Lord Mayo, besides his duties as President of the Council and final source of authority in each of the seven Departments, was therefore in his own person Foreign Minister and Minister of Public Works. The Home Minister, the Minister of Revenue, Agriculture, and Commerce, and the Finance Minister, were members of the India Civil Service, together with the Secretaries and Under-Secretaries in those and in the Foreign Department. Of the other two Departments, the Military was presided over by a distinguished soldier, and the Legislative by an eminent member of the English Bar.
Routine and ordinary matters were disposed of by the Member of Council within whose Department they fell. Papers of greater importance were sent, with the initiating Member's opinion, to the Viceroy, whoeither concurred in or modified it. If the Viceroy concurred, the case generally ended, and the Secretary worked up the Member's note into a Letter or Resolution, to be issued as the orders of the Governor-General in Council. But in matters of weight, the Viceroy, even when concurring with the initiating Member, often directed the papers to be circulated either to the whole Council, or to certain of the Members whose views he might think it expedient to obtain on the question. In cases in which he did not concur with the initiating Member's views, the papers were generally circulated to all the other Members, or the Governor-General ordered them to be brought up in Council. Urgent business was submitted to the Governor-General direct by the Secretary of the Department under which it fell; and the Viceroy either initiated the order himself, or sent the case for initiation to the Member of Council at the head of the Department to which it belonged.
This was the paper side of Lord Mayo's work. All orders issued in his name. Every case of real importance passed through his hands, and bore his order, or his signature under the initiating Member's note. Urgent matters in all the seven Departments went to him, as I have said, in the first instance. He had also to decide as to which cases could be best disposed of by the Departmental Member and himself, and which ought to be circulated to the whole Council or to certain of the Members. In short, he had to see, as his orders ran in the name of the Governor-Generalin Council, that they fairly represented the collective views of his Government. The 'circulation' of the papers took place, and still does, in oblong mahogany boxes, air-tight, and fitted with a uniform Chubb's lock. Each Under-Secretary, Deputy-Secretary, Chief Secretary, and Member of Council gets his allotted share of these little boxes every morning; each has his own key; and after 'noting' in the cases that come before him, sends on the locked box with his opinion added to the file. The accumulated boxes from the seven Departments pour into the Viceroy throughout the day. In addition to this vast diurnal tide of general work, Lord Mayo had two of the heaviest Departments in his own hands, as Member in charge of the Foreign Office and of Public Works.
The more personal duties of the Viceroy divided themselves into three branches. Every week he personally met, in the first place, each of his Chief Secretaries; in the second place, his Viceregal or Executive Council; and, in the third place, his Legislative Council. Each of the seven Secretaries had his own day with the Governor-General, when he laid before His Excellency questions of special importance, answered questions arising out of them, and took his orders touching any fresh materials to be included in the files of papers before circulating them.
The Viceroy also gives one day a week to his Executive Council, consisting of the Executive Ministers or 'Members of Council' mentioned in the tableabove, with the Commander-in-Chief as an additional Member. Inthis oligarchy all matters of Imperial policy are debated with closed doors before the orders issue; the Secretaries waiting in an ante-room, and each being summoned into the Council Chamber to assist his Member when the affairs belonging to his Department come on for discussion. As all the Members have seen the papers and recorded their opinions, they arrive in Council with a full knowledge of the facts, and but little speechifying takes place. Lord Mayo, accustomed to the free flow of Parliamentary talk, has left behind him an expression of surprise at the rapidity with which, even on the weightiest matters, the Council came to its decision, and at the amount of work which it got through in a day. His personal influence here stood him in good stead. In most cases he managed to avoid any actual taking of votes, and by little compromises won the dissentient Members to acquiescence. In great questions he almost invariably obtained a substantial majority, or put himself at the head of it; and under his rule the Council was never for a moment allowed to forget that the Viceroy retained the constitutional power, however seldom exercised, of deciding by his single will the action of his Government.
In hotly debated cases the situation is generally as follows. The Viceroy and the Member of Council in charge of the Department to which the case belongs have thoroughly discussed it, and the proposal laid before Council represents their joint views. These views have gone round with the case to the otherMembers of Council, and been 'noted' on by them. When the question comes before the Council, no amount of talking can add much new knowledge to the elaborate opinions which each of the Members has recorded while the papers were in circulation. Several of these opinions are probably in favour of the policy proposed by the Member in charge of the question, and supported by the Viceroy; others may be opposed to it. When the matter came up in the meeting of Council, Lord Mayo generally tried, by explanations or judicious compromises, to reduce the opposition to one or two Members, and these might either yield or dissent. The despatches to the Secretary of State enunciating the decision of the Government of India specify the names of dissentient Councillors, and append in full such protests as they may deem right to record.
To take a hypothetical instance. Supposing a frontier expedition had been decided on, and the Commander-in-Chief desired a more costly armament than was really needed. A Commander-in-Chief's business is to make the success of an expedition an absolute certainty, and to that end he is supported by two strongly-officered Departments—the Adjutant-General's and the Quartermaster-General's. The business of the Government of India is to take care that no expenditure, not required to ensure success, shall be permitted. To this end the Commander-in-Chief's plans and estimates are scrutinised first by the Viceroy and his Military Member of Council, withthe aid of the Military Secretariat, and are then considered in Council. The Commander-in-Chief is not necessarily an officer with a keen regard for financial considerations. The Military Member of Council and his Secretaries are invariably selected for their administrative and Indian experience. They are distinguished soldiers, but soldiers whose duty it is for the time being to deal also with the financial aspects of war. Thus, it might possibly happen that a Commander-in-Chief demanded a costly equipment of elephants or camels for a service which, as ascertained from the local facts, could be as efficiently and more economically performed by river-transport or bullock-train. Such a divergence of opinion would probably disappear when each side had stated its case in the papers during circulation; or at any rate a line of approach to agreement would have been indicated.
If the question actually came up for discussion in Council, the Viceroy and the Military Member would be as one man, and they would in all likelihood have the Financial Member on their side. The Commander-in-Chief would have such of the other Members as had been convinced by his written arguments, or who deemed it right in a military matter to yield to the weight of his military knowledge, and to the fact that the direct responsibility for the operations rested with him. And that weight would tell very heavily. For the experience of Indian officials leads them to believe that the man whose business it is to know what is needed, does, as a matter of fact, know it best. If theViceroy saw that, after his side of the case was clearly stated, an opinion still remained in the minds of the Council in favour of the Commander-in-Chief's plan, he would probably yield. On the other hand, if the arguments left no doubt as to the sufficiency of the counter-proposals by the Viceroy and the Military Member, the Commander-in-Chief would either withdraw his original scheme, or strike out some compromise.
Similar divergences might take place between two sections of the Council in regard to the foreign policy of the Government, or the railway system, or a great piece of legislation, or in any other Department of the State. Each Member comes to Council with his mind firmly made up, quite sure that he is right, and equally certain (after reading all the arguments) that those who do not agree with him are wrong. But he is also aware that the Members opposed to him come in precisely the same frame of mind. Each, therefore, while resolved to carry out his own views, knows that, in event of a difference of opinion, he will probably have to content himself with carrying a part of them. And once the collective decision of the Government is arrived at, all adopt it as their own. Lord Mayo has recorded his admiration of the vigour with which each Councillor strove for what he considered best, irrespective of the Viceregal views; and of the generous fidelity with which each carried out whatever policy might eventually be laid down by the general sense of his colleagues. It is this capacityfor loyally yielding after a battle that makes the English talent for harmonious colonial rule.
Besides his personal conferences with each of his Chief Secretaries, and the hebdomadal meeting of the Executive Council, the Viceroy devoted one day a week to his Council for making Laws and Regulations. This body, known more shortly as the Legislative Council, consists of the Viceregal or Executive Council, with the Lieutenant-Governor of the Province where the Viceroy may be residing, and also certain non-official Members as representatives of the Native and European communities. The Viceroy presides. Practically, it does not initiate measures; most of the laws which it frames come up to the Government of India from the Provincial Governments in the shape of proposed enactments. They are first considered by the Viceroy and Legal Member, then circulated to the whole of the Executive Councillors, and decided on in the Executive Council before being brought before the Legislative Council as a draft Bill.
The Legislative Council next appoints a committee of its own Members to consider the Bill, and after various publications in theGazette,rejects, modifies, or passes it into law. The Legislative Council is open to the public; its proceedings are reported in the papers, and published from the official shorthand-writer's notes in theGazette. The law-abiding nature of the English mind, and the attitude of vigorous independence which the Anglo-Indian courts maintain towards the Executive, render it necessary to obtainthe sanction of a legislative enactment for many purposes for which an order of the Governor-General in his Executive Council would have sufficed under the Company. Indeed, almost every great question of policy, not directly connected with foreign affairs or military operations, sooner or later emerges before the legislative body. If all the official Members hold together, the Viceroy has an official majority in the Legislative Council. And as no measure comes before it except after previous discussion and sanction by the Governor-General in his Executive Council, this represents the normal state of votes in the Legislature.
Lord Mayo was a rigid economist of time. Each day had its own set of duties, and each hour of it brought some appointment or piece of work mapped out beforehand. He rose at daybreak, but could seldom allow himself the Indian luxury of an early ride, and worked alone at his 'boxes' till breakfast at 9.30. At 10, his Private Secretary came to him with a new accumulation of boxes, and with the general work of the day carefully laid out. Thereafter his Military Secretary (an officer of his personal staff, and distinct alike from the Military Secretary to the Government of India, and from the great Departments of the Adjutant-General and Quartermaster-General under the Commander-in-Chief) placed before him in the same manner special questions connected with the army. By 11 Lord Mayo had settled down to his boxes for the day, worked at them till luncheonat 2; and afterwards till just enough light remained to allow him a hard gallop before dark. On his return, he again went to his work till dinner at 8.30; snatching the half-hour for dressing to play with his youngest boy, or to perch him on his toilet-table and tell him stories out of the Old Testament and Shakespeare. About a year after his father's death, the child (now a man!) repeated to me wonderful fragments from a repertory of tales thus acquired, his memory jumbling up the witches of Macbeth with the witch of Endor.
There were few days in the year in which Lord Mayo did not receive at dinner, and not many in the week in which there was not an entertainment at Government House afterwards—a ball, or state concert, or private theatricals, or a reception of Native Chiefs, or an At Home of some sort or other. Whatever had been his labour or vexations and disappointments throughout the day, they left no ruffle on his face in the evening. He had a most happy talent for singling out each guest for particular attention, and for throwing himself during a few minutes into the subject on which each was best able to talk. 'There are few connected with him,' writes his Private Secretary, 'who do not remember the many instances of his leaving his room full of anxiety on some great impending question, and at the next moment welcoming his guests and charming all who enjoyed his hospitality, European and Native, by his kindness, joyousness, and absence of officialism.'
At first, Lord Mayo worked at night, carrying on the labours of the day long after his guests and household were asleep. But India soon taught him that her climate put limits even on a strongly-built constitution like his own, and he had to give up the practice. It may be imagined that much accurate prevision was required to lay out the paper side of Lord Mayo's work described above, so that it might be as little as possible interfered with by the more public functions of the Viceregal office. His interviews with each of his Secretaries, and the meetings of his Executive and Legislative Councils, were fixed for specified hours on certain days, and from the printed scheme on his table no departure was permitted. But a large mass of ceremonial and personal business could not be thus laid out beforehand.
One day it was a foreign embassy, or a great feudatory who had come a thousand miles with his retinue to pay his respects; another day it was the return visit of the Viceroy; a third day it was the laying of some foundation-stone; a fourth, the inspection of a local institution or hospital; a fifth, a rapid run upon a railway to see some new works, or examine a bridge across a deltaic estuary hitherto deemed uncontrollable by engineering skill; a sixth, the letting in of the water at the head-lock of a canal; a seventh, a great speech as Chancellor of the Calcutta University, or some words of encouragement at the distribution of prizes at a college or school. No hard-and-fast scheme could provide forthis multifarious aspect of his duties. But he looked (and looked with just confidence) to his Private Secretary to reduce the interference thus caused to his regular work to the minimum. Whenever the ceremonial permitted, he avoided an interruption of his day's work by giving up the hour for the evening's gallop to it.
In the following narrative of the great measures initiated or carried out during Lord Mayo's Viceroyalty there are several omissions which Lord Mayo would have deemed most unjust. They refer not to what he himself did, but to the assistance which he derived from others. But with few exceptions his coadjutors are still alive, and some of them still hold high office. This book is not written in praise or dispraise of living men. Yet, at almost every page, I have felt that I am doing the central figure of it a wrong by isolating him from his surroundings. He was essentially a man who went through life girt about with friends, and a memoir which fails to develop that side of his character leaves half his story untold. This, however, is one of the conditions under which a contemporary biography ought to be written; and no one can feel the air of ungraciousness which it may impart to my work, especially to the Indian sections of it, more keenly than the writer himself.
While, however, Lord Mayo in the following narrative stands out more prominently from among those who shared his labours than he himself wouldhave deemed right, his method of working renders the injustice less than it might have been in the case of some other Viceroys. He had a remarkable faculty for listening to everything that could be said on a subject, and then shaping from many divergent counsels a course which was distinctively his own. No one could tempt him into the error of being led to state his own conclusions first and then to ask his adviser's opinion about them. He had the art of making every one feel that he followed with a personal interest their exposition of a case; but at the same time that his interest was that of a judge, not of a partisan.
In India the Provincial Administrations and Heads of Departments represent the initiative, the Secretariats the critical element in the Government. A Head of a Department is almostex officioa man who has something to propose. And his plans of improvement, however admirable in themselves, and however economical they may purport to be at the outset, mean in the end increase of expenditure. The function of the Secretariat is to pull such schemes to pieces, to expose their weak points, and to put on the drag upon every proposal that sooner or later will cost money. A strong Viceroy acts as arbiter between the two sets of forces thus constantly in motion.
Those who had to do business with Lord Mayo were constantly struck by his happy combination of the qualities required for this delicate part of his office. He was adored by the more ardent administrators forthe interest with which he listened to their plans. Every one felt sure of a fair hearing. But those who misinterpreted his courteous sympathy into official approval found, by a very brief experience of his method of working, that they were mistaken. For between this initial stage and ultimate action lay an ordeal of inquiry and criticism, a process of weighing which he sometimes renewed afresh in his own mind, even after his responsible advisers had been convinced of the expediency of the proposed measure. He insisted that each question should be thoroughly fought out by his subordinates, sending it, if necessary, back and back, till every disputed point was absolutely disposed of, before he allowed himself to express his own views; nor did he commit himself to a line of action until the chances had been exhausted of his having to alter it, in consequence of new evidence coming to light. He had the art of bringing to a focus whatever was sound in the advice of conflicting Councillors, and all parties felt that their strongest arguments had entered into, and were fairly represented by, the conclusion at which he arrived. But they also felt that that conclusion was his own, and that he would adhere to it. This openness to suggestion and to plans of administrative improvement, followed by a carefully protracted period of criticism and scrutiny, and backed by stedfastness in the practical action which consummated it, formed the secret of Lord Mayo's success as an Indian Viceroy.
The strong individuality which marked his measures produced a corresponding sense of personal responsibility in his own mind. Amid the difficulties and trials, to be presently narrated, this feeling sometimes pressed upon him with a weight under which even his robust nature heaved. 'It is a hard task,' he wrote to a friend during the first dark months of his grapple with deficit; 'but I am determined to go through with it, though I fear bitter opposition where I least expected it. I have put my hand to the work, and I am not going to turn back; and I will kill, before I die, some of the abuses of Indian Administration.'
LORDMAYO'SDEALINGS WITH THEFEUDATORYSTATES
LORDMAYO'SDEALINGS WITH THEFEUDATORYSTATES
The India of which Lord Mayo assumed charge in 1869 was a profoundly different India from that which had, eleven years previously, passed from the Company to the Crown. The fixed belief of the founders of the British Empire in India had been, that the Native States must inevitably, and in their own defence, be either openly or secretly hostile to our rule. They held that by good government and a scrupulous respect for the religions, customs, and rights of the people, they might attach the population of the British Provinces. But the Independent or Feudatory Native Powers in India must, in their opinion, for ever remain a menace to our sway.
It was therefore the permanent policy of the greatest servants of the East India Company to bring the Native States under subjection by treaties, and, when they could do so without actual injustice, to incorporate the lesser States into the British Dominions. In 1841 the Government of India laid down the uniform principle 'to persevere in the one clear anddirect course of abandoning no just and honourable accession of territory or revenue, while all existing claims of right are at the same time scrupulously respected.'
We have seen how, after the Mutiny, this policy of annexation was deliberately reversed. The Queen of England, when she became the Sovereign of India, became the protectress of all classes of the Indian people. She declared in the most solemn manner her will 'that the governments of the several Princes and Chiefs who now govern their own territories should be perpetuated, and that the representation and dignity of their houses should be continued.' In 1862 Lord Canning, as the first Viceroy of India, thus summed up the new situation:—
'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 pretender to the representation of the Peshwá' (the Maráthá over-lord) 'has disappeared. The Crown of England stands forward the unquestioned ruler and paramount power in all India, and is, for the first time, brought face to face with its Feudatories. 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.'
The change in policy meant that an area of 600,000 square miles, with a population of nearly 50 millions, under the Feudatory Chiefs, was no longer a foreignterritory subject to annexation, but an integral portion of the British Empire for whose welfare the Queen became responsible in the sight of God and man. Her responsibility, although not the direct responsibility of a sovereign, was the responsibility of a suzerain. On Lord Canning and Lord Lawrence devolved the heavy task of consolidating the Native States under the changed régime. But the memories of the Mutiny still cast their shadow over India throughout the period of their government. Lord Mayo came as a new man to India, free from the recollections which that terrible struggle had graven into the souls of all who took part in it. The work of conquest had been effected by his predecessors, the task of conciliation remained for him to accomplish.
'I, as the representative of the Queen,' he declared to the Rájput Princes assembled in darbár, 'have come here to tell you, as you have often been told before, that the desire of Her Majesty's Government is to secure to you and to your successors the full enjoyment of your ancient rights and the exercise of all lawful customs, and to assist you in upholding the dignity and maintaining the authority which you and your fathers have for centuries exercised in this land.
'But in order to enable us fully to carry into effect this our fixed resolve, we must receive from you hearty and cordial assistance. If we respect your rights and privileges, you should also respectthe rights and regard the privileges of those who are placed beneath your care. If we support you in your power, we expect in return good government. We demand that everywhere, throughout the length and breadth of Rájputána, justice and order shall prevail; that every man's property shall be secure; that the traveller shall come and go in safety; that the cultivator shall enjoy the fruits of his labour, and the trader the produce of his commerce; that you shall make roads, and undertake the construction of those works of irrigation which will improve the condition of the people and swell the revenues of your States; that you shall encourage education, and provide for the relief of the sick.
'Be assured that we ask you to do all this for no other but your own benefit. If we wished you to remain weak, we should say: Be poor, and ignorant, and disorderly. It is because we wish you to be strong that we desire to see you rich, instructed, and well-governed. It is for such objects that the servants of the Queen rule in India; and Providence will ever sustain the rulers who govern for the people's good.
'I am here only for a time. The able and earnest officers who surround me will, at no distant period, return to their English homes; but the Power which we represent will endure for ages. Hourly is this great Empire brought nearer and nearer to the throne of our Queen. The steam-vessel and the railroad enable England, year by year, to enfold India in acloser embrace. But the coils she seeks to entwine around her are no iron fetters, but the golden chains of affection and of peace. The days of conquest are past; the age of improvement has begun.
'Chiefs and Princes, advance in the right way, and secure to your children's children, and to future generations of your subjects, the favouring protection of a power who only seeks your good.'
'We see,' wrote one of his Councillors after his death,—'we see Lord Mayo in every line of this speech, the frank and courteous and enlightened gentleman; but, at the same time, the strong and worthy representative of the Queen, and the unmistakeable ruler of the Empire. Every Native Prince who met him looked upon Lord Mayo as the ideal of an English Viceroy. They all felt instinctively that they could place perfect confidence in everything that he told them; and their respect, I ought rather to say their reverence, was all the deeper, because, while they knew that he was their master, they felt also that he was their friend.'
Lord Mayo discerned the evil as well as the good of our Feudatory system. He was often sorely hurt by the spectacle of Native mal-administration, which our principles of non-interference rendered him powerless to amend. He found that the existing system allowed of petty intermeddling, but often precluded salutary intervention—straining out the gnat and swallowing the camel. His mind was attracted to the possibility of developing a scheme which wouldsecure to the Indian Feudatories their present independence, and at the same time arm the suzerain power with adequate checks on its abuse.
In his personal and social relations with the Feudatories, he made them realise that the one path towards the Viceregal friendship was the good government of their territories. The Indian Foreign Office strictly regulates the official courtesies of a Governor-General to each Prince, and these regulations Lord Mayo accurately observed. But he made the Native Chiefs feel that beyond such State receptions there was an interior region of intercourse and kindly interest, and that this region was open to every one who deserved it, and to no one else. He led them to see that his friendship had nothing to do with the greatness of their territory, or their degree of political independence, or the number of jealously counted guns which saluted them from our forts. These considerations regulated his State ceremonials; but his private friendship was only to be won by the personal merit of character and conduct.
By his attitude he practically said to each: 'If you wish to be a great man at my Court, govern well at home. Be just and merciful to your people. We do not ask you whether you come with full hands, but whether you come with clean hands. No presents that you may bring can buy the British favour; no display which you may make will raise your dignity in our eyes; no cringing or flattery will gain my friendship. We estimate you not by the splendour ofyour offerings to us, nor by the pomp of your retinue here, but by your conduct to your subjects at home. For ourselves, we have nothing to ask of you. But for your people we demand good government, and we shall judge of you by this standard alone. And in our private friendship and hospitality, we shall prefer the smallest Feudatory who rules righteously, to the greatest Prince who misgoverns his people.'
The Native Chiefs very soon understood the maxims which regulated his personal relations towards them; and the outburst of passionate grief that took place among them on his death proves whether the Indian Princes are, or are not, capable of appreciating such a line of conduct. As regards his public dealing with them, the four following principles, although never formally enunciated in any single paper, stand out in many letters and State documents from his pen:—
I shall endeavour very briefly to show how Lord Mayo gave effect to these principles.
I take first a case in which Lord Mayo recognised the necessity for reform, but abstained from direct intervention. In the great Province of Káthiáwár, with its 187 chiefdoms, Lord Mayo had to deal with the relics of five centuries of Native misrule. He found many conflicting claims to the soil and a number of ancient communities, each with a vested right to depredation. The 'ex-ruling classes,' representatives of old houses forcibly dispossessed, or of younger brothers of Chiefs unable to live on their slender share of the inheritance; 'predatory tribes,' and 'dangerous communities,' whose hereditary means of livelihood was plunder; 'aboriginal races,' penned into the hills by successive waves of invaders,—all these elements ofanarchy still fermented in the population of Káthiáwár. Some venerable customs also survived. Litigants still retained their right ofbáhirwátia,literally, 'going out' against their neighbours. This method of adjusting suits for real property consisted in forcing the husbandmen to quit their villages, while the litigant retired with his brethren to 'some asylum, whence he may carry on his depredations with impunity.'
Lord Mayo keenly realised the evils from which Káthiáwár was suffering; but he also clearly perceived the futility of attempting to rush reforms upon the loose congeries of 187 chiefdoms that made up the Province. While, therefore, he gradually introduced a better system for the whole, he confined his more direct interference to a leading principality which might serve as an object lesson to the rest. One of the richest and most important States of the 'first class' in Káthiáwár passed to a minor. Instead of bringing it under a British regent, an experienced Native Minister and a picked Member of the Bombay Civil Service were appointed as its joint-rulers. The experiment succeeded admirably. Reforms which could not have been introduced by an English regent without popular opposition, and which would never have been introduced by a Native ruler at all, were smoothly and harmoniously effected. The State became, with a minimum of interference by the Suzerain Power, a model of prosperity and firm administration.
But during Lord Mayo's Viceroyalty, as duringevery other General-Governorship, cases of Feudatory misrule—pure, simple, and incorrigible—took place. In such instances he did not hesitate to interfere in a manner that left no doubt as to the interpretation which he gave to the duties of the Suzerain Power. He held that until everything had been done to render the English surveillance in a Native State as efficient as possible, he had no right to complain of the Chief. He realised that the process by which an Indian State casts its old skin of anarchy is necessarily a slow one. He kept his hands clean of any faintest stain of annexation. But he made every Feudatory in India clearly understand that if he persistently misgoverned his subjects, the sceptre would be taken out of his hands.
The State of Alwár afforded an example of this class. It was founded in the latter half of the last century, by a Rájput soldier of fortune, and had an area of 3000 square miles, a population of three-quarters of a million, and an army of about 7000 men. In 1863 the young Hindu Chief attained his legal majority. His first act was to take vengeance on the President of the Native Council of Regency who had governed during his minority. In seven years he not only squandered a cash-balance of £172,287 saved during his minority, together with the regular revenue of £200,000per annum,but he had plunged the State into debt to the extent of £160,000. The current taxes were so forestalled, that the balance due for the whole year would suffice but for twomonths' expenditure; the Mahárájá having hit on the clever financial device of rewarding his creatures by 'orders on the harvest!'
Some of the items of his expenditure will repay notice. Over £4000 a year were assigned to 'men whose sole duty it is to makesalámsto the Chief'; over £5000 to singers and dancing girls; and £1900 to wrestlers. 'The Mahárájá manifests the utmost contempt of decency, drinking publicly with low Muhammadans, and getting drunk nearly every day.' The revenues formerly spent on the administration of justice and police had 'been devoted to the Chief's private pleasures.' 'Indeed, the Chief himself is on terms of intimacy with twodakáitleaders,' i.e. heads of robber gangs. He had confiscated the public lands assigned for the support of his troops, and for the maintenance of religion, or for the relief of the poor—one of the latter grants being 270 years old.
The result was to completely alienate the Rájá of Alwár from his Rájput nobility and subjects. The nobility consisted of a powerful body of Hindu Thákúrs, or barons. In vain they pleaded with him to observe some measure in his excesses. His practical answer to them was the disbandment of fifteen out of the eighteen Rájput troops of cavalry, whose fathers had won the State for his ancestor, and the enrollment of Muhammadan mercenaries in their stead. In March, 1870, the news reached the Government of India that the people of Alwár had risen, and that 2000 men were in the field against the Hindu Prince.
Lord Mayo first laboured to do what was possible by arbitration between the unworthy Prince and his revolted subjects. But the nobility would have been contented with nothing short of the deposition of the Chief. Lord Mayo interfered to prevent so extreme a measure. He gave the Prince a last chance, by summoning him to name a Board of Management which would command the confidence of his people; and the Chief having neglected to do so, Lord Mayo issued orders for the creation of a Native Council at Alwár. The Council consisted of the leading nobility in the State, with the British Political Agent as President—the Mahárájá having a seat next to the President.
Under the efficient management of this board, Alwár speedily emerged from its troubles. The Chief received an allowance of £18,000 a year for his personal expenditure, exclusive of the permanent establishments required for his dignity as titular head of the State. These establishments included, among other things, 100 riding-horses, 26 carriage-horses, and 40 camels, at the disposal of His Highness. The remainder of the revenue was devoted to paying off the debt and to replacing the administration on an efficient basis. Peace was firmly established; the courts were reopened; schools were founded; and crime was firmly put down by an improved police.
The Chief still clung to his lowest favourites, and, so far as his debauched habits allowed him to interfere at all, he interfered for evil. At a State darbár onthe Queen's birthday, he publicly insulted his nobility. Lord Mayo, however, still adhered to his resolve to govern Alwár by means of its own Native Council, rather than by any expedient which might bear the faintest resemblance to annexation. 'I fear this young Chief is incorrigible,' he wrote early in 1871, 'but we must pursue the course of treatment we have laid down, firmly and consistently. The whole action of this Chief is that of a mischievous and wily creature, who finds himself over-matched, tightly bound, and unable to do further harm.' Lord Mayo plainly told him that the only chance of 'his being ever freed from the Council' would depend on his showing 'symptoms of repentance, and a determination to reconcile himself with his subjects.'
But this amendment was not to be. The Native Council of Management went on with its work of improvement and reform. The Chief held himself sullenly aloof, and sank deeper and deeper into the slough of evil habits, until he died, a worn-out old man of twenty-nine, in 1874.
This was the most serious case of Native misrule during Lord Mayo's Viceroyalty, and the only one in which he had to push interference to the point of superseding the hereditary Prince. Another instance of mal-administration was visited with a severe rebuke, which the Chief resented, and refused to take his proper place at a Viceregal darbár in the seat below the head of the ancient Udaipur house. The offender was promptly ordered to quit British territory indisgrace, and was further punished by having his salute reduced from seventeen to fifteen guns.
It is only fair to the Indian Feudatories to state, that against these examples of misrule many instances could be cited of wise government and a high sense of duty. Lord Mayo gathered round him a circle of Chiefs whose character he personally admired, and in whose administration he took a well-founded pride. Of such territories, Bhopál may serve as an illustration. It is one of the Feudatory States of Central India which exercise sovereign powers over their own subjects: has an area of 6764 square miles, a population of 663,656 souls, and yields a revenue to its Chief of £240,000 a year. Its army, besides a British Contingent which the Chief was bound to maintain by the treaty of 1818, amounted to 4000 men.
The State of Bhopál was founded in 1723 by an Afghán adventurer, who expelled the Hindu Chiefs, built a fortress, and assumed the title of Nawáb. In 1778, when a British army under General Goddard marched through Central India, Bhopál stood forward as the one State friendly to our power. The Maráthá aggressions of the early part of the present century compelled it, like many other Indian States, to seek English aid. In 1819 it acknowledged the supremacy of our Government, was received under the British protection, and was rewarded by some valuable districts which we had won from the Maráthás. The Mutiny of 1857 found Bhopál under the government of alady, the celebrated Sikandar Begam, whose wise administration had raised her State to a high rank among the Indian Feudatories. For her loyal services at that juncture she was created a Grand Commander of the Star of India, and dying in 1868, left her territory to a daughter worthy of her blood.
This Princess, at the time of her accession in 1868, was a widow of thirty-one years of age. She inherited her mother's firmness and good sense, with a rare aptitude for the duties of administration. During Lord Mayo's Viceroyalty she devoted herself to the measures of progress which the Viceroy pressed on every Feudatory Chief who came under his influence. She opened out roads, organised a system of public instruction, executed a survey of her State, reformed the police, suppressed the abominable but deep-rooted trade of kidnapping minors for immoral purposes, and improved the jails. Lord Mayo received her in his capital with marks of distinction, and, on the occasion of the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh, presented her with honour to His Royal Highness. The Princess carried back to her State the liveliest recollections of his hospitality and kindness, and the next few years of her rule became conspicuous for good government and prudent administrative reforms.
Her Highness was created a Grand Commander of the Star of India, as the ruler of a model State.
Lord Mayo entertained very stringent views as to the duties of the Government of India towards thewilder frontier tribes. He held that, while his Government was bound to preserve the peace of the border, it was bound to do so not by vindictive chastisements for raids committed, but by a more perfect organisation of preventive measures.
In one case on the North-Western Frontier of India, after persistent provocations, it had been locally proposed to deal with the mountaineers by means of a force to be kept ready to make reprisals at a moment's notice, in the event of future raids. Lord Mayo, after reviewing the recent events, thus declared his policy:—'The whole recommendation comes to this—that in the early part of spring a large force should be assembled at different points within the hills; and that this force, being placed absolutely at the disposal of the officers who believe that the burning of crops and the destruction of villages by British troops are indispensable to the maintenance of the peace of the frontier, should, at the least appearance of robbery or raid, advance into the hills and commence the old system of devastation.' Lord Mayo then points out that such a force, acting on the moment, would be beyond the guidance of the Government of India, and that that Government 'might find itself involved in serious military operations, upon the character, justice, or necessity of which the Governor-General in Council never had an opportunity of expressing an opinion.' 'I object to authorise action which may cause such serious results.'
'No one can read ——'s letter without coming tothe conclusion that there still exists in the minds of the local authorities an ardent though partly concealed desire for that avenging policy which the Government of India is so anxious to avoid.' Lord Mayo proposed 'to substitute, as far as possible, for surprise, aggression, and reprisal, a policy of vigilant, constant, and never-ceasing defence of those parts of our frontier which are by their position liable to be attacked by foreign tribes.'
It had been objected that such a system of watchful defence 'must act as a constant menace to the tribes.' To this Lord Mayo replies: 'I cannot see the force of this objection. The presence of a policeman is indeed a standing menace to the thief; and a sight of the gallows may be a salutary reminder to the murderer. It is, I fear, too much the habit to adopt what is doubtless the view taken by the mountaineers themselves of these affairs. They look upon them as acts of war and justifiable aggression. We have to teach them that assassination, the attack of a defenceless village by night, and killing people in their beds, are not acts of war, but are esteemed by civilised nations to be acts of murder. The sooner we teach these people this lesson the better. We have already taught it to millions who are less intelligent than the Patháns of the Hazára frontier.'
Lord Mayo's policy was to remove such crimes from the operations of honourable warfare into the jurisdiction of a strong armed police. To the objection that a raid, unless avenged by a militaryexpedition, would impair 'our prestige on the frontier,' he answers: 'I object to fight for prestige. And even those who may still think that killing people for the sake of prestige is morally right, will hardly assert that the character and authority of the British arms in India are affected one way or the other by skirmishes with wild frontier tribes. But there are other considerations connected with the subject, of wider and greater import than the punishment of a few mountain savages, and the vindication of a local officer's prestige. Every shot fired in anger within the limits of our Indian Empire reverberates throughout Asia; gives to nations who are no friends to Christian or European rule the notion that amongst our own subjects there are still men in arms against us; and corroborates the assertion that the people within our frontier are not yet wholly subjected to our sway, and that the British power is still disputed in Hindustán.'
The other example which I shall cite of Lord Mayo's frontier policy will be taken from the opposite extremity of India, and it may seem at first to point to views different from the above. In 1871 the Viceroy sanctioned an expedition against the Lúshai tribes of the North-Eastern border. These races occupy the thenterra incognitawhich stretches from the Cachar valley to the Chittagong District on the Bay of Bengal; and from Hill Tipperah on the west to the great watershed which pours its eastern drainage into the rivers of Burma. As regards the eventof the expedition, it may be briefly said that it was perfectly successful, and that, by the infliction of the smallest possible amount of temporary suffering, it introduced, for a period, order and peace into tracts which had been from time immemorial the haunt of rapine and inter-tribal wars.
Lord Mayo, however, would have been the last man to claim any special credit for success in such operations. 'The affair,' he wrote, 'should be conducted with as little parade, noise, and fuss as possible. It must not be looked upon as a campaign, for no formidable resistance is anticipated. It should be looked upon more as a military occupation and visitation of as large a portion of the Lúshai Districts as possible, for the purpose of punishing the guilty where they can be traced and found, but more particularly for showing these savages that there is hardly a part of their hills which our armed forces cannot visit and penetrate.'
But while Lord Mayo dealt thus firmly, and at the same time considerately, with the Indian Feudatories and wild frontier tribes, he clearly perceived that our whole relations with the Native States of India must undergo a profound change. The Indian Feudatories had, as I have repeatedly insisted on, ceased to be semi-foreign allies of a commercial company. They had become an integral part of the India of the Queen. It was Lord Mayo's earnest desire that a new generation of Native Princes should be trained up to discharge the new and higher functions involved by this change.He believed that this could only be done by a carefully devised system of education, adapted to the various classes of Chiefs.
Whenever a great Native State passed to a minor, he held it the duty of the Suzerain Power to do two things. In the first place, to make such arrangements by means of a Native or a mixed regency, as would secure a good local administration, and at the same time convince both the ministers and the people of the State that the British Suzerain respected their independence and would scrupulously maintain it. In the second place, to make such arrangements for the education of the young Prince as would train him up in English rather than Native ideas of his responsibility as a ruler. He believed that this work of rearing up the young Feudatories to a high sense of their public duty was a worthy work for British officers of rank and talent. The system of educating the Native Princes under English guardians or tutors has borne blessed fruit. It rendered possible those subsequent measures for incorporating the military strength of the Native States into the general array of the Empire, which form perhaps the most important political reform in India during the last quarter of this century.
Lord Mayo was not content with providing for the education of the great Indian Feudatories alone. Under his auspices colleges were established for the lesser Chiefs. Such a college formed a part of his scheme for improving the condition of Káthiáwár.For he held it vain to expect that a large collection of Native Chiefs would discharge their responsibilities as men, unless they were properly trained as boys. The rank of these youths had hitherto confined them to private education under the indulgent influences of the Zanáná. Lord Mayo designed for them an Indian Eton, in which they should mix with each other, and learn to fit themselves for the duties of their future position in life.
Another, and perhaps more conspicuous, example was the Mayo College at Ajmere, to which the Native Chiefs themselves subscribed £70,000 sterling. This institution Lord Mayo intended to be a purely aristocratic College for Rájputána, where the sons of the Rájput Princes and noblemen would be brought into direct contact with European professors and European ideas, and under the healthy influences of physical and moral training. The Council of the College consists of all the principal Chiefs of Rájputána and the British Political Agents accredited to their States, with the Viceroy as President, and the Agent to the General-Governor in Rájputána as Vice-President.
I believe, if Lord Mayo were now alive, it would be his educational policy for the Native Princes of India, rather than his immediate dealings with them, however successful, that he would regard as the most beneficent memorial of his feudatory rule.