The history of our connection with Oude has been given in preceding chapters down to the time of Lord William Bentinck. No province in India had suffered the affliction of misgovernment for so long a period. The people had scarcely known repose or happiness since the first Nabob, the Khorasan merchant, acquired the principality by treachery. As early as 1779, Warren Hastings remonstrated with the prince on the dissipation of his revenues and the oppression of his subjects. The expostulation was repeated by Lord Cornwallis and by Sir John Shore, but without effect. At the beginning of this century, Lord Wellesley found that “the inveterate abuses which pervaded every department of Government destroyed the foundations of public prosperity and individual happiness,” and he pronounced that the only substantial remedy for these evils was to vest the exclusive administration of the civil and military government in the hands of the Company. In 1801 a large portion of the territory was made over to them, and a treaty was concluded with the Nabob, by which he, on his part, bound himself to introduce into his reserved dominions a system of administration conducive to the prosperity of his subjects, and invariably to act in conformity with the advice of the Resident, while the British Government, on its part, engaged to defend his dominions from all foreign and domestic enemies. So little, however, was this pledge regarded by him, that in the course of thirteen years, he amassed a sum of no less than thirteen
crores of rupees, though the annual revenue of the country was only a trifle in excess of a crore of rupees a-year. In 1831, Lord William Bentinck, who was distinguished by a desire to maintain the independence of native princes, proceeded to Lucknow, and after describing the flagrant abuses of his Government, assured the king – he had been raised to royal dignity by Lord Hastings – that matters had come to such a pass, that unless prompt measures were adopted to reform them, and to govern the country for the benefit of the people, in conformity with the treaty of 1801, the British Government would assume the entire administration till order was restored, and reduce him to the condition of a pensioner of the state, like the raja of Tanjore and the Nabobs of the Carnatic and Moorshedabad. To impress this warning more deeply on his mind, it was likewise left with him in writing. The Court of Directors, in their remarks on this proceeding, observed that the Oude administration had become progressively more inefficient and oppressive, till the country presented a scene of anarchy and tyranny scarcely paralleled in any other part of India; and they gave the Governor-General the fullest authority to carry out his intentions, and assume the temporary administration of the country. The reformation which this menace produced was, however, very short-lived, and in 1837 Lord Auckland constrained the Nabob to enter into a new treaty for the protection of his subjects, but it contained stipulations which induced the Court of Directors to disallow it, and it became void. In 1847, Lord Hardinge proceeded to Lucknow to remonstrate in person with the king upon the state of desolation to which the country was reduced, and gave him a solemn warning that if at the end of two years there should not be a complete reform in his administration, the Government would assuredly carry into effect the orders received from the Court of Directors in 1834, and deprive him of the management of the country.
Soon afterwards, Colonel Sleeman was appointed Resident, and made a tour through the country to
ascertain from personal observation the condition of the people and the character of the administration. The valuable journal which he presented to Government on his return to Lucknow, presented a black record of crimes and misery. The king’s army of 70,000 men which, while British troops protected the throne from all domestic and foreign foes, was altogether redundant, received scanty and uncertain pay, and was employed only in preying on the people. As soon as a regiment reached its encamping ground, foraging parties were sent out to rob the villagers of provisions, and to bring in the roofs, doors, and windows of their houses for fuel. In the peaceable parts of the country, the Colonel remarked, not a house was to be seen with a thatched or tiled covering. It was impossible to conceive a greater curse to a country than such a body of licentious, predatory, and disorganized soldiery. The people affirmed that rebels and robbers sometimes spared them, but the king’s troops never. There were 246 forts or strongholds in the country, with 476 guns, held by first-class landholders, chiefly Rajpoots. They had converted into jungle large tracts of the most fertile land in Oude, extending many miles round their castles, which became the dens of lawless men who infested all parts of the country, set the Government at defiance, and levied intolerable imposts on all traders and travellers. Within sixteen miles of the capital one landholder had converted thirty miles of rich land into a dense jungle, and erected four fortifications within its circle. One rapacious and brutal revenue contractor had driven off hundreds of the wives and children of the cultivators from entire towns and villages, and had not only sold the cattle and the implements of husbandry but the men themselves, and thus reduced a smiling district to desolation. The king, immured in his palace, was invisible except to his women, singers, musicians, and buffoons, and the minister, whom he sometimes saw, was obliged to succumb to them. His favourite fiddler was appointed chief justice. The chief singer, was, de facto, king of Oude; justice was openly bought and sold, and nothing was seen but corruption, from the monarch
on the throne to the lowest functionary. Every officer on his appointment was obliged to pay heavy douceurs to the king, to the heir apparent, to the minister, and to everyone who was supposed to have interest at court. He reimbursed himself by extortions, all the more severe for being necessarily rapid, since he was never certain of his post for a single day. The king never read a report, and the great object of his ministers and his favourites was to guard him from the cares of business. This system of misrule was in some measure mitigated by the privileges which the sepoys in the Company’s service enjoyed of transmitting their complaints through their own commanding officer to the Resident, who was required to take them up, and use his influence, which was all powerful, to obtain redress. With few exceptions, every agricultural family in Oude planted one of its members in the Company’s army, and thus obtained the protection of British power. It will, therefore, be no matter of surprise that there should be 40,000 Oude sepoys in the ranks of the native army, when the enlistment made them a privileged class in their own misgoverned country. In presenting his report on the state of the administration to Government, Colonel Sleeman stated that “his friendly feelings towards native states, and his earnest desire to do everything in his power, and consistent with his duties, to support them, were so generally known in India, that his nomination to the Lucknow Residency was considered by all native chiefs as the surest pledge the Governor-General could give of his earnest desire, if possible, to maintain the native sovereignty of Oude in all its integrity.” But, he remarked, fifty years of sad experience have shown that the hopes in which the treaty of 1801 was founded, that while the British Government defended the king from all enemies, foreign or domestic, he should by means of his own officers carry out a system of administration calculated to secure life and property, and to promote the happiness of the people, were utterly fallacious. “He did not think that with a due regard to its own character, as the paramount power in India, and to the
particular obligations by which it was bound by solemn treaties to the suffering people of this distracted country, the Government could any longer forbear to take over the administration.” No reigning family in India, he added, had a juster claim for its loyalty to the protection and consideration of Government; but this claim could not be expected to embrace the privilege of rendering wretched in perpetuity, five millions whose welfare and happiness the British Government was bound by solemn treaties to promote. He advised that on assuming the Government of the country, such provision should be made for the king as would enable him and his family and dependents to live, in perpetuity, in suitable dignity and comfort.
General Outram was appointed Resident at Lucknow in 1854, and directed to institute a minute and searching enquiry into the condition of the people and the administration. He was required to report whether the country was still in the same state which Colonel Sleeman had described, and whether any progress had been made in the correction of abuses which Lord William Bentinck had peremptorily demanded thirteen years before, and for which Lord Hardinge had given the king two years of grace. He reported that there was not only no improvement whatever, but no prospect of any. The vices of the Government were inherent in its constitution, and absolutely incurable. He had no hesitation, therefore, in affirming that the duty imposed on the British Government by treaty could no longer admit of its honestly indulging the reluctance it had hitherto felt of having recourse to the decisive measure of assuming the government. “In pronouncing,” he said “an opinion so unfavourable to the reigning family of Oude, I have performed a painful duty. I have ever advocated the maintenance of the few remaining states in India, so long as we can, consistently with our duty as the paramount power and the pledges of our treaties. It is distressing to me to find that in upholding the sovereign power of this effete and
incapable dynasty, we do it at the cost of five millions of people, for whom we are bound to secure good government.”
General Outram’s report was transmitted to Lord Dalhousie while residing for his health at Ootacamund, and he drew up one of his great and comprehensive Minutes upon it. “For the convenience of those to whom it would belong to decide the future fate of Oude,” he made a complete and masterly analysis of the evidence which had been given during a long series of years of the gross and inveterate abuses of power in Oude. He collected together the opinions which had been recorded of our solemn obligations to the people, by those officers of Government who were distinguished by their anxiety to maintain the existing royal families, and then proceeded to state that, if it were not for the presence of British troops, the people would long since have worked their own deliverance. Our Government was, therefore, heavily responsible for having so long tolerated this disregard of the treaty of 1801, and for all the ills and human suffering which had sprung therefrom. The time had now arrived when inaction on our part could no longer be justified, and was already converting responsibility into guilt. “But,” he added, “the rulers of Oude, however unfaithful to the trust conferred on them, have yet ever been faithful and true in their allegiance to British power. No wavering friendship has ever been laid to their charge, and they have aided us, as best they could, in the hour of our utmost need. Although we are bound by all the means in our power to amend the lot of a people whom we have so long indirectly injured, justice and gratitude nevertheless require that in so doing we should lower the dignity and authority of the sovereign of Oude no farther than is absolutely necessary for the accomplishment of our righteous ends. The reform of the administration may be wrought, and the prospects of the people secured, without resorting to so extreme a measure as the annexation of the territory and the abolition of the throne, and I, for my part, do not advocate the advice that the province of Oude be declared
British territory.” He proposed, therefore, that the king should retain the sovereignty of all the territory which he possessed, that he should vest the whole of the civil and military administration in the hands of the Company; that an annual stipend should be allotted for the support of his honour and dignity, and due provision be made for all the members of the royal family, besides his own children. The scheme which Lord Dalhousie thus proposed differed from that of Colonel Sleeman only in regard to the surplus revenue, which he proposed to expend entirely for the benefit of the royal family and the people of Oude. Lord Dalhousie, on the other hand, remarked that the revenue of the country might be expected largely to increase under the judicious management of our own officers, and that the British Government would not be justified in making over so considerable a surplus to the reigning sovereign, to be unprofitably squandered in the follies, vices, and excesses of a native court. He considered that the British Government ought to be at liberty to devote to the general advantage of the Indian empire some portion of that surplus of which its own exertions would have been the sole origin and creative cause. He likewise urged, that the arrangement should be perpetual and not transitory. He cited the cases of Hyderabad and Nagpore, where the country had flourished under British management, and had been desolated when restored to the native princes.
The members of Council unanimously concurred in the opinion that the Government of India could no longer postpone the assumption of the entire administration, but they were divided in their views regarding the mode in which this was to be effected, two of them siding with Lord Dalhousie, and two others voting for a more radical measure. General Low, who had been Resident at Lucknow, and was thoroughly acquainted with the condition of the people and the Government, and who had, moreover, recently resisted the annexation of Nagpore, declared it to be his deliberate opinion that “the disorders of Oude were of so long
standing and so deeply rooted, and the corruption of the public officers so general and so inveterate that there was now no other remedy available for effecting and maintaining a just government over the people of Oude than that of placing the whole of its territory, exclusively and permanently, under the direct management of the East India Company.” In a subsequent Minute he said “the scheme I advocate may be considered harsh towards the king himself, individually, but I contend that it would only be a fulfilment of our own obligations to the people of Oude.” He wished, however, to avoid the assertion contained in Lord Dalhousie’s Minute, that the king should retain his sovereignty, and desired to substitute for it that he should retain the rank and title, and all the honours heretofore enjoyed by him as sovereign of Oude. He saw no objection to the application of the surplus revenue to the general interests of the empire, but proposed that “after a bond fide peaceful and beneficial government to the inhabitants of the country should be fully established in the Oude territory, the king should receive an addition of three or four lacs a-year to his income.” The Minute of Mr. – now Sir Barnes – Peacock, the legislative Member of Council, was replete with the refinements of legal analysis, and concluded with advising that in conformity with the proposal of the Governor-General, the province of Oude should not be declared British territory, but that the civil and military administration should be vested in the Company. Mr. Doris earnestly seconded the recommendation of Lord Dalhousie that the transfer of power should be permanent. In support of this opinion he cited the recent case of the raja of Sorapore, who had been carefully trained as a minor by the Governor of Bombay, but when invested with the Government of his principality on coming of age, so completely disorganized the administration in one short year, that no respectable adherent was safe under his auspices. This case of failure, he remarked, “teaches us the bitter lesson that, with all our care, we may still be unable to impress on the minds of the native princes of India, even with education, a proper
sense of their responsibilities.” But he recommended that the king of Oude should be required to abdicate his sovereignty, and that the province should be incorporated with the possessions of the British Crown. Mr. – now Sir John – Grant, Governor of Jamaica, took up the subject from a different point of view, and brought his extraordinary powers of argumentation to bear on the discussion of it, but he coincided with Mr. Dorin, and came to the conclusion that “the incorporation of Oude with the territories administered by the British Indian Government was the best measure on the whole, which could be adopted for the good government of the people, and that the East India Company had a clear right to adopt it.”
These Minutes were transmitted to England. It was a great and important question, and it received earnest and conscientious deliberation for two months, when the Court of Directors, the Board of Control, and the Cabinet, came to the unanimous determination to overrule the advice of Lord Dalhousie, and to adopt what he had endeavoured to dissuade them from, as an “extreme measure,” the annexation of the territory and the abolition of the throne; – thus ended the sovereignty of Oude. In communicating his Minute to the India House, Lord Dalhousie had stated, that if they considered his experience of eight years likely to arm him with greater authority for carrying their decision into effect than a Governor-General just entering on the Government, he was ready to undertake the duty, though it would doubtless be assailed by those who were ever on the watch to attack the policy of the Indian Government. On the arrival of the orders from England, he prepared to carry them into execution with promptitude, though so ill as scarcely to be able to move. A body of troops was moved up to the frontier. General Outram was instructed to endeavour to persuade the king to sign the treaty which transferred the government to the Company. He received the communication with an undignified burst of tears, said he was a miserable wretch, and placed his turban in the lap of the Resident; he positively
refused to affix his signature to the treaty, and a Proclamation was accordingly issued, declaring the province of Oude to be a component part of the British empire in India. Not a blow was struck in favour of the dynasty; there were no popular risings, and the whole body of the people went over peaceably to their new rulers. An allowance of fifteen lacs of rupees a-year – more than a seventh of the revenues of the country – was allotted for the support of the king and his palace guards. An elaborate scheme of administration, on the model of that of the Punjab, was drawn up by Lord Dalhousie, which embraced every possible contingency in every department. Compared with the plan of government for Bengal drafted eighty years before by the first Governor-General, Warren Hastings – who was in no respect inferior to the last, – it exhibits a proof of the vast progress which had been intermediately made in the science of oriental administration.
The assumption of the Government of Oude was the fulfilment of a sacred obligation to the people, which had for half a century been acknowledged without exception by all the public officers, not excepting even those who advocated the continuance of native dynasties. The condition of that province was forcibly delineated in an eloquent article which appeared in the columns of the leading journal of England several years before the annexation. “Rebellion and deposition,” the writer remarked, “were the correctives of despotism, in India. This remedy we have taken away from the inhabitants of the states still governed by native princes. We give those princes power without responsibility. Our hand of iron maintains them on the throne despite their imbecility, their vices, and their crimes. The result is in most of these states a chronic anarchy, under which the revenues of the state are dissipated between the mercenaries of the camp and the minions of the court. The heavy and arbitrary taxes levied on the miserable ryots serve only to feed the meanest and the most degenerate of mankind. The theory seems in fact admitted, that government is not for the people
but for the king, and that so long as we secure him his sinecure royalty, we discharge all the duty that we, as sovereigns of India, owe to his subjects, who are virtually ours.” It was from this deplorable condition that Lord Dalhousie’s measure was intended to relieve Oude. The abolition of the throne and of the king’s sovereignty, were added to it by the home authorities. The equity and justice of the measure were not impaired by the revolt of the province in the succeeding year. The large and powerful body of zemindars, from whose tyranny we were anxious to deliver the people, were not likely to neglect the opportunity of rising against us when they saw our power in Hindostan shaken to its foundation, and Oude left with only a mere handful of European troops, – not a tenth of the number left in the Punjab to maintain our authority on its annexation. Neither was it to be expected that when 40,000 Oude sepoys were in a state of mutiny, their kinsmen and connections, forming, according to the estimate of the Resident, one tenth of the population would remain firm in their allegiance to a foreign power which appeared to be tottering. The rescue of five millions of people from a state of the deepest misery was, notwithstanding the mutiny, an act of benevolence which Lord Dalhousie might justly congratulate himself on having had an opportunity of performing.
The period of Lord Dalhousie’s administration, which extended to eight years, was rendered memorable, not less by administrative reforms and material progress, than by its political results. There was no division of the public service in any portion of the empire, which his keen eye did not penetrate, and into which his strong hand did not introduce substantial reforms. He simplified and lubricated the whole machinery of the Government. He had an unconquerable aversion to what he considered the cumbersome and obstructive agency of Boards, and he considered individual responsibility to be the secret of success in public business. He abolished the Board of Customs, Salt
and Opium, and transferred its duties to the Board of Revenue which he, unhappily, left standing, but which the depopulation of Orissa by famine in the present year – chiefly through its supineness – will doubtless consign to the tomb. In no branch of the service were his reforms more radical and more beneficial than in the military department. He had not been many months in India, before the approach of the second Punjab war and its exigencies, convinced him of the necessity of a complete reorganization of our whole system of military economy, and he remarked that he would have demolished the venerable and senile Military Board at once, if he did not apprehend that the Court might exclaim, “What is the boy about?”
The Board was not only viciously constituted, but loaded with duties, which could not have been efficiently performed by it, even if its organization had been perfect. After a complete investigation of the subject, he withdrew from its control, in the first instance, the Army Commissariat, one of the most important departments of the army, on the efficiency of which its movements in the field depend. It was placed in the hands of a Commissary-General; and the practice of keeping accounts in Persian, which had lingered for nearly a century was at the same time abolished, and they were ordered to be rendered at once in English: Next followed the Stud department, which, at the suggestion of the Court of Directors, was invigorated by unity of control and responsibility. In like manner, the Ordnance Commissariat, with its powder manufactures, gun foundry and gun carriage agency, was placed under a single officer.
The Board had likewise been laden with the superintendence of all public works, and in no department of duty had our failure been more palpable and more flagrant. Compared with our Mohamedan predecessors, we had nothing to show for our dynasty; and it was not inaptly remarked, that if we were obliged to quit the country there would remain no token of our rule but empty soda water bottles. The Court of Directors became at length fully alive
to the scandal of this neglect, and ordered a Commission of enquiry to be appointed at each Presidency. It was on the receipt of their report that Lord Dalhousie proceeded to reorganize the system, root and branch. The charge of the works was withdrawn from the Board – which was then abolished – and a Public Works Department became one of the institutions of Government, with a separate Secretary, not only to the Government of India, but to that of each Presidency. The responsibility of management was vested in a Chief Engineer, assisted by executive officers and subordinates appointed from England, and youths trained in the College of Roorkee, and at the corresponding colleges founded in Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay. This was, in fact, to supply the need which had long been felt in India of a civil engineering establishment. To secure the uninterrupted progress of these works, which had previously been prosecuted by spasmodic efforts, it was ordered that a schedule of all the undertakings which it was proposed to commence, or to carry on during the year, at each Presidency, and under each commissionership – now designated the budget – should be submitted at the beginning of the year to the Government of India. Funds were supplied with a lavish hand. The liberality with which Lord Dalhousie fed this department, which had been famished for many years, may be gathered from the fact, that while the entire sum expended during the seventeen preceding years, including the repairs of civil and military buildings, had not on an average exceeded seventeen lacs of rupees a-year, the expenditure in the last year of his administration fell little short of three hundred lacs.
The cause of education received special encouragement from Lord Dalhousie. Mr. Thomason, the enlightened Governor of the north-west provinces, had established a Government vernacular school in each revenue division of certain districts under his charge. The experiment was attended with such signal success, that Lord Dalhousie resolved to extend the system to the whole of the north-west provinces
as well as to Bengal and the Punjab – but vernacular education has never yet been duly appreciated by those who have hitherto exercised power in Bengal. At the suggestion of Mr. Bethune, the legislative Member of Council, who devoted his time and his purse to the cause of female education, Lord Dalhousie officially announced that the education of females was considered by the British Government an object of national importance, and he was the first Governor-General who had the courage to proclaim this doctrine in the teeth of native prejudices. On the death of Mr. Bethune, he took on himself the support of the female school established by him. It was while engaged in devising plans for the improvement of education that he received the celebrated despatch of Sir Charles Wood, of July, 1854, which has justly been denominated “the Intellectual Charter of India,” and which Lord Dalhousie described as “containing a scheme of education for all India, far wider and more comprehensive than the local or the Supreme Government could have ventured to suggest.” It embraced vernacular schools throughout the districts; Government colleges of a higher character, a university at each Presidency, to which all educational establishments, supported by the state, or by societies, or by individuals, might be affiliated; and above all, the glorious measure of grants in aid to all schools, without reference to caste or creed. Lord Dalhousie took immediate measures to carry out this large scheme; organized a distinct department of public instruction, and placed it under the responsibility of a Director-General, with a suitable staff of assistants.
The revenue of India was advanced during Lord Dalhousie’s administration from twenty-six to thirty lacs of rupees. Yet, such is the elasticity of the resources of India under our scientific management, that even this large amount has since been augmented fifty per cent., and the income now stands at forty-five crores of rupees. The wars in which the Government of India had been engaged, with little interruption for more than ten years, had absorbed
thirty crores of rupees, and entailed an annual deficit; but for some little time after they had ceased there was a trifling surplus. The deficiency which appeared again during the last two years of Lord Dalhousie’s rule, was occasioned by the copious expenditure which he authorized in the department of public works for the improvement of the country. During the period of eight years now under review, the commerce of Bombay was developed to an extraordinary extent, and that of Calcutta was doubled. The coasting trade was liberated from every obstruction; many improvements were sanctioned in the various ports from Kerachee to Rangoon, and lighthouses erected in dangerous parts of the Indian and eastern seas. Lord Dalhousie’s attention was equally bestowed on the improvement of internal navigation. Steamers were placed on the “silent Indus,” for periodical trips between Mooltan and Kerachee, the port of Sinde, destined one day to be the emporium of the trade of the Punjab and of Central Asia, but neither has this undertaking nor that of the guaranteed Company, which has since continued to work it, been marked by success. They have only served to demonstrate more clearly the necessity of completing the Sinde railway to expand the commerce of the Punjab – and, not less, to bring its capital within forty hours of the sea, which is the basis of our security. After the conquest of Pegu, Lord Dalhousie transferred half the steam flotilla of Government to the delta of the Irrawaddy, a country abounding in rivers, but destitute of roads. The apprehension which was entertained of interruption to the commerce of Calcutta from the silting up of the Hooghly led him to contemplate the establishment of an auxiliary port, and after careful surveys, he fixed upon the Mutlah, a channel in the Soonderbuns, twenty-eight miles east of Calcutta, which presents every facility of navigation for the largest vessels. Anticipating the future importance of the settlement, whenever its advantages should be fairly developed, he adopted the precaution of purchasing on behalf of Government, and for an inconsiderable sum, the large estate on which stood the site selected for the
new port. To the latest period of his administration he laboured earnestly to promote the undertaking; but, by one of the caprices of fortune, the port has been ungratefully named after his successor, who treated the whole project with supreme contempt. Lord Dalhousie likewise gave every encouragement to the project of a bridge across the Hooghly, at Calcutta, which, after the establishment of the railway, became an indispensable necessity. Boring operations were commenced under his auspices; but twelve years have since been allowed to elapse without any further progress in a work, which, if he had been in power, would long have been completed.
Private posts had long been established in India by the mercantile community, but Government had thought fit to abolish them under heavy penalties. The postage by the public mail was, for a poor population like that of India, prohibitory, and it was felt to be a severe tax even by the merchants. The importance of conferring on India the boon of cheap and uniform postage which had long been enjoyed in England, had frequently been suggested and discussed, but without any practical result, as is usually the case when there is not a resolute spirit of energy at the source of power. Lord Dalhousie took up the subject with his accustomed zeal, and appointed a commission, consisting of an experienced civilian from each Presidency, to revise the postal system of the empire, and to suggest improvements. Their report was submitted to the authorities in England, and, with their concurrence, Lord Dalhousie proceeded to remodel the postal economy of India, which he placed under one Director-General. He established a uniform rate of half an anna, or three farthings, for letters of a given weight, irrespective of distance, to be levied by means of stamps. He likewise procured a reduction of the rate of postage between England and India, and took no little pride in an arrangement by which, as he said, “the Scotch recruit at Peshawar might write to his mother at John O’Groat’s house for sixpence.” Of all the improvements of Lord Dalhousie’s administration there was none
which conferred on the population a blessing so universally felt as the privilege of sending letters through the length and breadth of the land, if necessary, to a distance of two thousand miles, at a cost which placed the means of correspondence within the reach of the poorest.
No Governor-General has ever traversed the vast dominions committed to his care to the same extent as Lord Dalhousie. He visited the Punjab, Madras, Pegu, and Sinde, investigating the state of the country and of the administration with his own eyes, and immediately turning his observations to practical account. Nor did he overlook the Straits settlements of Penang, Malacca, and Singapore which had been visited but once by the head of the state. It was when inspecting the jail at Penang, that he perceived something resembling a gibbet within the walls, and found upon enquiry that it was the gallows on which criminals were executed. He ordered it immediately to be placed without, with the facetious remark that if its position came to be known in England, he should be liable to an impeachment for having permitted an infringement of the most ancient and indefeasible right of an Englishman, – to be hung in public. In order to keep the Government of India constantly and fully acquainted with the state of each division of the empire, he established the rule that the Governor of each Presidency and the chief of each province should annually transmit a report of every event of importance, and of the progress which had been made in the several departments. These reports have proved of the highest value. They have enabled the controlling authorities in England and in India to trace the progress of improvement in each province, year by year, and to compare the state of one province with that of another. They also furnish materials from which the nations of Europe may estimate the extent to which England is fulfilling her mission of civilization in India.
The great importance which Lord Dalhousie attached to the construction of roads and canals
has been illustrated in a preceding chapter by a reference to the great works with which he endowed the Punjab. Other provinces and districts were likewise benefited by improved means of communication, but two undertakings deserve to be selected for particular notice. No sooner had Pegu become a British province, than Lord Dalhousie perceived the necessity of connecting it with Bengal by a military road, and thus obviate the objections of the sepoys to the sea. A road was constructed from Dacca to Aracan, but not without a great sacrifice of life and money. To pass from Aracan to Pegu, it was necessary to cross the Yoma range through the Toungoo pass, which presented such formidable obstacles to the engineer that the construction of a road appeared at first an impracticable undertaking. The mountains were lofty; the forests were dense; water was scarce, and labour still more so, and the climate was so pestiferous as to reduce the working season to five months in the year. It was entrusted to Lieutenant For-long, who succeeded in collecting, embodying, and training a brigade of Burmese labourers, and by his untiring zeal and energy completed the enterprise in two years. Another arduous and important work, executed under the orders of the Governor-General, was the road intended to stretch from the plains of Hindostan to the frontiers of Tibet. The first portion of it extended from Kalka, where it left the plains, to Simla, 7,800 feet above the level of the sea, a distance of about fifty miles, and it was accomplished with a gradient of not more than three feet in a hundred. From Simla the road advanced to Chini, through the valleys, forests, and cliffs of the mighty range of the Himalayas; but the skill and perseverance of the engineer officers, and more especially of Lieutenant Briggs, animated by the deep interest Lord Dalhousie took in the work, surmounted every difficulty. The vale of Chini, the favourite residence of Lord Dalhousie when in the hills, is surrounded by the most sublime scenery in the world, and faces the magnificent Koilas, 21,000 feet above the level of the sea, the fabled paradise of the god Shiva. It is one of the most salubrious and
lovely spots yet discovered in India; and produces the most luxuriant grapes at an elevation of 8,700 feet. One object of constructing the road was to establish a convalescent depot for European soldiers. Nor was Lord Dalhousie without a hope that when it was completed, it might attract the traffic of Tibet, now transported in packs on the shoulders of goats. The Ganges Canal was sanctioned and commenced before the arrival of Lord Dalhousie; but it was advancing at so sluggish a pace, that the sum expended on it from the beginning had not exceeded seventeen lacs of rupees. He considered it a work of paramount importance, and pressed it forward with great ardour, allowing no financial pressure and no exigencies of war to interrupt its progress. The sum expended under his direction in the course of six years exceeded a crore and a-half of rupees. The main stream was for the first time opened by a grand ceremonial, over which Mr. Colvin presided, on the 8th April, 1854. The canal, in its class and character, stands among the noblest efforts of civilized nations. It nearly equals the aggregate length of all the lines of the four greatest canals in France, and its length is five times greater than that of all the main lines in Lombardy. This gigantic work was designed and completed by Colonel Cautley, and seldom has the star of the Bath, which adorns his breast been so richly earned by pacific labours in the service of humanity.
The Ganges Canal was pressed forward by the Governor-General with a spirit of zeal proportioned to the value he attached to it, but the immediate superintendence of Colonel Cautley’s labours devolved on Mr. Thomason, the Lieutenant-Governor of the north-west provinces. He was not permitted to see the completion of it; before its waters began to fertilize the country his eyes were closed in death, just as he had been rewarded for his successful administration of ten years by the governorship of Madras. In 1832, he resolved to quit the honourable post he held in Calcutta, in order to make himself acquainted with the economy of our system of government in the interior. He took charge of the large and
populous district of Azimgar, on the borders of Oude, where in five years he acquired that intimate knowledge of the working of our institutions which was of the greatest service when he came to rule the Presidency. He was subsequently raised to the post of foreign secretary, and was in attendance, during his tour in the north-west provinces, on Lord Ellenborough, who, with his characteristic discernment of talent, selected him for the Lieutenant-Governorship of the north-west provinces. At the same time, Lord Ellenborough exhibited a noble instance of disinterestedness by relinquishing the patronage of that Presidency, which, as well as that of Bengal, had hitherto been vested in the Governor-General, and transferring it to the officers charged with the responsibility of governing them. Mr. Thomason occupies a very high rank among the great administrators of the Company, and his long, beneficent, and vigorous administration reflected honour on the British name in India. Every cold season, he was in the habit of making a tour through the various districts in his jurisdiction, which gave him a complete acquaintance with the circumstances and wants of the people, and the qualifications of his subordinate officers, and likewise afforded him an opportunity of conciliating the confidence of the most influential men in each district by personal intercourse. He devoted great attention in the revenue department to the establishment of an equitable and moderate assessment, and the definition of boundaries, the absence of which was one of the most fruitful sources of litigation and crime, as well as to the completion of proprietary records, which he laboured to render accessible to the native public. But his warmest and most zealous efforts were directed to the promotion of education, and more particularly of vernacular tuition; and well did he earn the eulogy of Lord Dalhousie, when, in announcing the loss the country had sustained by his death, he said, that “though Mr. Thomason had left no other memorial of his public life behind him, his system of general vernacular education, which is all his own, would have sufficed to build up for him a noble and abiding monument of his earthly career.”
The system of railways, which is working a greater and more beneficial change in the social, political, and commercial condition of India than has been known at any former period of its history, is due to the indefatigable exertions of Lord Dalhousie. The question had been for some time under discussion, when Mr. – now Sir Macdonald – Stephenson proceeded to Calcutta in 1843, with the hope of drawing the attention of Government and of the public to its importance. Lord Ellenborough pronounced the whole project to be moonshine; but his temporary successor, Mr. Wilberforce Bird, announced, in an official communication, that the Government was fully alive to the value of the proposal, and would recommend it to the Court of Directors. About the same time, Mr. Chapman endeavoured to secure the patronage of the Bombay Government, and succeeded in laying the foundation of the Great India. Peninsular Rail; and Mr. Andrew likewise brought his local knowledge and zeal to the aid of the cause. Mr. Stephenson returned to England and formed a Company for the construction of a railway through the valley of the Ganges, from Calcutta to Delhi. The commercial disasters of 1846 and 1847, which indisposed the public to all railway enterprises, gave his task for some time the appearance of a forlorn hope, but his indomitable energy and perseverance surmounted every obstacle, and enabled him to give a fair start to the East India Railway Company, the largest of these Indian undertakings, – which now works a capital of twenty-five crores of rupees, and embraces 1,500 miles of line. It was manifest that, under the most favourable circumstances, a railway project in so remote and unexplored a field of labour, could not attract public confidence without the material support of Government. But, for a long time, the public authorities in Leadenhall Street and in Calcutta, persisted in limiting the aid of the state to the grant of the land, an insignificant item of expense in India. The eventual assent of the Court of Directors to the indispensable concession of a pecuniary guarantee was secured by the enlightened views and earnestness of
Sir James Hogg, to whom the cause of the railway is not much less indebted in England, than to Lord Dalhousie in India. In the year 1848, a guarantee of five per cent. was granted on two short and experimental lines in the neighbourhood of Calcutta and Bombay. Every subsequent concession was, however, preceded by a severe struggle at the India House, and in 1852, the total number of miles sanctioned for the whole continent of India did not exceed two hundred. But the Court came gradually to appreciate the importance of the undertaking, and, in referring the various applications which had been made to them, to the consideration of Lord Dalhousie in 1852, expressed their wish “that India should, without unnecessary loss of time, possess the immense advantage of a regular and well-devised system of railway communications.”
The question could not have been placed in the hands of one better qualified to do justice to it. Lord Dalhousie had been at the head of the Board of Trade during the most active period of railway enterprise in England, and had become master of the principles and details of the system. With this pre-eminent advantage he united large and comprehensive views of imperial policy. In the memorable Minute which he transmitted to the Court of Directors on the 20th April, 1853, and which became the basis of the railway system of India, he expressed his hope that the limited section of experimental line heretofore sanctioned by them would no longer form the standard for railway works in India. A glance upon the map, he remarked, would recall to mind the vast extent of the empire, the various classes and interests it included, the wide distance which separated the points at which hostile attacks might at any time be expected, the expenditure of time, treasure, and life, involved in the ordinary routine of military movements, and the comparative handful of men scattered over its surface who have been the conquerors of the country, and now hold it in subjection. This glance would suffice to show how immeasurable would be the political advantages of a system of internal communication by
which intelligence of every event should be transmitted to the Government at a speed, under all circumstances, exceeding fivefold its present rate, and Government would be enabled to bring the main bulk of its military strength to bear upon any given point in as many days as it now required months. The commercial and social advantages India would derive from the rail were beyond all calculation. Great tracks were teeming with produce we could not transport, and new markets were opening to us under circumstances which defy the foresight of the wisest to estimate their probable value, or calculate their future extent. A system of railways judiciously selected and formed would Surely and rapidly give rise within this empire to the same encouragement of enterprise, the same multiplication of produce, the same discovery of latent forces, the same increase of national wealth that have marked the introduction of improved and extended communications in the various kingdoms of the western world. With a railway, moreover, touching every important military station from Calcutta to the Sutlege, native states would be deterred from resorting to combined attacks; and the army now maintained, might, it was probable, be numerically reduced without diminishing our military strength. With the aid of the rail carried up to the Indus, the risks involved in the extension of our frontier to a distance of 1,500 miles from the capital of the country would be infinitely diminished. Peshawar would, in fact, be reached in less time and with greater facility than Moorshedabad, though only seventy miles distant from Calcutta, was reached in the days of Clive. He already anticipated the great improvement in the conveyance of troops from England, which, after the lapse of fourteen years, has been at length consummated. “If,” he said, “when the Egyptian railway is completed, permission could be obtained to send troops through Egypt, a corps might leave England after the heat of the summer was over, and be quartered before Christmas on the banks of the Sutlege, without any exposure on its way, and with four months before it of the finest climate under the sun, and, withal, in less time and with less
trouble, than it could now march from Calcutta to Benares.” He then proceeded to lay down a system of railways for the whole continent which should connect the Presidencies with each other, and form the great trunk lines. He entered into a minute analysis of the various lines which sought the patronage of Government, and pointed out their respective merits and demerits, and his judgment in each case has been abundantly confirmed by time and experience. He advocated the construction of the lines by public companies sustained by a Government guarantee, and “directly, but not vexatiously controlled by the Government of the country, acting for the interests of the public on the principle for which I contended” – when at the Board of Trade – “and I may venture, without arrogance, to add, that if the principle had been then more fully recognized, the proprietors of railway property in England, and the suffering public would have been in a better condition now than they appear to be.” The bitter experience of the fourteen years which have elapsed since these remarks were recorded by him has served to give them additional weight, and to render this melancholy truth more grievously apparent. But, while England pays the penalty of a hundred millions sterling for the rejection of Lord Dalhousie’s advice, India will always have reason to rejoice that the construction of her railway economy fell to the lot of one who combined with a solid judgment and mature experience, the power to turn them to account.
This communication reached England at an auspicious juncture. The Court of Directors had already indicated their desire to establish a system of railways in India, but they might have been staggered by the boldness and magnitude of Lord Dalhousie’s scheme. Happily, the question of the renewal of the Charter was at the time under the consideration of Parliament. Night after night were they assailed for their shortcomings in the management of the national estate entrusted to them, and Mr. Bright, in one of his most fiery philippics, more particularly denounced their
neglect to establish the means of communication in India. If any hesitation was felt in Leadenhall Street to sanction the grand proposals of the Governor-General, it soon ceased to exist, and a guarantee upon a capital of twelve millions was at once granted. Upon the broad foundation thus laid by the Governor-General, the Indian authorities at home have raised a noble superstructure. In the course of fourteen years they have increased their guarantee from twelve crores to eighty, for the construction of 4,200 miles of line, and, at the present rate of progression, they will not stop short at a hundred crores. Of the sum expended on these Indian railways, only about three per cent. has been contributed by native capitalists and Europeans in India; the remainder has been supplied by the London Stock Exchange. There are not wanting philosophers who assert that England gains nothing by her connection with India, and would lose nothing by cutting her adrift; but there cannot be two opinions on the inestimable advantage which India derives from her annexation to England, which not only gives her a strong and beneficent government, the security of life and property, and the unrestricted pursuit of wealth and happiness, but enables her to draw from the inexhaustible mine of British capital, whatever resources are necessary for material improvements. It was at one time surmised that the priesthood would take umbrage at this innovation, and that the unchangeable habits and traditional prejudices of the Hindoos would present a serious obstacle to the success of the rail; but these fancies were dispelled before the line had been six months in operation. The brahmins, with all their religious conservatism, hailed it with delight, folded up their caste prejudices, and travelled third class with those whose touch was pollution. At a meeting, moreover, of the Dhurmu Subha in Calcutta, the great sanhedrim of Hindoo orthodoxy, which had petitioned the Privy Council for the restoration of the “sacred rite “of suttee, it was unanimously determined that pilgrims might freely avail themselves of the rail, which, considering that the merit of pilgrimage diminishes in proportion
to the ease with which it can be performed, was a concession of no small merit. Travelling by rail became at once, and still continues, a national passion, and the number of passengers conveyed during the last year of account, on the 2,500 miles open, exceeded twelve millions, of whom ninety-five per cent. were of the third class.
Another benefit conferred on the commercial and political interests of India by Lord Dalhousie, was the Electric Telegraph. The system owes its existence to the professional enterprise and the persevering industry of Dr. – now Sir William – O’Shaughnessy. After a series of experiments continued for many years in which every failure became a new element of success, he succeeded in laying a line from Calcutta to the sea at Kedgeree, which proved to be of the highest value during the Burmese war. Lord Dalhousie had watched these experiments with deep interest, and on receiving from Dr. O’Shaughnessy in April, 1852, a report of the successful working of the experimental line, lost no time in transmitting his views on the subject to the Court of Directors. He said, “the complete success of the experimental line has added intensity to the ardent desire I have entertained ever since the first report was submitted, to see the main line of electric telegraph between Calcutta and Peshawar, Bombay and Calcutta, and Madras and Calcutta, fairly commenced before I quit India next year. Since then the early establishment of the electric telegraph is all important, alike to the Government and to the community in India; since it has been shown to be practicable, safe, cheap, and profitable, I make my most earnest personal solicitation to the Honourable Court of Directors, that they will authorize the immediate construction of a line or lines from Calcutta to Agra, to Bombay, to Peshawar, and to Madras, either simultaneously, or as soon as possible, in the order in which they are placed in my list. Everything, all the world over, moves faster now a days, than it used to do, except the transaction of Indian business.” He then proceeded to remark, that, what with the number of
functionaries, boards, references, correspondences, and the several Governments in India, what with the distances, the consultation of the several authorities in England, the reference to India for further information, and the fresh correspondence arising from it, the progress of any great public measure, even when all were equally disposed to promote it, was often discouragingly slow. To obviate these obstructions, he directed Dr. O’Shaughnessy to proceed to England simultaneously with the despatch, and place himself in personal communication with the Court of Directors, and afford them every information on the subject. Happily, Sir James Hogg was in the Chair at the India House, and he took the same interest in promoting the project of the telegraph as he had that of the railway. It was carried through the various stages with such cordiality and promptitude that, within a week of the arrival of Lord Dalhousie’s despatch, it had received the sanction of the Court and of the Board of Control, and a despatch conveying this gratifying intelligence was on its way to India. There had been no parallel to the expedition of these movements within the memory of the oldest functionary at the India House. Dr. O’Shaughnessy returned to India with all the necessary apparatus, and a large staff; the construction of the telegraph from Calcutta to Agra was commenced at the end of 1853, and more than 3,000 miles were covered with the wires in the course of fifteen months. Considering the local difficulties presented by the rivers and the swamps, the jungles and the mountains, Lord Dalhousie was fully justified in affirming that the electric telegraph in India might challenge comparison with any public enterprise which had been carried into execution in recent times, among the nations of Europe or America. The establishment of these telegraph lines, which now extend over not less than 12,000 miles, have fully answered the expectations of the Governor-General by increasing the security of the empire, and multiplying the facilities of governing it. Even his most ambitious anticipations have been realized by the
progress of science and the energies of civilization. “It may yet be hoped,” he wrote, “that the system of electric telegraphs in India may one day be linked with those which envelope Europe, and which already seek to stretch across the Atlantic.” The Governor-General is able now to hold communication with the Secretary of State in London between breakfast and dinner, and a message from New York has been conveyed to Calcutta in less than twenty-four hours. Since the days of Lord Wellesley, who was at one time without intelligence from England for seven months, the appliances for maintaining our dominion in India have been augmented to an indefinite degree. The reasonable apprehensions once entertained that the extension of the boundaries of the empire would increase its insecurity, have vanished before the miracles of modern science. Steam and electricity have given an irresistible strength to European power in Asia. The British Government in India is now prepared for every emergency. If, at the period of the Sepoy mutiny, when the British empire was exposed to the greatest danger it had ever encountered, the Government had possessed the advantages which have since been created, – telegraphic wires pervading every district, and stretching to London, magnificent steam transports on both sides the Isthmus of Suez, with the Egyptian rail as the connecting link, railways radiating from Bombay and extending throughout the country – any number of European troops might have reached the north-west provinces from England within five weeks of the outbreak at Meerut, and the mutiny would have been crushed in the bud.
Lord Dalhousie embarked at Calcutta on the 6th March, 1856, for England. The whole population, moved by a feeling of admiration of the great ruler who had enlarged and consolidated the empire, and enriched it with solid and lasting improvements, crowded the plain to testify their regret at his departure. Eight years of incessant toil in the service of his country had completely exhausted his constitution, and after a painful and lingering
illness of more than four years, he sunk into the grave on the 19th December, 1860. His administration marks a new and important era of civilization in India. The principle of uninterrupted progression which has since characterized the movements of Government is due to the impulse which he communicated to it. To his genius is to be ascribed the grateful fact that the India of 1867 presents so pre-eminent a contrast to the India of 1847. He grasped the largest projects for the improvement of the country, and his views of policy were of imperial magnitude. In all his measures he exhibited a clear intellect, a sound judgment, and deep sagacity, while his firmness of purpose and resolution of character turned all these qualifications to the highest account. He communicated vigour to the administration by exacting a rigid performance of duty from all under him, and he set them the example of his own intense application to public business, to which, by a noble devotion, he sacrificed leisure, ease, comfort, and even health. He investigated every question that came before him with great patience and diligence, and with a scrupulous desire to be right. He marshalled all the arguments which could be adduced on both sides of it, and always recorded weighty reasons for whatever decision he formed, the soundness of which was seldom questioned either by his colleagues, or by the public in India. If he had little imagination for the sensitive feelings of princes who represented ancient and effete dynasties, the absence of it was in some degree compensated by his compassion for their misgoverned subjects; and his administration was distinguished throughout by incessant efforts to benefit the people, whether in our own territories or independent states. The present age is inclined to form its judgment of his administration from the narrow point of his refusal to commit the government of Satara, Jhansi, and Nagpore to three lads, when he was authorized by the ancient law of India, and the orders of his superiors in England, to incorporate those states with the territories of the paramount power – and thus bestow on them the blessing of a British
administration. When this error has had its day, and his administration comes to be surveyed in its broad dimensions, it will be apparent that he exhibited perhaps the finest example which ancient or modem history affords, of what can be accomplished for the benefit of mankind by an enlightened despotism acting upon a large theatre.
Lord Dalhousie has been censured for not having foreseen the mutiny, and provided against it. It has been noted against him, that the only allusion to the native army in the Minute in which he reviewed his administration was, that “the position of the native soldier in India had long been such as to leave hardly any circumstance of his condition in need of improvement, while the condition of the European soldier, on the other hand, was susceptible of great improvement, and had received it liberally.” This had reference to the condition in which the sepoy had been placed by his indulgent masters, not to his feeling towards them. The repeated acts of insubordination exhibited by the sepoys convinced Lord Dalhousie that the native army was no longer to be depended on; but neither he nor Sir Henry Lawrence, nor any other public functionary, ever dreamt that a hundred thousand sepoys, after all the attention which had been bestowed on their comforts, would rise as one man, massacre their officers, and endeavour to subvert the Government. Such an anticipation would have been deemed as wild and improbable as that the United States of America were likely to be plunged into a civil war, and to prosecute it on the grandest scale the world had ever seen. The constitution of the native army was vicious in the extreme. Two fifths of the sepoys were drawn from a single province, and the fraternity thus established in the various regiments, caused every feeling of irritation to vibrate through the whole body. It was impossible for Lord Dalhousie to eradicate this fundamental defect, and the only practicable mode of averting its consequence, was to re-establish the proportion between European and native troops, which from the days of
Lord Cornwallis had been considered essential to our safety. He had fixed the proportion at one to three, but not less than one to four; it had now been reduced to the dangerous scale of one to six. To this vital question Lord Dalhousie bent his earnest attention. During the Crimean war the Ministry announced their intention to withdraw two European regiments from India, but Lord Dalhousie raised the strongest objections to it. In his Minute on the subject he stated that “the withdrawal of European troops from India to Europe would weaken the essential element of our strength; if European troops were farther withdrawn for service in the Persian gulf, he could no longer feel, or express, the same confidence as before, that the security and stability of our position would remain unassailed.” He confidently submitted to the candour of Her Majesty’s Ministers, that “placed as it is amidst distances so vast – amidst multitudes so innumerable – amidst peoples and sects various in many things, but all alike in this, that they are the lately conquered subjects of our race, alien to them in religion, in language, in colour, in habits, in all feelings and interests, the Government of India has had solid ground for the declaration more than once made of late years, that the European force at its command is not more than adequate for preserving the empire in security and tranquillity even in ordinary times,” much less then, in circumstances of political difficulty. The regiments were, notwithstanding, withdrawn both to the Crimea and to the Persian gulf, and when the mutiny broke forth, the entire force of European infantry at all the Presidencies had been reduced to thirty-one battalions, and there were only two regiments between Calcutta and Agra, a distance of 800 miles, amidst a population of fifty millions. Treble that number, under a Gillespie or a Havelock would have been sufficient to strike terror into the mutineers, and to restore our authority. On the last day Lord Dalhousie presided in Council, he laid on the table nine Minutes in which he stated his mature and final views regarding the condition of the army and the requirements of the
country. He considered it essential to increase the European battalions to thirty-seven, and to reduce the sepoy army by 14,000 men, and thus to protect the Government from the hazard to which it was exposed by the disproportion of the sepoy force.
Lord Dalhousie has been charged not only with having neglected to foresee the mutiny, but with having been himself the cause of it. When the intelligence of this catastrophe reached England, the nation became wild with excitement at the prospect of losing the empire, – in which it had manifested but little interest before, – and swelled with indignation at the atrocities of the sepoys. In this state of feeling, a national victim was required, and it was found in the person of the late Governor-General. Those who had always been opposed to annexation came to the conclusion that it had now produced the result they had long foreseen, of shaking our empire in India to its foundations. “Lord Dalhousie’s annexation policy has caused the mutiny,” was echoed through the land. A dictum thus pronounced by men who were supposed to understand India relieved the mind from the labour of thought, and became an article of faith. All his services were forgotten in the tragedy which “his lust of territorial aggrandisement” had created; and instead of receiving the ovation due to a great statesman who had enlarged the dominions of England, and planted the seeds of a great civilization among a fifth of the human race, his name became a scandal and a reproach. The investigations which have since been made have tended to show the fallacy of this hasty assumption. That the annexation by war or lapse did not create the mutiny, appears evident from the fact that except in the case of Oude, and the little principality of Jhansi under the instigation of the enraged ranee, none of the annexed provinces manifested the slightest disposition to turn against us in the great crisis. Satara and Nagpore were tranquil. Burmah was so contented with its new masters that the European corps stationed in it was withdrawn with safety,
and the Punjab was mainly instrumental in putting down the mutiny. If the annexations had created any of that alarm for their own possessions in the minds of the independent princes of India, Sindia, Holkar, the Guickwar, or the Nizam, which was assumed, the fairest opportunity was now presented to them for expelling us from India by the revolt of the whole native army, and the extinction of our authority in Hindostan. But so exemplary was their loyalty to the British Government in the day of its extremity, that the advocates of native dynasties have adduced it as one of the strongest arguments for maintaining them. Neither did the sepoys manifest any feeling of irritation at the annexation even of their own province. They took up arms to avenge, not the deposition of their sovereign, but the supposed attempt on their caste. Their relatives and connections included a tenth of the whole population, as well as the great bulk of the agricultural yeomanry, and strange indeed would it have been if they had remained inactive when the sepoy army was triumphant in its rebellion, and the Resident was besieged in Lucknow. The zemindars in Oude, whom it was the object of the incorporation to restrain from plunder and oppression, did in many cases join the malcontents; but during the entire period of the eclipse of our authority in that province, neither sepoy, nor zemindar, nor peasant, appears to have manifested any desire to restore the king to his throne.
It does not fall within the compass of this work to embrace the period of the mutiny. We live, in fact, too near this stupendous event, and the feelings it has excited are still too sensitive, to admit of a calm and conclusive judgment of its origin and character. All that can be expected of the present age is to contribute individual opinions, more or less valuable, for the examination of the future historian. Under this impression, a few brief remarks on the mutiny suggested by this review of our progress in India, are offered to the candour of the reader. It has been surmised that the melancholy events of 1857 are to be attributed
to a national revolt against our authority. But, independently of the irresistible conclusion that, if this had been the case, we could not have retained our footing on the continent, all the evidence which has since been collected runs counter to this hypothesis. There was no insurrection in any district of any class, however lawless, until after our authority had been extinguished by the triumph of the sepoys, when all the vagabonds were let loose upon the country, and petty and obscure chiefs came forth to take advantage of the confusion. In many districts, on the contrary, natives of influence stepped forward and maintained order, till we should return. Where there were no sepoys, there was no insurrection. Wherever there was revolt, it was the consequence, and not the cause of the mutiny. Neither does the resumption of rent-free tenures, thirty years before, appear to have exercised any influence, as has been asserted, upon the revolt. The province of Behar, with seven millions of inhabitants, of a martial character, had suffered more severely than any other province from the operation of the resumption law; but, with the exception of one district, there was no symptom of disaffection till after the mutinous sepoys had been allowed, by the weakness of the General commanding at Dinapore, to overspread it. We refer to Shahabad, where Koer Sing, the most influential of the zemindars, whose circumstances were irretrievably embarrassed, threw himself into the cause of the mutineers and set the Government at defiance, in the hope of obtaining relief from the process of the courts and the pursuit of his creditors. In two of the most flourishing districts of Behar, containing 10,000 square miles, and filled with landholders whose fathers had felt the heavy hand of resumption, not a finger was raised against our Government, though there was not so much as a corporal’s guard left to maintain our power. The mutiny has likewise been attributed to the virtues of our administration, the introduction of female schools, the spread of English education, the railway, the telegraph, and, indeed, to whatever contributed to lessen the
importance and authority .of the priesthood. But the sepoys knew nothing of English instruction, and none of our improvements had ever reached them. They had been scrupulously guarded by our timidity from everything that could remotely affect their religious prejudices. The railroad was then unknown out of Bengal. It was in Bengal that the influence of the priesthood had been most rudely shaken by a flood of improvements; but the thirty millions of Bengalees never dreamt of rebellion. Moreover, in no province had those measures and those innovations to which the mutiny has been ascribed been introduced with more rapidity and vigour than in the newly conquered province of the Punjab. In the course of seven years, the Lawrences had abolished suttees and infanticide, two practices ardently cherished by the upper classes; they had carried out an extensive plan of resumptions; they had humiliated Runjeet Sing’s aristocracy; established English schools; fostered female education, and even introduced the telegraph. But the Sikhs, instead of making common cause with the sepoys, and seizing the opportunity to re-establish their beloved Khalsa, hastened to assist in putting down the mutineers and restoring our authority.
“The mutiny,” says Sir John Lawrence, “had its origin in the army itself; it is not attributable to any external or antecedent conspiracy whatever, although it was afterwards taken advantage of by disaffected persons to compass their own ends; the approximate cause was the cartridge affair, and nothing else.” This assertion, made by the highest authority on the subject, is corroborated by irrefragable evidence. Neither the old resumptions, nor the spread of English, nor the attempt to teach females, nor the diffusion of knowledge, nor the railway, nor the telegraph, nor all other causes which have been conjectured, put together, were sufficient to account for the savage mutiny of a hundred thousand sepoys; while the delirious alarm created by the story of the greased cartridges is fully adequate to the effect. The sepoy rebels only for his pay or his caste. The various mutinies
which have been enumerated in this work, between 1763 and 1853, may all be traced to one or other of these causes. The condition of the sepoy as regarded his pay left him nothing to desire, but the most strenuous efforts had been made, after the arrival of Lord Canning, to persuade him that his religion was in danger. It was confidently affirmed that Lord Canning had come out especially pledged to the Queen to make all the army Christians, and had undertaken to have all the native officers to dine at Government House. The King of Oude had left Lucknow, and planted his residence in the suburbs of Calcutta, and his emissaries were incessantly employed in inflaming the minds of the sepoys, as the family of Tippoo had done at Vellore. Then came the report which spread like wild-fire, that the cartridges had been greased with the fat of cows and pigs, with the object of destroying the caste of both Mohamedans and Hindoos. The preposterous tale was believed by ninety-nine out of every hundred sepoys, and a feeling of uncontrollable alarm for their religion and their caste spread through every regiment, from Calcutta to Peshawar, and the whole army was extinguished in a blaze of mutiny.
The Charter of 1833 expired in 1853, and a strenuous effort was made in Parliament to wrest the Government of India from the Company, but the Whig Ministry resolved to continue it in their hands, until Parliament should otherwise ordain. The India Bill was introduced in the House of Commons by Sir Charles Wood, the President of the Board of Control, in a lucid speech of five hours, which, considering that he had been only a few months in office, and was previously ignorant of India, exhibited great power of analysis, and held out the prospect of an enlightened and vigorous administration, which has since been fully realized. The settlement did not last much beyond five years, and it is only necessary to notice the three chief modifications which it embodied. The number of the Court of Directors was reduced from thirty to eighteen, and the elimination was performed by a most ingenious process of balloting, devised
for the occasion. Of the reduced number of Directors, a certain proportion was to be nominated by the Crown. This was no small improvement on the old constitution of the Court, into which it was impossible to obtain admission, except after a laborious and humiliating canvass, often prolonged for years. The most eminent statesmen of the Company’s service, men like Malcolm, Elphinstone, and Metcalfe, whose experience and influence would have been invaluable at the India House, were thus excluded from all share in the home Government, from their invincible repugnance to this wearisome mode of election; and the vacancies were filled up with bankers and brewers, and captains of ships, and other city men, who coveted a seat in the Direction for its position and its patronage. Under the new arrangement the Minister was enabled to call to his aid the most eminent of the Company’s retired officers. A second improvement consisted in entrusting the Government of Bengal and Behar to a separate Lieutenant-Governor. These provinces contained a thriving population of thirty-five millions, and contributed one-third of the revenues of the whole empire, yet the task of administering the Government was still imposed on the Governor-General, when in Calcutta, even after his imperial functions had been doubled. He was generally absent more than half his time, and this duty devolved upon the senior member of Council, who sometimes happened to be a military officer, rewarded for services in the field, or for reforming the Commissariat at Madras, by a seat at the Council Board and £10,000 a-year. Under this anomalous system there were no fewer than ten successive Governors and Deputy Governors of Bengal in the course of eleven years. Happily Mr. – now Sir Frederick – Halliday continued to hold the post of Secretary throughout this period of permanent instability and inevitable weakness, and it was owing entirely to his local knowledge and experience, his sound judgment and great diligence that the administration exhibited any degree of spirit, or even consistency. His long and eminent services
were rewarded by the first appointment to the Lieutenant-Governorship. By a third provision in the Charter, the patronage of the Civil Service was withdrawn from the Court of Directors to make way for the principle of unreserved competition. This system has entirely changed the character of the service, but there has not as yet been sufficient time to estimate its full effect on the general interests of the empire. It possesses many advantages, but is not, of course, without its drawbacks. At all events, the new class of men whom it introduces into the service have the advantage of a high standard of excellence before them. The nomination system, with all its tendency to jobbery, did produce a fine body of public servants, who were invariably distinguished by the honourable bearing and high principle of English gentlemen, and who, with few exceptions, threw their whole soul into their work and took a pride in the efficient performance of it. It is to be hoped that when the higher responsibilities of office devolve on those who have entered the service by competition, they will be found equally competent to represent the dignity of British power among the nobles and princes of India, and equally anxious to conciliate the confidence of the people by their consideration and kindness.
The East India Company fell with the mutiny of 1857. That catastrophe would equally have occurred, if the government had been in the hands of the Crown. Indeed, the Board of Control had been for more than seventy years the mainspring of authority, and the Court was little more than the medium of making public its decisions. If any portion of the responsibility of the mutiny was attached to the authorities in England, it belonged to the Prime Minister, who, in utter disregard of the experience of the past, and the deliberate opinion of successive Governors-General, and the remonstrances of Lord Dalhousie, withdrew the European regiments, which formed “the essential element of our strength.” But when the appalling crisis came, the national feeling sought relief and comfort, both with regard
to the past and the future, in changing the organs of government, and the East India Company was required to resign its power. Its work was accomplished, and the cycle of its existence completed. It was created by the Crown, two hundred and fifty years before, for the purpose of extending British commerce to the East; and it transferred to the Crown, on relinquishing its functions, an empire more magnificent than that of Rome. Its political power began with the battle of Plassy; and in the course of a single century, its servants abroad, contrary to every injunction from home, but acting under the influence of an irresistible impulse, extended its authority over the whole continent. A company of merchants in London thus became the instrument, under the mysterious, but wise and benignant agency of Divine Providence, of establishing the British empire in India, with all its attendant blessings, and of leading the way to the extension of European supremacy throughout Asia.
This collection transcribed by Chris Gage