or on some special wording of the English instrument, in favour of a wider interpretation, those words cannot be construed to secure to the Rajas of Sattara any other than the succession of heirs natural, or to grant to them the right of adopting successors to the raja without that sanction of the sovereign state, which may be given, or may be withheld, and which, by ordinary and invariable practice, is necessary to the validity of such an act of adoption by the prince.

(Arnold, Dalhousie's Indian Administration, ii. 120.)

139. NAGPUR

From Lord Dalhousie to the Court of Directors, 1853.

The

The case of Nagpur stands wholly without precedent. We have before us no question of an inchoate, or incomplete, or irregular adoption. The question of the right of Hindu princes to adopt, is not raised at all by recent events at Nagpur, for the Raja has died, and has deliberately abstained from adopting an heir. His widow has adopted no successor. State of Nagpur, conferred by the British Government in 1818, on the Raja and his heirs, has reverted to the British Government on the death of the Raja without any heir. Justice, and custom, and precedent, leave the Government wholly unfettered, to decide as it thinks best. Policy alone must decide the question.

(Arnold, Dalhousie's Indian Administration, ii. 163.)

140. SURVEY OF A GREAT PROCONSULATE

Minute by Lord Dalhousie, 28th February 1856.

(The following are the most important passages of the famous Minute which Lord Dalhousie wrote at the close of his long Governor-Generalship.)

2. When I sailed from England in the winter of 1847, to assume the government of India, there prevailed universal conviction among public men at home that permanent peace had at length been secured in the East. Before the summer came, we were already involved in the second Sikh war.

That we were so, was due to no precipitation or fault of ours. The murder of the British officers at Multan, and the open rebellion of the Diwan Mulraj, were not made pretext for

quarrel with the Government of Lahore. On the contrary, the offence of the Diwan Mulraj was sedulously distinguished from national wrong. The Sikhs themselves were called upon to punish Mulraj as a rebel against their own sovereign, and to exact reparation for the British Government, whose protection they had previously invoked.

But when it was seen that the spirit of the whole Sikh people was inflamed by the bitterest animosity against us; when chief after chief deserted our cause, until nearly their whole army, led by sirdars who had signed the treaties, and by members of the Council of Regency itself, was openly arrayed against us; when, above all, it was seen that the Sikhs, in their eagerness for our destruction, had even combined in unnatural alliance with Dost Mahomed Khan and his Mahomedan tribes; it became manifest that there was no alternative left. The question for us was no longer one of policy or of expediency, but one of national safety.

Accordingly, the Government put forth its powers. After a prolonged campaign, and a struggle severe and anxious, the Sikhs were utterly defeated and subdued; the Afghans were driven with ignominy through the mountains, and the Punjab became a British province.

3. When little more than two years had passed, the Government of India again was suddenly engaged in hostilities with Burma.

Certain British traders in the port of Rangoon had been subjected to gross outrage by the officers of the King of Ava, in direct violation of the treaty of Yandabu.

Holding to the wisdom of Lord Wellesley's maxim, that an insult offered to the British flag at the mouth of the Ganges should be resented as promptly and as fully as an insult offered at the mouth of the Thames, I should, under any circumstances, have regarded it as sound policy to exact reparation for wrong done to British subjects from any native state. But our relations with the Burmese Court, and the policy it had long pursued towards us, imposed upon the Government of India, at the time to which I refer, the absolute necessity of exacting from it reparation for the systematic violation of treaty, of which British traders had now made formal complaint.

Of all the Eastern nations with which the Government of India has had to do, the Burmese were the most arrogant and overbearing.

During the years since the treaty with them had been concluded, they had treated it with disregard, and had been allowed to disregard it with impunity. They had been permitted to worry away our envoys by petty annoyances from their court; and their insolence had even been tolerated, when at last they vexed our Commercial Agent at Rangoon into silent departure from that port. Inflated by such indirect concessions as these, the Burmans had assumed again the tone they used before the war of 1825. On more than one occasion they had threatened recommencement of hostilities against us, and always at the most untoward time.

However contemptible the Burman race seem to critics in Europe, they have ever been regarded in the East as formidable in the extreme. Only five-and-twenty years before, the news of their march towards Chittagong had raised a panic in the bazaars of Calcutta itself; and even in the late war a rumour of their supposed approach spread consternation in the British districts of Assam and Arakan.

If deliberate and gross wrong should be tamely borne from such a people as this, without vindication of our rights or exaction of reparation for the wrong-whether the motive of our inaction were desire of peace or contempt for the Burman power; it was felt that the policy would be full of danger. .

...

Every effort was made to obtain reparation by friendly means. The reparation required was no more than compensation for the actual loss incurred. But every effort was vain. Our demands were evaded; our officers were insulted. The warnings which we gave were treated with disregard ; and the period of grace which we allowed was employed by the Burmese in strengthening their fortifications, and in making every preparation for resistance.

Thereupon the Government of India despatched a powerful expedition to Pegu; and within a few weeks the whole of the coast of Burma, with all its defences, was in our possession.

Even then the Government of India abstained from further operations for several months, in the hope that, profiting by experience, the King of Ava would yet accede to our just demands.

But our forbearance was fruitless. Accordingly, in the end of 1852, the British troops took possession of the kingdom of Pegu, and the territory was retained, in order that the Government of India might hold from the Burman state, both adequate

compensation for past injury and the best security against future danger.

4. Since hostilities with Burma ceased, the Indian empire has been at peace.

No prudent man, who has any knowledge of Eastern affairs, would ever venture to predict the maintenance of continued peace within our Eastern possessions. Experience, frequent hard and recent experience, has taught us that war from without, or rebellion from within, may at any time be raised against us, in quarters where they were the least to be expected, and by the most feeble and unlikely instruments. No man, therefore, can ever prudently hold forth assurance of continued peace in India.

But, having regard to the relation in which the Government of India stands towards each of the several foreign powers around it, I think it may be safely said that there seems to be no quarter from which formidable war can reasonably be apprehended at present....

6. For nearly 40 years, Nipal has faithfully observed the peace she bought so dearly. Her minister, sagacious and able, has himself been witness of the vast resources of our power, during his recent visit to Europe. He has been for some time engaged in a war with Tibet, which has been productive of heavy charge, while it has brought neither power nor profit to Nipal, and must have given umbrage to China, whose tributary she is. From Nipal, therefore, there is even less probability of hostility now, than in any one of the 40 years, during which she has in good faith observed the peace which she solemnly bound herself to maintain, and which her obvious interests recommend.

7. Maharaja Gulab Singh of Jammu and Kashmir, so long as he lives, will never depart from the submissive policy he announced, with unmistakable sincerity in his air, when in Durbar at Wazirabad he caught my dress in his hands, and cried aloud, "Thus I grasp the skirts of the British Government, and I will never let go my hold."

And when, as must soon be, the Maharaja shall pass away, his son, Mian Rambir Singh, will have enough to do to maintain his ground against rivals of his own blood, without giving any cause of offence to a powerful neighbour, which he well knows can crush him at his will.

8. On the western border, a treaty has been made with the Khan of Khelat, whereby he becomes the friend of our friends,

and the enemy of our enemies, and engages to give us temporary possession of such positions within his territory as we may at any time require for purposes of defence.

9. Lastly, a treaty was concluded during the past year with the Amir Dost Mahomed Khan of Kabul. It bound him to be the friend of our friends and the enemy of our enemies, while it imposed no corresponding obligation upon us, from which inconvenience or embarrassment could arise. The Amir himself sought our friendship, and he has already shown that he regards it as a tower of strength.

Thus the enmity which existed through many years, and which was aggravated by the Afghan policy of 1849, has happily been removed, without any sacrifice upon our part, and to our manifest advantage. An alliance has been timely formed with the leading Afghan state, upon the solid basis of common interest against a common enemy. Already, the consequences of the treaty have developed themselves in the conquest of Kandahar by the Amir Dost Mahomed Khan; an event which has largely increased the Amir's power, while it has brought to pass for us, that every portion of our western frontier, from the Himalayas even to the sea, is now covered against hostile attack by the barrier of a treaty with a friendly power.

I venture to think that the Court of Directors will see in this brief summary ample reason to be content with the condition in which I leave the relations of the Honourable East India Company with every foreign state around its borders.

10. As regards the internal tranquillity of the empire, I have already observed that no man can presume to warrant its continuance, with certainty, for a day. In territories and among a population so vast, occasional disturbance must needs prevail. Raids and forays are, and will still be, reported from the western frontier. From time to time marauding expeditions will descend into the plains, and again expeditions to punish the marauders will penetrate the hills. Nor can it be expected but that, among races so various and multitudes so innumerable, local outbreaks will from time to time occur.

With respect to the frontier raids, they are and must for the present be viewed as events inseparable from the state of society which for centuries past has existed among the mountain tribes. They are no more to be regarded as interruptions of the general peace in India, than the street brawls which appear among the every-day proceedings of a police court in