Rulers of India: The Earl of Mayo Part 4

The new plan subsisted with little change till 1858, the last year of the East India Company. While the Governor-General retained the power of over-ruling his Council, as a matter of fact he wisely refrained, except in grave crises or emergencies, from exercising his supreme authority. Every order ran in the name of the President and the collective Cabinet, technically the Governor-General in Council. And under the Company every case actually pa.s.sed through the hands of each Member of Council, circulating at a snail's pace in little mahogany boxes from one Councillor's house to another. 'The system involved,' says a former Member of Council, 'an amount of elaborate minute writing which seems now hardly conceivable. The Governor-General and the Council used to perform work which would now be disposed of by an Under-Secretary.'

Lord Canning, the first Viceroy under the Crown, found that, if he was to raise the administration to a higher standard of prompt.i.tude and efficiency, he must put a stop to this. He remodelled the {82} Government 'into the semblance of a Cabinet, with himself as President.' Each Member of the Supreme Council practically became a Minister at the head of his own Department--or the 'Initiating Member' of the Department--responsible for its ordinary business, but bound to lay important cases before the Viceroy, whose will forms the final arbitrament in all great questions of policy in which he sees fit to exercise it.

'The ordinary current business of the Government,' writes Sir John Strachey, 'is divided among the Members of the Council, much in the same manner in which, in England, it is divided among the Cabinet Ministers, each member having a separate Department of his own.' The Governor-General himself keeps one Department specially in his own hands, generally the Foreign Office; and Lord Mayo, being insatiable of work, retained two, the Foreign Department and the great Department of Public Works. Various changes took place in the Supreme Government even during his short Viceroyalty, but the following table represents the _personnel_ of his Government as fairly as any single view can. It shows clearly of what the 'Government of India' was made up, apart from the immediate staff of the Viceroy. But it should be mentioned that Lord Mayo was fortunate in having in Major (now General Sir) Owen Tudor Burne, a Private Secretary of the highest capacity for smoothly and effectively transacting business. Major Burne did much to lighten the personal labour of the Viceroy, and became his most intimate confidante and friend.

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+--------------------+--------------------+----------------------+ DEPARTMENT. MEMBER OF COUNCIL. CHIEF SECRETARY. +--------------------+--------------------+----------------------+ I. Foreign THE VICEROY. Sir C. U. Aitchison, Department K.C.S.I. II. Public Works THE VICEROY. Divided into Department branches. III. Home Hon. Sir Barrow Sir E. Clive Bayley, Department Ellis, K.C.S.I. K.C.S.I. IV. Department of Hon. Sir J. Mr. A. O. Hume, C.B. Revenue, Strachey, Agriculture, K.C.S.I. and Commerce V. Financial Hon. Sir R. Mr. Barclay Chapman, Department Temple, K.C.S.I. C.S.I. VI. Military Major-General the General H. K. Burne, Department Hon. Sir H. C.B. Norman, K.C.S.I. VII. Legislative Hon. Sir Fitzjames Mr. Whitley Stokes, Department Stephen, Q.C., C.S.I., D.C.L. K.C.S.I. +--------------------+--------------------+----------------------+

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, who {84} either 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 pa.s.sed 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-General in {85} 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 acc.u.mulated 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 table above, with the Commander-in-Chief as an additional Member. In {86} this 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 a.s.sist 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 const.i.tutional 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 other {87} Members 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, with {88} the 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 the {89} Viceroy 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 capacity {90} for 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 the _Gazette_, rejects, modifies, or pa.s.ses 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 the _Gazette_. The law-abiding nature of the English mind, and the att.i.tude of vigorous independence which the Anglo-Indian courts maintain towards the Executive, render it necessary to obtain {91} the 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 acc.u.mulation 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 luncheon {92} at 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; s.n.a.t.c.hing 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.'

{93} 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 const.i.tution 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 ma.s.s of ceremonial and personal business could not be thus laid out beforehand.

One day it was a foreign emba.s.sy, 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 inst.i.tution 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 ca.n.a.l; 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 for {94} this 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 a.s.sistance 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 would {95} have 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 almost _ex officio_ a 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 for {96} the 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.

{97} 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.'

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CHAPTER IV

LORD MAYO'S DEALINGS WITH THE FEUDATORY STATES

The India of which Lord Mayo a.s.sumed charge in 1869 was a profoundly different India from that which had, eleven years previously, pa.s.sed 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 and {99} direct 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 cla.s.ses 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 Peshwa' (the Maratha 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 foreign {100} territory subject to annexation, but an integral portion of the British Empire for whose welfare the Queen became responsible in the sight of G.o.d 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 regime. 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 Rajput Princes a.s.sembled in darbar, '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 a.s.sist 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 a.s.sistance. If we respect your rights and privileges, you should also respect {101} the 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 Rajputana, 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 a.s.sured 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 a {102} closer 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 would {103} secure 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 friends.h.i.+p was only to be won by the personal merit of character and conduct.

By his att.i.tude 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 friends.h.i.+p.

We estimate you not by the splendour of {104} your 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sionate 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 doc.u.ments from his pen:--