, partly as an assertion of authority, partly with an idea of benefit to trees and game. Further, as already mentioned in a former chapter, the right to work a water-mill or put a fish weir in a stream was held direct of the raja. Such was the extent of the great Bengal zaminddris that, if we look particularly to area, they should be compared rather with the fiefs of dukes and counts and viscounts than with manors corresponding to townships or parishes. Accord- ing to the estimates in the Fifth Eeport and its appendices, the zaminddri of Birbhum contained 3,858, that of Dindjpur- 3,519, that of Burdw4n 3,280 square miles ; the zaminddri of the Company in the twenty-five parganas was, by the same estimate, 882 square miles in area. These estimates are very rough, and indeed in one of the appendices to the report the Burdwdn zaminddri is said to be larger than that of Birbhum. But even these rough estimates will suffice to show that many of the Bengal zaminddris were territories rather than townships. Their usually official origin is another point that they have in common with the greater fiefs. Still they exhibited some of the characteristics of the manor in the distinction between the raiyati lands, occupied by settled peasants, and the khdmdr lands, originally waste but brought under cultivation and retained by the zaminddr or let out at grain rents ; in the ndnkdr, or portion of land or revenue assigned to the zaminddr for his subsistence ; in the possibly identical nijjot, or lands cultivated for his own benefit on which no revenue was assessed ; and in his official under- taking on his appointment that he would increase the culti- vation, the implication being that he must have had authority over the waste. FEUDAL TENDENCIES IN INDIA 229 It has been doubted whethqif any of the Bengal zamin- ddris were originally principalities ; but the point can be set at rest from the paper written by Mr. J. Grant in 1786, and published with the Fifth Eeport. The zaminddri of Bishanpur appears to have been the inheritance of a Edjput family for more than a thousand years, under a regular succession of fifty-five rajas, subject only to a small tribute to the ruler of Bengal. This was its condition tiU 1715 a.d., soon after the commencement of the administration of J4fir Khan, when the country was reduced, and conferred again in zaminddri tenure on the heir of the line of rajas. In Burdwdn there were traces of an ancient line which may have had an official origin ; in Eajshahye there had been two ancient lines, of which one became extinct by the suicide of the last repre- sentative, and the other was proscribed for rebellion. In Tipperah a jdgir of the yearly value of 45,000 rupees was granted to the representative of the family from whom that zaminddri had been conquered in the reign of Shah Jehdn. Pachit, the most westerly zaminddri of Bengal, resembled Bishanpur, which it adjoined, in having been held by a E4jput family. It was at first in great part subject only to a fixed tribute. The fact is, that the ruthless proceedings of Jdfir EZhan, who became Dew4n of Bengal in 1707, and died (as already mentioned) in 1725, had greatly confused and ob- scured the old condition of the country. Feeling that his reputation and continuance in office depended upon financial success, he resorted to the hardest severities in exaction. He dispossessed nearly all the former zaminddrs ; employed his own officers to scrutinise the lands and their produce ; and presently in many cases put new men — Brdhmans, Kayasths (or men of the writer caste), Khatris, and (at least in one case) a Pathdn. Many of the dispossessed zaminddrs were restored by Shiija Khan, his successor. But the confusion which J4fir Khan, in the attempt to introduce reformation and regularity, had certainly produced, was maintained by the rapacity and notorious corruption of those who followed him. I have already alluded to the police jurisdiction of the zaminddrs. Of the criminal courts (to adopt the language of the Seventh Eeport of 1773) the zaminddrs or rajas were judges. Capital sentences might not be executed till orders had been received on a report of the case to the government at Murshidabad ; the most frequent mode of punishment was fine, and the fines were the perquisite of the 230 OUR IXDIAX PROTECTORATE zaminddrs. So, too, the zaminddr or raja was the judge of the civil court, and took a fourth or a fifth of the value of the property recovered by civil action. Doubtless, in order to increase their own power or as a consequence of their posi- tion, these men entertained or obtained the command of considerable foUowings. In BurdwAn, for instance, there were 2,400 armed constables under thdnadars, or officers in charge of small police divisions, and some 19,000 zaminddri paiks — a rabble, probably very badly armed, who were allowed lands in lieu of pay, and were liable to be called out in aid of the police. Birbhiim was organised as a sort of frontier province to be held against Hindu incursions from the West by means of a warlike Muhammadan peasantry maintained as a standing militia with suitable territorial allotments. Lands were here held free of revenue and appropriated for the support of troops. The first recorded settlement of the land revenue in Bengal was made by Akbar's minister Todar Mai in 1582. This was called the original standard assess- ment ; and long before the time of JAfir Khan the zaminddrs and officers under the subaddr levied many imposts from the ryots over and above this standard tax. The native govern- ment knew of these impositions, and probably connived at them ; and at least from the period of J4fir Khan's adminis- tration followed the example thus set. We have a full list of the abtodb or extra cesses imposed by J4fir Khan and his successors upon the zaminddrs. It is unnecessary to go through the whole of it ; but amongst the items were fees for the renewal of annual leases ; payments to secure exemp- tion from inquiries into assets and the superintendence of officials, made ostensibly as contributions to the cost of pre- sents periodically sent to Delhi as tokens of homage ; a com- mission on treasure brought to headquarters ; a contribution to the cost of feeding elephants ; a tax supposed to represent the chauth due by the grant of the emperor to the Marhattas, wiio had, however, been really paid off by cessions in Orissa ; and imposts to defray the expense of bringing lime from Sylhet to repair the fort of Murshidabad, of dismantling the city of Gaur, and of building a palace for Sur4j-ud-daula. In other ways also the subaddrs drew into their own grasp the profits which zaminddrs a,ndfaujddrs made out of their respective charges ; sometimes claiming for their treasury taxes which the faujddrs of frontier districts had imposed of their own authority ; sometimes by the resumption of jdgirs, and their re-grant in less profitable localities ; and in. FEUDAL TENDENCIES IN INDIA 231 at least one remarkable case, that of Birbhiim, by the re- annexation of the territory of a zaminddr who had imitated the example of his superiors and set up as an independent prince. Many of these impositions were passed on by the zaminddrs to those under them ; but, as the exactions of the zaminddr were usually limited only by the ability of the ryot to meet them, it did not necessarily follow that an extra cess imposed by the suhaddr was also levied from the culti- vators. If the zaminddr had already taken all he could get, the object of the suhaddr, to reap a profit for himself by exactions which he winked at, was all the same attained. In fact, the governors left it to the discretion of the zamin- ddrs to make new demands upon the ryots, with the well- understood intention of sharing the plunder in due time. Amongst the pretences on which the zaminddrs levied new cesses were the death of a zaminddr, the birth of a son, and any increased demand made by the government on the zaminddr himself. The zaminddrs also obtained income from tolls, markets, and fairs. We can see, then, that the greater Bengal zaminddrs, in point of fact, possessed many of the attributes of internal sovereignty ; police jurisdiction with responsibility for the peace of the country ; civil and criminal jurisdiction with liberty to appropriate the fines and court fees ; the command of a rude following more or less armed, and de facto the power of taxation. Sir John Shore would not admit that the sannd or written grant, often given to the zaminddr, was the foundation of his tenure. ' The origin of the possession of some zaminddris,' he said, ' may be traced to a grant, but the inheritance goes on without it.' Elsewhere he says that since the arrival of JAfir Khan in Bengal one half of the country had been transferred for defalcations ; and he refers also to the wholesale dispossessions effected by that dewdn. The Bengal case was, I think, the most difficult that any British Indian Government ever had to deal with. It was most unfortunate that the maximum of difficulty had to be faced with the minimum of Indian experience. In addition to the circumstances I have already noticed, which tended to obscure the real meaning of the institutions we found, the subaddrs, by exacting annual presents and making supposed annual renewals of grants do duty as a sort of homage, and in other ways, were constantly on their guard against their zaminddrs following their own example of rebeUion. We may throughout discern tendencies with which we are now J.OZ OUR INDIAN PROTECTOBATE familiar in other parts of India ; the tendency of petty states to preserve a certain autonomy in poHtical subjection ; the tendency of usurping officials to form petty states out of the charges committed by their superiors to their care. But these tendencies were struck and twisted into courses alto- gether at variance with their direct line, first by Moghal exaction and the degree of political strength possessed by our immediate predecessors ; and then by the impact of European legal ideas thrust along with undue precipitancy by the force of some not unnatural indignation at home and of colossal misapprehensions in the country. The type connecting the Punjab Hill principality, the Bengal zaminddri, and the French fief, occurs, I think, in Oudh, where the practices and traditions of Moghal dominion lasted till annexation in 1856. This will appear from an examination of the list of miscellaneous dues levied by the various petty rajas of the Gonda district — a list which varied slightly from state to state, but was essentially of the same nature in all. These dues included (1) a charge on inha- bitants of neighbouring parganas who came to cut wood in the unappropriated forests, the inhabitants of the same par- gana taking fuel gratis, but paying a slight due on building timber ; (2) dues on beasts of burden coming to fairs, on goods sold at fairs, on tradesmen in bazaars ; (3) tolls on ferries, fords, bridges, and roads ; (4) a still head duty on spirits ; (5) a duty of eight annas per annum on each cart and on each loom ; (6) the fines imposed by the raja in criminal cases; (7) an arbitrary contribution towards any public expense, but chiefly for war; (8) the right of escheat, all property without legal heirs reverting to the raja ; (9) occa- sional demands, each with a separate name, for clothes for a new-born son, for money to celebrate the first shaving of his head, for the price of a horse or of an elephant, or for the cost of repairs to the fort of the raja; and (10) payments which had to be made to the raja when a well-to-do subject lost a relation or married, a wife. If we compare this list with the list I gave just now of the rights of seigneurs who were also haiits justiciers, and with the rest of De Tocqueville's list of feudal dues, surely, so far as such exactions are an index to status, we may say that the Gonda raja was a seigneur, or the seigneur a Gonda raja. In the first, second, and third items we see an assertion of authority over the wastes, markets, rivers, and roads comparable with that of the hauts justiciers. In the rest of the list we recognise an FEUDAL TENDENCIES IN INDIA 233 unrelenting grasp, on almost e-^ry possible occasion, upon almost everything that the peasantry could call their own. I have elsewhere mentioned the theory of the Muham- madan Government in Oudh, that the state was the sole zamin- ddr. It must be remembered that the Oudh governors were subaddrs of a province of the Delhi empire, who became practically independent as it declined. As to the rajas or zaminddrs in possession, the Muhammadans in some cases contented themselves with an annual lump payment in lieu of their claims. In other cases, very much after the fashion of Eanjit Singh's dealings with the Naw4b of Dera, they divided the lands of the raj, taking as much as they could for themselves and reserving the remainder for the support of the raja. This remainder was known as the raja's ndnkdr, and in it he took the whole of the government share of the produce, which was sometimes supplemented by an annual allowance in cash from the proceeds of the rest of the principality. Lands, both those in the possession of village zaminddrs and others, were usually farmed out to con- tractors, who were either local capitalists or the dispossessed rajas themselves. With an accuracy which wiU presently appear, the circle of villages included in a contract was known as a taluka, and the contractor as a talukddr. 'Where the contractor,' the Settlement Eeport tells us, ' as was gene- rally the case, was also a raja, he occupied a compound position, being raja and in receipt of his old rights in his rela- tions with the tenantry, and talukddr, or simple contractor, from the point of view of the court. The capitalist was in theory a contractor only, but in the realisation of the land revenue he exercised for the time the powers of a raja, was bound by the same rules, and worked on the same principles.' Here we see the raja substantially identified with the zamin- ddr ; for, under the pressure of the Muhammadan Govern- ment, he was forced to accept, with the designation of talukddr, a position identical wdth that of the Bengal zamin- ddrs of JAfir Khan's creation. I have already dwelt at length on the resemblances between the Gonda states and the old E^jpiit states of the Punjab Hills ; and I may repeat here that the Moghal emperors, in addressing the HiU rajas, gave them the title of zaminddr. It remains to explain what I have called the accuracy of the use of the term taluka in Oudh. In Bengal one of the Indian equivalents for sub-infeudation stands out very clearly. The zaminddrs frequently made over divisions of their terri- 234 OUE INDIAN FROTECTOEATE tories to farmers or contractors, known, as inOudh,by the name of taluhddrs ; the word taluk', or taluka, meaning a dependency, and the talukddr being a person who holds property in dependence on another. In some cases in Bengal talukddrs paid their rents or revenue to government direct ; they were then in all material respects on the footing of zaminddrs. But the best general notion of a taluk is, I think, conveyed by saying that it was a holding of the same type as a zamin- ddri enjoyed in subordination to a zami?iddr. It is probable that in Bengal the dependent talukddrs obtained these tenures by grant or purchase from the zaminddrs, whereas in Behar they may have been men with certain original proprietary rights over the land placed under the jurisdiction of zamin- ddrs, who were also rajas, by the act of authority. On the theory that the government of the subaddr of Oudh was, or ought to be, the zaminddr, the rajas and speculators who actually collected the revenue in that province were called talukddrs with great propriety. It has been said that the feudal monarchy was a counter- part of the feudal manor, and Montesquieu makes a remai'k of the same tenor in respect of the fiefs of the seigneurs and the jurisdictions of the French counts. Of these he says : ' The counties, in the several variations that happened at different times, always followed the variations of the fiefs ; both were governed by the same plan and on the same prin- ciples.' ' The counts in their counties were lords, and the lords in their seignories were counts.' In the Moghal empire, though not in India generally, we can perceive a whole chain of similar resemblances ; as though, when once a society had caught a political air, it delighted in repeating it high and low with appropriate variations ; or, more truly, perhaps, as if, when once a political type has become im- planted in any society, it propagates itself wherever it can gain a footing, with those variations which adapt it best to particular local environments. As the zaminddr had taluk- ddrs under him, so the talukddrs might have below them other contractors and farmers, down to the village head-men. As the zaminddr held certain lands revenue free for his sub- sistence, and paid over, or was supposed to pay over, the revenues he collected to the subaddr, so the subaddr had a big jdgir assigned in his province for the support of his rank, and theoretically accounted for the revenue collections to Delhi. Zaminddr and subaddr were also alike in the practice of imposing fresh taxes on their own account on a variety of FEUDAL TENDENCIES IN INDIA 235 quasi-feudal excuses. And deQ§ in the foundations of the empire, but manifesting itself in ceremonial, in the various forms of enjoyment of rights over land, and through them in the political regulation of society, was the idea of the old Hindu raj, assigning to the ruler the property in the un- appropriated wastes and his share of the produce of the lands brought under cultivation. We may now bring together in one view the indications of feudal tendencies which we have traced in various parts of India. In remote hills, little affected by Moghal or Sikh conquest or Gurkha incursions, there were and are manorial principalities exhibiting, in some characteristics, curiously close analogies to a fief ; and there are substantial traditions of hegemonies ranging many of these principalities under the suzerainty of a particular chieftain. On the far-off Punjab frontier, in lands occupied by free tribes, we have observed practices which may represent some of the possible begin- nings of vassalage. Under Sikh rule in the Punjab we have • seen how conquests were sometimes facilitated by restora- tions of territory, which left the subjugated khan or raja with some remnants of sovereignty in forced allegiance to his overlord. In the ancient Hindu states of Edjpiitdna there is the overlordship of tribal chieftains, who, themselves render- ing tribute and allegiance, first to the Moghals and then to the British, are the acknowledged superiors of their baronial clansmen ; while these clansmen, in their turn, owe military service, proportioned to their lands, to their tribal chiefs and rajas. In the west of India the complicated network of Marhatta claims and assignments bound to the hereditary Peshwa the Marhatta military chiefs, already well on the way to territorial dominion. In the south, poligdrs, officials of broken empires or states, descendants of old royal families, robber chiefs fighting their way up to power, founded nume- rous petty states by plunder and oppression. In the great provinces of the Moghal empire the jdgifs and zaminddris have borne comparison with the benefices which, as feudalism grew, turned into fiefs. In India generally we have noted how often overlordships have come to be acknowledged, how occasionally a strong power wiU hold together an extensive empire — in the south a Vijayanagar empire, in the Deccan a Bahmani kingdom ; in Hindustan the Moghals ; in the Punjab the Sikhs — and how, when the capacity of an able ruler, or of a few generations of able rulers, has exhausted itself, these empires or kingdoms are shattered into numerous 236 OUR INDIAN PEOTECTORA.TE fragments, and the work of consolidation has to begin over' again. Thus in almost every part of the country we have found som.e conditions wliich may be compared with those of Europe in the eighth and ninth centuries. But we have nowhere found any general system which can properly be termed feudal in the European sense of the term. There were materials of feudalism almost everywhere, and different sorts of materials in different parts of the country. The uniformity of the East has often been remarked, but any acquaintance with India that is more than superficial pro- duces an abiding sense of its vast variety ; and I say this while fully bearing in mind the sameness of the institutions of the Moghal empire and their connection with the Hindu institutions that preceded them. If the fiefs and counties varied together, so also — if we make a pretty liberal allow- ance for particular states being earlier or later than others in putting forth the particular sprout or bud that was to grow into the leading stem — did all the states of Western Europe. They were all provinces of the Eoman Empire ; they were all overrun or subjugated by German tribes ; they were all feudalised ; in all or most of them absolute monarchies have arisen and been abolished ; and in all we now have either a republic or a constitutional queen or king. There are obvious reasons, of course, why such principles as those of feudalism or constitutionalism, when once quickened into active messengers of change, should leaven the whole mass of these European states with great rapidity. Great local variety really belongs to that old world which civilisation supersedes. Hence it is that when we look at the begin- nings of feudalism in India we see one type in the Punjab Hills, another on the Punjab frontier, a third in the Punjab plains, a fourth inEdjputdna, a fifth with the Marliattas, a sixth with the poligdrs, and a seventh in the institutions of the Moghal empire. In Europe there was the common heritage of Eoman dominion and Eoman ideas, which is altogether wanting in India. Nor had India any Catholic Church to capture political forces and put them to work, partly, no doubt, in corporate interests, but partly also in honourable resistance to savagery and oppression. In Europe, too, the spread of feudalism was furthered by the roving, adventurous spirit of Germans and Norsemen— a spirit which has never died out, which has discovered new worlds, colonised con- tinents, and may yei bring some of the real benefits of FEUDAL TENDENniES IN INDIA 237 civilisation to the darkest regions of tlie earth ; and which in those early days carried French feudalism to England with William the Conqueror, and to Syria as a result of the Crusades. To at least three races in India has some of that roving, adventurous spirit belonged : to the Pathdns who followed the Moghal emperors, to the Marhattas, and to the Sikhs. All three, it will be observed, worked out an extended political system, though each political system differed from the other two. The distinction between stationary and progressive societies has, I suppose, for some time been a commonplace. But the eyidence I have attempted to review in this chapter will perhaps suggest to some minds the preliminary ques- tion, whether there are or have been any stationary socie- ties at all. Are we not extending geological time to animal nature? The most approved theories of the development of animal forms postulate, as I understand, an accumulation of centuries beside which historic time shrinks into insignifi- cance. AU we really know of the rate of advance of human societies is that it is prodigiously slow at some periods and prodigiously rapid at others. May we not have mistaken for stationary societies some whose rate of progress, like that of the secular subsidence or elevation of continents, is so slow that in an ordinary way we can perceive no progress at aU, and can only arrive at the fact of progress by com- plicated and converging inferences ? Scholars will tell us that ages ago there must have been in parts of India a degree of civilisation more advanced than that which charac- terised the times of the best and greatest of the Moghal emperors. If so, India has, in parts at least, both advanced and retrograded. At any rate the accounts of travellers, and other sources of information, show a considerable degree of civilisation in the India of Akbar and Aurangzib, of which much was temporarily lost in the turbulence and anarchy which preceded British rule. Europe, too, has had its periods of retrogression as well as of advance. There was civilisation, disgraced, it may be, by many barbarous cruel- ties, but still civilisation, in the age of the Antonines. There was barbarism, mitigated, no doubt, by Eoman and Chris- tian influences, but still barbarism, in the age of the Mero- vingians. Later on the empire of Charlemagne gave a promise of advance which was belied by its speedy disrup- tion. The suggestion that in India even of the eighteenth century there were principles at work which might have 238 OUE INDIAN PROTECTORATE led to progress is, if admitted, of some consequence. For, in a political sense, there can be no safer goals of progress which we could deliberately adopt than those towards which a dependent society would have spontane- ously pressed if its forces had been left to their unguided operation. JSTor need we fear that any consideration of this kind, if accepted, would prove too stiff a drag on the wheels of our very effective machinery. There is a danger of an opposite description ; the danger that in our dislike of practices and institutions offensive to a moral judgment, formed under conditions entirely absent in the East, or in our zeal for the extension of our latest home-made improve- ments, we may press on the pace so rapidly as to produce alarm in the more conservative sections of native society, and in the more advanced sections a giddiness that may be even more fraught with future trouble than the alarm. Amongst the remarkable facts connected with the organisation of feudal society were the isolation of the dif- ferent vassals of the same suzerain and the absence of any peaceful expedients for the execution of the judgments of the vassals acting in the court of the suzerain in their capacity of pares or compeers. The suzerain might convoke his vassals to make war, to administer justice, to celebrate some festi- val ; but they had no obligatory habitual relations amongst themselves apart from the action of their suzerain ; their relation to him was their only principle of association. The general rule was that a man should be judged by the assembly of his peers ; and there were some subsidiary rules for giving effect to it. There was also a sj^stem of appeal from the lord to his superior lord en faux jugement and en defaut de droit. But if we may rely on Guizot, there was nothing short of war, or the threat of war, to enforce the judgment that might be passed, and the isolation of the vassals was accompanied by the severance of jurisdic- tions. The holders of the fiefs, great or small, so Guizot tells us, exercised all the rights of internal sovereignty in their respective domains. ' No external or distant power,' he says, ' gave laws there, established taxes, or administered justice ; the proprietor alone possessed all this power.' Ideas of law derived from Eome, the great source of European law, and carried along in Eomano-Gallic traditions, in the Leges Barbarorum, in the capitularies of the Frankish kings, deeply influenced the archaic, tumultuous society which had broken down the Eoman empire of the West. In FEUDAL TENDENCIES IN INDIA 239 India almost exactly tlie converse has happened of that which happened in Gaul. In -v^at is now France the semi- barbarous German tribesmen overmastered the mature, though failing, civilisation of Eonianised Gaul. In India the mature and strong civilisation of our own country has acquired supremacy over a vast assemblage of semi-civilised states and races and tribes. Looking to Western Europe as a whole, and to India as a whole, our situation in India is as though the old Eoman empire risen from the dead had conquered the broken empire of Charlemagne. But the contact between early and late ideas of politics and morality, between a number of societies or states on the verge of feudalism and a governing body steeped in modern theories, fuU of modern precision, and, above all things, reverencing law, has produced some striking analogies between the political system of India and the feudal system established in Europe by the fusion of Germanic custom with Eoman law. If the fiefs were isolated, so are the native states. If the holders of the fiefs enjoyed immunity from the laws of any external or distant power, so in general do the chiefs exer- cising various degrees of internal sovereignty under the pro- tectorate enjoy immunity from British law. No doubt we have suppressed private war ; and there are now other and better means for determining disputes between diiFerent states or their subjects. No doubt the paramount power has far greater strength than ever belonged to any feudal suzerain. But this is a natural consequence. It follows as of course from the reversal of the old, early mediasval position. The paramount power is a strong and pacifying power because it is civilised. It is for this reason that it can hold in check those impulses which the surviving traditions of Eoman law and the attempts of semi-barbarous kings to rule in Eoman fashion were alike impotent to restrain. Even in the methods by which the system of the protec- torate has been gradually formed we see likeness to the process of feudalisation. One great agent in that process was commendation. As I have said, I have found nothing in India which precisely resembles commendation ; but I will mention two famous historical examples of great groups of states seeking the protection of the British Government against an external enemy. The Sikh states of the Cis-Sutlej territory sought our protection against Eanjit Singh and it was afforded. Our policy in the matter of protecting the 240 OUR INDIAX PROTECTORATE States of Eajpiittina against the Marhattas and free com- panies generally unfortunately vacillated ; and in the end the Marquis of Hastings proceeded on the principle that in the operations against the Pinddris no one could be suffered to be neutral, and that many of the E4jput states should be required to join the league which had that measure for its object. The case, therefore, was not quite the same as that of the Sikh chieftains ; but no Edjput state failed in obedience to the summons, and indeed, before this policy was determined upon, these states had repeatedly applied for the aid of the British Government. ' When I reply to these applications,' said Sir Charles Metcalfe, the Eesident at Delhi, under date June 20, 1816, ' I find it difficult to obtain even a confession that the moderate policy of the British Government is just. People do not scruple to assert that they have a right to the protection of the British Government. They say that there has always existed some power in India to which peaceable states submitted, and, in return, obtained its protection ; that then their own governments were maintained in respect- ability, and they were secure against the invasions of upstart chiefs and armies of lawless banditti ; that the British Govern- ment now occupies the place of the great protecting power, and is the natural guardian of the peaceable and weak ; but, owing to its refusal to use its influence for their protection, the peaceable and weak states are continually exposed to oppressions and cruelties of robbers and plunderers, the most licentious and abandoned of mankind.' These arguments of the old Hindu states of Edjputdna in the early years of this century confirm the opinion that the Indian protectorate rests on ideas which are fundament- ally indigenous ; that there were many tendencies making for feudalism in the India of our predecessors ; and that our protection has been sought in India as vassals sought the protection of their lords. Feudalism, however, implied a contract between lord and vassal, and that contract carried with it a number of consequences largely derived from sur- viving influences of Eoman law. Where are the contracts of the new variety of feudalism established in the Indian pro- tectorate ? They are in the six massive volumes of Aitchison's treaties, engagements, and sanads relating to India ; and they carry with them consequences which have been slightly touched by international law, and are much more largely moulded on modern ideas of political morality. 241 CHAPTEE XII NATIVE RULE UNDEE THE MARHATTAS It is one of the objects of this treatise to contribute, however humbly and imperfectly, to the strength of the British Indian protectorate by facilitating the practical application of recognised principles and furthering the development of a body of clear and reasonable subsidiary rules framed in harmony with those principles. If the protectorate itself were incapable of adequate moral justification, no such aim could rightly be entertained. It would be iniquitous to seek to strengthen an engine of pohtical oppression or to elabo- rate a mechanism for producing the miseries of misrule. If we do not believe that, on the whole, the preponderance of British influence has done good in native states, we can hardly rejoice in the consolidation of the protectorate. Apart from this, there are solid political reasons why we should not forget — as we are very apt to do — the true character of native governments when as yet unmodified by Western ideas. The Indian Government must be judged not merely by what it does, but largely by what it prevents ; and if the British nation desires to pass a just judgment on the manner in which some of its most onerous responsibiUties are fulfilled, it is only right to bear in mind what a vast store of the political forces of the Indian Government is used up in the mere prevention .of the commonest evils incident to immature civilisation. No one can understand the actual position of our fellow- countrymen who are engaged in the business of Indian administration without first grasping some of the elements of native society and then realising the permanence of these elements and the persistence of the old types of character under British rule. It is palpable enough that many English- men have forgotten, many more have never known, what native India — India before British rule or the preponderance of British influence — was really like. It is not so palpable, E 242 OUE INDIAN PROTECTORATE but it is equally true, that many educated Indians are in a like condition of forgetfulness or ignorance ; and it is as well that they should not merely profess to acknowledge, but actually know, what they have gained by the efforts of British soldiers and statesmen. The hereditary teachings of despotism are strong ; and it is really often hard for those whose mental stock is largely composed of Oriental traditions to see anything better than a transparent piece of cant in the expression of a disinterested wish to govern for the good of the country. The transfer of the Indian Government to the Crown has here produced some improvement ; and in course of time we may hope that it will be more widely recognised that most British soldiers and statesmen, when they profess this wish, as a matter of fact actually enter- tain it. In this way, in part as a moral justification of the present position, and in part because facts important to be known are often ignored or forgotten, it comes to be part of the argument to describe native rule in its indigenous condition. In such a work as this no description of the former state of India can be more than a sketch ; but in attempting to ' present the mere outline of a few salient features I shall hope at least to convey an impression which shall be true so far as it goes. With the object of arriving at a true imjaression we may consider what is the best evidence now available. I think the best evidence is that which relates to the condition of a number of British provinces in the times immediately pre- ceding annexation. In the records of the early investigations of the circumstances of annexed territory we have detailed accounts of the governments of our predecessors much more full and exact than it has usually been possible to obtain in regard to the governments of native states until the character of them has already been changed by the preponderance of British influence. It may be said that the value of this evidence is sometimes diminished by the fact that British interposition has been directly due to a climax of misgovernment. That is true ; and due allowance must be made for the circum- stance in weighing the evidence, particularly in the case of Oudh and, in a less degree, of Mgpur. For this reason I shall in the main confine myself to the Marhatta country, the Punjab, the North-West, Bengal, and parts of the old kingdom of Mysore, in none of which provinces was misrule the particular ground of annexation. But in the broadest NATIVE RULE UNDER THE MARHATTAS 243 sense it must be allowed that ggneral anarchy in India led to the whole series of annexations ; and indeed the causes of the disorders which became rampant in the land upon the disrup- tion of the Moghal Empire lay deep in the constitution and character of Indian society. The operation of those causes is now restrained by the British system ; but were the control- ling hand uplifted, the strength and violence of the forces held in check would be visible again. Fortunately there has been drawn by a master hand a very vivid picture of a native system of government as it existed just before British rule. In Mountstuart Elphin stone's report on the territories conquered from the Peshwa there is an account of Marhatta institutions in the early years of the present century so clear, so simple, so concise and yet so fuU, that the perusal of it immensely facihtates the task of examining other similar expositions relating to other parts of India. It is difficult to compress what is already a model of official precision and terseness ; but I shall try to convey, as briefly as possible, the impression which the perusal of that report may leave upon the mind. There is also another circumstance which facilitates the attempt to describe native rule. In comparatively early stages of society the -elements of government are necessarily fewer and simpler than they are under the complex condi- tions of advanced civilisation. In a society either without courts of justice or with courts of justice not worthy of the name, without legislatures, without representative institu- tions, without manufactories, a society in which inland commerce was hampered by transit duties and the chief occu- pations were agriculture and warfare, our modern problems have no place. There are, in such a society, no projects for improving the law of property, the criminal law, the law of private conditions ; there are no questions of parliamentary reform, of protection and free trade, of capital and labour. Colonial pohcy there could not be without dependencies ; and as for foreign policy, apart from the feudal tendencies which I have described, we may appeal to the almost con- temporary testimony of Lord Minto. In a despatch of April 14, 1810, Lord Minto argues that no system of a balance of power is discoverable at any period of Indian history or is compatible with the character, principles, or constitution of Indian states. With these states, he says, ' war, rapine, and conquest are avowed principles of action, a just and legitimate pursuit, and the chief source of pubhc B 2 244 OUH INDIAN PKOTECTOEATE glory, sanctioned and even recommended by the ordinances of religion, and prosecuted without the semblance or pretext of justice, with a savage disregard of every obligation of humanity and public faith, and restrained alone by the power of resistance. Under the successful impulse of these principles the vast empire of the Muhammadans was esta- blished over more than the continent of India. On its ruins arose the power of the Marhatta states, which subsequently branched out into a confederation of chiefs, professedly directed to objects of conquest and universal exaction, the fruits of which, by regular convention, were to be divided in specific proportions. The same views and principles animated and extended the usurpations of Haidar. Ali and his successor. The checks which the Marhattas and the ruler of Mysore occasionally received from the power of the Nizam, and from different combinations among these three states, were the result, not of a pre-established federation and balance of power, but of the prevalence of a system of conquest, violence, and usurpation. The efforts of the con- tending parties were directed, not to the just limitation, but to the subversion of each other's power and the aggrandise- ment of their own ; and it is unnecessary to refer to the testimony of specific facts with a view to demonstrate the self-evident proposition, that the permanent existence of a balance of power is incompatible with reciprocal views of conquest and ambition.' Eemembering that before our day the Indian political ocean was crowded with piratical craft, and that many of the states we have displaced or preserved were essentially preda- tory, we find that the analysis of their internal organisation resolves itself into an account of the character of taxation, the means, such as they were, of dispensing justice, and the general degree of personal freedom from molestation and of security of life and property. The fact that taxation often originates in rapine partly explains why primitive empires may commonly be described with justice as tax-gathering empires. A Eesident at Hyderabad, in an official report dated June 22, 1859, states that most natives entertain the idea that we have only governed them in order to exact as much revenue from them as we can, without reference to their interests. This conception of the objects of a govern- ment seems to me merely the natural fruit of centuries of experience of uncivilised rule. We come now to the consideration of Mounts tuart NATIVK RULE UNDER THE MARHATTAS 245 Elphinstone's report. In the territories conquered from the Peshwa the ryots, or petty occupants, were found to be proprietors of their holdings, subject to the payment of a fixed land tax to Government. The tax, though fixed, was loaded with other impositions, but the lands appear to have been saleable at ten years' purchase. The Peshwa himself, when he wanted land so owned, paid the price of it. At the time of conquest the whole country had been surveyed, and each field classed and assessed according to its circum- stances and quality. There had been partial and imperfect attempts at surveys by the Marhattas. The northern districts had been surveyed by Malik Amber, and the southern by the Adil Sh4hi kings. The Muhammadan rulers who preceded the Marhattas had appointed district revenue officers of their own, but had not entii:ely ousted the old hereditary revenue officers of previous Hindu Governments, the deshmuJchs and deshpandis already described. The Marhatta arrangements were not uniform, but in general there was a revenue officer for a large distriot, called a mdmlatddr, under whom were tarafddrs, or karkuns, who had charge of a consider- able number of villages, and under them shaikhddrs, who had four or five. There were other officers also, who were bound to give information of aU malpractices on the part of the mdmlatddrs. These mdmlatddrs made large unauthorised profits, often with the connivance of the Government. They found means to engage on their side the officers who were set to watch tliem. Accustomed to be mulcted when they submitted their accounts, on the score of embezzlements assumed against them without much proof or investigation, the mdmlatddrs made money by concealing the receipt of fees and fines, by false charges for remissions of revenue, false musters, non-payment of pensions, and other frauds.. An extra assessment was imposed for the purpose, amongst other things, of bribing the ministers and auditors. This expenditure was known as Durbdr Kharch ; and by degrees the bribes became established fees, and the account of them was audited like the rest. ' As bribes,' it is said, ' were stiU required, another increase of collection took place for this purpose ; and as the auditors and accountants did not search minutely into these delicate transactions, the mdmlatddr generally collected much more for himself than he did for his patron.' The complicated Marhatta system of dividing 246 OUR INDIAN PROTECTOEATE the revenue in grants to various recipients added to the trials of the peasant occupant. As many as five diiFerent grantees might have claims on the collections from a single village. If there was a defalcation, each endeavoured to secure his own share in full and throw the loss on his neighbour ; and a general struggle ensued, in which the ryots suffered from the violence of the combatants. When the time of payment came round, a foot soldier was sent by the shaikhddr to assist the village headman, and if a ryot refused, or was unable to pay his revenue, the soldier con- fined him in the village watch-house, exposed him to the sun, put a heavy stone on his head, and prevented his eating and drinking till he paid. If this did not succeed, the ryot ' was carried to the mdmlatddr, his cattle were sold, and himself thrown into prison or into irons. This rigorous treatment was seldom necessary for the regular revenue, it was more employed in exacting extraordinary taxes ; and under the farming system the practice of it was frequent and severe.' So long as the mdmlatddrs had an interest in the prosperity of their charges the ryots probably suffered less by all this corruption and exaction than might be sup- posed. But eventually this check was removed. The office of mdmlatddr was put up to auction year by year among the Peshwa's attendants. Mdmlatddrs thus appointed had neither time for inquiry nor motive for forbearance. 'A man's means of payment,' writes Mountstuart Elphinstone, ' not the land he occupied, were the scale on which he was assessed. No moderation was shown in levying the sum fixed, and every pretext of fine and forfeiture, every means of rigour and confiscation, were employed to squeeze the utmost out of the people before the arrival of the day when the mdmlatddr was to give up his charge ; amidst all this violence a regular account was prepared, as if the settlement had been made in the most deliberate manner.' In the matter of police, Elphinstone testifies that the country to which his report relates was, amidst all the abuses and oppressions of a native Government, in a state superior to that of our oldest possessions at that time. Gang robbery was common, but had never, since he had been in the country, reached such a piteh as it had reached in Bengal. These robberies were almost always committed by Bhils and other predatory tribes, who scarcely formed part of the society. The Bhils, probably aborigines, differing in colour, manner, and language from the other inhabitants, lived in NATIVE RULE UNDER THE MARHATTAS 247 the northern Ghauts and eastern branches of the range, in the -wastes dividing Guzera* from M41wa, and in the east of Guzerat. Below Poona the Bhils were succeeded by the Eamiisis, who had the same thievish habits as the Bhils, but were less separated from the generality of the people. There was no prescribed form of trial. Men were seized on slight suspicions. Presumptions of guilt were freely made. Torture was emploj^ed to compel confession. Prisoners for theft were often whipped at intervals to make thgm discover where the stolen property was hidden. Ordi- narily no law was referred to, except in cases affecting religion. In punishments a greater distinction was made on account of the caste or means of the criminal than the nature of the crime. Probably no .other punishment than fine was ever inflicted on a man who could afford to pay one, and any offender, it is said, could purchase his release if he had money enough to pay for it. False accusations were used to extort money from the innocent. Jdgirddrs, zamin- ddrs, and village headmen made a trade of harbouring robbers and shared their profits. Highway robbery was generally punished with death, because it was generally committed by low people. A principal rebel, or a head of banditti, would be executed as soon as he was caught ; any Bhil captured in a part of the country w;here Bhils were plundering the road would be hanged immediately. Most mdmlatddrs would hang a Bhil or a Eamiisi without refer- ence to any higher authority. But at Poona all officers would pay the Peshwa the compliment of asking his sanction to a capital sentence. Murders were usually punished by fine ; but in cases of treason and rebellion, birth was no pro- tection. Besides hanging, other punishments were tramp- ling to death by an elephant, blowing away from a gun, beheading, cutting to pieces with swords, crushing the head with a mallet. 'Brdhman prisoners, who could not be executed, were poisoned or made away with by deleterious food ; bread made of equal parts of flour and salt was one of these. Women were never put to death ; long confine- ment and the cutting off of the nose, ears, and breast, were the severest punishments inflicted on them. Mutilation was very common, and the person who had his hand, foot, ears, or nose cut off, was turned loose as soon as the sentence was executed, and left to his fate. Imprisonment in hiU forts and dungeons was common ; and the prisoners, unless they 248 OUE INDIAN PBOTECTOEATIi: "were people of consideration, were always neglected, and sometimes allowed to starve.' Under a police administration so corrupt and so tyran- nical, how was it that crime was not specially rife ? To a certain extent the people protected themselves. They had arms, and were hardy and warlike. Village police was committed to the village headmen and the village watchman. The footsteps of a thief were tracked from village to village, and the village officers, and inhabitants of the village outside the boundaries of which the track could not be carried on, were held responsible for the property lost. Besides the hereditary village watchmen, other watchmen were often entertained from plundering tribes in the neighbourhood, partly to assist in repelling open force, partly as a measure of blackm.ail convenient to both parties concerned in it. But probably the success of barbarous methods of repressing crime is best explained by their origin in and close connec- tion with a primitive state of society. Because punishments were inhuman, they struck terror where no other motive would deter from crime. The mdmlatddrs and other officers were careless of small disorders in society ; great ones they put down with a strong, unsparing, undiscriminating hand. Born and bred in the country, they had a keen insight into the probabilities of each case, which at least helped men who had few scruples to a speedy decision. ' If robberies were committed, they seized all the suspicious characters in the neighbourhood, and if they succeeded in restoring quiet they did not care, though a hundred Eamiisis suffered imprisonment and torture without a fault.' In the Marhatta system of civil justice the most impor- tant institution was the panchdyat. This has been described as a village council or court of arbitration ; but in the country here under consideration it does not appear to have been closely connected with the village organisation, though the village headman was one of the functionaries in whom resided the power of summoning these courts. In one period of the development of Eoman law the magistrate defined the issue between the parties to a civil case, and referred it for decision to a judge or judex. The judex was a private citizen, and had no power to pronounce judgment unless authorised by the magistrate. The written directions given by the magistrate to the judge were called formulce; and the whole system was comparable in point of precision and almost in technicahty with the pleadings of an English NATIVE RULE UNDER THE MARHATTAS 249 court of law. The Marhatta references to panchdyats bore some slight resemblance to Eoman references to judices, if we can suppose the latter stripped of all precision, techni- cality, and system, and directed, without advertence to any law except the popular notions of customary law, to selected groups of people — never less than five, and sometimes as many as fifty in number. Many officers of the native government, and other persons of good position, had autho- rity to order a panchdyat to be called ; and in any doubtful case it was considered a gross injustice to refuse to make this order. The persons chosen to serve were in general those likely to understand the subject in discussion : as bankers in a matter of account ; deshmukhs and deshpandis in land-suits ; in caste disputes,- members of the caste from an unprejudiced part of the country. The members of a panchdyat might be openly paid by the parties for their trouble. The decisions oi panchdyats were reported to, and supposed to be enforced by, the public officers. But in truth there was no finality where a superior officer, or the same officer or his successor in office, might be induced by a bribe or the expectation of a recognised fee to reopen the matter. Sums were levied from the parties ; the fine on the loser varied with his means ; one-fourth of the property was the price paid for justice by a successful plaintiff; and this was, in fact, a standing bribe to invite the assistance of the magistrate. The panchdyats were quite unmethodical in pro- cedure, and usually dilatory in making an award. Sometimes their counsels were divided by partisanship with the litigants. Sometimes one of their members was stimulated by a bribe to suggest the decision and persuade the rest to assent. With all their liability to corruption and delay, these rudimentary juries, in default of better courts, commanded the confidence of the people, as is witnessed by the proverb, pdnch parmesh- wdr — ' The judgment of the panchdyat is the judgment of God.' Private redress, patronage, and presents played a very large part in the whole arrangement. Eeaders of Sir Henry Maine's ' Early History of Institutions ' are familiar with the transformation of the foray of primitive times into the legal remedy of distraint, and with the analogy between the Indian practice of sitting dharna and the rule of the Brehon law that a creditor who requires payment from a debtor of higher rank than himself shall ' fast upon him ' Elphinstone's description of the Marhatta sj'-stem of civil justice exhibits, I think, a transitional state of society in 250 OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE which a primitive institution, probably originating in a caste, tribal, or village council, has been utilised, with modifications, for purposes of administration and to provide in part for the remuneration of officials ; while private duress is accepted, just as the seizure of cattle was tolerated under early English law, as a means of inducing the defen- dant to submit to the jurisdiction. In all claims, except for land, the first step in the suit was takdza, or dunning ; nor would the Government concern itself in the case unless the defendant complained of excessive or unjust takdza. This might consist of placing a guard over a man, preventing his eating, tying him neck and heels, or making him stand on one leg, with a heavy stone on his head, under a vertical sun. It was employed intentionally to bring about the acquiescence of defendants in the appointment of joanc/iiiyflfe. Such was the process when the demand was made against an inferior or an equal. ' If,' says Elphinstone, ' the debtor were a superior, the creditor had first recourse to suppli- cations and appeals to the honour and sense of the other party : he laid himself on his threshold, threw himself on his road, clamoured before his door, or he employed others to do all this for him ; he would even sit down and fast before the debtor's door, during which time the other was com- pelled to fast also ; or he would appeal to the gods and invoke their curses upon the person by whom he was injured. It was a point of honour with the natives not to disturb the authors of these importunities so long as they were just, and some satisfaction was generally procured by means of them. If they were unjust, the party thus harassed naturally concurred with the plaintiff in a wish for a panchdyat.' The employment of the interest possessed with any great neighbour or connection to iiatercede with the debtor or stir the authorities to do justice was so extended that scarcely any man was without some patron. This circumstance, so far as it goes, seems to support the conjecture that the Eoman dientela was an old Italian institution, dating from tifties when Eoman citizenship was yet unknown. At all events, in primitive times the spokesmen of the groups which are the prominent units of society are the headmen of the villages, the headmen of tribes, and the chiefs of plundering bands ; and in periods of habitual warfare the disposition of in- dividuals, villages, or towns to seek the protection of any lord or leader who is strong enough to afford it, plays an active NATIVE KULE UNDER THE MAEHATTAS 251 part in the process of feudalisatioji. In this Marhatta society we can perceive at work some of the motives which went to form two of the most famous legal relationships in legal history, those of patron and client under Eoman law and of lord and vassal under feudalism. As for presents, though we are right to detest venality and to punish severely an offence that is easily screened, we must not forget how deep in primitive human nature lies the con- viction that any powerful people and the gods, too, if the gods are any way in question, had better be conciliated, lest they do one an injury ; and that, later on, the fair remunera- tion of the judge for his trouble was paid by the parties hke a court fee. In our early days when the government of the East India Company was stiU conducted on oriental principles, it permitted its servants to reap the fruits of the native system of presents to those in authority. When we look into states that have not been Anglicised, we should hardly err if we expect to find judicial corruption held in popular estimation to be no worse a faihng than in our country parliamentary corruption was held to be only a generation ago. I must add that under the Marhattas ordeals were not uncommon, especially in boundary disputes.* In other cases they were chiefly resorted to when other means of ascertain- ing the truth had failed. On the whole, some justice was obtainable. The panchdyats being drawn from the people could act on no principles that were not generally under- stood ; and they could readily grasp the facts before them, and often knew the character of the parties very well. There was a special term, however, — tali, — for robbery, arson, or murder committed to oblige a Government officer or village to satisfy the claims of the perpetrator. As Elphin- stone points out, the frequency of this offence shows that justice was often denied. It is easy to see that such advan- tages as there were in the old Marhatta system could scarcely be maintained under British rule. It was taJcdza that gave, in many cases, its impulse to the system of panchdyats ; and tahdza, under British administration, perished forthwith. It is no point of honour with our courts to refrain from inter- ference with clamouring creditors. If clamour goes beyond mere importunity and reaches to personal molestation or threats of divine vengeance, there are the law courts and there is the penal code. Assuredly in these days the man assailed wiU, if possible, have the law of his adversary. And our magistrates must act as their codes direct, if the applica- 252 OUR INDIAN PROTECTOEATE tion made to them is supported by sufficient evidence. They cannot, hke an old Marhatta mdmlatddr, blankly refuse to take up a case if they think its investigation too troublesome or inexpedient, or no one has made that investigation worth their while. So far the description applies to the places and times in which the Marhatta government was strongest and best. In the days of the last of the Peshwas the state of things was much worse. ' The farming system,' so the report runs, ' made over each district to the highest bidder, who was generally the most unprincipled man about the court ; and, as full support was requisite to enable him to pay his re- venue, it consigned the people to his oppression without a remedy. The farmer's whole time and thoughts were occupied in realising his revenue. Justice was openly sold, and, except as a marketable commodity, it was never thought of. The party in the wrong could always by a bribe prevent his Cause going to a panchdyat, or overturn the decision of one. An appeal lay from the under farmer to the upper, whose income depended on the exactions of the authorities below him, and from him to the minister, who never received a complaint without a present, or to the Peshwa, who never received one at all. In consequence, the Government afforded little justice to the rich and none to the poor.' I will supplement the particulars I have taken from Mountstuart Elphinstone's report of 1821 by some extracts from a report, dated August 16, 1867, by the late Mr. W. G. Pedder, then Superintendent of Revenue and Survey Assess- ment, Khandeish. Mr. Pedder had been employed for many years in Guzerat on duties connected with the settlement of the land revenue, and had thus had special opportunities of making himself acquainted with the early records of all the Guzerat coUectorates. At a distance from the seat of Mar- hatta power, on the coasts and in the northern districts, there was less in vigour in Marhatta rule than in the Deccan ; and there were special circumstances which conduced to great insecurity of life and property. If the state of taxation was bad in the Deccan, ' it was much worse in Guzerat, where the people, in race and language, were foreign to their Marhatti rulers, where the farming system was introduced earlier and more systematically, and where districts were portioned out between the Moghals, the Peshwa, the Gaek- war, and Sindhia, which powers were continually at war, so that a single village was often called on to pay revenue to NATIVE RULE UNDER THE MARHATTAS 253 two or more at once.' In some districts ' the revenue v\'as only collected by sending rouna a mulk-giri army while the crops were standing ; and, as the chiefs made resistance a point of honour, the collection of the Grovernment demands was annually attended with bloodshed and wide devastation, the result being that the most powerful chiefs paid little, the weaker were crushed by the exaction.' Mulk-giri, as I have explained elsewhere, literally means taking possession of a country ; and it is significant that a special term was in use to denote the periodical progress or incursion of a force for the collection of tribute or revenue by violence or intimidation. The Edjpiit chiefs, who resided mostly on the frontiers, made a regular practice of levying blackmail. This was called tordgrds, from tora, composition, payment, adjustment, and grds, literally a mouthful, apphed sometimes to the assignment of a smaU portion of the produce of a village or villages in remuneration for military service, and in Guzerat and MAlwa denoting the price paid for immunity from plunder. If the tordgrds was not regularly contri- buted, the villages were burnt and the headmen carried off and held to ransom. In many districts of Guzerat not a single village was exempt from the imposition. ' Besides the sufierings of the province from robber tribes, every petty chief and every village during the eighteenth century waged war with their neighbours at discretion.' ' The coasts of Guzerat and the Konkan suffered dreadfully during the eighteenth century from the ravages of pirates. On one occasion aU the women of a Brdhman town were carried off by Muhammadan pirates, who not only violated them, which perhaps was not thought of so great consequence, but de- prived them of caste by forcing beef into their mouths. In Khandeish, the Bhils, or aboriginal tribes, sallying from their fastnesses in the hills, committed great ravages upon the villages of the plains. The policy of the Marhattas towards these people was cruel in the extreme. A common punish- ment for a Bhil, whose only crime was perhaps his being a Bhil, was to be tied to a red-hot gun. Numbers of them, with their wives and children, betrayed by treachery, after being flogged or mutilated by the amputation of their noses, ears, and the breasts of the women, were thrown down pre- cipices or into dry wells. They, of course, retaliated when they could by similar atrocities.' ' Khandeish is fuU of dis- mantled hill-forts. These were supposed to curb the hill tribes, but during Marhatta rule they were occupied by Arab - 254 OUK INDIAN PROTECTOEATE and other mercenary troops, who laid the whole country under contribution.' The older report of Elphinstone states that women were never capitally punished. But where nothing was systematic and no general rules were consis- tently observed, there seems no reason, in the case of Bhil women, to doubt the testimony of Mr. Pedder. 255 CHAPTEE XIII NATIVE RULE IN THE PUNJAB Our three greatest predecessors in Indian dominion were the Marhattas, the Delhi emperors, represented by their usurping viceroys, and the Sikhs. When the Company first became a political power, the Marhatta confederacy had thrown its close and intricate network of predatory claims over Western, Central, and a great part of North-western India. The rest of Northern India and the Deccan and most of the eastern coast districts were in the hands of practically independent Muhammadan governors. Later on, about the time when the British Government became the paramount power in the rest of India, to the north and west of the Sutlej arose the compact Sikh kingdom of Maharaja Eanjit Singh. Neglect- ing a vast number of petty jurisdictions within the enormous masses of territory subject to Marhatta, Sikh, or Moghal domination, neglecting also the far southern states of Cochin and Travancore, I must add that in the south of the peninsula we succeeded to a great part of the dominions of Haidar Ali and Tippoo, the Muhammadan rulers of the Hindu state of Mysore. Edjpiit India, extending from Guzerat to the distant petty principalities in the Punjab HiUs, from Bikanir on the west to the borders of Eewa on the east, was never, as a whole, regularly annexed by any conquerors ; though an intrusive arm of Marhatta conquest divides the Western from the Eastern E^jputs, and the northern Edjpiit States are separated from the States of Edjpiitdna proper by a like obtruding block of territory once overrun and now stiU partly held by Sikh chieftains. It is interesting to note that our main conquests followed the line of least resistance. The Delhi Empire was altogether in fragments ; but the Marhatta confederacy, though very loose, was held together in a way by ties of race and religion, by something like a common system and common aims ; and the Sikh power of Eanjit Singh 256 OUR INDIAN PEOTECTOEATE was better consolidated than any barrier that opposed our course before we reached the Sutlej. It will be remembered that we are dealing at present with the condition, prior to British rule, of territory that is now British. As I have described Marhatta administration in the last chapter, I turn now to Sikh administration, leaving the Muhammadan governments for another chapter. Before the irruptions of Turks, Afghans, and Moghals established a Muhammadan government in the Punjab, and laid the foundations of Muhammadan supremacy in Upper India, the Punjab territories appear to have been, held by Edjpiit princes. To Edjpiit dominion eventually succeeded that of the Delhi emperors, whose hold upon the Punjab was at one time strong. From 1584 to 1598 a.d. the great Akbar seems to have made Lahore his head-quarters ; and the mosques and gardens of Lahore and its neighbourhood still bear witness to the ostentation and luxury of the Delhi court. It was the decay of Muhammadan rule in the Punjab that led first to the partition of the country amongst numerous Sikh chieftains ; and afterwards to the rise, in the country west and north of the Sutlej, of the consolidated kingdom of Eanjit Singh. Sikhism, an eclectic religion combining with some Hindu tenets and observances a monotheism probably derived from IsMm, arose in the Punjab during the sixteenth century. Its birthplace was a border-land between the Hindu countries of India and the Muhammadan countries whichstretchaway from a point not far west of Lahore till they blend with Christian countries in the European provinces of the Turkish Empire. The Sikh religion, originally a tolerant quietism, became, under the impulse from within of political ambition and the , impact from without of a persecution that was both political and religious, a warlike and aggressive political power. It was probably during the long absence of Aurangzib in the Deccan that Guru Govind Singh, the last of the ten great Gurus, or recognised heads of the faith, conceived the idea of founding a Jat principality along the skirts of the hills between the Sutlej and the Jumna. His chosen disciple, Banda, attacked, defeated, and slew the Moghal governor of the province of Sirhind ; and Banda was, after further suc- cesses, eventually captured and put to death at Delhi under circumstances of great barbarity. It is said that he was com- pelled to take the life of his own son, and that his flesh was then torn with red-hot pincers. A price was put upon the NATIVE RULE IJST THE PUNJAB 257 heads of Sikhs ; and persecution, which was probably the more relentless and bloodthirsty*%ecause political issues were involved in the struggle, suppressed for a generation the ex- hibition alike of Sikh fervour and of Sikh turbulence. The Delhi Empire, however, was already being torn to pieces by its open enemies and faithless adherents ; and ruthless pressure upon one nucleus of political power did nothing to retard the catastrophe. The notorious confusion of the time invited the invasion of N4dir Shah ; and the march of the Persian army through the Punjab, followed by the capture of Delhi, gave the Sikhs another opportunity. Bands of armed men, in tens and twenties, infested the roads, plundered indiffe5.ently the stragglers of the Persian army and the inhabitants of the country ; and, as troubles thick- ened, these robbers extended their depredations to villages and towns. Again and again Ahmad Shah Durdni, the mace-bearer and successor of Nddir Shah, repeated, with varying success, the blows of his predecessor. The Muham- madan governors, who still lingered in the Punjab, could make little head against the Persians on the one side and the Sikhs on the other ; and the Muhammadan rulers of Upper India, who were now asserting independence, already felt the formidable menace of Marhatta power. The bands of highwaymen began to collect in dehras or encampments under sarddrs or chiefs ; the robbers, now mounted and better armed, began to regard themselves and to be regarded as free-lances, ready to take any side that offered a prospect of booty. Adina Beg Khan, the last governor on behalf of the Moghals in the JuUundur Do4b, assumed inde- pendence, and, refusing to bow to the Dur4ni yoke, took Sikhs into his pay, and called in the Marhattas. Mulhar Eao Holkar, and other Marhatta chiefs came with alacrity, and a swarm of Sikh plunderers advanced with them on Lahore. The son and the governor of the Durdni chief retired to the Indus ; and a detachment of Marhattas remained at Lahore till Ahmad Shah reappeared on the scene, when they retreated before him, pillaging and laying waste the country to Delhi. Then followed, in 1761, the last great battle of Pdnipat, the I'ast great battle in India between Muhammadans and Hindus, in which the Muham- madan powers formed or forming on the ruins of the empire joined the invaders, who had contributed to its ruin and their rise, in temporarily crushing the great Marhatta power of Western ■ India, which practically threatened 258 OXTR INDIAN PROTECTORATE every Muhammadan state in tlie land with either subjection or extinction. The defeat of the Marhattas at Pdnipat gave a very severe shock to the only Indian political authority in Northern and Western India that was ' then capable of withstanding for any length of time the growing strength of the East India Company ; and it may be said to have prevented a Marhatta conquest of the Punjab, which would in all probability have ensued had Ahmad Shah Dur4ni and his Indian allies been vanquished by the Peshwa's cousin, Seddsheo Eao Bhdo. Ahmad Shah Durdni quickly returned to KAbul, leaving governors in Lahore and Sirhind. For some few j^ears the Sikhs attacked his governors when he '^as absent, and on his approach to the assistance of his dependents eluded his vengeance by breaking up their camps and dispersing in different directions. Once he surprised them already in action with his Sirhind governor, Zain Khan, and defeated them with great slaughter. They avenged this defeat by the destruction of Sirhind and the capture of Lahore ; and at length the sudden desertion of 12,000 men of the Shah's armj^, who marched back to K4bul without orders, compelled him, in 1764, to quit the Punjab for the last time. The Delhi Empire had fallen. The Marhattas were defeated. The Persians and Afghans were gone. The field was thus clear for the martial bands of Sikhs now formed into a number of confederacies, known as Misls, which speedily acquired territorial power. It was a principle of these associations that the lands they conquered should be divided amongst the confederates in proportion as each had contributed to the acquisition. The portion of the chief or sarddr having first been divided off', the remainder was parcelled out to leaders of troops, usually according to the number of horsemen they brought into the field. The theory was that every one took and held his share in full indepen- dence ; became, indeed, to the extent of his holding in the jointly conquered lands, a petty prince of a petty sovereignty. We may reasonably suppose that the leaders of the Misls soon arrived at a common understanding due to community of race amongst Jat Sikhs, and amongst all Sikhs to com- munity in religion and in antipathy to the Muhammadans alike of Delhi and Persia and Afghanistan. A practice was established whereby the chiefs of the Misls and their followers met once or twice a year at Amritsar, and usually NATITE RULE IN THE PUNJAB 259 held gurumattas or councils on tlieir common afiairs. So far as the idea of the mystic Khdlsa had at that time any con- crete realisation, its embodiment, I think, is to be traced in these assemblages. The Khdlsa appears to me to have been a sort of vague personification of the Sikh people in its warlike and religious aspect. At all events, if the forces of several Misls, after a gurumatta, joined in a predatory enterprise or in the levy of blackmail, they assumed the title of the army of the Khdlsa. Before the rise of Eanjit Singh there does not appear to have been any central political authority controlling the chiefs of the Misls, who were held to be equal amongst themselves. In a society full of violence an immense number of petty chieftaincies just won by the sword could by no means maintain inviolate for any long period of time either their boundaries or their authority. North and west of the Sutlej they were welded into a mass by the lucky alliances and unscrupulous craft of Eanjit Singh. South and east of that river they fell under the petrifying, if preserving, hand of British authority. Some of these states lapsed to the British Government. Many were sequestrated for taking the wrong side in the first Sikh war. Some are stiU substantive protected dependent states of the British Empire. From the first there were tendencies at work which made it pretty certain that before long some bold adventurer would outstrip his compeers in the race for power and subjugate numbers of these lesser chiefs, who in the unquiet times could hardly stand alone without protectors. It is unlikely that the theory of the full independence of those who shared in the acquisitions of a Misl was ever consistently acted on. Indian experience, at least, suggests that the vague acceptance of a theory as a sort of counsel of perfec- tion that no one seriously supposes will be followed universally or unless convenient, is just one of those distinctive marks which form part of the contrast between imperfectly civilised and fuUy civilised societies ; and the popular capacity for modifying general rules according to practical exigencies is one of the circum- stances that make generalisation on Indian history and Indian affairs eminently hazardous unless fortified by modifications and exceptions. A Sikh sarddr in the lands assigned to him might grant jdgirs — that is, assign the revenue of specified lands — to relations, dependents, or retainers, on condition of personal service with contingents s 2 260 OUR INDIAN PEOTECTORATE according to the extent of the grant. In other cases a disputed succession, a quarrel between brothers or between father and son, or the probable helplessness of the widow or orphan when a tenure fell to a woman or a child, might invite interference or attack ; and when one sarddr had conquered another, it may be after a well-balanced fight, it was a ready expedient either to grant to the vanquished chief some of his own villages, or perhaps better still, some other villages in another part of the country, as a jdgir, to be held in dependence on the conqueror and subject to the usual condition of service in war. This last expedient was frequently employed by Eanjit Singh, and was part of the means whereby he raised himself to the headship of the Sikhs. His grandfather, Charat Singh, rose from being a common highwayman to the sarddri or chiefship of a separate Misl, with a territory computed to yield three lakhs of rupees. The circum- stances of the career of Eanjit Singh are matters of history which need not be repeated here. It is acutely remarked by Baron Charles Hiigel, who travelled in the Punjab in 1835, that causes similar to those which operated to extend the dominions of the East India Company contributed to the establishment of the kingdom of Eanjit Singh. Where there was a free fight for power, there was also a premium on subordinate alliance with the most formidable competitor ; if submission cut off the hope of supremacy, the stronger party probably had the strength and might be persuaded to have the will to confirm one's possession, at all events for one's own lifetime. Lapses, rightly or wrongly claimed, also afforded easy means of extending acquisitions. But the spirit in which Eanjit Singh reaped the fruit of political confusion was not that in which lasting empires are formed. It is said that Eanjit Singh never felt a moment's anxiety as to what would be the fate of the Sikh kingdom after his death ; and his whole history confirms this view of his character. It is certain that he never gave the Punjab any fixed form of government, or laid down written laws, or established courts of justice. The guru- mattas were discontinued. The last was held when Lord Lake pursued Holkar into the Punjab in 1805. The govern- ment of the Maharaja was a pure despotism. The standing army, the revenue farmers, the karddrs and jdgirddrs, and certain governors of large provinces, were almost the whole machinery of ihe administration. NATIVE -RULE IN THE PUNJAB 261 To get a clear idea of the condition of the Punjab before British rule we must distinguish between the Cis-Sutlej and the Trans-Sutlej territory. It was from the Cis-Sutlej terri- tory that we warned away the aggressive power of the Sikh Maharaja by the treaty of 1809. But six years before that date we had acquired the eastern portion, known as the Delhi territory, by conquest from the Marhattas. A great part of the Karndl district, near Delhi, was acquired in that way, and there is a very good description of the state of that neighbourhood in the ' Karndl District Gazetteer.' The Karndl district lay between the conquests of the Sikhs and the conquests of the Marhattas ; it was a prey to both, and a highway for the ravaging armies of Nddir Shah and Ahmad Shah Durdni as they marched to and fro. At the end of the last and the beginning of the present century the people, exposed ■ to attack from marauding bands, concentrated in strongholds. In one part of the district, out of 221 villages the inhabitants of 178 were whoUy driven from their homes and fields. Villages were usually protected by brick forts and surrounded by ditches and walls. Every group of villages was at enmity with its neighbours. The royal canal had dried up. Forest had taken the place of cultivation, and gave shelter to robbers and wild beasts. Many Sikh sarddrs had seized upon the northern part of the country. Towards the south the occupying chiefs were usually feuda- tories of the Marhattas. But whatever ruling power or chief local authority there was, concerned itself with criminal justice or police only so far as the pretence of either could bring in money ; and, in fact, the chiefs usually shared the proceeds of the depredations committed by the villagers. Cultivators followed the plough sword in hand, and when any revenue was collected it was taken at the sword's point. In the Sikh states between, the Sutlej and the Jumna brought under protection in 1809, the establishment of a British protectorate did not for very many years result either in pacification or in good government. There is an account of the condition of society in these states in a report by Captain Murray, who was political agent at UmbaUa for some fifteen years ending about 1830. In the avarice of the ruling authorities, their denial of justice, the use of private redress, panchdyats and ordeals, the picture he draws recalls that of the Marhatta Government reproduced in the preced- ing chapter from Elphinstone. But in these Sikh states not 262 OUR INDIAN PROTECTOEATJK under the rule of Eanjlt Singh it is easy to see that we are several degrees nearer anarchy. Such administration of civil and criminal justice as can be said to have existed at all, was, in each state, vested in the sarddr or chief. Arbitrary fines, levied according to the means of the offender, were the usual form of punish- ment. They brought money into the coffers of the chief, and were a fruitful source of peculation to his officers, who often used cruel means to elicit confessions and extort money for real or imaginary offences. The successful suitor paid shukardna, a present of gratitude ; the prosecutor in a case of theft had generally, as a pre- liminary, to pay a chahdram, or fourth of the value of the lost property, to the chief or his officer ; the unsuccessful suitor paid a fine. ' The wealthy,' says Captain Murray, ' may secure justice, but the indigent are likely to obtain something less. The larger the bribe, the more chance of success. A case where the right is clear and undeniable is often allowed to lie over, that the present may be augmented. All officers under the chief and employed by him in districts or departments follow his example, but are ultimately thrown into a bora, or dungeon, and required to refund, and when they have satisfied the cupidity of their superior they are generally permitted to resume their functions, honoured with the shawl as a mark of favour. Capital punishment is very seldom inflicted. The most incorrigible culprits are punished with the loss of either one or both hands and deprivation of nose or ears ; but mutilation is rare, for whoever has the means to pay, or can procure a respectable security to pay for him within a given time, may expiate the most heinous transgressions.' Claims for justice being thus recognised as opportunities for exaction, it is not surprising that petty chiefs and their officers harboured thieves and shared their plunder. When the parties were subjects of different chiefs, and, I suppose, in many other cases also, failure to obtain redress or its cost or probable denial was often the cause of a foray, cattle being driven off and detained in the hope of procuring satisfaction. Bloodshed, which was common in village boundary disputes, might be atoned by the price of blood — khun-haha — or by a ndta, the gift of a daughter in marriage to a relative of the deceased. A hfe was redeemed at 150 to 200 rupees or a few score acres of land. Vengeance, however, on the principle of a life for a life, was probably more frequent than these NATIVE' EULE IN THE PUNJAB 263 adjustments. Panchdyats were held, consisting, in the case of boundary disputes, of committ^s of neighbours chosen by the parties, who would pay and feed the members while they prolonged their sittings for weeks. Disputes as to betrothals and breaches of promise of marriage were also referred by the orders of the chief to panchdyats selected from the caste or tribe of the disputants. In criminal cases resort was sometimes had to ordeals by water, by boiling oil, by bearing a heated ploughshare. Captain Murray sums up the chief forms of oppression as the exaction of extraordinary imposts, the pressing of labour without recompense, and the violence of licentious armed dependents who preyed on the country, sallying out of the forts and towers which covered it on every side. Eeports by Sir Henry Lawrence, shortly after the lapse of the Sikh state of Kaithal in 1843, and by Captain Abbott five years later, when the protected states on the Umballa and Karndl border had just been confiscated, show the sub- stantial continuance of the misrule above described. In these reports we read of more than a hundred men having been killed in a single boundary dispute between two vil- lages, probably in 1840 ; of armed resistance to the collection of revenue ; of states setting the example of remorseless plunder ; of villagers forced by want of security to plunder in self-defence ; of cultivation protected by towers ; of cattle at pasture attended by bodies of armed men. It must be remembered that the Sikh states were till the annexation of the Punjab a frontier protectorate ; but we certainly pressed the principle of non-intervention very far, and clearly did not in those days and in that part of the country hold our- selves responsible for the prevention of turbulence and anarchy. I have gone through a mass of evidence on the former state of the Punjab north and west of the Sutlej, annexed in two great blocks after the first and second Sikh wars, and on this subject I know nothing better than the excellent historical retrospect in Mr. D. C. J. Ibbetson's Punjab Census Eeport of 1881, where many striking passages have been brought together from the best Settlement Eeports. I shall quote largely from Mr. Ibbetson or his authorities in what I now have to say. On the north-west frontier, under Sikh rule, the mulk-giri of the Marhattas reappears, though not under that name. In Bannu * each group of villages was a little independent 264 OUR INDIAN PEOTECTOEATE state, now warrmg with its neighbours, now at peace, now gaining, now losing territory. Between 1823 and 1845 the country was every second or third year invaded by a large Sikh army, which harried their fields, trod down their har- vests, burnt their houses, and inflicted injuries which it took the intervals of peace to repair.' In Peshawar 'the periodical visits of the Sikhs were calamities to the people ; their approach was the signal for the removal of property and valuables, and even of the window and door-frames from the houses ; crowds of women and children fled frightened from their houses, and the country presented the appearance of an emigrating colony. As the hated host advanced thej'' overran the neighbourhood, pillaging and destroying what- ever came within their reach, and laying waste the fields.' There was, it is said, scarcely a village from the head of the Peshdwar Valley to the Indus that was not burnt and plun- dered by the Sikh commanders. One chief, Karim-ud-din Khan of Ohamkanni, held his jdgir from the Sikhs on a stipulation that he should produce annually twenty Afridi heads. Across the Indus in the Murree Hills it is said that Eaja Guldb Singh used to let loose his Dogra troops upon recusant villages and pay rewards for any hill man killed, at first of a rupee a head, then of eight and finally of four annas. In the Salt Eange the high roads were universally unsafe. Passing through the limits of different tribes, ' travellers and caravans had to satisfy the rapacity of each by paying blackmail, or they had to submit to be plundered, outraged, and ill-treated, happy sometimes to escape with life.' In the central districts the Sikh grasp was much firmer ; and as Eanjit Singh extended his power open marauding was very generally suppressed. Service in his army was popular ; and the warlike spirit of the Sikhs of his part of the country had, under his guidance, full play in the expedi- tions he undertook against the Pathdn colony of Kasiir, or the Durdni governors of Mooltan, or against K4ngra, or Kashmir, or the Derajat, or Peshdwar, or other Sikh territories across the Sutlej. When he had provinces to distribute, Eanjit Singh was not averse to assigning them to local governors whose functions resembled those of the subaddrs of the Delhi Empire ; in this way the Majithia sarddrs, Deva Singh and Lehna Singh, were governors of the JuUundur Dodb, Moti Earn and Hari Singh of Kashmir, Dewdn Sdwan Mai of Mooltan and the Southern Punjab, and Avita- 3SIAT1VE RULE IN THE PUNJAB 2G5 bile of Peshawar. The pohcy was uniform ; but effect was given to it in different ways adRording to local circumstances and the degree of political strength attained in different parts of the country. Like the old Hindu rajas, the Sikh conquerors claimed a share of the crop ; but wherever they were strong enough they exercised an unusually free hand in arranging for the cultivation. Sikhs favoured Sikhs ; but it was an object to make all, Sikhs and others alike, politi- cally subordinate, and to crush down pre-existing rights and pre-existing prestige, so as to produce the maximum revenue with the minimum of political resistance. A tract first granted in jdgir might presently be resumed ; and the classes and families with any old pretensions to ruling power would be allowed a fourth share of the revenue for their subsistence ; later this would be taken from them, and small allowances out of the revenue substituted for it. The sup- posed government share of the produce varied ; it was often a half, sometimes a fourth, rarely a sixth. In practice, except where there were political reasons for concessions, the amount taken was as much, as could be exacted without actually ruining the cultivators or driving them away in despair. This is what is meant by the grinding policy of the Sikhs. The motive for any self-restraint was not compunction, but fear of the loss of revenue. Jdgirs were, however, largely granted, and were of different kinds. Sometimes a conquered chieftain was allowed to retain a part of his own territory in jdgir. Sometimes he was removed and given a jdgir in another part of the country. Where the former chiefs or ruling families or tribes had been more completely beaten down, large tracts were assigned in jdgir to high officials or court favourites. Certainly in some cases, pro- bably as often as he was resident and strong, the jdgirddr exercised all the powers of government in those villages, to the revenue of which he was entitled. If the jdgirddr, as often happened, was not resident, he leased out his villages or employed Mrddrs to collect for him. The opportunity of the death of a jdgirddr was commonly used to seize his jdgir, which, if restored at all, would only be re-granted on the payment of a heavy fine. The same tract might, at different times, bp assigned in jdgir, or farmed out to some leading dependent of the Maha- raja. These farms, perhaps of several hundred villages, were known as ijdras, and the man who thus took the lease 266 OUR INDIAN PEOTECTORATE of fhe Government share of the produce and its concomitant emoluments was called an ijdraddr. North of the Rdvi, the term kdrddr appears to have been sometimes used to denote these farmers of revenues on a large scale ; but it conveys, I think, a true idea of the actual state of things to say that the ijdraddrs, like the jdgirddrs, employed kdrddrs under them. These kdrddrs corresponded in a way with the mdmlatddrs of the Marhattas. The kdrddr might be a farmer of the ' revenue, required to pay a lump sum and left to make what he could, or he might be ordered to give an account of his collections. In either case he was regarded as an official of the state or jdgirddr, or ijdraddr, as the case might be. The instructions of Dewdn Sdwan Mai to his kdrddrs in the Muzaffargarh district are extant, and show well the official theory of the functions of a kdrddr, though they throw less light on his actual proceedings. The circle of a kdrddr in that part of the country may be supposed to have comprised some thirty villages and some 130 square miles. He was directed to treat the subjects well, to collect the revenue with acuteness, and to increase the revenue and the cultiva- tion year by year. He was to protect his charge, to punish theft with imprisonment, and, above all things, to cause restitution to be made to the complainant. He was to attend personally and settle accounts once a year. A clerk and a few soldiers were at his disposal ; he was told to subsist on his pay, and to pay the soldiers with his own hand. These instructions do not explain how the revenue was to be increased ; but that point was very well understood and fully attended to. The Dewdn did not alter the old rate of the Government share of the crops ; but he added' cesses, a few where the share was large, many where it was compara- tively small. He equalised the demand by extra imposts, so that it was heavy on all alike. ' Sdwan Mai's govern- ment,' says Mr. O'Brien (now Deputy Commissioner of KAngra), whose knowledge of the Muzaffargarh district is probably unequalled, ' was better than anything which had preceded it. Its sole object was the accumulation of wealth for the Dewan. The execution of public works, the adminis- tration of justice, and security of life and property, were a secondary consideration, and were insisted on only because without them agriculture would not prosper, and the revenue would not be paid. When one examines his numerous cesses and sees how he levied dues to pay the people's alms NATIVE RULE IN THE PUNJAB 267 and perform their religious duties, and then paid the poor and the Brdhmans what he* thought a fair amount and pocketed the rest ; how he levied a cess in return for keep- ing his word, and how he encouraged his officials to take bribes and then made them duly credit the amount in the public accounts, one's admiration for the great Dewdn is less than it would be if based on history.' The recognised receipt of presents and articles in kind for subsistence went on, notwithstanding the warning against extortion in the written instructions ; and the kdrddrs interfered closely with the cultivators. They ' made them cultivate, made the Hindus lend them money, and made the borrowers re-pay. The agriculturists were pitted against one another to culti- vate. If one man did not cultivate his land, it was given to another who did.' It may safely be said that Sikh rule was nowhere better than it was under S4wan Mai. The fact is that no ante- cedent proprietary rights in the soil, no claims of individuals to hold any intermediate position between the Government and the cultivator, were acknowledged as a matter of principle. As a matter of expediency, it was very desirable to retain industrious cultivators, to pacify people whom it was not practicable to crush, and to conciliate or reward powerful men who were used, or might be used, to carry on the really important business of acquiring territory and amassing revenue. It will have been noticed that the kdrddrs discharged some functions of officers of justice and police ; but no doubt private redress of the primitive sort must have been common in the Maharaja's dominions, as in the Cis-Sutlej states, particularly in such matters as cattle lifting, breach of betrothal, and the conjugal infidelity of women. Eeprisals, the mutilation or murder of women for adultery, and the vendetta, must have been frequent in parts of the country in Sikh times, as, indeed, they are now. Certain measures taken to prevent theft were effective, and well suited to the conditions of society. The early English laws. Sir James Stephen tells us (' History of the Criminal Law of England,' vol. i. p. 66), are full of provisions as to the hue and cry and the tracking of thieves and stolen cattle. The rule was that if the track of stolen cattle was followed into a shire, it must be followed out or the cattle paid for. Just the same customary track law was enforced in the dominions of the Maharaja and the Sikh states. If the track of thieves or 208 OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE cattle could be carried to a particular village, and the men of the village could not clear themselves of the presumption thus raised against them by carrying on the track outside their limits, there was nothing inequitable, according to primitive ideas, in demanding restitution from the village as a whole. When village might go to war with village, and tribe with tribe, and one petty ruler with another, this track law was a step in advance, an incipient limitation on private vengeance. To commit a comprehensible anachronism, it was a part of the international law of the then independent political communities. The groups in a state of nature one with another were tiny ; but then, as now, the recognised payment of indemnity was better than going to war. I am glad to say that in the Punjab we have preserved the track law, though with modifications which deprive it of a great part of its utility. There are some credible anecdotes of Avitabile which illustrate very well both the character of the administration and the state of society in Sikh times. Avitabile was a Neapolitan by birth, and a pupil of the Polytechnic School at Paris. He was an officer of Murat's army and court, and before coming to the Punjab had served sometime in Persia. At one time six Sikh robbers, who had escaped, were cap- tured and sent to him at Wazirabad, where he was employed as governor of the Eechna Dodb. With these captives came a command from the Maharaja that they should not be allowed to escape again. That same hour Avitabile caused them to be hanged. The Maharaja summoned him and asked how he had dared to hang six Sikhs. Upon Avitabile replying that he thought this the surest means of preventing their escape and obeying the Maharaja's command, the Maharaja laughed and took no further notice of the matter. Avitabile was afterwards sent as governor to Peshdwar, and administered that recent acquisition with a ferocity which was in keeping with its barbarism. ' In cases of murder ' — I quote a letter dated March 26, 1841, from the then Political Assistant at Peshdwar — ' a thirst for private vengeance is encouraged, contrary to the spirit of true law, by the rela- tions of the deceased being permitted to kill the guilty person. One revolting instance of this took place a short time back. A man had assassinated another. To obtain the price of blood, Avitabile kept him in prison for some time, and then exposed him, stark naked, to the scorching heat of the sun, the attacks of insects, &c., with half his NATIVE RULE IN THE PUNJAB 269 body painted red. As he continued obstinate, the mother of the slain was permitted to«iase her right of slaughtering him with a knife, which she not only did, but, in her delirious and savage joy, stooped down and drank two handfuls of his blood as it welled from the death-wound.' The Political Assistant goes on to say that when he was lately riding with Avitabile an old woman whose two sons had been murdered assailed the governor with cries for justice and entreaties that she might be allowed to kill the murderers. Avitabile coolly told the Political Assistant that, as he had no hopes of extracting any money from the murderers, he would probably grant the woman's request, and invited the Assistant to come and see her carry out the execution. The condi- tions of the frontier were, however, then, as now, exceptional. The most frequent vice of the Sikh hdrddrs was not ferocity, but avarice. In this chapter on native rule in the Punjab I must not omit all reference to Edjput rule in the Punjab Hills. Here, however, I can be very brief, as I have already described at some length the hill principality. It will suffice to quote again the KAngra Settlement Eeport of Sir James Lyall. Speaking of the rulers of Kulu, ' the rajas,' he says, ' were petty despots in league with the priests, often cruel and avaricious, and recognising very faintly any law or custom ; and they and their favourites did much as they liked, or as their jealousy or avarice prompted them. A man's ancestral house and lands were sometimes confiscated and transferred for no fault. To seem to be weU-to-do or influential was to be in danger. As an example, in 1862 a large sum of money was accidentally exhumed. On inquiry, it appeared that it belonged to a family of which the women were hereditary foster-mothers to the royal family, and which had thus acquired wealth and influence. Three generations ago, on some shght pretext, the raja suddenly seized the whole family and buried them all alive — men, women, and children — probably because the hidden treasure was not forthcoming. The only survivors were a woman and her infant, who escaped because the mother happened to be serving at the time as wet-nurse in the palace. The number of women burnt at a raja's funeral was often prodigious. Quite as great tyranny, however, prevailed in other petty hiU states.' The governments of Eanjit Singh and of the Marhattas in the central Marhatta districts during the times which pre- ceded that of the last of the Peshwas were certainly favour- 270 OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE able specimens of native rule. In origin and in principle both governments were very much alike ; in the west, as in the north, the weakness of a decaying empire gave freebooters the opportunity of establishing territorial power ; and, in the altered circumstances, motives remained unchanged when the strength acquired by depredation was directed to a per- sistent course of aggression. In relation with other states, the Sikh and Marhatta governments belonged to a period in the development of society earlier than any in which international morality appears. In internal affairs the Marhatta administration was of a rather more advanced type than that of the Sikhs ; there were, at all events, some courts of justice, there was more distribution of authority amongst various departments of state, the measurement of the land points to a certain degree of care and skill in revenue management, and in many public arrangements we see traces of the great cleverness of the Marhatta Brdhmans in devising plans well fitted to last beyond the lifetime of an individual. In military affairs there was some similarity. If Sindhia had his disciplined battalions under French officers, his Perrons and his Bourquins, Eanjit Singh had in his service Court and AUard and Ventura and other Europeans, and organised his army more or less in a European style. But no Marhatta chieftain ever became without question supreme in the Marhatta confederacy in the same way as Eanjit Singh became supreme in the Punjab ; no one Marhatta ever had the same command of the resources of the several Marhatta chiefships as the Sikh Maharaja had of the men and material of his own dominions. There was also in the Sikh army greater fighting power and a deeper enthusiasm derived from the militant Sikh faith. Soon after the death of Eanjit Singh the supremacy passed to the army, which, in Prse- torian fashion, set up and deposed the nominal rulers at will. The formidable might of the army was due to the conquests of Eanjit Singh, because he gathered under one chiefshipthe whole military strength of the Sikh people in his own terri- tories, which might otherwise have been frittered away amongst numerous petty states. For a second time the Khdlsa found its embodiment, its avatar. The army now identified itself and was identified in popular opinion with the Sikh people ; and it freely exercised its power by means of panchdyats, committees of soldiers who determined the distribution of the troops and settled their relations to the nominal government. NATIVE RULE IN THE PUNJAB 271 It is possible that the success of these panclidyats and the strain that was put upon our Strength by the two Sikh wars may have been amongst the incentives of the Sepoy mutiny. The Sepoys of Hindustan had seen how the Sikh soldiers had acquired and wielded political power, and some of their leaders may have thought their own chances of success not indifferent when victory over a worse disciplined army had cost the paramount power so dear. 272 OUK INDIAN PROTECTORATE CHAPTEE XIV NATIVE RULE UNDER MUHAMMADAN AND OTHER GOVERNMENTS In the chapter on the annexation of Oudh and in the discus- sion of the sovereignty of the Moghals, I have anticipated a good deal that might be said on the subject of native rule under Muhammadan governments. It will be remembered, however, that the larger part of the dominions of the Nawdb Wazir of Oudh was annexed by Lord Wellesley in 1801, and that Lord Dalhousie in 1856 annexed the residue. Of districts annexed in 1801 which surround the present province of Oudh, something remains to be said in this place. The condition of these districts was probably worse than that of Bengal and Behar, as may be gathered from the well-known Fifth Eeport of the Select Committee on the affairs of the East India Company, dated July 28, 1812. Mr. H. C. Irwin, in the ' Garden of India,' gives good reasons for considering that Saadat Ali Khan, who was Nawdb of Oudh from 1798 to 1814, was a very capable ruler. He kept a strong hand on turbulent Edjpiit chiefs and successful revenue farmers, and indeed abolished the farming system, which was again established by his successors. But the cession of more than half his territory was made at the beginning of his career as Nawdb ; and no doubt what is said in the Fifth Eeport must apply to the condition of the country before the introduction of his too short-lived reforms. After describing the internal administration of Bengal, the authors of the Eeport distinctly speak of the internal admin- istration of Oudh as exhibiting the worst features which they had delineated as existing elsewhere. In support of this view they allude to the farming of the whole territory to the dmils or native collectors ; to the complete authority, civil and military, committed to these men ; and to the con- duct of the tributary rajas, exercising absolute dominion, who frequently withheld the sums demanded of them till forced to pay or compromise the claim by the appearance MUHAMMADAN AND OTHER GOVERNMENTS 273 of a military force. So long, it may weU be believed, as the dmil paid the revenue, he- was te. no danger of being called to account for abuses. Writing in 1808 of AUahabad, one of the ceded districts, the judge of Benares says: 'According to every account which I have heard of the Nawdb's government, its only object was the collection of money ; all care of justice, civil or criminal, was utterly abandoned.' In the Lower Provinces there appears to have been less turbulent resistance to the principal authority, and some slight pretensions to an administration of justice, which was, however, very corrupt. The Committee of Secrecy of 1773 reported, as the general sense of the accounts they had received of the old courts under native rule, ' that the admin- istration of justice during the vigour of the ancient consti- tution was liable to great abuse and oppression ; that the judges generally lay under the influence of interest, and often under that of corruption ; and that the interposition of Government, from motives of favour and displeasure, was another frequent cause of the perversion of justice.' In the part of Oudh first annexed, there is good reason to believe that no one could get justice at all; the redress of injuries and the punishment of crimes depended on the tyranny and caprice of the dmil, who either entirely disre- garded his duty in their behalf, or, by corruption and abuse, made it a source of profit. The first appendix to the Fifth Eeport is the celebrated minute on the permanent settlement by Sir John Shore, afterwards Lord Teignmouth. His description of Muham- madan rule in India is very weU known, but wiU bear repe- tition. 'The Moghal dominion,' he says, 'in the best of times and under the wisest princes, was a government of discretion. The safety of the people, the security of their property, and the prosperity of the country depended upon the personal character of the monarch. By this standard his delegates regulated their own demeanour ; in proportion as he was wise, just, vigilant, and humane, the provincial viceroys discharged their kists ' (that is, paid the periodical instalments of revenue due from them), ' with zeal and fidelity ; and as they possessed or wanted the recited quali- fications, the inferior agents conducted themselves with more or less diligence and honesty ; a weak monarch and corrupt minister encouraged and produced every species of disorder, for there was no law paramount to the sovereign's will, few of the officers of Government were liberally paid, T 274 OUE INDIAN PROTECTORATE and property was left to accumulate from breach of trust, abused patronage, perverted justice, or unrestrained oppression. This description I conceive to be applicable to all Muhammadan governments, where practice is for ever in opposition to the theory of morals ; and a few remarkable instances of distinguished virtue or forbearance are excep- tions which deduct little from the universality of the remark.' It has long been a commonplace that the goodness or badness of an Indian native government depends on the personal character of the ruler of the day. The informa- tion collected in this book will, I trust, enable any one who looks into _it to add something to the explanation of this well-known fact given by Sir John Shore. In the case of a small territory, a few square miles in extent, no explanation is necessary. In a very petty .state the inhabitants are likely to thrive under a good chief, just as tenants are likely to thrive under a good landlord, and for much the same reasons. A good and able man, who attends to his busi- ness, will personally know all his important officials and the local peculiarities of every part of his little dominion. He will habitually seek its improvement ; and his minute local knowledge will enable him to adjust his legitimate demands to the capabilities of the peasantry, varying with their caste or tribe or local history or the vicissitudes of the seasons. The case of a large state or empire is not so clear. Why should the deputies of the chief or emperor regulate their demeanour by his ? and why should weakness in the monarch produce every species of disorder ? I think the answer is that Sir John Shore is speaking of native governments as yet quite unaffected by British influences ; and that where we observe like facts nowadays they are probably due to the persistence of political habits and types of character formed under old conditions, changed, indeed, in some places, but in others still existing in considerable force. The effect, I take it, as observed in the old days, should be ascribed to the objects then practically acknowledged by native govern- ments, and to the methods of administration and distribution of power which they usually adopted. In so far as the effect is observed now, it should be attributed to the survival of the old causes. In the India of the Moghals, the Marhattas, and the Sikhs, I suppose the great objects of a chief were his own political security and a large revenue ; he would commonly be careless, like Banjit Singh, of everything that did not MUHAMMADAN AND OTHER GOVEKNMENTS 275 directly touch his authority or his finances. To his agents he would farm out large tracts *f many villages, to courtiers, it may be, or strong soldiers of fortune, or rich, sleek, calculating Hindu traders, with a much greater capacity for grinding money out of the poor than their obsequiousness of demeanour to their social superiors would suggest to a casual observer. Such men as these would agree to produce by a stipulated date a stipulated sum, or even pay in advance into the state treasury the revenue which they would pro- ceed to coUect from the peasantry, with additions and with that degree of harshness which was, in their judgment, required. Other tracts would be ' managed direct' — that is, the revenue would be collected by officials desired to account for all ostensible taxes, but allowed to supplement their slender salaries by various irregular practices and perqui- sites. Other lots of villages would be granted out in jdgir to people whom the chief had reason to conciliate ; or a half-subdued tribal chieftain, or raja, or poligdr, or a set of sturdy villages, lying at the edge of the desert or away in the hiUs, not to be easily controlled without some risky use of steel and gunpowder, would be left in enjoyment of their hereditary claims, subject to some light quit-rent or tribute which the chieftain or the villages would alike refuse to pay at the earliest symptom of weakness in the central authority. As regards dependent chieftains and revenue farmers and officials, there would be two tests of efficiency and the sort of loyalty expected. "Will the revenue farmer or official make good the required sum ? Are those whose tenures so prescribe prepared whenever summoned to attend the Durb4r, or court of the chief, and to follow him into the field with the customary number of adherents? If so, questions would rarely be asked as to the manner in which these different sets of people kept order in their respective local charges, or gathered the taxes for which they were responsible or which they were permitted to enjoy. No doubt now and then the chief would coerce some refractory dependent, and perhaps resume the whole or part of his jdgir, or move him and his assignment of revenue or part of it to some fresh place. But that meant war if the tributary chief dared risk it ; and no such measure was to be attempted without troops to back it up. Officials, who had no following in the country, could be treated more cavalierly ; the chief would fully expect to share the fruits of unusual exactions ; or he might call for an account, and T 2 276 OUR INDIAN PROTECTOEATE then waive it, as a sort of pull at tlie reins, to assure himself and others that his team was well in hand. In these ways there would be everywhere a large dele- gation of the powers of the chief, if such an expression can be applied to a loose irregular condition of things in which in- termittent action depended on the expediency of the moment, and there was no written law or system of precedents defining the limits of authority, and even custom itself might be overridden by the caprice of the chief. Officials he would select himself ; others, who practically discharged the func- tions of ofiicials, might be forced upon him by pre-existing social conditions. As for ofiicials, he would have no scruple in dismissing or imprisoning them, or, if necessary — I am speaking of the old days — flogging, torturing, or executing any whose obedience was suspected, or who failed in the prime duty of producing a sufficient revenue. In these circumstances even dependent and tributary chiefs and villages would readily feel the spell of bold, energetic, un- scrupulous personal character. But the potency of this spell, where conduct was dictated not by moral principle but by personal ambition and desire of gain, would depend rather upon fear than upon any amiable disposition to imitate possible virtues. The penetration, the activity, the reputation of the chief for stern and prompt vengeance, would breed terror in his local deputies. He would usually be well served in proportion as he was feared. With the removal of this check a reasonably moderate course of conduct would speedily be reversed, and the weU-known disorders would reappear. The opportunity for gain would be quickly seized whenever profitable misdeeds had a good chance of immunity. Such an opportunity might occur when a Ranjit Singh or Haidar Ali died, or when some weak boy succeeded to the chiefship and was seduced from all business by debauchery. In such a case, the junto of head- quarter ofiicials who, in league with some of the women of the palace, had corrupted him for the sake of their own power, might fall out among themselves or might not have weight enough in the state to pursue the policy of a vigorous despot. Exactions might then be multiphed on every side ; frauds in cash and grain, in the falsification of accounts, in the pay, supply, and muster of troops, in the construction of buildings, might become unusually frequent and un- usually barefaced ; old tribal chiefs in out-of-the-way places might set up for independence, which would mean that they MUHAMMADAN AND OTHEK GOVERNMENTS 277 would appropriate for themselves all they were able to coUect ; perhaps their examp^ might be followed by an official or two who had amassed a big sum with which he could pay horsemen ; strong tribal villages might pluck up heart and refuse to render revenue to any authority what- soever, prepare to resist any summons to pay by force of arms, and begin to levy blackmail on as wide an extent of country as was within fair reach of their depredations. Presently peasants of weak villages ruined by oppression, soldiers with their pay months in arrears, and generally hundreds of sturdy loons who might be either cultivators or graziers and cattle lifters or mere freebooters according to circumstances, might gather in bands under venturesome desperadoes ; and in no long time there would be literal anarchy, fire and sword being rife in the land, fields falling out of tillage for dread of raids, and no man being able to call any more of his few chattels, his cattle, his grain, his silver ornaments, or even his land his own, than he was able, with his brethren, to defend at any hour from any plunderers. Lest I be thought to exaggerate this description I will produce two vivid pictures of native life where conditions had not been changed by British pacification. One is from Southern India. I take it from a note at pages 191-2 of Lieutenant-Colonel Mark Wilks's ' History of Mysore.' ' On the approach,' he says, ' of a hostile army the unfortunate inhabitants of India bury underground their most cumbrous effects, and each individual man, woman, and child above six years of age (the infant children being carried by their mothers), with a load of grain proportioned to their strength, issue from their beloved homes, and take the direction of a country (if such can be found) exempted from the miseries of war, sometimes of a strong fortress, but more generally of the most unfrequented hills and woods, where they prolong a miserable existence till the departure of the enemy ; and if this should be protracted beyond the time for which they have provided food, a large portion necessarily dies of hunger. The people of a district thus deserting their homes are called -the Wulsa of the district. A state of habitual misery, involving precautions against habitual war and un- pitying depredations of so peculiar a description as to require in any of the languages of Europe a long circumlocu- tion, is expressed in all the languages of the Deccan and the South of India by a single word. No proofs,' he adds, ' can 278 OUK INDIAN PROTECTOEATE be accumulated from the most profound research which shall describe the mimemorial condition of the people of India with more authentic precision than this single word.' The other picture is a more recent one, drawn from the life on the north-west frontier. In March 1871, Mr. Fryer, lately Financial Commissioner in Burma, accompanied an ex- pedition across the frontier of the Dera Ghdzi Khan district into a part of the country which, as a consequence of the Afghdn War and the career of Sir Eobert Sandeman, has now been greatly pacified. Amongst other places, he visited the Khetran village of Mat, and I extract the following passage from his report : ' The Khetrdns are a peaceable and un- aggressive tribe, but are kept in a constant state of anxiety by the Marris. As we approached Mat through a gorge which leads into the small valley in which it is situated, we saw the gleam of swords from a small look-out tower situated on a rock at the end of the gorge. We sent on those Khetrdns who were with us to reassure the garrison of the little tower, who were blowing the fuses of their matchlocks and making ready for an onslaught from a supposed party of Marri raiders. Only three months before the date of our visit to Mat, twelve Khetrdns belonging to that village were grazing cattle in a valley behind the village. The Marris surprised and killed the graziers, and carried off 180 head of cattle in sight of the village. The villagers were too few in number to venture down from the ridge on which the village stands to the assistance of their sons and brothers, who were butchered before their eyes." It may be objected that this is an account of an ordinary frontier raid ; and that occurrences more or less similar have been reported in numbers from half a dozen British frontier districts since annexation. I admit it ; but go to the heart of British territory, to the Karn41 district, near Delhi. The scene that Mr. Fryer saw at Mat was a daily scene in the Karndl district at the end of the last century, when, in the dissolution of the authority of the Delhi emperors, the overlordship was seized by Sikhs and Marhattas and anyone else who was able to strike in. A few years ago the territory in the neighbourhood of Feroze- pore, also in the heart of British territory, was still dotted with the remains of mud or brick towers built by the wells as watch-towers against invaders, and as places of refuge against small predatory bands. If history be an account of the growth and mutual MUHAMMAD AN AND OTHER GOVERNMENTS 279 relations of progressive communities, then in primitive times, among societies that a% apparently stationary, or where progress is so slow that it is ordinarily impercep- tible, there is no history, but there are many typical events — events, that is, typical of the stage in tiie advance towards civilisation which the particular society has reached, and at which it seems to have paused awaiting some inter nal or external stimulus to further development. On the smaller scale, for instance, if we look at the tribal societies on the north-west frontier, we see that one frontier raid resembles another ; and that there is a common, con- tinuous round of acts of bloodshed which civilisation treats as heinous crimes ; there is cattle-lifting by armed men and, as the villagers swarm out on the hue and cry, firing by pursuers and pursued ; there is perhaps a pitched battle between tribe and tribe on account of some disputed right to the water of a hill stream ; there are murders to avenge the seduction or punish the unchastity of women, mur- ders of paramours, of wives by husbands, of daughters by fathers ; there are murders of headmen by smaller leaders seeking the headship for themselves, or of any member of a hostile family from which a life is due by the vendetta handed on from generation to generation. In all these cases each crime in its essential features closely resembles most of the others where the motive is of the same class. So also in the larger contests of primitive states, the establishment of one big chieftaincy, of a state founded by a Sivaji, a Haidar Ali, a Eanjit Singh, very much resembles the establishment of any other, the usual foundations of political power being laid in wholesale pillage. Or if we look to the political superiority of race over race rather than to the rise of individuals, each movement of armed hordes upon rich plains where plunder can be had recalls former instances of ravaging invasion ; and a Mahmiid of Ghazni, a B4ber, a Nddir Shah, an Ahmad Shah Durdni appears each to tread in the actual footsteps of his predecessor. Again and again, as we read what, for want of a better word, we must call Indian history, we see the familiar scenes repeating themselves ; it is only the names and places, sometimes only the names and dates, that are changed. For purposes of narrative, for efforts of literary skiU, this sameness diminishes the interest and narrows the opportunity ; but it possesses, in tJie scientific analysis of social progress and in the practical business of government, this great advantage — that it teaches both the 280 OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE Student and the administrator what, in the absence of Euro- pean control, they may reasonably expect. It is essential that we should know what happened in India before our time, that we may fully realise the nature of those spontaneous tendencies which we must either use or sternly check in the interests of the common weal. In no part of our business is this knowledge more important than in that part which is connected with the protected native states ; for the reason that the adventitious pressure of the superincumbent Western civilisation is lighter there than it is anywhere else, and therefore in those states the natural movements of native society are less impeded. In many or most of the Edjput States the origin of the ruling house is lost in the mists of time ; but an examination of the structure of society points to conquest by tribe over tribe, by race over race, as the source of political authority. Of the states that arose in the eighteenth century some grew out of the usurpations of provincial governors, themselves the officials of Muhammadan conquerors ; others were the prize of successful freebooters ; some were formed by the partition of Marhatta conquests achieved by systematic pillage or systematic levy of blackmail. From the events of that century, from the events of authentic Indian history at large, it is easy to illustrate the remark that robbery on a large or small scale is a usual foundation of Oriental despotisms. And, just because where there is little learning traditions are often lasting and strong, we may have to con- sider whether the selfishness, the indifference to human suf- fering, the lust of gain, which were the originating principles of power, may not be passed on from prince to prince, incul- cated by hereditary officials, and thus dictate a persistent course of sinister policy. If we suppose an Indian Machiavelli advising an Indian prince of the last century, he might tell him that wars are good because towns may be plundered and depredations provide subsistence for troops ; and conquests are good because more territory means more revenue. ' Your neigh- bour rajas,' he might say, ' are your natural foes, because your loss of territory would be their gain. Beyond their limits you may find allies, just because their further borders march with the domains of other rajas fearing and hating them as you do those who are nearest to you. In your own territories and outside of them there are manifold causes of enmit}- — race hatreds of Hindustanis against Mar- MUHAMMAD AN AND OTHEE GOVERNMENTS 281 hattas, of Sikhs or Punjabis against Afghans or Purbias, bitter religious antagonisms, «8ikhs against Musalmdns or Musalmdns against Hindus or Shias against Sunnis ; and still fiercer state or family feuds, starting from the seizure of some borderland or town, or the slaughter, foul or in fair fight, of some relation or ancestor. You must study these causes of quarrel, and use them to unravel plots, to upset over-powerful men, to take a lucrative side in the wars of other princes. In your internal administration be hard, but not so hard as to drive the ryots away, for on their toil depends the land-tax or rent which is both your private and public income. Your tax-gathering ofiicials will cheat you if they dare. You must squeeze a rich one now and again ; flog and imprison him and make him disgorge ; and when you have done this, restore him to his place. In the will to despoil they are all alike, and one who has made a good pile is probably a clever fellow, sharp at finding out how much extortion the ryot can suffer without flight. In the disposal of your wealth, remember that hoards of solid cash are probably your best investment, because in troublous times the bigger battalions have the best chance of success, and the more cash you have to spend on troops, the larger will be your following. Be ever on the watch against rebellion and treachery. Who knows when your kinsmen or paid commanders may sell themselves to your foes for the sake of your own place or better prospects ? Of course there are rebels and rebels ; it would be stupid to punish all alike. If a lord of broad acres has gone into outlawry with a strong following, a compromise may end your domestic war. If a rebel, however, is wholly in your power, banishment is a good penalty, but imprisonment and blinding are safer ; and if capital punishment is necessary, the sentence should be executed with circumstances of publicity and horror, so as to strike terror far and wide. If, however, the offender is a near relation or a Brdhman or anyone else whom it would be a scandal to kill openly, you can send him away to some distant hill fort, where a daily drink of a decoction of opium will do the business for you within a reasonable time. Above all things, be jealous of all external symbols of power. Peasants have risen to be princes ; many a deposed prince wanders a suppliant in foreign lands ; many a principality has vanished like the shadows devoured by the spreading darkness of a moonless night. Hold fast to your raj, to your own sovereignty, lest 282 OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE by some evil chance it begin to slip from your grasp. Does a neighbouring chief or one of your own vassals abate one iota of his customary respects? Be sure he meditates alliance with your foes or defiance of your authority. _ Does some far-off potentate, who claims your allegiance in the field, omit to award you an expected dress of honour or title, or does he assign to you or your envoy a lower place in Durbdr ? Doubtless he intends your disgrace and ruin and the annexation of your territory. If you are dis- honoured, men will think your power is on the wane. Your foes will see their opportunity ; of your professed followers, many will be prompt to join the side that promises to win ; more, dreading vengeance if they resist, will tender an easy submission to your enemies. Be wise, therefore, in time, and give evidence of your strength by keeping the insignia of your rank inviolate.' I do not affirm as a fact that advice like this is offered now ; much of it is inapplicable in the altered circumstances. But those who know most of native states and their ways may consider how far the spirit of this advice may sometimes actuate that which is still given. I cannot attain my object of stating what I believe to be the truth about native rule without some allusion to super- stition and cruelty. It is, I suppose, a mark of advancing civilisation that these vices cease to characterise avowed, public, customary acts, the provisions of the penal law, and penalties imposed in the course of justice or by the autho- rity of the state. Of course superstition and cruelty are in no way peculiar to native rule. Torture, as a means of col- lecting evidence whilst the prisoner was in custody, was never recognised as a part of the law of England. But it was practised in England for the purpose of obtaining evi- dence under Henry VITI., Edward VI., Mary, Elizabeth, James I. and Charles I., not only in political cases but also in the case of common crimes. There is good authority for beheving that in the sixteen years, 1644 to 1660, 109 people were hanged under English law for witchcraft. Probably the last execution under our law for this imaginarj^ offence took place when three persons were hanged at Exeter in 1682 ; but there were many later trials. Nor must we forget the frightful tortures and judicial murders perpetrated in Europe in the name of religion. Gross as is the list of Indian crimes, I know of nothing more appalling to humanity than the cruelties of the Spanish Inquisition. I understand that MUHAMMAD AN AND OTHEE GOVERNMENTS 283 Llorente, in his history of that Inquisition, reckons that up to 1809 no less than 31,912 persons were burnt alive in Spain. It is said that the last executions in consequence of the proceedings of the Inquisition took place in 1826, when a Quaker schoolmaster was hanged and a Jew burnt. When contemplating a serious undertaking Eanjit Singh sometimes used to cause two slips of paper, one expressing his wish and the other the reverse, to be placed in a copy of the Granth, the Sikh scripture. A little boy was then sent for and told to bring one of the slips and the Maharaja accepted the augury. The night before he met Lord Wil- liam Bentinck, the Governor-General, at Eupar, on October 26, 1831, Eanjit Singh entertained apprehensions that some treachery or foul play must be designed. He consulted his astrologers, who advised him to take with him two apples and offer them to the Governor-General and his secretary. If these apples were at once taken without demur, the omen would be good. The Maharaja acted on this advice, and presented the apples, which were freely received. We have founded several universities, many colleges, and many thousands of schools ; the English language and Western ideas have spread and are spreading ; but it would be a great mistake to suppose that the frame of mind which suggested these puerilities can never nowadays influence the counsels of native states. The cruelties of Haidar Ali and Tippoo were exceptional in the annals of Indian atrocities ; they were perhaps equal- led by the savageries of the Delhi emperor Muhammad Tughlak, who vras probably mad ; they were, I think, worse than anything that can be laid to the charge of the Marhattas or the Sikhs. But they actually occurred within historical times in a Hindu state under a Muhammadan Government. I may instance a few cases, all of which I take from the pages of Wilks. There is a distinction, how- ever, between the cruelties of the father and those of the son. Haidar Ali was deliberately cruel from an unfeeling policy which aimed at the extortion of wealth and the security or estabhshment of his power by striking terror. Tippoo was cruel from bigotry, from fear, from inability to control the tyrannical impulses of a mind so weak, so brutal, and so vain as to incur some suspicion of insanity. In 1763, when engaged in the conquest of Bednur, Haidar captured the trifling post of Eitoor, garrisoned by a hundred men. He caused the noses and ears of these men 284 OUR INDIAN PKOTECTORATE to be cut oiF, and in that state dismissed them to spread terror before him. On one occasion his hfe was attempted by eighty Afghan prisoners who had cut down their guard. Many of these men were killed at the moment. Of those who survived to the next day he ordered some to ' have both their hands and feet chopped off, and in that shocking state to be thrown into the highway, at considerable intervals from each other, to announce to his new subjects and to passing travellers the terror of his name.' The remainder were ordered to be dragged to death by elephants. One man survived this frightful punishment, and was seen twenty years afterwards by General Close. Once and once only is it recorded that Haidar showed compunction. On invading Coorg in November 1773, he proclaimed a reward of five rupees for each Coorg head which should be brought before him, and sat down in state to distribute the rewards. About seven hundred heads had been paid for when a man brought in two with features still showing in death a special beauty. ' In cutting off such lovely heads,' asked Haidar, ' did not your heart burn within you ? ' And he immediately ordered quarter to be given and the decapita- tions to cease. He had a department of torture which was a branch of his department of police. One of his dewdns, or ministers of finance, Chinneia, was tortured, plundered, and dismissed in 1768. The next dewdn, Asad Ah Khan, died in 1772 under torture inflicted to extort money which he did not possess. Another minister, the Brdhman Shamia, excelled all his predecessors in the well-understood practice of exhi- biting a balance against a proposed victim by means of false vouchers and false witnesses. But the spirit of the rule of Haidar Ali is best understood from the testimony of an eye-witness, the missionary Schwartz. In July 1779, Mr. Schwartz was sent by the Madras Government on a mission to Haidar to sound his views and assure him that the British authorities desired peace. Mr. Schwartz arrived at Seringa- patam on August 25, 1779, and thus describes what he saw there : ' Haidar's palace is a fine building in the Indian style. Opposite to it is an open place. On both sides are ranges of open buildings, where the military and civil servants have their offices, and constantly attend. Haidar Naik can over- look them from his balcony. Here reigns no pomp, but the utmost regularity and despatch ; although Haidar sometimes MUHAMMAD AN AND OTHER GOVERNMENTS 285 rewards his servants, yet tlie. principal motive is fear. Two hundred people with whips stai^ always ready to use them. Not a day passes on which numbers are not flogged. Haidar applies the same cat to all transgressors alike, gen- tlemen and horsekeepers, tax-gatherers and his own sons. And when he has inflicted such a public scourging upon the greatest gentlemen, he does not dismiss them. No ! They remain in the same oflfice, and bear the marks of the stripes on their backs as public warnings ; for he seems to think that almost all people who seek to enrich themselves are void of all principles of honour. ' Once of an evening I went into the palace, and saw a number of men of rank sitting round about ; their faces betrayed a conscious terror. Haidar's Persian secretary told me they were collectors of districts. To me they appeared as criminals expecting death. But few could give a satis- factory account, consequently the most dreadful punish- ments were daily inflicted. I hardly know whether I shall mention how one of these gentlemen was punished. Many who read it may think the account exaggerated, but the poor man was tied up, two men came with their whips and cut him dreadfully, with sharp nails was his flesh torn asunder, and then scourged afresh ; his shrieks rent the air.' The forcible expatriation of the Christians of Canara by Tippoo is weU known. To quote his own description of this atrocity : ' Sixty thousand persons, great and small, of both sexes, were seized and carried to the resplendent pre- sence . . . being formed into battaUons of five hundred each, they were honoured with the distinction of Isldm.' The true number was about thirty thousand ; aU the males of every age were circumcised. Colonel Wilks states that, so far as could be ascertained from conjecture, one-third of the whole number did not survive the first year. Haidar did not succeed in tranquUlising Coorg, and Tippoo entered the country with an army, and for the time restored quiet. ' If rebellion,' he declared, ' ever be repeated, I have made a vow to God to honour every man of the country with Isldm.' Another rebellion occurred. Tippoo entered Coorg in two columns, burned and destroyed the open country, and compelled the inhabitants to take refuge in the woods. He then despatched his troops in detachments to all parts of the frontier, so as to surround the province ; and caused them to contract the circle thus formed, ' beating up the woods before them, as if dislodging so much game.' They 286 OUR INDIAN PROTECTOEATE then closed in ' on the great mass of the population, male and female, amounting to about 70,000, and drove them off like a herd of cattle to Seringapatam, where the Sultan's threats were but too effectually executed.' I pass over the poisonings, hackings to death, and other murders of prisoners of war, the seizure of 20,000 masons and other men to carry on the works at Seringapatam, the wholesale mutilation of the garrison at Benda, and other instances of barbarity. I will only add the account of Tippoo's conduct towards the garrison of Oochingy, a strong hill fort belonging to a recal- citrant JOo/^^ar. The fort was taken in 1793, and the general who took it ordered five handsome boys from among the pri- soners to be emasculated for future service in the harem of the Sultan. Tippoo was delighted with the hint, and directed the whole garrison to be treated in the same manner. The command was obeyed. All the adults died. Colonel Wilts (ii. 282, note) had seen and conversed with some of the younger survivors. It was a common saying ' that Haidar was born to create an empire, Tippoo to lose one ; ' and there is no doubt of the great capacity of the father or of the imbecility of the son. It is not necessary to multiply instances of cruelty due to the acts or orders of capable or incapable native chiefs. For a few examples of cruel usages either tolerated by former rulers, or, when we found ourselves able to direct their sup- pression, so far rife as to call for express provisions, it will suffice to look to some of the engagements with native states and to some of the old regulations. Many of the engagements refer to the practice of sati, which was not declared illegal and punishable by the criminal courts in British territory till December 14, 1829. Lord William Bentinck was then Governor-General, and the first instance which I have traced of an undertaking on the part of a native chief to prohibit sati occurred in 1833, during his lordship's term of office. Upper Assam was granted in that year to Eaja Purandhar Singh, who engaged ' to abstain from the practices of the former Eajas of Assam as to cutting off ears and noses, extracting eyes, or other- wise mutilating or torturing ; ' and further bound himself not to permit the immolation of women in sati. Between 1836 and 1842 agreements directed against sati were taken from the chiefs of Ahmadnagar, Junagarh, and Jdfirabad, from seven chiefs in Eewa Kanta, and from seventeen in the Orissa Tributary Mehals. The Gaekwar of Baroda appears MUHAMMADAN AND OTHEE GOVERNMENTS 287 also at tills time to have undertaken to put dov^n sati, and in 1839 the Eaja of Satt4ra took measures to that end. Some later engagements include other practices opposed to British laws. Thus the sanads or grants of the chiefs of Taroch (1843), Mandi and Suket (1846), BiMspur, Patidla, and Jhind (1847), Chamba (1848), Patidla and Jhind (a second time), and Ndbha (1860), and Faridkot (also for a second time in 1863), prohibit sati, female infanticide, and slavery or slave dealing. The Mandi, Suket, and Bil4spur chiefs are specially bound to prevent the burning or drowning of lepers, and there are express words in the Chamba sanad prohibiting mutilation. This is not the place for a disquisition on sati ; but Bernier's description of what he actually saw at Lahore brings to mind the thousands of cases, under native rule, and under British rule also, before the resolution was formed to forbid the practice, in which innocent girls and women were forced or resigned themselves to an agonising death under the influence of a pernicious theory of morals or religion. 'At Lahore,' he says, 'I saw a most beautiful young widow sacrificed, who could not, I think, have been more than twelve years of age. The poor little creature appeared more dead than alive when she approached the dreadful pit ; the agony of her mind cannot be described ; she trembled and wept bitterly ; but three or four of the Brdhmans, assisted by an old woman, who held her under the arm, forced the unwilling victim toward the fatal spot, seated her on the wood, tied her hands and feet, lest she should run away, and in that situation the innocent creature was burnt alive.' As for evidence of barbarous practices contained in the old regulations, Bengal Eegulation IX. of 1793 provided that no criminal should suffer the punishment of mutilation. ' The reverence paid by the Hindus to Brdhmans ' (I quote Harington's 'Analysis,' vol. i. p. 397), ' and the injury to caste and credit which ensues from being the cause of their death, have, in some parts of the province of Benares been con- verted into the means of setting the laws at defiance. On the approach of a public officer to serve any judicial or revenue process, or to exercise any coercion on the part of Government over the Brahmans in question, they have been known to lacerate their bodies with knives or razors ; or to swallow or threaten to swallow poison, or a powder declared to be such ; or to construct a circular enclosure called a 288 OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE Tcurh, in -which they raise a pile of wood or other com- bustibles, and place within the area an old woman, with a view to sacrifice her by setting fire to the kurh, in which case it is believed that after death she will become the tormentor of those who occasion her being sacrificed. It has also been a practice with the Br^hmans referred to, on their not obtaining speedy relief for any loss or dis- appointment, and upon any public process being issued against them, to cause their women and children to sit down in the view of the officer charged with such process, to brandish their swords, and threaten to behead or otherwise destroy their females or children on the nearer approach of the officer ; and instances have occurred in which, from resentment at being subjected to arrest or other coercion, they have actually put such menaces into execution. A proclamation was issued throughout the province of Benares, on July 7, 1799, for the purpose of putting a stop to the murder of women and children in the manner above described ; and provisions for the same purpose, as well as for preventing the construction of a kurh and the com- mission of any act of violence, or the threat of it, under the circumstances stated, are contained in the first ten sections ofEegulationXXL, 1795.' The well-known practice of sitting dharna appears to have been sometimes aggravated by the threat of suicide. Eegulations of 1795 and 1803 dealt with female infanticide amongst a particular class of people in Benares and the Ceded Provinces, and Eegulations of 1797 and 1803 sub- jected to the penalties of murder the putting of people to death for being versed in or practising sorcery. The prac- tice of sacrificing children by exposing them to be drowned or to be devoured by sharks or alligators, prohibited by Eegu- lation VI. of 1802, does not appear to have been authorised by any Hindu or Muhammadan Government. It is time now to sum up the result of this laborious inquiry. Apart from the subjection of individuals to the influence of cruelty or superstition, what were some of the permanent causes making for misrule in native India un- redeemed by the strong civilising control of the British protectorate ? There was, I think, an intellectual defect which may be described as want of system ; an inability to foUow out principles of public conduct to their less obvious consequences, to devise, or even to perceive the need for rules ensuring the stability of institutions and assigning MUHAMMADAX AND OTHER GOVEHNMENTS 289 clearly-defined limits to delegated authority. If we regard law as consisting of those rules (^ conduct which, in civilised societies, form the subject of legislation and are enforced by courts of justice, there were numerous bodies of law — Muhammadan law, Hindu law, the unwritten customary laws of tribes and castes and localities ; but there was not that reverence for law which in Europe is in all probabihty very largely due to the influence of the Eoman law and to the teaching of the Eoman Catholic and other Christian Churches. So far as there was a germ out of which the. respect for law might have grown, it was to be found in dislike to .actions plainly opposed to custom and tradition. There was a deeply-rooted and widespread conviction that there could be no rule to which exception could not be made if agree- able to the discretion of the chief or of any of his delegates. The chief was set above the law ; it did not limit his autho- rity by any constitution. There was no legislation for the improvement of law. The administration of justice was extremely imperfect ; the absence of any law of succession to the throne in Muhammadan states, and the uncertain operation of the customary rules of succession in Edjput states, led to discord and intrigue, often excited or fomented by the women of the palace. Indefiniteness of control over dependent chiefs, indefiniteness of the authority of appointed deputies, were standing incitements to revolt and usurpa- tion. The great space which should be fiUed by constitu- tional law stood empty ; and the attraction of that vacuum again and again brought on the hurricane of war. But the moral defects were more serious than any want of system or want of legislation and habitual. observance of laws. Given the legal habit of mind and the disposition to obey the law, mere want of system will work in time its own cure. Nothing could be more unsystematic than the growth of English constitutional law and of the English criminal law ; yet each has a certain symmetry due to the efibrts of many generations in moulding it to a form suited to our national life. If the chief was set above the law, or, indeed^ practically and not merely theoretically regarded as a personage to whom no laws applied, and more particularly if the origin of his power was recent, so that restraining customs had had no time to grow up, it was natural that he should look upon his subjects as existing for his convenience, and rule with an eye, not to their good, but to his own wealth and power. There may have been some rare excep- •290 OUH INDIAN PROTECTORATE tions ; but usually, I think, there was no idea of governing for the general good. There was a grasping, mercenary, selfish spirit in the administration, callous to suffering, greedy of gain. This spirit was apt to pervade all ranks. It led inevitably to judicial corruption. In peaceful times it would tempt men to various forms of exaction. With the relaxation of authority more violent evils would appear. Bobbers would openly prey upon society ; and those whose duty it was to prevent their ravages would be bribed to inaction by a share of the spoil. All this is merely to say that government by system and in accordance with moral principle and for the general good is civilised government. Government at discretion for the benefit of the ruler, with indifference to the welfare of the subjects, is the earlier state of things which is superseded by civilisation. I have tried to give a correct account of some Oriental governments ; and I have been insensibly led to use language which almost describes one of the fictions surviving in our own law from the time when the rules they purport to express corresponded with realities. Indeed, that the king can do no wrong is not entirely a fiction even now ; though no one could say that an English king or queen is set above the law. The rule may be taken as one of the many links in legal history that connect the East and the West. It reminds us that Asia is not the only continent where there have been tribal chiefs and hereditary despots. The notion that all kings, all governing bodies, all officials of governments, should be merely stewards of public interests and trustees for the general weal is comparatively new even in Europe. It is idle to be either angry or surprised be- cause this idea is rarely, if at all, discernible in India under Oriental rule, in the India of the Moghals, the Sikhs, and the Marhattas, 291 CHAPTER XV NATIVE RULE UNDER THE PKOTECTOEATE It is unhappily beyond doubt that some of the characteristics of imperfect civilisation described in preceding chapters as existing under native rule in parts of India which are now- British territory are to be discerned in certain native states long ago brought within the British protectorate. In many of these states there are defects by no means as yet eradicated by British influence. There are tendencies in many places making for misrule, which, in the absence of watchfulness, or if the paramount power at any time shrinks from the responsibilities of its controlling position, will certainly issue in corruption, oppression, and violence. In some places these evils have appeared and become notorious, and inter- ference has been necessary to put them down. In offering the proofs of these conclusions I find myself in a certain difiiculty. I have here to deal with facts and events of which some are quite recent, and few occurred more than thirty years ago. It is necessary to avoid giving pain to living men, or to distinguished houses naturally jealous of the reputation of their former chiefs. Moreover, in cases where there has been misgovernment in native states, it would be a breach of trust for an oflBcial like myself to publish, with aU particulars of names, places, and dates, accounts of the occurrences. At the same time instances of misrule in native states seem essential to my argument, because the existence of misgovernment is the justification of British intervention ; and if this treatise is to be of use, as I venture to hope it may be in a moderate degree, to officers who are beginning political work in India, it is desirable to forewarn them of some of the defects in native administration against which, in the course of their official duties, they niay have to contend. Bearing in mind these considerations, I propose to adduce certain illustrations of evil tendencies or misrule T7 a 292 OUR INDIAN PROTKCTOEATE in native states. But in order to avoid any breach of confidence I shall be careful to suppress names of persons and places, and, as far as possible, indications which might show whether the state spoken of is a Hindu or a Muham- madan one. I shall also avoid specifying dates in any such manner as to give a clue to identification. In this way each case brought forward will serve the purpose of a specimen to be coolly considered without prejudice or partisanship ; and no state need take to itself an unfavour- able description which has been designedly made anony- mous for the reasons just explained. I shall, of course, allege no imaginary instances of misconduct or error. Where I can properly dispense with reserve I shall gladly do so. I will begin with barbarous practices or punishments in native states under British supervision. I quoted in the last chapter the old Eegulations directed against the sacrifice of women for the purpose of intimidation, and it might be supposed that no such case could occur in India now. But, as a fact, a case of the kind has occurred within the last ten years. In a native state, which I shall not name, some Brdhmans of four separate clans had held a village for many generations, and asserted that it had been granted to them free of revenue by a copper deed, which could not be pro- duced. According to the traditions of the village, nine sacrifices had taken place in former times, the localities of three of them being still marked hj masonry platforms. Probably no grant had ever been made ; but the Brdhmans, by these inhuman expedients, had coerced the state authori- ties into abandoning their just claims. The land revenue of the village was assessed in 1853, and thirty years later an officer of the state nearly quadrupled the assessment. The sum thus fixed was never realised. A reduced assessment approximating to the former was proposed ; but the Durbdr, or court of the state, refused to ratify it, and directed that the land should be measured and assessed as in other villages. As a protest against the order, it was agreed at a village meeting that the four heads of clans should sacrifice themselves, and thus bring a curse on the state authorities. The mothers of two of the heads of clans offered themselves as substitutes, and two other women were named for sacrifice on behalf of the other two clans. The- two mothers were burnt alive in the presence of the whole village and of residents of neighbouring villages who had been warned to attend. There was probably no intention of burning the >AT1VE EULE UNDER THE PKOTECTOEATE 293 otlier two women, as the two Ijpads of these clans wounded themselves and sprmkled their blood upon the pyre, thus symbolising their own sacrifice. When the two aged women were believed to be dead, their hands jv^ere cut off — one hand could not be severed owing to the fierceness of the flames — and were carried away by the ringleaders, I suppose to be laid before the authorities. There was a police post of the state within a mile of the village ; two clear days elapsed before the declared intention of performing the sacrifice was carried into effect, but no attempt was made to put a stop to it. The chief of the state tried the offenders and sentenced eighteen to various terms of imprisonment. He also dismissed and fined the officer in charge of the police post, and dismissed the men under his orders. In another native state within the last twenty years the intervention of the political officer prevented the execution of a threat on the part of some Sidhs to commit samddh, that is, to commit suicide by burying themselves alive, for the usual purpose of intimidation. These Sidhs were Hindu religious mendicants who had settled down to culti- vation ; and the matter in dispute was the levy of a relief or fine — a nazrdna — on the accession of the chief. An official of the state explained by a sort of Irishism that these Sidhs ' were in the habit of committing suicide with a view of intimidating the raj,' and that two men had already died from self-inflicted stabs. Less than thirty years ago a certain state was under the administration of an incapable council of regency. Gang- robbery and other violent crimes were rife, and the son of one of the members of the council was sent into the districts for the purpose of hunting up offenders. He began well, but presently constituted kine-killing a capital offence, and inflicted barbarous punishments on captured offenders. One man, after being beaten and tortured till he confessed to having eaten cow's flesh, was tied to the leg of an elephant and dragged along the ground tiU he was flayed. He was then buried with his head above ground and left to die of starvation. I am bound to add that when the son of the member of council was tried some years later for having ordered this atrocious execution, he was acquitted. He was, however, convicted of having caused another prisoner, accused of the same imaginary offence, to be tortured by the extraction of two of his teeth. This man died two or three days after the outrage. The son of the member of 294 OUE INDIAN PROTECTORATE council was brought before the Political Agent and made a full confession. The council, influenced by his father, per- mitted him to escape, and several years elapsed before he was brought to justice. Perhaps people unfamiliar with Indian society might have some difficulty in believing that native governments could treat the slaughter of kine as an offence of the first magnitude. I therefore quote from the Quarterly Eeport of the'Proceedings of the State Council, Kashmir, from April 18 to July 31, 1889 (published by authority), the following passage : ' On a suggestion made by the judicial member of the council, six prisoners from the Jammu jail and four from that of Srinagar were released in honour of his High- ness the Maharaja's birthday, preference being given to life- convicts for cow-killing, who had undergone eight or nine years of their term of imprisonment.' The italics are mine. I take from the same report a quaint instance of super- stition. ' A custom,' it is said, ' prevailed in Jammu terri- tory by which, on payment of a fee of 50 rupees, any person believing himself to have been injured by sorcery could get hold of the witches, traced by certain magicians, and, with the aid of the police and the revenue courts, compel such witches to withdraw their ominous influence. This practice had the effect of subjecting so-called witches to a most cruel treatment, while, at the same time, it enabled magicians and sorcerers to make the best use of their tricks in extorting money from women accused of witchcraft. On a reference from the judicial department, setting forth the evils of the practice, the state council directed that the courts be strictly enjoined not to entertain such complaints against witches, and the practice of receiving the customary nazrdna fee from such complainants was discontinued forthwith.' In another state in a different part of the country it was found necessary, some four or five years ago, to deprive the chief of all authority in the administration, because he had proved by his public conduct his unfitness to rule. One of the facts stated in this case by a responsible European officer was that the chief had been practising by magic against the life of his eldest son. The rites were carried on with great secrecy, and proof of them was necessarily difficult. But, after reading the very circumstantial statements made in the report, 1 have no doubt of the truth of the allegation. That it was made and believed to be true by the officer on the spot is a sufficient index to the state of society. NATIVE RULE UNDER THE PROTECTORATE 295 In the case of another chief it was reported — also within the last five years — that an adventurer of low origin and an astrologer had become the principal favourites. These two obtained a complete command over the chief by means of an impostor who pretended to have spiritual communion with the ghost of the chiefs father. The power of this ghost over the chiefs destiny was supposed to be unlimited. Every act of the chief's life was regulated by the dictatess of the ghost as announced by this medium. The ghost told the chief what to eat, what to avoid, where to go, and when and how to answer the recommendations of his public advisers. Every night before the chief retired to rest the medium drew magic circles round his bed, and pronounced exorcisms to keep away the evil spirits who — so the chief was assured — would otherwise tear him to pieces. I need draw no sort of veil over the Jhabua case of 1865, because a notification was published at the time in the ' Gazette of India,' directing the discontinuance of the chiefs salute of eleven guns on the ground of his having knowingly permitted a case of mutilation to occur at his capital. He was also fined 10,000 rupees, and other persons con- cerned in the aflair were duly punished. The facts were that a temple built and endowed by the chiefs mother had been plundered ; a man named Kesia was charged with the offence, but, before the investigation was complete and when he had not as yet been found guilty, he was mutilated by the amputation of one hand and one foot. The order for this atrocity appears to have been given by the mother of the chief, and it was found that the chief himself was cognisant of it. So far I have quoted instances of barbarism or supersti- tion which, however significant, are here shown as isolated I wiU now bring forward some general descriptions of particular tracts of country or states, with regard more especially to the administration of justice, the collection of revenue, and the general security of life and property. I may without objection quote an account of Central India, given in 1867 by an ofiicer who had had considerable expe- rience of states in that part of the country. The time is fairly remote ; great improvements have since been effected in many quarters, and the report itself is couched in general terms without specification of names of places or persons. This officer, so far as his experience went, had found the system of native government loose and disjointed, and 296 OUR INDIAN PEOTECTOHATE pervaded by a spirit of mutual suspicion running from the chief to his minister and thence downwards to the lowest official. The persons charged with the administration of justice were frequently uneducated and generally corrupt. In one case the post of chief officer of justice was sold to the highest bidder. While the poorer classes had to pay for justice, men of position or wealth were allowed to imprison their debtors or to seize their houses and property on their flight. Prisoners for public offences were considered in- convenient ; fines — a source of revenue — were imposed even in heinous cases. Favouritism led to immunity ; for instance, in one state a personal attendant of the chief roamed over the country seizing and driving away cattle on the pretence that they were without owners, and no one dared to com- plain. Thieves inhabiting some of these states carried their petty depredations into British districts, and gave a portion of their plunder to the chief, either in kind or by way of a yearly contribution. The life led by the few prisoners incarcerated was most deplorable. The officer making the report had ' seen such men stowed away in the most obscure part of a fort, surrounded by filth, themselves unwashed, unshorn, almost unclad.' ' But sometimes,' he adds, ' there are men who are treated even worse than these prisoners. I have known of a Thdkur, calling himself a noble, tying up to a tree by his wrists a man obnoxious to him, quite close to a populous city where the E4ni, then the head of the administration, held her court. The unfortunate victim, after being beaten, has been wounded with a spear, and then cast, with his sores open and bleeding, into a place of con- finement, uncared for and unattended ; maggots sprang up in his sores, and finally death released him from suffering.' If a treasury was drained, a demand would be made on wealthy bankers, who would advance the money and recover it with exorbitant interest from the proprietors of the land. The banker extorted from the proprietor, the proprietor from the cultivator, and the cultivator 'gave his last farthing, and prayed to be left alone.' I turn to a state of an entirely different type in a dis- tant part of India. Here, some five-and-twenty years ago there were frequent outbreaks due sometimes to a disputed succession, sometimes to the tyranny and cruelty of the chief. The administration was corrupt and disorganised. The principal officers were generally foreigners — ^that is, natives of other parts of India- — and their main object was to NATIVE RULE UNDER THE PEOTECTOEATE 297 make money. Appointments w^e freely bought and sold year by year. The army was found to be in a mutinous condition, and its pay four months in arrear. The troops were partly paid in rations, and the local officials who had to collect and supply grain for them were obliged to pay part of their collection in advance and recouped themselves by oppressing the peasantry. The chief was charged for the keep of the horses of the body-guard, which the peasants were com- pelled to feed. Cartmen and cattle were kept to maintain miles of strong hedges used as drives for deer. The cartmen appropriated the provision allowed for the cattle, made the peasantry feed the cattle, and, like the horse-keepers of the body-guard, committed other extortions. The chiefs of this state kept in the harems a number of procuresses, whose business it was to look out for women, and any good-looking women were at once seized and married by the chief, whether they had previously been married or not. The chief lived in constant dread of assassination ; the officials in fear of ruin, disgrace, and death. There was a pension list, which contained a number of names of women whose husbands had been prime ministers and had been killed by order of the chief, their lands confiscated and. a small pension given to the widows and daughters. Between 1819 and 1867 there had been ten prime ministers, of whom five were executed or murdered by the chief, one had to escape to save his life, one was thrown into prison, and of one, who died a natural death, the property was subsequently confiscated. In many parts lands were entirely deserted, and — a rare occurrence — numbers even of bankers and traders had left the chief town. These disorders were long ago cured, the state falling under British superintendence during a minority. In another state, again of another type, it was found within the last five years that, notwithstanding ample resources, the treasury was empty ; corruption and disorder prevailed in every department, and the chief was surrounded by low and unworthy favourites. There were heavy arrears of salaries in all departments ; at one time the army had not received the cash portion of its pay for eighteen months. A foreigner, that iSj a native of another part of India, a mere theorist without practical knowledge, was appointed Minister of Eevenue and Finance. He largely augmented his own and the Prime Minister's salary, and procured appointments on high pay for a number of men from his own part of India. The relations of the Minister of Finance and Eevenue with his col- 298 OUB INDIAN PROTECTORATE league did not long remain friendly, and in a trial of strength with the Prime Minister, the foreigner was compelled to resign. The state lent money to traders, and in this and other ways ■officials, traders, artisans, and cultivators became heavily indebted to the public treasury. Appointments were sold or given to people with powerful interest ; and the men most secure in tenure of office were some of the debtors of the :state, because half their pay was forfeited in discharge of their obligations. It was said that the judicial machinery -was thoroughly bad, and that the only reason why the people submitted to the existing style of administration was that they could bribe the officials, who then would not press them to pay their debts to the state. The cultivators were reduced to the condition of labourers, the population was diminishing, and the former occupants of land were being steadily ousted from its possession, which was passing to ■officials enriched at the public expense. These details illustrate the thorough corruption that may overtake a native administration under a weak or incapable chief. I will now point to some germs of more violent disorders, which, if examined, suggest the reflection that, after all, we are not far yet from the confusions of the last century, and that deep in existing societies lie predatory in- stincts which, in the absence of strong control, might soon fill whole provinces with pillage and alarm. In a state where there was a good deal of corruption and the torture of prisoners was not unknown, a colony settled not long ago, consisting of the descendants of Thugs. In 1888 there were in three villages 800 of these people all told. They had no occupation except theft, robbery, and the disposal of stolen goods. Skilled in disguises, the men tra- velled about by rail to great distances, to the Deccan, to Ajmere, to the North-West Provinces, to Bengal, to Bombay, bringing back plunder to their homes. They were on good terms with the local police, subordinate officials, and lessees, to whom, it is said, they paid a regular percentage of their ill-gotten gains. The ruler of the state ordered the colony to be broken up, and the local ndzim passed on the order to his subordinates. To these orders not the slightest attention was paid. Effiarts have now been made to reclaim these cri- minals, but are not likely to have much success till trust- worthy men can be obtained for the charge of police stations, and till the men obtained are sufficiently well paid. In a circle of three states not less than 400 miles NATIVE RULE UNDER THE PROTECTORATE 299 from the villages of these Thugs, a formidable band of robbers vpas lately making depredations. In the four years ending February 1889, twenty-two villages had been plun- dered by daring gangs, forty-seven murders committed, fifty-one persons wounded, and about 200 hostages carried off, of whom many were ransomed at enormous gain to the brigands. Measures were taken, with success, to break up the band. Three European officers, all of whom came under fire, and twelve non-cobamissioned officers of the native army were employed. The officer in command organised an in- telligence branch ; and within a year three of the men em- ployed in it were killed by the brigands for giving informa- tion. In the end, thirty-two of the proclaimed band were killed or captured and eighty of their adherents were arrested. It remained to reorganise the police forces of the states. In a state situated in territory intervening between this group of three and the state from which the Thugs set out on their distant expeditions, gang-robbery, in late years, became very prevalent. In a comparatively short time a criminal organisation originated by one man so extended its operations that in place of a single band no less than seven or eight bands established themselves in different parts of the country. Each band had its own head- quarters, and they paid monthly wages to men for supplying them with informa- tion. In 1885 and 1886 arrangements were made to attack and break up these gangs. The native officer employed, marching through some fifty or sixty miles of country, found robbers roaming about in large gangs of fifty to a hundred men, mostly carrying fire-arms. His own force was too small to cope with them, and at that time nothing effective was done. Dread of the vengeance of these robbers or dacoits deterred the villagers from giving assistance. The command party was then strengthened by troops and in other ways, and the dacoits moved northwards and robbed a village in a party said to be 150 strong. The native officer marched after them, and in a tract of some 120 miles length he found the population in a state of terror ; for instance, on arriving at a certain village after sunset he could induce no one to open his house or furnish him with supplies. ' In the villages,' so the report ran, 'jewellery and valuables are all carefully buried or hidden ; but should the dacoits on attacking a house not find the property they expected, they practise the greatest barbarities on the persons of the men and women of the house to compel them to disclose the place where their pro- 300 OUR INDIAN PEOTKCTOBATB perty is concealed.' Eventually several of tlie leaders were shot, the gangs were dispersed, and the people recovered confidence. These illustrations have been adduced to show that the battle with cruelty, superstition, callous indifference to the security of the weaker and poorer classes, avarice, corrup- tion, disorder in all public affairs, and open brigandage is by no means over even at the present day. In pointing out that the tendencies which produced anarchy in India in the eighteenth century are still at work in some places at the end of the nineteenth century, I gladly acknowledge that many native states are well administered ; and I fully hope that, in course of time, most, if not all, of them wiU be able to establish a system of administration probably less strict, less thorough, less active, less imbued with European theories than our own, but at least equally well suited to the existing state of society. In the statement submitted to Parliament exhibiting the moral and material progress and condition of India during the year 1889-90, I have counted forty-eight native states of which the administration is praised, either for general excellence, or because the finances are sound, or because there has been improvement. In making out this list I have not excluded the cases in which the management is temporarily entrusted to British or native officials appointed by the British Government either on account of the minority of the chief or for other reasons. It is one of the advantages of the whole system that, without any upset of the indi- genous chiefships, occasional spells of administration by officials trained under the British Government habitually occur in one part of the country or another. 301 CHAPTEE XVI THE LIMITS OF BRITISH INTERPOSITION In this book it is nowhere intended to institute any formal comparison between British and native rule. The benefits of the direct administration of British Indian territory by the European and native servants of the British Government have been so often described, and are, indeed, so manifest, that it is not necessary to add on that subject a single line. The working of the protectorate is less fully understood ; and that is a matter which it is my endeavour to illustrate both here and in other parts of this volume. The tendencies which, if uncontrolled, set towards cor- ruption, plunder, and oppression are nothing but the play of human character in the circumstances of life ; and character is formed not merely by individual experiences, but also by inherited capacities and impulses and inherited traditions. In the untold ages during which India has been thickly populated, our century of supremacy is a mere span ; and it is really absurd to suppose that in a few generations many millions of people will show any general revulsion from habits of mind engrained in their forefathers by the experiences and events of, at the very least, three thousand years. We may be able to see the influence of the past more clearly in Native India than in British India ; but we need not be blind to that influence in those parts of India where our responsibilities are most pressing and most direct. For these reasons, I am in no way concerned to assert that some of the evils described in former chapters have not existed or do not exist in British territory. With supersti- tion, indeed, no one can charge the British authorities. It is inconceivable that British police or revenue courts should be employed to counteract witchcraft ; or that a Lieutenant- Governor should seek advice, through a necromancer, from his father's ghost. But who would be prepared to say that the corruption of underlings on low pay, the occasional 302 OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE torture of prisoners by the police to procure confession, the prevalence of gang-robbery in certain tracts, and the shelter- ing of thieves by village headmen and others of a certain position, are things unknown in British districts? The important point is that, when these things do occur in our own districts, we are free to put them down by the most direct and efficient means at our disposal. That is not the case in native states. There are limits to British interven- tion ; limits varying with the history of the relations of any particular state to the British Government, the strength and known character of the native administration, and the disposition of the ruling chief to seek or reject advice in the conduct of his business. It is therefore difficult to define these limits in any general language ; and to attempt to do so in any authoritative way would, if the line were drawn too much on one side, alarm the native courts, and, if too much on the other side, embarrass the British Government itself in its never-ceasing contest with injustice, oppression, and cruelty. In dealing, therefore, with this delicate subject, I may be allowed to repeat what I have said in the preface, that I can offer nothing for consideration but mere personal opinions, which are unauthoritative. I can merely advise that in many, perhaps in most cases, certainly not in all, a certain attitude of mind will probably be expedient. All that I say in this chapter is subject to these remarks. In former parts of this treatise it has, perhaps, been abundantly shown that the British Government desires the preservation of native states ; and I believe that policy to conduce directly to our strength in the country, and further to be largely based on a recognition of the many advantages to the people themselves conferred by the existence of a considerable portion of territory governed, under adequate supervision, by native rulers. This belief is in no way impaired by the occurrence, in certain cases, of misrule and oppression. Starting from this principle, the prevailing attitude of mind should be one of great reluctance to interfere. The continuance of native rule being one of our objects, even when interference is forced upon us we should studiously avoid any action which may prove an obstacle to that con- tinuance. Whilst ordinarily ready to help a native adminis- tration with our advice, if sought, we should never obtrude it, and on giving it should be careful not to lessen the THE LIMITS OF BRITISH INTERPOSITION SOS responsibility of the chief. We should never permit our name to be used as a cloak for*^uestionable measures-; and cases may no doubt occur in which the wisest thing we can do is to decline to advise at all. If remonstrance beeomes our duty, the case is altered, and we must then speak with candour and consideration. Subject to certain exceptions, to be noted presently, we should have no wish to interfere so long as peace is preserved, reasonable security afforded to life and property, and justice administered with tolerable fairness. It is the plain duty of a native chief to govern his own territory in a proper way. He is responsible to the paramount power for the general success of his administra- tion. Power and responsibility go together ; it is unjust to insist on the responsibility if we undermine the power. That we shall assuredly do if, without grave cause, we interfere between the chief and his subjects or subordinates. If we have to act at all, the safe rule is to act always through the chief with a watchful regard for his reputation and dignity — his izzat in the native phrase — unless and until incapacity for rule or deliberate persistence in misrule is proved by a course of conduct. Who is there entrusted with power and able and willing to exercise it well that will not rightfully resent even inadvertent usurpation of his authority ? In any degree to ignore or set aside a chief in matters affecting his state, whether by inadvertence or in zeal for the general good, is to wound him where he is most sensitive, and the more justly sensitive in proportion to his energy and ability. Injudicious interference produces a double mischief. It demoralises the chief; no man, be he ruler or subordinate, wiU do his work well if he feels that he is distrusted or degraded; and it stimulates disaffection and intrigue. Be the ruler strong or weak, there wiU probably exist in any considerable state parties prepared for turbulence if the opportunity offers, or for intrigue in the hope of bettering themselves by a change of rulers or ministers. If incomparably the strongest authority in India shows by the acts of its servants that it has lost confidence in a particular chief, that is not unlikely to be accepted as a sort of signal for the recalcitrant to persist in their dis- obedience or for the intriguers to take heart. In this view, interference is a most serious matter ; for if we weaken or discredit the existing government we must be prepared, should occasion arise, to set up another in its room. There are, however, cases in which interference is as S04 OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE plainly the duty of the paramount power as good govern- ment is the duty of its feudatories. As the guardian of the general peace of the country, the supreme government cannot stand by and see disorders grow up by which that peace may be threatened. It was ruled more than twenty years ago that in no case would civil war be permitted in any state of India ; nor would any state be permitted to attack any other state. It was held in 1873 that a chief who had sent an armed force of about one hundred men to arrest a man in the territory of another chief (where they attacked and plundered a house, killing one man and wounding another), was guilty of a breach of allegiance to the Crown ; and the offending chief was fined 10,000 rupees and compelled to apologise to the British Govern- ment. But, short of any actual outbreak of war or rebellion, there may be gatherings of turbulent nobles jealous of some ancient rights or restless because the chief has called in strangers to be his ministers, or because his orthodoxy is not above suspicion or is perhaps already gone ; or in some hill-state bands of peasants may pour into the chief place and, without any disturbance, surround the palace, sitting there as a declaration that they have grievances which must be redressed ; or the peasants may go further and seize on some obnoxious minister and place him in confinement ; or the marauding of freebooters may reach such a pitch that a whole country-side may live in a state of terror. In aU such cases the sound question — if there is time to ask it — seems to be. Can the native administration deal with the matter ? If it can keep the peace without aid, that is best ; if not, aid must be given. But any interposition necessarily means that both sides must be heard. If we repress dis- orders due to injustice or misgovernment, we must see that the causes of the disorders are removed. I may add that it is well understood that our troops must not be employed in a native state without the express sanction of the Govern- ment of India. One case, then, in which interference is necessary is when the general peace of the country is endangered. Another case is when misrule has reached such a pitch that rebellion would be morally justifiable ; and there may be conditions of misgovernment, far short of that, when interposition be- comes a duty. I quoted, in describing the affairs of Baroda, the language used by Lord Northbrook to the Gaekwar. Viceroys have held similar language to other chiefs on other THE LIMITS OF BRITISH INTERPOSITION 305 occasions. There is a letter from Lord Hardinge addressed in 1848 to a chief, who shall Be nameless, which expressly declares that the British Government cannot submit to the stigma of tolerating oppression. That Government — so the letter runs — ' never can consent to incur the reproach of becoming indirectly the instrument of the oppression of the people committed to the prince's charge. If the aversion of a people to a prince's rule should, by his injustice, become so universal as to cause the people to seek his downfall, the British Government are bound by no obligation to force the people to submit to a ruler who has deprived himself of their allegiance by his misconduct.' Lord Hardinge went on to say that if, in spite of friendly warnings, the evils of which the British Government might have just cause to complain were not corrected, it would be necessary to have resort to direct interference. In 1886, Lord Dufferin personally warned a chief that the British Government could ■ not countenance oppression and misrule. The chief of a great native state, his lordship said, was not maintained in his position that he might neglect the welfare of his subjects and give himself up to indolence and the gratification of selfish desires. The cases of grave disorder or gross misrule are clear. Whether, in any particular case, there exists such a degree of misgovernment that interposition is expedient, is neces- sarily a question of fact upon which there can be no general rule. At all events, except for some heinous crime, no chief would be deprived of his authority until remonstrances addressed to him in such a way as not to impair his authority had given him opportunities of amendment. The mere absence of improvements and of the active, energetic style of administration which we often see in British districts, is not, I think, a case for remonstrance. Sir John Malcolm long ago said that all dangers to our power in India are slight in comparison with that which is likely to ensue from our too zealous efforts to change the character of the in- habitants. I would not unreservedly endorse the remark, for I think there are other equal or greater dangers, but there is weight in it, and, to my humble judgment, it appears that one of the great advantages of the existence of more than 600,000 square miles of native territory is that in more than a third of the whole country progress, if not always and everywhere sure, is at least nowhere too rapid. I believe it is a good thing that about a fourth of the total population 306 OUR INDIAN PKOTECTOEATE should proceed along the path of civilisation at their own very easy pace. There may, of course, be cases where the inertness of the central authority, and its callousness to the welfare of all except the army, the court, and the priestly classes, may be gradually bringing about serious misgovern- ment. There may be no outcry, no widespread discontent, no glaring iniquity ; but, either from the idleness and incapacity of the chief or from his jealousy of other authority, there may be a complete block of business. It may be impossible to get any long and intricate case decided, because the chief either will not or cannot deal with it himself and will not allow it to be dealt with by his subordinates. There may be a slipshod style of work in aU departments ; the administration of justice may be slow, careless, often corrupt. At the capital we may see a veneer of civilisation, and a number of officials with high-sounding titles of state. Five miles away there may be complete neglect of the most elementary requisites of efficient administration, and no ' money may be spent on any object that is not religious or military or directly remunerative. If to neglect and sus- picion be added avarice, if there be deliberate attempts to break the tenures of large classes of the peasantry, if taxes, are laid upon the peasants heavier than they can bear, if without trial men are seized and imprisoned and their pro- perty confiscated, the time is at hand when forbearance towards the chief becomes a wrong to his people, and when remonstrance, if unheeded, must give way to direct measures of reform. When a whole administration is infected with greed and suspicion and heartlessness, it is not ordinarily very difficult to see what ought to be done. The most difficult cases are those which arise in particular instances of alleged miscon- duct or injustice. Here, I think, the general rule is that the complaints of individuals should not be taken up. It is the business of the chief to redress such complaints if proved to his satisfaction. If the government of the state is fairly good, and if the complaint is directed against an act done in ordinary course by revenue authorities or in the admini- stration of justice or in settling state ceremonials, it is ordinarily right merely to transmit the complaint to the chief for his disposal. The only exception I need mention here is when we have given a guarantee to individual sub- jects of a chief that certain rights of theirs shall be respected. This may happen, for instance, when British territory has THE LIMITS OF BEITISH INTERPOSITION 307 been transferred to native rule ; but such pledges are extremely embarrassing, and snould be undertaken, if at all, with great reluctance and caution. We may come to hear, however, by petitions or general rumour, of occurrences such as all chiefs know must be put down everywhere, or such as imply a certain amount of political insubordination. Amongst these are mutilation and other barbarous punishments, such as impalement, sati, samddh, the torture of prisoners, the forcible conversion of subjects to a new religion, and the punishment or persecution of individuals or their families because they have taken service with or complained to the British authorities. These are all strong symptoms of mis- rule ; and though allegations under the last two heads should be heard with the greatest caution, because they may easily be the fruit of intrigue or contumacy, or gross and substan- tially false exaggerations of a mistaken though not unnatural bias, well-authenticated complaints under any of these heads cannot be ignored. These are matters at least for inquiry and explanation, and, if proved to the satisfaction of the British authorities, for warning, reproof, or punishment. On the whole, we may say that the obligation of occa- sional interference arises because it is the duty of the British Government to maintain the general peace of the country, and to give the inhabitants of native states freedom from misrule. It follows that the best limit to British interposi- tion is the effectual one of good government. Chiefs who govern well need not, I think, have any fear of interference prompted by officious zeal. The British Government has responsibilities upon it which are heavy enough without its seeking to add to them. Good administration, however, is not easy; it requires experience, capacity, constant hard work ; for a chief, we must add good and trustworthy advisers. If any chief does not happen to see such men amongst his ministers, he can usually get others for the asking, as in another chapter I propose to explain. X 2 308 OUE INDIAK PKOTECTOBATE CHAPTEE XVn SOME ADVANTAGES OF NATIVE EULE Without repeating what lias been said in Lord Canning's despatches, I purpose in this chapter to discuss some advan- tages of native rule. I shall bear in mind benefits to different classes of the population in native states, to the native governments themselves, and to the British Government, but I shall not rigidly distinguish these topics from one another, for the reason, amongst others, that we may rightly regard any benefit to a native state as a benefit in which the British Empire participates. I will touch first upon the question of popularity. There are two senses in which a government may be said to be popular. It may meet with general approbation because it is known to be just in intention and is efficient in protecting substantial interests ; or it may elicit affection not unmingled with awe, because it strikes the imagination of the people, because its proceedings are generally intelligible to them, because the high birth of the ruler has a recognised here- ditary claim on general regard, and because there is a sym- pathy founded on identity of race and religion between the ruler and his subjects. In the second of these senses, I think native rule, when fairly well conducted, is likely to be more popular than British administration. It will be noted that some of these elements of popularity — a part of those which strike the imagination and all that depend on the world-wide sentiment of reverence for illustrious birth — may attach to the imperial government of her Majesty the Queen-Empress, as distinguished from the mere administration of British dis- tricts by British officials. It must further be observed that the last element of popularity — identity in race and religion between the ruler and his subjects — is far from universal iu native states. There are numerous instances— instances which occur in some of the most important states in India — in which the chief differs in race or creed or both, either SOME ADVANTAGES OF NATIVE RULE 309 from the mass of his subjects or from great masses of them. * I do not think it by any means a trifling remark that the show and ceremony of a native court have a pohtical value. A chief will himself regard a proper retinue and the due observance of state ceremonials as marks oi'izzat — that is, of self-respect, reputation, and dignity, a feeling cherished as we cherish honour, to which, indeed, it is nearly akin. The principal men, those admitted to his Durb4r, his court or lev4e, will hold that the social consideration which is paid to them depends largely or entirely on their place and reception and proofs of the favour of the chief, and will gladly join in stately formalities, wearisome indeed to people accustomed to the pleasures of a European capital, but interesting enough to men brought up to look upon them as important matters of business, from which reputation may accrue. The shopkeepers, peasants, artisans, and menials have, by educa-* tion and condition, a keener relish for spectacular than for in- tellectual pleasures, and will gaze with admiration and enjoy- ment on the pomp and colour of an Oriental procession, on the troops and gilded carriages, the bedizened horses and elephants, the brocades and uniforms, the jewels and arms. It is true that on important occasions we hold Durbdrs on the native model, and, thanks greatly to the help of our native advisers, often, I believe, with success. But we have to learn as a lesson what comes, as it were, by nature to a native chief and those about him ; we have to guard against impatience of ceremonial, an impatience due partly to the modern spirit which pervades our minds, partly to our eager desire to get through as many as possible of our multitu- dinous tasks ; and the parade of the symbols of power to which, by taste and from press of business, we resort as seldom as may be, is a daily experience at the capital of a native state. I have driven in such a procession as I have mentioned through the chief town of a native city ; and on thinking of group after group of men raising their hands to their foreheads on the approach of the chief, and saluting him with the low murmuring cry of ' Mahar4j, Mahar^j,' I cannot but recognise in that greeting indications of loyalty differing in kind from the respect paid to British officials. I hasten to add that I do not see why it should not differ in kind. If the same thriU passed through a native crowd on the approach of a prince of the blood or a -viceroy, I should feel much more satisfaction than surprise. That Over one- 310 OUR IISDIAN PROTECTORATE third of India chiefs who are, in Indian phrase, the parents of their people have the chance of attracting this loyalty to themselves is, I think, a fact of much political importance. Loyalty to a chief who is himself loyal, implies a correspond- ing allegiance to the paramount power. The sentiment is also conducive to order and good government in the par- ticular state ; and I think the parade of power has an effect both in kindling and in maintaining it. Upon the immense advantage which any Government enjoys if its measures are generally understood by the people affected by them, it is unnecessary to enlarge. For the peasants and traders the main points are the general security of life and property, the close adjustment of taxation, from season to season, to the means available to pay it, and the administration of their own customary laws in accordance with caste and tribal traditions. If these ends are fairly ' well attained, methods that we should regard as irregular and unsafe wiU not impair the popularity of a government. To convict a housebreaker, without summoning the witnesses or holding any trial, on the mere report of the police-officer who made the local investigation, to arrange for the restitu- tion of stolen property by the levy of a fine on a whole village community some member of which is believed to be concerned in the theft, to assume as self-evident without any local or other inquiry some rule of custom as applicable to a question of inheritance or adoption, are measures which we mighi regard as questionable or highly improper ; but I think the} would be more intelligible in a native state than the release, in consequence of some technical flaw in the evi- dence, of a murderer of whose guilt there was no moral doubt, or than the application to the disputes of peasants of Sanskrit texts and Muhammadan legal expositions of which neither of the parties had ever heard. As for rich and powerful men, it is expecting too much of human nature to suppose that in any state of society there will not be many of them who will prefer the style of government under which they can, for their own objects, make most use of their wealth and family and social connections and interest. "Wealth tells in litigation everywhere ; but if it is found in some places that to give presents and to make interest are things directly conducive to gain or advancement, will the men who are able and willing to profit by these expedients prefer a style of government under which presents are condemned and their own family and social connections and interest count SOME ADVANTAGES OF NATIVE RULE 311 in judicial matters for nothing at all, and in other matters for very little ? Is it likely thalftnen of this kind wiR under- stand or sympathise with the principles of impartial admini- stration ? Indeed, in those British provinces where native aristo- cracies to some extent survive, I feel that in making appointments to the pubhc service we are in danger of attaching too little weight to good birth. There are two sets of influences pushing us in that direction : there is the English feeling that the prizes of public life ought to be open to all and that fitness should be the sole criterion of eligibility ; and there is the outcry of a considerable number of Indians educated in English, who are quite prepared to apply Western doctrines of equality so far as they favour their own claims. Whatever theories may be held as to fair- ness and fitness in this matter, it is indisputable that good birth is, as a fact, a very powerful instrument for producing willing obedience. In such an empire as India there is much more risk in endeavouring to shape society according to our notions of what it theoretically ought to be, than in carrying on the administration as efficiently as possible with the means at hand. It is difficult enough to govern the country even efficiently ; and we should not neglect the advantage of good birth in those by whose aid we rule. In native states the principle of high birth as a qualification for positions of great trust and responsibility has a wide and striking operation, and that is one of the many reasons for which we may hold that the maintenance of native states is advan- tageous to the empire. Eeligious neutrality, a first principle of British Indian administration, is necessarily distasteful to the priestly classes, both Hindu and Muhammadan. Yet no one will deny that it is both right and politic that the traditions and legitimate expectations of those classes should be taken into considera- tion. It is extremely difficult for us to meet these expecta- tions ; for our principle is that we show neither favour nor disfavour on religious grounds. If this principle has arisen from the peculiarity of our position, ther6 is another, brought by us from the West, which unfavourably afiects these classes in common with others of great influence. We have an abstract sentiment, as Sir Donald McLeod long ago said, that a government has no right to bestow upon a few the income which properly belongs to the public at large. ' This has led us ' — I quote Sir 'Donald, whose knowledge of the 312 OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE country and of our proceedings no one will impugn — ' to inquire into the validity even of small grants with a rigour and to resume them with a freedom which have given much offence, especially in the case of endowments ; while, when grants have been declared valid, they have in a large majority of cases been confirmed by forms so rigid and legal as to become the subject of contention in our courts, even as against the Government itself, so that the people cease to regard them as gifts from the Government. In thus acting, we have without doubt been guided by a sense of right and justice ; but the course pursued, nevertheless, conveys to an Oriental mind the impression of a burlesque of liberality.' A Hindu or Muhammadan Government will probably have no scruple founded on any theory as to the proper disposal of state income to deter it from making religious endowments or providing priestly classes with feasts or fees or other means of support ; and if the mass of its subjects are of the same creed as the chief, it is likely that a free hand in these respects will increase his popularity. It sometimes seems to be supposed that Englishmen are specially able to resist the seductions of theory, and that they succeed as administrators because they doggedly limit themselves to the decision of particular cases as they arise, and refuse to be committed to large principles and sweeping generalities. Indeed, I am not sure that it is not occasion- ally claimed as a merit of some measure or course of action that it is founded on no theory at all. In language of this sort there is often a good deal of affectation or political dis- guise ; and perhaps amongst the circumstances that make it endurable, or even effective, in our own country are our national familiarity with the fiction that judges merely apply the law to individual cases and the extreme difficulty of passing any comprehensive measure through the House of Commons. To me it appears that one of the greatest merits of British Indian administration, and one of its chief claims to take a high rank in the general history of political development, is the singularly bold and comprehensive use that has been made of a number of important theories — of political theories, for instance, in the foundation of the Empire and the subsequent conduct of our relations with native states ; of economic theories in the assessment of the land revenue, in famine relief, in moulding land tenures in all provinces ; and of Benthamite and Austinian theories of jurisprudence in the codification of the law. Unless there SOME ADVANTAGES OF NATIVE KULE 313 ■were in all important departments of state vrell-considered rules tolerably consistent alii* with each other and with accepted principles, I do not see how it would be possible successfully to manage so vast and complicated an empire. This wealth of rules and principles, though likely to be very valuable to Western nations taking the lead of the more backward peoples of the earth, does not tend to make the British Indian style of government more intelligible to the great uneducated majority. Natives of India are apt to look, in all matters of govern- ment, more to persons than to systems ; but by the nature of our situation in that country we are compelled to look more to systems than to persons. In a native state heredi- tary officials may be kept in the same part of the country all their lives or from generation to generation, and in the lowest ranks we have local officials, such as the village headmen and accountants, whose appointments are partly regulated by hereditary claims. But in the higher ranks amongst officials, European and native, who would have the charge of dis- tricts or sub-divisions of districts, or be employed on the district staff — amongst, that is, tahsilddrs, deputy-collec- tors or extra assistant commissioners, assistant collectors, and their immediate local superiors, and also amongst the judicial staff generally — there is a constant state of flux. It often happens that an officer holds the same charge for not more than three or six months, and shorter tenures occur. Men accumulate local knowledge and experience at very different rates of speed ; but few can master a district thoroughly in less than a couple of years. Every effort is made by ad- ministrative authorities to keep down the number of transfers ; but the necessities of leave, sickness, promotions, retirements, and other casualties, and the demands for the services of officers at head-quarters for special duty within, and. for special and other duties outside, their own provinces, are so pressing that transfers in very great numbers take place every, year. The tahsilddrs, or native officials in charge of sub-divisions of districts, are affected by these arrangements, because they are temporarily promoted to fill the places of the extra-assistants at the bottom of the Hst. A great deal is done to mitigate the inconvenience caused by these short tenures of office ; district officers are required to leave memoranda for the guidance of their successors ; the district settlement report is at hand; in the viUage records and village note-books there is an immense mass of detailed local 314 OUR INDIAN PKOTECTOKATE information readily available ; and valuable gazetteers, each in itself an elaborate treatise descending to minute particulars, have been compiled for almost every district in India. More than this, almost every department of business is thoroughly systematised. In my own province, for instance, there is a Land Eevenue Act, with elaborate rules under it ; there are the revenue circulars of the Financial Commissioners, and the consolidated judicial circulars of the Chief Court ; we have a police code, an education code, a jail manual, a municipal manual ; an Irrigation Act, with subsidiary rules ; and there are in force in the Punjab, in common with other provinces, a forest code, a public works code, and the codes of the financial department, the civil account code regulating trea- sury and other financial business, and the civil service regu- lations respecting leave, pay, and travelling allowances. In fact, the great measures of codification of the law have been followed or accompanied by numerous codifications of de- partmental rules, consolidating scattered instructions and settling moot points. This state of things has both advantages and disadvan- tages. A good native ofiicial in a native state who has been born and bred in the part of the country where he is serving will not need gazetteers and village note-books to supply him with local knowledge. Without effort he will be ac- quainted with the little histories of the local notables ; he will know all about their family connections, their quarrels, their objects in life ; for his own locality, the whole map of castes and tribes, with its cross-lines of feuds and party divisions, will be continually in his mind ; he will be able to say what villages shelter criminals, what lands will sufier from flood or drought in the variations of season. Knowledge of this kind is habitually acquired by European ofiicers in British districts, especially by settlement officers and district officers who stay for some time in one district ; but it is not ac- quired without effort, and frequent transfers, lawyer-like dependence upon codes and rules, the quantity of legal and departmental matter that each officer has to master, the unceasing requisitions of heads of departments, and the excessive writing of reports, are obstacles to its quick acqui- sition. It is obvious that such a native officer as I have supposed would have an advantage for administrative work over any officer, European or native, new to his charge, however well that officer might be posted up in Acts and circulars. SOME ADVANTAGES OF NATIVE EULE 315 The greater permanence of the official staff is thus, I think, one of the advantages of guarantee for success in the undertaking. I am not sure that this is a disadvantage. It would completely exclude mere speculators. With those whose object it might be to make money by traffic in shares or laud-jobbing the Indian Government would have nothing to do. On the other hand, there would be much greater safety for bond-fide investors. Practically, the risk of the Indian Government would be so considerable that it would contemplate no undertaking founded on borrowed capital in a native state unless it had the same assurances of the probable financial success of the work as it would require in the case of pro- jects in British territory. My own view is that, for the sake both of the native state and of the bond-fide British investor, it is only right that the Government of India should have such assurances in the case supposed. There is no other authority that the bond-fide British investor ought to trust in the matter, or that he would trust if he knew the facts. Other plans might be devised. One is suggested by actual experience in my own province, the Punjab. The Sirhind Canal — a magnificent work, of which the main and branch channels are altogether 542 canal miles in length, and the distributories 4,418 miles — commands an irrigable area of 500,000 acres in British territory and 278,000 acres in native states. It has been constructed, under suitable agreements, at the joint cost of the British Government and the states benefited, and the income is shared in proportion to the respective contributions. I think this principle might be extended to works falling wholly within native territory. The state might find part of the cost and the British Govern- ment the rest, and each might have its proportionate share of the proceeds. Here again it would be necessary, as is right, that the work should be financially sound. Cases might occur in which a railway or irrigation work might be a very proper investment for state income, though the project could not be shown to satisfy the strict rules which have been laid down for limiting the outlay of monej'- borrowed by the Government of India to works which can certainly be declared to be remunerative. To prevent famine or secure adequate political objects concessions might be made ; but the safe general rule here would, I think, be that the state should wait for the work till it could find the money from its own resources without borrowing. 332 OUH INDIAN PROTECTOEATE CHAPTEE XVIII THE CONSTITUTIONAL POSITION OF NATIVE STATES In England we are in the habit of describing as unconstitu- tional acts wbich are opposed to the principles of the British Constitution ; and perhaps it is that habit which leads us to apply the epithet ' constitutional ' to governments which have been framed on the same general model as our own. In one sense, there is no government without a constitution. Every government — even an Oriental despotism — must have some rules or customs by which it is maintained, and which at least assert its powers, if they nowhere clearly limit them. We may, indeed, without impropriety, speak of the constitu- tion of a tribe, a village community, a municipality, a local board. But the laws or customs which regulate such con- stitutions as these cannot, in ordinary parlance, be called constitutional law ; and no doubt there is a current distinc- tion, founded on real differences, between states which possess and those which do not possess a constitution. I suppose the term ' constitutional government ' is often used as a synonym for representative or popular government, and, having regard to this use of the expression, it would be a violation of usage to speak, without explanation, of an Oriental despotism as possessing a constitution. For the purposes of this chapter it is necessary to give to the word ' constitutional ' a signification wider than that in which it is apphed to popular or representative governments. I will here venture to use it in application to governments which are established or maintained by, and are conducted in accordance with, constitutional law. By constitutional law Austin (i. 230) means ' the positive morality, or the compound of positive morality and positive law, which fixes the constitution or structure of the given supreme government.' He goes on to explain that ' against a monarch properly so called,' or against a sovereign body in its corporate or collegiate capacity, constitutional law is THE CONSTITUTIONAL POSITION OF NATIVE STATES 333 positive morality merely, or is enforced merely by moral sanctions, though it may be enforced by legal sanctions against the members of the sovereign body considered seve- rally. I do not think it is worth while to discuss the case of constitutional law enforceable against a ' monarch properly so called.' It is straining language too much to speak of any constitutional law under a pure despotism. No doubt, according to Austin's analysis of sovereignty, a sovereign body, no less than a despot, is absolute. But it is really only a verbal proposition that the power of a sovereign number is incapable of legal limitation. The difficulty in any state enjoying representative government, the still greater difficulty in any empire composed of a vast number of states of different kinds, is to determine with reasonable precision of whom the sovereign number consists. It would probably be a fruitless task, and certainly one beside my present purpose, to inquire how the sovereign number is made up in the British Empire, India and all the colonies being included in that term. It will suffice to note here how far Austin's definition of constitutional law may appear inadequate for present objects. The contrast between moral and legal sanctions is not, I think, exhaustive ; there may be penalties which could not be enforced in any court of justice — penalties of an admini- strative or political character, such as the recall of a viceroy or the deposition of a chief — which may play a very important part, by the possibility of their infliction, in securing the observance of rules of constitutional law. These and similar cogent penalties, such as censure and the de- privation of honours or rank, cannot properly be described as merely moral sanctions ; and, when they are not expressly authorised by any statute law, it would be an abuse of lan- guage to call them legal penalties merely because no court of justice would interfere to prevent their infliction or to award damages or order restitution. And, further, constitu- tional law does much more than fix the structure of a given supreme government. It regulates the working of a govern- ment as well as its form, and it always imposes certain limits — not, indeed, on the power of the sovereign number when discoverable, but — on the discretion of the individuals who are from time to time entrusted with the exercise, on behalf of the community, of those various functions which, taken together, make up sovereignty. These limits, though not excluded bv Austin's definition, do not, I think, receive in it 334 OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE the prominence they deserve. They may be limits of various kinds, statutory or enforceable through courts of justice, or administrative or political, or merely moral. I shall not attempt any exact definition of constitutional law. I will merely endeavour so to describe it as to suit the purpose in view. T will therefore say that I here mean by constitu- tional law the rules and principles of law in the Austinian sense, and of usage, which determine what person or persons are to be supreme in any state or assemblage of states, in what manner the sovereignty is to be shared amongst those who exercise it, and with what restrictions the principal functions of sovereignty — legislative, judicial, fiscal, mihtary and naval, pohtical and diplomatic — are to be discharged by those to whom they are entrusted. The British Empire, as a whole, is a constitutional empire — that is to say, the numerous and very varied governments of which it is composed are established or maintained by constitutional law — and the general govern- ment of the empire, including India and all other de- pendencies and the self-governing colonies, is conducted in accordance with constitutional law, though there are states within the empire which possess nothing that could, in ordinary language, be described as constitutional law for the regulation of their internal affairs. The question that I have to answer in this chapter is : What is the constitutional position of the Indian native states in the British Empire considered as a whole ? In the Indian Constitutional Statutes the states which are under the government of native rulers, subject to the paramount power of the Crown, are usually described as being in alliance, or in subordinate alliance, with the East India Com- pany or the Crown, as the case may be. There is no real difference between the two expressions ; for an alliance of any of these states with the paramount power is necessarily a subordinate alliance. But the truth is the Statutes pre- serve a phraseology which was correct when we were rising to the position of the paramount power, but has long ceased to correspond with facts. The relations between these states and the British Government will appear in their true light if we regard them from some point outside the empire. What is the position we assign to these states in diplomatic relations with a foreign Western power ? In a convention with the French Government (which will be found in the third schedule of the Indian Act, No. VII. of 1871) we practi- THE CONSTITUTIONAL POSITION OF NATIVE STATES 335 cally define a native state as any Indian state vfliich is under the protection or politi#al control of her Majesty, or of which the government has acknowledged the supre- macy of the British Crown. The functions of protection, control, and supremacy are exercised by the Government of India on behalf of her Majesty. The states are therefore subordinate to the Government of India ; and the Govern- ment of India has its definite place, assigned by statute law, in the general constitution of the whole empire. We thus have to take into view two sets of relations : those of the Government of India to the general Government of the em- pire at large ; and those of the Government of India to the protected dependent states. If we have a fairly adequate idea of these two sets of relations, we shall see where the Indian native states may be supposed to stand in the general scheme of the British Empire. It would be premature to attempt to bring so complex a growth as that of the Indian Government under any simple and comprehensive formula. Probably, no one is yet in a position to formulate any laws of political growth with any certainty ; and, in the endeavour to discover these laws, it is, perhaps, best that attention should first be directed to the simplest cases. The case of the Indian Government is specially complicated, because it is a case of a government which is, from one point of view, that of a dependency ; from another point of view, the supreme government of ceded and conquered territory ; from yet a third point of view, the paramount power of a vast assemblage of feudatory states. But in the British Empire, which touches some, at least, of the primitive or, if I may so call them, the mediaeval races of mankind in Asia, Africa, America, and Australasia, there is an ample field for the study of the simple cases — that is, of the institutions which sprang up amongst the comparatively backward races before their contact with civilisations more advanced than their own. So good are our opportunities for this study, that it wiU be a matter of some national discredit if our countrymen do not take and keep the lead in this branch of scientific inquiry. If a full analysis of the growth of the Indian Government is likely to have more scientific value some time hence, we may at any rate refer just now to some obvious considera- tions which will doubtless be borne in mind hereafter when their true weight and place can be determined by means of wider knowledge of the laws of political development. 336 OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE Clearly, the Indian Government, as it now stands, is the result partly of our national character and history, partly of such social and political growth as India itself exhibited. Derived from political contact between the West and the East, the Indian Government has both Eastern and Western lineaments ; and this combination of things new and old accounts for part of its complexity. Of late we have habitually brought to the East our Western ideas of politics and policy ; and if at first we laid aside our national tradi- tions, we were long ago forced, by the pressure of national opinion exercised through Parliament, to resume so much of them as it was at all possible to apply in the tropics. In the long run we have in India been much more true to English traditions than is often supposed ; but Indian traditions have from the outset been so strong that our Indian form of government is — I will not say more Asiatic than European, but — of a type which belongs to the past of Europe, not to its present. It is, indeed, of the type of the great Eoman Empire before its decline. In Indian constitutional law, as in the great Indian codes, we have produced a new amalgam by blending together what we have brought with what we found. In so much of the codes as relates to the constitution of the courts there is a very large proportion of Eastern elements. But in the rest of the codes, — though there are Oriental touches here and there, and some concessions to Oriental custom and senti- ment, — we have, in the main, an improved and simplified version of English and Western law. In Indian constitutional law, as in the law constituting the courts, Eastern material preponderates. At the summit there are councils of Western origin^ — the councils of the Governor-General and of the Governors of Madras and Bom- bay, historically derived from the mercantile boards at the three Presidencies, and the Council of the Secretary of State, historically derived from the Court of Directors and the Board of Control. The Legislative Councils of the Govern- ment of India, Madras, Bombay, Bengal, and the North- western Provinces and Oudh are also the product of Western ideas on the nature of law and legislation, and are similar in type to nominated legislative councils in some of the Crown colonies of other parts of the world. The rest of the structure is Indian, or has been moulded by English hands in conformity with Indian experiences and necessities. Even at the summit we see the influence of Asiatic empire in the THE CONSTITUTIONAL POSITION OF NATIVE STATES 337 power of the Secretary of State (with exceptions that have httle or no practical importanoe) to overrule his council, or, in cases of urgency or which in his opinion require secrecy, to act independently of them ; as also in the power of the Viceroy to adopt or reject, on his own authority and responsi- bility, measures which, in his judgment, essentially affect the safety, tranquillity, or interests of India or any native state. I know of no stronger testimony to the vital connection between certain forms of government and certain stages of social or political growth than that the British nation, through Parliament — both imbued through and through with a conviction of the excellence of popular or representa- tive institutions — has estabhshed for India a government which is more like a reconstituted Delhi Empire, greatly improved and strengthened, or a Eoman Empire undeformed by slavery and cruel usages, than any Western government except that of Eussia. The Eomans had not any advantage which we may have derived from the former existence of an empire which was broken to pieces before the work of construction began ; but, hke ourselves, they were nur- tured in popular traditions, and they established an empire which is literally replete with close resemblances to the great Eastern empire of our creation and time. The fact that the coincidences have been entirely undesigned is additional proof of the working of inevitable laws. I see a confirma- tion of the same view in the circumstance that in the same period of time the same race of men has, in two different hemispheres, established two great assemblages of states and provinces of types standing at the beginning and end of Western civihsatiou. In America, Englishmen, freed from the pressure of the old society which they had left, founded a federation bearing throughout marks of those tendencies which are already transforming Europe. In India, EngHsh- men, constrained by the pressure of the archaic society which they found, built up an empire exhibiting close Hke- ness to that great empire from which all European civilisa- tion springs. In the United States of America and in our own involuntarily Eomanised empire of the East we see two great types of the possible future and the actual past ; and both have been evolved by the British race in different social and political environments. We may please ourselves with the reflection that the adaptation of institutions to facts has been due to the strong common sense and poHtical instinct of our race, and it would be unjust to deny that the success 338 OUR INDIAN PKOTECTOEATE in each case is largely ascribable to our national training in political life. But, to judge at least from Indian experience, the adaptation has been so little the result of any consciously formed design that we may fairly attribute most of it to the irresistible impact of the facts themselves. Nor is there in this view any more fatalism in politics than there is fatalism in the whole of science. In politics, as in science, our power of controlling the operation of natural law is very limited. But the better we understand natural laws the better is our chance of being able to bend them to our own purposes. In truth, if we look to the general growth of political institutions in civilised societies, without limiting our view to the histories of particular nations, it will not escape us that the great movement of modern centuries is from feudalism to federalism. In a minute of March 24, 1864, on the affairs of the K4thiaw4r States, which I quoted in the first chapter. Sir Henry Maine observed that 'Europe was at one time full of imperfectly sovereign states, although the current of events has for centuries set towards their aggregation into large independent monarchies.' Whilst the old currents of events still advance in certain chan- nels, new currents arise to mingle with and sometimes to absorb them. The principle of federation had swept over the United States and Switzerland long before the year of the revolutions ; but perhaps we may consider that, in many countries, the current which set from feudalism to monarchy had spent its force when, in 1848, constitution after constitu- tion was granted by autocratic or almost autocratic kings. At aU events,, the growing ascendency of one leading principle of federation is a remarkable characteristic of our own time. A federation of states is usually contrasted with a confederacy, in which a number of states join in a per- manent alliance without the surrender of any rights of sovereignty ; and it has been supposed that the supreme central government in a federation must include or consist of representatives appointed by each state ; and that ' in the inception of a federal union there must be voluntary agreement to the constitution among all the constituent states ' (J. B. Kinnear, ' Principles of Civil Government,' pp. 70, 77). In speaking, however, of the growing ascen- dency of a leading principle of federation, I mean something different from a mere increase in the number of federa- tions of states. One leading principle of federation may be operative without any federation of states pro- THE CONSTITUTIONAL POSITION OF NATIVE STATES 339 perly so called. That leading principle is, I think, the combination of local autonomy with common defence. The aggregate of powers or privileges which make up sovereignty may be so divided that a central authority has the control of all relations with states not included in the union, and the right of organising and using some, not necessarily ah, of the common naval and military forces. The control of foreign relations would comprise diplomacy and the right of making war or treaties. The other powers of sovereignty might be exercised by the states included in the union ; or some of them — notably those affecting national debt, customs taxation, currency, posts and railways — might be in the hands of the central authority. The list of powers exercised by the central authority might include other matters ; but these other matters would not be numerous, and all powers not exercised by the central authority would be exercised by the several states them- selves. In all such arrangements, whether there is an actual federation or not, the central authorities are charged with the common defence, and the local authorities are charged with the regulation of their own local affairs, as is the case in federations. If we go a step or two further, and add that in the same union some states might have many more of the powers of sovereignty left to them than others ; that the central authority might consist conceivably of one person, possibly of few, determined in different unions in a great variety of ways ; and that states might be brought into or constrained to remain in the union, not only by compact, but by conquest or cession ; or might be created as members of the union by delegation or grant ; we should then identify a leading principle of federations with the leading principle of pro- tectorates. And this abstract identification is useful for the purpose of remarking the enormous spread in our own day of the combination I have noticed, that of local autonomy and common defence. It exists in our world-wide empire. It exists outside that empire in parts of every continent. Where states or provinces within an empire stand on the same general level of civihsation, they tend to combine in unions of a federal type, as in the United States, the Argentine EepubHc, Canada, and, we may perhaps hope, Austraha, Switzerland, the German Empire, and the Austro- Hungarian Empire, or more generally in Teutonic Europe, America, and possibly Australia; whereas, in the other z 2 340 OUK INDIAN PROTECTOKATE quarters of the globe, in Asia and Africa, the Western races are establishing or have established protectorates over races whose degree of civilisation falls short of their own. The Latin races of Europe have reached the stage, not of federa- tion, but of constitutional government. Eussia is still in the earher epoch of absolutism. It seems, indeed, a political discovery of some con- sequence that sovereignty can, at least ideally, be divided in any manner we please amongst great combinations of states for their general advantage ; and perhaps there is some scientific interest in the remark that the present importance of the divisibility of sovereignty and the tendency to unite local autonomy with common defence are consistent with known laws of development ; greater variety of function and greater specialisation of parts being well-known marks of the higher forms in organic nature. And the use that may be made of the division of sovereignty — which, I may remark in passing, is the antithesis to the earlier union of all functions of sovereignty in the single hand of a chief or king — should have enormous influence on two great factors in human progress : the general peace of great empires or of the world, and the amount of variety in human character which is due to or connected with the laws and institutions of particular societies. A healthy variety, admitting of experiment, discovery, and diiFerent rates or stages of social advance, is secured by local autonomy; and peace is secured by entrusting to a common or central authority the common defence. Chronic warfare is a disease of the infancy of nations ; and it has been outgrown or suppressed or checked by federations or protectorates as between a vast number of states in every quarter of the globe. As time runs on, there may be a growing disposition to require the central authority to regulate matters on which any states or large sections of the community are bitterly opposed ; and conversely matters of public business which everyone agrees should be regulated everywhere in the same manner. I must not, however, pursue these speculations here. The object of this chapter is to describe the constitutional position of the protected dependent states within the empire. Since they are subordinate to the Indian Government, we now come to discuss the place of that Government in the British Empire as a whole. The position of the Indian Government is defined by Indian constitutional law, which may be regarded as consisting of four great parts or branches. TUB CONSTITUTIONAL POSITION OF NATIVE STATES 341 One part deals witli the relations of the Indian Government to Parliament through the Secretary of State and his Council in England. Another part defines the constitution of the supreme Government in India and its relations with the Indian Local Governments and provincial Administrations. A third part lays down the principles which regulate some of the chief Indian estabhshments, the Civil Service, the High Courts of Justice, and the ecclesiastical establish- ments. _ And the fourth part, consisting mainly of usage, is that with which this book is concerned — the rules and principles governing the relations between the paramount power and the feudatory states. To enter fuUy upon these various topics would be to write a separate treatise on the three branches of Indian constitutional law, which are not now immediately before us. But some allusion, however slight, to these branches is indispensable in order that our immediate subject may be fully understood. What, it may be asked, are the three great constitutional ties that bind together that vast and complicated whole known as the Britannic Empire ? They are, first, the supremacy of Parhament ; secondly, the power of the Crown, advised by responsible ministers, to veto subordinate legislation ; thirdly, the like power of the Crown to make war and peace, and treaties. As a matter of constitutional principle the first and third of these ties extend to every colony and de- pendency, from Canada to Fiji, from Hong Kong to the Cape ; and the second tie extends to every colony or dependency that possesses a legislature. As a matter of constitutional practice, the relations between the central Government and the different classes of colonies are conducted in different ways. There would be the greatest reluctance to veto the legislation of any great self-governing colony. There is good authority for holding that parliamentary legislation on any subject of exclusively internal concern to any colony pos- sessing a representative assembly is, except in extreme cases, unconstitutional. There have even been signs of a disposition to give the great self-governing colonies a certain share in the treaty-making power with reference to matters of com- merce ; for instance, in negotiations upon certain commercial questions pending between Canada and Spain a representa- tive of Canada was given joint plenipotentiary powers with the Ambassador at Madrid ; and on other occasions repre- sentatives of Canada have, under the sanction of the Foreign. Office, taken a prominent part in negotiations with foj-eign 342 OUR INDIAN PEOTECTOKATE countries. But after we have given such, circumstances as these their proper weight, the fact remains that, though some strands of the triple ties, the veto and the parhamentary power of local legislation, in the case of some colonies and for all ordinary purposes, may have been attenuated to the merest gossa.mer, constitutionally the ties themselves still ramify to every part of our complex empire. The official classification of the colonies is well known. There are the Crown colonies, in which the Crown has the entire control of legislation while the administration is carried on by public officers under the control of the Home Govern- ment ; the colonies possessing representative institutions but not responsible government ; and the colonies possessing both representative institutions and responsible government. If we were to attempt to bring India into this classification, we could only place her in the first of these classes ; but, in truth, she belongs to none of them. India stands apart as a great subordinate empire, consisting of a number of govern- ments and administrations, and a much greater number of dependent states. Nevertheless, the three great constitu- tional ties bind India no less than they bind Malta or Mauritius. 'No lawyer questions,' says Mr. A. V. Dicey (' The Law of the Constitution,' p. 104), ' that Parliament could legally abolish any colonial constitution, or that Par- liament can at any moment legislate for the colonies, and repeal or over-ride any colonial law whatever. Parliament, moreover, constantly does pass Acts affecting the colonies, and the colonial no less than the English courts completely admit the principle that a statute of the Imperial Parliament binds any part of the British dominions to which that statute is meant to apply.' We need not here discuss the qualifica- tions to which these remarks may be subject in the case of the self-governing colonies. AU I have to point out is that they apply to India. The Indian Government is constituted by a number of Acts of Parliament which any Parliament could alter or repeaL The legislative council of the Governor- General has no power to repeal or to enact anything incon- sistent with the Indian Constitutional Statutes or any Act of Parliament 'in anywise affecting her Majesty's Indian terri- tories or the inhabitants thereof passed since August 1, 1861, the date of the enactment of the Indian Councils Acjt, and many Acts of Parliament affecting India have been passed since that date. The Viceroy may withhold his assent from a law made by his council, or reserve the measure, for the signification of THE CONSTITUTIONAL POSITION OF NATIVE STATES 343 the pleasure of her Majesty ; and when the Viceroy has given his assent to a law so made, h«r Majesty may signify through the Secretary of State in Council her disallowance of the same. The powers of making war and of making treaties are pecu- liarly distributed with regard rather to former than to present cu-cumstances. The language of the statute of George III. (3 3 Geo. III. c. 52, s. 42) reminds us that in 1793 there were no telegraphs. At the present day it may be assumed that any question of guaranteeing territory or commencing hostilitie's which appeared likely in any way to affect imperial interests would, if there was not time to write, be referred by tele- graph for the orders of the Secretary of State. When the Secretary of State sends any order to India directing the actual commencement of hostilities by her Majesty's forces in India, the fact of such order having been sent must be communicated to both Houses of Parliament within a time fixed by law. • As to the power of the Governor-General in Council, we may paraphrase the law as it stands by saying that technically the sanction of the Secretary of State is not required to the declaration or commencement of war in India provoked by hostilities or warlike preparations made against ourselves or any protected dependent state ; but, in the absence of this provocation, that sanction is required to treaties for making war or guaranteeing territory. Other treaties, or more properly engagements, with Indian native states may be made by the Governor-General in Council. In this behalf the powers of the local governments and administrations are much more restricted, as will presently appear. The legislative supremacy of the Viceroy and his council is secured by means which, in a general way, resemble those employed to secure the legislative supremacy of Parliament in the empire at large. Just as' Parliament can legislate for any part of the Britannic Empire, so the Governor-General in his legislative council can make laws for all Indian territories under the dominion of her Majesty. Laws made by the legislative councils of Madras, Bombay, Bengal, and the North-West Provinces and Oudh require the assent of the Governor-General, and are subject to disallowance by the Crown. For provinces which at present have no legislatures — the Lieutenant-Governorship of the Punjab, and the Chief Conimissionerships of Burma, the Central Provinces, Assam, Ajmere, and Coorg — laws are made by the legislative council of the Governor-General. There is a power also resembhng 344 . OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATK the power of the Crown under certain enactments to make Orders in Council. In districts notified under a statute of 1870, which include some whole provinces and many localities in other parts of India, the Governor-General in his executive council can make regulations which have the force of law, and are subject to the like disallowances as Acts passed in the legislative council. The legislative powers of the local legislative councils have undoubtedly been too much restricted ; but I need not go into that subject here further than to say that one well-known defect in the law on this point has been remedied by the Indian Councils Act, 1892. Amongst several restrictions likely to be retained, one is that no provincial legislature may take into consideration any law aiFecting the relations of the Government with foreign princes or states, except with the previous sanction of the Governor-General. The treaty-making powers of local governments are defined in the old statute of 1793 to which I have referred above. I may describe the law by saying that no local government or administration may issue any order for commencing hostilities or levying war, or negotiate or conclude any treaty of peace or other treaty with any prince or state (except in cases of sudden emergency or imminent danger, when it shall appear dangerous to post- pone the hostilities or treaty), unless in pursuance of express orders from the Governor-General in Council or the Secre- tary of State ; and every treaty so made must, if possible, contain a clause subjecting it to the ratification or rejection of the same authority. But in practice it is well understood that all agreements with native states, including postal and telegraph agreements, must be ratified by the Governor- General in Council. The exceptions warranted by law would probably be inoperative at the present day, now that orders can be sought and given by' telegraph. Notwithstanding the restricted powers of the local governments and administrations, they have the political superintendence of an immense number of states. But, before I discuss that subject, I have to remark that the resemblances between the structure of the Britannic Empire and the structure of the British Indian Empire point alike to Western influences and the working of similar causes of growth. The charters granted by James I. in 1609 to the London Company of Virginia, by Charles I. in 1629 for planting the province of Massachusetts Bay, by Charles IL in 1661 to the East India Company, are alike in this, that THE CONSTITUTIONAL POSITION OF NATIVE STATES 345 they all delegate some of the essential attributes of govern- ment. The neglect of the»home authorities and their inability to control distant settlements left the colonies in America and the presidencies in India, in their early history, each to pursue a separate course. The Virginians enacted that the Governor should not tax the colony except by the authority of the General Assembly. The men of Massachusetts, in 1634, established representative govern- ment for themselves, and in 1652 coined their own money. Both in India and America union was forced upon colonies or presidencies by the stern necessities of self-preservation. Massachusetts combined with three of the other four New England colonies in an offensive and defensive confederacy, due to the presence of Dutch settlers on the Hudson, of French settlers in Nova Scotia, and frequent hostilities with Indian tribes. The Navigation Laws, the Stamp Act, and the import duties led the American colonies to unite in self-defence against ourselves. In India there was no volun- tary combination of the three Presidencies ; the union, which was soon seen to be essential to the preservation of our power,, was imposed upon them by an external authority. The Eegulating Act of 1773 forbade the Presidents and Councils of Madras and Bombay to make war or treaties without the previous consent of the Governor-General and Council of the Presidency of Port William in Bengal ; and even after this, in 1775, the Government of Bombay made, on its own authority, a treaty with the Marhatta pretender, Eaghoba, which the Bengal Government disallowed. Security, indeed, the primary necessity of self-preserva- tion, is at the root of political combinations so far apart, not only as the United States of America and the British Indian Empire, but as feudalism and federalism. Protection was the great thing sought by feudal submission ; and military service in the wars of his feudal lord was one of the chief duties of a vassal. The advance from feudahsm to federahsm cannot be brought under the general formula of progress from status to contract, because the feudal tie, though by virtue of its hereditary character giving birth to a new status, originated, or was supposed to originate, in a com- pact ; and the federal tie, though often originating in a com- pact between provinces or states, maybe formed in _ other ways. Feudalism was based upon the land; federalism is based upon legislation. Feudalism permitted private vvar between the dukedoms and counties and other lordships 346 OUR INDIAN PKOTECTOEATE under a common suzerain ; it even elaborately regulated private war. It is of tlie essence of federalism that there shall be no war between the members of the federal union, that no member shall alone have the right of making war, and that disputes between the several members of the union, or conflicts between their laws, shall be settled by peaceful means. The disorders and violence of feudalism were miti- gated or corrected by the growing power of kings, and the overgrown power of kings was, in its turn, restrained by representative institutions. It would be fanciful to press too far an analogy between general European history and the history of Indian legislative councils. The tie that binds the several local governments and administrations to the supreme Government is not feudal or truly federal, but imperial. These diyerse territories are the provinces of a great empire, and the councils are formed by nomination, not by election. Still, the growth of the whole system pre- sents some features which may be recognised elsewhere. It may be worth while to follow up that remark by a brief historical retrospect. Before the application to India of the Charter Act of 1833, the Indian Eegulations, consti- tuting three different bodies of statute law, had been passed by three separate legislatures. A succession of enactments had given the Governor-General in Council control over the Governments of Madras and Bombay in political matters, in revenue matters, in all matters whatsoever. But it does not appear that the Governor-General exercised any direct con- trol over the Governor in Council at Madras or Bombay in the matter of making laws, nor were the Eegulations passed at Madras and Bombay submitted to the Governor-General - in Council for approval. The legislative powers of the Governor-General in Council were limited to the presidency of Bengal. The Act of 1833 withdrew the legislative powers of the Madras and Bombay Governments, and centralised all legislative authority in India in the council of the Governor- General. The legislative council under this Act was identical with the executive council, except that the law member was entitled to sit or vote in the council only at meetings for making laws and regulations. This made little difference, as he might be invited to attend at other meet- ings. Discussion was not public, and it was not necessary that it should be oral. Practically the Acts passed at this time were nothing but the orders of the executive Govern- ment, put into the form of enactments by specially appointed THE CONSTITUTIONAL POSITION OF NATIVE STATES 347 draughtsmen, and possessing the force of law. Two natural consequences of extreme cei^alisation — over-pressure of business and defect of local knowledge — were found to produce certain evils. In 1853 the legislative council was strengthened and altered by the introduction of legislative councillors, of whom two were English judges of the Supreme Court at Calcutta, and the rest nominated repre- sentatives, one each for the several great provinces, appointed by the Governors for the Presidencies, by the Lieutenant- Governors for the Lieutenant-Governorships. Finally, the Indian Councils Act of 1861 formed the first great measure of the much-needed policy of decentralisation. It revived in an improved shape the legislative powers of the Govern- ments of Madras and Bengal, and provided means whereby legislative councils might be established in any province in India. A legislative council was forthwith established for Bengal, has lately been established for the North- Western Provinces and Oudh, and ought soon to be established for the Punjab. In the early >days the presidencies, as soon as they acquired any political power, bore marks of resemblance to the petty states that on the disruption of the Moghal empire were formed all over India. When legislative authority, other than the mere power of passing by-laws for factories find small settlements, came to be exercised, we see it first Romewhat aimlessly suffered to lie in hands that used it independently ; then tightly concentrated in a central council; and at length equitably redistributed by formal enactment. Legislative authority is only one amongst many powers of Government, and its history in India fills an extremely minute place in the general history of civilisation. But in India, by the peculiarities of our position, we have often been impelled, in the course of a few generations, through ranges of administrative history which many nations have taken centuries to traverse. The three stages of sepa- ration of authority, its concentration and its definite redis- tribution by law, may at least remind us of the three far greater, far more important, stages in another continent of feudaHsm, absolutism, and federalism. It is not necessary to enter at any length upon what may be called the internal structure of the Indian govern- ments. Parallel to each other stand the judicial and the executive services. The judicial service consists of long series of graded courts, the powers diminishing by well- marked steps from the, top to the bottom, and security being 348 OUE INDIAN PROTECTORATE afforded for the proper administration of justice by a very- strict supervision exercised by the higher judicial officers over the courts next below their own, and by great freedom of appeal, which, however, does not foUow quite the same course in all parts of the country. The composition of the executive service is well known. The pivot of the whole mechanism is the district charge. Below the officer in charge of a district, called in some provinces the magistrate and collector, in others the deputy commissioner, are the native officials and European and native assistants in charge of sub-divisions of districts, and other assistants, native and European, at head-quarters. Above the district officer, except in the Madras Presidency, are commissioners of divisions, each division comprising a number of districts. The commissioners, in revenue matters, are, except in Bombay, subordinate to Boards of Eevenue or Financial Com- missioners, and these in their turn are subordinate to the Local Government or Chief Commissioner. Such is the general type : there are variations in detail in different provinces. The Bombay Presidency, for instance, has no Board of Eevenue or Financial Commissioner, and in some provinces the separation between the judicial and executive services is much less complete than in others. In the older provinces, Madras, Bombay, Bengal, and the North- West, the summit of the judicial service, like the summit of the executive service, is partly of Western composition. As the executive councils are derived from the old mercantile boards, and the legislative councils from Western ideas of legislation, so the high courts were formed by the amalgamation of the old supreme courts — English courts of justice transplanted to India — with the old courts of indigenous origin, the Sadr Diwdni and Sadr Faujddri' Addlats. With this exception, the whole system is of Indian derivation. It may be traced back to the reforms instituted by Warren Hastings in Bengal after a long series of blind experiments and miserable failures. It was in Bengal that we first had any extended territorial dominion ; and it was by means of our experience there that, at the cost of many mistakes and much mis- government, we worked out most of the principles of administrative organisation which have since been applied, with many improvements and some local variations, to all parts of British India. It is worth noticing that in the two great systems which are mainly indigenous, the administrative organisation and the protectorate, we started on the path of THE CONSTITUTIONAL POSITION OF NATIVE STATES 349 reform with a purely Western equipment. In other parts of this work I have shown h#w little applicable to India were the Western principle of a balance of power and the Western notion of non-intervention. Towards the end of last century it was an idea current in England that the only way to prevent oppression was to subject every one to actions in courts of justice for illegal acts. Accordingly, when jealousy and indignation were aroused by the ill-gotten gains and thoroughly Oriental proceedings of the Company's servants in Bengal, a supreme court was established in Calcutta for the purpose of applying this check. Violent collisions followed between the supreme court and the Governor-General and Council. In the Cossijurah cause, to quote Sir J. Fitzjames Stephen (Nuncomar v. Impey, vol. ii. p. 5), 'the Council opposed the execution of the process of the court by mihtary force, and substantially confined its jurisdiction by the same means within the town of Calcutta.' In 1781 an Act was passed (21 Geo. III. c. 70) which yielded the two main points for which the executive Government had been contending. It enacted that the supreme court should not have jurisdiction concerning the revenue or acts done in collecting the same according to the practice of the country or the Government regulations ; and it enabled the Government to frame regulations for the provincial courts, and thus to provide for them a legal and stable foundation. The rapid collapse, in the early history of the administration and the protectorate, of ideas derived ex- clusively from our domestic experiences and the condition of Europe, suggests caution in future experiments. The official organisation for the affairs of the protectorate has some features in common with the administrative organisation in British territory. There is a strong political department under the immediate orders of the supreme Government, which, in the gradation of its ranks and the official discipline of its members, resembles, in a general way, the commissions administering British provinces. At the head of the list, corresponding with the Chief Commis- sioners, are the Agents to the Governor-General for Edjputdna and Central India and at Quettah. The Eesidents in the important states of Hyderabad and Mysore are on an equal footing. Indeed, all these officers are actually Chief Com- missioners of adjoining British territory, or discharge the functions of a Local Government for foreign territory ad- ministered by British officers. Thus the Governor-General's 350 OUK INDIAN PKOTECTORATE Agent at Quettah is Chief Commissioner for British Baluchi- stan; the Governor-General's Agent in E4jput4na is Chief Commissioner for Ajmere ; the Eesident at Hyderabad exer- cises the powers of a Local Government in respect to Berar ; and the Eesident in Mysore is Chief Commissioner for Coorg. There are other Eesidents of less rank, usually under some intermediate authority, as the Eesident at Jaipur under the Governor-General's Agent for E4jputAna, and the Eesident at Gwdlior under the Agent for Central India. The title of Governor-General's Agent is given to a Eesident of the second class at Baroda. A step lower down in the official scale are the political agents, arranged in several grades, and below them, again, the assistant political agents. Geographically, the native states may be divided into two great classes : those under the Governor-General in Council and his Agents, and those where the intermediate authority of a Local Government or Administration is interposed be- tween the state and the supreme Government. It is a well- understood principle, and one entirely consistent with the responsibility of the supreme Government for the foreign relations of the whole Indian Empire, both internal and external, that all the most important states in India should be included in the first class. That class may further be subdivided into (1) the states where the Eesident or Agent corresponds direct with the Government 6f India, and (2) the states under the general supervision of an Agent to the Governor-General, assisted by a staff of political officers, most of whom have local charges, sometimes limited to a single state, but more often including several states grouped together. To the first of these sub-classes belong the Nizam's dominions, Mysore, the Gaekwar's dominions, and Kashmir. Excluding the Baluchistan agency, which does not fall within the scope of this book, the second sub-class includes the twenty states of Edjpiitdna and the 136 states of Central India. According to the return of 1886, which I quoted in a former chapter, there are five states under the Government of Madras, 368 states — very many of them petty states in the Kdthiawdr peninsula — under the Govern- ment of Bombay, 26 states under the Bengal, two under the JSTorth-West, 33 (the figure should be 34) under the Punjab Governments, and fifteen and twenty respectively under the Chief Commissioners of the Central Provinces and Assam. In respect to the political stafi", the Local Governments and Administrations follow the same general plan as the THE CONSTITUTIONAL POSITION OF NATIVE STATES 351 Government of India. But it frequently happens that the officer in political charge of a g;ate or group of states is also the officer in administrative charge of the surrounding or adjoining British territory. Thus in the Punjab, the Zapiir- thalla, Mandi, Faridkot, and Suket states are under the com- missioner of the JuUundur division ; the Chamba state is under the commissioner of the Lahore division ; the Maler Kotla, Kalsia, Pataudi, and Lohdru states are under the commis- sioner of the DeUii division ; and the Simla Hill states, twenty in number, are under the deputy commissioner of the Simla district, who, in his political capacity, is desig- nated the superintendent of the Hill states. There is no local political officer for the four most important Punjab states, the Lieutenant-Governor himself being agent for Patidla, Jhind, NAbha, and BahAwalpur. Under the Govern- ment of Madras there is a resident in Travancore, but the political agents for BunganapuUy and Sandur are the collectors of the Kurmil and Bellary districts. A similar arrangement is usual in the Bombay Presidency. According to the latest return I have at hand, the collectors of nine districts in that presidency were also political agents for some state or group of states. As to the duties of all these political officers, the part they take in supervising the native administration varies greatly. The guiding principle is usage, and that varies with the history of the state, the nature of its special rela- tions with the British Government, the character of its government, and the share of sovereignty which belongs to it. 1 will take an extreme case, probably indicating the maximum of interference — the case of a state, which shall be nameless, in Southern India. The chief of this state is bound by treaty to pay the utmost attention to such advice as the British Government shaU occasionally judge it neces- sary to offer to him, with a view to certain specified objects and to any other objects connected with the advancement of his interests, the happiness of his people, and the mutual welfare of his state and the British dominions. This very wide power of offering authoritative advice is. freely exer- cised. The prime minister is usually a native officer who has been trained in the service of the British Government. The British Eesident is kept informed of all important affairs, supervises the courts of justice through the minister, advises on the selection of judges, is consulted before any judge is removed, approves sentences of capital punishment 352 OUB INDIAN PROTECTOKATE before the chief confirms them, accords his approval to pro- posed laws before the chief sanctions them, and generally gives on all measures of consequence advice that cannot be disregarded, though the measures themselves are mostly initiated by the minister, and can be finally adopted only by the chief. This amount of control would be quite without precedent in the case of any Punjab state ; and probably there is less interposition in the internal affairs of native states in the Punjab and Edjput4na than in other parts of India. On the other hand, it is tolerably clear that the states which are most nearly assimilated in style of administration to the neighbouring or surrounding British territories are to be found in the Indian peninsula under the Governments of Madras and Bombay. However wide may be the authority of any local political officer, there are some points touching the prerogative of the paramount power which must always be referred for the orders of the Government of India. These include the succession to the chiefship, and conversely any measure amounting to the deposition of the chief, the use within the state of any forces of the British Government, and any formal agreement or engagement of a nature resembling a treaty or convention. Exchanges or readjustments of foreign territory, or rules for the extradition of criminals as between states, would always stand in need of sanction from the same authority. It is well established that British territory may be ceded to a native state only by the Govern- ment of India, with the sanction of the Secretary of State. Generally it is only the paramount power that is entitled to decide who shall be the chief of a state, what his territory shall include, and what shall be his engagements with the British Government. In so far as the whole scheme of the protectorate depends upon the divisibility of sovereignty, its formation illustrates one striking tendency of modern legal ideas. If we were to compare or contrast British India and the British Indian protectorate, taken together, with any self-governing colonj', the best to select for the purpose wOuld be Canada, though, doubtless, Australasia, if ever the proposed union should be completed, would also present points of analogy. Canada and India are alike in possessing a long land-frontier — a matter of great consequence in connection with the general military defence of the whole empire. In the Canadian Dominion there are seven provinces, each with a separate THE CONSTITUTIONAL POSITION OF NATIVE STATES 353 Lieutenant-Governor, each with, separate legislative powers. In India and the protectorate Ukere are four Governorships or Lieutenant-Governorships with separate legislative powers, a number of other provinces for which laws are passed by the Council of the Governor-General, and a very much greater number of states to which the territorial laws of the various councils, as distinguished from the personal laws relating to British servants and subjects, do not of their own force apply. _ The list of subjects reserved for the Central Parliament in Canada presents a striking similarity to the Ust oi subjects on which the local councils in India are forbidden to ma.ke laws except with the previous sanction of the Governor-General. Both lists include, amongst other things, certain matters relating to the currency, the Post Office, public debt, patents and copyrights, and the mihtary and naval services. The great contrast lies in the type of province or state. Notwithstanding the separate legislative powers of nominated Indian councils, there is less hkeness between any Indian province and a Canadian province than between any Indian province and a large, well-managed native state. We see here the effect of history. In the East, where indigenous forms of government had gi-own up before our time, we have by law and usage set constitutional limits to the mere discretion of personal rule. In the West, where, except for dwindling 'Indian tribes, the land was altogether empty, the representative institutions of England have reproduced themselves. Another important point of comparison or contrast con- cerns the supremacy of Parhament. Parliament is un- doubtedly competent to pass laws for any Indian province. It is perhaps only theoretically competent to pass laws for any Canadian province. I shall not discuss the question whether Parliament is competent to pass territorial laws for native states ; for if there were any strong political necessity for the application of a particular territorial law in parts of a native state where jurisdiction is not vested in the British Government, the constitutional course would be to induce the chief to introduce the law on his own authority. But apart from the currency of laws, the political supremacy of Parliament is undoubted. The states are subordinate to the Government of India ; and that Government is both created by Parliament and responsible to it. Even in respect of the currency of laws — and I have explained in the first chapter how British laws have become current in A A 354 OUR INDIAN PEOTECTORATE foreign territory — the powers of the Governor-General in his legislative Council to pass laws applicable personally to British servants and subjects in native states, and the power of the Governor-General in executive Council to apply laws to territory of which the jurisdiction has been ceded or otherwise acquired, depend ultimately on parliamentary legislation. The political supremacy of the Crown, whose functions, under our constitution, are exercised under parliamentary control, is clearly seen from what I may call the double allegiance of the subjects of native states. There is, so far as I am aware, no official recognition or sanction of any doctrine of a double allegiance. The soundness, however, of such a doctrine will, I think, easily appear from a few obvious considerations. Allegiance is the obedience ren- dered by a subject to a sovereign. If the sovereignty is divided, the obedience must be divided, and in like proportion. Correlative with the legal duty of allegiance on the part of the subject is the moral duty of protection on the part of the sovereign. We extend protection to the subjects of native states, first, as against gross misrule ; secondly, as against all enemies of the British Government by our general measures for the defence of the empire ; and, thirdly, in our ordinary relations with foreign powers, because we give the subjects of Indian native states in foreign countries the same protection that we give to native Indian subjects of her Majesty. Again, this doctrine of a double allegiance may be illus- trated by our practice in extradition. In making an extra- dition treaty with another power we agree that our subjects shall, in certain cases, be compelled to render obedience to foreign laws in consideration that the subjects of the foreign power shall, in certain like cases, be compelled to render obedience to our laws. It is well understood that when a foreign power is entitled to demand the extradition of an offender from British Indian territory, it is entitled to make the same demand in regard to offenders resident in the dominions of native princes and states in India, for whose political relations with foreign powers the Government of India is responsible. It would merely be necessary to ascertain whether the demand was justified by the treaty engagement with the foreign power. If so, it would be complied with ; nor could any internal extraditional arrange- ments as between the native state and the British Indian THE CONSTITUTIONAL POSITION OF NATIVE STATES 355 Government be allowed to interfere with the due discharge of our international obligations* The practical consequence is, that for all purposes of our relations with foreign powers the subjects of Indian native states must be regarded as subjects of her Majesty ; that is, to this extent, though not to this extent only, they are in allegiance to the Crown. Although, as a matter of fact and practice. Acts of Par- liament do not of their own force apply to Indian native states, there are certain statutory provisions by which these states are more or less affected. I have already mentioned some of the provisions which secure to the supreme Govern- ment in India the control of the relations of the British Government with these states ; and I referred in the last chap- ter to the restrictions on the loan of money to these states by British subjects. The Act of 1858, which transferred the government of India to the Crown, declares that all treaties made by the East India Company shall be binding on her Majesty ; and in this way, and by virtue of subsequent engage- ments and grants, the constitutional position of individual states comes to be fixed partly by written instruments, partly by constitutional usage and law. Upon the enormous detail of the immense number of written instruments which bear on the powers and duties of particular chiefs it is no part of the design of this treatise to enter. On the contrary, part of the object in view is to prepare the mind for the study of the relevant documents when our relations with any par- ticular state come under consideration. The other statutory provisions affecting native states are mainly concerned with those powers of the Governor-General in Council to make laws for its servants and subjects to which I referred in the first chapter, and with the authority of the Governor-General in Council to empower high courts to exercise jurisdiction in respect of Christian subjects of her Majesty resident in native states. To complete this review of the constitutional position of Indian native states I shall have to notice certain customary obligations of native rulers not elsewhere treated in sufficient detail. That subject must be reserved for the whole of the next and a part of the final chapter. The next chapter wiU also be the most appropriate place to mention certain provi- sions of the Indian codes of civil and criminal procedure which have special reference to native states. Meanwhile, I will briefly sum up the conclusions so far apparent. The states are subordinate to the Government 356 OUp INDIAN PROTECTORATE of India, and that Government is subordinate to Parliament. The states are therefore subordinate to Parliament, though it does not legislate for them. The states may also be sub- ordinate to intermediate authorities, officers of the Govern- ment of India or of the provincial governments, or more directly to the provincial governments themselves. But these intermediate authorities exercise strictly limited powers ; the treaty-making power and the determination of succes- sions are in the hands of the Government of India, which also itself regulates the business arising with all states of great importance. This position of the Government of India is secured by a number of statutory provisions ; and an im- mense number of written instruments guarantee the powers or the perpetuation of native states and, taken with usage, define the relations of particular states to the paramount power. Native rulers are under certain other obligations which may or may not be mentioned in written instruments, but which can be enforced as a part of constitutional usage whether so mentioned or not. The subjects of native states owe a double allegiance — to their own chief and to her Majesty the Queen-Empress. For purposes of the international obligations of the British Government towards foreign powers, the whole map of India is red. Foreign powers have no concern with our domestic division of sovereignty. In our relations with them we must regard the subjects of native states as subjects of her Majesty ; a position which necessarily follows from the fact that we prohibit the states themselves from having any relation whatsoever with foreign powers. Finally, from the point of view of the dutj^ of good government, native rulers may be regarded as the agents or great hereditary officers of the British Empire at large for the administration of part of its varied possessions. No doubt the chiefs are much more than this ; for the essence of their position is that they exercise many of the functions of sovereignty, that they rule for life and from generation to generation, and that their high birth gives them at once rank in the empire such as few of its mere officers attain. But that the view just stated is true, though not exhaustive, few or none will doubt who realise the attitude of the Delhi emperors towards the great zaminddrs, and of the Marhatta Peshwas towards the great Marhatta commanders, and who bear in mind the official origin, the origin by grant of the British Government, and the past history of many Indianstates. 357 CHAPTEE XIX SOME OBLIGATIONS OF NATIVE RULEES This chapter is a supplement to the chapter just ended, be- cause it gives further details regarding the constitutional position of the chiefs of Indian states under the British pro- tectorate. But the matters which will here come under dis- cussion are necessarily of a dry and technical character, and possess little, if any, general interest. A reader who refers to this book merely for information, with no professional or pohtical object in view, is advised to omit the perusal of this chapter and to limit himself to a glance at the heading in the table of contents. To a jurist who might regard the gradual growth of a new branch of jurisprudence as worthy of atten- tion, some of the points about to be discussed may, perhaps, possess the sort of attraction that belongs to a legal curiosity. For the rest it wiU suffice to say that this chapter is mainly addressed to those who are now engaged, or are likely to be engaged, in the practical business of the Indian political system, or who may be employed in establishing or work- ing any similar system in any other part o# the world. Such a commodity as the experience gained in the British Indian protectorate has a wider market in proportion as the present fashion of setting up protectorates extends. I propose to touch as lightly and briefly as possible on some prerogatives of the Indian Government, on some weU-understood arrangements by which the administration of justice, both in British and native territory, is facihtated, and on some of the ways in which native states are expected to contribute to the strength and efficiency, and particularly to the mihtary strength and efficiency, of the paramount power. There are some prerogatives of the paramount power which carry with them corresponding obligations, not indeed of so binding a force as those of allegiance or good govern- 358 OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE merit, but such that the breach of them, if deliberate, would amount to a breach of amity. On such obligations there is ordinarily no need to insist. They would be generally accepted and acted upon readily enough as matters of friend- ship and courtesy. They do not touch the internal sovereignty of feudatory states. They regulate certain points of ceremony or convenience in the external relations of these states with the suzerain. In such points of ceremony, as, for instance, in the grant or recognition of titles and the regulation of precedence and salutes, the rule is necessarily laid down by the supreme authority ; though it is based as far as possible on custom, and in framing it the greatest care is taken to give all just expectations their due. The question of coinage may be considered in the same connection ; though here, except in regard to the opening of new mints, the policy is understood to be to abstain from authoritative regulation. Of the wisdom of that policy there can be little doubt ; for the right to coin money is an attribute of internal sovereignty that is highly valued in the native states that enjoy it. The document which granted Lord Olive's jdgir directs that Colonel Olive, a European, be favoured with the title of ' Flower of the Empire, Defender of the Oountry, the Brave, Eirm in War ' ; and I have heard on good authority that at a much later date General Ochterlony received from the King of Delhi the title of Nasir-ud-Dauiat, which is perpetuated in the name of the cantonment of Nasirabad. The days, however, in which Europeans received these Oriental titles have gone by. Some fifteen or sixteen years ago an Oriental title was indeed conferred by the authorities of a native state on a European tutor of the minor chief ; but when the m.atter came before the Government of India regret was expressed that a previous reference had not been made to the British Government, the title was not recognised, and the ruling given implied that no titles conferred upon European British subjects by native chiefs could be recognised without the sanc- tion of the Queen. In an earlier case the council of a certain state announced that a title had been granted to a native Indian subject of her Majesty in the service of the state, and prayed that it might be recognised by the British Government. After some discussion, this was done. There is another leading case on the subject, but I need only say that, while no general rule has been promulgated, the view that would probably be taken, should the point arise again, is that, though no interference would be exercised in regard to titles SOME OBLIGATIONS OF NATIVE EULERS 359 granted with discretion by native rulers to their own subjects, titles ought not to be given to^ritish subjects, European or native, without the consent of the British Government. In the grant of Oriental titles which would be recognised by the British Government, there may have been eccentri- cities in the past which it is unnecessary to particularise. It is now, I believe, clearly established that the power to bestow or confirm such titular distinctions in India rests exclusively with the Viceroy as the immediate representative of her Majesty the Queen-Empress. Many Oriental titles, besides the familiar titles of rnaharaja, raja, and nawdb, are still in use, both for ruling chiefs and for others; and the whole subject since the transfer of the Government of India to the Crown has been treated with much more care and attention, and, I may add, liberality, than at any earlier period. To a very long list of Oriental titles we have added the English titles of ' his ' or ' her Highness ' and ' Sir.' The title of ' Highness ' is restricted to ruling chiefs, who are entitled to a salute of not less than ten guns, either permanently or as a personal concession. As a matter of courtesy the principal wives and widows of all who bear or have borne the title of ' Highness ' may also be addressed by that title. The prefix ' Sir ' goes with appointment to knighthood in the Orders of the Star of India and the Indian Empire. The Muhammadan rulers of India freely awarded personal distinctions both in the way of titles and in per- missions to use certain badges or emblems of rank, such as palankeens, cushions of state, canopies; standards and kettle- drums, elephants with gold trappings, and so forth. In one instance we ourselves formally allowed to an important chief the use of fans of peacocks' feathers ; and it was reported that this gave great pleasure to the chief himself, his family and people. But we never regularly adopted a practice of granting such permissions; and indeed under British rule there is no restriction on any individual using any of these emblems of rank at his own pleasure. The principle that the sovereign right of conferring titles and other marks of distinction on natives of India should properly be exercised by the British Government direct, instead of, as formerly, through the medium of the pageant court at Delhi, was first asserted and established by the Marquis of Hastings at an early period of his administration. A resolution reciting this fact and defining the grounds upon which titles would be awarded was issued by the Government of India in 1829; and in 1837 the Orders of 360 OUE INDIAN PROTECTORATE Merit and of British India were instituted for the reward of native soldiers of the Indian army. After the transfer of the administration of India from the East India Company to the Crown, the whole subject of the grant of titles and honours was very fully considered in communication with the Local Governments. The object was to make the principles of the subject as clear and as well-understood as they were under the Moghal Empire, and as they are in the United Kingdom. Practically, the result was the foundation in 1861 of the Order of the Star of India, and in 1878 of the Order of the Indian Empire, which in 1887 was enlarged by the addition of knights commanders and knights grand commanders. In matters of ceremony I do not know of any wiser step than the establishment of these orders. As Sir Charles Trevelyan said in the course of the discussions of 1859, the 'craving- after distinction is an element of great power.' The proper use of this desire enables us to reward merit, to stimulate endeavour, and to strengthen attachment to our cause. Most fortunately there is no doubt that Indians of rank and position wish to share our honours and think highly of them. Both of these orders are open to Europeans and natives alike. They would have entirely missed the mark had they been restricted on any principle of race. All should be united in the service of the empire ; and the constitution of these orders is a recognition of that truth. And it is fortunate, too, that the emblems and ceremonials of these orders, modelled on ideas handed down to us from mediasval Europe, are eminently suitable to a society which, as I have shown at length, was rapidly tending before our day to certain kinds of feudalism. A great many ruling chiefs are members of these orders ; and I rejoice to say that amongst the companions of both orders are to be found subjects and servants of native states. This is important, because it shows that good service in a native state is recognised as good service on behalf of the empire. It is stated on good authority that a long war between the Bombay states of KolhApur and Sdvantvddi was occa- sioned by the Emperor of Delhi granting to the S4vantv4di chief the use of fans of peafowls' feathers. If we are some- times tempted to regard unsympathetically the great anxiety felt by native chiefs, and still more, perhaps, by the high officials of native states, on the subject of ceremonial distinc- tions, we shall do well to remember that even in Europe breaches of etiquette have led to wars, and that salutes and SOME OBLIGATIONS OF NATIVE EULEES 36 i the complimentary interchange of oflGicial visits are still very ' elaborately regulated by the Iwws, treaties, or declarations of great powers. The procedure of officers of ships of war of different nationalities in exchanging visits in port is pre- scribed by the concurrence of the maritime powers ; and it is curious that a custom precisely resembling the Indian custom of mizdj pursi, has to be observed by naval com- manding officers. On the arrival of some important ruling chief, a couple of officers are at once deputed to inquire after the health of the visitor ; so, too, a naval commanding officer, on the arrival of a ship of war of another nationality, has to send one of his officers to the ship to offer the customary courtesies. The British and French naval regula- tions and the military regulations of the United States are very minute on matters of ceremony. The questions who is to salute first and what is to be the number of guns have formed up to recent times the subject of international stipulations. In the period from 1721 to 1829 there have been between European, countries many treaties dealing with salutes. No doubt maritime states are tending to adopt a uniform system, and salutes are now divested of all idea of domination or supremacy. But the importance which is stiU attached in Europe to the exchange of international courtesies should enable us to understand why it is that any omission, however inadvertent, of the honours due to a native state may be resented or deplored as a disgrace or a punishment.^ The very fact that these states are not on the equal footing of the independent powers of Europe necessarily makes them the more jealous of ceremonial privileges. In Europe, in the case of ceremonies in which ambassadors or other high officials or commanders take part, it is understood that if the salutes and other honours and the relative rank of the representatives of the different nations cannot be ad- justed by pre-arrangement, the dissenting party will with- draw from the ceremony. But this form of protest is not open to the rulers of native states. To attend a ceremonial assemblage at the behest of a superior is an acknowledgment of allegiance ; to be wilfully absent without excuse is a mark of disrespect amounting to contumacy. Every feudatory chief must accept the place and the degree of honour which ' The illustrations from international law in this paragraph are taken from HaUeck, pp. 107-123. 362 OUR INDIAN PROTECTORATE the Viceroy assigns to him. Eefusal to do so, evinced by absence from the durbdr, would be visited by censure and deprivation of honours. As the right of protest which equal powers possess is disallowed, it is all the more incumbent on those who advise on the conduct of our Oriental cere- monies to be careful to give every chief his due. Practically, most of the burning questions of precedence have been settled, or, if unsettled, can be avoided by fore- sight and considerate plans. Salutes have been regulated by a series of orders in council ; and records of precedents entering into minute details for the regulation of ceremonies are maintained both in our offices and in those of the native states. There is a distinction worth mentioning between personal and dynastic salutes. A dynastic salute is attached to a chiefship ; but a chief may be allowed, as a personal distinction for his own lifetime, an extra number of guns. Such a concession is much valued ; it is a mark of favour due probably to distinguished loyalty or services, high per- sonal attainments or able and efficient administration. It is satisfactory to note that at least fourteen feudatory chiefs now enjoy personal salutes. The only return I have been able to obtain of the coinage in native states was compiled so long ago as 1877. I have, however, ascertained that in 1885 the Government of India had no later information. According to these old returns, there were, about the year 1875, twenty-six states which coined silver and three which coined copper only. Of the states coining silver, two or three also coined gold. The question of coinage in native states is obviously a delicate one, and will not bear frequent handling. It must be left largely to the commercial interests, the good taste, and the loyal spirit of the DurbArs concerned. In the early years of this century a great many mints in the smaller native states in Malwa and Bundelkhand were authoritatively sup- pressed ; but it is highly improbable that such action would be taken now. In 1870 it was held that there were great political and general objections to directing the closure of mints in native states, and that nothing should be done be- yond pointing out to native chiefs at suitable opportunities that it would be for the advantage of their states if they would co-operate in making the Indian coinage uniform, and would assimilate their own coinage to that of the British Government. But the reopening of disused mints would not be allowed, nor the establishment of new mints by states SOME OBLIGATIONS OF NATIVE RULERS 363 that have not hitherto exercised the privilege without ques- tion. Mints are permitted, wken they are permissible at all, only at the capitals of states, and not in the territories of petty chieftains and nobles subordinate to a feudatory of the empire. Objection would be raised if a state were to issue debased coinage, or the coin of any extinct dynasty, or of any other state. It may be mentioned that the Eao of Kutch and the Maharaja of Jaipur have set an excellent example in this matter. The Eao of Kutch, in 1846, proposed to Sir Charles Napier that the British Government, as the paramount power, should have its name superscribed on native coins ; and the Eao, after the mutiny, resolved to strike his coin in the name of her Majesty. The Maharaja of Jaipur about the same time expressed a desire to call in his current coin which bore the name of the King of Delhi, and to issue a new currency bearing some reference to her Majesty the Queen. This becoming and graceful offer was accepted with appreciation ; but if similar offers are made elsewhere they must be spontaneous. On such a point no one would press a native government. Next after certain questions of prerogative we may con- sider certain means for facilitating the administration of civil justice. Some of the provisions of the Code of Civil Procedure under this head operate of their own force without further action on the part of the executive Government ; other provisions require a specific order or notification, pro- mulgated by an executive authority, to bring them into play. The provisions of the first of these classes relate generally to the service of the suinmonses of British courts and the issue of commissions to examine witnesses. The provisions of the second class have reference to the peculiar position of ruling chiefs who trade or own immovable property in British territory, or, when the courts of native states have risen to a proper level of efficiency, admit of the execution of their decrees and the service of their summonses in British territory, just as if the state courts were British courts. The provisions are thus either a part of the ordinary judicial routine, or pay special regard to the measure of sovereignty enjoyed by native rulers, or recognise by appropriate con- cessions the improvements which may be effected in the ad- ministration of civil justice in native states. The summonses of British courts may be sent by post to defendants or witnesses residing out of British India, or may be served through the British resident or agent, or a super- 364 OUR INDIAX PROTECTORATE intendent appointed by the British Government, or by a court established or continued in foreign territory by the authority of the Governor-General in Council. British courts may issue commissions for the examination of persons residing at any place not within British India; and the general provisions of the code as to the execution and return of commissions apply to commissions issued by courts situate beyond the limits of British India and established by the authority of her Majesty or of the Governor-General in Council, courts situate in any part of the British Empire other than British India, and courts of any foreign country for the time being in alliance with her Majesty. It is considered generally undesirable that the rulers of native states should acquire immovable property in British territory ; but if they do so, the acquisition has no effect upon sovereignty or jurisdiction, and, as proprietors, they have merely the same rights as British subjects. As a fact, many ruling chiefs own house property, and some have large landed estates in British territory. A recognised foreign state may sue in the courts of British India to enforce the private rights of the head of the state or of its subjects. Persons may be specially appointed by Government to prosecute or defend any suit on behalf of a ruling chief; and any such chief may be sued in a competent British court with the consent of the Government. The consent may not be given unless the chief has instituted a suit in the court against the person desiring to sue him, or trades within the local limits of the court, or is in possession of immovable property situated within those limits, and the suit is brought with reference to such possession or for money charged on that property ; but no consent is necessary if the plaintiff sues as a tenant of immovable property held or claimed to be held from the ruling chief. In petty or other litigation the dignity of a chief may be saved by a direction that he is to be sued in the name of an agent or in any other name. The principles seem to be that if the chief chooses to submit to the jurisdiction by bringing a suit, the courts are open to him and the law takes its course ; but he cannot ordinarily be subjected to the jurisdiction without a special order, which will not be made unless by his own act, or as a consequence of his double position as a proprietor in British territory and a ruling chief in his own territory, he steps or is obliged to step outside his state, and thus to descend from his place of sovereignty and to put SOME OBLIGATIONS OF NATIVE EULERS 365 himself on a level with the mass of her Majesty's subjects under the law. • By notification in the ' Gazette of India ' it may be pro- vided that the decrees or summonses of the ordinary courts of native states may be executed or served by British courts, the procedure of the courts of the states selected for this privilege being thus recognised as substantially as good as our own. This is a useful and satisfactory way of en- couraging and rewarding progress. In respect of decrees and summonses, courts in native states established or con- tinued by the authority of the Governor-General in Council — as, for instance, courts so established within residency or cantonment limits — are on very nearly the same footing as British courts ; but I need not here enter into any further detail. In connection with the administration of criminal justice I propose to notice certain provisions relating to the trial of European British subjects and the difficult and intricate question of extradition. As a general rule, the ordinary courts of native states do not try European British subjects. It is not necessary that they should do so ; for when a European British subject commits an offence in a native state he may be dealt with in respect of such offence as if it had been committed at any place within British India at which he may be found. Under a statute of 1865 (28 & 29 Vict. chap. xv. sec. 3), and under the Foreign Jurisdiction and Extradition Act of 1879, British officers are appointed justices of the peace in foreign territory for the purpose of taking up cases in which European British subjects are concerned; and the most conveniently situated high courts are invested, for the several territories, with original and appellate criminal jurisdiction over European British subjects of. her Majesty, being Chris- tians, who are resident in native states. There is nothing novel or exceptional in the enjoyment by Europeans of a right of ex-territoriality of this description. Mr. Tarring remarks ('British Consular Jurisdiction in the East,' p. 3) that when Eichard III. in 1485 appointed Lorenzo Strozzi, a merchant of Florence, to be the consul of the Enghsh merchants at Pisa and in the adjacent countries, the office of a judge formed part of the duty of the consul. As the idea of state sovereignty made progress, consular jurisdiction over British subjects in respect of offences committed hy them in foreign lands was surrendered throughout Christian 366 OUE INDIAN PROTECTOHATE Europe to tlie territorial authorities ; but it lived on in Muhammadan countries, and, as British commerce and enter- prise spread over the world, was extended, with enlarge- ments, to other countries of the far East and the far South. Under the Foreign Jurisdiction Acts, Orders in Council have been issued regulating the exercise of her Majesty's juris- diction in Morocco, the Ottoman dominions, including Tripoli and Egypt, Muscat, Zanzibar, Madagascar, Siam, China, Japan and Corea, the Western Pacific, West Africa, and South Africa [ihid. pp. 5, 36, 37). A personal law for European British subjects in countries which are not Christian countries is thus the general rule. Indeed, even in British India itself, not so very long ago, a European British subject could not be brought to trial in any but ' the presidency courts ; and, under the law as it stands at present, the powers of British Indian magistrates and courts of session to try such subjects are much restricted. Trial by a mixed jury may be claimed practically in all serious cases, and no court but a high court can try the case if the ofience which appears to have been committed is punishable with death or with transportation for life. Twenty years ago it was expressly declared that no native state could be allowed to try a European British subject according to its own forms of procedure and punish him ac- cording to its own laws. Personally, I see very little objec- tion to such a rule ; not only because it harmonises with practice in many countries outside India, but because in India itself the idea of a personal law attaching to people of a particular caste or creed is a fundamental part of the whole theory of society. If we administer Muhammadan civil law where Muhammadans are concerned, and Hindu civil law where Hindus are concerned, I perceive no breach of impartiality in causing certain highly valued rules of British criminal law to be administered in the case of European British subjects. In all these cases we simply recognise what each class looks upon as its birthright. As a fact, the rule promulgated twenty years ago has been modified by later orders. It is obviously inconvenient that the moment a case passes the narrow boundary which sepa- rates civil from criminal questions the stat^ courts should be paralysed because one of the parties is a European British subject. When the alleged ofience is trivial or merely tech- nical, as in some cases of criminal trespass or obstruction of a right of way, a trial might be left in the hands of the state SOME OBLIGATIONS OF NATIVE RULEBS 367 courts. The same might be done if the offence were one against the law of the state, ^, for instance, a fiscal law, and not against British law ; and, lastly, if the laws and courts of a native state are on a satisfactory footing, a European British subject who has taken service in the state may usually be left to the jurisdiction of the native courts, sub- ject only to the ];-ight of the political ofiicer to interfere on sufficient grounds. In the states of Cochin and Travancore, in consideration of some special circumstances, and more particularly of the efforts made by these states to conduct their judicial administration on enhghtened principles, certain magistrates of the state courts who are themselves European British subjects and Christians have been allowed to exercise the same powers in regard to European British subjects as are exercised in British territory by European British sub- jects who are magistrates of the first class and justices of the peace. These various exceptions, grafted on the present general rule that the courts of native states do not try European British subjects, can be admitted, because before our courts can try a European British subject for an offence which he is supposed to have committed in a native state, the political agent, if there be one, for the territory in which the offence is alleged to have been committed, must certify that, in his opinion, the charge ought to be inquired into in British India. If the case is one in which the state court ought to be allowed to try the European, this certificate should be refused. We need not consider the possible diffi- culty that there might be no political agent. For reasons upon which it would waste time to enter, it is not hkely to arise. It will readily be seen that under a practice such as I have just described there is no substantial question of extradition within the limits of India so far as European British subjects are concerned. The general rule is that they are tried by British courts, whatever the place of the supposed offence. The immense mass of official correspondence and of legal and political dissertation which has accumulated in India on the question of extradition has reference in the main to the extradition of subjects of native states and of native Indian subjects of her Majesty. Usage on matters of extradition so limited is still in rapid growth ; I am tempted by the extra- ordinarily voluminous character of the official discussions to say even in redundant growth. A glance, however, at the map of India suffices to show that an immense quantity of busi- 368 OUR INDIAN PEOTECTOEATE ness must necessarily arise under this head. The boundaries of British and native state territory coincide for enormous distances, and the jurisdictions are often intimately inter- laced. I am unable altogether to pass by a subject which fills so large a space in Indian political law ; but I shall touch upon it very slightly for the reasons, amongst others, that I am confident that its present stage is not its last, and that if its present stage were likely to be its last I should much regret the circumstance. In the case of states over which the British Government claims no supremacy, such as the frontier state of Nepal, extradition is an affair of international law, and is regulated by treaties on the principle of reciprocity. Within the limits of India there are some native states with which the Government of India has in former times concluded treaties of extradition ; and there are many states which have in various agreements engaged to surrender criminals. But though some existing treaties may stand in need of modifica- tion, new extradition treaties or agreements with the internal states of India are not now required. The paramount power can, if it is considered necessary to make the demand, demand the extradition of any person as an act of state ; and extra- dition to native states can be granted under an Act of the Indian legislature, independently of any treaty. Indeed, most of the Indian native states have no extra- dition treaties, and extradition to them is regulated by the enactment in question^ — the Foreign Jurisdiction and Extra- dition Act of 1879. This Act is a new edition of one that was passed in 1872, and, in at least one very important particular, is much more liberal to native states than the old ' rules which were in force in former days. There is a despatch of the Court of Directors of 1836 which laid down that British subjects apprehended in British territory for ofiences committed in native states should be amenable only to British tribunals, but that the subjects of native states, wherever apprehended, should always be amenable to British courts for oiFences committed in British territory. This want of reciprocity — in so far as it was operative, it amounted to a refusal to surrender British subjects in any case — was justified at the time as a prerogative of the paramount power, and ' on the ground of the inequality in the state of civilisation and of jurisprudence under the British Government and that of native states.' But under the law as it now stands, no dis- tinction is made for purposes of extradition between the SOME OBLIGATIONS OF NATIVE EULBKS 369 subjects of native states and the native Indian subjects of her Majesty. The surrender*of both classes is lawful ; the .surrender of a British subject — that is, of a native Indian subject of her Majesty — may be granted in certain carefully defined cases, the discretionary power of the political agent to refuse extradition and to dispose of the case himself being regulated by rules framed under the Act by the Government of India. In the absence of treaty provision to the contrary, the general custom has been for pohtical agents to retain jurisdiction if the accused person is a servant of the British Government or an officer of the British Government em- ployed in connection with the state. In other cases the pohtical agents would grant extradition if the courts of the state, either by custom or by express recognition of the Governor-General in Council, were in the habit of trying native British subjects so surrendered. It is important to notice that the Act supplies alternative methods of procedure. The native state, relying solely on the Act, may apply to a pohtical agent for a warrant against a fugitive offender ; and district magistrates in British terri- tory will comply with the warrant if granted. In this case the pohtical agent has the discretion just described. Or the native state, relying on a treaty or on usage, may address a requisition to the Governor-General in Council or to any local government, and the Government applied to wiU order a magistrate to investigate the matter, and on the receipt of his report will decide whether the accused person is to be surrendered or not. The existence of these alternative courses of procedure side by side illustrates the transitional condition of the whole question. When native states demand the surrender of their own subjects who have escaped beyond their jurisdiction, the practice is to grant extradition either in accordance with the terms of the treaty, if any, or in accordance with the law. The rules under the Act of 1879 take proper securities that an ofiender shaU not be given up for a merely pohtical offence, that the offence is grave enough to warrant extradition, and that a primd facie case of the guilt of the supposed offender is estabhshed. The Act expressly declares that nothing contained in it shall affect the provisions of any treaty for the time being in force as to the extradition of offenders ; and that the pro- cedure provided by any such treaty shall be followed in every case to which it apphes. It has usually been held BE 370 OUR INDIAN PROTECTOEATE that this declaration does not prevent a native state possessing an extradition treaty from taking advantage of the speedy procedure of the Act and applying to a political agent for his warrant. A state, however, must not vacillate between the Act and its treaty, choosing in particular cases the method which would best serve its own turn. It must either consistently abide by the treaty or consistently adopt the procedure of the Act. In practice it is found that the Act is superseding the treaties. If in any case the procedure under the Act directly conflicts with the procedure contem- plated by a treaty, and if, notwithstanding the readiness of both the contracting parties to have recourse to the Act, legal difiiculties might arise in consequence of such a con- flict, there would obviously be no difficulty in negotiating the necessary additions to treaties in force. So far we have been considering extradition from British territory on the demand of native states, or from state territory on the demand of the British authorities. Offenders in one native state may, however, take refuge in another state ; and the means adopted for the disposal of cases of this nature are necessarily affected by the general principle which prohibits diplomatic intercourse and diplomatic rela- tions between the different states. If it is desirable that two or more states should come to an understanding as to their mutual responsibilities, the object can be attained by rules framed in the name of the British Government, to which the states may be invited to assent, or by separate engagements between each state and the British Govern- ment. There are local varieties of practice in the matter of what we may caU interstatal extradition ; and sometimes the simple and patriarchal rule has been maintained which reserves all interjurisdictional cases, as they are termed — that is, all cases where the parties belong to different states — for determination by the political officers of the British Government. It will suffice to take two illustrations — one from E4jput4na, where the protectorate was a frontier pro- tectorate tin the Punjab was annexed, and where primitive institutions are stiU in their vigour ; the other from Central India, where our predominance followed that of theMarhattas, and where, for that and other reasons, the measure of sovereignty left to smaller chiefs was less than in many other parts of native state territory. In neither of these cases is extradition an immediate object of the system ; and it is only incidentally that under both systems the arm of SOME OBLIGATIONS OP NATIVE EULEES 371 justice may reach out to capture fugitive offenders. But both illustrations have a ceitain value and interest of their own. The Central India illustration will show the willing- ness of the Supreme Government to grant greater authority to ruling chiefs when their methods of administration have been improved ; and the Edjpiitdna illustration wiU suggest that it is not after aU very difficult, when the preliminary local knowledge has been obtained, to make our regulations harmonise with the actual facts of early societies. The Edjputdna rules are, I think, admirable ; they are the direct result of local experience, and they maintain such primitive expedients for the repression of crime as blood money, the hue and cry, and the track law. In a land where forays were the favourite mode of excite- ment, and where a bold, restless, partly feudalised baronage was always ready to contest at the sword's point any supposed encroachment on its privileges, it was specially necessary to deal with two things : with the plunder of merchants and travellers, and with the practice of sheltering outlaws who, when they had become disaffected towards their own chief, or he had in any way incurred their ven- geance, would use the asylum of a neighbouring state as their starting-place for raids on his territory. Vakils, or repre- sentatives of the several Edjpiitdna states, have long been accredited to the Agent of the Governor-General at Ajmere ; and some fifty years ago Colonel Sutherland, the then Agent, finding that little justice was done by referring a case to the vakil of the state against whose subjects a complaint was made, adopted the plan of assembling a panchdyat or com- mittee of the vakils of the principal states at Ajmere to deal with cases of mixed jurisdiction. From the action of this court, robbery soon received a check, and most of the old plunder claims were quickly disposed of. Such was the origin of the existing rules for the courts of vakils in Edjputdna. The courts — the principal one is at Mount Abu, and there are others at Udaipur, Jaipur, Jodhpur, and Deoli investigate criminal cases which cannot be decided by any one state. In entire accordance with the spirit of primitive law, and, I may add, of international law, the rules under which these courts act look to groups— to states and villages— for reparation. The courts may apportion the responsibility as they think fit between the states concerned. Ordinarily, the primary habihty falls on the state within whose territories the offence has been committed. Next B B 2 372 OUE INDIAN PEOTECTORATE after this in liability is the state in which the offender is followed in hot pursuit, or in which he is proved to reside, and which has not surrendered him. Last comes the state in which the stolen property is discovered, when the inhabi- tants cannot account for its possession, and have taken no measures to restore it. The state into which the track of offenders is carried must take it up and carry it on. In cases of cattle theft or of the pursuit of mounted robbers, a refusal on the part of the village where the tracks are lost to permit search for the animals renders the village liable for the whole value of the stolen property. The British districts of Ajmere and Mhairwarra are accounted a EAjput state for the purposes of the rules. Five vakils, inclusive of those belonging to the states interested, make a quorum ; but when British interests are involved, or at the request of the members, or in cases of importance, the Agent to the Governor-General or his assistant in the upper court at Mount Abu, or the local political agent in the lower courts elsewhere, sits as president with four or more members and has a casting vote. Subject to this rule, political officers superintend the courts and confirm or cancel their deci- sions, but do not, as a rule, interfere with or control their deliberations unless the members cannot agree. The upper court at Mount Abu, however, is under the superintendence of an assistant who usually conducts the proceedings in per- son. The courts can award compensation and blood-money and can punish with fine and imprisonment. Death sentences and sentences ot imprisonment passed by a lower court for a term exceeding seven years require confirmation by the Agent to the Governor-General. When the perpetrators of some violent crime cannot be caught, blood-money may be awarded according to the loss sustained ; but the life even of a man of the lowest rank may not be valued at less than one hundred and fifty rupees, and the award is forbidden if the blood be shed by men defending their own lives or property. AH sums awarded, whether as fine, blood-money, or compen- sation, are recovered from the states held to be responsible, not from individuals. We thus have here an excellent specimen of primitive usage, recognised, tamed, trained, and made to work for the pacification of a wild country. If similar specimens were less rare, it would be much less difficult to govern India. In Western M41wa it appears to have been the practice tiU quite lately for the political agent or resident, as represent- SOME OBLIGATIONS OF NATIVE EITLEES 373 ing the paramount power, to adjudicate in all cases, both civil and criminal, in which the ptrties concerned were subjects of different states. In 1887 it was represented that circum- stances had changed ; that the great states of Indore and GwdUor had now more or less completely organised systems for the administration of justice ; and that it was a slight upon their courts that they should be deprived of jurisdic- tion merely because one of the parties was the subject of some other state. It was thereupon arranged to deal in Western Mdlwa with these interjurisdictional cases in the same way as they are dealt with in other parts of Central India. Civil cases are to be left alone, except when there is some palpable miscarriage of justice. In criminal cases the pohtical agents will not interfere when any of the larger states are concerned ; and an offender, to whatever state he may belong, wiU ordinarily be tried in the state where the offence was committed. But political agents may demand justice for an inhabitant of a foreign state in the event of his clearly having been deprived of it. I may add that in 1889 half a dozen states in Central India accepted some very simple extradition rules prepared by the political agent in Bhopdl, and these rules may have since been extended to other states. Leaving now the subject of extradition and interjurisdic- tional cases, the next obligation of ruling chiefs that I will notice is their responsibility for the secure passage through their territories of the imperial mail and parcel post. Every ■native state in the territory of which the imperial mail or parcel post is robbed is primd facie liable to pay to the British Government the full value of whatever is taken or destroyed by the robbers ; and to pay such compensation as the British Government requires to carriers of the mail or other persons, or to their families, in the event of the carriers or other persons being injured or killed in connection with the robbery. The track law is applied to a certain extent ; for if a mail robbery is committed in the territory of one state, and the tracks of the robbers are carried into the territory of another state, and there lost, the primd facie liability for the robbery would usually be shared in equal proportions by the state in which the robbery occurred and the state into which the robbers were finally tracked. But a native state to which any such primd facie liabihty attaches may plead in extenuation that its pohce arrangements are efficient ; that it has displayed zeal and energy in bringing, 374 OUK INDIAN PEOTECTOEATE or attempting to bring, the robbers to justice ; or that the robbery was committed, without complicity or contributory neghgence on the part of its servants or subjects, by a servant of the British Post Office. There are many other matters, some of local, some of imperial concern, in which the zealous co-operation of native states is expected and has often been afforded. Obligations relating to mihtary affairs are in some cases imperative, and, when this is the case, are directly deducible from the responsibility of the British Government for the external de- fence of all native states. The paramount power must ne- cessarily determine the geographical distribution and the movements of its own forces. Hence it follows that native states must permit the establishment of British cantonments or the occupation of forts within their limits when, in the opinion of the British Government, this is required in the general interests of imperial defence ; and all native states must at all times allow the passage of British troops through their territories. On the other hand, native states act in regard to external defence only in subordination to the supreme power ; they may not, therefore, move their troops beyond their own territories without permission. The right of the British Government to regulate the fortifications and, armies of native states and their supplies of munitions of war also follows from its supremacy. In former times the right to regulate armaments often formed the subject of treaty stipulations. But it exists independently of treaties. I may here once again borrow the language of Sir Charles Aitchison : ' Independently of treaties,' he says, ' the British Government could not, either in justice to itself or with due regard to its duty towards native governments, permit native states at their pleasure to erect first-class fortresses, or manufacture unlimited stores of arms ' of preci- sion, or maintain excessive armies. Formidable fortifica- tions in false positions would be of the utmost danger to the empire in the event of an invasion or insurrection. Large armies may be a source of danger not only to the empire but to the state which entertains them. It was the inability of the Gwdlior durbdr to control its army that brought on the war of 1843. The Sutlej war was due to a similar cause. Extensive armaments are not required by native states for purposes of self-defence. They are either wasteful or hostile, requiring in either case unnecessary additions to the forces which the paramount power maintains. Warlike SOME OBLIGATIONS OF NATIVE RULERS 375 preparations of a subordinate state, especially if carried on secretly, indicate distrust of«,tlie British Government or an intention, if opportunity be afforded, of isolating itself from imperial interests. In either case the British Government not only has the right to interfere and remove the cause of danger, but it would neglect its duty as the supreme power in India if it failed to do so.' But some obligations relating to military affairs may be undertaken voluntarily, and may become a conspicuous sign of the loyal co-operation of ruling chiefs. In this connection I shall describe in the next chapter the arrangements lately made for the organisation of corps of imperial service troops in native states. Obligations relating to fiscal affairs and to imperial communications are usually derived from agreement. I am not aware of any general ruling on the point, but I offer the opinion that it would be a breach of comity on the part of any native state so to order its fiscal arrangements as to damage the finances of the paramount power. Many states have agreed to prevent the smuggling of opium. It is often necessary to invite native states to look into the working of their excise administration, so that our taxation of spirituous liquors may not be nullified by the easy transit across an unguarded border of liquor that is untaxed or very Hghtly taxed. The salt administration of Upper India has been immensely facihtated by the lease of the Sambhur Lake salt source from the Jaipur and Jodhpur Durbdrs. At least thirty-five states, including several of the most important states of India, have either ceded or agreed to cede lands for railway purposes. In some old cases fuU sovereignty was also ceded with the railway lands. But in practice this kind of cession has been found inconvenient. It is better to obtain the cession of jurisdiction only ; and the exercise of the jurisdiction can then be very easily regulated by an order of the Governor-General in Council notified under the Foreign Jurisdiction and Extradition Act. In these cases no treaties are required, nor has any particular form of agreement been prescribed by Government. It will suffice if it. be clearly specified that the state cedes full jurisdiction and administrative control short of sovereign rights over all lands and premises occupied or required for railway pur- poses. Having regard to these precedents, and to the great benefits which states derive from the construction of railways within their limits at no cost to their revenues, I think it 376 OUE INDIAN PROTECTORATE may be taken as a rule that, when a railway is constructed in state territory at the expense of the British Government, no state will refuse (1) the land free of cost, (2) the cession of the necessary jurisdiction, and (3) the abolition of transit duties, if any exist, so far as regards the railway traffic. Native states intending to construct a line of rail or telegraph or telephone lines are expected to report the fact. In respect to railways, this requirement was justified about ten years ago on the ground that the Government of India is charged by its position with the defence of the continent, the maintenance of a general postal system, and the direction of through traffic, and is therefore bound, without undue interference in detail, to obtain information regarding the construction of lines which may enter into the general system, and to claim such a voice in their regulation as may be sufficient for the discharge of its duties. Looking back on the usages discussed in this chapter, we can readily see that many of them, particularly those connected with the administration of justice, are in a condi- tion of rapid and often complex growth. The responsibility of the paramount power for the general defence of the country, its prerogatives in regard to titles, salutes, and precedence, and its right to regulate jurisdiction in the case of European British subjects, are matters admitting of no doubt and apparently standing in need of little, if any, further definition. Even here, however, it is obvious that as new circumstances arise fresh consequences may be seen to follow from accepted principles. In the administration of civil and criminal justice, in fiscal policy, in the extension of railways and other means of communication, in all the . public functions and undertakings which come into existence or gather importance and complexity with the advance of civilisation and the greater frequency and intimacy of inter- course between the subjects of neighbouring states, there is great scope for future development both in British and in, native territory ; and therefore the customary rules of political law which at present touch these matters settle some points only in a provisional fashion and necessarily leave many others undefined. M I CHAPTEE XX INDIA AND IMPERIAL FEDERATION In this treatise, dealing with, certain portions of Indian history and the development of certain political and legal ideas, very little has been said on material progress in India. I have, indeed, briefly noted the enormous addition made to our political Strength in the country by the telegraphs and railways ; and if it were not for them the political system, which I have tried to describe, could not be worked. This is a text requiring no comment ; but I may be allowed to add here that perhaps no engineering achievements in India are more remarkable than those which have at length, after great and costly efforts, culminated in the successful bridging of the great Punjab rivers. Looking from the south side of the Sutlej opposite PhiUor, a soldier or civilian on the march in the Punjab may see before him a railway bridge more than a mile long spanning one of these vast rivers, which are so erratic in their course that, when a bridge is built, extensive works are also needed to keep their waters in the original channel. Amid the mists of a chiUy Punjab morning in the cold weather the further end of the bridge will be lost to view in the dim distance. To some, perhaps to most, there would be nothing in the sight of such a railway bridge that could appeal to the heart or touch the imagination. But then so much depends on our associations. To anyone serving in the Punjab, or indeed in India, the Sutlej is an historic river. For years it was practically our frontier, the hne demarcating the respective spheres of influence of Maharaja Eanjit Singh and the British Government. It was on this river that the battle of Sobraon was fought with the Sikhs— our most formidable foes when their army was against us, our best and staunchest friends amongst the native population when the Punjab had frankly accepted the result of two wars, but the army of 378 OUE INDIAN PROTECTORATE Hindustan rebelled. The bridge crosses the old frontier ; and is thus a symbol of the change that has transformed the dominions of Eanjit Singh into a British province. It is a symbol also of other changes, not indeed as yet actually transforming India, but leavening many archaic societies in all parts of India with new capacities and new ideas. It reminds us of the courage, the energy, the willingness to learn, the patience that, in spite of many failures, many bad mistakes, have in the end triumphed over great physical and moral difficulties, and have united together in one coherent and rational system a vast and complicated empire of most diverse territories and states. As we gaze on that bridge stretching away to a vanishing point on the other side of the river, as we gaze on that river itself, unceasingly carrying its vast weight of water from the far-off Himalaya to the distant sea, we may well ask what is to be the goal of our swift progress in India? what the destiny of those great ever- moving forces which our civilisation has crossed, and which it taxes our best strength and wisdom rightly to guide and control ? Am I to attempt any answer to these questions ? That is a problem that faces me as I draw to the end of this book. Obviously, no complete or confident answer is possible. But surely it is desirable that some of us, and particularly those whose profession and duty it is to undertake administrative work in India, should try to form some idea, however im- perfect, of the ultimate aims of Indian government, and of the true direction of those social and political tendencies in India which, owing to the events of the last hundred and fifty years, have now set in new courses. Many of those men who are best able to help others in so difficult a task are, by their official positions, compelled to keep silence. A civil officer on furlough is temporarily out of office ; and, subject to what I have said in my preface, I am free to speak if I have anything to say. Assuredly I do not suppose that I am capable of doing more than offering a few suggestions to those who, like myself, think it is worth while, or even a clear mattei: of duty, to devote some labour and thought to these questions ; which, though necessarily incapable of full solution except by time, are fascinating by reason of their magnitude, their difficulty, and their con- nection with the future of the British Empire. In the course of my service, in the course of the studies undertaken for the purpose of writing this book, some suggestions have INDIA AND IMPEEIAL FEDERATION 379 occurred to me ; and on the whole I think it will be right and proper to mention them feere. I have spoken of the Indian Empire as possessing a coherent system ; but on a closer view we shall recognise that it possesses two systems — the political and the ad- ministrative systems — each exhibiting certain likenesses to the other in official disciphne and service organisation, and both united by the common control of the supreme Govern- ment. Neither of these systems is hke any form of govern^ ment or other political arrangement in Western Europe; both of them are intimately connected with the past of India ; but both differ widely from anything that ever was produced, or could be produced, by purely indigenous means. In both the impact of unwonted forces has welded old materials into a new shape ; in both the products of Oriental semi-civilisation, molten in a furnace of anarchy which was lit up before our day, have been poured into moulds of Western manufacture. But in the system for the administration of British territory the Western pressure and influence have been far more powerful than in the political "system. At some points on the surface of the adminis- trative system there are patterns and a polish which recall, if they do not reflect, the West. Out of eight governments which may in time have separate legislation, only four have them as yet. But when we consider the relations of these governments to the Central Government, absolute as their subordination is, we see that the type, ' so far as it may be derived from Western institutions, though imperial and not federal, has certain peculiarities which are common in federations. On the other hand, the political system is of a feudal type. The inchoate feudalism of India, in the abnormal conditions of pacification and legality, has resulted in a strong and flexible growth unlike anything that is now elsewhere in the world, and, with qualifications, capable of being described as a new variety of feudalism. The whole product is not really in character so new as it seems ; for the rulers of Indian feudatory states in many ways resemble the client-princes of Eome, and the present Indian feudalism and the old European feudahsm were ahke formed by the fusion of ideas of civilised law and government with the warlike customs of primitive races and tribes. I have remarked on the progress in Europe from feudalism to federalism. Here, as often happens in India, the beginning and end of history seem to meet. 380 OUE INDIAN PROTECTORATE There is a sort of feudalism in the political system ; there are traces of the ideas of federalism in the administrative system. And both are in active operation side "by side in an empire which is comparable with that of Eome. It has been well said that the problem of Imperial federation is the problem of the whole future of the British Empire. The word Imperial is sometimes used to describe despotic authority supported by military power ; and it is objected that imperialism and federalism, considered as the voluntary union of States on representative principles, are directly opposed, and that it is a solecism to speak of any one system as simultaneously both Imperial and federal. This objection does not seem to be important. If Imperial federation is a convenient phrase, with a sufficiently well- known meaning in common acceptation, we need not hesitate to use it because the two words taken by themselves may have meanings which are altered when they are brought into juxtaposition. At any rate the phrase has, so far, more general currency than the alternative expressions, Britannic or national federation. By such words as empire and Imperial throughout this book, except where the contrary appears from the context, as in allusion to the Eoman Empire under the emperors, I have intended to refer to groups of States united in federations, or to groups of states and provinces under the supremacy of one state or paramount power. And I have pointed out that the division of sovereignty in the British Empire generally, in- cluding the British Indian protectorate, has points of resem- blance to the division of sovereignty effected in federations.* The Committee of the Imperial Federation League has sanctioned and circulated an answer to the question, What is Imperial federation? The sanctioned answer says that ' Imperial federation is a means of securing the continued union of our nation throughout the world by removing the danger to union caused by two great anomalies in the present Imperial system. These are that: (1) At present no one of our great self-governing colonies — not even the Dominion of Canada — has any recognised voice in Imperial affairs. They are liable, therefore, to be involved in all the consequences of war, without having had any share in controlling the pohcy that had led to it. (2) On the other hand, the people of the United Kingdom not only bear the entire cost of the naval, military, diplomatic and consular services all over the world, the protection and advantages INDIA AND IMPERIAL FEDERATION 381 of wMcli in war and peaTdhsils, sub-collectorates, 188 Takaza, literally durming, private duress to induce a defendant to sub- mit to the jurisdiction of a Pancha- yat, 250 Tali in Marhatta times, robbery or other violent crime committed to put pressure on a Government officer, 251 Taluk or Taluka of Oudh explained, 233, 234 Taluhda/r of Oudh defined, 233, 234 ; of Bengal, 234 Tanjore, the raja of, and the Dutch, 201 Tarafdars or Tahikddrs, civil officers under Sivaji, 177 ; governors under the Bahmani kings of the Deccan, 157 ; under the Marhattas, 245 Taxation, a sign of a settled govern- ment, 136 Tehri, a protected state, see ' Oorcha ' Telegraphs, their effect on conditions of native states, 98 ; in native states, 327, 376 Telephones in native states, 376 Telingana, its locaUty, rajas of, 154 Tenures, see ' Land ' TepuTcchi, revenue assistant under the Moghals, 189 Territorial sovereignty, see ' Sove- reignty ' Thagi, professional murder by strangu- lation or poison for purposes of plunder, 53 Thdkwrdin, period of government by Thdkwrs, who, in Kulu, were petty chiefs of a few villages, 142 Thdkurs, the great barons or chiefs subordinate to the rajas in Baj- piitana, 140, 206 Thdnadwrs, officers in charge of small police divisions, 230 Theories, their value in governing India, 312 Tipperah, the zaminddri of, 229 Tippoo Sultan, how his destruction affected the balance of power in India, 34 ; some of his cruelties, 285 Titles conferred on Marhatta chiefs by Deccani kings, 158 ; recognition of, rests with British Government, 358; political and official value of, 401 Tod, Colonel, on feudalism in Eajpii- t4na, 201 ; on rehwali in Eajpiitana, 223 Tondeltmandalam, land tenure in, 167 426 OUR INDIAlf PKOTECTOBATE TORAGKAS Tordgrds, blackmail levied by Eijpiit chiefs in Guzerat, 253 Trade, extent and value of Indian, 389 Travanoore, in subsidiary alUance in 1813,50; jurisdiction over European British subjects in, 367 Treason, instances of, among native chiefs, 6 Treaties with native states must be ratified by Governor-General in GouncU, 344 ; regarding extradition with native states, 368 Trial, procedure regarding native chiefs, 118 Tribal organisation amongst the Baluchis, 132 ; amongst the Pathans, 133 Tribe, distinction between caste and, 395 Tumanddrs, chiefs of Baluch tribes, 132-4 Twiss, Dr. Travers, on the position of native states, 4 VAKIL, an agent of a native state, 371 ; Bajpiitana Court of Vakils, 371 Vakil-ul-mutlak, the office of executive Prime Minister of the Moghal Empire conferred on the Peshwa by the King of Delhi, 38, 183 Vand, tenure of, in Kangra, aee ' Jeola' VeUalers, tradition of their settlement in Tondeimandalam, 167 Viceroy, legislative powers of the, 343 Vijayanagar, traces of suzerainty in empire of, 153 ; empire founded, 154; its extent and collapse, 154, 155 Villanus, his normal holding, 209 Virgate, meaning of, 209 WADEYAES, Governors under the Vijayanagar Empire, 155 Wajid Ali Shah, the last King of Oudh, 72 ZAMIND^RIS Warangal, capture of, by the Delhi Path4ns, 154 Wdrisi, inheritance, a heritable right of occupancy or peasant proprietary right in Kulu and Kangra, 210 Warren Hastings, the charges against him viewed in the light of Indian public morality, 27 ; acquired Ben- ares, 44 Waste land, see ' Land ' and ' RaJih ' Watan, means hereditary property, 181 Wellesley, Lord, condition of India when, assumed the Governor-Gene- ralship, 30; as the founder of the Indian political system, 41 ; and the pohcy of subsidiary alHances, 39 ; his conquests, 44 Wellington, Duke of, on oriental policy, 36 WHkins, Sir Charles, on zaininddrs, 192 Wilks, Colonel, his definition of poli- gars, 155 ; on the causes of despot- ism of the East, 159 ; on succession to kingdoms among Muhammadans, 186 ; on native goyernment, 277, 278 ; on the cruelties of Haidar and Tippoo, 283-6 Witnesses, commissions for examina- tion of, in native states, 364 Wulsa, in Southern India, Wilks's description of, 277 Wyuaad, original state of property in the, 165 ZAMAN SHAH, 30 Zaminddr, different meanings ot the term, 190 ; under tne Moghals, 191, 197; Sir Charles Wilkins's definition, 192 ; origin of the office, 192 ; some were originally rajas, 229; sovereignty of great Bengal zaminddrs, 231 Zaminddris and jdgirs compared, 217 ; the great, of Bengal, 228 PRINTED BY SPOITISWOODB AM) 00., NEW-STEEBT SQUARE LOKEON