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Chapter 3

There was still another province to be absorbed into the British Empire under the administration of Lord Dalhousie; not by conquest, for its rulers had ever been our friends, and its people had recruited our armies; not by lapse, for there had always been a son or a brother, or some member of the royal house, to fulfil, according to the Muhammadan law of succession, the conditions of heirship, and there was still a king, the son of a king, upon the throne; but by a simple assertion of the dominant will of the British Government. This was the great province of Oudh, in the very heart of Hindustan, which had long tempted us, alike by its local situation and the reputed wealth of its natural resources.

It is a story not to be lightly told in a few sentences. Its close connexion with some of the more important passages of this history fully warrants some amplitude of narration. Before the British settler had established himself on the peninsula of India, Oudh was a province of the Mughul Empire. When that empire was distracted and weakened by the invasion of Nadir Shah, the treachery of the servant was turned against the master, and little by little the Governor began to govern for himself. But holding only an official, though an hereditary title, he still acknowledged his vassalage; and long after the Great Mughul had shrivelled into a pensioner and a pageant, the Nawab-Wazir of Oudh was nominally his minister.

Of the earliest history of British connexion with the Court of the Wazir, it is not necessary to write in detail. There is nothing less creditable in the annals of the rise and progress of the British power in the East. The Nawab had territory; the Nawab had subjects; the Nawab had neighbours; more than all, the Nawab had money. But although he possessed in abundance the raw material of soldiers, he had not been able to organise an army sufficient for all the external and internal requirements of the State, and so he was fain to avail himself

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of the superior military skill and discipline of the white men, and to hire British battalions to do his work. At first this was done in an irregular, desultory kind of way, job-work, as in the infamous case of the Rohilla massacre; but afterwards it assumed a more formal and recognised shape, and solemn engagements were entered into with the Nawab, by which we undertook, in consideration of certain money-payments, known as the Subsidy, to provide a certain number of British troops for the internal and external defence of his Excellency’s dominions.

In truth it was a vicious system, one that can hardly be too severely condemned. By it we established a Double Government of the worst kind. The Political and Military government was in the hands of the Company; the internal administration of the Oudh territories still rested with the Nawab-Wazir. In other words, hedged in and protected by the British battalions, a bad race of Eastern Princes were suffered to do, or not to do, what they liked. Under such influences it is not strange that disorder of every kind ran riot over the whole length and breadth of the land. Never were the evils of misrule more horribly apparent; never were the vices of an indolent and rapacious Government productive of a greater sum of misery. The extravagance and profligacy of the Court were written in hideous characters on the desolated face of the country. It was left to the Nawab’s Government to dispense justice: justice was not dispensed. It was left to the Nawab’s Government to collect the revenue; it was wrung from the people at the point of the bayonet. The Court was sumptuous and profligate; the people poor and wretched. The expenses of the royal household were enormous. Hundreds of richly-caparisoned voracious elephants ate up the wealth of whole districts, or carried it in glittering apparel on their backs. A multitudinous throng of unserviceable attendants; bands of dancing-girls; flocks of parasites; costly feasts, and ceremonies; folly and pomp and profligacy of every conceivable description, drained the coffers of the State. A vicious and extravagant Government soon beget a poor and a suffering people; a poor and a suffering people, in turn, perpetuate the curse of a bankrupt Government. The process of retaliation is sure. To support the lavish expenditure of the Court the mass of the people were persecuted and outraged. Bands of armed mercenaries were let loose upon the ryots in support of the rapacity of the Amils, or Revenue-farmers, whose appearance was a terror to the people. Under

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such a system of cruelty and extortion, the country soon became a desert, and the Government then learnt by hard experience that the prosperity of the people is the only true source of wealth. The lesson was thrown away. The decrease of the revenue was not accompanied by a corresponding diminution of the profligate expenditure of the Court, or by any effort to introduce a better administrative system. Instead of this, every new year saw the unhappy country lapsing into worse disorder, with less disposition, as time advanced, on the part of the local Government to remedy the evils beneath which it was groaning. Advice, protestation, remonstrance were in vain. Lord Cornwallis advised, protested, remonstrated: Sir John Shore advised, protested, remonstrated. At last a statesman of a very different temper appeared upon the scene.

Lord Wellesley was a despot in every pulse of his heart. But he was a despot of the right kind; for he was a man of consummate vigour and ability, and he seldom made a mistake. The condition of Oudh soon attracted his attention; not because its government was bad and its people were wretched, but because that country might either be a bulwark of safety to our own dominions, or a sea of danger which might overflow and destroy us. That poor old blind ex-King, Shah Zaman, of the Saduzai family of Kabul, known to the present generation as the feeble appendage of a feeble puppet, had been, a little while before the advent of Lord Wellesley, in the heyday of his pride and power, meditating great deeds which he had not the ability to accomplish, and keeping the British power in India in a chronic state of unrest. If ever there had been any real peril, it had passed away before the new century was a year old. But it might arise again. Doubtless the military strength of the Afghans was marvellously overrated in those days: but still there was the fact of a minacious Muhammadan power beyond the frontier, not only meditating invasion, but stirring up the Muhammadan Princes of India to combine in a religious war against the usurping Faringhi. Saadat Ali was then on the musnud of Oudh; he, was the creature and the friend of the English, but Wazir Ali, he had supplanted, had intrigued with Zaman Shah, and would not only have welcomed, but have subsidised also an Afghan force in his own dominions. At the bottom of all our alarm, at that time, were some not unreasonable apprehensions of the ambitious designs of the first Napoleon. At all events, it was sound. policy to render Oudh

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powerful for good and powerless for evil. To the accomplishment of this it was necessary that large bodies of ill-disciplined and irregularly paid native troops in the service of the Nawab-Wazir – lawless bands that had been a terror alike to him and to his people – should be forthwith disbanded, and that British troops should occupy their place. Now, already the Wazir was paying seventy-six lakhs of rupees, or more than three-quarters of a million of money, for his subsidised British troops, and though he was willing to disband his own levies, and thereby to secure some saving to the State, it was but small in proportion to the expense of the more costly machinery of British military defence now to be substituted for them. The additional burden to be imposed upon Oudh was little less than half a million of money, and the unfortunate Wazir, whose resources had been strained to the utmost to pay the previous subsidy, declared his inability to meet any further demands on his treasury. This was what Lord Wellesley expected – nay, more, it was what he wanted. If the Wazir could not pay in money, he could pay in money’s worth. He had rich lands that might be ceded in perpetuity to the Company for the punctual payment of the subsidy. So the Governor-General prepared a treaty ceding the required provinces, and with a formidable array of British troops at his call, dragooned the Wazir into sullen submission to the will of the English Sultan. The new treaty was signed; and districts then yielding a million and a half of money, and now nearly double that amount of annual revenue, passed under the administration of the British Government.

Now, this treaty – the last ever ratified between the two Governments – bound the Nawab-Wazir to “establish in his reserved dominions such a system of administration, to be carried on by his own officers, as should be conducive to the prosperity of his subjects, and be calculated to secure the lives and properties of the inhabitants,” and he undertook at the same time “always to advise with and to act in conformity to the counsels of the officers of the East India Company.” But the English ruler knew well that there was small hope of these conditions being fulfilled. “I am satisfied,” he said, “that no effectual security can be provided against the ruin of the province of Oudh until the exclusive management of the civil and military government of that country shall be transferred to the Company under suitable provisions for the maintenance

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of his Excellency and his family.” He saw plainly before him the breakdown of the whole system, and believed that in the course of a few years the entire administration of the province would be transferred to the hands of our British officers. There was one thing, however, on which he did not calculate – the moderation of his successors. He lived nearly half a century after these words were written, and yet the treaty outlived him by many years.

If there was, at any time, hope for Oudh, under purely native administration, it was during the wazirship of Saadat Ali, for he was not a bad man, and he appears to have had rather enlightened views with respect to some important administrative questions34. But the opportunity was lost; and whilst the counsels of our British officers did nothing for the people. the bayonets of our British soldiers restrained them from doing anything for themselves. Thus matters grew from bad to worse, and from worse to worst. One Governor-General followed another; one Resident followed another; one Wazir followed another: but still the great tide of evil increased in volume, in darkness, and in depth.

But, although the Nawab-Wazirs of Oudh were, doubtless, bad rulers and bad men, it must be admitted that they were good allies. False to their people – false to their own manhood – they were true to the British Government. They were never known to break out into open hostility, or to smoulder in hidden treachery against us; and they rendered good service, when they could, to the Power to which they owed so little. They supplied our armies, in time of war, with grain; they supplied us with carriage-cattle; better still, they supplied us with cash. There was money in the Treasury of Lakhnao, when there was none in the Treasury of Calcutta; and the time came when the Wazir’s cash was needed by the British ruler. Engaged in an extensive and costly war, Lord Hastings wanted two

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millions for the prosecution of his great enterprises. They were forthcoming at the right time; and the British Government were not unwilling in exchange to bestow both titles and territories on the Wazir. The times were propitious. The successful close of the Nipal war placed at our disposal an unhealthy and impracticable tract of country at the foot of the Hills. This “terai” ceded to us by the Nipalese was sold for a million of money to the Wazir, to whose domains it was contiguous, and he himself expanded and bloomed into a King under the fostering sun of British favour and affection35. The interest of the other million was paid away by our Government to a tribe of Oudh pensioners, who were not sorry to exchange for a British guarantee the erratic benevolence of their native masters.

It would take long to trace the history of the progressive misrule of the Oudh dominions under a succession of sovereigns all of the same class – passive permitters of evil rather than active perpetrators of iniquity, careless of, but not rejoicing in, the sufferings of their people. The rulers of Oudh, whether Wazirs or Kings, had not the energy to be tyrants. They simply allowed things to take their course. Sunk in voluptuousness and pollution, often too horribly revolting to be described, they gave themselves up to the guidance of panders and parasites, and cared not so long as these wretched creatures administered to their sensual appetites. Affairs of State were pushed aside as painful intrusions. Corruption stalked openly abroad. Everyone had his price. Place, honour, justice – everything was to be bought. Fiddlers and barbers, pimps and mountebanks, became great functionaries. There were high revels at the capital, whilst, in the interior of the country, every kind of enormity was being exercised to wring from the helpless people the money which supplied the indulgences of the Court. Much of the land was farmed out to large contractors,

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who exacted every possible farthing from the cultivators; and were not seldom, upon complaint of extortion, made, unless inquiry were silenced by corruption, to disgorge into the royal treasury a large portion of their gains. Murders of the most revolting type, gang-robberies of the most outrageous character, were committed in open day. There were no Courts of Justice except at Lakhnao; no Police but at the capital and on the frontier. The British troops were continually called out to coerce refractory landholders, and to stimulate revenue-collection at the point of the bayonet. The sovereign – Wazir or King – knew that they would do their duty; knew that, under the obligations of the treaty, his authority would be supported; and so he lay secure in his Zenana, and fiddled whilst his country was in flames.

And so years passed; and ever went there from the Residency to the Council-chamber of the Supreme Government the same unvarying story of frightful misrule. Residents expostulated, Governors-General protested against it. The protests in due course became threats. Time after time it was announced to the rulers of Oudh that, unless some great and immediate reforms were introduced into the system of administration, the British Government, as lords-paramount, would have no course left to them but to assume the direction of affairs, and to reduce the sovereign of Oudh to a pensioner and a pageant.

By no man was the principle of non-interference supported more strenuously, both in theory and in practice, than by Lord William Bentinck. But in the affairs of this Oudh State he considered that he was under a righteous necessity to interfere. In April, 1831, he visited Lakhnao; and there, distinctly and emphatically told the King that “unless his territories were governed upon other principles than those hitherto followed, and the prosperity of the people made the principal object of his administration, the precedents afforded by the principalities of the Karnatik and Tanjur would be applied to the kingdom of Oudh, and to the entire management of the country, and the King would be transmuted into a State prisoner.” This was no mere formal harangue, but the deliberate enunciation of the Government of India; and to increase the impression which it was calculated to make on the mind of the King, the warning was afterwards communicated to him in writing, But, spoken or written, the words ere of no avail. He threw himself more than ever into the arms of parasites and panders; plunged more

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deeply into debauchery than before, and openly violated all decency by appearing drunk in the public streets of Lakhnao36. With the corruption of the Court the disorders of the country increased. The crisis seemed now to have arrived. A communication was made to the Court of Oudh, that “instructions to assume the government of the country, if circumstances should render such a measure necessary, had arrived, and that their execution was suspended merely in the hope that the necessity of enforcing them might be obviated.”

But in what manner was the administration to be assumed – in what manner was the improvement of the country to be brought about by the intervention of the British Government? There were different courses open to us, and they were all diligently considered. We might appoint a Minister of our own selection, and rule through him by the agency of the Resident. We might depose the ruling sovereign, and set up another and more hopeful specimen of royalty in his place. We might place the country under European administration, giving all the surplus revenues to the King. We might assume the entire government, reducing the King to a mere titular dignitary, and giving him a fixed share of the annual revenues. Or we might annex the country outright, giving him so many lakhs of rupees a year, without reference to the revenues of the principality. The ablest and most experienced Indian statesmen of the day had been invited to give their opinions. Malcolm and Metcalfe spoke freely out. The first of the above schemes seemed to represent the mildest form of interference; but both the soldier and the civilian unhesitatingly rejected it as the most odious, and. in practice, the most ruinous of all interposition. Far better, they said, to set up a new King, or even to assume the government for ourselves. But those were days when native dynasties were not considered unmixed evils, and native institutions were not pure abominations in our eyes. And it was thought that we might assume the administration of Oudh, but not for ourselves. It was thought that the British Government might become the guardian and trustee of the King of Oudh, administer his affairs through native agency and in accordance

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with native institutions, and pay every single rupee into the royal treasury.

This was the scheme of Lord William Bentinck, a man of unsurpassed honesty and justice; and it met with favourable acceptance in Leadenhall-street. The Court of Directors at that time, true to the old traditions of the Company, were slow to encourage their agents to seek pretexts for the extension of their dominions. The despatches which they sent out to India were for the most part distinguished by a praiseworthy moderation; sometimes, indeed, by a noble frankness and sincerity, which sheaved that the authors of them were above all disguises and pretences. They now looked the Oudh business fairly in the face, but hoping still against hope that there might be some amelioration, they suffered, after the receipt of Lord William Bentinck’s report, a year to pass away, and then another year, before issuing authoritative orders, and then they sent forth a despatch, which was intended to bring the whole question to a final issue.

July 16, 1834

They spoke of the feelings which the deplorable situation of a country so long and so nearly connected with them had excited in their minds – of the obligations which such a state of things imposed upon them – of the necessity of finding means of effecting a great alteration. They acknowledged, as they had acknowledged before, that our connexion with the country had largely contributed to the sufferings of the people, inasmuch as it had afforded protection to tyranny, and rendered hopeless the resistance of the oppressed37. This made it the more incumbent upon them to adopt measures for the mitigation, if not the removal, of the existing evil. They could not look on whilst the ruin of the country was consummated. It was certain that something must be done. But what was that something to be? Then they set in array before them, somewhat as I have done above, the different measures which might be resorted to, and, dwelling upon the course which Bentinck had recommended, placed in the hands of the Governor-General a discretionary power to carry the proposed measure into effect at such

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period, and in such a manner as might seem advisable, but with the utmost possible consideration for the King, whose consent to the proposed arrangement was, if possible, to be obtained. It was suggested that all the titles and honours of sovereignty should remain with his Majesty as before; that the revenues should be mainly expended in the administration and the improvement of the country, and that either the surplus, or a fixed stipend, should be assigned to the King. But, at the same time, the Government were instructed, in the event of their proceeding to assume the administration of the country, distinctly to announce that, so soon as the necessary reforms should have been effected, the administration of the country, as in the case of Nagpur, would be restored to its native rulers.

Colonel John Low, of whose character and career I have already spoken, was then Resident at Lakhnao. The despatch of the Court of Directors, authorizing the temporary assumption of the Government of Oudh, was communicated to him, and he pondered over its contents. The scheme appeared in his eyes to be distinguished by its moderation and humanity, and to be one of a singularly disinterested character. But he was convinced that it would be misunderstood. He said that, however pure the motives of the British Government might be, the natives of India would surely believe that we had taken the country for ourselves. So he recommended the adoption of another method of obtaining the same end. Fully impressed with the necessity of removing the reigning King, Nasar-ud-din, he advised the Government to set up another ruler in his place; and in order that the measure might be above all suspicion, to abstain from receiving a single rupee, or a single acre of ground, as the price of his elevation. “What I recommend is this,” he said, “that the next heir should be invested with the full powers of sovereignty; and that the people of Oudh should continue to live under their own institutions.” He had faith in the character of that next heir; he believed that a change of men would produce a change of measures; and, at all events, it was but bare justice to try the experiment.

But, before anything had been done by the Government of India, in accordance with the discretion delegated to them by the Court of Director s, the experiment which Low had suggested “inaugurated itself. Not without suspicion of poison, but really, I believe, killed only by strong drink, Nasar-ud-din Haidar died on a memorable July night. It was a crisis of no common

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magnitude, for there was a disputed succession; and large bodies of lawless native troops in Lakhnao were ready to strike at a moment’s notice. The cool courage of Low and his assistants saved the city from a deluge of blood. An uncle of the deceased Prince – an old man and a cripple, respectable in his feebleness – was declared King, with the consent of the British Government; and the independence of Oudh had another lease of existence.

Lord Auckland was, at that time, Governor-General of India. The new King, who could not but feel that he was a creature of the British, pledged himself to sign a new treaty. And soon it was laid before him. That the engagements of the old treaty had been violated, day after day, year after year, for more than a third part of the century, was a fact too patent to be questioned. The misgovernment of the country was a chronic breach of treaty. Whether the British or the Oudh Government were more responsible for it was somewhat doubtful to every clear understanding and every unprejudiced mind. The source of the failure was in the treaty itself, which the author of it well knew from the first was one of impossible fulfilment. But it was still a breach of treaty, and there was another in the entertainment of vast numbers of soldiers over and above the stipulated allowance. Those native levies had gradually swollen, according to Resident Low’s calculations, to the bulk of seventy thousand men. Here was an evil not to be longer permitted; wonder, indeed, was it that it should have been permitted so long. This the new treaty was to remedy; no less than the continued mal-administration of the country by native agency. It provided, therefore, that in the event of any further-protracted misrule, the British Government should be entitled to appoint its own officers to the management of any part, small or great, of the province; that the old native levies should be abandoned, and a new force, commanded by British officers, organised in its place, at the cost of the Oudh Government. But there was no idea of touching, in any other way, the revenues of the country. An account was to be rendered of every rupee received and expended, and the balance was to be paid punctually into the Oudh Treasury.

This was the abortion, often cited in later years as the Oudh Treaty of 1837. Authentic history recites that the Government of India were in throes with it, but the strangling hand of higher authority crushed all life out of the thing before it had

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become a fact. The treaty was wholly and absolutely disallowed by the Home Government38. They took especial exception to the establishment of the new auxiliary force, which was to cost the Oudh Treasury sixteen lakhs of rupees a year; for, with all the pure logic of honesty, they said that the treaty of 1801 had made it compulsory on the British Government to provide for the defence of the country, and that a large tract of territory had been ceded with the express object of securing the payment of the troops necessary for this purpose. If, then, it were expedient to organise a fresh force under British officers, it was for the Company, not for the Oudh Government, to defray the expenses of the new levy. But not only on these grounds did they object to the treaty. It is true that, a few years before, they had given the Governor-General discretionary power to deal, as he thought best, with the disorders of Oudh, even to the extent of a temporary assumption of the government; but this authority had been issued at a time when Nasar-ud-din, of whose vicious incapacity they had had many years’ experience, sat upon the throne; and the Home Government were strongly of opinion that the new King, of whose character they had received a favourable account, ought to be allowed a fair trial, under the provisions of the treaty existing at the time of his accession to the throne. They therefore directed the abrogation, not of any one article, but of the entire treaty. Wishing, however, the annulment of the treaty to appear rather as an act of grace from the Government of India than as the result of positive and unconditional instructions from England, they gave a large discretion to the Governor-General as to the mode of announcing this abrogation to the Court of Lakhnao.

The receipt of these orders disturbed and perplexed the Governor-General. Arrangements for the organisation of the Oudh auxiliary force had already advanced too far to admit of the suspension of the measure. It was a season, however, of difficulty and supposed danger, for the seeds of the Afghan war had been sown. Some, at least, of our regular troops in Oudh were wanted to do our own work: so, in any view of the case, it was necessary to fill their places. The Auxiliary Force, therefore, was not to be arrested in its formation, but it was to be maintained

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at the Company’s expense. Intimation to this effect was given to the King in a letter from the Governor-General, which, after acquainting his Majesty that the British Government had determined to relieve him of a burden which, in the existing state of the country, might have imposed heavier exactions on the people than they well were able to bear, expressed a strong hope that the King would see, in the relaxation of this demand, good reason for applying his surplus revenues firstly to the relief of oppressive taxation, and, secondly, to the prosecution of useful public works. But nothing was said, in this letter, about the abrogation of the entire treaty, nor was it desired that the Resident, in his conferences with the King or his minister, should say anything on that subject. The Governor-General, still hoping that the Home Government might be induced to consent to the terms of the treaty (the condition of the auxiliary force alone excluded), abstained from an acknowledgment which, he believed, would weaken the authority of his Government. But this was a mistake, and worse than a mistake. It betrayed an absence of moral courage not easily to be justified or forgiven. The Home Government never acknowledged the validity of any later treaty than that which Lord Wellesley had negotiated at the commencement of the century.

Such is the history of the treaty of 1837. It was never carried out in a single particular, and seldom heard of again until after a lapse of nearly twenty years, except in a collection of treaties into which it crept by mistake39. And, for some

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time, indeed, little was heard of Oudh itself. A Native State is never so near to death, but that it may become quite hale and lusty again when the energies and activities of the British are engrossed by a foreign war. Now, it happened that, for some time to come, the British had quite a crop of foreign wars. First, the great Afghanistan war of Auckland, which made him wholly forgetful of Oudh – her People and her King – her sorrows and her sensualities. Then there was the Sindh war of Ellenborough, intended to wash out by a small victory the stain of a great defeat, but fixing a still deeper stain upon the character of the nation; and next the fierce Maratha onslaught, which followed closely upon it. Then there was the invasion from beyond the Satlaj, and the first Sikh war, in which Hardinge was most reluctantly immersed. Altogether, some eight years of incessant war, with a prospect of further strife, kept the sword out of the scabbard and the portfolio out of the hand. Then Oudh was safe in its insignificance and obscurity. Moreover, Oudh was, as before, loyal and sympathising, and, although the hoardings of Saadat Ali had long since been squandered, there was still money in the Treasure-chests of Lakhnao. But peace came, and with it a new birth of danger to the rulers of that misruled province. There had been no change for the better; nay, rather there had been change for the worse, during the years of our conflicts beyond the frontier. One Prince had succeeded another only to emulate the vices of his ancestors with certain special variations of his own. And when Lord Hardinge, in the quiet interval between the two Sikh wars, turned his thoughts towards the kingdom of Oudh, he found Wajid Ali Shah, then a young man in the first year of his reign, giving foul promise of sustaining the character of the Royal House40.

With the same moderation as had been shown by Lord William Bentinck, but also with the same strong sense of the paramount duty of the British Government to arrest the disorders

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which had so long been preying upon the vitals of the country, Lord Hardinge lifted up leis voice in earnest remonstrance and solemn warning; and the young King cowered beneath the keen glance of the clear blue eyes that were turned upon him. There were no vague words in that admonition; no uncertain sound in their utterance. Wajid Ali Shah was distinctly told that the clemency of the British Government would allow him two years of grace; but that if at the end of that period of probation there were no manifest signs of improvement, the British Government could, in the interests of humanity, no longer righteously abstain from interfering peremptorily and absolutely for the introduction of a system of administration calculated to restore order and prosperity to the kingdom of Oudh. The discretionary power had years before been placed in the hands of the Governor-General, and these admonitions failing, it would assuredly be exercised. A general outline of the means, by which the administration might be reformed, was laid down in a memorandum read aloud to the King; and it was added that, if his Majesty cordially entered into the plan, he might have the satisfaction, within the specified period of two years, of checking and eradicating the worst abuses, and, at the same time, of maintaining his own authority and the native institutions of his kingdom unimpaired – but that if he should adhere to his old evil ways, he must be prepared for the alternative and its consequences.

Nervous and excitable at all times, and greatly affected by these words, the King essayed to speak; but the power of utterance had gone from him. So he took a sheet of paper and wrote upon it, that he thanked the Governor-General, and would regard his counsels as though they had been addressed by a father to his son. There are no counsels so habitually disregarded; the King, therefore, kept his word, Relieved from the presence of the Governor-General his agitation subsided, and he -betook himself, without a thought of the future, to his old courses. Fiddlers and dancers, singing men and eunuchs, were suffered to usurp the government and to absorb the revenues of the country. The evil influence of these vile panders and parasites was felt throughout all conditions of society and in all parts of the country. Sunk in the uttermost abysses of enfeebling debauchery, the King pushed aside the business which he felt himself incapable of transacting, and went in search of new pleasures. Stimulated to the utmost by unnatural excitements,

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his appetites were satiated by the debaucheries of the Zenana, and, with an understanding emasculated to the point of childishness, he turned to the more harmless delights of dancing, and drumming, and drawing, and manufacturing small rhymes. Had he devoted himself to these pursuits in private life, there would have been small harm in them, but overjoyed with his success as a musician, he went about the crowded streets of Lakhnao with a big drum round his neck, striking as much noise out of it as he could, with all the extravagance of childish delight.

The two years of probation had passed away, and the British Resident reported that “the King had not, since the Governor-General’s visit in October, 1847, shown any signs of being fully aware of the responsibility he incurred.” “In fact,” he added, “I do not think that his Majesty can ever be brought to feel the responsibilities of sovereignty strongly enough to be induced to bear that portion of the burden of its duties that must necessarily devolve upon him; he will always confide it to the worthless minions who are kept for his amusements, and enjoy exclusively his society and his confidence.” So the time had arrived when the British Government might have righteously assumed the administration of Oudh. The King had justly incurred the penalty, but the paramount power was in no haste to inflict it. Lord Dalhousie was Governor-General of India; but again the external conflicts of the British were the salvation of the sovereignty of Oudh. The Panjab was in flames, and once more Lakhnao was forgotten. The conquest of the Sikhs; the annexation of their country; the new Burmese war and its results; the lapses of which I have spoken in my last chapter; and many important affairs of internal administration of which I have yet to speak, occupied the ever-active mind of Lord Dalhousie until the last year of his reign; but it was felt by everyone, who knew and pondered over the wretched state of the country, that the day of reckoning was approaching, and that the British Government could not much longer shrink from the performance of a duty imposed upon it by every consideration of humanity.

Colonel Sleeman was then Resident at Lakhnao. He was a man of a liberal and humane nature, thoroughly acquainted with the character and feelings, the institutions and usages of the people of India. No man had a larger toleration for the shortcomings of native Governments, because no one knew

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better how much our own political system had aggravated, if it had not produced, the evils of which we most complained. But he sympathised at the same time acutely with the sufferings of the people living under those native Governments; and his sympathy overcame his toleration. Having lived all his adult life in India – the greater part of it in, or on the borders of, the Native States – he was destitute of all overweening prepossessions in favour of European institutions and the “blessings of British rule.” But the more he saw, on the spot, of the terrible effects of the misgovernment of Oudh, the more convinced he was of the paramount duty of the British Government to step in and arrest the atrocities which were converting one of the finest provinces of India into a moral pest-house. In 1849 and 1850 he made a tour through the interior of the country. He carried with him the prestige of a name second to none in India, as that of a friend of the poor, a protector of the weak, and a redresser of their wrongs. Conversing freely and familiarly in the native languages, and knowing well the character and the feelings of the people, he had a manner that inspired confidence. and the art of extracting from every man the information which he was best able to afford. During this tour in the interior, he noted down, from day to day, all the most striking facts which were brought to his notice, with the reflections which were suggested by them; and the whole presented a revolting picture of the worst type of misrule – of a feebleness worse than despotism, of an apathy more productive of human suffering than the worst forms of tyrannous activity. In the absence of all controlling authority, the strong carried on everywhere a war of extermination against the weak. Powerful families, waxing gross on outrage and rapine, built forts, collected followers, and pillaged and murdered at discretion, without fear of justice overtaking their crimes. Nay, indeed, the greater the criminal the more sure he was of protection, for he could purchase immunity with his spoil. There was hardly, indeed, an atrocity committed, from one end of the country to the other, that was not, directly or indirectly, the result of the profligacy and corruption of the Court41.

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Such was Colonel Sleeman’s report of the state of the Oudh country; such was his account of what he had seen with his own eyes or heard with his own ears. There was not a man in the Two Services who was more distressed by the fury for annexation which was at that time breaking out in the most influential public prints and the highest official circles. He saw clearly the danger into which this grievous lust of dominion was hurrying us, and he made a great effort to arrest the evil42; but he lifted up a warning voice in vain. The letters which he addressed to the Governor-General and to the Chairman of the East India Company appear to have produced no effect. He did not see clearly, at that time, that the principles which he held in such abhorrence were cherished by Lord Dalhousie himself,

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and he did not know that the Court of Directors had such faith in their Governor-General that they were content to substitute his principles for their own. But, utterly distasteful to him as were the then prevailing sentiments in favour of absorption and confiscation, Sleeman never closed his eyes against the fact that interference in the affairs of Oudh, even to the extent of the direct assumption of the government, would be a righteous interference. Year after year he had pressed upon the Governor-General the urgent necessity of the measure. But, perhaps, had he known in what manner his advice was destined to be followed, and how his authority would be asserted in justification of an act which he could never countenance, he would rather have suffered the feeble-minded debauchee who was called King of Oudh still to remain in undisturbed possession of the throne, than have uttered a word that might hasten a measure so at variance with his sense of justice, and so injurious as he thought to our best interests, as that of which the interference of Government eventually took the shape.

Sleeman’s advice had been clear, consistent, unmistakable. “Assume the administration,” he said, “but do not grasp the revenues of the country.” Some years before the same advice had been given by Henry Lawrence43, between whom and Sleeman there was much concord of opinion and some similitude of character. The private letters of the latter, addressed to the highest Indian functionaries, and, therefore, having all the weight and authority of public documents, were as distinct upon this point as the most emphatic words could make them. “What the people want, and most earnestly pray for,” he wrote to the Governor-General, “is that our Government should take upon itself the responsibility of governing them well and permanently. All classes, save the knaves, who now surround and govern the King, earnestly pray for this – the educated classes, because they would then have a chance of respectable employment, which none of them now have; the middle classes, because they find no protection or encouragement, and no hope

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that their children will be permitted to inherit the property they leave, not invested in our Government Securities; and the humbler classes, because they are now abandoned to the merciless rapacity of the starving troops and other public establishments, and of the landholders driven or invited to rebellion by the present state of misrule.” But he added: “I believe that it is your Lordship’s wish that the whole of the revenues of Oudh should be expended fur the benefit of the Royal Family and People of Oudh, and that the British Government should disclaim any wish to derive any pecuniary advantage from assuming to itself the administration.” And again, about the same time, he had written to the Chairman of the Court of Directors, urging the expediency of assuming the administration, but adding: “If we do this, we must, in order to stand well with the rest of India, honestly and distinctly disclaim all interested motives, and appropriate the whole of the revenues for the benefit of the People and Royal Family of Oudh. If we do this, all India will think us right.” And again, a few months later, writing to the same high authority, he said, mournfully and prophetically, that to annex and confiscate the country, and to appropriate the revenues to ourselves, would “be most profitable in a pecuniary view, but most injurious in a political one. It would tend to accelerate the crisis which the doctrines of the absorbing school must sooner or later bring upon us44.”

Such was the counsel Sleeman gave; such were the warnings he uttered. But he did not remain in India, nay, indeed, he did not live, to see his advice ignored, his cautions disregarded.

Thaggi

After long years of arduous and honourable service, compelled to retire in broken health from his post, he died on his homeward voyage, leaving behind him a name second to none upon the roll of the benefactors and civilisers of India, for he had grappled with her greatest abomination, and had effectually subdued it. Some solace had it been to him when he turned his back upon the country to know that his place would be well and worthily filled.

September 1854

“Had your Lordship left the choice of a successor to me,” he wrote to the Governor-General, “I should have pointed out Colonel Outram; and I feel very much

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rejoiced that he has been selected for the office, and I hope he will come as soon as possible.”

An officer of the Company’s army on the Bombay establishment, James Outram had done good service to his country, good service to the people of India, on many different fields of adventure; and had risen, not without much sore travail and sharp contention, to a place in the estimation of his Government and the affections of his comrades, from which he could afford to look down upon the conflicts of the Past with measureless calmness and contentment. Versed alike in the stern severities of war and the civilising humanities of peace, he was ready at a moment’s notice to lead an army into the field or to superintend the government of a province. But it was in rough soldier’s work, or in that still rougher work of mingled war and diplomacy which falls to the share of the Political officer in India, that Outram’s great and good qualities were most conspicuously displayed. For in him, with courage of the highest order, with masculine energy and resolution, were combined the gentleness of a woman and the simplicity of a child. No man knew better how to temper power with mercy and forbearance, and to combat intrigue and perfidy with pure sincerity and stainless truth. This truthfulness was, indeed, perhaps the most prominent, as it was the most perilous, feature of his character. Whatsoever he might do, whatsoever he might say, the whole was there before you in its full proportions. He wore his heart upon his sleeve, and was incapable of concealment or disguise. A pure sense of honour, a strong sense of justice, the vehement assertions of which no self-interested discretion could hold in restraint, brought him sometimes into collision with others, and immersed him in a sea of controversy. But although, perhaps, in his reverential love of truth, he was over-eager to fight down what he might have been well content to live down, and in after life he may have felt that these wordy battles were very little worth fighting, he had still no cause to regret them, for he came unhurt from the conflict. It was after one of these great conflicts, the growth of serious official strife, which had sent him from an honourable post into still more honourable retirement, that, returning to India with strong credentials from his masters in Leadenhall-street, Lord Dalhousie selected him to succeed Sleeman as Resident at Lakhnao.

The choice was a wise one. There was work to be done

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which required a hand at once gentle and strong. The fame of Outram was not the fame of a spoliator, but of a just man friendly to the native Princes and chiefs of India, who had lifted up his voice against wrongs done to them in his time. and who would rather have closed his public career than have been the agent of an unrighteous policy. But a measure which Low, and Sleeman, and Henry Lawrence had approved, nay, which in the interests of humanity they had strenuously recommended, was little likely to be an unrighteous one, and Outram, whilst rejoicing that his past career had thus been stamped by his Government with the highest practical approval, accepted the offer in the full assurance that he could fulfil its duties without a stain upon his honour or a burden upon his conscience45.

November 1854

Making all haste to join his appointment, Outram quitted Aden, where the summons reached him, and took ship for Calcutta, where he arrived in the first month of the cold season. His instructions were soon prepared for him; they were brief, but they suggested the settled resolution of Government to wait no longer for impossible improvements from within, but at once to shape their measures for the assertion, in accordance with Treaty, of the authority of the Paramount State. But it was not a thing to be done in a hurry. The measure itself was to be deliberately carried out after certain preliminary formalities of inquiry and reference. It was Outram’s part to inquire. A report upon the existing state of Oudh was called for from the new Resident, and before the end of March it was forwarded to Calcutta. It was an elaborate history of the misgovernment of Oudh from the commencement of the century, a dark catalogue of crime and suffering “caused by the culpable apathy of the Sovereign and the Durbar.” “I have shown,” said the new Resident, in conclusion, “that the affairs of Oudh still continue in the same state, if not worse, in which Colonel Sleeman from time to time described them to be, and that the improvement which Lord Hardinge peremptorily demanded, seven years ago, at the hands of the King, in pursuance of the Treaty of 1801, has not, in any degree, been effected. And I have no hesitation in declaring my opinion, therefore, that the duty imposed on the British

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Government by that treaty cannot any longer admit of our ‘honestly indulging the reluctance which the Government of India has felt heretofore to have recourse to those extreme measures which alone can be of any real efficiency in remedying the evils from which the state of Oudh has suffered so long.’ ”

To this report, and to much earlier information of the same kind with which the archives of Government were laden, the Governor-General gave earnest and sustained attention amidst the refreshing quiet of the Blue Mountains of Madras. The weighty document had picked up, on its road through Calcutta, another still more weighty, in the shape of a minute written by General Low.

March 28, 1855

Few as were the words, they exhausted all the arguments in favour of intervention, and clothed them with the authority of a great name. No other name could have invested them with this authority, for no other man had seen so much of the evils of native rule in Oudh, and no man was on principle more averse to the extinction of the native dynasties of India. All men must have felt the case to be very bad when John Low, who had spoken the brave words in defence of the Princes and chiefs of India which I have cited in the last chapter, was driven to the forcible expression of his conviction, that it was the paramount duty of the British Government to interfere at once for the protection of the people of Oudh46.

It was not possible to add much in the way of fact to what Outram had compiled, or much in the way of argument to what Low had written. But Dalhousie, to whom the fine bracing

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air of the Nilgiris had imparted a new-born capacity for sustained labour, sat himself down to review the whole question in a gigantic minute. He signed it on the 18th June; and, indeed, it was his Waterloo – the crowning victory of annexation. It is not necessary to repeat the facts, for I have stated them, or the arguments, for I have suggested them. No reader can have followed me thus far, without a strong assurance on his mind, that it would have been a grievous wrong done to humanity to have any longer abstained from interference. But what was the interference to be? Here was a question for the Governor-General to solve in the invigorating atmosphere of Utakamand – a question, the solution of which was to yield the crowning measure of his long vice-regal career.

There may have been many ways of working out the practical details of this measure; but there was only one uncertain point which was of much substantial importance. All men agreed that the Treaty of 1801 might rightfully be declared to have ceased by reason of repeated violations, and that with the consent of the King, if attainable, or without it, if unattainable, the Government of the country might be transferred to the bands of European administrators. That the King must be reduced to a mere cypher was certain; it was certain that all possible respect ought to be shown to him in his fallen fortunes, and that he and all his family ought to be splendidly endowed; no question could well be raised upon these points. The question was, what was to be done with the surplus revenue after paying all the expenses of administration? Just and wise men, as has been shown, had protested against the absorption of a single rupee into the British Treasury. They said that it would be as politic as it would be righteous, to demonstrate to all the States and Nations of India, that we had not deposed the King of Oudh for our own benefit – that we had done a righteous act on broad principles of humanity, by which we had gained nothing. But Lord Dalhousie, though he proposed not to annex the country, determined to take the revenues.

It is not very easy to arrive at a just conception of his views “The reform of the administration,” he said, “may be wrought, and the prosperity of the people may be secured, without resorting to so extreme a measure as the annexation of the territory and the abolition of the throne. I, for my part. therefore, do not recommend that the province of Oudh should be declared to be British territory.” But he proposed that the

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King of Oudh, whilst retaining the sovereignty of his dominions, should “vest all power, jurisdiction, rights and claims thereto belonging in the hands of the East India Company,” and that the surplus revenues should be at the disposal of the Company. What this territorial sovereignty was to be, without territorial rights or territorial revenues, it is not easy to see. When the Nawab of the Karnatik and the Rajah of Tanjur were deprived of their rights and revenues, they were held to be not territorial, but titular sovereigns. The Nizam, on the other hand, might properly be described as “territorial sovereign” of the Assigned Districts, although the administration had been taken from him, because an account of the revenue was to be rendered to him, and the surplus was to be paid into his hands. But the King of Oudh, in Dalhousie’s scheme, was to have had no more to do with his territories than the titular sovereigns of the Karnatik and Tanjur; and yet he was to be told that he was “to retain the sovereignty of all the territories” of which he was then in possession.

Strictly interpreted to the letter, the scheme did not suggest the annexation of Oudh. The province was not to be incorporated with the British dominions. The revenues were to be kept distinct from those of the empire; there was to be a separate balance-sheet; and thus far the province was to have a sort of integrity of its own. This is sufficiently intelligible in itself; and, if the balance being struck, the available surplus had been payable to the King of Oudh, the rest of the scheme would have been intelligible also, for there would have been a quasi-sovereignty of the territories thus administered still remaining with the Ring. But the balance being payable into the British Treasury, it appears that Oudh, in this state of financial isolation, would still have substantially been British territory, as much as if it had become a component part of the empire. Again, under the proposed system, Oudh would have been beyond the circle of our ordinary legislation, in which respect it would not have differed much from other “Non-Regulation Provinces “; and if it had, even this Legislative segregation superadded to the Financial isolation of which I have spoken, would not have made it any the less British territory. The Channel Islands have a separate Budget and distinct laws of their own, but still they are component parts of the British Empire, although they do not pay their surplus into the British Treasury. But in everything that really constitutes Kingship,

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the Bailiff of Jersey- is as much the territorial sovereign of that island as Wajid Ali would have been territorial sovereign of Oudh under Lord Dalhousie’s programme of non-annexation.

But this transparent disguise was not to be worn; this distinction without a difference was not to be asserted, anywhere out of Lord Dalhousie’s great Minute. The thing that was to be done soon came to take its proper place in the Councils of the Indian Empire as the Annexation of Oudh; and it was as the annexation of Oudh that the measure was considered by the Government at home. The Court of Directors consented to the annexation of Oudh. The Board of Control consented to the annexation of Oudh. The British Cabinet consented to the annexation of Oudh. The word was not then, as it since has been, freely used in official documents, but it was in all men’s minds, and many spoke it out bluntly instead of talking delicately about “assuming the Government of the Country.” And, whether right or wrong, the responsibility of the measure rested as much with the Queen’s Ministers as with the Merchant Company, That the Company had for long years shown great forbearance is certain. They had hoped against hope, and acted against all experience. So eager, indeed, had they been to give the Native Princes of India a fair trial, that they had disallowed the proposed treaty of 1837, and had pronounced an authoritative opinion in favour of the maintenance of the then existing Native States of India. But twenty more years of misrule and anarchy had raised in their minds a feeling of wondering self-reproach at the thought of their own patience; and when they responded to the reference from Calcutta, they said that the doubt raised by a survey of the facts before them, was not whether it was then incumbent upon them to free themselves from the responsibility of any longer upholding such a Government, but whether they could excuse themselves for not having, many years before, performed so imperative a duty.

November 19, 1855

The despatch of the Court of Directors was signed in the middle of November. At midnight on the 2nd of January, the Governor-General mastered its contents. Had he thought of himself more than of his country, he would not have been there at that time. The energies of his mind were undimmed; but climate, and much toil, and a heavy sorrow weighing on his heart, had shattered a frame never constitutionally robust. and all men said that he was

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“ breaking.” Without any failure of duty, without any imputation on his zeal, he might have left to his successor the ungrateful task of turning into stern realities the oft-repeated menaces of the British rulers who had gone before him. But he was not one to shrink from the performance of such a task because it was a painful and unpopular one. He believed that by no one could the duty of bringing the Oudh Government to solemn account be so fitly discharged as by one who had watched for seven years the accumulation of its offences, and seen the measure of its guilt filled to the brim. He had intimated, therefore, to the Court of Directors his willingness to remain at his post to discharge this duty, and in the despatch, which he read in the quiet of that January night, he saw on official record the alacrity with which his offer was accepted, and he girded himself for the closing act of his long and eventful administration47.

Next morning he summoned a Council. It was little more than a form. Dalhousie had waited for the authoritative sanction of the Home Government; but he knew that sanction was coming, and he was prepared for its arrival. The greater part of the work had, indeed, been already done. The instructions to be sent to the Resident; the treaty to be proposed to the King; the proclamation to be issued to the people had all been drafted. The whole scheme of internal government had been matured, and the agency to be employed had been carefully considered. The muster-roll of the new administration was ready, and the machinery was complete. The system was very closely to resemble that which had been tried with such good success in the Panjab, and its agents were, as in that province, to be a mixed body of civil and military officers, under a Chief Commissioner. All the weighty documents, by which the revolution was to be effected, were in the portfolio of the Foreign Secretary; and now, at this meeting of the Council, they were formally let loose to do their work.

The task which Outram was commissioned to perform was a difficult, a delicate, and a painful one. He was to endeavour to persuade the King of Oudh formally to abdicate his sovereign functions, and to make over, by a solemn treaty, the government of his territories to the East India Company. In the event of his refusal, a proclamation was to be issued, declaring

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the whole of Oudh to be British territory. By a man of Outram’s humane and generous nature no counsel from his Government was needed to induce him to do the work entrusted to him in the manner least likely to wound the feelings of the King. But it was right that such counsel should be given. It was given; but the decree of the Paramount State, tempered as it might be by out ward courtesy of manner, was still to be carried out, with stern and resolute action. No protests, no remonstrances, no promises, no prayers were to be suffered to arrest the retributive measure for a day. It need not be added that no resistance could avert it. A body of British troops, sufficient to trample down all possible opposition, had been moved up into a position to overawe Lakhnao, and for the doomed Government of Oudh to attempt to save itself by a display of force would have been only to court a most useless butchery.

Outram received his instructions at the end of January. On the last day of the month he placed himself in communication with the Oudh Minister, clearly stated the orders of the British Government, and said that they were final and decisive. Four days were spent in preliminary formalities and negotiations. In true Oriental fashion, the Court endeavoured. to gain time, and, appealing to Outram, through the aged Queen Mother – a woman with far more of masculine energy and resolution than her son – importuned him to persuade his Government to give the King another trial, to wait for the arrival of the new Governor-General, to dictate to Wajid All any reforms to be carried out in his name. All this had been expected; all this provided. for. Outram had but one answer; the day of trial, the day of forbearance, was past. All that he could now do was to deliver his message to the King-.

On the 4th of February, Wajid Ali announced his willingness to receive the British Resident; and Outram, accompanied by his lieutenants, Hayes and Weston, proceeded to the palace. Strange and significant symptoms greeted them as they went. The guns at the palace-gates were dismounted. The palace-guards were unarmed. The guard of honour, who should have presented arms to the Resident, saluted him only with their hands. Attended by his brother and a few of his confidential Ministers, the King received the English gentlemen at the usual spot; and after the wonted ceremonies, the business commenced. Outram presented to the King a letter from the Governor-General, which contained, in terms of courteous explanation,

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the sentence that had been passed upon him, and urged him not to resist it. A draft of the proposed treaty was then placed in his hands. He received it with a passionate burst of grief, declared that treaties were only between equals; that there was no need for him to sign it, as the British would do with him and his possessions as they pleased; they had taken his honour and his country, and he would not ask them for the means of maintaining his life. All that he sought was permission to proceed to England, and cast himself and his sorrows at the foot of the Throne. Nothing could move him from his resolution not to sign the treaty. He uncovered his head; placed his turban in the hands of the Resident, and sorrowfully declared that title, rank, honour, everything were gone; and that now the British Government, which had made his grandfather a King, might reduce him to nothing, and consign him to obscurity.

In this exaggerated display of helplessness there was something too characteristically Oriental for any part of it to be assigned to European prompting. But if the scene had been got up expressly for an English audience, it could not have been more cunningly contrived to increase the appearance of harshness and cruelty with which the friends of the King were prepared to invest the act of dethronement. No man was more likely than Outram to have been doubly pained, in the midst of all his painful duties, by the unmanly prostration of the King. To deal harshly with one who declared himself so feeble and defenceless, was like striking a woman or a cripple. But five millions of people were not to be given up, from generation to generation, to suffering and sorrow, because an effeminate Prince, when told he was no longer to have the power of inflicting measureless wrongs on his country, burst into tears, said that he was a miserable wretch, and took off his turban instead of taking out his sword.

There was nothing now left for Outram but to issue a proclamation, prepared for him in Calcutta, declaring the province of Oudh to be thenceforth, forever, a component part of the British Indian Empire. It went forth to the people of Oudh; and the people of Oudh, without a murmur, accepted their new masters. There were no popular risings. Not a blow was struck in defence of the native dynasty of Oita. The whole population went over quietly to their new rulers, and the country, for a time, was outwardly more tranquil than before.

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This was the last act of Lord Dalhousie’s Ministry. When he placed the Portfolio of Government in the hands of Lord Canning, the British officers to whom had been entrusted the work of reforming the administration of Oudh were discharging their prescribed duties with an energy which seemed to promise the happiest results. The King was still obstinate and sullen.

£120,000

He persisted in refusing to sign the treaty or to accept the proposed stipend of twelve lakhs; and though he had thought better of the idea of casting himself at the foot of the British Throne, he had made arrangements to send his nearest kindred – his mother, his brother, and his son – to England to perform a vicarious act of obeisance, and to clamour for his rights.

With what result the administration, as copied closely from the Panjabi system, was wrought out in detail, will be shown at a subsequent stage of this narrative. It was thought, as the work proceeded in quietude and in seeming prosperity, that it was a great success; and it gladdened the heart of the Government in Leadenhall-street, to think of the accomplishment of this peaceful revolution. But that the measure itself made a very bad impression on the minds of the people of India, is not to be doubted; not because of the deposition of a King who had abused his powers; not because of the introduction of a new system of administration for the benefit of the people; but because the humanity of the act was soiled by the profit which we derived from it; and to the comprehension of the multitude it appeared that the good of the people, which we had vaunted whilst serving ourselves, was nothing more than a pretext and a sham; and that we had simply extinguished one of the few remaining Muhammadan States of India that we might add so many thousands of square miles to our British territories, and so many millions of rupees to the revenues of the British Empire in the East. And who, it was asked, could be safe, if we thus treated one who had ever been. the most faithful of our allies?

Footnotes

34. Sir Henry Lawrence says that he was “in advance of the Bengal Government of the day on revenue arrangements,” and gives two striking instances of the fact. With characteristic candour and impartiality, Lawrence adds that Saadat Ali’s maladministration was “mainly attributable to English interference, to the resentment he felt for his own wrongs, and the bitterness of soul with which he must have received all advice from his oppressors, no less than to the impunity with which they enabled him to play the tyrant.” – Calcutta Review, vol. iii. See also Lawrence’s Essays, in which this paper is printed.

35. Sir John Malcolm said that the very mention of “his Majesty of Oudh” made him sick. “Would I make,” he said, “a golden calf, and suffer him to throw off his subordinate title, and assume equality with the degraded representative of a line of monarchs to whom his ancestors have been for ages really or nominally subject?” Sir Henry Lawrence seems to have thought that this was precisely what was intended. “The Nawab Ghazi-ud-din Haidar,” he wrote, “was encouraged to assume the title of King; Lord Hastings calculated on this exciting a rivalry between the Oudh and Dehli Families.” – Calcutta Review, vol. iii.; and Essays, page 119.

36. This was Nasar-ud-din Haidar – the second of the Oudh kings, and perhaps the worst. I speak dubiously, however, of their comparative merits. Colonel Sleeman seems to have thought that he might have extracted more good out of Nasar-ud-din than out of any of the rest.

37. For a long time, as we have said, our troops were employed by the King’s officers to aid them in the collection of the revenue; thereby active, as the Court frankly described it, as “instruments of extortion and vengeance.” This scandal no longer existed; but our battalions were still stationed in the country, ready to dragoon down any open insurrection that might result from the misgovernment of Oudh.

38. That is to say, by the Secret Committee, who had, by Act of Parliament special powers in this matter of Treaty-making.

39. Much was attempted to be made out of this circumstance – but the mistake of an under Secretary cannot give validity to a treaty which the highest authorities refused to ratify. If Lord Auckland was unwilling to declare the nullity of the treaty because its nullification hurt the pride of his Government, the Home Government showed no such unwillingness, for, in 1838, the following return was made to Parliament, under the signature of one of the Secretaries of the Board of Control:

“ There has been no treaty concluded with the present King of Oudh, which has been ratified by the Court of Directors, with the approbation or the Commissioners for the affairs of India. (Signed) “R. GORDON.

“India Board, 3rd July, 1838.”

It must, however be admitted, on the other hand, that, years after this date, even in the Lakhnao Residency, the treaty was held to be valid. In October, 1853, Colonel Sleeman wrote to Sir James Hogg “The treaty of 1837 gives our Government ample authority to take the whole administration on ourselves.” And again, in 1854, to Colonel Low: “Our Government would be fully authorised at any time to enforce the penalty prescribed in your treaty of 1837.” This was doubly a mistake. The treaty was certainly not Low’s.

40. There was something in the number seven fatal to the Princes of Oudh Ghazi-ud-din Haidar died in 1827; Nasar-ud-din in 1837; and Umjid Ali Shah in 1847. The last named succeeded, in 1S42, the old King, whom we had set up, and from whose better character there appeared at one time to be some hope of an improved administration. But, capax imperii nisi imperasset, he was, for all purposes of government, as incompetent as his predecessors. His besetting infirmity was avarice, and he seemed to care for nothing so long as the treasure-chest was full.

41. “The Talukdars keep the country in a perpetual state of disturbance, and render life, property, and industry everywhere insecure. Whenever they quarrel with each other, or with the local authorities of the Government, from whatever cause, they take to indiscriminate plunder and murder – over all lands not held by men of the same class – no road, town, village, or hamlet is secure from their merciless attacks – robbery and murder become their diversion, their sport, and they think no more of taking the lives of men, women, and children, who never offended them, than those of deer and wild hogs. They not only rob and murder, but seize, confine, and torture all whom they seize, and suppose to have money or credit, till they ransom themselves with all they have, or can beg or borrow. Hardly a day has passed since I left Lakhnao, in which I have not had abundant proof of numerous atrocities of this kind committed by landholders within the district through which I was passing, year by year, up to the present day.” And again: “It is worthy of remark that these great landholders, who have recently acquired their possessions by the plunder and the murder of their weaker neighbours, and who continue their system of plunder in order to acquire the means to maintain their gangs and add to their possessions, are those who are most favoured at Court, and most conciliated by the local rulers, because they are more able and more willing to pay for the favour of the one and set at defiance the authority of the other.” – Sleeman’s Diary.

42. See Sleeman’s Correspondence, passim. Exempli gratia: “In September, 1848, I took the liberty to mention to your Lordship my fears that the system of annexing and absorbing Native States – so popular with our Indian Services, and so much advocated by a certain class of writers in public journals – might some day render us too visibly dependent upon our Native Army; that they might see it, and that accidents might occur to unite them, or too great a portion of them, in some desperate act.” – Colonel Sleeman to Lord Dalhousie, April, 1852. And again: “I deem such doctrines to be dangerous to our rule in India, and prejudicial to the best interests of the country. The people see that these annexations and confiscations go on, and that rewards and honorary distinctions are given for them and for the victories which lead to them, and for little else; and they are too apt to infer that they are systematic and encouraged and prescribed from home. The Native States I consider to be breakwaters, and when they are all swept away we shall be left to the mercy of our Native Army, which may not always be sufficiently under our control.” – Colonel Sleeman to Sir dairies Hogg, January, 1853.

43. “Let the management,” he said, “be assumed under some such rules as those which were laid down by Lord William Bentinck. Let the administration of the country, as far as possible, be native. Let not a rupee come into the Company’s coffers.” (The italics are Lawrence’s.) “Let Oudh be at last governed,- not for one man, the King, but for him and his people.”--Calcutta Review, vol. iii. (1845); and Lawrence’s Essays, p. 132.

44. Private correspondence of Sir W. H. Sleeman, printed at the end of the English edition of his “Diary in Oudh.”

45. I speak, of course, of the mere fact of the assumption of the administration. The manner of carrying out the measure had not then been decided.

46. Low said that he was in favour of interference, “because the public and shameful oppressions committed on the people by Government officers in Oudh have of late years been constant and extreme; because the King of Oudh has continually, during many years, broken the Treaty by systematically disregarding our advice, instead of following it, or even endeavouring to follow it; because we are bound by Treaty (quite different in that respect from our position relatively to most of the great Native States) to prevent serious interior misrule in Oudh; because it has been fully proved that we have not prevented it, and that we cannot prevent it by the present mode of conducting our relations with that State; and because no mail of common sense can entertain the smallest expectation that the present King of Oudh can ever become an efficient ruler of his country.” And he added to these pungent sentences an expression of opinion that the unfulfilled threats of Lord Hardinge had increased the evil, inasmuch as that they had produced an impression in Oudh that the Indian Government were restrained from interference by the orders of higher authority at home.

47. The Court of Directors to the Government of India, November 19, 1855. Paragraph 19.

This collection transcribed by Chris Gage
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