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THE 
 
 BENGAL REVERSION, 
 
 ANOTHER "EXCEPTIONAL CASE." 
 
 MAJOR EVANS BELL, 
 
 U'-" — 
 AUTHOR OF "the MYSOKE KEVEKSION," "tHE OXUS AKD THE INDUS," ETC. 
 
 " K in the pride of our power, we ever forget the means by which it has been attained, and, casting 
 away all our harvest of experience, are betrayed by a rash confidence in what we may deem our intrinsic 
 strength to nealect those collateral means by which the great fabric of our power in India has hitherto 
 been supported, we shall with our own bauds pi ecipiute the downfall of our authority." 
 
 Sib John Maxcolm. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 TRUBNER & CO., 60, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 1872. 
 

 •• • • 
 
 T. RICHARDS. 37, GREAT QCEFN STREKT. 
 
 HENRY MORSE STEPHBHS 
 
QJZ 
 
 INTEODUCTION. 
 
 The first actual outbreak of the Indian mutiny in 1857 
 took place at Berhampore, a military station on the banks 
 of the Ganofes about a hundred miles North of Calcutta. 
 Sir John Kaye informs us that the place was "well suited 
 by its position for the development of the desired re- 
 sults." 
 
 " For only a few" {^^e) " miles beyond it lay the city 
 of Moorshedabad, the home of the Nawab Nazim of Ben- 
 gal, the representative of the line of Soubahdars, who, 
 under the Imperial Government, had once ruled that 
 great Province. It w^as known that • the Nawab, who, 
 though stripped of his ancestral power, lived in a Palace 
 with great wealth and titular dignity and the surroundings 
 of a Court, was rankling under a sense of indignities put 
 upon him by the British Government, and that there 
 were thousands in the city w ho would have risen at the 
 signal of one who, weak himself, w^as yet strong in the 
 prestige of a great name. At Berhampore there were no 
 European troops ; there were none anywhere near to it. 
 A Begiment of Native Infantry, the Nineteenth, w^as 
 stationed there, with a corps of Irregular Cavalry, and a 
 battery of post guns manned by Native gunners. It was 
 not difficult to see that if these troops were to rise 
 against their English officers, and the people of Moor- 
 shedabad were to fraternise with them in the name of 
 the Nawab, all Bengal wovild soon be in a« blaze. No 
 
 511551 
 
IV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 thoughts of this kind disturbed the minds of our people, 
 but the truth was very patent to the understanding of 
 their enemies/' 
 
 The historian relates how the routine-action of our Go- 
 vernment favoured the growth of the evil, — how detach- 
 ments from the most disaffected R-egiments of all came in 
 succession to Berhampore " to spread by personal inter- 
 course the great contagion of alarm," and were received by 
 their comrades of the Nineteenth " open-armed and open- 
 mouthed." He describes the state of excitement and 
 panic — ''so often the prelude of dangerous revolt," — 
 into which the station and its neighbourhood were thrown, 
 and finally explains how the " hostile combinations, by 
 which the mutiny of a Regiment might have been con- 
 verted into the rebellion of a Province," were, at this time 
 and place, baffled and overthrown. 
 
 " Under the guidance of Colonel George Macgregor, 
 the Nawab Nazim of Bengal threw the weight of his in- 
 fluence into the scale on the side of order and peace ; and 
 whatsoever might have been stirring in the hearts of the 
 Mussulman population of Moorshedabad, in the absence of 
 any signal from their Chief, they remained outwardly 
 quiescent."* 
 
 The "indignities" that are very naturally supposed 
 to have been "rankhng" in the heart of the Nawab 
 were not of distant date, and he had then very little pro- 
 spect or hope of redress. Lord Dalhousie, in 1853, had 
 pronounced the Nawab guilty of allowing " a monstrous 
 outrage upon humanity" to be "perpetrated under his very 
 eyes," on the mere assumption that his Highness must 
 have been cognizant of whatever occurred in his hunting 
 encampment, even when he was absent from it. A petty 
 theft having been committed in the camp, two persons, a 
 
 * The SepoT/ War, vol. i, chapter iv, p. 498-508. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 boy and a beggar, were seized by the man wbo had been 
 robbed, and violent measures were adopted by him and 
 his companions to extort a confession and recover the 
 goods. The two poor creatures were most cruelly beaten, 
 and died a few days afterwards, and in the words of 
 General Colin Mackenzie, who was Agent at Moorshedabad 
 in 1858, and who carefully analysed the case in a report 
 to Government, — " it is in the highest degree probable 
 that they died from the beating, but there is no positive 
 proof that they did so." Several servants of the Nawab 
 were tried on a charge of comphcity in this murder — one 
 of them, Aman Ali Khan, being a confidential chamber- 
 lain, — and were acquitted. The guilty parties were con- 
 victed and condemned. Lord Dalhousie, in defiance of the 
 solemn verdict of the highest Court of Justice in India, 
 decided that Aman Ali Khan, who had been acquitted, 
 ivas guilty, and that the act of his Highness in agreeing 
 with the Sudder Nizamut by believing him innocent, was 
 a proof of his favour and affection for a murderer. He 
 called for an explanation, but the expressions he used in 
 so doing sufficiently show that he had made up his mind 
 not only as to the guilt of the acquitted persons, but as 
 to that of the Nawab Nazim himself. The Nawab Nazim 
 was required to state " why he failed to exert his autho- 
 rity to prevent the perpetration of so outrageous a crime, 
 almost in his veri/ presence", thus taking for granted that 
 his Highness had known all about it. 
 
 The Nawab sent in an explanation which any impartial 
 person would consider amply sufficient, but which Lord 
 Dalhousie declared to be '' most unsatisfactory". In re- 
 ply to Lord Dalhousie's inquiry "why he continued to 
 show favour and countenance to those who" (in his Lord- 
 ship's opinion, not in that of the Judges) "were con- 
 cerned in the murder," the Nazim naturally replied that 
 
VI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 " wlien they were acquitted by the S udder Court, after 
 
 being so strictly tried, / really thought them to he not 
 
 guilty y The Nawab was peremptorily required by the 
 
 Governor-General " to dismiss them altogether from his 
 
 service," and to "hold no further communication with any 
 
 of them." The Agent, Colonel Macgregor, was required 
 
 to " report within one week" whether " this requisition 
 
 had been complied with or not." 
 
 We shall quote one more passage from the Narrative 
 
 of 1858 by General Colin Mackenzie. 
 
 " His Highness had an undoubted right to be of the same 
 opinion as the Sudder Nizamut, but this Lord Dalhousie would 
 by no means permit, and being in the only position in the world 
 in which a British Sovereign or subject can punish those who 
 have been legally acquitted, he decided that the eunuchs were 
 guilty, and punished his Highness for believing them innocent, 
 not only by depriving him of air and exercise, and of his right 
 to have his travelling expenses paid from the Deposit Fund, but 
 by recommending to the Court of Directors to diminish his High- 
 nesses stipend, to take away the salute of nineteen guns due to 
 his rank as the acknowledged equal and brother of the Governor- 
 General, or at least to diminish it to thirteen, ' so that the Nawab 
 should no longer receive in public as he now does, higher honours 
 than the Members of the Supreme Government of India 1^ He 
 even declined to comply with an indent for military stores re- 
 quired for the Nazim's use, and brought in a Bill depriving his 
 Highness, his family and relations, including the ladies, of all 
 immunities and rights which had been secured to them by 
 Treaties, by pledges from successive Governors-General, and by 
 no less than four Acts of Council." 
 
 At this period Lord Dalhousie's influence with the 
 Home Government was unbounded ; his word was law. 
 The Nawab's remonstrances were of no avail. The Court 
 of Directors sanctioned all Lord Dalhousie's proposals 
 except that of abolishing the salute, — *'it appeared sufii- 
 cient that the number of guns be altered from nineteen 
 to thirteen," — and that of reducing his Highne^s's income. 
 
 In 1859, as a reward for the Nawab's "numerous and 
 valuable services rendered to the British Government 
 
INTRODUCTION. VU 
 
 during tlie Son thai rebellion in 1855, and at the more 
 serious crisis which followed, the mutiny of the Bengal 
 army in 1857," the public honours due to his Highness 
 were replaced on their former scale, and the restrictions 
 and deprivations imposed by Lord Dalhousie were wholly 
 removed ; but the immunity from certain legal processes 
 previously enjoyed by the Nawab and the ladies of his 
 family was not restored, the Governor-General consider- 
 ing that such a step would have *' undesirable conse- 
 quences", and would not be so advantageous to the Nawab 
 as he supposed. In Lord Canning's letter, announcing 
 the good news, the Nawab was assured that the Minute 
 on the subject by the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, 
 "recorded in the archives of the Government, will serve 
 as a perpetual remembrance of your Highnesses active and 
 zealous support, and of the fiim friendship which exists 
 between your Highness and the British Government".* 
 
 The Nawab having now been reinstated very much on 
 the old footing, it was, doubtless, expected by the autho- 
 rities at Calcutta that, under a proper sense of these un- 
 exampled concessions, he would rest and be thankful. 
 But the evil effects of an iniquitous act are not so easily 
 dispelled. The Nawab was relieved from the personal 
 indignity and the restraint over his movements ordained 
 by Lord Dalhousie, but the charge of privity to a murder 
 and of harbouring and favouring the murderers, which 
 had been used as the pretext for these penalties, was not 
 withdrawn or modified. The Lieutenant-Governor of 
 Bengal, Sir Frederick Halliday, on whose Minute Lord 
 Canning's measures of recompense were based, had con- 
 curred in 1853, as a Member of Council, in Lord Dal- 
 housie's condemnation of the Nawab. He had thus pre- 
 
 * Iteturn to the House of Lords, Honours and Rewards to Native Princes 
 (11 of 1860), p. 103. 
 
Vlll INTRODUCTION. 
 
 judged the case, and was not prepared to admit in 1859 
 that his condemnation had been hasty and ill-founded. 
 
 Mr. Grant Duff, the Under Secretary of State for India, 
 in the debate on Mr. Havilland Burke's motion on the 
 4th July, 1871, does, indeed, so far modify the original 
 charge as to say that 'Hhe Court of Directors never 
 accused the Nawab of having been actually an accomplice 
 in the murder. What they accused him of" — continued 
 the honourable gentleman, "was only of having falsely 
 stated to the Governor-General's Agent that he had dis- 
 missed from his service the persons who had committed 
 the murder, and having afterwards extended marked and 
 especial favour to one, at least, of these persons". And 
 the Under Secretary suggests that "the whole story of 
 his" (the Nawab's) "misconduct would have been utterly 
 forgotten if he had not gone out of his way to revive it". 
 
 But the Agent to the Governor-General in 1858, under 
 Lord Canning's Government, — still, happily, living to 
 answer for himself, — could see nothing of that "miscon- 
 duct", which the Under Secretary considers himself 
 justified in imputing. 
 
 General Colin Mackenzie, in that Narrative of Nizamut 
 Affairs already cited, declares that "the Nawab Nazim's 
 explanation bears truth on the face of it ;" and thus dis- 
 misses the incident on which the Under Secretary, — fol- 
 lowing, as he says, the Court of Directors' despatch of 
 1854, — founds the charge of making a false statement, to 
 which the accusation against the Nawab is now reduced. 
 
 '^His Highness seems at first to have understood that the 
 Governor-General had ordered the dismissal of the eunuchs, 
 though nothing is said of this in Lord Dalhousie's letter, but 
 hearing nothing of the matter during an interval of four months, 
 and having information that the afiair had been referred to the 
 Court of Directors, he thought they never V70uld sanction such 
 an injustice as punishing men for a crime of which they had been 
 acquitted, nor such an interference with his own domestic arrange- 
 
INTRODUCTIOX. IX 
 
 ments^ and therefore instead of depriving himself wliolly of old 
 and favourite attendants, lie allowed them to continue among his 
 retinue, although not exercising their functions, until the matter 
 should be finally decided. This turned out a most unfortunate 
 step. The Agent reported that they were still in His Highness's 
 service, and that Aman Ali Khan had resumed his duties.^^ 
 
 Lord Dalhousie declared the charge against the Nawab 
 to be much aggravated by this "unfortunate step", but 
 he never reduced the charge to that of a mere false state- 
 ment. And if the Court of Directors, as Mr. Grant Duff 
 states, "put the most lenient construction possible" on 
 the Nawab's acts or omissions, they were certainly not 
 very lenient in the penalties they sanctioned and con- 
 firmed, and which were enforced for six years. If anyone, 
 therefore, will try to place himself in the position of the 
 Nawab, — or to adopt, for the moment, the conclusions 
 formed by General Colin Mackenzie in 1858, after a care- 
 ful review of the whole case, — it will be easily understood 
 how his Highness, conscious of his innocence and of the 
 undeserved sentence passed on him, should not regard 
 the remission of the indignities and deprivations under 
 which he had suflPered quite as a reward, but rather as a 
 partial reparation, and an imperfect reinstatement. 
 
 Some of the Nawab's occasional expenses had been, by 
 one of the penal conditions of 1854 and during their con- 
 tinuance, thrown upon his personal allowance, instead of 
 being defrayed, according to the long established practice, 
 from the Nizamut Fund ; and, by one of the restorative 
 conditions of 1859, the usual payments were to be made 
 from the Fund, when required on future occasions. But 
 the more extensive questions, which had long been in 
 dispute, as to the real ownership of that Fund, and as to 
 the right of the Naw^ab Nazim to be consulted in its in- 
 vestment and disbursement, were still left open and un- 
 settled. The Nizamut Fund was formed by deductions 
 
X INTRODUCTION. 
 
 and savings from the stipend allotted to the Nawab, 
 under arrangements made from time to time with his 
 predecessors, and the accumulations were annually in- 
 creasing. Although this Fund had been constantly pro- 
 nounced by the Government of India and by the Court 
 of Directors, 7iot to be "public money", to be "the inalien- 
 able property of the Nizamut," and "a part of the assign- 
 ment secured by Treaty to the family", Lord Dalhousie 
 had evinced an intention of disregarding the terms of the 
 various trusts, and of treating the Fund as if it were en- 
 tirely at the disposal of Government. 
 
 But worse remained behind. From the very terms in 
 which the Court of Directors had negatived one of the 
 proposed measures against the Nawab, there appeared 
 reason to suspect that something still more harsh and 
 hostile had been recommended by Lord Dalhousie. The 
 Court of Directors would not reduce the Nawab's income, 
 — they would not interfere with the Nizamut stipend, 
 ''during his Highness s life-time \ thus causing the most 
 serious alarm as to what they might be disposed to do 
 after his demise. In short, the fact became known, (for- 
 mally stated in General Colin Mackenzie's Narrative, and 
 since published in several official Papers,) that the Nawab's 
 alleged misconduct had been turned to account by Lord 
 Dalhousie for the furtherance of his policy — avowed in 
 ] 848, — of losing no "such rightful opportunities of acquir- 
 ing territory or revenue as may from time to time present 
 themselves", and of obtaining "ultimate reversions of 
 revenue into the general exchequer of India",* — that in 
 his Minutes and despatches on the subject the Governor- 
 General had recorded his opinion that the Nawab had 
 "no right or title whatever to any allowance by treaty or 
 compact, or by virtue of any agreement", but that he and 
 
 * Post, p. 53. 
 
INTRODUCTION. XI 
 
 his predecessors had hitherto received their stipend ''of 
 the free grace and favour of the British Government." 
 The future existence of the family was threatened. All 
 security for their dignities and possessions was denied. 
 
 Alarmed by these ominous intimations and still more 
 portentous rumours, but encouraged by the Queen's Pro- 
 clamation of 1858, and by the favourable change in the 
 aspect of our Government, the Nawab, having got his 
 inch in 1859, has ever since continued asking for his ell 
 in several memorials to the Government of India and to 
 the Secretary of State. After a great deal of correspon- 
 dence, a crisis was reached in a despatch from the Secre- 
 tary of State, Sir Charles Wood (now Lord Halifax) dated 
 the 17th of June, 1864, an "Extract" from which was 
 forwarded for the information of his Highness the Nawab 
 Nazim. This "Extract" is certified as a "true copy" by 
 no less than three officials, — by " C. U. Aitchison, Under 
 Secretary to the Government of India," by "Maurice 
 Power, Assistant in charge of office on tour", and by 
 " W. B. Buckle, Agent to the Governor-General", — show- 
 ing, we may presume, the stages by which it was trans- 
 mitted to the hands of the Nawab Nazim. At each stage 
 the " Extract" was, it would appear, copied, but at which 
 of them it was manipulated so as to render it anything 
 but a "true copy", does not appear. The despatch in its 
 complete form (as in the Parliamentary Papers, No. 371 
 of 1870,) consists of fourteen paragraphs. After mention- 
 ing the "long series of official papers" from the Govern- 
 ment of India, and the memorials received from the 
 Naw^ab, the Secretary of State proceeds to "review all 
 the circumstances of his Highness's position." There are 
 many historical inaccuracies in the sketch of the relations 
 between the East India Company and the Nawab's pre- 
 decessors which occupies paragraphs 4 and 5 of the de- 
 
Xll INTIIODUCTION". 
 
 spatch ; but although the opinion is expressed, as a matter 
 of abstract argument, that "the family of the Nawab 
 Nazim of Bengal have, under the Firman of Shah Allum, 
 no claim upon the British Government", and that "under 
 the Treaties" concluded with his ancestors, "the Nawab 
 Nazim of Bengal has no acquired rights," the practical 
 conclusion laid down in paragraph 6 — duly communicated 
 to the Nawab in the "Extract," — is of the most reassur- 
 ing nature. 
 
 "In 1772, by an order of the Court of Directors of the East 
 India Company, passed on a review of the proceedings of the 
 Bengal Government upon the accession of Moobaruk-ood-Dowlah, 
 and of the Treaty concJuded with him by the Indian Government, 
 the stipend of the Nawab Nazim was fixed at the annual amount 
 of 16 lacs of rupees. No treaties of a later date than 1770 were 
 entered into with the descendants of Meer Jaffier, but, on the 
 occasion of each succession, the member of the House entitled to 
 succeed by Mahomedan Law has been recognised by the British 
 Government as Nawab Nazim, and the stipend of 16 lacs of rupees 
 has continued to be appropriated to the benefit of the Nazim and 
 other members of the family. By whatsoever terms, strictly 
 defined, the Nawab Nazim may hold the titles and privileges 
 which he now enjoys, it is obvious to me that they could not be 
 interfered with or altered, during good conduct, without a viola- 
 tion of the spirit, at least, of the assurances which have been 
 given to him by our Government, and a departure from the whole 
 tenure of our transactions with him during a long course of years. 
 I perceive with satisfaction, therefore, that j^our Government 
 have no intention of disturbing subsisting arrangements for the 
 pecuniar}^ provision of the Nawab Nazim and his family, and the 
 maintenance of the titular dignity of his Highness".* 
 
 In the Extract furnished to the Nawab there is a 
 hiatus, marked by asterisks, between paragraphs 11 and 
 13; and though any reservation in communicating a 
 despatch of this kind may have raised some anxiety in 
 the minds of those interested, no one could have been 
 prepared for the . eventual disclosure that the confidence 
 created by paragraph 6 was proved to be false by para- 
 * Papers, Nawah Nazim (371 of 1870), p. 4. 
 
INTRODUCTION. xiii 
 
 graph 12, — that the promises apparently made to the 
 Nawab Nazim and his family in the paragraph communi- 
 cated, were made of no effect in the paragraph reserved. 
 The omitted passage runs as follows : — 
 
 "12. It appears to have been the intention of your Govern- 
 ment to leave the adjustment of future relations with the family 
 of the Nawab Nazim until the necessity shall actually arise. But 
 I am of opinion that It is advisable that the future position of the 
 Nawab Nazim's sons should be fixed and defined with as little 
 delay as possible, in order that the young men may be made 
 acquainted with the status which they are to hold after the death 
 of the present Nawab whilst they are yet sufficiently young to 
 form habits adapted to the circumstances in which they may be 
 placed. With reference to this consideration, Her Majesty's 
 Government desire to be put in possession of the views of your 
 Excellency in Council with respect to the future provision to be 
 made for the Nazim's family. Your Excellency is aware that this 
 Government are fully sensible of the inconvenience of perpetuat- 
 ing, in this or in any other family, a line of titled stipendiaries, 
 without power and responsibilit}^, and without salutary employ- 
 ment conducive to their happiness and their respectability. It 
 would seem to be the desire of the Nazim that his sons should be 
 trained to useful occupations, and I should be glad, therefore, to 
 learn from your Excellency's Government whether, in your opinion 
 any arrangements can be made to place these young* noblemen in 
 an honourable position_, enabling them to become useful members 
 of society, before they are so moulded to habits of idleness as to 
 render it difficult, if not impossible, to make a favourable impres- 
 sion upon them. It is possible that the accumulations in the 
 Deposit Fund may, in some manner, be so employed as to form, 
 to a certain extent, a permanent endowment for some members of 
 the family, and, at the same time, to supply those incentives to 
 exertion which cannot exist in the case of mere Government 
 stipendiaries."* 
 
 The omission of this all-important portion of the de- 
 spatch from the "Extract" for the Nawab's information 
 was open and undisguised ; and we may fully admit the 
 indispensable discretionary power of withholding from 
 persons interested, or from the general community, any 
 parts of an official document that the Government, from 
 
 * Papers, Nawab Xazim (371 of 1870), p. 6. 
 
XIV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 a regard for the public weal, may consider it would be 
 unadvisable to make known. 
 
 Although a critical analysis of the language employed 
 in paragraph 6 may show that its letter is not quite irre- 
 concileable with that of paragraph 12, and that its con- 
 ciliatory spirit is very superficial and indefinite, no im- 
 partial reader can, we think, examine the two passages 
 in conjunction without being irresistibly led to the con- 
 clusion that the one was expressly written to be shown, 
 and the other not to be shown, — that paragraph 12 an- 
 nounced the real policy, and the course to be pursued at 
 the next demise, while paragraph 6 was carefully worded 
 to keep the present Nawab quiet, and to make things 
 pleasant during his life time. 
 
 There was another paragraph in the despatch calculated 
 to make things pleasant for the Nawab, which, however, 
 was w^ithheld from him in the "Extract." Whether this 
 was done at the first stage, in the office of the Secretary 
 to Government, or at the last, in that of the Agent to 
 the Governor-General at Moorshedabad, does not appear, 
 but in either case the reservation was made in an irre- 
 gular style, quite disentitling the "Extract" to the triple 
 certificate of being a " true copy." Of course this may 
 have been a fortuitous occurrence, — though that is hardly 
 credible, — it may have been the unauthorised act of a 
 subordinate, undertaken either as a volunteer stroke of 
 state-craft, or with transcendental views of clerical sym- 
 metry, but the efiect is decidedly undignified, and pain- 
 fully suggestive of deception. The paragraph omitted is 
 numbered 8. But instead of there being any hiatus be- 
 tween 7 and 9 in the ''true copy" sent to the Nawab, a 
 paragraph numbered 8 still appears therein, — the real 
 paragraph 7 being, with this object, divided into two 
 parts, numbered 7 and 8. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 XV 
 
 Pabagraph 7 OF Sir Charles Wood's Despatch, dated 
 17th June, 1861. 
 
 As in the Parliamentary Pajyers, As subdivided in the " true copif^ 
 Xo. 371 o/ 1870. sent for the NaivaVs information. 
 
 " 7. It appears that the personal 
 allowance of the Nawab Nazira him- 
 self is about seven laktis of rupees, 
 that, from the remaining nine lakhs, 
 provision is made for other mem- 
 bers of the family, and that the 
 balance goes to the formation of an 
 accumulating fund, known as the 
 ' Nizamut Deposit Fund'. It is un- 
 necessary to trace further the his- 
 tory of this Fund. Its accumula- 
 tions, representing, as they do, the 
 unappropriated portions from year 
 to year of the sixteen lakhs sti- 
 pend, unquestionably belong to the 
 Nazim and his family, and can 
 properly be expended only for their 
 benefit. But this does not confer 
 upon the Xazira himself any right 
 to dispose, or to superintend the 
 disposal, of these balances. This 
 right belongs to the Government, 
 under the conditions upon which 
 the Fund was constituted. It was 
 assumed, in the first instance, 
 mainly for the benefit and pro- 
 tection of the Xazim and his 
 family ; and I am of opinion that 
 it is to the advantage of his High- 
 ness and his family that this sys- 
 tem should be maintained. At the 
 same time, it would seem to be 
 desirable, and I believe that, to 
 some extent, it has been the prac- 
 tice, in past time, for your Govern- 
 ment, through the Agent at Moor- 
 shedabad, occasionally to consult 
 the Nazim with respect to any ex- 
 traordinary expenditure from the 
 Nizamut Fund." 
 
 " 7. It appears that the personal 
 allowance of the Nawab Nazim 
 himself is about seven lakhs of 
 rupees, that, from the remaining 
 nine lakhs, provision is made for 
 the members of the family, and 
 that the balance goes to the forma- 
 tion of an accumulating fund known 
 as the ' Nizamut Deposit Fund'. 
 
 " 8, It is unnecessary to trace 
 further the history of the Fund. 
 Its accumulations, representing, as 
 they do, the unappropriated por- 
 tions from year to year, of the six- 
 teen lakhs stipend, unquestionally 
 belong to the Nawab Nazim and 
 his family, and can properly be ex- 
 pended only for their benefit. But 
 this does not confer upon the Na- 
 zim himself any right to dispose, or 
 to superintend the disposal, of these 
 balances. This right belongs to 
 the Government under the condi- 
 tions upon which the Fund was 
 constituted. It was assumed in 
 the first instance mainly for the 
 benefit and protection of the Nazim 
 and his family ; and I am of opinion 
 that it is to the advantage of His 
 Highness and his family that this 
 system should be maintained. At 
 the same time it would seem to be 
 desirable, and, I believe, that to 
 some extent, it has been the prac- 
 tice in past time, for your Govern- 
 ment, through the Agent at Moor- 
 shedabad, occasionally to consult 
 the Nazim with respect to any ex- 
 traordinary expenditure from the 
 Nizamut Fund." 
 
 The real paragraph 8, thus withdrawn from the Nawab's 
 
XVI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 observation and inquisitiveness, was to the following 
 effect : — 
 
 "8. It has always been the desire of Her Majesty's Government 
 that a liberal view should be taken of the claims of the family of 
 the Nazira, in respect to the appropriation of the accumulations in 
 the Deposit Fund to objects calculated to advance their happiness 
 and to support their dignity. To this end, in my Despatch of 
 the 7th of July, 1859, I authorised an advance of four lakhs of 
 rupees from the Deposit Fund for the payment of the Nawab 
 Nazim's debts, leaving it to the discretion of the Government 
 whether this sum should be a loan, to be repaid by instalments, 
 or a substantive grant for the above purpose. In the same De- 
 spatch I requested that the decision upon this point might be 
 communicated to Her Majesty's Government at the earliest con- 
 venience of the Governor- General in Council, and that the money 
 might be paid to the Nawab Nazim without any further delay. 
 But I regret that I have not received from your Government any 
 communication whatsoever on the subject, and I cannot ascertain 
 that the money has ever been advanced in any shape ; I desire, 
 therefore, to be informed whether anything was done in conse- 
 quence of these instructions.''* 
 
 The claims of the Nazim and his family to the Nizamut 
 Fund having occupied a great space in the discussions 
 which caused the appeal to the Home Government, this 
 paragraph with its " liberal view" of the question in gene- 
 ral, and the directions for an immediate advance of four 
 lakhs of rupees (£40,000), would have been most gratify- 
 ing to the Nawab. But apparently the Government at 
 Calcutta considered that the communication of this para- 
 graph would be much too gratifying, and desired to avoid 
 or postpone the advance of four lakhs of rupees, notwith- 
 standing the instructions on that head of the Secretary of 
 State, amounting almost to a positive order. Several 
 years elapsed before it became known to the Nawab Na- 
 zim that this advance had been authorised, and if we 
 apply rightly some passages in the speech of Mr. Grant 
 
 * Papers, Nmvah Nazim (371 of 1870), pp. 4, 5. 
 
INTRODUCTION. XVll 
 
 Duff on the 4th July, 1871, the grant had not been fully 
 disbursed even on that date.* 
 
 The peculiar manner in which paragraph 8 was with- 
 drawn from view, prevented all inquiry on the subject. 
 But the Nawab soon got wind of the far more important 
 paragraph 12, denouncing, in terms equivalent to Red 
 Republican invectives against " an idle and profligate 
 nobihty", the very existence of the Nizamut family. The 
 historian of the Sepoy War remarks, with reference to 
 Lord Dalhousie's plan for annexing Kerowlee, which 
 caused a panic throughout the States of Rajpootana, that 
 "it was well known at every Native Court, in every Na- 
 tive bazaar". In such matters there is "no Secret De- 
 partment", t Perhaps all the secondary and subordinate 
 officials who were cognizant of these denunciations, had 
 not been properly impressed by their superiors with the 
 advisability of keeping things quiet and pleasant during 
 the Nawab's lifetime. Somehow or other the facts leaked 
 out. It became known that the Secretary of State had 
 objected to " the inconvenieiice of perpetuating a line of 
 titled stipendiaries', had declared that the sons of the 
 Nawab Nazim would be placed in altered circumstances 
 ''after the death of the present Naivab'\ and had suggested 
 that they should not be ''moulded to habits of idleness", 
 but " trained to useful occupations" ,% 
 
 As the Secretary of State propounds no scheme for 
 extinguishing or annihilating this " line of titled stipen- 
 diaries", it is not easy to imagine how he intends to pre- 
 vent it from " perpetuating" itself. Nor is it any easier 
 to divine how the " inconvenience" of such a " line" exist- 
 
 * " Then the Government undertook to give him £40,000 to clear off 
 certain debts, if that sum was found necessary. The Government has 
 given him, or is going to give him, the money — .£25,000 it has given 
 him, and £15,000 it is going to give him." 
 
 t Kaye'« Sepoy War, vol. i, p. 96. + Ante, p. xiii. 
 
 h 
 
XVm INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ing can be removed by its comparative impoverishment 
 and degradation. Unless the acquisition of revenue by 
 any means is to over-ride all other considerations, it is 
 difficult to see the advantage of perverting a family of 
 great influence from a state of contented quiescence and 
 harmonious co-operation to a state of morbid activity and 
 discontented opposition. 
 
 It is not enough to say in condemnation of the visionary 
 plausibilities brought forward in paragraph 12 of the 
 despatch of 17th June, 1864, that they evince an utter 
 and contemptuous v^ant of sympathy w^ith the class 
 attacked : they betray an utter ignorance of the con- 
 ditions of Indian society, and of its most energetic and 
 sensitive constituent, Mahomedan society. How did 
 Lord Halifax expect the Princes of the Moorshedabad 
 family to be weaned from what he stigmatises as "habits 
 of idleness", and to be "trained to useful occupations"? 
 To what part of the globe could he refer them for an 
 example ? Such efforts of self-denial and self-abasement 
 are not expected of European "Royalties retired from 
 business," whether of ancient or parvenu origin, — of a 
 Bonaparte or a Bourbon, a Murat or a Vasa. Oriental 
 Royalties, their followers and adherents, have the same 
 prejudices and pride, and lack the outlets and consola- 
 tions that are possessed by their Western compeers. The 
 British Government of India opens no road to the honour- 
 able ambition of young Nawabs and Rajahs. Mediatised 
 Princes find places in the Army, the diplomatic service 
 and the executive administration of Germany and Austria. 
 There is room for a Saxe- Weimar in our Army, for a 
 Leiningen and a Gleichen in our Navy. The Dukes of 
 Chartres and Penthievre can serve Republican France. 
 But no son of a Princely line in India, reigning or media- 
 tised, is admitted into the Army or Civil Service of the 
 
INTRODUCTION. XIX 
 
 Empire, unless he should solicit employment in some 
 inferior situation such as no English gentleman would 
 accept. When the head of one of these families is de- 
 prived of the stipend on which he maintains a host of 
 relatives and connections, — and to a somewhat less degree 
 when the stipend is reduced and sub-divided, with the 
 prospect of gradual extinction, — the result must be im- 
 mediate rum to many, loss and humiliation to the whole 
 tribe, while the only life of activity to which our Govern- 
 ment invites them is one of conspiracy and fanaticism. 
 
 As soon as the Nawab Nazim had ascertained beyond 
 the possibility of doubt that it was to a fate like this his 
 family was destined, unless our Government could be 
 induced to reconsider the sentence passed by Lord Dal- 
 housie in 1853, he determined to proceed in person to 
 London, — there, at the foot of the Throne and before the 
 Great Council of the Empire, to ask for inquiry and 
 redress. 
 
 The Nawab never did, and does not, claim a sum of 
 more than eighteen millions sterling, exclusive of interest, 
 as a settlement of the arrears and outstanding balances 
 due to the Nizamut. He does not ask that the stipend 
 may be raised, either with retrospective or prospective 
 effect, to the amount mentioned in the Treaty of 1770, 
 £318,000, instead of £160,000, the annual sum that has 
 been allotted since the year 1772, and during five succes- 
 sions, for the support of the Nizamut. He did not 
 "assert" — as the Government of India suggested by 
 way of a reductio ad dbsurdum of his case, — "that Her 
 Majesty in the year 1870 ought to reconsider the justice 
 and propriety of the policy of Warren Hastings in 1770, 
 with the view, if it should appear to have been unjust or 
 impolitic, of reestablishing the representative of Meer 
 Jaffier as hereditary Soubadar of Bengal, and of reducing 
 
 62 
 
XX INTRODUCTION. 
 
 herself to the position of Dewan/'* The Nawab has not 
 made the extravagant demands, or preferred the mon- 
 strous pretensions that have been ascribed to him, the 
 rumour of which, — not entirely of spontaneous growth, — 
 is known to have raised a prejudice in many minds 
 against his Highness's case, and to have diverted atten- 
 tion from its real nature and merits. 
 
 What the Nawab really does ask is an assurance by 
 the Imperial Government, in any form that may be con- 
 sidered becoming, that the honours and dignities of the 
 Nizamut and Soobahdarry of Bengal are what they were 
 publicly proclaimed to be at his accession, — and at the 
 accession of every one of his predecessors, — ^^ hereditary 
 honours and dignities!''\ He also asks that the stipend 
 which has been for a century, and during five successions, 
 settled on the Nawab Nazim, shall be pronounced to be 
 what it was declared to be by the Home Government in 
 1840, — two years after the present Nawab's accession, — 
 " the assignment secured by Treaty to the family "X ^^^ 
 shall not be again diminished. 
 
 He asks that the Nizamut Fund may be clearly 
 acknowledged to be what it was invariably declared to 
 be until 1853, — when the new doctrines of Lord Dal- 
 housie were propounded, — ''the inalienable property of the 
 Nizamut''; or, in the words of the Home Government in 
 1840, ''not 'public money, but a part of the assignment 
 secured by Treaty to the Family, ivhich part is allowed to 
 accumidate for its general benefit,''^ or in the words of 
 the Secretary of State's despatch of 17th Jime, 1864, 
 paragraph 8, "to belong unquestionably to the Nawab 
 Nazim and his family "" to be expended only for their 
 
 * Despatch to the Secretary of State, dated 29th July, 1870, Papers, 
 Nmvah Nazim (116 of 1871), p. 4. 
 
 t Post, pp. 17, 18. + Ihid., p. 78. § Ihid., pp. 77, 78. 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXI 
 
 benefit"^ So much being granted, he asks that this 
 Fund may be really maintained and expended for the 
 benefit of the Nawab Nazim and his family, and that it 
 may be not applied, at his demise, to form what is called 
 in paragraph 12 of the same despatch, ''a permanent en- 
 dowment" for his sons and other "members of the family", 
 — that is to say, a provision on a reduced scale made out 
 of the accumulated savings of the " assignment secured 
 by Treaty", the assignment being no longer paid. This 
 would really be to apply "the inalienable property of the 
 Nizamut" for the benefit of the British Government. 
 
 The Nizamut stipend, instituted in 1765, when, on 
 being invested with the Dewannee or Financial Adminis- 
 tration of Bengal, the East India Company became entitled 
 to exercise control over the expenditure, was intended, 
 in the words of the original agreement, to cover the 
 expenses of the Nawab's ''household, servants" and "re- 
 tinue", and " the support of his dignity only\'\ It was, 
 therefore, distinctly of the nature of a Civil List, and 
 the argument that has been sometimes brought forward, 
 that the word "Nizamut" means simply "government," 
 and that those allowances were for the expense of carry- 
 ing on the administration, falls to the ground at once. 
 No part of the expense of administration was ever paid 
 out of the Nizamut stipend. 
 
 After their acquisition of the Dewannee, but more par- 
 ticularly duiing the minority of two Nawabs in succes- 
 sion, between 1766 and 1782, the East India Company 
 contrived to possess themselves of all the functions of 
 executive administration ; the judicial department alone 
 being left under the partial control of the Native Prince 
 until 1793. The Nawab Nazim was thus gradually re- 
 duced to the position of a mediatised Sovereign. 
 
 * Ante, p. xiv. 
 
 t Papers, Naivab Nazim (371 of 1870), pp. 13, 14; Post, p. 27. 
 
XXU INTRODUCTION. 
 
 During this double minority, also, — by means of two 
 Treaties, and tlie arbitrary suspension by order of the 
 Court of Directors of one half of the Nawab's allowances 
 during **the nonage" of the younger of these Princes, 
 which suspension was extended indefinitely until it 
 became permanent, — the Nizamut stipend was gradually 
 reduced to the amount at which it has been fixed for the 
 last hundred years, £'160,000 per annum. 
 
 During this same period of their "nonage", the two 
 minor Nawabs were, by some process of management or 
 guardianship, deprived of large landed estates, the pos- 
 session of which would for ever have secured the family 
 from being entirely dependent on the honour and for- 
 bearance of the stronger party to the Treaty of 1770, 
 and from being stigmatised in 1871 by Mr. Grant Duff, 
 the Under Secretary of State for India, as "titled stipen- 
 diaries," *' recipients of the bounty of the British Govern- 
 ment." The Nizamut stipend, therefore, is not merely a 
 perpetual annuity, settled on a mediatised Princely family 
 in consideration of the loss of their sovereignty, and of 
 great political services rendered to the Imperial Govern- 
 ment, but stands also as compensation for the loss of 
 their domains. In consequence of these losses and reduc- 
 tions, the Nawab Nazim has a much smaller income than 
 several noblemen and land-holders in Bengal, — the Bajah 
 of Burdwan, for example, about the richest man in India, 
 — who, nevertheless, would not think of claiming for them- 
 selves anything like an equality of rank with the descend- 
 ant of the rulers of the country and grantors of their estates, 
 and would never address him in writing except in the 
 style of a humble petitioner. 
 
 For the whole of the Nizamut stipend of £160,000 
 the Nawab Nazim is required to grant his acquittance, 
 although only the sum of £70,000 is paid directly to 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXUl 
 
 him, — the rest being apportioned out to other members 
 of the family, or added to the Nizamut Fund. The pre- 
 sent Nawab alleges — in pursuance of long-standing claims 
 — that the accumulations of this Fund have been allowed 
 to grow far beyond what was contemplated and stipulated 
 in the several arrangements between his predecessors and 
 the Government of India ; that lapsed pensions and allow- 
 ances of deceased relatives and dependents are constantly 
 being absorbed into the Fund, instead of being restored 
 to the income of the head of the family ; that sums from 
 the Fund are applied to purposes foreign to the interests 
 of the Nizamut ; and that by these processes a great part 
 of the assignment under treaty is improperly withheld 
 from the Nawab, and a large amount of family property 
 intercepted by the British Government. 
 
 But these are points of minor importance, mere details 
 in the inquiry for which the Nawab sues, when compared 
 with the main point of the threatened subjection of his 
 heir, at the next succession, to a very considerable dimin- 
 ution of his prescriptive income, to the total sequestra- 
 tion, however disguised and glorified, of the accumulated 
 family capital, and to the denial of his hereditary rank, 
 with the necessary consequences of social humiliation and 
 heavy loss to the entire family. 
 
 In 1869 the Nawab Nazim arrived in London. On the 
 28th of July in that year he presented his Memorial to 
 the Secretary of State, the Duke of Argyll. In con- 
 formity with the rule in such cases, the Memorial was 
 sent to the Government of India for their comments and 
 report. A full year and a day elapsed before the opinions 
 of the Governor-General and Council were embodied in a 
 despatch dated the 29th of July, 1870.* It reached this 
 country of course after the close of the Parliamentary 
 
 * Papers, Nawab Nazim (116 of 1871), p. 2. 
 
XXIV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 session ; and the Duke of Argyll's letter to the Nawab, 
 in reply to his Highness's Memorial, is dated the 23rd of 
 December, 1870.* This communication from the Secre- 
 tary of State conveys, in colourless language and with a 
 total avoidance of argumentative exposition, his general 
 concurrence with the views of the despatch of the 1 7th 
 June, 1864, from Sir Charles Wood, who was then Secre- 
 tary of State, while the Duke of Argyll was Lord Privy 
 Seal, and who now, as Lord Halifax, holds the Privy Seal 
 in the same Cabinet in which the Duke sits as Secretary 
 of State for India. 
 
 The only noteworthy passage in the Duke's letter to 
 the Nawab is his Grace's declaration that *' having de- 
 liberately considered the circumstances of the treaties" 
 between his "Highness's predecessors on the one side and 
 the British Government on the other", he "can come to no 
 other conclusion than that they were not of an hereditary 
 nature', — a conclusion which, even if it were sound and 
 tenable, entirely passes by the prescriptive claims of the 
 Nizamut, proved and displayed by the uniform and re- 
 iterated statements and acts of all British authorities, at 
 home and in India, for a hundred years, and which, in 
 the absence of any Treaty, would amply suffice to estab- 
 lish the hereditary nature of the Nawab's dignity and 
 revenue. 
 
 But if the Duke's letter calls for no critical remark, 
 confined as it is to a pointless declaration of adherence to 
 previous official proceedings, the same cannot be said of 
 the positions assumed in the House of Commons by the 
 Under-Secretary of State on the 4th July, 1871, when 
 after an interval of two years — caused, as we have seen, 
 by no delay on the Nawab's part, — the motion for a 
 Select Committee to inquire into the Treaties between 
 
 * Papers, Nawab Nazim CllG of 1871), p. 8. 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXV 
 
 the East India Company and the Nawab Nazim of 
 Bengal, was introduced by Mr. Haviland Burke. No 
 one on that occasion can have been prepared for the 
 offensive weapons produced and the new ground occupied 
 by Mr. Grant Duflf. We shall endeavour to show in the 
 following pages that these newly invented weapons of 
 offence are by no means arms of precision, and that, 
 however well calculated to inflict pain, their effect cannot 
 be fatal. We shall endeavour to show that the new 
 ground occupied is false and treacherous, and that 
 although for once a lightly equipped partisan may skim 
 over the surface, it will not bear even his weight a second 
 time. 
 
 When a professed judge has adopted the style and 
 tactics of a partisan, the appellant may be excused, and 
 his cause ought to suffer no prejudice, if he calls in the 
 aid of a professed advocate.* The only tribunal before 
 which the appeal can be heard is by no means generally 
 well instructed in Indian affairs. It will be one of our 
 objects to expose the flagrant misdirection of the tribunal, 
 
 * Although I have no objection to the character of advocate in this case, 
 — one of a class especially needing advocacy, and accepted for advocacy or 
 advice by some of the most eminent living judges and counsel, — let me ob- 
 serve that the principles and political considerations on which my argu- 
 ments proceed are not the growth of the present occasion, but have been 
 brought forward by me, in season and out of season, — ofl&cially, more 
 strongly than such humble places as I filled usually permit, officiously, 
 by such literary means as were available, — for more than fifteen years ; 
 and that I did not want a rebellion to teach them to me ; that in 1856 
 I placed on official record the cruel results of disinheriting the heir of 
 the Rajah of Xagpore; that in 1857, under very peculiar circumstances, 
 I addressed a refutation of Lord Dalhousie's novel doctrine of " Lapse", 
 as applied in the recent annexations of Xagpore and Jhansi, directly to 
 Lord Canning, and suggested the reconstitution of the former Native 
 State. In April 1861, an article from my pen (reprinted in 1864 in 
 Tlie Empire in India), recommended the very policy towards Mysore, — 
 the maintenance of the State under an adopted heir, and the gradual 
 restoration of Native agency, — which in 1867 was ordered by the Secre- 
 tary of State to be carried out in every particular. — E. B. 
 
XXVI INTKODUCTION. 
 
 at the first hearing last year, by the official representative 
 of the Imperial Government, who would naturally be ex- 
 pected and trusted to give full and accurate information 
 as to the facts of the case, and its political and social 
 bearings. 
 
 What is to become of this expectation and trust, what 
 can be thought of the merits of the official answer, when 
 it appears that Mr. Grant Duff's contemptuous assertions, 
 that **the Nawab Nazim of Bengal is no Prince", that 
 ^'his father was no Prince", that "his grandfather was no 
 Prince", that "none of his predecessors have been Indian 
 Princes", constitute an irreconcileable defiance of history, 
 of law, and of the innumerable declarations and uniform 
 practice of our Government down to the present day ? 
 What will be thought of the inherent strength of the 
 official case, when Mr. Grant Dufi"s bold assertion that 
 the Treaty of 1770 between the East India Company 
 and theNawab Mobaruk-ood-Dowlah, "was never ratified 
 by the proper authority, and never acted on during the 
 whole of the life of the person to whose life it exclusively 
 applied," appears to be totally without foundation, — 
 when it is proved that it was '* ratified by the proper 
 authority"; that the Court of Directors (to whose arbi- 
 trary action the Under Secretary most inaccurately 
 refers,) approved and confirmed the Treaty ; that it was 
 "acted on" in every respect, without a jot or tittle of 
 deduction, during two years of the life of the Nawab 
 Mobaruk-ood-Dowlah, and, saving the arbitrary and pro- 
 fessedly temporary modification of one of its provisions, 
 during the whole of his life ; and that so far from this 
 Treaty being "exclusively applied" to the life of that 
 Nawab, it was to be "inviolably observed for ever", and 
 has been repeatedly and continuously recognised as a still 
 subsisting Treaty during the life of evevj successor to the 
 Nizamut, including the present Nawab ? 
 
IXTEX)DUCTION. XXVU 
 
 What can be thought of the competence of Mr. Grant 
 Duff to grasp the complex problem of the social and sec- 
 tarian forces at work in India, when he is found speaking 
 of the people of Bengal as *'a Hindoo population/'* totally 
 ignoring the Mussulman inhabitants, who form a consider- 
 able part of the population, and who far surpass all other 
 sects and classes . in average intelligence and spirit, in 
 social organisation and political capacity ? 
 
 The Under Secretary's failure to appreciate the im- 
 portance of the Mussulman community as a constituent 
 in the population of Bengal, — his utter inability to realise 
 the scene of action, the plot of the drama, or the places 
 of the several performers, — tempt us to hazard a conjec- 
 ture that he must have been tutored in his own part by 
 some one accepted at the India Office as an expert in 
 Bengal affairs. Keeping in view the high probability of 
 such instruction, it is necessary to recoUect that in the 
 whole matter of the Nawab's appeal the original respon- 
 dent is the provincial Government of Bengal, under which 
 the immediate supervision of Nizamut affairs has always 
 been left ; and that the functionaries of that Province 
 have evinced on every possible occasion, from the first 
 establishment of British power down to the present day, 
 the most marvellous lack of insight into Mahomedan 
 opinion and feeling, and into the fluctuations and pro- 
 gress of the Mahomedan movement. It matters not 
 whether this bhndness is altogether an incurable defect, 
 or whether, — as we are inclined to think, — it arises from 
 that haughty and unsympathetic indifference to every 
 social and spiritual force of purely Native growth, which 
 a true statesman might be expected to overcome, but 
 which has always been the weakness of our system in 
 India, hardly less prevalent among the supreme than 
 
 * Post, p. 64. 
 
XXVm INTRODUCTION. 
 
 among the subordinate authorities, most conspicuous at 
 the great centres of British power, and preeminently so 
 at Calcutta. 
 
 At Calcutta, where everything is bedaubed with a thin 
 wash of European culture, — w^here gas-lamps and an 
 Italian Opera House, daily newspapers and an Art 
 Union, attest the progress of humanity, where the palan- 
 quin has given place to the brougham, and Baboos in 
 patent-leather boots display their enlightenment by eat- 
 ing beef-steaks and drinking bottled porter, — the highly 
 placed English officials of long service and great experi- 
 ence become quite unable to realise the possibility of any 
 attack on Government within the Regulation Provinces 
 more formidable than an * indignation' meeting at the 
 Town Hall, a memorial from the British Indian Associa- 
 tion, or an article in the Hindoo Patriot. The same 
 arrogant confidence has always been equally characteristic 
 of the Viceregal Cabinet and Secretariat, and of the local 
 Government of Bengal, in ordinary times, and has been 
 very rapidly recovered after any shock or convulsion. 
 
 It is well known that at the outbreak of the Bebellion 
 of 1857, the only man in Lord Canning's Council who 
 perceived the dangerous crisis that had arrived, who fore- 
 cast the magnitude of the struggle, and insisted that 
 there must be no trifling with it, was General Sir John 
 Low. The great Civilians were all for adhering to the 
 strict forms of law. At first they would not believe that 
 the contagion would spread through the army, — "they 
 laid it down as a maxim that no corps ever mutinied 
 which was properly commanded".* When the defection 
 of seventy Begiments overturned that theory, they main- 
 tained that no civil district had risen, would or could rise 
 
 * The Mutiny of the Bengal Army, by One who has served under Sir 
 Charles Napier (1857), p. 175. 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXIX 
 
 in revolt, or that any part of the civil population could 
 join or sympathise with the Sepoys, for this was a purely 
 military mutiny. The extended area of insurrection soon 
 upset this theory also ; but the old colleagues and sup- 
 porters of Lord Dalhousie stuck to it as long as they 
 could. 
 
 In the extract already given from Sir John Kayo's his- 
 tory we are told that the great danger of a Mahomedan 
 rising in Bengal — more particularly if it could start from 
 Moorshedabad as a centre, with the ostensible counte- 
 nance of the Nawab, — was " very patent to the under- 
 standing of our enemies", but that " no thoughts of this 
 kind disturbed the minds of our people".* 
 
 In the same beautiful spirit of undisturbed tranquillity 
 and uninquiring confidence, Mr. (now Sir Frederick) 
 Halliday, Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, totally dis- 
 approved and denounced the precautionary measures 
 taken in the middle of June, 1857, — the highest crisis of 
 the insurrectionary spirit, — by Mr. William Tayler, Com- 
 missioner of Patna, to frustrate the machinations of 
 Wahabee conspu'ators. 
 
 In order fully to appreciate what the situation was, it 
 must be imderstood that Mr. Tayler was the responsible 
 executive authority in the Province of Behar, with a 
 population of several millions, composed of Hindoo tribes 
 far more sturdy and turbulent than those of the Lower 
 Districts of Bengal, and that the city of Patna, 380 miles 
 from Calcutta, contains about 300,000 inhabitants, at 
 least one-third being Mahomedan. 
 
 Acting on good information which none but a ruler 
 who was popular, genial, and accessible, as well as able, 
 would have been likely to procure, and the accuracy of 
 which has been marvellously proved by events long sub- 
 
 * Ante, p. iv. 
 
XXX INTRODUCTION. 
 
 sequent, Mr. Tayler quietly arrested and kept in close 
 but honourable custody the leaders of the Wahabee sect, 
 among whom was a person of considerable wealth and in- 
 fluence in the city of Patna, Moulavee Ahmed-oolla. Im- 
 mediately on receiving intelligence of this step, the Lieu- 
 tenant-Governor sent Mr. Tayler a curt requisition for 
 copies of the documents on which he had based the arrest 
 of the principal " Wahahee gentlemen''. Mr. Halhday 
 did not officially or openly condemn this measure at the 
 time, nor directly interfere with Mr. Taylor's orders. But 
 his constant warnings and exhortations to do nothing 
 " harsh or illegal", and to take care not to overstep the 
 law ; his complimentary designation of the " Wahahee 
 gentlemen" ; his extraordinary opinion, publicly recorded, 
 that it was " inconceivable the Sepoys at Dinapore" (ten 
 miles from Patna) ''should mutiny", which, however, they 
 did on the 23rd July, and that he ''could not believe 
 we were in any danger at Patna"; are sufficient to show 
 the justice of our allegation, that the Bengal authorities, 
 even at the moment of greatest peril, have ever mani- 
 fested an ignorant contempt for the social and spiritual 
 forces that sway the masses around them. 
 
 Mr. Tayler checked and confounded the Wahabee de- 
 signs until military operations rendered their immediate 
 renewal hopeless ; he saved our Government from an im- 
 measurable aggravation of its difficulties, but he did not 
 duly revere those in the brotherhood of the Bengal Civil 
 Service who had attained to a higher step in the hierarchy. 
 He observed, inquired, thought and acted promptly, but 
 in an unheard-of predicament some of his acts were un- 
 precedented and officially irregular. He was removed from 
 Patna; and, being a man of high courage and independent 
 spirit, the treatment he received from Government, — for, 
 of course the Lieutenant-Governor's authority was sup- 
 ported, — drove him from the service. 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXXI 
 
 Mr. Tajler s successor at Patna, carefully instructed to 
 repair all breaches in the Regulations, at once leleased 
 the " Wahabee gentlemen" from their confinement, re- 
 ceived Moulavee Ahmed-oollah, their chief, with open 
 arms, condoled with him on his unmerited sufferings, and 
 congratulated him on his emancipation. The new Com- 
 missioner also reported, in words expressly approved by 
 the Lieutenant-GoVernor, — 
 
 '^ With, regard to the Wahabees, it is only necessary to say 
 that there is not the slightest proof that any danger was to be 
 apprehended from this sect.^^ 
 
 " Mr. Tayler, indeed, talks of the men he arrested as the 
 Wahabee leaders, but they were book-men, and had the sect 
 been inclined to fight they would assuredly have selected other 
 leaders.^^ 
 
 " Without positively affirming the fact, I confess a doubt has 
 often occurred to me whether Mr. Tayler was not worked upon 
 to arrest the Wahabees, simply in oi'der to get out of the way 
 men who were likely to interfere with the plans of the conspi- 
 rators. There is at least, as will be seen, some grounds for this 
 hypothesis. There is none for attributing seditious designs to 
 the Wahabees.^' 
 
 Mr. Tayler and his principal Mussulman subordinate, 
 Mowla Buksh, — the confidence placed in whom proves 
 that the Commissioner had no prejudice against Mahome- 
 dans, — having been removed from Patna, the much- 
 injured Wahabees were taken into high favour. As if to 
 demonstrate the absurdity of all suspicions against these 
 harmless *'book-men", their leader, that respectable ''Wa- 
 habee gentleman", Moulavee Ahmed-oollah, was placed on 
 the Committe of Public Instruction at Patna, where he 
 sat for several years with the Commissioner, Collector, 
 Civil Surgeon, and other English officials. He was also 
 made an Assessor of Income Tax. These two appoint- 
 ments, giving him constant access to the local authorities, 
 and showing how well he stood with them, were calcu- 
 lated very much to strengthen his position. Had not 
 
XXXll INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Wahabee influence reached far beyond the limits of the 
 Bengal Presidency, it might apparently have continued 
 to spread and work, unseen and unchecked, recruiting its 
 followers and over-awing its opponents, until the supreme 
 opportunity arrived. But the very extent of its opera- 
 tions led to the detection of its leaders. 
 
 In 1863 Moulavee Ahmed-ooUah had the honour of 
 being presented to the Viceroy of India in the reception- 
 hall of Belvedere House at Calcutta. In 1864 he was 
 transported for life to the Andaman Islands. 
 
 Seven years had scarcely elapsed since Mr. Tayler was 
 removed from Patna, condemned as having "caused gene- 
 ral scandal and discontent" by his administration, parti- 
 cularly by that act of wanton oppression against those 
 inoffensive and loyal subjects, the "Wahabee gentlemen", 
 — seven years had scarcely elapsed since Mr. Halliday, 
 the Lieutenant-Governor, sent an official letter containing 
 high praise of the "Wahabee gentlemen" to the public 
 journals, and had it placed on record in every Commis- 
 sioner's office in Bengal, — when a police-officer from the 
 Punjaub arrived at Patna, apprehended Moulavee Ahmed- 
 oollah and his brother Yahiya Ah, searched their houses, 
 and carried them off to be tried for their lives on several 
 charges of treason. 
 
 For immediately after the costly and bloody Umbeyla 
 campaign of 1863, under General Sir Neville Chamber- 
 lain, against the Wahabee fanatics of Sittana, judicial in- 
 vestigations clearly established the fact that the hostile 
 colony beyond the North-Western corner of the Punjaub 
 frontier was recruited and subsidised from the British 
 Provinces of Bengal and Hindostan, that Patna had 
 been for many years the head-quarters, arsenal, and bank, 
 the very centre and hot-bed of this fanatical and treason- 
 able organisation; and that those innocent "book-men", 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXXIU 
 
 Moulavee Ahmed-oolla and his brother Yahiya Ali, were 
 its leading spirits and most active supporters, incessantly 
 preaching a Jihad or religious war against the British 
 Government, deputing emissaries throughout Bengal to 
 promote the enterprise, and forwarding men, money, and 
 arms to the stronghold of the brigands beyond our frontier. 
 They were condemned to death, but the sentence was 
 commuted to transportation for life. 
 
 Immediately after the conviction of Moulavee Ahmed- 
 oolla, the life of the Judge of Patna, Mr. Ainslie, who had 
 tried the case, was attempted by a Mahomedan, who, 
 after being found guilty in the local court, was acquitted 
 by the appellate tribunal on the ground of insanity. The 
 murderous assault failed, and the prosecution of the as- 
 sailant failed also. It has been suspected that if he was 
 mad, there was some method in his madness. 
 
 The suspicion that there is some method in such mad- 
 ness, cannot but become still stronger when the circiun- 
 stances of two similar acts that have been perpetrated 
 within the last year, — with no failure, alas ! in either in- 
 stance, — are duly considered. Two noble victims have 
 fallen before the knife of the assassin, and in each case 
 there was that same apparent absence of motive for the 
 crime which gave plausibility to the plea of insanity in 
 the case of unsuccessful assault on the Judge of Patna. 
 The fact that he had just convicted and sentenced Mou- 
 lavee Ahmed-oolla, was at the time scarcely noted. 
 
 In consequence of fresh information from the Punjaub 
 and North- West Provinces, inquiries into the Wahabee 
 conspiracy and ^jropaganda were pursued with augmented 
 energy in 1869 and 1870. Several persons aUied by re- 
 lationship or close business connections with the '' head 
 centres" of Wahabeeism at Patna, were apprehended, — 
 two of higher position and greater wealth than the others 
 
XXXIV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 being kept in jail for more than a year by a special pro- 
 cess, very seldom put in force, a simple warrant of deten- 
 tion under the seal and sign manual of the Viceroy him- 
 self These persons applied to the High Court of Cal- 
 cutta for a writ of habeas corpus. After long argument 
 this application and several others made on their behalf, 
 were rejected by Mr. Justice Norman. The same Judge 
 was expected to preside, as Acting Chief Justice, when 
 their appeal from the verdict and sentence of the Ses- 
 sions Court on their trial came up for hearing. On the 
 threshold of the High Court, where the Wahabee conspi- 
 rators would have been brought for judgment before him, 
 Chief Justice Norman was struck down in open day. The 
 assassin, having in all probability heard something, or 
 having been instructed, as to the escape of the criminal 
 on a previous occasion, feigned insanity. That expedient 
 proving useless, he died and made no sign. 
 
 Lord Mayo was the Viceroy who instituted and carried 
 on with unprecedented vigour, the renewed inquisition 
 into the doings of the Wahabee confederacy. By a strange 
 fatality he visits the very place to which Moulavee 
 Ahmed-ooUa and the other convicted leaders of that con- 
 federacy were transported, and where they are known to 
 have been allowed to hold communication with a large 
 number of other prisoners, and to maintain a correspond- 
 ence with their brethren and co-religionists at home. It 
 may not be clear whether they had notice of the intended 
 visit, or not, though the necessary preparations in the 
 settlement must have told them ; but the broad facts at 
 least are certain, that their arch-enemy, the highest em- 
 bodiment of the great Infidel Power possessing India, 
 who had even put forth his personal prerogative for the 
 arrest and detention of the elect, comes to the Andaman 
 Islands, where these fanatics are kept under very loose 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXXV 
 
 discipline, and the knife of an assassin once more strikes 
 down the most exalted person within reach, the person 
 above all others whom the Wahabees had reason to hate. 
 That may be a merely fortuitous concurrence of circum- 
 stances. Here are three murderous assaults by Maho- 
 medans on high Enghsh officials. In not one of these 
 cases is there any trace of private vengeance to be grati- 
 fied, or of personal rancour against the intended victim. 
 The strange points of agreement between these three 
 outrages, of which one only failed in its fatal object, and 
 their apparent coincidence in time and place with the 
 trial and punishment of certain Wahabee traitors, may 
 be quite accidental and really insignificant ; but we are 
 certainly not going to be brought over to that opinion by 
 any assurances from the very highest officials at Calcutta, 
 or from the most experienced and distinguished advisers 
 of the Crown in London who have been transplanted from 
 Calcutta. We have had too much proof of the arrogant 
 apathy and blind self-complacency that have long pre- 
 vailed in that quarter, to look there for an intelligent, 
 patient, and tolerant appreciation of what is bad, or of 
 what is good, in any one of the religious and social move- 
 ments that are stirring the depths of the Indian popula- 
 tion. They care for none of these things, and therefore 
 they have never known anything about them, until some 
 paroxysm has revealed their existence. The Lieutenant- 
 Governor of Bengal, who in 1857 "could not believe we 
 were in any danger at Patna", who considered that there 
 were no "grounds for attributing seditious designs to the 
 Wahabees", and "not the slightest proof that any danger 
 was to be apprehended from this sect",* who evinced so 
 much pity and sympathy for the harmless '' book-men" 
 cruelly confined on suspicion by Commissioner Tayler, 
 
 * AutCf pp. XXX, xxxi. 
 
XXXVl INTRODUCTION. 
 
 and who gave them public favour and confidence while 
 they were actually engaged in those hostile and treason- 
 able operations against the British Government for which 
 they were eventually transported to the Andaman Islands, 
 — was the same Lieutenant-Governor who in 1853 con- 
 curred as Councillor in Lord Dalhousie's persecution of 
 the Nawab Nazim for imaginary misconduct. Yery highly, 
 therefore, as any one may estimate the services and repu- 
 tation of Sir Frederick Halliday, who is now a Member of 
 the Secretary of State's Council, we must urge that in 
 this particular matter of the Nawab Nazim's claims, his 
 opinion can hardly be accepted as an unbiassed one, and 
 that in the general matter of Mahomedanism in India, and 
 of the policy to be pursued for the guidance and control 
 of the Mahomedan movement, his opinion can scarcely be 
 considered as of any value at all. We should say the 
 same of any other permanent official or Councillor at the 
 India Office, who has been trained amidst the narrow 
 prejudices and odious exclusiveness of Bengal Civilianism. 
 And therefore we are not in the least surprised that Mr. 
 Grant Duff was so badly instructed. 
 
 A few sentences from the recently recorded views of 
 two eminent men, both of whom have had a more exten- 
 sive and varied experience of Indian life than falls to the 
 lot of most public servants, and whose opportunities of 
 inquiry and observation have not been confined to the 
 scenes of their military achievements, will affi^rd a brief 
 but sufficient testimony that this is not a period of gene- 
 ral contentment and stagnation in India, but that it is a 
 period of political stir and intellectual unrest, and that, 
 among other symptoms of that unrest, there is a widely- 
 spread Mahomedan movement in progress, which deserves 
 to be studied and understood. The late Commander-in- 
 Chief of India, Lord Sandhurst, in a Minute dated the 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXXVU 
 
 9th September, 1870, after speaking of "many great 
 changes", which have "tended to disturb and perplex, 
 not only the Native soldiers themselves, but all that part 
 of the population directly or indirectly connected with 
 them", and of the possibilities of a " time of disorder", 
 and of " embodied insurrection", says : — 
 
 " Our whole experience of India should warn us that we cannot 
 always depend upon tranquillity ; that disturbances arise when 
 they are least expected ; and, when they commence at one point, 
 unless immediately checked, they are sure to be followed at 
 others/^* 
 
 The present Commander-in-Chief in India, Lord Napier 
 of Magdala, in a Minute dated 14th November, 1870, 
 warns us emphatically not to be too confident in our in- 
 herent strength : — 
 
 ''In looking to our general position in India, I cannot find 
 ground for believing that we may neglect any means of maintain- 
 ing our supremacy, or disarm, without risk, in a fancied security. 
 It appears to me that we never had less hold on the affections of 
 the people than at the present. 
 
 " The remembrance of the benefits which we conferred on the 
 people of the parts of India which we relieved from oppression 
 and misrule, has passed away with the people of those days ; the 
 present generation only consider their present restraints and the 
 obligations imposed on them ; and the more educated and am- 
 bitious look for a larger share of places of influence and emolument 
 than they now possess. 
 
 " The Mahoraedan movement, though the scope of its objects 
 and intentions has not been fully brought to light, shows a much 
 wider extent and combination than we have hitherto appre- 
 ciated.^^t 
 
 It might be thought, to say the least, very doubtful 
 whether the Mahomedan movement can be mitigated or 
 managed by persecuting the Consei-vative leaders of 
 Mahomedan society. 
 
 Mr. Grant Duff, — badly instructed, as we said before, — 
 
 * Papers, Indian Military Expenditure (467 of 1871), p. 349. 
 t Ibid., p. 371. 
 
XXXVm , INTRODUCTION. 
 
 seems to know nothing of the Mussulman community in 
 Bengal, and places the supposed interests of " a Hindoo 
 population" in direct antagonism with those of '•' a Maho- 
 medan family". In protesting against the continuance of 
 the large assignment of public revenue to the Nizamut 
 after the demise of the present Nawab, the Under Secre- 
 tary professes to speak on behalf of "the tax-payers", 
 the people of India. Any professions of a regard for 
 economy may be received thankfully, if not with great 
 confidence, from the official spokesman of the most extra- 
 vagant Government in the world. But after aU there is 
 not much in what he said on this point. The only ques- 
 tion is whether the Nizamut stipend is hereditary or not. 
 Of course by the repudiation or reduction of any annual 
 charge on the revenue, — the interest on public debt, for 
 example, — there is an apparent gain for the Government 
 and the taxpayer. The same may be said of annexations 
 of territory, the confiscation of estates and personal pro- 
 perty. But the gain is very often merely apparent and 
 utterly fallacious. The only question worth asking is 
 whether the proposed acquisition or resumption is just or 
 not. All our Indian experience hitherto shows that what- 
 ever revenue we have acquired by an illegitimate process 
 we have always had to expend, and more too, in estab- 
 lishments. Moral force and willing allegiance being lost 
 or impaired, must be replaced by physical force. A 
 British garrison costs more than a British Besident. 
 
 It may weU be doubted whether either the Bonaparte 
 family or the French tax-payers have gained anything — 
 or ever could have gained anything, if the Second Em- 
 pire had lasted, — by the confiscation of the Orleans 
 property. 
 
 If Mr. Grant Duff can devise no more effectual means 
 for improving the financial condition of India, and for 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXXIX 
 
 making our Government popular with the tax-payers, 
 than that of impoverishing the great poHtical stipen- 
 diaries, he will never make a name as an Indian states- 
 man. Neither popularity nor a balance is to be got in 
 that way. That way madness lies. 
 
THE BENGAL EEVEKSION. 
 
 Buried in a confused mass of official documents — a few 
 needles in a huge bin of chaff, — the points of the case of 
 the Nawab Nazim of Bengal may well have eluded the 
 search of many who really sought the truth of the matter. 
 As to the great majority of public men, among the hun- 
 dred subjects that are daily contending for their attention, 
 it is difficult to conceive of any one that can appear, 
 prim4 facie, more uninteresting or less urgent. It is not 
 too much to say that there is a general aversion to 
 Indian affairs, as being peculiarly iTuintelligible and 
 having no direct bearing on the interests of constituencies, 
 and of the immediate circles within which the Members 
 of both Houses of Parliament live and move and have 
 their being and business. And this general aversion very 
 naturally tends to become special, when the Indian affair 
 in question presents itself in the form of a personal 
 grievance, and is depicted by those responsible Ministers 
 and officials who ought to know all about it, as merely 
 the discontented demand of a great stipendiary for some 
 additional emoluments and privileges, "not only far greater 
 in degree, but totally different in kind" — in the words of 
 Mr. Grant Duff, the Under Secretary of State for India,* 
 — from what he has hitherto enjoyed. 
 
 If this were really a fair epitome of the Nawab's claims, 
 — confessedly incapable, as they are, of prosecution or 
 realisation by any legal process, — it would be hopeless to 
 try to get a hearing for them by any statesman or any 
 political critic whose help would be valuable. But it is 
 by no means a fair epitome of the question. 
 
 The Nawab does not, in fact, claim anything for him- 
 
 * Speech in the House of Commons, 4th July, 1871. 
 
 B 
 
2 ^ - " - "^^^ -ra^^ B'ElNJlJAL REVERSION. 
 
 self or for his descendants, ''greater in degree," or "differ- 
 ent in kind/' from what he now possesses. The question, 
 from his point of view, is whether on his decease the 
 dignity and the endowment settled on his family by 
 treaty, shall be lowered and lessened in a very great 
 degree, and the existing securities for their continuance 
 formally disavowed and destroyed, — whether his son and 
 successor shall be reduced to a mere stipendiary, invested, 
 perhaps, with some new title of nobility, but degraded 
 from his hereditary rank. 
 
 The question for the statesman, in office or in opposition, 
 who takes, or has taken, or aspires to take, a part in 
 ruling the Empire, is whether it is worth while, for the 
 sake of an insignificant pecuniary saving, to violate a most 
 conspicuous engagement, thereby awakening throughout 
 India alarming recollections that had almost been set at 
 rest, shaking general confidence in British good faith, and 
 encouraging a spirit of lawlessness and fanaticism. 
 
 The question for the practical as well as for the critical 
 politician, wherever his work may lie,— ^in Parliament, in 
 the press or in party management, is this, — whether the 
 rapacious policy, from which the late Lord Dalhousie's 
 name will be for ever inseparable, and which has been 
 dormant for some years, is to be insidiously revived, so as 
 to form the starting-point and precedent for a new series 
 of confiscations. 
 
 In the interval of about three years immediately 
 following the mutinies and rebellion of 1857, during 
 which Indian affairs occupied an unusual space in public 
 attention and underwent a thorough discussion, one 
 principle for the future government of our great Eastern 
 Empire seemed to have got hold of the national consci- 
 ence, — that the levelling system of grasping by every 
 doubtful pretext and pretence at opportunities of appro- 
 priating estates and revenue, to the detriment and ruin 
 of the heads of Native society, should cease. And 
 this principle was apparently accepted by nearly all states- 
 men of eminence, without distinction of party, who were 
 not themselves officially implicated in the process of 
 disinheritance and forfeiture. 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. 3 
 
 Many remarkable speeches by leading men in both 
 Houses of Parliament, and many public measures, contri- 
 buted in that interval of about three years to the general 
 impression in India that the Government would hence- 
 forward maintain a restorative and conservative poHcy in 
 their dealings with Native Princes. 
 
 On the 2nd August, 1858, the great statute was passed 
 whereby the Queen assumed the direct administration of 
 her Oriental dbminions. On the 1st of the ensuing 
 November the Poyal Proclamation was issued from 
 Allahabad by her Majesty's first Viceroy, Earl Canning, 
 and was published on the same day in every city and 
 large station of India. The Sovereign of the British 
 Empire spoke face to face for the first time with her 
 Indian Allies, feudatories and subjects. No document 
 published by the British Government in India has ever 
 produced so profound a sensation. Appearing in the 
 hour of strength and triumph, breathing words of mercy 
 and benevolence where vengeance and mistrust might 
 have been expected, this Proclamation gave with no 
 uncertain sound the true ring of Boyal magnanimity. 
 
 But more especially, in consequence of the following 
 weighty assurances, the Queen's Proclamation was hailed 
 as a solemn pledge of security in the future for the great 
 representative families of every tribe and creed, so many 
 of whom had fallen from their high estate under the 
 policy of Lord Dalhousie's administration. 
 
 " We hereby announce to the Native Princes of India that all 
 Treaties and Engagements made with them by or under the 
 authority of the Honourable the East India Company, are by Us 
 accepted, and will be scrupulously maintained ; and We look for 
 the like observance on their part. 
 
 "We desire no extension of Our present territorial possessions; 
 and, while we will permit no aggression upon Our dominions or 
 Our rights to be attempted with impunity. We shall sanction no 
 encroachment on those of others. We shall respect the rights, 
 dignity, and honour of Native Princes as Our own.^^ 
 
 A copy of this Royal Proclamation was officially fur- 
 nished to his Highness the Nawab Nazim of Bengal, 
 Behar and Orissa. 
 
 Jn Lord Canning's despatch to the Secretary of State, 
 
 b3 
 
4 THE BENGAL REVERSION. 
 
 dated 30th April 1860, commonly called the Adoption 
 Despatch, the unfounded prerogative of "Lapse" was 
 expressly surrendered, which had been the most fatal 
 weapon in Lord Dalhousie's armoury ; and repeated ad- 
 missions were therein made, in contravention of the 
 doctrine recently held as orthodox at Calcutta, to the 
 effect that *' the safety of our rule is increased, not dimin- 
 ished, by the maintenance of Native Chiefs well affected to 
 us," and that it must always be advisable to '* treat the 
 Chiefs and influential families with consideration and 
 generosity". Two remarkable passages may well be 
 quoted here. 
 
 '^ Notwitlistanding the greater purity and enlightenment of our 
 administration, its higher tone, and its surer promise of future 
 benefit to the people, as compared with any Native Government, 
 I still think that we have before us a higher and more pressing 
 duty than that of extending our direct rule, and that our first 
 care should be to strengthen that rule within its present limits, 
 and to secure for our general supremacy the contented acqui- 
 escence and respect of all who are subjected to it. 
 
 " Our supremacy will never be heartily accepted and respected 
 so long as we leave ourselves open to the doubts which are now 
 felt, and which our uncertain policy has justified, as to our ulti- 
 mate intentions towards Native States.^' 
 
 Sir Charles Wood, in his reply of the 26th of July, 
 1860, to Lord Canning's Adoption Despatch, says : — 
 
 '' In the sentiments expressed in your Excellency's letter of 
 the 30th of April, I entirely concur. It is not by the extension 
 of our Empire that its permanence is to be secured, but by the 
 character of British rule in the territories already committed to 
 our care, and by practically demonstrating that we are as willing 
 to respect the rights of others as we are capable of maintaining 
 our own.'' 
 
 Now it is very true that in the complete or partial 
 resumption of the revenue assigned under Treaty to the 
 Nawab Nazim, and the extinction of his titular dignity, 
 there would be no territorial extension of the Empire. It 
 would be a confiscation of income, not of land, a reduction 
 of Princely rank, not of sovereign power. But at the 
 same time, it appears very doubtful whether *'the character 
 of British rule" would be exalted by such a measure, or 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. 5 
 
 whether it would amount to a ** practical demonstration" 
 that '*we are as willing to respect the rights of others as 
 we are capable of maintaining our own". Some people 
 might suppose that it would have a contrary tendency. 
 
 Soon after the arrival in India of Sir Charles Wood's 
 reply, botli despatches were published for general infor- 
 mation. And in consequence of the entire approval by 
 the Home authorities of the measures he had suggested, 
 Lord Canning then circulated to the Princes and Chief- 
 tains of India, sminuds or patents. — all or nearly all of 
 them dated 11th March, 1862, — assuring those who were 
 Hindoos, that "on failure of natural heirs, the British 
 Government would permit and confirm any adoption of a 
 successor," and those who were Mahomedans, that "the 
 British Government would recognise and confirm any 
 succession which may be legitimate according to Mahome- 
 dan law". 
 
 In the Adoption Despatch Lord Canning had proposed 
 "that the assurance should be given to every Chief who 
 now governs his oion territory, and who holds a position 
 higher than that of a Jaghiredar\ And in every one of 
 the circular surmuds it was announced that "Her Majesty" 
 was "desirous that the Governments of the several Princes 
 and Chieftains icho now govern their oion territories should 
 be perpetuated, and that the representation and dignity 
 of their Houses should be continued." Lord Canning, 
 however, did not rigidly confine the distribution of these 
 patents within the prescribed limits ; some inconsistencies 
 and irregularities may be pointed out, while in certain 
 instances there w^as a decided inapplicability in the 
 stereotyped language of the sunnud to the political status 
 of the recipient. 
 
 For example, simnuds were sent to two Mahratta 
 Princes, — the Bajah of Kolapore, who had not "governed 
 his own territories" for sixteen years, and the Bajah of 
 Sawunt Warree, who had not "governed his own terri- 
 tories" for twenty-four years.* These two States were 
 taken, just as Mysore had been taken in 1831, under 
 
 * Aitchisons Treaties, Calcutta, 1864 (Longmans, Loudon), vol. vi, pp. 
 90, lU, 118. 
 
6 THE BENGAL REVERSION. 
 
 British management, — Sawunt Warree in 1838, Kolapore 
 in 1846, — after a period of disorder and rebellion, wliich 
 in the case of Kolapore assumed the proportions of a war 
 against the British Government. Both of these Principal- 
 ities had also, like Mysore, been marked down for an- 
 nexation on the death of the reigning Princes ; but being, 
 unlike Mysore, very small and poor States, they were 
 reprieved in 1860, when it began to be acknowledged, 
 even at Calcutta, that the poHcy of annexation was for 
 the most part a financial failure. 
 
 The Bajah of Sawunt Warree does not ''now govern his 
 own territories". He receives at this day a fixed allowance 
 from the revenues of the State, which is still retained under 
 British management. 
 
 Again, sunnuds were issued to Sirdar Shumsher Sing 
 Sindhan walla and to Bajah Tej Sing, in which they were 
 styled "Princes who now govern their own territories,'^ 
 although, as admitted subsequently in the authorised 
 Collection of Treaties, they were in fact, " ordinary jaghi- 
 redars, having ordinary magisterial and revenue powers 
 within their estates, but no powers of government", t 
 
 A sunnud in the same terms was granted to the Bajah 
 of Benares,'!' a personage of great dignity and influence, 
 but actually no more then a Zemindar or land-holder, 
 having no "State" under his rule, and no powers of govern- 
 ment* 
 
 Lord Dalhousie had refused in 1854 to recognise the 
 succession of Janojee Bhonsla, the grand-nephew and 
 adopted heir of the last Rajah of Nagpore, and had 
 annexed the State as a "lapse". In consideration of the 
 good conduct of the family during the rebellion of 1857, 
 the title of Rajah and the ancient estates of the family 
 were secured to Janojee Bhonsla and his heirs, with the 
 right of adoption recognised, under a surinud from Lord 
 Canning. J It does not, however, appear tJiat this was one 
 of the circular sunnuds of the 1 1th of March, 1 862. 
 
 Thus the circulation of the patents of 1862, restoring 
 some of the rights of inheritance which a previous admini- 
 
 Aitchison's Treaties, Calcutta, 1863 (Longmans, and Co., London), 
 vol. ii, p. 375. t Ihid., p. 67. X Ibid., vol. iii, p. 94. 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. 7 
 
 stration had done so much to destroy, was not in practice 
 confined by Lord Canning to those Princes who were then 
 "governing their own territories". In going as far as he 
 did, that upright and high-minded ruler went far beyond 
 his immediate advisers and chief officials at Calcutta. And 
 yet he was not so completely free from local influences as 
 to rehnquish any of the past encroachments, or even to 
 abandon, by a clearly declared principle, all claim to 
 similar ''lapses" in the future. A few reservations were 
 still made, in petto; and, with the avowed object of secur- 
 ing these reserved cases, the following plan was proposed 
 in the Adoption Despatch. 
 
 " I recommend that in every case, Mahomedan or Hindoo, the 
 assurance should be conveyed to each Chief individually, and not 
 by a general notification addressed to all. This would be neces- 
 sary, in order to avoid future claims from petty Jaghiredars or 
 others, whom it is not intended to include in this measure.^^ 
 
 Among those '^others" whom it was "not intended to 
 include in this measure,'' were two of the highest import- 
 ance, — the Rajah of Mysore and the Nawab of Bengal, 
 neither of whom " governed his own territories," — the 
 Rajah, however, being unquestionably the Sovereign of 
 Mysore, although his executive powers were suspended ; 
 while the Nawab, as unquestionably, merely held in 
 Bengal, under Treaties that deprived him of all admini- 
 strative authority, the position of a mediatised Prince. 
 
 The Principality of Mysore, producing an annual revenue 
 of more than a million sterling, was, with the exception of 
 that of the Nizam of Hyderabad, the richest Native 
 State in India. The Hajah's personal income was nearly 
 £140,000 a year. 
 
 The Nawab of Bengal was the richest of aU the 
 mediatised Princes. His charge on the revenues of Ben- 
 gal, — much reduced from its original amount by the 
 recorded concessions, and subsequently by the helpless 
 acquiescence of his predecessors, — stood then, as it stands 
 at present, by the prescription of a century, and after five 
 successions, at £160,000 per annum. 
 
 These two rich benefices had been duly registered by 
 Lord Dalhousie for sequestration^ on the death of their 
 
8 THE BENGAL REVERSION. 
 
 respective incumbents, but the lives did not happen to 
 fall in during his tenure of office. Nothing could have 
 saved either of them if a demise had occurred in the midst 
 of that brilliant career, — brilliant, that is to say, as 
 painted by the principal actor himself. Every piece of 
 work that he produced was blindly accepted at the 
 value he chose to put upon it. The actual cost at the 
 time was much greater than his English admirers ima- 
 gined. But the real cost of the annexations only came to 
 light, the real price only began to be paid, after he had 
 left India. It is very doubtful whether it has yet been 
 paid up in full. 
 
 Although Lord Canning, enlightened by the phenomena 
 of the mutinies and rebellion, manifested a large appreci- 
 tion of what would be a sound Imperial policy in the 
 Adoption Despatch and in some of his later dealings with 
 Native States, he was not, as we have said, so fully 
 emancipated from official orthodoxy as to reject the two 
 rich legacies bequeathed by his predecessor. In sec;ret 
 Minutes recorded for his successor's edification. Lord 
 Dalhousie had pointed out the Mysore Rajah's Principality 
 and the Bengal Nawab's endowment as good things that 
 were likely to fall in, and must not be allowed to slip 
 through our fingers.* 
 
 Lord Canning unquestionably so far consented to the 
 views of his predecessor as not to send the new patent 
 of succession to either the Bajah of Mysore or the Nawab 
 of Bengal. Besides these negative indications of concur- 
 rence, two letters must be mentioned, — one addressed to 
 the Bajah, the other intended for the Nawab's perusal, — 
 despatched within two months of Lord Canning's departure 
 from India, when he was enfeebled by the illness that was 
 so soon to prove fatal. The letter for the Nawab's infor- 
 mation was dated on the 14th of January, and that 
 addressed to the Bajah of Mysore on the 11th of March, 
 1862, the very day before Lord Canning left Calcutta. 
 He died in London on the 1 7th of June. These letters 
 
 * The first Minute aimed against the permanence of the Nawab 
 Nazim's dignity was written in November, 1853. The Minute marking 
 down the State of Mysore is dated 16th January, 1856. 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. 9 
 
 are notoriously not of his composition, nor of the tone and 
 temper that he was wont to sanction, although he signed 
 them at the last moment, glad, probably, amidst an accumu- 
 lation of arrears, to dispose of two irritating and perplex- 
 ing subjects that pressed for settlement, and which he felt 
 ought not to be transferred to Lord Elgin, after long delay, 
 in an undetermined state. Both of these letters are 
 written in a peculiarly offensive style, that became well 
 known in subsequent years through the productions of the 
 Calcutta Foreign Office. A remarkable similarity in 
 language and in argument characterises these two des- 
 patches. In both of them a perfectly novel position is 
 taken up ; the Nawab and the Rajah are plainly told, for 
 the first time in their lives, that their dignities and 
 possessions are not hereditary. The Secretary to the 
 Government of India thus instructs the Lieutenant-Gover- 
 nor of Bengal : — 
 
 "It should be clearly explained to His Highness, that the 
 Governor-General in Council entirely rejects his claims so far as 
 they are founded on the assertion of any Treaty-rights, or of any 
 sovereign or hereditary titles, and that his recognised position in 
 regard to the sum of sixteen lacs of Sicca rupees, now annually 
 set apart for Nizamut purposes, and to the accumulations thereof, 
 is as follows : — 
 
 "Since 1771, sixteen lacs of Rupees have been granted for 
 Nizamut purposes. The continued payment of this sum is guaran- 
 teed by no Treaty, and it has hitherto been paid of the free grace 
 and favour of the British Government. It may cease, or may be 
 diminished, whenever the Government shall determine, but there 
 is no intention of making any change in the present arrangement 
 during the lifetime of the present Nawab. ^' 
 
 The Nawab of Bengal is charged in this despatch with 
 having "set forth unfounded pretensions," "erroneous 
 statements and inferences". 
 
 In the letter addressed to the Eajah of Mysore, his 
 Highness is accused of putting forward "pretensions based 
 upon erroneous assumptions," and "assumptions without 
 foundation," and his actual position, as interpreted by the 
 official writer, is expounded as follows : — 
 
 " Your Highness is now enjoying the personal provision which 
 was secured to you in the event of that Government resuming 
 
10 THE BENGAL REVERSION. 
 
 tlie administration of Mysore. This provision is a personal right, 
 not a heritable one. It is not claimable as a right even by a 
 natural-born heir, however liberally the Government might of its 
 own grace be disposed to deal with a claim from such a quarter. 
 
 *' Your title to that right is exactly the same as was your title 
 to the authority which you forfeited through misrule; that is, it 
 rests upon favour shown to your Highness by the British Govern- 
 ment in its mode of dealing with other rights which it had ac- 
 quired by conquest.^-'* 
 
 Just as the Nawab of Bengal was informed that the 
 Governor-General rejected his claims, " founded on the 
 assertion of treaty-rights, or of sovereign or hereditary 
 titles," so the Rajah of Mysore was told that he was "very 
 ill-advised" to call in question the treatment of his affairs, 
 *'upon the grounds of assumed ancestral and hereditary 
 rights which have no existence," and that "the rights of 
 conquest and sovereignty" belonged to the British Govern- 
 ment, which had ''become Sovereign" over the people of 
 Mysore. 
 
 But we know that Lord Canning's policy in the Mysore 
 case, as avowed in documents undoubtedly from his own 
 pen, was based on grounds quite incompatible with the 
 claim to territorial sovereignty in Mysore on the part of 
 the British Government. Two years before this novel 
 claim was advanced, Lord Canning had declared his belief 
 that "by a little patience" the British Government would 
 obtain "a bequest" of the Principality of Mysore "in free 
 will" and "full sovereignty," and "in a spirit of loyal 
 attachment," by its "venerable Sovereign," — "more than 
 sixty years of age, and of a family notoriously short-lived, "t 
 In the despatch to the Secretary of State just quoted, 
 Lord Canning repeatedly terms the Bajah the Sovereign 
 of Mysore, and the people of that country "the subjects" 
 of the Rajah, terms quite inconsistent with the alleged 
 sovereignty of the British Government, to which Lord 
 Canning set his signature one day before he left India. 
 From the same despatch we learn that Lord Canning had 
 been for a long time under the erroneous impression that 
 
 * Papers, Mysore (No. 112), 1866, p. 6. 
 
 t Despatch to the Secretary of State (Sir Charles Wood), dated 30th 
 March, 1860. 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. li 
 
 the Rajah did not wish to adopt an heir, and was desirous 
 "that everything that he possessed should at his death pass 
 into the hands" of the British Government, which will 
 probably account for the adoption patent — forwarded, as 
 we have seen, to several Princes who did not then "govern 
 their own territories" — not having been sent to the Rajah 
 of Mysore. 
 
 It is impossible to say what would have been the counsel 
 of Lord Canning if he had known that the Maharajah of 
 Mysore would long outHve the period officially allotted to 
 him, and would in due course adopt a young kinsman to 
 be heir to all his possessions, as he did on the 18th of 
 June, 1865. 
 
 It is impossible to say how Lord Canning would have 
 treated the Bengal Nawab's case, if he had been able to 
 give it his personal attention, instead of being compelled 
 by ill health and an excessive press of business to leave 
 it for disposal by a Secretary. But it is quite incredible 
 that he should have ever deliberately denied the Nawab's 
 " hereditary titles' and " treaty-rights,'' as was done in 
 the passage extracted above from the letter of the 1 4th of 
 January, 1862.* Such a denial would have been in fla- 
 grant contradiction to all the previous utterances and acts 
 of his official intercourse with the Nawab, as an example 
 of which a sentence may be quoted from the letter address- 
 ed to his Highness by Lord Canning, — in conformity with 
 twenty precedents during the last century, — on arriving 
 at Calcutta, to assume the office of Governor-General, and 
 dated the 11th of March, 1856. 
 
 "Your Highness may be assured, the consideration, respect^ 
 and friendly interest in the prosperous administration of your 
 affairs, and just regard to the honours and dignities due to your 
 hereditary ranh and the prescriptive privileges of your high station, 
 guaranteed by the stijpnlations of subsisting Treaties and long 
 established relations, observed and cherished by former Governors- 
 General, will on the part also of this sincere friend, be fervently 
 fostered and punctually fulfilled." 
 
 Mr. Edmonstone, also. Foreign Secretary under Lord 
 Canning's Government, wrote a semi-official letter, dated 
 
 * Ante, p. 9. 
 
12 THE BENGAL REVERSION. 
 
 8th January, 1859, to Colonel Colin Mackenzie, who was 
 then the Governor-Generars A^ent at the Nawab's Court, 
 one passage in which is enough to prove how far Lord 
 Canning s real opinions and feelings were from accordance 
 with the acrimonious rejection of hereditary right con- 
 tained in the letter of the 14th of January, 1862. The 
 Agent had written to the Foreign Secretary, submitting a 
 "Narrative of Nizam ut affairs" for the consideration of 
 Government, giving a general support to the Nawab's 
 claims and complaints, and laying particular stress on the 
 hereditary tenure of his Highness's dignity and revenue. 
 Here is the extract from Mr. Edmonstone's reply : — 
 
 " The narrative is extremely useful, and should awaken the 
 attention of Government to the position of the Nawab and the 
 state of its relations with him. The whole subject has been more 
 than once under the consideration of the Governor-General, and 
 has also been discussed with me as often ; but no final decision 
 has been recorded, although I believe the Governor-General has 
 made up his mind on the matter. I am not, of course, at liberty 
 to inform you of the opinion the Governor-General appears to me 
 to have formed, but I may say confidentially that it is not un- 
 favourable. I wish you well in your endeavours to right His 
 Highness, and have little doubt that you will succeed in some 
 measure.^^ 
 
 Of course it must be unequivocally acknowledged that no 
 inferences or conjectures, however logical and reasonable, 
 will suffice to disassociate Lord Canning personally from 
 any proceeding of his Government, so far as to release 
 him from formal responsibility. The only grounds, indeed, 
 on which we can hope to strip the two disinheriting 
 despatches of such moral support as they might derive 
 from Lord Canning's deliberate approval, are those of the 
 fatal illness which, diu-ing the last two months of his resi- 
 dence in India, must have materially diminished his capa- 
 city for work, never equal to that of his indefatigable pre- 
 decessor. 
 
 For all practical purposes, however, it has become an 
 immaterial question whether the technical irregularity of 
 separating Lord Canning from some of the last acts of his 
 administration can be tolerated or not, for any weight or 
 authority that the two disinheriting despatches may ever 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. 13 
 
 have possessed has already been broken down by one of 
 them having been utterly rejected and set aside by the 
 Impeiial Government with the cognizance and sanction 
 of Parliament. And when Lord Cranborne (now Marquis 
 of Salisbury), on the 23rd of February, and his immediate 
 successor. Sir Stafford Northcote, on the 24th of May, 
 1867, without the proposal of a division, almost without 
 a word of doubt being heard, announced in the House of 
 Commons their intention of reversing the decision of the 
 Indian Government, repeatedly avowed, that Mysore 
 must be annexed, and of maintaining that Principality by 
 the recognition of the Maharajah's adopted heir, many 
 Members, many Peers, and .many persons of influence out- 
 side Parliament, may well have been deterred from up- 
 holding the threatened confiscation because they knew 
 that the sentence passed on Mysore was not in fact Lord 
 Canning's, but had been recorded in 1856, so that the 
 authorities in 1867 really had to decide whether they 
 would act as executors under a deferred process of Lord 
 Dalhousie's reign of terror. 
 
 The same question has to be answered once more. It 
 is an absolute certainty, not to be shaken by any plausible 
 misrepresentation, that before the date of a certain Minute 
 by Lord Dalhousie, afterwards embodied in a despatch 
 to the Court of Directors of the East India Company, 
 written in November 1853, no doubt as to the hereditary 
 nature of the Bengal Nawab's dignity had ever been ex- 
 pressed or hinted at by any Governor-General or by the 
 Home Government. No word of " grace or favour" was 
 ever employed at any one of the five successions that 
 have taken place since the Treaty of 1770. Neither the 
 phrase nor the idea of " a personal Treaty," of binding 
 force only during the life of the original contracting 
 party, can be found in the transactions of any Governor- 
 General, from Warren Hastings down to Lord Hardinge. 
 
 Our Ministers, our statesmen. Members of both Houses 
 of Parliament, have to ask themselves whether they are 
 willing by their silence, by their inaction, or by their 
 votes, to assist in executing another confiscating clause 
 in Lord Dalhousie's political testament. 
 
14 THE BENGAL REVERSION. 
 
 The question of the Nawab of Bengal, as it stands at 
 present, exactly resembles in another respect that of the 
 Maharajah of Mysore. It is not so much an appeal against 
 a blow, as a protest against a threat. There was this 
 peculiarity in the Mysore case, that it offered the first 
 opportunity that had ever been given to the British Par- 
 liament of pronouncing on an Indian annexation before it 
 had been completed, — before, in fact, it was too late to 
 remonstrate or interfere. Lord Dalhousie was able to 
 carry out every one of his annexations without any awk- 
 ward chance occurring of a discussion in the House of 
 Commons. In two most important instances, — those of 
 Jhansi and Nagpore, — he acted without any reference 
 even to the Court of Directors, as if their concurrence were 
 considered as a matter of certainty.* But the Rajah of 
 Mysore would not die in time ; the recorded sentence 
 against his heir became known and open to exception ; 
 and the Native State was reprieved. 
 
 The position of the Nawab of Bengal's protest at this 
 moment is identical with that of the Maharajah of Mysore 
 in 1867. Sentence of disinheritance has been recorded 
 against the Nawab's family. The judge, however, who 
 pronounced that sentence being the same whose con- 
 demnation of the Mysore State was quashed in 1867, the 
 grounds alleged for the original sentence being the same 
 as those alleged in the Mysore case, and the principles 
 involved on both sides being equally applicable to both 
 cases, the sentence may be reversed in the same way by 
 the Great Council of the Empire. The only difference be- 
 tween the two cases is, that the Maharajah of Mysore 
 was a territorial Sovereign, while the Nawab of Bengal is 
 a mediatised Prince. 
 
 But Mr. Grant Duff, in the House of Commons, on the 
 4th of July, 1871, told us that the Nawab was not a 
 Prince at all. The Under Secretary for India, who ought 
 to know all about these things, delivered himself of these 
 words : — "The Nawab Nazim of Bengal is no Prince; his 
 father was no Prince ; his grandfather was no Prince ; 
 
 * PajyerSf Rajah of Berar, 1854, page 37 ; Jhansi Papers, 1855, 
 page 5. 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. 15 
 
 none of his predecessors have been Indian Princes/' And 
 in another passage of the same speech the Nawab is called 
 " the descendant of Meer Jaffier, — no Prince, but the 
 officer of an officer of the King of Delhi." 
 
 If we supposed Mr. Grant Duff to be a firm believer in 
 divine right, we could well understand such a sweeping 
 depreciation, just as we can understand an ultra-legitimist 
 denying the Princely rank of the Emperor Napoleon I, 
 declaring him to, be merely General Bonaparte, son of a 
 Corsican attorney, and an officer of the King of France. 
 We can understand the legitimist and Austrian partisan 
 of the last century, who would refuse any higher dignity 
 to the King of Prussia than that of Margrave of Branden- 
 burg, the faithless and contumacious vassal of the House 
 of Hapsburg-Lorraine. These notions are stDl extant, it 
 is said, in some very exalted circles. Certainly there 
 may now be found in Germany both Royalists and He- 
 publicans who impugn the Imperial titles and attributes 
 assumed by William of Hohenzollern. 
 
 We cannot, however, judging from his political disser- 
 tations, suppose Mr. Grant Duff to be either a Bepublican 
 or a Legitimist, or to be ignorant of modern history and 
 the axioms of political science. Yet he says that Meer 
 Jaffier, the first Nawab of the present line, was " no Prince, 
 but the officer of an officer of the King of Delhi." We 
 must conclude, therefore, that if another revolution in the 
 Danubian Principalities — the Lower Bengal of Eiu-ope — 
 were to send Prince Charles back to Berlin ; and the first 
 ruler of united Poumania, Colonel Couza — whose military 
 rank was conferred by some Hospodar of Moldavia — 
 were to be restored, Mr. Grant Duff would not recognise 
 his Princely dignity, — would cry him down as "no Prince, 
 but the officer of an officer" of the Sultan of Turkey. 
 
 As Mr. Grant Duff would certainly be guilty of no such 
 absurdity, as he is neither a Bepublican, a Legitimist, 
 nor an ignoramus, we must in charity suppose him to 
 have been speaking in the Nawab of Bengal's case from 
 his instructions, and to have been misled by some experi- 
 enced gentleman at the India office who undertook to 
 coach him for the debate. 
 
IG THE BENGAL REVERSION. 
 
 " The Nawab Nazim of Bengal," says Mr. Grant Duft, 
 "is no Prince ; his father was no Prince ; his grandfather 
 was no Prince ; none of his predecessors have been Indian 
 Princes." 
 
 To begin with the present Nawab Nazim, — leaving his 
 father, grandfather and their predecessors for later con- 
 sideration, — if he is *'no Prince," Mr. Grant Duff, or the 
 office which he represents in the House of Commons, must 
 possess a deposing or degrading power, and must have 
 exercised it against his Highness about the 4th of July, 
 1871, for most assuredly the Nawab was fully recognised 
 as a Prince by the Government of Great Britain and 
 Ireland up to a very short time before the debate of that 
 day. 
 
 If no decree of degradation has issued, and if Mr. Grant 
 Duff did, nevertheless, on that occasion accurately ex- 
 pound the views of his superior, the Duke of Argyll, a 
 singular conflict exists between two great Departments 
 of State. The principal Secretary of State for India 
 pronounces the Nawab of Bengal to be " no Prince"; the 
 Lord Great Chamberlain pronounces that the Nawab of 
 Bengal is a Prince, receives him as a Prince, and repeatedly 
 introduces him with the forms reserved only for Boyal 
 personages into the very presence of Her Majesty. If 
 any foreign nobleman, enjoying the title of Prince but not 
 endowed with Royal honours, were to claim the right of 
 being privately introduced, '' with his suite," at Her Ma- 
 jesty's Court, and of being on all occasions of his presence 
 there " attended" by a military officer, his claim would 
 certainly be rejected. Yet this is the style in which, by 
 the authority of the Lord Chamberlain, the visits of the 
 Nawab of Bengal to Her Majesty's levees and drawing- 
 rooms were officially announced last year. 
 
 " His Highness tlie Nawab Nazim of Bengal, with his sons, 
 Prince AH Kudr-Hassan-Ali-Bahadoor, and Prince Suleiman-Kudr- 
 Wahid-Ali-Bahadoor, was also present at the Court^ attended by 
 Colonel Frederic Layard." 
 
 And the Nawab's first introduction to the Queen is 
 thus recorded in the official Court Circular. 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. 17 
 
 "Osborne, Ajyril 28th, 1869. 
 
 " The Duke of Argyll, Secretary of State for India, arrived at 
 Osborne to day, and had an audience of the Queen. 
 
 '' His Highness the Nawab Nazim of Bengal, and his eldest 
 and seventh sons. Prince Ali-Kudr-Hassan-Ali-Bahadoor and 
 Prince Soliman-Kudr- Wahid- Ali-Bahadoor, arrived, and were 
 presented to Her Majesty by the Duke of Argyll. 
 
 " The suite of the Nawab were presented to Her Majesty by 
 the Duke of Argyll, and also Colonel Frederic Layard, of the 
 Bengal Staff Corps, who is specially appointed to attend upon his 
 Highness.'^ 
 
 Here the title of Prince, refused by the Under-Secre- 
 tary to the Nawab, his father, his grandfather and his 
 predecessors, is accorded by the Secretary of State for 
 India even to the Nawab's sons. 
 
 Having seen that the present Nawab of Bengal was 
 received, addressed and treated as a Prince in the year 
 1871 by the proper authorities, during his residence in 
 London, let ns now go back to the year 1838, and see how 
 the same personage, whom Mr. Grant Duff declares to be 
 "no Prince," was received, addressed and treated by the 
 proper authorities at Calcutta, when he first attained to 
 what Mr. Grant Duff is pleased to call "the shadowy 
 honours of the Nizam ut". On the death of his Highness's 
 father, the Nawab Hoomayoon Jah, the following notifi- 
 cations appeared in the Government Gazette at the 
 capital of the British Empire in India. 
 
 " Political Department, I9th December, 1838. 
 
 " PROCLAMATION. 
 
 ^^ By order of the Governor-General of India, the Deputy-Go- 
 vernor of»Bengal notifies to the PubHc and to the AlUes of the 
 British Government, and to all friendly Powers, that the Nawab 
 Shoojah-ool-Moolk, Ihtishamood-Dowlah, Humayoon Jah, Syud 
 Mobaruck Ullee Khan Bahadoor, Feeroz Jung, having departed 
 this life at Moorshedabad, on the 3rd October, 1838, his son the 
 Nawab Syud Munsoor Ullee Khan, has succeeded to the hereditary 
 honours and dignities of the Nizamut and Soobahdarry of Bengal, 
 Behar and Orissa, and His Highness is hereby declared, under the 
 authority of the Government of India, to be the Nazim and 
 Soobahdar of Bengal, Behar and Orissa, and to have assumed 
 and to exercise the authority, dignities, and privileges thereof, 
 under the style and title of Moontizum-ool-Moolk, Mohsen-ood- 
 
 C 
 
18 THE BENGAL RE VERSION. 
 
 Dowlah, Fareedoon Jah, Syud Munsoor Ullee Khan Bahadoor, 
 Nusrut Jung. 
 
 Published and proclaimed by His Honour the Deputy-Governor 
 of Bengal. H. T. Prinsep, 
 
 Secretary to the Government of Bengal, 
 
 General Order hy the Honourable the Deputy -Governor of Bengal, 
 under date the 19th December, 18-38. 
 The Honourable the Deputy- Governor of Bengal has been 
 pleased to direct^ that a salute of nineteen guns be fired from the 
 ramparts of Fort William at 12 o'clock this day, in honour of the 
 accession of his Highness Syud Munsoor Ullee Khan to the Mus- 
 nud of the Provinces of Bengal, Behar and Orissa, and that the 
 above Proclamation be read at the head of all the troops in garrison 
 at sunset this evenings under a salute of three volleys of musketry. 
 
 H. T. Peinsep, 
 Secretary to the Gove^^nment of Bengal."* 
 
 The language and tenor of these official acts would not 
 suggest to most of us that the person they refer to 
 was " no Prince". On the contrary, the order for a salute 
 of cannon, and the assembly of all the troops in garrison, 
 to fire a feu de joie " in honour of the accession of his 
 Highness Syud Munsoor Ullee Khan to the Musnud of 
 the Provinces of Bengal, Behar and Orissa," sounds very 
 much like the recognition of Royal dignities. A similar 
 ceremonial is not usually observed, in any known part of 
 the world, when a mere nobleman succeeds to his ances- 
 tral estates, or to a charge on the public revenue. Al- 
 though the full heraldic style of an English Duke is that 
 of '*' high, mighty and puissant Prince," his " accession" is 
 not publicly announced ''to the Allies of the British 
 Government and to all friendly Powers," nor are the 
 troops called out to hear a Proclamation read, and to 
 celebrate the event with military honours. 
 
 And before quitting this Proclamation, attention must 
 be called to the fact that " the honours and dignities of 
 the Nizamut," to which the present Nawab is said to have 
 " succeeded," are therein also expressly declared to be 
 *' hereditary". 
 
 Mr. Grant Duff says, also, that the Nawab's father was 
 
 * Extract from page 925 of the Calcutta Gazette of Wednesday, 19th 
 December, 1838, No. 101. Papers, Nawab Nazim (116 of 1871), pp. 34, 35. 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. 19 
 
 "no Prince". We might adduce the Proclamation on his 
 accession, which is almost identical with that just quoted. 
 
 But from among many official documents publicly 
 recorded we will only cite one as evidence against this 
 clause in the Under Secretary's edict. In 1834, when 
 the present Nawab's father, Meer Humayoon Jah, occu- 
 jDied the Musnud, an effort was made in the course of 
 some legal proceedings to bring his Highness within the 
 jurisdiction of the* Supreme Court of Calcutta. This was 
 resisted, on behalf of the Nawab, by the Governor-General, 
 Lord William Bentinck. 
 
 In a letter of instructions in this matter, addressed by 
 his order to the Advocate General, and signed by "the 
 Deputy Secretary to the Government, C. E. Trevelyan," 
 the following passages occur. 
 
 ^' It will be observed from the Treaty of 1770, of which a copy 
 is annexed, that His Highness the Nawab has been recognised by 
 the British Government as an independent Prince, and that the 
 national faith is pledged for nothing being proposed or carried 
 into execution derogating from his honor.^^ 
 
 "As the Government has no power to regulate the proceedings of 
 the Court towards persons acknowledged to come within its juris- 
 diction, if the liability of the Nazim were to be admitted, there is no 
 degree of indignity which might not be inflicted upon him by its 
 ordinary processes, in contravention of the pledged national faith, 
 and of the respect which is obviously due to the representative 
 of our oldest Ally on this side of India.''^ 
 
 " The case of Raja Hurreenauth Eae, referred to by the Ad- 
 vocate-General, does not appear to His Honor in Council to bear 
 anj' analogy to the present. Raja Hurreenauth Rae was a subject 
 of this Government, from whose gift he derived his title, while 
 the Nawab Nazim is a Prince, whose independence has been re- 
 cognised by a Treaty with one of his Predecessors.^^* 
 
 This, be it once more observed, was written in 1834 of 
 the present Nawab's father, declared in 1871, by Mr. Grant 
 Duff, to have been "no Prince". 
 
 We may, perhaps, leave the grandfather and prede- 
 cessors alone for the present, for by this time even Mr. 
 Grant Duff himself might admit that he was wrong in 
 denying that the Nawabs were Princes. It may be urged 
 that, after all, this was merely a verbal error, and that 
 what Mr. Grant Duff meant was that neither the Nawab, 
 
 * Paj^ers, Nmvah Xazim (116 of 1871), p. 34. 
 
 c 2 
 
20 THE BENGAL REVERSION. 
 
 his father, nor any one of his predecessors was a Sovereign. 
 Be it so, — we may inquire into that by and by. But 
 surely it would not have been beyond the resources of the 
 Under Secretary's eloquence to have stated that proposi- 
 tion in more accurate and measured language. 
 
 Assuming that the intention of the Under Secretary 
 was only to impugn the Sovereignty of the Nawab, it is 
 impossilDle to acquit him, or the permanent officials at the 
 India Office on whom he incautiously relied for informa- 
 tion, of a serious deviation from the calm and dignified 
 course becoming those who profess to speak with authority 
 the mind of the Imperial Government. The Nawab's 
 case must gain in strength if it becomes manifest that the 
 stronger party cannot, without abandoning common 
 candour and ordinary courtesy, make even a plausible 
 answer to it. 
 
 Mr. Grant Duffs assertions, therefore, as charitably 
 amended, will now stand thus : — The Nawab is no Sove- 
 reign ; his father was no Sovereign ; his grandfather was no 
 Sovereign ; none of his predecessors have been Indian 
 Sovereigns. His ancestor, Meer Jaffier, was no Sovereign, 
 but the officer of an officer of the King of Delhi. 
 
 Let us begin at the beginning. Before the battle of 
 Plassey on the 23rd of June, 1757, Meer Jaffier, the first 
 Nawab of the existing line, was undoubtedly neither 
 Prince nor Sovereign. He was uncle by marriage of the 
 reigning Nawab, Suraj-ood-Dowlah, and Commander-in- 
 Chief of his army. As such he may be said — if a dispar- 
 aging designation be wanted, — to have been " an officer of 
 an officer of the King of Delhi". The Nawab Nazim of 
 Bengal was — formally and ceremonially at least — an officer 
 of the Great Mogul. 
 
 But the status of Meer Jaffier before the battle of 
 Plassey, is a matter of merely historical or biographical 
 interest. We want to know what Meer Jaffier became 
 after the complete success of his confederacy with the 
 English East India Company, and after the execution of 
 the Treaty of 1 75 7. For all purposes of political science 
 or international law, it matters no more what Meer Jaffier 
 w^as before his installation, than what Napoleon Bonaparte 
 was before he became Emperor of the French. 
 
THE BENGAL REVEKSION. 21 
 
 Foreign nations recognised Napoleon as the Sovereign 
 of France. The English, the Dutch and the French 
 recognised Meer Jaffier as the Sovereign of Bengal. 
 
 Formally and ceremonially the Nawab of Bengal was 
 an officer and a vassal of the Mogul Emperor, just as 
 Mehemet Ali, during the height of his rebellious career, 
 was the humble servant of the Sultan, just as his de- 
 scendant, the Khedive of Egypt, is to this day. The 
 rulers of Bengal in the eighteenth century, like the rulers 
 of Egypt since 18 40, paid tribute to their Suzerain, assumed 
 no higher titles than were conferred by the fountain of 
 honour, and petitioned for confirmation and investiture at 
 each succession. But hke the rulers of Egypt they main- 
 tained all the substance of administrative independence. 
 
 In writing history, and in discussing political events, 
 we must accept the condition and powers of States and 
 Princes as we find them when each transaction takes 
 place. We must neither anticipate nor retrograde. We 
 must not revive dogmatically bygone prerogatives, de- 
 stroyed amidst the revolutionary changes which opened 
 the road for our interference, for the purpose of depreciat- 
 ing at this late hour the local authorities whose co-opera- 
 tion was in former days indispensable for our safety and 
 success. 
 
 To speak of the Nazim of Hyderabad or the Nawab 
 Vizier of Oude as refractory Deputies or Lord Lieutenants, 
 — to talk of the Nawab of Bengal as merely an officer of 
 the King of Delhi, — is as absurd as it would be to speak 
 of the King of Prussia in the eighteenth century as merely 
 the Margrave of Bi'andenburg and Arch-Chamberlain of 
 the German Emperor. 
 
 It is true that some of the Indian Princes, with whom 
 our adventurous countrymen first came in contact, or 
 those Princes' ancestors, had been tributaries, feudatories, 
 or provincial Governors under the Great Mogul ; some of 
 them had no better original title than that of a rebellious 
 vassal or contumacious Lieutenant ; but then the East 
 India Company entered upon the field of negotiation with 
 no more secure footing, with no higher pretensions. 
 
 The English Authorities avowed themselves to be vas- 
 
22 THE BENGAL REVEESION. 
 
 sals of the King of Delhi, tenants and tributaries of the 
 Nizam of the Deccan and the Nawab of Bengal, and 
 entered into various complicated relations with them of 
 joint management, partnership and assignment. At 
 successive political conjunctures these embarrassing en- 
 gagements were, for the most part, shaken off or com- 
 muted; the ambiguous tenures were simplified or converted 
 into cessions ; but whatever new rights of sovereignty 
 and independence may have been gained by the East 
 India Company, must have been equally conceded to those 
 successful confederates and to those defeated adversaries 
 with whom they treated. 
 
 The British Government, having by various public acts 
 recognised Meer Jaffier, the ancestor of the present Na- 
 wab of Bengal, as a Sovereign, having made Treaties with 
 him and with several of his descendants, cannot now, 
 with any truth, justice or decency, deny retrospectively 
 the sovereignty of the other contracting parties. 
 
 Nor can the British Government, — with any truth, 
 justice or decency, — having regularly at each succession 
 to the Nizamut, and repeatedly on other occasions, ac- 
 knowledged the continuous existence and binding force of 
 those Treaties, suddenly declare that it will be no longer 
 bound by them, and that upon its will and pleasure alone 
 henceforth must depend the rank and revenue of the 
 other contracting parties. 
 
 The English East India Company recognised the 
 Nawab Meer Jaffier as a Sovereign, when they concluded 
 with him the Treaty of 1757, in the 2nd Article of which 
 he declared that "the enemies of the English should be 
 his enemies"; in the 3rd Article of which he promised 
 that "'all the effects and factories belonging to the French" 
 should "remain in the possession of the English," — norwould 
 he "ever allow the French any more to settle in the three 
 Provinces" of Bengal, Behar and Orissa ; and by the 8th 
 and 9th Articles of which, he granted to the East India 
 Company the "tracts of land, belonging to several Zem- 
 indars," "within the ditch which surrounds the borders of 
 Calcutta," and "all the land lying to the South of Cal- 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. 23 
 
 cutta, as far as Culpee/'* Who but a Sovereign could 
 enter into such engagements as these ? 
 
 The Nawab Meer Jaffier was recognised as a Sovereign 
 when the East India Company accepted at his hands a 
 General Siinnud, or circular order to all officers of the 
 Government in the Provinces of Bengal, Behar and 
 Orissa," granting the Company exemption from ''all duties ' 
 on their goods, by ''land or by water. "f 
 
 The East India Company recognised the Nawab Meer 
 Jaffier as a Sovereign when they received from him a 
 Sunnud by which "the office of the Zemindarry of the 
 Twenty Four Pergunnahs" was conferred " upon the Noblest 
 of Merchants, the English Company, to the end that they 
 attend to the rites and customs thereof, as is fitting, nor 
 in the least circumstance neglect or withhold the vigi- 
 lance and care due thereto," "that they dehver into the 
 treasury, at proper times, the due rents of the Circar," 
 render annual accounts, and maintain peace and good 
 order " within the limits of their Zemindarry."J 
 
 The Nawab Meer Jaffier was recognised as the Sove- 
 reign of Bengal in the Treaty of 1763, by Article II of 
 which he did "grant and confirm to the Company, for 
 defraying the expenses of theu' troops, the Chucklas" 
 (districts) "of Burdwan, Midnapore and Chittagong"; by 
 Article XI of which he did " confirm and renew the Treaty 
 formerly made with the Dutch"; and by Article 12 of 
 which he imdertook, "if the French come into the country," 
 " not to allow them to erect any fortifications, maintain 
 forces, hold lands or Zemindarries".§ 
 
 Who but the Sovereign of the country could make 
 territorial grants to the English, or enforce restrictions 
 against the Dutch and French ? 
 
 It is true that in some of the Sunnuds issued by the 
 Nawab, granting lands, privileges and exemptions to the 
 East India Company, the old forms of deference to " the 
 
 * Aitchison's Treaties, Calcutta, 1862 (Longmans, London), vol. i, 
 p. 11, 12 ; Parliamentary Papers, Nawab Nazim of Bengal, No. 371 of 
 1870, p. 8. 
 
 t Aitchison's Treaties, vol. i, p. 13, { Ihid., p. 17. 
 
 § Ibid., p. 51, 53; Parliamentary Papers, Naioab Nazim of Bengal, 
 No. 371 of 1870, p. 9. 
 
24 THE BENGAL REVERSION. 
 
 Imperial Court, the Asylum of the World," are kept up, 
 but no such allusions appear in either of the Treaties with 
 Meer Jaffier, and no overture was made to the reigning 
 King during the progress or on the completion of these 
 weighty transactions. 
 
 In 1758, in 1761, and again in 1764, the combined 
 forces of the Nawab and the Company successfully resisted 
 the so-called Imperial armies which invaded Bengal, and 
 endeavoured to dispossess our serviceable Ally. It was 
 not until August 1765, six months after the installation 
 of Meer Jaffier s son and successor, Nudjum-ood-Dowlah, 
 and the conclusion of a Treaty with him, that the English 
 obtained from the Emperor Shah Alum a confirmation of 
 their arrangements with the Nawab of Bengal, and their 
 own appointment to the Dewannee, or revenue admini- 
 stration. In the words of the historian. Captain Grant 
 Duff, — "The English, at the period of Meer Jaffier's death, 
 had Bengal at their disposal, and the Emperor's person in 
 their power. The youngest son of Meer Jaffier was made 
 Nawab of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa in February 1765, 
 and the East India Company, previously charged with the 
 military protection of this territory, were appointed his 
 Dewan in the August following."* 
 
 The sovereignty of the Nawab Nudjum-ood-Dowlah 
 was fully recognised in the Treaty of 1765, in the Pre- 
 amble of which the East India Company undertook to secure 
 him "the Soubahdarry of the Provinces of Bengal, Behar, 
 and Orissa; and to support him therein against all his 
 enemies". 
 
 " And," it continues, " as our troops will be more to be 
 depended on than any the Nabob can have, and less 
 expehsive to him, he need, therefore, entertain none but 
 such as are requisite for the support of the Civil Officers 
 of his Government, and the business of his collections 
 through the different districts", t 
 
 The sovereignty of the Nawab Nudjum-ood-Dowlah is 
 also fully recognised in a Treaty concluded at Allahabad, 
 
 * Grant Duffs History of the Mahrattas, vol. ii, p. 221. 
 t Aitchisonh Treaties, vol. i, p. 56; Parliamentary Papers, Nawah 
 Nazim of Bengal, 371 of 1870, p. 11. 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. 25 
 
 on the 16th of August, 1765, by Lord CKve and General 
 Carnac, "invested with full and ample powers on the behalf 
 of his Excellency the Nawab Nudjum-ood-Dowlah, Sou- 
 bahdar of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa," and likewise on 
 behalf of the English East India Company, "to settle a 
 firm and lasting peace with his Highness the Nawab'' of 
 Oude, "Shujah-ood-Dowlah, Vizier of the Empire". 
 
 In Article I of this Treaty "a perpetual and universal 
 peace, sincere friendship and firm union" is "established 
 between his Highness Shujah-ood-Dowlah," the Nawab 
 Vizier of Oude, "on the one part, and his Excellency 
 Nudjum-ood-Dowlah and the English East India Company 
 on the other ; so that the said contracting powers shall 
 give the greatest attention to maintain between them- 
 selves, their dominions and their subjects this reciprocal 
 friendship." 
 
 It is provided by Article II of the same Treaty that if 
 " the dominions" of the Nawab of Oude shall " hereafter 
 be attacked," the Nawab Nudjum-ood-Dowlah and the 
 English Company shall assist him, *'and if the dominions of 
 his Excellency Nudjum-ood-Dowdah or the English Com- 
 pany shall be attacked, his Highness shall, in like manner, 
 assist them with a part or the whole of his forces." 
 
 In Article XI of the same Treaty, ''His Highness 
 Shujah-ood-Dowlah," the Nawab of Oude, " his Excel- 
 lency the Nawab Nudjum-ood-Dowlah, and the English 
 Company, promise to observe sincerely and strictly all the 
 Articles contained and settled in the present Treaty ; and 
 they will not suffer the same to be infringed, directly or 
 indirectly, by. their respective subjects ; and the said con- 
 tracting powers, generally and reciprocally, guarantee to 
 each other all the stipulations of the present Treaty."* 
 
 It is difficult to believe that Mr. Grant Duff, Under- 
 Secretary of State for India, would now venture to say, 
 on mature consideration, that this Nawab Nudjum-ood- 
 Dowlah, Soubahdar of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, one of 
 "the contracting powers" to this Treaty of "perpetual 
 peace," and who is therein said to have " dominions" and 
 " subjects," w^as neither a Prince nor a Sovereign. 
 * Aitchisoii's Treaties, vol. ii, p. 76, 79. 
 
26 THE BENGAl. REVERSION. 
 
 Even in the Royal jirinans of 1765, granting the Eng- 
 lish Company the Dewannee of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, 
 and the " conditional jaghire" of the Province of Bengal, 
 although the customary style of Imperial Suzerainty is 
 kept up, the territorial dominion and administrative in- 
 dependence of the Nawab are effectually acknowledged ; 
 and the Company, although invested with functions of 
 great power and influence as Dewan or Financial Minister, 
 and as security for the Boyal revenue or tribute of Ben- 
 gal, is yet formally recognised as possessing merely an 
 official authority subordinate and inferior to that of the 
 Nawab. In the accurate language of the Indian diplo- 
 matist and historian whom w^e have just quoted : — " The 
 youngest son of Meer Jaffier was Nawab of Bengal, Be- 
 har and Orissa," — " the East India Company, previously 
 charged with the military protection of this territory, 
 were appointed his Dewan."* 
 
 Thus the sum of twenty-six lakhs of rupees (£260,000) 
 " appointed" for the Eoyal revenue, is due from " the 
 Nawab Nudjum-ood-Dowlah," — the Company is only to 
 be " security" for its punctual payment, f 
 
 Again, in the " Articles of Agreement," " the Nawab 
 Nudjum-ood-Dowlah agrees to pay his Majesty out of the 
 revenues of Bengal, Behar and Orissa, the sum of twenty- 
 six lakhs of rupees a year;" and "the English Company 
 do engage themselves to be security for the regular pay- 
 ment." " But," it is further provided, '' in case the terri- 
 tories of the aforesaid Nawab should be invaded by any 
 foreign enemy, a deduction is then to be made out of the 
 stipulated revenues. J Thus even after the grant of the 
 Dewannee to the Company, the Nawab still remains Lord 
 of the territories and master of the revenues, which the 
 Company administer for him, as " his Dewan." 
 
 The financial stipulations of the Treaty of 1765 could, 
 however, no longer be carried out as therein provided, the 
 Company, and not the Nawab, having now the collection 
 and management of the revenue. The following new 
 
 * Ante, p. 24. 
 
 t Firman from the King Sliah Alum, Jitchison^s Treaties, vol. i, pp. 
 GO, 61. t Aitchuon's Treaties, vol. i, pp. 64, Q6. 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. 27 
 
 '* Agreement" was therefore made, in which the Com- 
 pany appears for the first time as the disbursing autho- 
 rity. It is dated on the 30th of September, 1765, just 
 six weeks after the Treaty of Peace with Oude. 
 
 ^^The King having been graciously pleased to grant to the 
 English Company the Dewanny of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, 
 with the revenues thereof, as a free gift for ever, on certain con- 
 ditions, whereof one is that there shall be a sufficient allowance 
 out of the said revenues for supporting the expenses of the Niza- 
 mut, be it known to all whom it may concern, that I do agree to 
 accept of the annual sum of Sicca Rupees 53,86^131, as an 
 adequate allowance for the support of the Nizamut, which is to 
 be regularly paid, as follows, viz., the sum of Rupees 17,78,854 
 for all my household expenses, servants, etc., and the remaining 
 sum of Rupees 36,07,277 for the maintenance of such horses, 
 sepoys, peons, burkundauzes, etc., as may be thought necessary 
 for my suwarry'' (retinue) " and the support of my dignity only, 
 should such an expense hereafter be found necessary to be kept 
 up, but on no account ever to exceed that amount, and having a 
 perfect reliance on Maeen-ood-Dowla, I desire he may have the 
 disbursing of the above sum of Rupees 36,07,277, for the purpose 
 above mentioned. This Agreement (by the blessing of God) I 
 hope will be inviolably observed, as long as the English Com- 
 pany's factories continue in Bengal.^'* 
 
 This document marks a most critical period in the 
 relations between the British Government and the Nawab 
 Nazim. It is the contemporary record by both contract- 
 ing parties of the political changes produced when the 
 East India Company was invested with the Dewannee of 
 Bengal. The most important condition in the grant of 
 the Dewannee to the East India Company — the condi- 
 tional nature of which is set forth plainly enough in all 
 the Royal firmans, — is herein specifically settled. The 
 Company, as Dewan or Financial Administrator, having 
 been required to provide for the expenses of the Nizamut, 
 the Nawab Nazim and the Dewan settle between them 
 what will be " a sufficient allowance" for that purpose. 
 This being such an important document, it is very re- 
 markable that its existence, or at least its purport, seems 
 to have been entirely overlooked or misunderstood by 
 those within whose sphere of power and duty it has re- 
 * Aitchison's Treaties, vol. i, p. Qo. 
 
28 THE BENGAL REVEKSION. 
 
 cently fallen to interpret and declare the rights of the 
 Nawab Nazim of Bengal. 
 
 For example, Sir Charles Wood (now Lord Halifax), as 
 Secretary of State for India, in the despatch of the 1 7th 
 of June, 1864, to which we have already referred as the 
 main cause of the pending appeal, very correctly describes 
 the present Nawab as " a descendant of Meer Jaffier Ali," 
 but very incorrectly proceeds thus — " who when the East 
 India Company were first invested with the Dewannee of 
 Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, was at the head of the Niza- 
 mut of those Provinces,"* — the fact being that the East 
 India Company was not invested with the Dewannee 
 until seven months after Meer Jaffier s death, and eight 
 years after their treaty with him. During Meer Jaffier's 
 life the office of Dewan was actually in the Nawab 's own 
 gift, for whatever may be said of Imperial prerogative, 
 the Mogul Emperor was during the whole of that period 
 either utterly powerless or at war with the Nawab and 
 the Company. 
 
 Sir Charles Wood antedates by eight years the Com- 
 pany's investiture with the Dewannee, and totally forgets 
 that the Company was only in a position to ask and ob- 
 tain that appointment, in consequence of the Treaty and 
 of eight years' alliance with the Nawab Nazim. 
 
 Let us see how the acquisition of the Dewannee was 
 viewed by the contemporary English authorities at Cal- 
 cutta and in London. The Governor and Council of 
 Bengal, in a despatch to the Court of Directors, dated 
 30th of September, 1765, after alleging "the perpetual 
 struggles for superiority between the Nawabs and your 
 agents, together with the recent proofs of notorious and 
 avowed corruption," as the grounds of their successful 
 efforts "to obtain the Dewanny of Bengal, Behar, and 
 Orissa for the Company," proceed as follows : — 
 
 " By establishing the power of the Great Moguls we have like- 
 wise estabhshed his rights ; and His Majesty, from principles of 
 gratitude, equity and policy, has thought proper to bestow this 
 important employment on the Company, the nature of which is, 
 the collecting all the revenues, and, after defraying the expenses 
 of the army, and allowing a sufficient fund for the support of the 
 
 * Pcu'liamentary Pajyers^ Nmvah Nazim, No. 371 of 1870, p. 3. 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. 29 
 
 Nizamut, to remit the remainder to Delhi, or wherever the King 
 shall reside or direct/'* 
 
 The J explain that in order to fulfil "certain stipulations 
 and agreements expressed in the Sunnud" they "have 
 settled with the Nawab, with his own free T\dll and con- 
 sent, that the sum of 53 lacs" (£530,000) "shall be an- 
 nually paid to him for the support of his dignity, and all 
 contingent expenses, exclusive of the charge of maintain- 
 ing an army, which is to be defrayed out of the revenues 
 ceded to the Company by this Royal grant of the Dew- 
 anny." 
 
 " By this acquisition of the Dewanny," they continue, 
 " your possessions and influence are rendered permanent 
 and secure, since no future Nawab will have either power 
 or riches sufiicient to attempt your overthrow by means 
 either of force or corruption." 
 
 In the concluding paragraph of the letter they say : — 
 
 " The experience of years has convinced us that a division of 
 power is impossible without generating discontent, and hazarding 
 the whole. All must belong either to the Company or to the 
 Nabob, and we leave you to judge which alternative is the most 
 desirable and the most expedient in the present circumstances of 
 affairs. As to ourselves, we know of no system we could adopt 
 that could less affect the Nabob's dignity, and at the same time 
 secure the Company against the fatal effects of future revolutions, 
 than this of the Dewanny."t 
 
 Here it is plain enough that the English officials at 
 Calcutta, however determined to free themselves from the 
 " division of power," laid no claim to territorial dominion, 
 and knew very well that they could not carry on the 
 administration of Bengal without the moral support and 
 politico-legal standing in the country conferred upon them 
 by then- maintenance of the Nawab's dignity. 
 
 The Court of Directors, in their reply, dated the 1 7th 
 of May, 1766, complain of the rapacity and corruption of 
 their servants, who have been " grasping the greatest 
 share of that part of the Nawab's revenues which was not 
 allowed to the Company," and who, "whilst the Com- 
 pany was sinking under the burden of the war, were 
 
 * Parliamentary Papers, Bewanny of Bengal (371, ii, of 1870), p. 1. 
 t Papers, Bewanny of Bengal (371, ii, of 1870), pp. 1, 2. 
 
30 THE BENGAL EE VERSION. 
 
 enriching themselves from those very funds that ought to 
 have supported the war," and who have managed to make 
 the Company's largest jaghire, the district of Burdwan, 
 simply a source of illicit gain for themselves. They are 
 doubtful of the advantage of enlarging their direct pos- 
 sessions, and object to undertaking the entire administra- 
 tion. 
 
 '^ We observe the account you give of the office and power of 
 the King^s Dewan in former times, was the collecting of all the 
 revenues,, and after defraying the expenses of the army, and 
 allowing a sufficient fund for the support of the Nizamut, to remit 
 the remainder to Delhi. This description of it is not the office 
 we wish to execute ; the experience we have already had in the 
 province of Burdwan convinces us how unfit an Englishman is to 
 conduct the collection of the revenues, and follow the subtle 
 Native through all his arts to conceal the real value of his country, 
 to perplex and to elude the payments. We therefore entirely ap- 
 prove of your preserving the ancient form of Government in the 
 upholding the dignity of the Soubah^^ — the Nawab. 
 
 They desire that the public service of Bengal shall con- 
 tinue to be carried on by the Nawab's officers under the 
 supervision of "the Besident at the Durbar," and "the 
 control of the Governor and Select Committee, the ordi- 
 nary bouuds of which control should extend to nothing 
 beyond the superintending the collection of the revenues 
 and the receiving the money from the Nabob's treasury 
 to that of the Dewanny or the Company." 
 
 " This we conceive to be the whole office of the Dewanny. 
 The administration of justice, the appointments to offices, zemin- 
 daries, in short, whatever comes under the denomination of civil 
 administration, we understand is to remain in the hands of the 
 Nabob or his ministers. ^^* 
 
 Nudjum-ood-Dowlah having in the Preamble, already 
 cited,t of the Treaty of 1765, entrusted the niilitary pro- 
 tection of his territories to the East India Company, his 
 English allies might, after the grant of the Dewannee, 
 and his acceptance of a fixed annual sum for his "house- 
 hold expenses" and the support of his " dignity only," 
 have easily seized upon almost the whole machinery of 
 
 * Parliamerdary Papers^ Dewanny oj Bengal., 371 ; ii, of 1870, pp. 
 2, 3. f Ante, p. 27. 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. 31 
 
 civil government, if thej had then considered it prudent 
 and practicable to work it for themselves. But they did 
 not so consider it. A species of double government was 
 instituted; the Company's officials exercised a strict super- 
 vision over the receipts and disbursements, but the Go- 
 vernment was carried on in the Nawab's name, the whole 
 administrative and executive power being concentrated in 
 the hands of his chief Minister, Mahomed Keza Khan, 
 with the title of 'Naib Nazim, or Deputy, — the same per- 
 son who is mentioned under that name in Article II of 
 the Treaty of 1765, and as the Nabob Minah-ood-Dowla 
 in the Treaties of 1766 and 1770.* 
 
 Nudjum-ood-Dowlah died on the 8th of May, 1766, one 
 year and a quarter after his accession ; and was succeeded 
 by his brother, Syef-ood-Dowlah, aged only sixteen. The 
 Governor and Council of Calcutta, feeling their position 
 much strengthened by their complete success against the 
 Nawab Vizier of Oude, and the Treaty of Peace concluded 
 in the previous year, took immediate advantage of their 
 recently augmented power, and of the new Nawab's youth, 
 inexperience and relative weakness, to reduce very con- 
 siderably the sum allotted for the Nizamut. In a fresh 
 Treaty dated the 19th of May, 1766, the Governor and 
 Council engaged "to secure to the Nabob Syef-ood-Dowla, 
 the Soubahdarry of the Provinces of Bengal, Behar, and 
 Orissa, and to support him therein with the Company's 
 forces against all his enemies." The Nawab a] so for his part 
 agreed to ratify and confirm "the Treaty which my father 
 formerly concluded with the Company upon his first 
 accession to the Nizamut, engaging to regard the honour 
 and reputation of the Company and of the Governor and 
 Council as his own, and that entered into with my brother. 
 Nabob Nazim-ul-Dowla." 
 
 The 2nd Article of this Treaty must be given at full 
 length. 
 
 '^ The King has been graciously pleased to grant unto the Eng- 
 lish East India Company the Dewannyship of Bengal, Behar, and 
 Orissa, as a free gift for ever; and I, having an entire confidence 
 
 * Papers, Nawah Nazim of Bengal (371 of 1870), pp. 12, U, 16; 
 Aitckison's Treaties, Calcutta, 1862, vol. i, pp 57, 67, 69. 
 
32 THE BENGAL REVERSION. 
 
 in them, and in their servants settled in this country, that nothing 
 whatever be proposed or carried into execution by them, deroga- 
 ing from my honour, dignity, interest, and the good of my coun- 
 try, do therefore, for the better conducting the affairs of the 
 Soubahdarry, and promoting my honour and interest, and that 
 of the Company, in the best manner, agree that the protecting 
 the Provinces of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, and the force suffi- 
 cient for that purpose, be entirely left to their discretion and 
 good management, in consideration of their paying the King 
 Shah Aalum, by monthly payments, as by treaty agreed on, the 
 sum of Bs. 2,16,666. 10. 9.; and to me, Syef-ul-Dowla, the an- 
 nual stipend of i^5. 41,86,131. 9., viz., the sum of i^.9. 17,78,854. 1., 
 for my house, servants, and other expenses indispensably neces- 
 sary ; and the remaining sum of Rs. 24,07,277. 8. for the support 
 of such sepoys, peons, and bercundauzes as may be thought 
 proper for my suwarry only ; but, on no account, ever to exceed 
 the amount. ^^* 
 
 These are not exactly the terms that would be employ- 
 ed in an agreement between the lawful possessors and 
 rulers of Bengal and a mere political pensioner, neither a 
 Prince nor a Sovereign. The mutual relations of the 
 parties are recognised as being the same as during the 
 life of Nudjum-ood-Dowlah, but the annual sum allotted 
 for the support of the Nawab's dignity is diminished from 
 £530,000 to £418,000. 
 
 The Court of Directors, in a despatch dated the 16 th of 
 March, 1768, noticing the succession of the Nawab Syef- 
 ood-Dowlah, desire that the Governor and Council will 
 "tender our compliments of condolence to the present 
 Nabob, Syef-ood-Dowlah, and our congratulations on his 
 accession and on his confirmation by the King, with as- 
 surance of our approbation of the Treaty entered into 
 with him, and of our inviolable attachment to him and his 
 family." They express some dissatisfaction at their ser- 
 vants at Calcutta not having given a more detailed 
 account of the facts relative to Nudjum-ood-Dowlah's 
 demise and the succession of his brother, and they add, 
 
 " All the forms of proclamation, and the acknowledgment of 
 his successor should also be recorded as examples to future times, 
 the observance of such forms being very essential to the stability 
 of Government. 
 
 * Papers, Nawah Nazim of Bengal (371 of 1870), p. 14. 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. 33 
 
 '' As the redaction of the stipend to the Nabob arises from 
 striking off the pay of an unnecessary number of his sepoys, and 
 does not affect the allowance for support of his dignity in the 
 Government, we approve what you have done in it, but we direct 
 you never to reduce the stipend lower, being extremely desirous 
 that he should have sufficient to support his public character, and 
 appear respectable to his subjects and to foreigners.'^* 
 
 The support of the Nawab's dignity in the eyes of "his 
 subjects" being coEsidered "essential to the stability of 
 Government," it is evident that he vras then upheld as the 
 reigning Sovereign of Bengal, and was no more looked 
 upon seriously as an officer of the Mogul Empire than 
 the German Electoral Princes of the same period, notwith- 
 standing their Household offices of Chamberlain, Cup- 
 bearer and so forth, were looked upon seriously as officers 
 of the Holy Koman Empire. No doubt the Nawab and 
 the East India Company too — as we can see by their pro- 
 ceedings, — were veiy well satisfied to obtain confirmation 
 by Eoyal grants of their possessions and immunities, 
 because no one could foresee the effects of "future re vol u- 
 tions,""!* and because such documents were good against 
 all third parties, whether Dutch, French, or Mahrattas ; 
 but the Nawabs of Bengal had been virtually independent 
 of Delhi for many years before our Treaty with Meer 
 Jaffier, and after that Treaty we had, in concert with 
 them, resisted in arms every effort of Imperial inter- 
 ference. 
 
 The tribute of Bengal, for which the Company, as 
 Dewan, had undeitaken to be security, was only paid to 
 the Mogul Emperor for four or five years. The pitiable 
 condition of the Mogul Court, after the invasion of India 
 by Ahmed Shah Abdallee in 1757, is a matter of history. 
 Although the whole of the continent still nominally 
 owned the sway of the House of Timour, the Emperor 
 could depend on a precarious revenue or tribute from only 
 a very few Provinces, and was, for the most part, during 
 several years a fugitive from his capital of Delhi, alter- 
 nately occupied by the Affghans and the Mahrattas. 
 From 1770 to 1803, he was virtually a state prisoner. 
 
 * Papers, Nawah Nazim (371 of 1870), p. 17. t Ante, p. 29. 
 
 D 
 
34 THE BENGAL REVERSTON. 
 
 The Treaty of 1765, between the Nawab of Oude, on 
 the one part, and the Nawab Nudjum-ood-Dowlah and 
 the English Company,* on the other part, was renewed 
 and confirmed by a Treaty concluded at Benares on the 
 29th of November, 1768, between the Nawab Shujah-ood- 
 Dowlah of Oude, the East India Company and "the 
 Nawab Syef~ood-Dowla, Soubahdar of Bengal, Behar, and 
 
 Orissa'.t 
 
 There was no intention as yet, either in Calcutta or 
 London, of getting rid of the double government of 
 Bengal, although all real power in the three Provinces 
 was now firmly held by the Governor and Council. On 
 the eve of his final departure from India in 1767, Lord 
 Clive thus expressed his views in a letter of instructions 
 to the Select Committee : — 
 
 " The first point in politics which I offer to your consideration 
 is the form of Government. We are sensible that since the acqui- 
 sition of the Dewannee, the power formerly belonging to the 
 Soubah" (Nawab) ^' of these Provinces is totally, in fact, vested 
 in the East India Company. Nothing remains to him but the 
 name and shadow of authority. This name, however, this shadow, 
 it is indispensably necessary we should seem to venerate. Under 
 the sanction of a Soubah, every encroachment that may be 
 attempted by foreign Powers can efiectually be crushed without 
 any apparent interposition of our own authority, and all real 
 grievances complained of by them can, through the same channel, 
 be examined into and redressed. Be it therefore always re- 
 membered that there is a Soubah ; and that though the revenues 
 belong to the Company, the territorial jurisdictions must still 
 rest in the Chiefs of the country, acting under him and this 
 Presidency in conjunction." 
 
 However clear it may now seem to us that this was an 
 impracticable and inconsistent policy, it was by no means 
 so clear in those days, and consequently the conversion of 
 the Nawab Nazim into a mediatised Prince, — imminent 
 ever since the grant of the Dewannee, — was not consum- 
 mated during the reign of the Nawab Syef-ood-Dowlah. 
 
 In March 1770 Syef-ood-Dowlah died. The Governor 
 and Council thus announced the installation of his brother 
 Mobaruk-ood-Dowla, in a despatch to the Court of Di- 
 rectors, dated the 18th of March, 1770 : 
 
 * Ante^ pp. 24, 25. t Aitchison^s Treaties, vol. ii, p. 79. 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSIOX. 35 
 
 '^ Mobaruk-ood-Dowlah, his younger brother, who is in about 
 the tenth year of his age, being the next in the Hne of succession, 
 has, by the President and Council, been recognised, and orders 
 have been transmitted to the Resident at the Durbar to assist the 
 Ministers in seating him with the usual formalities on the musnud, 
 which is a measure we hope will prove the most consistent with 
 your intentions, as well as with the meaning of the tenth para- 
 graph of your general letter of the 16th March, 1768, and is also 
 a popular election in the eyes of the Natives/^* 
 
 It was in the "general letter of the 16th March, 1768," 
 that the Directors had declared their ''inviolable attach- 
 ment" to the Nawab and ''his family", whose maintenance 
 was " very essential to the stability of Government," and 
 had directed the Governor and Comicil at Calcutta "never 
 to reduce the stipend lower, "f 
 
 But another crisis was now approaching in the relations 
 between the Nawab and the Company. Another succes- 
 sion, — the third within four years, — with another and 
 longer minority, offered an irresistible temptation to the 
 managing partner.- The sanguine expectations of Chve 
 as to the surplus revenues of Bengal had not been realised. 
 At the termination of Mr. Yerelst's government m 1769, 
 it was found that the income had failed to meet the cur- 
 rent expenses. At the same time the Court of Directors 
 were pressed very hard by the King's Ministry. The 
 Company became boimd by two successive Acts of Parha- 
 ment to pay a tribute from India to the Imperial Treasury 
 of £400,000 per annum, fii'st for two years, and after- 
 wards for G.ve years, commencing in February 1769. And 
 while their financial exigencies were increasing, their poli- 
 tical difficulties in India had very much diminished. The 
 Governor and Council at Calcutta began to feel the ground 
 firm under their feet. Both in Bengal and in England it 
 was clear that the money must be had somehow ; it was 
 quite clear, also, that the Nawab, — a boy ten years old, 
 • — might easily be made to pay his share of it. 
 
 Accordingly, in a new Treaty between the Governor 
 and Council and the Nawab Mobaruk-ood-Dowla, dated 
 the 21st of March, 1770, identical in other respects with 
 
 * Papers, Nmvah Xazlm (371 of 1870), pp. 17, 18. 
 t Ante, pp. 32, 33. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 THE BENGAL REVERSION. 
 
 that concluded with his predecessor, the annual stipend 
 for the support of the Nawab's household and retinue is 
 reduced from £418,000 to £318,000.* 
 
 Even this reduction of £100,000 per annum did not 
 satisfy the Court of Directors, as appears in the following 
 extract from their letter of the 10th of April, 1771 : 
 
 "We cannot but observe with astonishment that an event of 
 so mnch importance as the death of the Nabob Syef-ood-Dowlah, 
 and the establishment of a successor in so great a degree of non- 
 age, should not have been attended with those advantages for the 
 Company which such a circumstance offered to your view. 
 
 " We mean not here to disapprove the preserving the succes- 
 sion in the family of Meer Jaffier; on the contrary, both justice 
 and policy recommend a measure which at once corresponds with 
 the customs and inclinations of the people of Bengal ; but when 
 we consider the state of the new Soubah^^ (Nawab) " we know 
 not on what grounds it could have been thought necessary to 
 continue to him the stipend allotted to his adult predecessor.^'f 
 
 They consider that '' an allowance of sixteen lacs per 
 annum" (£160,000) "will be sufficient for the support of 
 the Nawab's state and rank, while yet a minor." This is 
 a remarkable change from their despatch of the 16th of 
 March, 1768, when they desired that the Nawab's income 
 should never be again reduced, J but still their objection 
 is only based upon the new Soubah's " nonage ;" the re- 
 duced allowance is only considered sufficient for him, 
 " while yet a minor ;" and in paragraph 41 of the same 
 despatch they state distinctly that " the reduction of the 
 Nawab's stipend is adventitious and temporary. "§ 
 
 The reduced allowance, however, was not raised, when 
 the Nawab Mobaruk-ood-Dowlah attained his majority, 
 to the amount stipulated in the Treaty of 1 770. By that 
 time the pecuniary wants of the Company had grown even 
 more rapidly than their powder and influence. During the 
 administration of Warren Hastings it was determined, 
 without apology or explanation, that the ''adventitious 
 and temporary reduction" in the Nawab's income should 
 
 * From Rs. 41,86,131 as. 9 to Rs. 31,81,991 as. 9. Pax>er8, Nawah 
 Nazim of Bengal (No. 371 of 1870), p. 15. 
 
 t Papers, Nawah Nazim (371 of 1870), p. 18. % Ante, p. 33. 
 
 § Papers, Nawah Nazim (371 of 1870}, p. 19. 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. 37 
 
 be considered as a permanent reduction. At the reduced 
 amount of sixteen lakhs of rupees per annum (£160,000) 
 the revenue of the Nizamut has been accounted for ever 
 since ; and though, as we shall see, the amount paid 
 directly to the Nawab Nazim has been gradually lessened 
 by a very ingenious process, each Nawab, from Mobaruk- 
 ood-Dowlah down to his fifth successor, the present Nawab 
 ]\Iunsoor Ali Khan, has been made to sign every month a 
 receipt for the full 'monthly instalment of the annual sum 
 of £160,000. 
 
 Notwithstanding the arbitrary diminution of the annual 
 allowance for the support of the Nawab's dignity, and 
 other indications of an approaching change, the system of 
 double government was not altered on the accession of 
 Mobaruk-ood-Dowlah. Although it began to be urged 
 with increasing force and reason that the Company ought 
 "to stand forth openly and immediately in their own 
 name as Dewan,'' Mahomed Reza Khan still tilled the 
 joint office of Naib Dewan and Naib Nazim, — the former 
 giving him full authority for the collection of the revenues 
 in the name of the Company, the latter giving him, beyond 
 tlie walls of Calcutta, the whole executive authority in 
 the name of the Nawab, — mth a salary of £90,000 per 
 annum. Warren Hastings, appointed Governor-General 
 in 1772, was not the man to brook such a rival near his 
 throne. Within four months after his arrival, armed with 
 the secret instructions and promised support of the Court 
 of Directors, he arrested Mahomed Keza Khan and sus- 
 pended him from his high offices. In spite of the whole- 
 sale subornation of evidence by Hastings' agent and ally 
 — soon to be his victim, — the Brahmin Nuncomar, the 
 integrity of Mahomed Reza Khan, after a lengthened and 
 searching inquiry, proved quite unimpeachable. As a 
 last resort, when pressed by a vote of the majority in 
 Council and the orders of the Home Government, Warren 
 Hastings, on the 23rd of July, 1778, produced a letter 
 from the Nawab Mobaruk-ood-Dowlah, complaining of 
 Mahomed E.eza, and claiming that as he had now attained 
 his twentieth year, which by Mussulman law was that of 
 majority, he should be set free from the oppressive tute- 
 
38 THE BENGAL REVERSION. 
 
 lage of a person not bound to him by any ties of nature 
 or aflPection. In urging that the Nawab's request should 
 be immediately complied with, Hastings argued that "his 
 demands are grounded on positive rights which will not 
 admit of discussion." He went on to say that the Nawab 
 " has an incontestible right to the Nizamut ; it is his by 
 inheritance ; the dependants of the Nizamut Adawlut" 
 (the administration of justice) "and of the Foujdarry" 
 (criminal law and police) "have been repeatedly declared 
 by the Company and by this Government to appertain to 
 the Nizamut." The decision of the Court of Directors 
 was given in a letter dated the 4th of February, 1779 : — 
 "As we have no reason to alter our opinion of Mahomed 
 Keza Khan, we positively direct that you forthwith sig- 
 nify to the Nawab Mobaruk-ood-Dowlah our pleasure 
 that Mahomed Reza Khan be immediately restored to the 
 office of Naib Soubahdar." 
 
 The prosecution of the Naib Nazim ostensibly failed, 
 but its object was nevertheless attained. During the six 
 years of Mahomed Keza Khan's suspension, Mr. Middleton 
 was appointed to take charge of his office ; the covenanted 
 servants who, since 1769, had superintended the receipts 
 and disbursements of revenue in each district, under the 
 name of Supervisors, were now denominated Collectors 
 and invested with direct authority. Every day dispelled 
 some imagined mystery of Indian administration, brought 
 more dexterity to the Company's officers in the details of 
 local management, and accustomed the Natives of all 
 classes to the open and visible exercise of British domina- 
 tion. Thus in 1779 when Mahomed Reza Khan was at 
 last reinstated in the post of Naib Nazim, his occupation 
 was almost gone. He was now evidently destined to be- 
 come at no distant day a sinecurist like his master. The 
 chief places in every branch of the public service, the 
 judicial department alone excepted, were filled by Eng- 
 lish gentlemen. Mahomedan judges, in subordination to 
 the Nawab or his Deputy, still administered criminal 
 justice, on principles drawn from the Koran. The general 
 administration of justice, indeed, when the public revenue 
 was not immediately concerned, was considered to be be- 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. 39 
 
 yond the province of the Company as Dewan, " to apper- 
 tain," in the words of Warren Hastings,* to the Nizamut." 
 But everywhere symptoms of the final transition were 
 apparent. During the suspension of Mahomed Reza 
 Khan, for example, the Nizamut Adawlut or chief Court 
 of appeal for Bengal, Behar and Orissa, was removed from 
 IVIoorshedabad, the Nawab's capital, to Calcutta, the 
 capital of the Company, where another Court of civil 
 jurisdiction was also established, called the Dewannee 
 Adawlut. The names of these two Courts may be said 
 to be the last traces of the double government of Dewan 
 Company and Nawab Nazim that lingered until 1862, 
 when the High Court of Bengal was instituted. 
 
 All possibility of any political or executive action of the 
 Nawab Nazim, either in person or by means of his Min- 
 ister, was definitively precluded in 1793 by Lord Corn- 
 wallis's judicial reforms, when the office of the Naib 
 Nazim was abolished. The double government then 
 really came to an end, and the Nawab Nazim of Bengal, 
 Behar, and Orissa, may then be said to have become a 
 mediatised Prince, having no voice in the administration. 
 The Nawab Mobaruk-ood-Dowlah died in 1796. 
 
 We have already pointed out the error committed by 
 Sir Charles Wood in his despatch of 17th June, 1864, in 
 throwing the acquisition of the Dewannee of Bengal by 
 the Company, eight years back to the time of the Treaty 
 with Meer Jaffier.f In the same despatch, and in the 
 speech of Mr. Grant Duff on the 4th of July, 1871, 
 another error, equally injurious to the present Nawab's 
 cause, is committed in considerably throwing back the 
 date of the assumption by the East India Company of 
 those executive and administrative duties that had pre- 
 viously been left to the Nawab Nazim. In paragraph TV 
 of the despatch above-mentioned, Sir Charles Wood admits 
 that it was "one of the conditions of the grant of the 
 Dewannee that provision should be made for the expenses 
 of the Nizamut," — "that is," he continues, "that a part 
 of the revenues of those Provinces should be appropriated 
 to the payment of the department of the administration 
 * Ante,]). 38. t Ante,i>. 28. 
 
40 THE BENGAL REVERSION. 
 
 distinguished by that official name." And so far he is 
 quite right; if he will only remember that in that depart- 
 ment, and at the head of it, there was a certain person 
 called the Nawab Nazim, to whom the Company was 
 bound by special ties, over and above the conditions 
 imposed by the King. Tn the play of Hamlet do not let 
 the part of Hamlet be left out. "But subsequently," he 
 adds, beginning to wander, "by special arrangements, the 
 Company undertook to perform the duties of the Niza- 
 mut, and made provision for its expenses by paying their 
 own servants to do the work which had before been done 
 by the servants of the Nazim." 
 
 Then in paragraph V of the same despatch Sir Charles 
 Wood says : — 
 
 " The administrative duties of the Nizam ut having been 
 transferred to the Company, a personal provision was made for 
 the family of the Nazim. It was right that consideration should 
 be shown to the sons of Meer Jaffir Ali, though they were not 
 called upon, after the death of the eldest, Nudjum-ood-Dowlah, to 
 discharge the high official duties of the Soobadar or Viceroy of 
 Bengal, Behar, and Orissa." 
 
 Here is a complication of serious and most misleading 
 mistakes. The "personal provision for the family of the 
 Nazim," was made long before "the administrative duties," 
 were "transferred to the Company," and quite irrespective 
 of the transfer, which, in fact, was not at that time con- 
 templated. He is quite wrong in saying that "after the 
 death of the eldest, Nudjum-ood-Dowlah," the sons of 
 Meer Jaffier Ali were not called upon to discharge the 
 duties of Nazim. The two younger sons, Syef-ood-Dow- 
 lah and Mobaruk-ood-Dowlah, were both minors when they 
 succeeded to the musnud, — and the former died before 
 attaining his majority. — but the high functions of the Na- 
 wab Soubahdar of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, were per- 
 formed for them, and in their names, by their Minister 
 or Deputy, the Naib Nazim. The minority of these two 
 Princes in succession undoubtedly facilitated gradual in- 
 novations, and smoothed the way for the final transfer, but 
 this was not completed, as we have just seen, till 1793. 
 
 And neither at the completion of the transfer, when 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. 41 
 
 the office of Naib Nazim was discontinued, nor at any 
 intermediate stage in the process, had the Company to 
 make any additional "provision for expenses". The 
 Company of course paid "their own servants to do the 
 work" out of the revenues of Bengal, as it had previously 
 paid "the servants of the Nazim" out of the same revenues, 
 which it administered as Dewan. 
 
 Surely Sir Charles Wood was not under the delusion 
 that the Nawab JN^azim paid for all the judicial, police 
 and executive establishments of the three Provinces, 
 while they were under his direction, out of the stipend 
 assigned personally to him for his "household expenses," 
 and for his retinue and "the support of 'his "dignity only".* 
 
 At every stage in the gradual process of transfer, and 
 at the final stage in 1793, far from there being additional 
 expense, there was a saving, for the double set of officials 
 — the Nazim's doing the work, the Dewan's controUing 
 and supervising, — was reduced to a single set ; and 
 although Lord Cornwallis considerably raised the pre- 
 viously nominal salaries of the Company's English officers, 
 not one of them received such an income as had been 
 allotted to the chief Native official under the double 
 government, the Naib Nazim, amounting to £90,000 a 
 year. 
 
 When Sir Charles Wood, in the passage last quoted, 
 declares that "it was right that consideration should be 
 shown to the sons of Meer Jaffir Ali," and adds that 
 "accordingly, treaties were entered into with the younger 
 Princes, Syef-ood-Dowlah and Moobaruk-ood-Dowlah suc- 
 cessively, by which the Company undertook to secure to 
 them the Soobadaree of the Provinces of Bengal, &c., and 
 to pay them a certain annual stipend," such a very inade- 
 quate reference to the Treaties of 1766 and 1770 amounts 
 to a falsification of history. The Secretary of State 
 speaks as if these Treaties were made solely out of "con- 
 sideration" for "the sons of Meer Jaffir," as if in those days 
 the alliance with them offered no pohtical advantage to 
 the Company. In the first place, the two younger bro- 
 thers, in Article I of the Treaties of 1766 and 1770, 
 
 * Ante, p. 27. 
 
42 THE BENGAL REVERSION. 
 
 "ratify and confirm" the previous Treaties made with their 
 elder brother and father, whereby they assume, and the 
 English Company recognise, their possession of the same 
 sovereign rights and prerogatives as their predecessors. 
 In the Treaty of 1765, which the Nawab Mobaruk-ood- 
 Dowlah "ratified" in 1770, the grant of certain districts 
 in Bengal were confirmed to the Company, and also the 
 privileges of carrying on trade, free, with the exception of 
 salt, from all duties and taxes, and of coining money; in 
 Article XII the Nawab promises to "confirm and abide 
 by the Treaty made with the Dutch"; and in Article XIII 
 he declares that "if the French come into the country," he 
 " will not allow them to erect fortifications or maintain 
 forces,"* — all of which are stipulations that could not 
 have been made with any but a Sovereign authority and 
 which no authority less than that of a Sovereign could 
 have been called upon to ratify and confirm. 
 
 Thus it is utterly untrue that the Treaties of 1766 and 
 1770, were only concluded out of " consideration" for "the 
 sons of Meer Jaffier Ali". Besides the ratification of all 
 former gains and acquisitions, the Company obtained this 
 additional advantage by those two Treaties, that in them 
 each of the younger brothers in succession consented to 
 receive a smaller annual sum for his household expenses 
 and the support of his dignity, than that for which his 
 predecessor had stipulated. 
 
 And this is the true mode of accounting for and ex- 
 plaining the fact that successive Treaties were made with 
 the sons of Meer Jaffier Ali, — not because each Treaty 
 was designed, or supposed, or desired to hold good only for 
 the life of the Nawab signing it, but because at each 
 demise the Company saw what they considered a good 
 opportunity for gaining some additional advantage, and 
 wished to preserve a regular and continuous title to all 
 their acquisitions by means of a chain of recorded charters. 
 
 The notion of claiming the territorial dominion of 
 Bengal, or of attempting to rule without — in the words 
 of Lord Clive,t — "the sanction of a Soubah," had never 
 been broached by any Anglo-Indian statesman in 1770. 
 
 * Aitchiso7i^s Treaties, vol. i, pp. 59, 60. t Ante, p. 34. 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. 43 
 
 By tlie sanction and with the assistance of the Nawab 
 the Company obtained the Dewannee. By means of the 
 Dewannee the Company gradually relieved the Nawabs 
 Nazim of all their executive functions. The new doctrine 
 is that the Nawabs Nazim, having parted with their 
 political power, lost thereby all right to the Princely 
 dignity and to that personal provision, for which, when 
 parting with political power, they had expressly stipu- 
 lated. 
 
 But this new doctrine has been held and explained by 
 several official authorities on several occasions, on grounds 
 equally untenable and irreconcileable with each other. 
 Lord Dalhousie, the original teacher, was content with 
 alleging that all the Treaties were " purely personal agree- 
 ments which expired with the individual with whom each 
 was concluded, and that they were not renewed after the 
 death of Mobaruk-ood-Dowlah in 1796".* 
 
 The Government of India, in their despatch of the 29th 
 of July, 1870, adopt Lord Dalhousie's views, as quoted 
 above, but also declare that Bengal was acquired from the 
 Nawab Nazim by conquest, — "in substance and fact as 
 much a case of conquest as the conquest of the Punjaub. 
 The fact," continues the despatch, "that the conquest was 
 effected peaceably, because the force of the Company was 
 irresistible, no more prevented it from being a conquest, 
 than the fact that the Danes offered no resistance to the 
 occupation of Serampore prevented that occupation from 
 being a conquest ; and the conquest, however effected, put 
 an end to all independence on the part of the Nawab, 
 and, therefore, according to one of the most familiar piin- 
 ciples of international law, to all Treaties between him 
 and his conquerors", t 
 
 It is nothing less than a monstrous perversion of lan- 
 guage and historical truth to call the gradual transfer of 
 executive power from the Nawab to the Company a 
 "conquest," and to say that the English were the "con- 
 querors" of their Ally. From first to last there was no 
 quarrel; there were no hostihties. Every step in the 
 gradation was either marked by some formal document 
 
 * Papet's, Nawah Nazim (116 of 1871), p. 3. t Ibid., pp. 3, 4. 
 
44 THE BENGAL REVERSION. 
 
 under the seal and sign manual of the reigning Nawab, 
 or sanctioned by his acquiescence, of which the East India 
 Company and its apologists have always made the most. 
 Thus Mr. Grant Duff in his speech of the 4th of July, 
 1871, after mentioning the arbitrary reduction of the 
 Nawab's income after the Treaty of 1770,* says: — "Mo- 
 baruk-ood-Dowlah, like a man of sense" (he was ten years 
 old at his accession,) "accepted accomplished facts with- 
 out even a protest, and was very glad to keep his 
 £160,000 a year for his life". 
 
 And tJie Government of India in the despatch just 
 quoted of 29th July, 1870, (paragraph IX) point out 
 what they consider to be an "inference" that the Nawab 
 must have "overlooked" in adducing documentary proof 
 of the Princely rank and prerogative of his ancestors, viz : 
 "that the higher he raises their position, the more weight 
 does he attach to the acquiescence of himself and his 
 ancestors to the arrangement under which they lived".']' 
 
 Too much weight cannot be attached to the acquiescence 
 of the Nawabs, but then if their acquiescence be pleaded, 
 — and assuredly it cannot be disputed, — it is absurd and 
 disingenuous to bring forward the plea of "conquest". 
 If the Nawabs have acquiesced, surely they are entitled 
 to the benefit of their acquiescence. Nor has the acqui- 
 escence been all on one side. If the Naw^abs have acqui- 
 esced in their own mediatisation, the British Government 
 has acquiesced by a series of Proclamations on the ac- 
 cession of each Nawab, by Acts of the Legislature and by 
 innumerable formal documents issued by the highest 
 authorities, in the Princely rank of the Nawab Nazim of 
 Bengal, and in the hereditary tenure of his dignity and 
 revenue. And if complete acquiescence on both sides for 
 an entire century, and during five successions, does not 
 constitute a case of prescriptive right, very scanty grounds 
 will be left for confidence or hope in the stability of their 
 position to many other Indian dignitaries, and a great 
 stain of bad faith and broken compact will be cast on the 
 British title to Bengal. How was our title acquired ? 
 
 Most certainly the process by which the East India 
 
 * Ante, p. 39. t Papers, Nawab Nazim (116 of 1871), p. 4. 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. 4 5 
 
 Company acquired the virtual sovereignty of Bengal can- 
 not properly be called "conquest." Let us take the most 
 recent official description of the first step in that process, 
 as given in'' Aitchisons Treaties'. 
 
 "A confederacy was formed among Suraj-ood-DowWs chief 
 officers to depose him. The English joined this confederacy, and 
 concluded a Treaty with Jaffier AH Khan. 
 
 "At the battle of Plassy, which was fought on the 23rd of June, 
 1757, the power of 8uraj-ood-Dowla was completely broken, and 
 Jaffier Ali Khan was installed by Clive as Subadar of Bengal.''* 
 
 A confederacy with Native nobles and ministers, and a 
 campaign carried on chiefly with Native troops, ending in 
 the installation of a Native Prince, can hardly be called a 
 conquest. The subsequent steps in the process — the 
 grant of the Dewannee by the Emperor, and the Treaties 
 by which each Nawab in succession was induced to divest 
 himself of some portion of his power and of his income — 
 do not amount to a conquest. It is manifest from the 
 contemporary records that the British authorities could at 
 no time between 1757 and 1800 have obtained the sove- 
 reignty of Bengal by any exertion or display of open force 
 that was possible for them. Even for their military 
 operations and political transactions they required a great 
 amount of Native support and co-operation. For admi- 
 nistrative and fiscal purposes. Native support and co- 
 operation were still more requisite. The Nawab Nazim may 
 have been, as has been often said, our creature, a mere 
 political instrument, but still he was an indispensable 
 political instrument. Without the Nawab on our side, as 
 a visible symbol of order and legality, as a link between 
 the East India Company and the Mogul Emperor, there 
 would have been imminent danger of a coalition of Princes 
 and a rising of the people against our undisguised en- 
 croachments and our mysterious designs. As our power 
 grew more secure, the support and countenance of the 
 Nawab became less necessary. The demands and acqui- 
 sitions of the East India Company gradually increased, 
 and are marked by the successive Treaties. 
 
 Mr. Grant Dufl:' in his speech of the 4th July, 1871, 
 
 * Collection of Treaties, Calcutta, 1862, vol. i, p. 3. 
 
46 THE BENGAL REVERSTON. 
 
 employs botli of the official pleas against the rights of the 
 Nizamut family that he found on record, — the plea c»f 
 "conquest" and the plea of " personal" Treaties. He puts 
 the date of the " conquest" at least as far back as the 
 grant of the Dewannee, for he says it was only "nominally 
 handed over to the English Company,"^ — "for of course 
 we took it, and the Nizamut too, by our own good swords". 
 And in another passage he says that "in the years from 
 1771 to 1782 Bengal was conquered by Warren Hastings, 
 — peacefully conquered, but still more thoroughly con- 
 quered than Delhi was by Tamerlane". No statement 
 could well be more erroneous, whether the question is 
 viewed as a matter of history or of political science. As 
 well might King William III be said to have conquered 
 Great Britain. The English Company no more gained 
 the upper hand of Suraj-ood-Dowlah in 1757, or obtained 
 the Dewannee in 1765 by their "own good swords," than 
 William of Orange obtained the Crown in 1688 by his 
 own good sword. Clive had a handful of British soldiers, 
 and a gallant company of British officers, — just as William 
 had his Dutch troops, a complete little army, 10,000 
 strong — who formed the soul and spirit of the force he 
 led, and without whom he could have done nothing. But 
 with them he could have done nothing, either in 1757 or 
 in 1765, — ^just as William could have done nothing with 
 his Dutch Guards in 1688, — without a much larger body of 
 Native troops, without Native sympathy and Native as- 
 sistance. Unless that confederacy to depose Suraj-ood- 
 Dowlah, whose tyranny had become intolerable, had been 
 formed among his chief officers, — unless Clive had secured 
 the defection at the critical moment, and the subsequent 
 co-operation, of a leading member of the Nawab's family 
 like Meer Jaffier Ali, with a strong party in the Durbar 
 and the army, — he could no more have deposed Suraj- 
 ood-Dowlah, than William could have deposed James II 
 without the concert and co-operation of the leading Eng- 
 lish statesmen. 
 
 If we make every allowance for differences of latitude 
 and race, and for dissimilar stages of civilisation, — if we 
 acknowledge that a Durbar is not a Parliament, and that 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. 47 
 
 the military and political manoeuvres of the English 
 Company were not guided purely by a disinterested 
 regard for the internal good of Bengal, — still the parallel 
 between the events from 1688 to 1690 in these islands, 
 and from 1757 to 1765 in Bengal will be sufficiently com- 
 plete for us to say that there are no elements of "conquest" 
 in either of them. 
 
 A dynastic revolution introduced the British officers 
 who took part in it into the very heart of the Native 
 State, and hampered the Nawab by pecuniary exactions, 
 complicated obligations, and demands which were inces- 
 santly growing, and which he could neither satisfy fully, 
 nor reconcile with the good of his country. Still British 
 domination, and even British power Id any shape, was 
 precarious in Bengal for some years, — the consciousness 
 of which is plainly enough expressed in the formula ob- 
 served in all the Treaties, except the last of 1770, that 
 they should be " inviolably observed, as long as the Eng- 
 lish Company s factories continue in Bengal"* — and all 
 the steps taken to secure British domination up to the 
 acquisition of the Dewannee in 1765, were, according to 
 the customs and precedents of India, legal and constitu- 
 tional. 
 
 The British title to Bengal, Behar and Orissa, is not 
 derived from conquest, but from a series of Treaties and 
 transactions with the Nawabs, confirmed, no doubt, but 
 only confii'med — not superseded or rendered superfluous, 
 — by the submission and obedience of the jnhabitants ; 
 and anyone who tampers with the reserved rights of the 
 Nawab, under any pretext whatever, attacks the British 
 title, and deserves the name neither of a statesman nor a 
 jurist. 
 
 But the official authorities at Calcutta, and Mr. Grant 
 Duff in the House of Commons, have two darts pre- 
 pared, and in case the plea of conquest should miss its 
 mark, they bring forward the weapon of " a personal 
 Treaty," used so freely and with such fatal effect by 
 Lord Dalhousie for the destruction of our faithful and 
 docile dependencies. Mr. Grant Duff, referring to the 
 * Aitchison^s Treaties, vol. i, pp. 49, QQ^ 67. 
 
48 THE BENGAL REVERSION. 
 
 series of Treaties with the Nawabs Nazim, says that " it 
 must be perfectly clear to anyone who takes the trouble 
 to read these Treaties, that they are siniply and solely 
 personal agreements, made for the life of particular per- 
 sons by whom they were signed." 
 
 " The particular persons by whom they were signed" 
 were "the Governor and Council" of Calcutta, whose 
 names are appended in full, on the one part, and the 
 Nawab on the other part. Mr. Grant Duff does not, we 
 may assume, mean that these Treaties were to last only 
 as long as the lives of the English gentlemen who signed 
 them. But why not ? Because, it would be replied, 
 they signed on behalf of the English East India Company, 
 which was a Corporation with the right of perpetual suc- 
 cession. Certainly, — and the Nawab signed as represen- 
 tative of the Nizamut, the perpetuity of which consisted 
 in its hereditary tenure, continuously acknowledged and 
 repeatedly asserted by the East India Company from. 
 1757 down to the accession of the present Nawab Nazim 
 in 1838.* 
 
 But still it may be urged, in the words of several 
 official despatches and speeches, that, after all, each 
 Treaty is only made for the life of a particular person. 
 That is by no means the case. No such words occur in 
 any one of the Treaties with the Nawabs Nazim. 
 
 The Governor and Council at Calcutta, representing 
 the East India Company, knew perfectly w^ell how to 
 make a Treaty or Agreement for one life only. One such 
 document will be found among the Bengal Treaties. It 
 is dated the 27th of September, 1760, and is concluded 
 between Meer Mahomed Cossim Khan and the English 
 Company. This is the Meer Cossim of whom Mr. Grant 
 Duff erroneously says in his speech that when " Meer 
 Jaffier Ali gave umbrage to his British masters," " he 
 was brushed aside," " one Meer Cossim was put in his 
 stead," and afterwards, " he, too, was brushed aside, and 
 Meer Jaffier replaced in the enjoyment of his dignity, 
 such as it was." The fact is, that in the agreement with 
 Meer Cossim it was expressly stipulated that "the Nawab, 
 * A7ite,-p^. 17, 18. 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. 49 
 
 Meer Mahomed Jaffier Ali Khan Behauder, shall continue 
 in possession of his dignities, and all affairs be transacted 
 in his name/' Meer Cossim was not " put" in Meer 
 Jaffier A lis "stead"; he was not recognised as Nawab 
 Nazim, but only appointed to be Naib Nazim — the same 
 office held subsequently for many years by Mahomed Reza 
 Khan,* — and this Deputyship or "Neabut of the Souba- 
 darry" was to be held, and " this Agreement to remain in 
 force" only " during the life of Meer Mahomed Cossim 
 
 Khan."t 
 
 No such limitation will be found in any one of the 
 Treaties with the successive Nawabs Nazim. 
 
 When Mr. Grant Duff so confidently asserted that the 
 Treaties of 1765, 1766, and 1770 were ''only for the life 
 of the then Nawab," of the Nawab in whose name it was 
 concluded, he must, equally with Lord Dalhousie when 
 he pronounced them to be " piu^ely personal agreements 
 which expired with the individual with whom each was 
 concluded,"^ have forgotten the manifest fact that not 
 one of them ceased and expired with the life of the indi- 
 vidual with whom it was concluded, for the very simple 
 reason that in the first Article of each of these Treaties, 
 the original Treaty with Meer Jaffier and every subse- 
 quent Treaty are ratified and confirmed, § while the last 
 of the series, that of 1770, in which all the previous 
 Treaties are recited for confirmation, is to " be inviolably 
 observed for ever."|| Thus the Treaties are inseparably 
 connected from the first to the last, and the last is a per- 
 petual Treaty. 
 
 All these mistaken views as to personal Treaties rest 
 upon two palpable errors, which disappear at once if refer- 
 ence is made to the established principles of International 
 Law. The first error is that a Treaty becomes a "per- 
 sonal Treaty," if it is made with a Prince by name, and 
 does not contain the words "heirs and successors". The 
 
 * Ante, p. 31. t Aitchison's Treaties, vol. i, pp. 46, 47. 
 
 X Ante, p. 43. 
 
 § Papers, Naivab Nazim (371 of 1870), pp. 12, 14, 15. 
 
 II Ihid., p. 16. 
 
50 THE BENGAL REVERSION. 
 
 second error is that the meaning of the term "personal 
 Treaty," is a Treaty made for one life only. 
 
 The fact is that a Treaty may contain the words " heirs 
 and successors," in every Article and clause, and yet be a 
 " personal Treaty", while the absence of those words from 
 a Treaty may not in the least detract from the perpetuity 
 of its obligations on both sides. " Treaties," says Yattel, 
 "that are perpetual, and those made for a determinate 
 time, are real ; since their duration does not depend on 
 the lives of the contracting parties."* And Grotius points 
 out that it is not necessary that the words " heirs and suc- 
 cessors" "should be introduced in order to make the 
 Treaty real^.f 
 
 The same great jurist also says: — "If it be added to 
 the Treaty that it shall stand for ever, or that it is made 
 for the good of the Kingdom, it will from hence fully 
 appear that the Treaty is reaV't It is "added to the 
 Treaty" of 1770 that "this Agreement, by the blessing of 
 God, shall he inviolably observed for ever". In Article II 
 the Nawab declares that he commits the executive power 
 in the Pro\dnces of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa to the 
 English East India Company, "having an entire con- 
 fidence" that it will promote "my honour, interest and the 
 good of my country" and that it wiU operate ''for the 
 better conducting the affairs of the Soubahdarry" .^ Thus 
 both of the stipulations, either of which, according to 
 Grotius, would suffice to make the Treaty "real," are con- 
 tained in the Treaty of 1770. 
 
 But for deciding as to the permanence of the Treaty of 
 1770, the question of "real" or "personal" is in fact im- 
 material. It may be personal and permanent. 
 
 A "personal" Treaty is not necessarily or usually a 
 Treaty made for one life only. It is a Treaty made for the 
 private objects and interests of a Prince or family, and to 
 last as long as the person or the family last. Even an 
 undoubted "personal" Treaty would not expire, for want 
 
 * Book II, chap, xii, § 187. 
 
 t De Jure Belli et Pads, lib. ii, chap. xv. 
 
 X Ihid., chap. xvi. See also Vattel, paragraphs 187, 189. 
 
 § Papers, Nawah Nazim (371 of 1870), p. 15. 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. 51 
 
 of the words, "heirs and successors," at the death of the 
 individual named in it, if its evident object was to secure 
 certain advantages to his family. 
 
 The Treaty of 1770, as we have seen, has some charac- 
 teristics of a "real" Treaty, but if it were ever so "per- 
 sonal," it would remain in force as long as any member of 
 the Nizamut family existed. According to Yon Martens : — 
 
 ^^Treaties, properly so called, are either personal or real. They 
 are personal^ when their continuation in force depends on the per- 
 son of the sovereign {or his family), with whom they have been 
 contracted. They are real, when their duration depends on the 
 StatOj independently of the person who contracts. All treaties 
 made for a time specified, or for ever, are also real."* 
 
 The Treaty of 1770 is made ''for ever", and therefore, 
 whether considered "real" or not, must have been intended 
 by the contracting parties to last as long as the Nawab's 
 family on the one side, and the East India Company on 
 the other, should continue in existence. 
 
 A Treaty such as we have made at different times in 
 India, granting a pension as reward or compensation to 
 a Prince or family, is a personal Treaty, and in some cases, 
 also, a Treaty for a life only, or for lives. Under Treaties of 
 this sort we settled certain annual payments on Dowlut 
 Bao Scindia and some ladies of his family. t The Treaty 
 made by the Duke of WelHngton with Amrut Kao, and 
 the terms of capitulation between Sir John Malcolm and 
 Bajee Rao, the last Peishwa,J are also instances of per- 
 sonal Treaties which are good for a Hfe only. 
 
 Wheaton, perhaps the greatest of modern authorities, 
 writes as follows on the same subject: — 
 
 "Treaties are divided into personal and real. The former re- 
 late exclusively to the persons of the contracting parties, such as 
 family alliances, and treaties guaranteeing the throne to a par- 
 ticular Sovereign and his family. They expire, of course, on the 
 death of the King, or the extinction of his family ." ^ 
 
 The Nizamut family is not extinct. The present Na- 
 
 * Law of Nations, translated from G. F. Von Martens, London, 1 803, 
 p. 54. t Aitckison's Treaties, vol. iv, p 24:5. 
 
 t Ibid., vol. iii, pp. 90 and 183. 
 § Elements of International Lav, Boston, ISoo, p. 39. 
 
 E 2 
 
52 THE BENGAL REVERSION. 
 
 wab Nazim is the fifth in succession, directly descended in 
 the male line from Mobaruk-ood-Dowlah, with whom the 
 Treaty of 1770 was concluded, and the eighth Nawab in 
 succession from Meer Jaffier Ali Khan with whom the 
 confederacy was formed against Suraj-ood-Dowlah, which 
 was the origin of our power in Bengal. 
 
 The new doctrine of a ''personal Treaty" was not 
 broached until ^ve successions had taken place to the 
 Princely dignity and the annual income enjoyed by the 
 Nawab Mobaruk-ood-Dowlah, with whom that Treaty 
 of 1770 was concluded, which was to be "inviolably ob- 
 served for ever". It was not broached until 1853, and 
 then only as one secretly proposed item in a general 
 scheme of annexation and confiscation, the main pivot and 
 working principle of which was that Treaties "to be in- 
 violably observed for ever", — "perpetual" Treaties, — 
 Treaties "to last as long as the Sun and Moon endure", 
 were each of them in turn declared to be mere "personal" 
 Treaties, good only for the life of the weaker contracting 
 party, whose descendants became after the first demise 
 mere "recipients of the bounty" of the stronger contract- 
 ing party. The East India Company was an immortal 
 corporation : such terms as "to be inviolably observed 
 for ever," "perpetual," "to last as long as the Sun and 
 Moon endure," applied only to the{7^ possessions or acqui- 
 sitions, and the concessions made to theon. A Eajah of 
 Mysore or a Nawab Nazim of Bengal, although he may 
 have been accustomed to suppose his rank and station 
 hereditary, was only an individual, and any reservations, 
 made on his behalf, or on behalf of his family, were in their 
 nature transitory, contingent on the grace and favour of 
 the stronger party towards the individual representative 
 for the time being of the weaker party. 
 
 When this new doctrine was first set forth in 1848, — 
 when the "Calcutta Government", in the words of Sir 
 George Clerk's Dissent against the annexation of Mysore, 
 "led off with that flagrant instance of the barefaced ap- 
 propriation of Sattara",* Mr. Willoughby, then a Member 
 
 * Mysore Papers (112 of 1866), p. 72. 
 
THE BEXGAL REVERSIOX. 53 
 
 of Council at Bombay,* whose Minute was eulogised by- 
 Lord Dalbousie as "a text-book'', recommended the annex- 
 ation "on financial grounds". After noticing the annual 
 deficits for several years, '*it cannot with truth be said," 
 he argued, "that the ultimate reversion into the general 
 exchequer of India of a revenue which may hereafter vary 
 from £120,000 to £140,000, is of no importance".t 
 
 The young Governor-General employed the same plea. 
 "I take this fitting* occasion," he said, "of recording my 
 strong and deliberate opinion that, in the exercise of a 
 wise and sound policy, the British Government is bound 
 not to put aside or to neglect such rightful opportunities of 
 acquhing territory or revenue as may from time to time 
 present themselves". J 
 
 And when the question came before the Home author- 
 ities. Lord Dalhousie's proposal met with warm support 
 on the same grounds from a very able retired Bengal 
 Civilian, Mr. R. D. Mangles, who, in the Court of Directors, 
 in the House of Commons, in the Council of India, and 
 in the columns of the Edinburgh Review, has ever since 
 persistently advocated a poHcy of confiscation for India. 
 "We have practically the whole of India," he urged, "to 
 govern and to defend, whether its provinces be immedi- 
 ately administered by British officers or by nominal Sove- 
 reigns. Our means are too smaU for the full and efficient 
 discharge of these functions ; the people have not so good 
 a government as they are justly entitled to ; and we are 
 consequently bound to avail ourselves of every just op- 
 portunity for increasing our financial resources. "§ 
 
 The principle being thus announced and accepted, such 
 "just opportunities," such "rightful opportunities," for se- 
 curing " those ultimate reversions" that were expected to 
 prove so lucrative, were very soon found. The friendly, 
 influential, and docile States of Sattara, Nagpore, Jhansi 
 and Oude were swept away. The mediatised Principality 
 of the Nawab of the Carnatic was declared not to be 
 
 * Afterwards Sir J. P. Willoughby, Bart., and a Member of the 
 Secretary of State's Council of India. 
 
 t Sattara Papers (83 of 1849), p. 73. + Ibid., 1849, p. 83. 
 
 § Ibid., p. 151. 
 
54 THE BENGAL REVERSION. 
 
 hereditary, and succession was refused to a lineal male de- 
 scendant of our oldest and most serviceable Ally. An- 
 other mediatised Principality in Southern India, that of 
 the Eajah of Tanjore, was extinguished by the rejection of 
 a collateral adopted heir. Every one of these cases of an- 
 nexation was accompanied by a shameless confiscation of 
 private property, and the scandalous public sale of jewels, 
 clothes and household furniture. 
 
 Our good friend, the Nizam of Hyderabad, had been 
 induced — ''compelled" would perhaps be the more correct 
 word, — by the dominant influence of our Government, to 
 maintain for more than fifty years a Contingent Force, 
 controlled by our Besident and commanded by our ofiicers, 
 whose emoluments, costing our Government nothing, were 
 swelled to a scale of preposterous extravagance. "The 
 commands and stafl*-appointments" (in this Force) says 
 Major Moore, one of the Court of Directors, ''have aflbrded 
 rewards for meritorious officers who had distinguished 
 themselves in our own armies ; and it has been altogether 
 a fertile source of patronage". On the other hand, while 
 we imposed this " incubus on the Nizam's finances," we 
 turned these troops to our own pecuniary benefit in an- 
 other way. Relying upon the Contingent for preserving 
 peace and good order in the Nizam's dominions, we "dis- 
 regarded our own engagements", and "for thirty years the 
 number of our troops", the Subsidiary Force, " kept up 
 within the Hyderabad country, was more than one fourth 
 less than the number for which we had contracted" under 
 the Treaty of 1800, in return for valuable cessions of 
 territory. 
 
 '^ Overwhelmed witli financial difficulties/^ he continues, " the 
 Nizam was at length unable to pay the Contingent, and we 
 kindly lent him the money from our own treasury, first at 12 
 per cent., and latterly at 6 per cent, interest ; and thus our 
 staunch Ally incurred a debt to us of about 50 lakhs of rupees'' 
 (£500,000).* 
 
 Colonel Davidson, Resident at Hyderabad, who had 
 been Assistant E-esident in 1853, when the Revised 
 Treaty was extorted from the Nizam, as he says, "by 
 
 * Papers, Nizam's Debt, 1859, pp. 4, 5, 9, 11, 16, 17. 
 
THE BENGAL EEVERSION. 55 
 
 objurgations and threats", declares that *'had the pecuni- 
 ary demands of the two Governments been impartially 
 dealt with, we had no just claim against the Nizam. " In 
 1853", he says in the next paragraph of the same despatch, 
 dated the 12th of October, 1860, "we had little or no real 
 pecuniary claim against the Nizam". He points out that 
 if that Prince's case had received fair consideration, he 
 could have shown "a credit" against us to the full amount, 
 without interest, of the debt charged against him, a great 
 part of which was made up of interest, while "since 1853 
 we have charged 18 lakhs of rupees" (£180,000) "for the 
 interest of the debt of 43 lakhs", (£430,000) "which his 
 Highness acknowledged, under pressure, to be due by 
 him by the Treaty of 1853, but which he never considered 
 he justly owed". After noticing the monstrous demand 
 that had been annually brought against the Nizam's 
 Government of £130,000 as the pay alone of the Enghsh 
 officers of the Contingent,* Colonel Davidson observes : — 
 "The wonder clearly is that instead of owing only 43 
 lakhs of Company's rupees at the end of fifty years of 
 such a system, our claim did not render the Nizam hope- 
 lessly insolvent", t 
 
 Taking advantage of this most questionable debt — 
 most questionable, even if the Nizam's large counter- 
 claims were excluded, — Lord Dalhousie extorted from 
 the Nizam in 1853, by means of menace and compulsion, 
 the assignment of some of his finest Provinces — about 
 a quarter of his dominions — to British administration, as 
 a material guaranty for the regular payment of the Con- 
 tingent Force, which we had most unfairly and insi- 
 diously rendered permanent, contrary to the principle of 
 the old Treaty, and altered under the new Treaty, while 
 its annual expense was reduced, so as to make it useful 
 and always available for our own purposes. J 
 
 * The average pay of each officer down to 1853 was about £1500 a 
 year. At the head of the hst were five Brigadiers, commanding what 
 were called " Divisions" in this Force numbering about 7000 of all ranks. 
 The emoluments of a Brigadier were about £3000 per annum, and to 
 each of the five " Divisions" there was a Brigade Major, a Paymaster, 
 and a Superintending Surgeon, all paid at proportionate rates. 
 
 t Papers, Thi Deccan (338 of 1867), pp. 27, 28. 
 
 X By a new Ti'j^p^Jy^ dated 31st December, I860, as a reward for the 
 
56 THE BENGAL REVERSION. 
 
 Financial advantages having been put prominently 
 forward as one of the chief objects of the policy of terri- 
 torial extension, Lord Dalhousie, in the Farewell "Minute 
 Reviewing his Administration/' boasted of having added 
 by his annexations "four millions sterling to the annual 
 revenue of the Empire," even including in this alleged 
 addition, £500,000 from these Assigned Districts of 
 Hyderabad, held in trust for the Nizam,* not one penny 
 of which could fall into the British Treasury, since we 
 were bound, after paying for the Contingent and the costs 
 of administration, to hand over the surplus to the Nizam. 
 
 In the Legislative Council at Calcutta on the 5th 
 March, 1867, Mr. Massey, then Financial Member of the 
 Government, stated that "the revenues of East and West 
 Berar, commonly called the Assigned Districts, like the 
 revenues of Mysore, were collected and administered in 
 trust for the Native Government (the Nizam's), and had 
 properly no place in the Indian accounts". 
 
 This is an extreme example of the delusive style in 
 which Lord Dalhousie drew up his self-laudatory Farewell 
 Minute, because here he had not acquired the sovereignty 
 or the beneficial possession of the Assigned Districts, but 
 merely the right of management for a specific purpose ; 
 and on a general examination of his flourishing financial 
 summary, we find that Lord Dalhousie only gave the 
 gross receipts of his territorial acquisitions, and said 
 nothing at all about the new expenditure, which in every 
 instance far exceeded the new receipts. In the eight 
 years of his administration he added £8,354,000 to the 
 public debt : in the three last of these years there was a 
 
 Nizam's help during the rebeUion, and " to mark the high esteem in 
 which his Highness the Nizam is held by Her ^Majesty the Queen", a 
 partial restoration was made of the Assigned Districts, — the Berar 
 Provinces being still retained to provide for the Contingent, —and the 
 balance of alleged debt was remitted. The Nizam's large counter-claims 
 were, however, left untouched, and some valuable territorial cessions 
 were taken from his Highness with only the nominal equivalent of 
 Shorapore, which had never, in fact, ceased to be part of the Nizam's 
 Dominions. — Aitchison's Treaties, vol. v, pp. 114, 116. 
 
 '"* Papers, Minute hij the Marquis of Dalhousie, February 28th, 1856, 
 paragraph 19 (note), p. 7. 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION". 57 
 
 heavy deficit, amounting in 1853-4, though India was at 
 peace, to £2,044,000, and in 1854-5 to £1,850,000. ^ 
 
 During the great rebellion, the immediate offspring of 
 Lord Dalhousie s demoralising and exasperating injustice, 
 — which broke out with the Sepoy mutiny in 1857, and 
 was not finally suppressed until 1859, — it became necessary 
 to augment the British forces in India to the enormous 
 number of 122,000 men ; of whom 35,000 disappeared 
 entirely from the tnuster-roUs in those three years, having 
 either died or been discharged from wounds or ruined 
 constitutions ; and during the same three years upwards 
 of forty millions sterling were added to the public debt of 
 India. Thus did Lord Dalhousie's policy " consolidate 
 our military strength," and "add to the resources of the 
 public treasury." 
 
 But besides the extinction of Native States, the 
 destruction of royal families, and the aboHtion of 
 mediatised Principalities, under the Dalhousie admini- 
 stration, many steps were taken and special measures 
 passed, — with the same rude notion of acquiring revenue 
 somehow, — that were eminently calculated to lower the 
 position, and destroy the pubHc career of great nobles 
 and proprietors. At later periods and by different pro- 
 cesses, varying in the several Presidencies, in the Pun- 
 jaub, and in Oude, the Native landed aristocracy saw 
 ruin, immediate or prospective, brought to their doors by 
 new-fangled revenue settlements, resumption laws, and 
 Inam Commissions, instituted or intensified by Lord 
 Dalhousie, strenuously supported by "the Services," speak- 
 ing through the Friend of India, and the Mangles party 
 in the Court of Directors. But even when they lost 
 property or income, the natural leaders of the people did 
 not lose their influence. The masses found no cause for 
 gratitude towards the British Government. They every- 
 where not only sympathised but suffered with the de- 
 spoiled landlords. This was most remarkably and con- 
 spicuously testified in Oude, though it was made evident 
 enough, also, in many parts of the North West Provinces. 
 Lord Canning in a despatch dated 17th June, 1858, thus 
 expresses his astonishment at the unaccountable fact 
 
58 THE BENGAL REVEESION. 
 
 "that the endeavour to neutraHze the usurped and largely 
 abused power of the Talookdars by recognising the sup- 
 posed proprietary right of the people, and thus arousing 
 their feelings of self-interest and evoking their gratitude, 
 had failed utterly". 
 
 '' The village occupants, as a body, relapsed into their former 
 subjection to the Talookdar", or great landlord, ''owned and 
 obeyed his authority as if he had been their lawful Suzerain, and 
 joined the ranks of those who rose up in arms against the British 
 Government^\* 
 
 The truth was that the village occupants knew much 
 more of the British revenue system than Lord Canning 
 did. They perfectly understood that the "supposed pro- 
 prietary right" enjoyed by the villagers of our adjacent 
 districts, was nothing more than the right to pay their 
 quota directly to the Government instead of to the 
 Talookdar. They knew quite well that any intermediate 
 profit-rent which was lost by the Talookdar would be no 
 gain to them, but would fall into the coffers of Govern- 
 ment, and would be expended on objects which, to say 
 the least, they were incapable of appreciating ; that they 
 would be deprived of the protection and countenance of 
 their hereditary Chief, and would lose both the "panem" 
 and the "circenses" arising from his local expenditure and 
 genial hospitality. 
 
 What a lesson was given, what an example was set 
 between 1848 and 1856, to the Indian people whom we 
 have undertaken to raise into a higher sphere of politics 
 and morals ! How well calculated our procedure in these 
 matters of annexation of territory, confiscation of revenue 
 and sequestration of private property, was to make them 
 a law-abiding people, to teach them reverence for our 
 civilised government ! 
 
 When Lord Dalhousie left Calcutta, after perpetrating 
 the annexation of Oude, the moral influence of Great 
 Britain in India was, for the time, annihilated. On the 
 first rumour of direct provocation applied to their own 
 religious prejudices, the Sepoys led the way in revolt, ex- 
 pecting the Princes and the people everywhere to answer 
 * Papers, Oude Prodamatimi, 1859, p. o. 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSIOK 59 
 
 to their signal and to follow their example. They were 
 mistaken ; but they were not nearly as much mistaken as 
 Lord Dalhousie was. They saw, because they suffered 
 from it in long and expensive marches and harder duty, 
 what he failed to see, that instead of our military strength 
 having been combined or consolidated by the annexing 
 operations, it was dispersed and scattered. They very 
 much underrated the conservative instincts and pacific 
 tendencies of Native Sovereigns, but he treated all such 
 considerations with contempt. Like Mr. Grant Duff he 
 rehed upon **our own good sword". He declared that 
 " petty intervening PrincipaHties" might be made a 
 " means of annoyance," but could " never be a source of 
 strength," and that by " getting rid of them" we should 
 ^'acquire continuity of military communication," and "com- 
 bine our military strength."* The time of trial soon came, 
 and it was then found that one great source of our 
 strength lay in those " petty intervening Principalities," 
 which not only gave us no " annoyance," but afforded the 
 most serviceable aid in men, money, and moral influence. 
 
 The matter stands thus at present. In the full tide of 
 his apparently brilliant career, — under the influence of 
 the vain delusion and shallow exultation so soon to be 
 dissipated amid the horrors of 1857, — Lord Dalhousie 
 recorded his mandates that the two rich reversions of the 
 Mysore State and the Bengal mediatised PrincipaHty 
 should be absorbed at the first demise. Are these testa- 
 mentary injunctions to be carried out, now that the 
 sophisms and equivocations by which they were defended 
 have been exposed, now that the promises of gain in 
 wealth and strength by which they were recommended 
 have been broken and falsified ? 
 
 With regard to the Mysore State this question was 
 answered in the negative in 1866. The same question is 
 now asked with regard to the Bengal mediatised Prin- 
 cipaHty. 
 
 The officials of Calcutta, and the retired officials in 
 London, fought hard for the rich prize of Mysore. They 
 protested, for the most part, their general aversion to the 
 * Sattara Papers, 1849, p. 83. 
 
60 THE BENGAL REVERSION. 
 
 annexation policy, or at least their submission to the 
 national decree against it embodied in the Koyal Pro- 
 clamation, but they maintained that the case of Mysore 
 was quite "exceptional". 
 
 In a similar extremity they will assuredly declare that 
 the case of theNawab of Bengal is also quite "exceptional", 
 and that they have no evil designs against the general 
 class of titled political stipendiaries. But should they un- 
 fortunately prove more successful in this instance than in 
 that of Mysore, it will not be looked upon as an "ex- 
 ceptional case" in India, but will awaken feelings of 
 hatred, alarm and suspicion throughout the Native States 
 as well as in our own Provinces. If the repudiation of 
 the Treaty of 1770 should be confirmed, — if the dis- 
 inheritance and degradation of the Nawab's family should 
 be decreed, and his descendants pronounced to be hence- 
 forth mere "recipients of the bounty of the British 
 Government," — such a course would be looked upon as 
 a mere return to that policy which has shaken through- 
 out India the belief in British honour, and which 
 has been denounced, more or less plainly, by every leading 
 statesman of Great Britain. 
 
 In vain will those who wish to revive Lord Dal- 
 housie's policy try to make any reassuring distinctions 
 for the future between the several classes of his victims, 
 and, while recommencing the attack against the dignities 
 and possessions of one class, profess — perhaps with per- 
 fect sincerity for the time, — the deepest regard for the 
 rights of the other classes whose turn has not yet come. 
 Touch one and they all tremble. 
 
 Mr. Grant Duff, at the very outset of his speech on the 
 4th of July, 1871, based his whole argument on an un- 
 discriminating misconception of the social gradations and 
 complicated connections of the classes with whom he has 
 to deal. These are his words : — 
 
 "Standing out from the mass of Indian society are three sets 
 of persons whom it is important carefully to distinguish. First 
 you have Native Princes and Chiefs — the heads of famous 
 houses possessing to this day more or less political power; 
 secondly^ you have great proprietors — noblemen of high position^ 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION". 61 
 
 bat without any princely prerogative ; and, thirdly, you have a 
 very small class of titled stipendiaries, privileged dependents of 
 the British Government. It is to the third of these classes that 
 the Nawab Nazim really belongs." 
 
 But the Under Secretary of State does not explain, 
 evidently because he does not understand, tliat each of 
 the "three sets" into which he has classified the great 
 families of India, does not comprise a distinct and homo- 
 geneous class, but that, whether we consider their rank 
 and dignity, their political importance, or the validity 
 and antiquity of their tenures, there are individuals in 
 the third "set" of "titled stipendiaries" who would be 
 placed by the universal consent and custom of India, and 
 on historical and legal grounds that admit of no dispute, 
 not only above all in the second "set" of "great pro- 
 prietors, noblemen of high position," but far above many 
 who fall within the first "set" of Princes actually ruling 
 their own territorial dominions. 
 
 Nor will this apparent anomaly appear so unreasonable 
 or so difficult of comprehension, if we remember that 
 there are reigning Princes in Europe, — such as those of 
 Monaco, Lichtenstein, Reuss and Lippe, — who do not 
 hold that rank, even in their own estimation, certainly 
 not in the general estimation of continental Courts, that 
 would entitle them to seek matrimonial alliances, for 
 themselves or their children, in any branch of the House 
 of Bourbon, or in the Ex-Royal family of Tuscany or 
 Modena. 
 
 And certainly the religious and political views, the 
 plans and movements of the Comte de Chambord, of the 
 Due d'Auraale, of the present Pope — and, we may add, 
 of the next Pope, — are matters of much more interesting 
 speculation, of much higher diplomatic and public im- 
 portance, than those of the Prince of Anhalt, the Grand 
 Dnke of Baden, or even the King of Saxony. 
 
 It is exactly so in the East. There are Princes and 
 Chiefs, ruling very smaU territories, who, as holding 
 political power, must be included in Mr. Grant DuflP's 
 first "set," but who have never been popularly regarded 
 or treated with the respect and deference that are shown 
 
62 THE BENGAL REVERSION. 
 
 to certain stipendiaries of the third ^'set/' to whom, 
 indeed, higher titles and greater personal honours are 
 accorded even by the British Government. Thus while 
 the Maharajah Dhnleep Singh receives a salute of twenty- 
 one, and the Nawab Nazim of Bengal one of nineteen 
 guns, many Princes of long descent, and exercising all 
 the functions of sovereignty, are only allowed fifteen, and 
 others only eleven,* while numerous Chieftains having 
 political power and hereditary jurisdiction within their 
 own estates, are entitled to no salute at all.t 
 
 Although Mr. Grant Duff in his speech of the 4th 
 July, 1871, speaks, with graceful and becoming urbanity, 
 of ^Hhe shadowy honours of the Nizamut ;" remarks inci- 
 dentally that one of the Nawabs succeeded to the dignity 
 '^such as it was ;" and, more expressly still, asserts that 
 the Nawab Nazim of Bengal is ''noPrince" that ''his father 
 was no Prince,'^ that ''his grandfather was no Prince" and 
 that "none of his predecessors have been Indian Princes,'* 
 there is the fact that for more than a century, and during 
 nine lives, they have been treated with Princely honours, 
 that as late as the year 1838 *'the accession" of the pre- 
 sent Nawab " to the hereditary honours and dignities of 
 the Nizamut and Soobahdarry of Bengal, Behar, and 
 Orissa," was proclaimed "to the Allies of the British 
 Government, and to all friendly Powers," and that all the 
 troops in garrison at Fort William were called out to hear 
 the Proclamation read, and to fire a feu de joie on the 
 occasion. J 
 
 Before the Under Secretary again commits himself to 
 any of these official disparagements, or attempts once more 
 to relegate the Nawab Nazim to any third-rate "set" of 
 titled stipendiaries, let him institute a search in the re- 
 cords, and ascertain whether equal or similar honours 
 have ever been accorded at Calcutta to any Prince or 
 Chief, "retaining political power", to any nobleman or 
 great proprietor " of high position", whom he would place 
 
 * Aitchison's Treaties, vol. iv, pp. 87, 157, 178, 188, etc.; vol. iii, 194, 
 195, 230. 
 
 t Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 58, 285, 317-223; vol. iii, pp. 231-254; vol. v, 
 pp. 334, 338 ; vol. vi, pp. 145, 361, 503. + Ante, pp. 17, 18. 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. 63 
 
 in the first or in the second " set" of persons who " stand 
 out from the mass of Indian society". 
 
 The Maharajah of Benares would hold a very high 
 position in Mr. Grant Duff's second set of "noblemen" or 
 "great proprietors," "without any princely prerogatives". 
 His ancestor having formerly possessed civil and criminal 
 jurisdiction and the right of coining money, the rank of a 
 mediatised Prince might be fairly attributed to him. He 
 bears a Princely title. He is allowed a salute of thirteen 
 guns. Lord Canning, as before mentioned, sent the 
 Maharajah of Benares one of the new patents of 1862, in 
 which he was included among "the Princes who now 
 govern their own territories".* In fact, however, he has 
 no administrative jurisdiction or political power. And 
 the Under Secretary of State for India will, perhaps, be 
 surprised to hear that this great nobleman, being histori- 
 cally and legally nothing more than a Zemindar or land- 
 lord, holding his estates under Sunnuds and Pottas, or 
 grants and leases, from the Nawab Vizier of Oude and the 
 East India Company, f would never venture so far to de- 
 viate from the estabhshed etiquette of India, as to address 
 the Nawab Nazim of Bengal in any other form than that 
 of an arzee or petition, styling himself "a devoted 
 servant". 
 
 As to another aspect of the question, — which no states- 
 man ought to overlook, much as it is despised by the 
 bureaucracy of Calcutta, — that of social and political in- 
 fluence among the masses, and the supervision and con- 
 trol of religious movements, especially among the Mahome- 
 dans, there are persons in Mr. Grant Duff's third "set," 
 who can act more effectually for or against Imperial in- 
 terests than many ruling Princes and nobles of great 
 estate in the first and second "set". It is only indirectly, 
 by its connections and communications — too loose and too 
 lukewarm as it is, — with the leaders of Native society and 
 Native opinion, more particularly with those who are its 
 own subjects or dependents, that our Government can 
 exert any guiding or restraining influence over the most 
 dangerous elements of the Indian population. 
 
 * Ante, pp. o, 6. f Aitchison's Treaties, vol. ii. 
 
64 THE BENGAL REVERSION. 
 
 But in this direction Mr. Grant Duff has no misgivings 
 whatever. In the debate of the 4th of July, 1871, he 
 quite ridiculed the idea that the Nawab Nazim could be 
 a person of great influence in Bengal, or that his wrongs 
 could enlist any popular sympathy. 
 
 " It would require an enormous deal of evidence to he brought 
 forward to convince us that the Nawab Nazim was a very popular 
 person, because it is not at all natural that a Mahomedan family, 
 living in the midst of a Hindoo population in Bengal, and which 
 was placed over them by Christian conquerors, should be extremely 
 popular.^' 
 
 '^ It would be very remarkable if a population of Hindoos were 
 so fond of a Mahomedan family which never did any good to them 
 or their ancestors, and which was placed over them by Christian 
 conquerors from the other end of the earth.^^ 
 
 This introduction of *' Christian conquerors from the 
 other end of the earth" into the argument, when the im- 
 mediate question is that of comparative popularity, is 
 somewhat remarkable. The topic is embarrassing, not to 
 say inflammatory. The present writer has, however, al- 
 ways protested against the vulgar saying that India is a 
 conquered country ; and in the preceding pages has 
 endeavoured to refute the assertion that Bengal was ac- 
 quired by conquest.* But even these corrections would be 
 insufficient to set the Under Secretary right. He talks 
 of "a Mahomedan family" having been "placed over a 
 Hindoo population by Christian conquerors." Is he, then, 
 ignorant that the people of Bengal had been governed by 
 Mahomedan rulers for five hundred years before those 
 whom he calls " Christian conquerors" were able to inte- 
 fere in Indian politics, and that Meer Jaffier, whom we 
 assisted to depose his relative, Suraj-ood-Dowlah, was a 
 member of the reigning family ? 
 
 Surely when he drew that picture of "a Mahomedan 
 family," placed by "Christian conquerors" over a "Hindoo 
 population," he must have been ignorant, or must for the 
 moment have forgotten, that at least a fifth of the popu- 
 lation of Bengal, and probably quite one half of the popu- 
 lation above the degree and intelligence of an agricultural 
 or day labourer, is Mahomedan. 
 
 * Ante, p. 43 to 47. 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. 65 
 
 It is possible that since tlie debate of the 4th of July, 
 1871, Mr. Grant Dnif may have been somehow reminded 
 of the fact that Bengal having been subject to Mahome- 
 dan Princes for five centuries before the alliance between 
 the Nawab Meer Jafiier and the East India Company, is 
 not inhabited by a purely "Hindoo population." Perhaps 
 he may have heard that Calcutta, the oflScial metropolis 
 of India, contains at least 150,000 Mussulman inhabi- 
 tants ; that abovd 100,000 maybe found in the great 
 city of Dacca, worshipping m 180 mosques ; and that there 
 are quite as many at Patna, the head-quarters of Wa- 
 habee propagandism. 
 
 A flash of lurid light was thrown last year on that un- 
 manageable amalgam of Puritan revival and privy con- 
 spiracy by the assassination of Chief Justice Norman, a 
 terrible catastrophe closely connected in time and place 
 and circumstance — to say the least, — with the appeals to 
 the High Court of Bengal of certain wealthy persons 
 charged with complicity in the recruitment and main- 
 tenance of a permanent camp of Wahabee fanatics beyond 
 the North West frontier of the Punjaub. Possibly this 
 deplorable event, and the discussions preceding and 
 following it in the periodical and other publications of 
 last year,* may have attracted the attention of some 
 English statesmen, if not of Mr. Grant Dufi* himself, to 
 the general condition, principles and practices of the Ma- 
 homedans in India, especially in Bengal. 
 
 The extent and the dangers of Mussulman disaffection 
 and fanaticism may be exaggerated by alarmists, but 
 they may also be unduly depreciated by official op- 
 timists. The population of Bengal includes a considerable 
 Mahomedan element, of which the social and political im- 
 portance cannot be measured by its numerical strength. 
 It is pretty well understood that, as compared with most 
 of the other Native races, the Hindoo Bengalees are not 
 
 * In particular Dr. W. W. Hunter's remarkable treatise, ^^ TJie Mussul- 
 mans of India, Are they hound to rebel against the Queen V^ (Trubner 
 and Co.) The facts on which the author founds his arguments and con- 
 clusions are almost exclusively taken from the history and customs of 
 the Bengalee Mahomedan s. 
 
 F 
 
66 THE BENGAL REVERSION. 
 
 noted for physical energy, or for prompt and practical 
 vigour of action. Unquestionable as may be the good 
 will and enlightened self-interest of individuals or large 
 communities among what may be considered this dis- 
 tinctly marked nationality, it would be a mistake to rely 
 too much on the moral support or material aid they 
 might be expected to furnish to the British Government 
 in a time of seething excitement or open insurrection. 
 The Bengalees have not, from time immemorial, been in 
 the habit of bearing arms, or entering any military service, 
 and even if they were inclined to enrol themselves on 
 our side at a dangerous crisis or in the midst of an actual 
 outbreak, the hour would not be opportune for the accep- 
 tance of such an offer, nor would the aid of raw recruits, 
 even of the best quality, be efficient or immediately 
 available. 
 
 In many other respects there are marked distinctions 
 in character and bearing, as Avel] as in social customs and 
 in what we may call the rule and purpose of Hfe, not only 
 between the Bengalee Hindoos and the Mahomedans, 
 but between the Bengalees and the Hindoos of other 
 Provinces. The Mahomedans have their own history, 
 their own literature and science, and are proud of them. 
 They are strongly attached to their own religion, — a 
 monotheistic faith, compatible, as we may see in the Le- 
 vant and in the North of Africa, with a very high degree 
 — however inferior to that of Christian Europe, — of social 
 and political advancement. If the Mussulman children of 
 India resorted generally, which unfortunately but a small 
 proportion of them do, to the English schools, either of 
 Government or of the Missionary Societies, there is no 
 reason to believe that their faith would be undermined. 
 Islam is not as yet effete. The Missionaries are not under- 
 stood to have made many converts among the followers of 
 that' creed, which steadily but unobtrusively continues to 
 make proselytes in every direction, from every tribe, and 
 in every rank.* 
 
 * The late Gaekwar of Baroda had the strongest predilections for the 
 Mussulman faith, which he evinced by costly offerings to the Caaba at 
 Mecca, and to other Moslem shrines. Mr. A. C. Lyall (of the Bengal 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. 67 
 
 But the Bengalees have eagerly availed themselves of 
 all the opportunities that have been afforded them of ac- 
 quiring Western culture ; and Hindoo society, in conse- 
 quence, is deeply saturated with scepticism. The Ben- 
 galee Baboos crowd the educational institutions of Go- 
 vernment ; they display extraordinary ability in specu- 
 lative and analytical studies, and attain great proficiency 
 in the English language. They are consequently to be 
 found in almost 'every Province of India North of the 
 Godavery, occupying the best posts in the public admini- 
 stration open to " uncovenanted" servants, and everywhere 
 highly valued for their talents and acquirements. But, 
 abroad or at home, the Baboo is always a Bengalee, 
 strong in the local attachments of his birth-place, almost 
 isolated among the Hindoos of other districts, or asso- 
 ciating with a small circle of his fellow provincials, and 
 gi'avitating, as he gains in years and competence, towards 
 the scenes of his early life with the certainty of a law of 
 nature. The ties and interests of a Bengalee beyond the 
 Delta of the Ganges are as loose and as temporary as are 
 those of the majority of our countrymen in any part of 
 India. 
 
 The Mahomedan, on the contrary, must be somewhat of 
 a cosmopolitan. His creed is his country. If he has not 
 learnt modern geography at school, he has picked up from 
 relio^ious teachers, from relatives or neiorhbours who have 
 made the pilgrimage to Mecca or Kerbela, a strange mix- 
 ture of ancient history and legend, local description and 
 recent political information, as to Arabistan, the fountain- 
 head of the faith, as to Bum, Misr and Iran.* The pro- 
 portions may be distorted, the details may be rudely 
 
 Civil Service, Commissioner of AVest Berar), in a remarkable article 
 in the Fortnightly Reinew for February, 1872, on " The Keligion 
 of an Indian Province," speaks of " the perceptible proclivity toward 
 the faith of Islam exhibited by some of the leading Princes of Rajpoot- 
 ana." The Governor-General's Agent for Central India, in his Report for 
 1866-7 (Calcutta, 1868), paragi-aph 92, p. 17, describing the condition 
 of the petty State of Rajgurh, regrets the continuance of an " unsatis- 
 factory state of feeling between the Rawut and his family and brother- 
 hood, consequent on his alleged adoption of the Mahomedan faith, and 
 certain proceedings of his in connection therewith." 
 * Turkey, Egypt, and Persia. 
 
 2 F 
 
68 THE BENGAL REVERSION. 
 
 drawn, but the general effect of the picture is grand and 
 impressive. Thus the horizon of the young Mussulman 
 is widely extended beyond that of his own town or dis- 
 trict, and even beyond the continent of India. In any 
 part of the Peninsula the Mussulman is at home among 
 his co-religionists, who all speak the Indian lingua franca, 
 Hindustani, many of them — the higher class especially, — 
 being unacquainted with the vernacular dialect of the 
 Province in which they were born. In the recently pub- 
 lished words of Mr. W. G. Palgrave, of all Englishmen liv- 
 ing perhaps the most competent judge : — " When we take 
 counsel on our Indo-Mahomedan subjects, we should ac- 
 custom ourselves to look on them, not as an isolated 
 clique, girt in by our power, our institutions, and, if need 
 be, our bayonets, but as part and parcel of the great 
 brotherhood that radiates from Mecca." " With more jus- 
 tice," he continues, "than the first converts of Christianity, 
 the Muslim may boast that 'the multitude of them that 
 believe are of one heart and of one soul'; loss or gain are 
 reckoned among them in common, the grievance of one is 
 the grievance of all."* 
 
 It may well be doubted whether the Duke of Argyll 
 and Mr. Grant Duff, or any of the authorities at Calcutta 
 or in London, have ever understood, or cared to under- 
 stand, how the grievance of a Mussulman Princely family, 
 deposed and impoverished by their "Christian conquerors," 
 becomes the direct, palpable, bitter grievance of all Ma- 
 homedans within a certain range, and spreads from that 
 range as a topic of hatred and invective wherever a Ma- 
 homedan is to be found in India. There being no 
 priesthood, properly so called, for the devotions and cere- 
 monies of the Mussulman religion, the Prince or local dig- 
 nitary is everywhere the spiritual chief, the patron and 
 guardian of religious rites and learning, takes the leading 
 part at certain great festivals and other solemn assemblies, 
 and defrays a large proportion of the regular and oc- 
 casional expenses of public worship and theological in- 
 struction. Thus the deposition and spoliation of a great 
 
 * Fraser's Magazine, February, 1872, "The Mahometan Revival," 
 p. 252. 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. 69 
 
 Mussulman House is always, to a greater or less degree, 
 the disestablishment and disendowment of the Mussulman 
 religion. 
 
 In the very remarkable essay we have already quoted, 
 Mr. Palgrave observes that no confidence must be placed 
 on the mutual jealousies and animosities of the Mahome- 
 dan sects. 
 
 " So strong, indeed, is the bond of union supplied by the very 
 name of Islam, even* where that name covers the most divergent 
 principles and beliefs, that, in presence of the ^ infidel,^ the deep 
 clefts which divide Soonee and Sheeah are for a time and purpose 
 obliterated ; and the most heretical sects become awhile amalga- 
 mated with the most uncompromisingly orthodox, who, in another 
 cause, would naturally reject and disavow them."* 
 
 Mr. Palgrave also calls attention to the strange com- 
 bination of the puritanical Unitarianism of the Wahabee 
 with the Sheeah superstitions of "Imam" and "Mahdee," 
 and "the secret association and murderous practices of 
 the Ismaeleeyah or Assassins, in the Mussulman move- 
 ment now at work in India, f We must not, therefore, 
 calculate on fanaticism dividing the Mussulman sects. 
 It seems rather to draw them together more closely, and 
 would certainly do so under the influence of the alleged 
 provocation or persecution of "Christian conquerors." 
 
 Mr. Grant Duff may, possibly, be so far better in- 
 formed and better advised on this question than he was 
 last year, that he will not again venture to speak as if he 
 were merely disposing of a single Mahomedan family, 
 isolated, and not very popular, in the midst of a "Hindoo 
 population." But still he may think that he is right to 
 this extent, that there are strong distinctions and an in- 
 compatibility of aims and ends between Hindoos and Ma- 
 homedans that will always render them antagonistic. Do 
 not let him reckon overmuch upon that. We have referred 
 to some of the distinctions that exist. We consider the pro- 
 blem of Mussulman disaftection to be the most urgent one of 
 the day, and would recommend English statesmen not to 
 jump too eagerly at any chance of aggravating the peculiar 
 grievances that provoke it. But there are many directions 
 
 * Fraser's Magazine, February, 1872, p. 2-32. t Ibid., p. 2-53. 
 
70 THE BENGAL REVERSION. 
 
 in which Hindoos and Mahomedans have grievances in 
 common. If the rulers of India rely for impunity in the 
 disestablishment and disendowment of the Nawab Nazim, 
 and other Mussulman Princes to follow, upon their not 
 being ''very popular persons" among the Hindoo common- 
 alty, they lean upon a broken reed. Even were the 
 Hindoos of Bengal as likely to be warlike partisans as 
 they are to be well-disposed subjects under the British 
 Government, they are by no means ill-disposed to their 
 Mussulman fellow-countrymen. Many very striking phe- 
 nomena that presented themselves in the course of the re- 
 bellion of 1857, and many occurrences of more recent date, 
 warn us that for the future we must only count to a very 
 slight extent upon religious animosity and rivalry prevent- 
 ing political combinations in India. There is nothing now 
 between us and the masses, but their Princes. And the 
 Piinces, if we do not spurn them or despoil them, are en- 
 tirely subject to our influence. We may continue to ad- 
 minister our Provinces in quiet times, and maintain a 
 military predominance though a chaos of blood and fire 
 come again, but we cannot govern India with honour and 
 profit to ourselves and with benefit to the people, without 
 the aid of their natural leaders. 
 
 It would be interesting and instructive to hear on what 
 moral and social forces and influences the present respon- 
 sible authorities rely, in the presence of the religious and 
 political eflervescence now perceptible in India, for the 
 preservation of good order, or for its timely restoration if 
 it should be disturbed. Are they really of opinion that 
 the best measure for meeting the possible consequences 
 of a Mussulman revival, is that of disestablishing and 
 disendowing the few Mussulman dignitaries that remain ? 
 
 Perpetual defensive and oflensive preparations, and re- 
 liance on " our own good sword" in days of quiet, and 
 immediate resort to its use in troublous times, would not, 
 we trust, constitute in Mr. Grant Dufl*'s political science 
 the most eflectual and the most economical machinery for 
 guiding and governing India. 
 
 Perhaps we may be told that the Government relies on 
 the civilising and pacificating eflects of education, and we 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. 71 
 
 may be referred to the evidence contained in Dr. W. W. 
 Hunters book,* that there are Literary Societies of Ma- 
 homedan gentlemen at Calcutta and at Allahabad, who 
 emphatically express their attachment to British rule, and 
 who have spread abroad by all the means in their power 
 the formal opinions of certain learned Moulavees that 
 Islam is not persecuted in India, and that the followers of 
 that faith are not bound to seek for an opportunity of 
 waging a Jilutd op religious war against the Christian Go- 
 vernment. There is something very suggestive of wild 
 counsels and dangerous doctrine having been on foot, in 
 the public-spirited and honourable resolution with which 
 these educated Mahomedans have procured, and promul- 
 gated with their own comments, these futwas from the 
 Doctors of the Law at Mecca, which, after all, are by no 
 means conclusive or unambiguous. But are those who 
 are so sure that the Nawab of Bengal is not very popular 
 or influential, equally sure that these enlightened English- 
 speaking Mussulman gentlemen are very popular and 
 influential among their co-religionists, and particularly 
 among the extreme zealots ? 
 
 If any such notion anywhere prevails, or any notion that 
 their interpretation of the Koran is likely to have superior 
 weight, it may be confidently pronounced to be very ill- 
 founded. The very reverse was found to be the case 
 durmg the mutinies and rebellion of 1857. EngHsh 
 speaking Natives, and those who were supposed to have 
 English tastes and sympathies, were looked upon as rene- 
 gades and spies, and were hunted out almost as remorselessly 
 as if they had been Europeans. In the event of a really 
 formidable outbreak such persons, especially if they came 
 forward and endeavoured to stem the tide, would be 
 swept away in the first riot. A single messenger from 
 the Nawab of Bengal would have more influence for good 
 over a Mussulman mob than a grand procession of all the 
 members of the Mahomedan Literary Societies of Alla- 
 habad and Calcutta. 
 
 We may leave here the question of the social and 
 political influence of some " titled stipendiaries" placed in 
 * The Indian Musstdmans (Triibner and Co.) 
 
72 THE BENGAL REVERSION". 
 
 Mr. Grant Duffs third *' set," as compared with that of 
 some reigning Princes in the first " set/' and some noble- 
 men and great proprietors in the second, and — setting 
 aside all considerations of right and wrong — merely 
 ask one question more. Is it advisable to destroy, di- 
 minish and pervert that influence by dishonouring and 
 disendowing those who possess it ? 
 
 Let us now consider the comparative validity and per- 
 manence of the tenure by which some "titled stipen- 
 diaries" hold their dignities and revenues. 
 
 Mr. Grant Duff evidently regards the tenure of those 
 whom he has included in his third " set" as very precarious, 
 as little better than a tenure at will, or, at best, for one 
 life, renewable on the same or worse terms at the pleasure 
 of superior power. He says that " towards these three 
 sets of persons, the people of these Islands, as represented 
 by the great ofiicers of the Queen in India, have well- 
 defined duties to fulfil. The Native Princes and Chiefs 
 have their rights, the great proprietors have their rights, 
 and the titled stipendiaries have their rights also." But 
 he evidently considers the rights of the third " set" to be 
 much weaker than those of the first and second, to be, in 
 fact, little more than the right to take what is given them, 
 and be thankful for it. They are " privileged dependents 
 of the British Government," " recipients of its bounty"; 
 the present Nawab Nazim is " the ninth successor of Meer 
 Jafiier in the favour of the British Government ;" and the 
 stipend paid to the Nizamut family was not paid " under 
 the provisions of a Treaty, but out of free grace and 
 favour." 
 
 There is nothing exactly new in all this, though it only 
 dates from 1848, and we have not heard much of it since 
 1856. It is an echo of the voice of Lord Dalhousie, who, 
 for example, in terms very much resembling these, 
 denied all inherent right of the Bhonsla family of Nag- 
 pore to permanent sovereignty. He said that if the de- 
 ceased Bajah's grand-nephew were allowed to succeed, it 
 would be " the gratuitous alienation of the State of Nag- 
 pore for the second time, in favour of a Mahratta youth."* 
 * Papers, Rajah of Berar (416 of 1854), p. 2Q. 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. 73 
 
 " The continuance of the Raj of Nagpore under a Mah- 
 ratta ruler/' would be " an act of grace and favour on the 
 part of the British Government."* 
 
 Mr. Grant Duff may think he has no bad intentions to- 
 wards the Native Sovereigns in his first ''set", and may 
 suicerely consider their tenure more valid and secure than 
 that of his third " set" of titled stipendiaries ; but let 
 him revive the fashion of crying down perpetual Treaties 
 as mere personal 'grants, and privileges and possessions, 
 enjoyed for a century, during five successions, as mere 
 matters of " bounty," " grace and favour," and he will 
 soon find that he has done much more than he intended. 
 Let him give the officials of Calcutta the fresh departure 
 — only just missed in the case of Mysore, — of another 
 series of Treaties nullified, another great family dis- 
 inherited with full Parliamentary sanction, and they 
 will not wait very long for opportunities of sweeping, one 
 by one, some of all three " sets" off the board. There 
 are many families of Princes and Chieftains in the first, 
 and many more in the second " set," who hold an inferior 
 and more obscure position in the Indian world than the 
 Nawab of Bengal, whose extinction would be much less 
 noticed and much less felt, and against whose hereditary 
 rights a much more plausible tale might be concocted. 
 
 Of course it is much easier, for obvious reasons, to oust 
 the holder of a pension or charge on the revenue, than to 
 oust the holder of a landed estate. If the Bed Spectre 
 should ever come to rule in these Islands, our " titled 
 stipendiaries" of the third " set," such as the Duke of 
 Marlborough, Earl Nelson and Viscount Exmouth, will 
 probably lose their perpetual pensions before the Duke of 
 Argyll is deprived of Inverary, or Mr. Grant Dufi* ex- 
 pelled from Eden. But when the third " set" in England 
 are being deprived of their stipends held under a Parlia- 
 mentary title, the second and even the first " set" may 
 very naturally begin to feel a little anxious. And so it 
 is, and so it will be among the Princes of India, if the 
 Bed Spectre which they know so well is allowed to re- 
 commence operations. 
 
 * Ihicl, p. 36. 
 
74 THE BENGAL REVERSION. 
 
 But then Mr. Grant DufF says that the third " set" in 
 India is a very small one, — there is " a very small class of 
 titled stipendiaries/' It is very much larger, we venture 
 to say, than the Under Secretary supposes ; and it is very 
 much larger than the corresponding class in this country. 
 If he means that there are very few individuals in the 
 class who in rank or in revenue can be compared with the 
 Nawab Nazim, he is quite right, but that reason can 
 hardly, of itself, justify the abolition of the dignity. 
 
 The class of titled stipendiaries in India, from every 
 point of view, is one of far greater importance than the 
 corresponding class in any European country. It is, also, 
 — if there can be degrees of comparison in such matters, 
 — deserving of far greater consideration, if only for this 
 reason, that perpetual pensions in Europe have been 
 granted, in the best and most defensible cases, as rewards 
 for public services, and frequently, under colour of pub- 
 lic services, on very illegitimate grounds or by mere court 
 favour. But in India most political stipends of any mag- 
 nitude were not so much the results of a grant as the re- 
 sults of a contract, where valuable consideration was 
 given ; and even in cases where the status of the original 
 stipendiary was not such as to admit of a Treaty or agree- 
 ment, there are very few instances in which the stipend 
 can be said to have been of the nature of a compassionate 
 allowance, given out of mere grace and favour. If traced 
 to their origin they will be found almost invariably to be 
 of the nature of reasonable and moderate compensation to 
 a family of rank and influence for the loss of possessions 
 and privileges, sometimes of sinecure or hereditary ofiice, 
 on the introduction of British rule. 
 
 There is a political stipendiary, the Gond Rajah, re- 
 siding at Nagpore, who occupied under the Mahratta Go- 
 vernment of the Bhonsla a position very analogous to 
 that occupied by the Nawab Nazim of Bengal under our 
 Government. About the time that Clive was consolidat- 
 ing British power in Bengal, Bughojee Bhonsla, under a 
 commission from his Suzerain the Bajah of Sattara, was 
 conquering Gondwanna, now included in the Central Pro- 
 vinces. Having interfered originally — as we interfered in 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. 75 
 
 Bengal, — to assist one branch of the reigning family 
 against the other, the Mahratta General seized on the 
 entire administration of the country, but maintained the 
 dignity of the Gond Rajah, allowed him one sixteenth of 
 the land revenue, to be collected in each district by his 
 own officers, and left him in possession of his Palace in 
 the city of Nagpore. When the Bhonsla afterwards de- 
 termined to assume the position of Sovereign, the Gond 
 Rajah, as acknowledged Lord of the Soil, was called on to 
 place the tiluh or mark of royalty on the Mahratta Ra- 
 jah's forehead ; and this ceremony w^as repeated at every 
 succession. On this occasion, and at one festival in the 
 year, the Bhonsla presented the Gond Rajah, as his 
 ceremonial superior for the time being, with a nuzzui^ or 
 tribute-offering. The Gond Rajah's seal was also re- 
 quired to many public documents. 
 
 The motives and policy of the Mahratta Prince in thus 
 upholding the ancient Sovereign whom he had, in fact, 
 superseded, were doubtless very similar to those which 
 induced the East India Company to uphold the Nawab 
 Nazim. First, he did not wish to offend the numerous 
 Gond Chieftains and the large Gond population within 
 the territories of Nagpore ; secondly, he wished to avoid 
 recognising directly the Suzerainty of the Rajah of Sat- 
 tara or of the Peishwa, as Executive Head of the Mah- 
 ratta Confederation, over the dominions which he pro- 
 fessed to hold in a soii: of trusteeship, and under a sort of 
 double Government, from the Autochthonous Lord. 
 
 The Gond Rajah, though never contracting a marriage 
 out of his own aboriginal tribe, is a Mahomedan by re- 
 ligion, one of his ancestors having been converted at Del- 
 hi by the Emperor Akbar. On the introduction of 
 British administration into the Nagpore territories he 
 could, of course, be no longer permitted to collect his 
 customary share of the revenue by means of his own 
 officers ; and his receipts were commuted into a fixed 
 annual stipend of about £10,000 a year. He has no 
 Treaty, no sitmmd to show for it. In the very w^ords 
 applied by Lord Dalhousie to the Nawab Nazim, "he has 
 no right or title whatever to any allowance by treaty or 
 
76 THE BENGAL REVERSION. 
 
 compact, or by virtue of any agreement." Is his tenure 
 of this allowance better or worse now than it was under 
 the Mahratta Government ? What does Mr. Grant Duff 
 think of him ? Is he merely " a recipient of the bounty 
 of the British Government" ? 
 
 In order to see what prospect there is of a fair pro- 
 vision in the future for mediatised families, if the doc- 
 trines and procedure of Lord Dalhousie's administration 
 are brought into use again, let us turn once more to the 
 case of Nagpore, and observe some circumstances that 
 followed the annexation. 
 
 Having annexed the State and annulled the family. 
 Lord Dalhousie then appropriated the Rajah's private 
 treasure, jewels, wardrobe, plate and crockery, turned 
 everything into cash by public auction, and allotted the 
 widows and other relatives — carefully excluding the 
 grand-nephew and adopted heir,* — pensions out of the 
 proceeds, to which he gave the name of " the Bhonsla 
 Fund."t 
 
 This is just what Mr. Grant Duff promises to do for 
 the Nizamut family. He says : — 
 
 " We do not propose to continue the Moorshedabad family to 
 all time coming as an old man of the sea round the neck of the 
 people of India ; but we do propose to continue to it a very 
 considerable position, and to form for it out of this Nizamut Fund, 
 —for mismanaging which we are taken so much to task — and 
 otherwise if needs be, a splendid inheritance. '^ 
 
 The " Nizamut Fund" happens to be the property of 
 the family already. This has been officially acknowledged 
 over and over again, even as late as the critical despatch 
 from the Secretary of State to the Government of India, 
 dated the 17th of June, 1864. In paragraph VII (that 
 part of it which became paragraph VIII in the doctored 
 copy sent to the Nawab, J) the following words occur : — 
 
 * Recognised in 1859 by Lord Canning as the head of the Bhonsla 
 family, ante, p. 6. 
 
 t See the Author's Empire in India, p. 220-250 j and 2ietros2^€cts aiid 
 Prospects of Indian Policy, p. 265-270. 
 
 X See Introduction. 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. 77 
 
 " It is unnecessary to trace further the history of the Fund. 
 Its accumulations, representing as they do the unappropriated 
 portions from year to year of the sixteen lacs stipend, unques- 
 tionably belong to the Nazim and his family, and can properly be 
 expended only for their benefit/^* 
 
 From the first establishment of the several accounts 
 eventually consolidated into the ISizamut Deposit Fund, it 
 has been repeatedly and continuously acknowledged by our 
 Government as '"the inalienable property'' of the Nawab 
 Nazim and his family, "the sacred inheritance of the Ni- 
 zam ut." This Fund was originally formed by the appro- 
 priation of a part of the private treasure left by the Mun- 
 nee Begum, grandmother of the Nawab Mobaruk-ood- 
 Dowlah, — widow of the Nawab Meer Jaffier Ali, and 
 commonly called ' the Mother of the Company,' — and by 
 the absorption of the allowance that had been made to 
 her out of her grandson's income (which, with her pro- 
 perty, would have reverted to the Nawab as her heir), 
 and was annually augmented by the lapsed allowances 
 of deceased relations and other stoppages from the Niza- 
 mut stipend, under successive arrangements with the 
 Nawab for the time being. On various occasions the Na- 
 wabs remonstrated against the large and increasing amount 
 of the annual stipends that was withdrawn from their per- 
 sonal control, but they were always assured it was for 
 their own benefit. In reply to one of these remonstrances 
 in 1817, the Governor-General, Lord Hastings, expressed 
 himself as follows in a letter to his Highness : — 
 
 '' The money forming the Fund thus obtained, amounting to 
 seven lacs of Rupees, is considered and recognised as the in- 
 alienable property of Your Highness's Family, over and above 
 the sixteen lacs of Rupees per annum assigned for its sup- 
 port.^^* 
 
 In a despatch from the Government of India dated 28th 
 February, 1823, the Governor-General desires that the 
 object of these accumulations may be impressed upon the 
 Nawab Nazim, in answer to some of his demands and 
 objections. 
 
 * Paj:>ers, Naioah Nazim (371 of 1870), p. 4. 
 f PaperSy Nawab Nazim (116 of 1871), p. IG. 
 
78 THE BENGAL REVERSION. 
 
 '' The plan of reserving this Fund was adopted with a view to 
 place in the hands of Government a means of relieving any 
 exigencies in which the family might be involved, as well as of 
 portioning the daughters_, and providing buildings, or other 
 operations of the kind, involving a present sacrifice of capital.^'* 
 
 And in a letter to the Governor-General, dated April 
 24tli, 1840, — two years after the accession of the present 
 Nawab, — the Court of Directors make the following 
 comment on a proposal for certain grants to some of the 
 Nawab's relatives whose houses had been damaged by an 
 inundation, in the course of which the Deputy Governor 
 of Bengal had incidentally spoken of the Nizam ut De- 
 posit Fund as " public money." 
 
 '^ The Deposit Fund is not ^public money,^ but a part of the 
 assignment secured by Treaty to the Family, which part is allowed 
 to accumulate for its general benefit.^'f 
 
 We must, therefore, commend to Mr. Grant Duff's con- 
 sideration, before he again talks of forming " a splendid 
 inheritaace" for the Moorshedabad family out of the Niza- 
 mut Deposit Fund, that he would not be dealing there 
 with " public money," but with "the sacred inheritance," 
 "the inalienable property," of the family in question, " part 
 of the assignment secured" to it " by Treaty." He is only- 
 proposing to do for the Moorshedabad family exactly 
 what Lord Dalhousie did for the Bhonsla family, — to 
 sequestrate their income assigned by Treaty, likewise to 
 appropriate the Fund formed of savings and deductions 
 from that income, and then to permit them to subsist on 
 " liberal" pensions taken out of their confiscated capital. 
 A " splendid" offer truly, and worthy of Imperial power ! 
 
 Let it also be observed that the stipend of sixteen 
 lakhs of rupees per annum, for the whole of which the 
 present Nawab Nazim's receipt is regularly required, and 
 of which distinct accounts are kept, is declared by the 
 Home Government in 1840, two years after the present 
 Nawab's accession, to be the " assignment secured by 
 Treaty to the family"; and that the Nizamut Fund, 
 formed by investing " a part of the assignment," is de- 
 clared not to be "public money." How is it, then, that 
 * Ihid., p. 24. t Ibid., p. 29. 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. 79 
 
 in these days we find the Home Government and the 
 authorities at Calcutta declaring, in direct contradiction 
 to all this, that the Nizamut stipend is not '' an assign- 
 ment secured by Treaty" to the Nawab and his family, 
 but is paid out of " free grace and favour," and that the 
 Nizamut Fund is public money, out of which, when our 
 Government is pleased to cease paying the stipend, a pro- 
 vision may be made for the Nawab's descendants ? How 
 and when did this thorough change in the professions 
 and intentions of our Government, arise ? 
 
 The answer is direct and positive. It arose under the 
 administration of Lord Dalhousie, in the course of his 
 operations and prospective arrangements *'for increasing 
 our financial resources," by " availing ourselves of every 
 just opportunity of acquiring territory, and revenue" and 
 *' ultimate reversions."* It arose in 1853, and cannot be 
 traced to an earlier year. To prove this, we have only to 
 cite the latest despatch on the subject from the Govern- 
 ment of India that has been pubUshed, dated 29th July, 
 1870, (paragraph 3) : — 
 
 '^As respects the Nawab Nazim's alleged Treaty claims, we 
 would observe that they have more than once been rejected. The 
 Government of Lord Dalhousie, after full deliberation, came to the 
 conclusion in 1853, that the Nawab has no right or title whatever 
 to any allowance by Treaty or compact ; that the three Treaties 
 which are upon record are purely personal agreements, which ex- 
 pired with the individuals with whom each was concluded ; and 
 they were not renewed after the death of Mobaruk-ood-Dowlah 
 in 1796.'^* 
 
 It is obvious that if the officials of Calcutta could have 
 raked out of their records, from any Government, or from 
 any adviser or servant of Government, anterior to that of 
 Lord Dalhousie, a single sheet or a leaf, or a rag, to cover 
 the nakedness of these assertions, they would have done 
 so. But it was impossible. Nothing earlier than 1853 
 would bear quotation. They could only repeat the dis- 
 creditable and utterly discredited perversions of history 
 and law for which that baneful epoch has become for ever 
 notorious, — that epoch during which, by means of the 
 
 * Ante, p 53. t Papers, Xawab Nazim (116 of 1871), pp. 2, 3. 
 
80 THE BENGAL REVERSION. 
 
 same perversions and prevarications that are once more 
 proffered for our acceptance, the faithful and friendly 
 Houses of Sattara, Jhansi, Nagpore, Tanjore and the Car- 
 natic were degraded and despoiled, and those of Mysore 
 and Bengal (with several others) menaced and condemned. 
 By the statesmanlike determination of Lord Salisbury 
 and Sir Stafford Northcote, supported by a minority of 
 great weight in the Indian Council, and a majority 
 amounting to unanimity in Parliament, the condemnation 
 of the Mysore State was reversed. Is the condemnation 
 of the titular Nizamut of Bengal to be maintained ? 
 
 If so, let those who represent the nation, and with 
 whom it ultimately rests to ordain or sanction every 
 doubtful act of Imperial power, understand clearly what 
 they are asked to do. They are asked, in defiance of all the 
 manifest proofs of the damnosa hcereditas entailed upon 
 us by Lord Dalhousie's dispositions, to execute another 
 secret codicil of his political testament. 
 
 They can do it, if they like, without fear of any im- 
 mediate convulsion or evident miscliief. Perhaps the evil 
 effects of the execution might altogether escape notice at 
 the time, and be quite undistinguishable amid the phe- 
 nomena of some future crisis, when nothing may be clear 
 except that something has gone wrong. We must not be 
 suspected of saying or suggesting any such ridiculous ex- 
 aggeration as that the Nawab Nazim of Bengal, or any 
 rightful claimant of that dignity, — even if he had the in- 
 clination, — would have the power of raising a formidable 
 rebellion against our Government, or of offering any open 
 resistance to the deposition and spoliation of the family. 
 We do not imagine the Nizamut to be so popular an 
 institution, that its downfall would be the signal for an 
 insurrection, even on the pettiest scale. We do not sup- 
 pose that the abolition of what Mr. Grant Duff calls ''the 
 misleading title of Nazim" would paralyse the admini- 
 stration of Bengal. He is quite right in saying that the 
 Nawabs " have ceased to be in any sense Administrators"; 
 and so have Dukes ceased to be in any sense Leaders, 
 and Marquises have ceased in any sense to guard the 
 Marches, and Earls to preside, in any sense, over Shires. 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. 81 
 
 But when the Under Secretary of State denounces '' the 
 luxurious repose of Moorshedabad," as " a thoroughly bad 
 and corrupting influence," we think he goes, in every way, 
 too far. He merely emulates the democratic enthusiasts 
 of the Hole in the Wall : his denunciations are about as 
 relevant and about as reasonable as their indignation 
 against " the bloated aristocracy" of Great Britain. We 
 estimate the social and political influence of the Nawab, 
 and of the class which he represents, more highly than 
 the Under Secretary does, and we have given some reasons 
 already for our higher valuation. Nawabs and Bajahs 
 within the British Provinces of India no longer guide the 
 ship of the State, and yet they may serve to trim the 
 vessel, and Diake its course more steady. The steam- 
 engines of some great iron-clad may be in perfect order, — 
 there may be no danger of the boiler bursting, — but it 
 would not be advisable to heave the ballast into the sea. 
 The ship might dance more buoyantly on the waves for a 
 time. But let a storm come ! Even her guns won't save 
 her then. The best way, indeed, to lighten her burden, 
 if that had been the one thing wanted, would have been 
 to throw them overboard. 
 
 Never was our military strength in India greater, ab- 
 solutely and relatively, than it is at present. But it is not 
 by over-running and occupying, punishing and plundering, 
 one disturbed Province after another, that a vast conti- 
 nent, inhabited by two hundred millions of men, can be 
 profitably, progressively and honourably governed. Odo 
 whose voice during twenty years at least was ever raised 
 in favour of scrupulous good faith in the interpretation of 
 treaties, and in all dealings with the Princes of India, 
 and whose retirement from a sphere where his influence 
 was weighty and special is very much to be regretted. 
 Captain W. J. Eastwick, remarked in his Minute dated 
 25th July, 1865, against the annexation of Mysore — 
 
 " In all cases like Mysore we must not take too circumscribed a 
 view. We must look upon the effect it will have upon the feeling 
 of the people of India generally. If we outrage their sense of 
 justice, if we act in the teeth of any deeply rooted sentiment, 
 which is not condemned by the universal voice of mankind, there 
 
 G 
 
82 THE BENGAL REVERSION. 
 
 will^ sooner or later, be an avenging Nemesis, and the stability of 
 our rule will be endangered. An eminent and lamented states- 
 man" (Sir Gr. C. Lewis) ^^ justly writes: 'The only stable foun- 
 dation for a Government is its moral authority : so long as it is 
 looked up to with respect, confidence, and esteem by the body of 
 the people, it stands on a rock.^ These essentials wanting, it is 
 an edifice built on sand.^'* 
 
 And here is a passage worthy of notice from the writings 
 of one of those great soldier-statesmen who saw the 
 political domination of Great Britain in India designed, 
 gained and consolidated, and who took an active part in 
 every stage of the transition from suppliance to acknow- 
 ledged supremacy. 
 
 '' Our Empire is held solely by opinion, — in other words 
 by that respect and awe with which the comparative superiority 
 of our knowledge, justice, and system of rule, has inspired the 
 inhabitants of our own territories ; and that confidence in our truth, 
 reliance on our faith, and dread of our arms, which is impressed 
 on every nation in India." f 
 
 Is it desirable that all these moral safeguards, — respect 
 for our justice, confidence in our truth, reliance on our 
 faith, — should disappear, and nothing but the dread of 
 our arms be left ? If so, we shall assuredly soon find out 
 for ourselves the truth of the warning addressed in vain 
 to Austria in Italy, — "You can do anything with bayonets 
 except sit down upon them." There can be no peaceful 
 progress in an atmosphere of distrust and disbehef. On 
 the other hand, there is no fighting against it. It is 
 useless to beat the air. A Government cannot show face 
 or hold its own for a day against a general contempt of 
 authority without a great display of military force ; but 
 all the military force imaginable cannot crush it or put it 
 down. The troops — as many as can be trusted when 
 such a spirit is abroad — may march and counter-march 
 and manoeuvre to admiration, but they cannot be every- 
 where at once ; they cannot collect revenue ; they can- 
 not restore life to trade; they cannot attract passengers or 
 goods to the railways, for the receipts of which the Indian 
 
 * Mysore Papers (112 of 1866), p. 79. 
 
 t Sir John Malcolm! s Political History of India, vol. i, p. 145. 
 
THE BENGAL REVERSION. 83 
 
 finances are now so deeply pledged ; they cannot protect 
 those railways from destruction. 
 
 Once allow that utter want of confidence in our good 
 will and good faith which prevailed in 1856, when the 
 Marquis of Dalhousie handed over the reins of Govern- 
 ment to Lord Canning, to be again diffused throughout 
 India, and the mine will be then loaded, the train once 
 more prepared. In one of those inflammable seasons — 
 almost of periodical occurrence, and always to be borne in 
 mind as possibilities, — when famine or pestilence or foreign 
 war causes general distress, and sufiering and searching 
 of heart, the spark may be very easily furnished, and 
 an explosion, visible or underground, may shake the foun- 
 dations of Imperial supremacy. 
 
 What we have now to dread in India, is not so much 
 armed rebellion, — the time may have gone by for that, — 
 not so much constitutional opposition and agitation, — the 
 time has not yet come — as the rapid and unseen spread of 
 a spirit of discontent, disrespect and disobedience, leading 
 with sure and fatal steps to a period of passive resistance, 
 with just enough of chronic terrorism and occasional 
 violence to make the country too hot for our adminis- 
 trators, and the administration so costly as to ruin the 
 Indian finances and destroy Indian credit. 
 
 The concurrent and urgent counsels of the highest 
 responsible authorities of the day tell us that this is not a 
 time for playing fast and loose with the moral safe-guards 
 of government, or for beginning once more that endless 
 game of ' Beggar my neighbour,' at which we have already 
 lost both money and reputation. All the tricks of that 
 game will never fill our treasury or raise olu: credit. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 T. BICHAKDS, 37, OREAT QCEEN STRKET. 
 
By the same Author. 
 
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