CHAPTER XIII.

The Native States of India.

A study of the Indian system of Government, however brief, would be incomplete without some account of the relations of the Government of India with the Native States. They form an integral part of India, and though at first sight they may seem to be excluded from the scheme of Government in British India, the interests of the Native States, of the princes as well as of their subjects, are so closely interwoven. with the interests of the population of the rest of this mighty country, that we cannot brush aside, as of no consequence, the question of the Native States, their present position and their place in the India of a generation hence.

In studying this question the student is confronted at the very outset with a very serious difficulty. The relations of the Government of India with the native princes are to a large extent conducted without that publicity which characterises the proceedings of the Government in other departments. This is of course no peculiarity of the Indian Government: even in England the complaint is very frequently made that the foreign policy of the country, on which depends so much the prosperity of a trading nation like Britain, is conducted without any reference to Parliament. To some extent this policy is not unreasonable, since, though the days of the bedchamber politics are over, the foreign relations of every country require such a delicate handling that the fierce light of popular criticism would throw the whole mechanism out of order. On the other hand it is justly contended that publicity would do away with many of those trivial but yet portentous misunderstandings which often result in the most disastrous wars. And it is all the more dangerous when what is claimed to be entirely confidential leaks out, and not always in its true form, thereby causing endless confusion, misunderstanding,

r

hatred. While therefore, we can say very little authoritatively, beyond what we can glean from the various treaties and sanads, about the way the relations between the Princes and their Suzerain are determined, we know, or we fancy that we know, a lot about what takes place behind the scenes, which, if published, would place an entirely different complexion upon certain matters from the version which the official gazettes place before the public. This state of chronic and confirmed doubt and suspicion is naturally very dangerous to every one concerned, but in the existing state of things it seems to be inevitable. The student of this part of the governing machinery in India must beware against saying too little as well as against saying too much; he must weigh every word, and consider every phrase in all its possible and even its impossible meanings; for the latter are even more to be dreaded than the former, as, exactly because an interpretation is impossible it would be deemed to be the most likely, and would therefore be adopted.

I. The Origin of the Native States.

Confining ourselves only to the British period, the native states, as we know them to-day, did not originate until the days of Lord Wellesley. The Company had no doubt entered into relations with the Princes of India long before that date; but their position at the native courts, in the days before Wellesley, was hardly superior to that of suppliants or military adventurers. Even where the relations were those of equals, as in the case of the Nawab of the Carnatic or the Nizam, the position of the Company was far too uncertain, and their territorial possessions far too inadequate to their pretensions of a later day, to allow us to regard them as really the equals of their native allies. In a sense that idea of equality, which we now associate with the alliance of two modern sovereign

powers like England and France, never appeared in India, at least as far as the East India Company were concerned. They passed too rapidly from the position of dependents to that of dictators. The Subsidiary Alliances of Wellesley laid the foundations of our modern protected states in India. By requiring them to maintain at their cost a considerable British army, ostensibly to aid them in their perennial dynastic quarrels, possibly to keep them in check against any design that they might be misled to entertain against the Company; by compelling them to surrender all control over their foreign relations; by stipulating that they should entertain no European in the service without the consent of the Company's government; by inducing them to agree to the arbitration of the Company in all their differences with the friends of the Company; Wellesley managed to render them entirely innocuous for future mischief. Naturally, all the consequences of this grand policy were not clearly apprehended from the first even by the author himself. No wonder that those who followed him, or those who opposed him, could not see in this net-work of alliances anything but an irresistible force, which would steadily impel the Company, in spite of themselves, from one frontier to another, till at last they would have to succumb under the very load of their greatness; and consequently tried to set aside this grand and silent scheme of conquering India without shedding a drop of unnecessary blood. It is difficult to say what Wellesley himself thought to be the probable results of such a policy in the end. Would he have regarded it only as a prelude to total annexation of the native territories, when the Company was strong enough to venture on aunexation without unnecessarily exposing themselves? Or did he consider his scheme as an ultimate and permanent solution of the political problems of India in his day? Certain it is that while his policy had inspired the weaker among the native princes with hopes of their own continuance in power, it provided no obvious solution to the riddle which faced his immediate successors as to what should be done in the event of internal anarchy, or external molestation of those who had not allied

themselves with the Company yet; nor did they know what to do when a prince, secured in his own possessions by the aid of the Company, used his security to his own undoingby extravagant misrule in his own dominions.

Lord Hastings carried the policy of Wellesley a step further; and, while arranging treaties with the native princes for safeguarding and improving the position of the Company, he made it clear that the obligations of an alliance with theCompany included a reasonable measure of decent Government within a prince's own dominion. The direct extension of British territory, which this Governor-General was instrumental in bringing about, was also due to the same general idea of securing a modicum of good Government to the peoples of India whether directly under British rule or not. In his time he had no distinct opportunity to make this principle clear, but under his much more pacific successor, Lord William Bentinck, the principle was carried out in the case of Coorg, which was annexed to the dominions of the Company, on the reigning prince showing himself utterly incompetent to improve his Government. In the Mysore case the same GovernorGeneral adopted a slightly different principle; the Mysoreterritories were placed under the administration of the Company's officers, though the Government was conducted in the name of the prince himself. The prince was given a fixed. income to support his position, and beyond that he had nothing to do in the affairs of his principality.

In the twenty years that followed the departure of Lord William Bentinck from India, the policy of the Company's government fluctuated in this respect. The important native states of the Punjab, of Nagpur, of Oudh and of Sind were all annexed for one reason for another; and for a while it seemed that the supreme power in India had made up its mind to abandon the role of King Log and commence the The annexations of Sind and of the part of King Stork. Punjab were dictated by reasons of imperial defence; they lay so temptingly in the way of India's centuries old chan

nels of invasion, and of the Company's natural line of advance, that the authorities in India as in England decreed their annexation. In the case of the Punjab there were no doubt other considerations. Under the late ruler Punjab had been a strong and reliable barrier between the English possessions and the old invaders of India; his successors were too weak to preserve their own authority; and so to remove once and for all this danger of the pretorian bands of the Punjab Government, Dalhousie decided for annexation, only two years after Hardinge had, on a similar occasion, decided for maintaining the local prince in subordinate alliance with the Company. In the case of Sind there was not the ghost of a reasonable excuse; and it was much more of a "humane piece of rascality" than the facetious Sir Charles Napier was aware of. The fundamental reason was in both these cases imperial necessity; the others were only temporary pretexts, the hollowness of which was not disguised from the superior authorities at home. The same may be said of Nagpur. It lay so inconveniently between the different parts of the Company's dominions, and prevented so effectually the linking up of the various presidencies and provinces with one another, that the Doctrine of Lapse received all the sting and importance which the ingenuity of the lawyer could devise and the necessities of the statesman could suggest. We cannot give the same explanation for the annexation of Oudh; there the reason given was the prevailing and apparently irremediable misrule of the native government. The principle was at that time deliberately asserted that by supporting a prince on his throne against all opposition, whether from his own subjects or from his external enemies, the Company's Government had made themselves responsible for the proper discharge, of the duties of the sovereign towards his subjects; and that the sovereign who failed to improve his administration in spite of repeated warnings could not, in justice to his subjects, be maintained in power by the Company without their being held responsible for that misrule.