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LETTER 
 
 SIR JAMES GORDON, K. C.S.I 
 
LETTER 
 
 TO 
 
 SIR JAMES DAVIDSON GORDON, 
 
 KC.S.L, 
 
 RESIDENT AT MYSORE, 
 
 LATE CHIEF COMMISSIONER FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF THE MYSORE 
 TERRITORIES, 
 
 FROM 
 
 MAJOE EVANS BELL, 
 
 i 
 
 LATE OF THE MADRAS STAFF CORPS, 
 
 AUTHOR OP "LAST COUNSELS OF AN UNKNOWN COUNSELLOR", "THE oxus AND THE INDUS' 
 "EETBOSPECTS AND PEOSPECTS OF INDIAN POLICY", "THE MYSORE EEVEBSION", ETC. 
 
 LONDON : 
 CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY. 
 
 1882. 
 
JD54-S5 
 
 HENRY MORSE STEPKEM* 
 
NOTICE. 
 
 THIS Letter is not written merely for the correction or 
 edification of the gentleman to whom it is addressed, 
 but has, to make use of his own words, " a political 
 purpose". Some words of preliminary explanation are, 
 therefore, necessary to introduce the subject and to 
 make it generally intelligible. 
 
 The Maharajah of Mysore, who was placed on the 
 throne in 1799 by the allied Powers, the Honourable 
 East India Company, and the Nizam of Hyderabad, 
 died in March 1868, and in accordance with the decision 
 of Her Majesty's Government, was succeeded by his 
 infant kinsman and adopted son, the present Maharajah. 
 
 In a letter dated 7th May 1868, the Commissioner 
 of Mysore appointed Major Charles Elliot, C.B., to the 
 task of rearranging the Palace Establishments, and 
 taking inventories of all the Maharajah's effects and 
 personal property. For the purpose of assisting in this 
 special duty, the services of Mr. C. Rungacharloo, a 
 Deputy Collector, were placed at the disposal of the 
 Commissioner of Mysore by the Government of Madras.* 
 
 Major Elliot and Mr. Rungacharloo were occupied 
 for five months in arranging the various Palace Estab- 
 lishments, and placing the personal property of the 
 Maharajah in a condition of order and security.t 
 
 * Papers, Mysore Government, 385 of 1878, pp. 60, 62. 
 t Ibid., p. 60. 
 
 511553 
 
VI 
 
 Mr. Bowring, Chief Commissioner of Mysore, in a 
 despatch to the Government of India, dated 29th of 
 November 1868, says that "the difficult task of ex- 
 amining and cataloguing the Maharajah's property has 
 been performed by Major Elliot and his assistant, Mr. 
 Rungacharloo, with scrupulous care and fidelity, and 
 great credit is due to both these officers for the excel- 
 lent arrangements made by them to prevent spoliation 
 or loss."* 
 
 These officers consequently received the thanks of 
 Government, and Mr. Rungacharloo was appointed 
 Controller of the infant Maharajah's Household. 
 
 The most important part of the Palace property was 
 described and valued as follows : 
 
 RS. 
 
 Jewellery . 26,02,233 
 
 The jewels used by the Rajah's grandson . . 3,68,920 
 
 The gold plate and other gold articles . . . 4,16,570 
 
 The silver plate and other silver articles . . . 1,80,571 
 
 And gold coins 1,70,316 
 
 Total estimated value . . 37,38,61 Of 
 
 Turning the rupees roughly into English money, we 
 may say that the plate and jewellery found in the 
 Mysore Palace in 1868 amounted in value to about 
 350,000. 
 
 According to the lists and valuation made on this 
 occasion, the goods in the Palace Wardrobe were 
 valued at Us. 2,77,856, or about 25,000. 
 
 And it may be observed that a great proportion of 
 the contents of such a Wardrobe, consisting of gold 
 and silver brocades and tissues, would be almost as 
 durable, and as convertible into cash, as plate or 
 jewellery. 
 
 * Mysore Government, 385 of 1878, p. 92. t Ibid., p. 94. 
 
Vll 
 
 In the course of some judicial proceedings in 1874 it 
 became known as an absolute fact that the Wardrobe 
 property had decreased by about one-sixth, or 4,000, 
 in value, while in the charge of Mr. Rungacharloo, by 
 a series of what were called " burglaries". 
 
 About the same time scandalous rumours were cur- 
 rent in Mysore as to a considerable diminution in the 
 value of the Jewel -room property having likewise taken 
 place under the Controllership of Mr. Rungacharloo. 
 
 These facts and rumours were brought to the notice 
 of the Chief Commissioner of Mysore, Sir Richard 
 Meade, in 1874, and seem to have received very slight 
 attention. 
 
 In 1877 the fact of discrepancies and deficiencies in 
 the value of certain articles in the jewel-room, when 
 compared with their value as recorded in the original 
 catalogue of 1868, became accidentally known to the 
 Chief Commissioner, Mr. Saunders, who made no serious 
 investigation, but was contented with a simple reference 
 to Mr. (now Sir James) Gordon, who had acted as 
 Guardian in 1872, and was satisfied with the following 
 official "Note" from that gentleman : 
 
 " I revised and rearranged, and placed in new receptacles designed 
 by myself, the Palace jewels in July 1872, or about that time. The 
 work was done in my presence, in that of Mr. Rungacharloo, the 
 Controller, and all the Palace officials concerned. It was a work 
 much required. It occupied us for several hours daily for more than 
 six weeks. I found several such errors as that under notice, but at 
 this distance of time, and considering the very great number of jewels, 
 and the great number of such inaccuracies, I cannot recall the parti- 
 culars of the jewels referred to herein 5, 9, 77." 
 
 All these incidents, as communicated to me, gave 
 form and colour to the rumours that had prevailed, of 
 some of the State Jewels having been lowered in value 
 by a process of abstraction and substitution. 
 
Vlll 
 
 The terms of Mr. Gordon's "Note" subsequently 
 appeared still more remarkable, when it became known 
 that Colonel G. B. Malleson, for whom Mr. Gordon 
 acted as Guardian in 1872, had, in December 1874, on 
 the authority of Mr. Rungacharloo, and expressly for 
 his exculpation, certified to " the accuracy of the origi- 
 nal lists", even to the absence of " a single error". 
 
 Under the circumstances mentioned in the follow- 
 ing Letter, a Memorandum signed with my ini- 
 tials, calling for an independent inquiry, was pub- 
 lished in a Calcutta daily paper, the Statesman, on 
 the 7th of April 1880, and republished on the 16th of 
 June in the same year. Mr. Gordon was called upon for 
 an explanation ; and wrote an explanatory Memorandum 
 dated the 29th July 1880, which the Government of 
 India declared to be satisfactory.* Mr. Gordon and Mr. 
 Rungacharloo, the two officials most interested the two 
 men who alone could be held answerable were called 
 upon to report upon themselves, and they reported 
 favourably. Their explanation, which was promptly 
 published, appeared to me so very unsatisfactory that I 
 at once addressed the Government of India officially ,f 
 considering that I should not be warranted, as a loyal 
 citizen, or as a pensioned servant of the public, in with- 
 holding such humble aid as lay within my power 
 towards the elucidation of a very grave matter that 
 had been manifestly mismanaged. The following Letter 
 testifies to the failure of my efforts in that direction, 
 and contains, I believe, a full justification of the course 
 that I have taken. 
 
 E. B. 
 
 * Mysore Papers, No. 1 of 1881, pp. 146 to 150. t Appendix B. 
 
TO 
 
 SIR JAMES DAVIDSON GORDON, K.C.S.I., 
 
 RESIDENT AT MYSORE, 
 
 Late Chief Commissioner for the Government of the 
 Mysore Territories. 
 
 SIR, 
 
 In a Memorandum submitted by you to the 
 Viceroy of India in Council, and dated " Government 
 House, Bangalore, the 29th of July 1880", you accuse 
 me of having made " strange misstatements" . In an 
 Order of the Mysore Government, dated, " Bangalore, 
 the 14th of March 1881", you accuse me, in stronger 
 and more offensive language, of having, " with the aid 
 of garbled quotations from official correspondence and 
 papers, attempted to weave for a political purpose a 
 malicious story of spoliation and loss of the Mysore 
 State Jewels" You charge me with perverting the 
 truth, "garbling" documents, and falsifying evidence, 
 from malicious motives. 
 
 Your Memorandum above-mentioned was published 
 after the last Session of Parliament, in a Blue Book.* 
 Your Order and Proceedings of the 14th of March 
 1881, forming the subject of an appeal to Her Majesty's 
 Government, by B. Ramaswamy lyengar, against his 
 summary dismissal from the place of Sheristadar to 
 the Mysore Residency, have been printed, and many 
 copies have been distributed here, at the India Office, 
 and in other influential circles. 
 
 After eighteen years of labour in the dry soil of 
 
 * Mysore Papers, No. 1, (C. 3026) 188.1. 
 
 B 
 
Indian politics, where not much fame or profit is to be 
 reaped, I cannot allow my small harvest of reputation 
 for truthfulness, fairness, and moderation in controversy, 
 to be scattered and spoiled, or my humble field of 
 usefulness to be trampled and torn up, by means of 
 official slander. I say that you have accused me 
 personally of " weaving a malicious story", and of 
 "garbling" documents, because for you, and for every- 
 one interested in Mysore affairs, the Memorandum I 
 published in the Calcutta Statesman* under my initials 
 " E. B.", reprinted in the same Blue Book of last year,, 
 and against which your strictures are directed, was not 
 anonymous. 
 
 I say, furthermore, that your denunciation of the 
 Memorandum signed "E. B.", in paragraph 15 of your 
 Order dismissing the Residency Sheristadar, as the 
 result of " a party agitation", and as " a mischievous 
 invention set up by his caste-men", is totally unjusti- 
 fiable. You knew quite well when you penned or 
 passed that Order that I was the writer of the 
 Memorandum signed " E. B.", and that my information 
 was derived from Colonel Macqueen. You must have 
 been, or ought to have been, well aware that the 
 Sheristadar's "caste-men" could not have had any 
 influence whatever over the decisions of Colonel Mac- 
 queen and myself. 
 
 The lyengars of Mysore, you may say in fact you 
 have said it are hostile to Mr. Rungacharloo ; and the 
 discharged Sheristadar belongs to that clan of Brahmins. 
 I believe you are to some extent right as to the 
 resentment felt and expressed by many Mysoreans of 
 that caste, on account of their being displaced by Mr. 
 Hungacharloo's friends from Madras. There has been 
 plenty about it in the Madras and Mysore newspapers. 
 The Sheristadar, however, is, I am assured, a respect- 
 able plodding clerk, quite unconnected with any "party 
 agitation", and he had not, I imagine, anything to 
 complain of, until you most iniquitously deprived him 
 
 * 7th of April and 16th of June 1880, Mysore Papers, No. 1 of 
 1881, p. 141. 
 
of his office and his pension, on an unfounded sus- 
 picion of divulging your Note of September 5th, 1877. 
 Your suspicion in his case is most certainly groundless, 
 and viewed either from a judicial or an administrative 
 point of view, your proceedings against that poor man, 
 dated the 14th of March 1881, are preposterous. 
 Our information did not come from that quarter. 
 So far as I can understand, the most valuable intelli- 
 gence placed at my disposal has come from European 
 sources. You are probably not aware of the surprise 
 and disgust very generally felt in the English com- 
 munity of Mysore, at your apparent infatuation regard- 
 ing Mr. Rungacharloo's merits. The greatest care in 
 testing and verifying the information before us, has 
 been taken by Colonel Macqueen and by myself. What 
 excuse have you for imputing bad motives to him or to 
 me ? And how, except through perfect bewilderment, 
 could you impute such an absurd motive to the author 
 of the Memorandum signed " E. B.", as that of ad- 
 vancing the interests, or avenging the wrongs, of the 
 lyengar Brahmins, the Sheristadar's " caste-men". In 
 such a connection I can attach no other meaning to the 
 terms, " a party agitation", and " a political purpose", 
 which you charge the poor Sheristadar with assisting. I 
 had, indeed, and still have, "apolitical purpose", and will 
 shortly explain it, but assuredly it had nothing to do with 
 promotions or dismissals of Mysoreans or Madrassees. 
 Placed at the head of Mysore affairs, you can hardly be 
 ignorant of the fact, that I have not had for many years 
 a.ny correspondent in that country. Colonel Macqueen, 
 who has been quite frank with you, and with every 
 other person entitled to know his intentions and objects, 
 informed you long ago, that he had one Native corre- 
 spondent in Mysore, and one only a gentleman of dis- 
 tinguished position and reputation, who has always held 
 himself apart from all " caste" rivalries and dissensions, 
 who corresponds with several other retired English 
 officials, and who had no more to do with the steps 
 we have taken than yourself. You were acquainted 
 with Colonel Macqueen, and had corresponded with 
 
 B2 
 
him. My old friend, as I said before, was perfectly 
 frank with you. You had not followed his advice to 
 avoid the Guardianship. When it became impossible 
 to doubt your determination contrary, likewise, to 
 his remonstrance to force Mr. Rungacharloo on the 
 Maharajah, and on the Government of India, as the 
 Minister of Mysore, Colonel Macqueen gave you fair 
 warning that he would do all in his power to oppose 
 your plans, or to expose them. You observed, in one 
 of your letters to him, that you knew my name, and 
 admitted that the initials, "E. B.", concealed no mystery 
 from your eyes. The Memorandum having been written 
 merely to suggest the urgent want of some inquiry and 
 of certain precautions, we considered that while there 
 ought to be no secret about the authorship, the full 
 signature might seem defiant and disrespectful to the 
 Government of India. 
 
 Apart from your personal acquaintance and corre- 
 spondence with Colonel Macqueen, you must, from your 
 access to all the confidential records, have understood 
 his very natural and very legitimate interest in the 
 affairs of Mysore. The intimate and attached friend 
 for many years of General Sir Mark Cubbon, he became 
 convinced in conformity with the views adopted by 
 that eminent man, slowly, deliberately, almost reluc- 
 tantly that the annexation of the Mysore State, as 
 recommended by the authorities at Calcutta, would be, 
 after the Queen's Proclamation of 1858, alike unjust and 
 impolitic. Having retired from the position of Judicial 
 Commissioner, he became associated with Dr. John 
 Campbell, for many years Durbar Surgeon at Mysore, as 
 an advocate with the Home Government for the Maha- 
 rajah's formal reinstatement. This agency, established 
 with the knowledge and consent of the Viceroy, Lord 
 Lawrence, though he withstood its object, saved the 
 Mysore State from destruction, and the Empire from 
 great discredit. My own small share in that good work 
 of 1866, is one of my most pleasing recollections ; but 
 although the Mysore State was rescued from extinction 
 by the adopted heir being recognised, the old Maharajah 
 
failed to obtain his personal release from supersession. 
 How very nearly it was obtained the decision of the 
 Secretary of State being reversed by a vote of the 
 Cabinet may some day, perhaps, be told. To the 
 aged Prince it would merely have been a restitution of 
 honour. He had agreed to claim no active share in the 
 Government. The documents are extant whereby 
 Colonel Macqueen was to have been placed at the head 
 of the Mysore administration with Colonel Gregory 
 Haines, for many years the right-hand man of Sir 
 Mark Cubbon, in charge of the revenue and finances. 
 
 When Sir Mark Cubbon retired in 1861, he left an 
 accumulated surplus in the Mysore treasury of a million 
 sterling. The Rajah's personal restoration being re- 
 fused, and annexation being at the time confidentially 
 decreed, the creation of new departments, new jobs, 
 and new salaries, went on under successive Chief Com- 
 missioners, until it fell to you to hand over his dominions 
 to the young Maharajah in 1881, burdened with a debt 
 of about a million and a half. I will not enter on visions 
 of what might have been if the real successors of Sir 
 Mark Cubbon had been allowed, while the old Rajah 
 was yet living, to restore the simple and economical 
 fabric of a real Native State. The experiment was not 
 to be tried. The costly structure called the Mysore Com- 
 mission, remained, with little change, during the last 
 years of the minority, and still seems to survive in a form 
 sufficiently strong to overawe and overshadow the young 
 Maharajah, and to crush local interests and opinions. 
 But Colonel Haines, though not recalled to a high 
 administrative post, was chosen by the old Maharajah, 
 and by the Secretary of State, Sir Stafford Northcote, 
 to be Guardian of the infant heir.* Both the Chief 
 Commissioner of Mysore and the Secretaries at Calcutta 
 betrayed at once their conviction that Colonel Haines 
 was too well informed and too much respected at 
 Mysore to be a manageable Guardian, j" and the arm of 
 
 * Mysore Papers (385 of 1878), pp. 13 and 19. 
 f Ibid., pp. 12, and 16, 17. 
 
the Secretary of State was not long enough to reach 
 to Mysore. Nor, in fact, was the arm of the Viceroy. 
 The most important of all the injunctions on which 
 Her Majesty's Government had insisted, and which was, 
 with equal solemnity, so far as written words went, 
 handed on to the Chief Commissioner of Mysore by the 
 Viceroy in Council, was that " great care should be 
 taken to remove from" the young Maharajah's household 
 " all persons likely to initiate him, at an early age, into 
 the vicious and demoralising practices of the zenana." 1 * 
 The Chief Commissioner of Mysore, being determined 
 not to tolerate a really competent Guardian, such as 
 Colonel Gregory Haines would have been, broke through, 
 and was allowed to break through, the rules prescribed 
 by the Government of India, that the Guardian should 
 appoint the Maharajah's attendants and instructors, and 
 that the Chief Commissioner was not to interfere in 
 details, f Lord Lawrence, who had framed those rules, 
 would hardly have allowed them to be thus instantly 
 set aside, but unfortunately he left India just at this 
 crisis, and the newly installed Viceroy, Lord Mayo, was 
 not yet capable of dealing with Secretaries or with 
 Provincial magnates. Immediately on his arrival, in 
 1869, Colonel Haines, from remarkable insight and 
 knowledge of persons and usages in Mysore, detected a 
 sinister alliance between Mr. C. Rungacharloo, the 
 Controller of the Household, and a person placed in one 
 of the most important posts in the zenana, named 
 Murree Mullapa, a man of notorious infamy for his 
 t{ vicious and demoralising practices". Helyirig on the 
 salutary rules prescribed by the Government of India, 
 Colonel Haines tried to break up this close partnership, 
 but more particularly insisted on the removal of Murree 
 Mullapa, against whose presence in the Palace, under 
 any circumstances, he absolutely protested. That was 
 quite enough ; Colonel Haines's remonstrances were 
 condemned as presumptuous, and he was worried 
 out of the place. When Mr. Bowring, then Chief 
 
 * Mysore Papers (385 of 1878), p. 82. 
 t Ibid., p. 81. 
 
Commissioner, supported by the Foreign Office at Cal- 
 cutta, refused to purify the Palace, by removing an 
 obscene parasite, Colonel Haines at once resigned. The 
 hands of Murree Mullapa and Mr. C. Rungacharloo 
 were, of course, much strengthened, and their domina- 
 tion converted into a terror by the failure of Colonel 
 Haines to dislodge them, and his own consequent 
 removal. You have, doubtless, seen the correspondence 
 in February and March 1869, which explains the first 
 Guardian's resignation. From that day the reign of 
 Mr. Rungacharloo commenced. Your responsibility 
 commences at a later period. 
 
 I must not speculate on the different spirit and 
 direction that might have been given to the present 
 Maharajah's domestic and political training, if Colonel 
 Gregory Haines had been able to remain for one or two 
 years at Mysore as Guardian. Perhaps the young 
 Hindoo Prince might by this time have been less pro- 
 ficient in polo and lawn tennis, and have seen more of 
 his own people, who, after all, and in spite of the nine- 
 teen English coffee planters of whom we have heard so 
 much, are for the most part Hindoos. But these, like- 
 wise, are mere visions of what might have been, and 
 I have more prosaic work on hand. 
 
 You were fully acquainted, then, with the fact, 
 that I was the author of the Memorandum in the 
 Calcutta Statesman, signed "E. B.", and that it was 
 written and published in counsel and concurrence with 
 Colonel Macqueen, with whom you had recently corre- 
 sponded on Mysore affairs. You charge me with 
 "malice", by which you must mean, I suppose, bad 
 motives of some sort. You also charge me with pub- 
 lishing "a mischievous invention set up by" the 
 dismissed Sheristadar's "caste-men". I defy you to 
 make out anything like malice, either in the moral or 
 the legal sense, in my proceedings. 
 
 We now come to your charge ol " setting up a 
 mischievous invention". The facts and official papers 
 on which I founded my call for an inquiry and I have- 
 done nothing more were certainly not my "invention". 
 
Although you talk vaguely of " strange misstatements", 
 and of " garbling documents", you admit the accuracy 
 of all my citations, including your Note of the 5th 
 of September 1877; and with one exception, which 
 soon ceases to exist, you do not impugn one of my 
 statements. You declare, in your Memorandum of 
 the 29th July 1880, that "save in the published 
 Memorandum" signed with my initials, you had " never 
 heard of any loss of jewels from the Mysore Palace" ; 
 and that " no one in the Palace is ab]e to conjecture 
 to what the Memorandum refers."* And yet, after a 
 lapse of only four months, in November 1880, you have 
 to admit, with reference to the loss of 300 in the value 
 of a single jewel, that you had "heard" of this "loss", 
 and of several others, in 1872, and that you are " able 
 to conjecture" how the loss occurred. Here are your 
 own words: "When the lady died, in 1871, the 
 bracelet, found amongst her jewels, was discovered to 
 be of less value It is believed in the Palace that 
 the relations of the lady substituted an inferior jewel 
 whilst it was in her possession. "t 
 
 I leave you to reconcile the two statements. I re- 
 ject your conjecture as to the personality of the 
 felonious agents, but I beg to point out that you 
 testify to the very process which the Memorandum 
 signed " E. B." suggests, loss by " abstraction and sub- 
 stitution", by diminution in value without apparent 
 deficit in the number of articles. 
 
 I am really puzzled to know what your actual con- 
 tention is. I cannot believe you to maintain that until 
 my Memorandum appeared in the Statesman, there 
 were no scandalous rumours afloat as to defalca- 
 tions of value in the Mysore Jewel Department, and 
 that my suggestion of such scandals prevailing in 
 Mysore is " a mischievous invention". You had, by 
 your own account, found good cause for such scandals in 
 1872. If you, who were Judicial Commissioner in 
 1874, and had recently acted as Guardian, never heard 
 
 * Mysore Papers, No. 1 of 1881, p. 146. 
 f Ibid., p. 168. 
 
9 
 
 of the scandalous rumours regarding the jewels that 
 were in circulation in that year, and have been current 
 ever since, until 1880, your ears were less open than 
 those of any other officer in the Mysore Commission. 
 
 There is, or was for I do not know if he is alive a 
 Brahmin named Kanchi Rungachari, formerly one of 
 Mr. Rungacharloo's hangers-on, who was apprehended 
 at Mysore a few days before the Maharajah's enthrone- 
 ment in March 1881, brought to Bangalore in custody, 
 held to the excessive bail of Rs. 1,000, somewhat hur- 
 riedly tried on the charge of defaming Mr. Runga- 
 charloo, and sentenced to a year's imprisonment. Now, 
 the defamatory libel consisted of petitions presented to 
 the Chief Commissioner of Mysore, in 1874, embodying 
 those very scandals regarding the Palace jewels which 
 you, addressing the Government of India on the 29th 
 of July 1880, say you never heard of "save in the 
 Memorandum published in the Statesman'' under my 
 initials, in April 1880. But you had heard of Kanchi 
 Rungachari before his rather tardy trial and imprison- 
 ment in 1881. If I am not very much misinformed, 
 Sir Richard Meade, who was Chief Commissioner in 
 1874, sent some of this man's petitions in 1874 to you 
 for inquiry and report. I cannot, therefore, understand 
 how in 1880 you had apparently forgotten your official 
 acquaintance in 1874 with these scandalous rumours. 
 I am not, however, in the least surprised at the allega- 
 tions of this obscure person, even though abetted and 
 guaranteed by Linga Raj Urs, a member of the Rajah's 
 family, having been disregarded. That is quite in con- 
 formity with Anglo-Indian official custom in such cases. 
 And although I cannot exactly understand, I can very 
 fairly conjecture why the charge of defamation, pressed 
 on to conviction and sentence in 1881, was not promptly 
 brought against Kanchi Rungachari in 1874. Mr. 
 Rungachaiioo had quite enough of prosecuting Kanchi 
 Rungachari, and of otherwise judicially exhibiting 
 himself in that year. 
 
 In 1872 and is73 there were several so-called "bur- 
 glaries" in the Palace Wardrobe at Mysore, for the 
 
10 
 
 charge of which Mr. Rungacharloo was solely responsi- 
 ble, and property to the value of about 4,000 was lost. 
 There is one recurrent peculiarity in the annals of the 
 Mysore Palace Controllership and Guardianship, which 
 appears to have caused hardly any local misgivings, 
 and that is that information of losses and deficiencies 
 in the Palace property has always come to the outside 
 world, and even to the authorities, by some accident or 
 irregularity, and never in due form or by a timely report. 
 For example, the Wardrobe burglary of 18 72- which 
 must not be confounded with " the Palace Treasury 
 burglary 5 '* was not reported to any of the authorities, 
 and only became known, after the lapse of two years, to 
 the Chief Commissioner of Mysore, as we are told in 
 Sir Richard Meade's Order of November 30th, 1874, 
 and in his letter to the Guardian, Colonel Malleson, 
 dated llth of January 1875,t from the proceedings 
 in the Magistrate's Court on the occasion to which I 
 am now about to refer. 
 
 In September 1874 several prisoners were tried and 
 convicted for one of these " burglaries" whether the 
 second or third is not quite clear. Kanchi Rungachari, 
 who was one of the witnesses at this trial, stated that 
 Mr. Rungacharloo, the Controller of the Household, 
 had instructed him to induce two men to come forward 
 and confess to the palace " burglary", on a promise of 
 a reward of Us. 500 for each of them. This deposi- 
 tion conveyed such a foul imputation against Mr. Ean- 
 gacharloo, that, in order to rebut it, he brought a 
 charge of perjury against the witness, Kanchi Hunga- 
 chari, who was tried in November 1874 before the Town 
 Magistrate of Mysore and acquitted. The Magistrate 
 considered it clear enough that Mr. Rungachaiioo had, 
 in fact, privately offered a reward of Rs. 500 in this 
 matter ; and he narrowed the issue to two alternatives : 
 (l) the reward was either offered for the production of 
 Queen's evidence ; or (2) it was offered to suborn false 
 
 * Mysore Papers, No. 1 of 1881, p. 173. I confess I know nothing 
 of this burglary, except that it is quite distinct from the Wardrobe 
 " burglaries". 
 
 t Appendix A. 
 
11 
 
 witnesses. He decided for the former and more favour- 
 able supposition, and dismissed the defendant with 
 some rather contemptuous remarks regarding the pro- 
 secutor. 
 
 It can easily be conceived that, after the failure of 
 this prosecution for perj ury, Mr. Rungacharloo may not 
 have considered it prudent or politic to open the flood- 
 gates of public debate by indicting his former dependant 
 for defamation. At any rate, Kanchi Rungachari was 
 left to his own devices until March 1881, in the last 
 days of your Chief Commissionership, and just before 
 the administration of Mysore was transferred to Mr. 
 Rungacharloo, so that the defamatory petitioner was 
 safely lodged in gaol, after seven years' immunity, by 
 the authority of a British officer. 
 
 This unsuccessful prosecution for perjury, and the 
 long series of civil suits brought by the widow of 
 Murree Mullapa, not settled until 1879, by no means 
 exhaust the list of Mr. Rungacharloo's appearances in the 
 Mysore courts of justice in 1874. He was in that year 
 defendant in two cases of trespass and assault brought 
 against him by the widow of Devaraj Urs, a relative of 
 the Maharajah, and one of her servants, to whom he 
 had offered personal violence with his own hands. In 
 one of these cases, Mr. Rungacharloo was fined Rs. 100, 
 and in the other, Rs. 200. On appeal, however, he 
 pleaded that he was acting in his " political" capacity, 
 and that the precincts of the palace were exempt from 
 the jurisdiction of the courts. The Chief Commis- 
 sioner upheld the plea, and the judgments were 
 quashed. On the other hand, it must, in justice to 
 Mr. Rungacharloo, be stated that in cases of this de- 
 scription, he has not always been the assailant. He 
 was, very soon after being thus relieved by special dis- 
 pensation from the legal consequences of his own stern 
 system of discipline, himself severely slippered within 
 the walls of the Palace by some of the Ranee's retainers, 
 and when the culprits were brought by him before the 
 magistrate, they were not allowed to plead that they 
 lived in a royal Alsatia, but were treated as ordinary 
 
12 
 
 offenders against the law. Unfortunately, no punish- 
 ment can wipe out a slippering. In India, the fact of 
 having been slippered, even unjustly, derogates from a 
 man's dignity and renders him incurably ridiculous. 
 And in this case, public sympathy in Mysore, most un- 
 officially perverse and prejudiced, was on the side of 
 the delinquents. 
 
 These were some of the incidents, it may be as- 
 sumed, which led your predecessors, Mr. Saunders and 
 Sir Richard Meade, to blame Colonel Malleson, the 
 Guardian, for having " left too much power in the 
 hands of" Mr. Rungacharloo, " an official of undoubted 
 ability and integrity, but greatly disliked by the Ranees 
 and their dependants".^ 
 
 The brief survey we have taken of some of his judi- 
 cial experiences, well deserving a more detailed scrutiny, 
 but probably unmentioned in your official report on his 
 merits, would hardly impress anyone quite unversed 
 in the ways of Anglo-Indian administration with a 
 strong conviction as to Mr. Rungacharloo's personal 
 dignity, or as to the likelihood of his being influential 
 and popular in the Mysore territories. You, however, 
 must have cared for none of these things, or must have 
 acquired some knowledge or some belief as to Mr. 
 Rungacharloo's acceptability and popularity unknown 
 to your predecessors, for you presented him to the 
 Viceroy of India in Council, in 1879, as "the fittest 
 person in the Province for the appointment" of Minis- 
 ter, and as " being preferred by the Maharajah to any 
 others who might be nominated", t " Mr. Gordon," 
 you say " has consulted the Maharajah on the point." 
 "The names of all officers employed in Mysore, who 
 are in any way eligible for the place, have been deli- 
 berately laid before the Maharajah, and he has ex- 
 pressed his undoubted preference for Mr. Runga- 
 charloo. "J 
 
 * Despatch in the Secret Depai'tment from the Viceroy, Lord 
 Lytton, in Council, to the Secretary of State for India, dated " Simla, 
 3rd May 1877", paragraph 8. 
 
 t Mysore Papers, No. 1 of 1881, pp. 182 and 187. J /&., p. 187. 
 
13 
 
 And yet you had at this time recommended to the 
 Government of India, as "absolutely necessary", not only 
 that the nomination to the office of Minister should be 
 reserved for the Government " by means of the power of 
 approval or veto",^ but also that it was " most desira- 
 ble to make this intention known in unequivocal terms, 
 rather than to leave it as a matter of inference, as has 
 not unfrequently been the practice else where", f I 
 should be surprised, therefore, to hear that you had not 
 made "this intention known" in good time to the 
 young Maharajah, " in unequivocal terms". 
 
 Two years before the Maharajah's installation, you 
 had also obtained permission from the Government of 
 India to place Mr. Rungacharloo in the position of your 
 Secretary " to be trained for the office of Dewan", " in 
 close relation with yourself".* I should be very much 
 surprised to hear that this fact was not made known in 
 good time to the young Maharajah, by yourself or by 
 the Dewan designate, " in terms quite unequivocal", 
 even if indirectly conveyed. 
 
 Under the circumstances, very sufficiently revealed 
 in the Blue Book, I cannot admit the possibility of the 
 Maharajah, eighteen years old, secluded from converse 
 or contact with any of the notables of his country, with 
 Mr. Rungacharloo as Maire du Palais during the whole 
 of the minority, having ever been allowed to feel that 
 he had a free choice in the matter. I cannot believe 
 that there can have been any great alacrity on the part 
 of Mr. Rungacharloo, or the people appointed by him 
 and in his interest near His Highnesses person, to re- 
 assure the Maharajah as to his right to express a real 
 preference for any particular person as his first Dewan, 
 or an objection to any particular person to persuade 
 him, in short, that he had a perfect right to celebrate 
 the day of his majority, or to anticipate his emancipa- 
 tion, by flying in the face of the Chief Commissioner 
 and the Viceroy, and rejecting their nominee for the 
 
 * Mysore Papers, No. 1 of 1881, p. 187. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 94. + Ibid., p. 97. 
 
14 
 
 office of Dewan after that nominee had been two years 
 " in training" for the office. 
 
 I may seem to have been once more wandering a 
 little from my proper task, which is that of defending 
 myself from your attacks on the Memorandum in the 
 Statesman, signed " E. B.", relating to the Mysore 
 Jewels. Mr. Eungacharloo's eligibility for the office of 
 Minister is not entirely irrelevant, but I will return to 
 the main subject. 
 
 You have accused me of making " strange misstate- 
 ments", without pointing out anything of the sort. 
 You have accused me of "garbling documents", with- 
 out offering a single instance of anything that can have 
 appeared to you in that light. You have, I am aware, 
 made free use of such terms as " a mare's nest", " a weak 
 and easily exposed invention". The Pioneer, well known 
 to be officially inspired, called my Memorandum an "un- 
 adulterated fiction", and you gave your approval to 
 that somewhat unhappy compound. You accuse me of 
 " weaving a malicious story of spoliation and loss of the 
 Mysore State Jewels". I again defy you to point out 
 anything like malice, either in the moral or the legal 
 sense, in anything I have written. No story of spolia- 
 tion or loss originated with me. In the Memorandum 
 signed " E. B.", official records are quoted proving an un- 
 explained and unreported loss of value in the jewels 
 between the completion of the catalogue by Colonel 
 Elliot in 1868 and the rearrangement by yourself and 
 Mr. Eungacharloo in 1872. Your own official Note of 
 the 5th September 1877 is quoted, in which you state 
 that in July 1872 you found " a great number of such 
 inaccuracies". The most remarkable among " the great 
 number" of unreported "inaccuracies", was that of a 
 jewel, No. 32, which, although catalogued by Major 
 Elliot in 1868 as worth Es. 6,000 (say 600), "ap- 
 peared small" in 1872, and was found only to be worth 
 about Es. 600 (say 60). Your Committee of Novem- 
 ber 1880 report a similar discrepancy in the value of 
 another jewel, No. 171, from the same collection, allotted 
 to the same widow Chundra Vilasa, who died in June 
 
15 
 
 1871, about a year before the rearrangement which you 
 commenced in July 1872. Thus there is ample evidence 
 that before that rearrangement the jewels had been 
 feloniously reduced in value. To what extent they 
 have been reduced cannot be told without a revaluation. 
 I wrote my original Memorandum signed "E. B.", know- 
 ing nothing of the second remarkable "inaccuracy", 
 No. 171. But when you and Mr. Rungacharloo are 
 now compelled to acknowledge, in contradiction to your 
 previous denials, that the valuable jewel so numbered 
 was abstracted and replaced by an inferior article, I 
 consider myself justified in still explaining, by the same 
 process of "abstraction and substitution", the reduc- 
 tion of Jewel No. 32 of the same Chundra Vilasa col- 
 lection from its estimated value of Rs. 6,000 (600) to 
 the actual value of Rs. 600 (60). That was the 
 opinion expressed in the Memorandum signed " E. B.", 
 and it is verified by your Committee of November 
 1880. The explanation you at first preferred of "a 
 merely clerical error" is now totally inadmissible. 
 
 What I did in the Memorandum signed " E. B." was 
 not, as you misrepresent it, "to make specific state- 
 ments as to losses", not to make charges against any- 
 one, but to affirm the existence of a scandal and to 
 call for an investigation. 
 
 I considered it my duty, in the last paragraph of my 
 Memorandum, after pointing out what seemed to me 
 to be grave reasons for an independent inquiry, to urge 
 that "if the very same functionaries who had been 
 singled out by circumstances for sole responsibility, 
 were to be left unprotected by any inquiry or supervi- 
 sion, to hand over to the young Maharajah, by their 
 own method and process, property valued in 1868 at 
 more than 350,000, and virtually to grant themselves 
 an acquittance, the seed would be sown for future crops 
 in mischievous rotation of incurable scandals and un- 
 answerable claims". The very course which I humbly 
 ventured to deprecate has been pursued. No indepen- 
 dent inquiry has been made ; no precautions have been 
 taken. 
 
16 
 
 The course which I suggested would have been as 
 I fully expect some of your own friends will tell you by 
 the time they have read this Letter the best one for 
 your own protection. You took my intervention, how- 
 ever, in bad part, and have reduced me to the neces- 
 sity of protecting myself. You felt secure, and, as it 
 appears, on good grounds, of being officially supported ; 
 and of no weight being given to an unauthorised and 
 irregular warning. You have been allowed to hand 
 over to the young Maharajah, without valuation, pro- 
 perty valued in 1868 at more than 350,000. You as 
 Resident, late Chief Commissioner, and Mr. Rungach- 
 arloo as Minister, late Controller of the Household, have 
 exchanged mutual acquittances. The Government of 
 India confirms, approves, and is quite satisfied. Kanchi 
 Rungachari is sent, for a year, to gaol. The Residency 
 Sheristadar, wrongly suspected of giving me information, 
 is dismissed by you, without a pension, after twenty- 
 three years' service. You are made a Knight of the Star 
 of India. If Mr. Eungacharloo were only exalted to the 
 same dignity, I suppose my confusion ought to be com- 
 plete. But I am not confused, or confuted. I still 
 maintain that for your sake an independent inquiry, 
 and a revaluation of the Mysore State Jewels, were very 
 desirable. 
 
 In the Memorandum signed " E. B.", I pointed out 
 that any examination of the jewels would be delusive 
 and inconclusive, and would fail to clear away the scan- 
 dalous rumours that had prevailed for seven years, 
 unless it were, as recommended by Captain F. A. Wil- 
 son in 1877, conducted by "a special agency" of un- 
 questionable independence. I urged also that, as the 
 injurious report was, as ineffectually hinted by Captain 
 F. A. Wilson in 1877, that "jewels" had not always 
 been "restored to the jewel-room in the same state in 
 which they were taken out"* that they had been, in 
 short, "sweated" the great object of inquiry must be 
 a revaluation of the jewels, to be compared with the 
 careful estimate made by Major Elliot and Mr. Runga- 
 charloo, with a jury of experts, in 1868. 
 
 re Papers, No. 1 of 1881, p. 150. 
 
17 
 
 This, perhaps, is the most appropriate place to men- 
 tion that the story current in Mysore, as told to me, is 
 that if the Jewels were now to be revalued, it would 
 be found that at least one-sixth, if not one-fifth, of 
 their value, had evaporated, the Jewel-room property 
 being, it is said, diminished in about the same propor- 
 tion as the Wardrobe property was, confessedly, dimi- 
 nished in Mr. Rungacharloo's charge. You may call the 
 story a legend, you may call it a myth, but it is the 
 refusal of inquiry that converts these myths or legends 
 into articles of popular faith. 
 
 Your opinion as to a special and independent inquiry, 
 and as to a revaluation, differed entirely from mine. 
 You considered, and your course has been approved by 
 the authorities at Calcutta, that no valuation was re- 
 quired, and that it would be enough to call together a 
 Committee composed of those among your subordinates 
 who had been connected with Palace affairs, including 
 Mr. C. Rungacharloo, and to preside over it yourself 
 For thus constituting the Committee you gave the 
 curious reason that " as no examination of the jewellery 
 had been made since that conducted by Mr. Gordon in 
 1872, and as such specific statements had been made of 
 losses that had occurred since the original examination 
 of 1868, it was thought to be very desirable that, at 
 the present examination, all the officers in India who 
 had at any time since the Maharajar's death had charge 
 of the jewellery should be present".* Of course they 
 ought to have been present as witnesses, but not as 
 judges. 
 
 It is clear that you perfectly understood what you 
 were doing in thus packing the Committee, although 
 its impropriety did not strike you, because you conclude 
 your despatch of the 18th of December 1880, by de- 
 claring your confidence that " it will be seen how 
 utterly unfounded are the statements which have been 
 so industriously circulated, and how thoroughly satis- 
 fied all the responsible officers concerned are as to the 
 complete identity and accuracy of the jewels", and by 
 * Mysore Papers, No. 1 of 1881, p. 166. 
 
 C 
 
18 
 
 expressing your " trust that the results of the exami- 
 nation now reported will satisfy His Excellency the 
 Viceroy in Council that there is not any ground what- 
 ever for ascribing to the responsible officers in Mysore, 
 in the past or present, any neglect in the preservation 
 of the Mysore State jewels".* 
 
 Doubts having been set forth "as to the complete 
 identity and accuracy of the jewels", " specific state- 
 ments having been made as to losses", " neglect" having 
 been ascribed to " the responsible officers", you think it 
 quite enough that " the responsible officers" concerned 
 should combine to declare themselves "thoroughly satis- 
 fied" with their own conduct. 
 
 Even this does not fully convey the utter nullity of 
 this pretended inquiry by your subordinates. For the 
 real question, after all, was not their conduct, but yours. 
 Not one of the subordinate officials, whom you and 
 Mr. Bungacharloo paraded at Mysore in November 
 1880, had ever been " in charge of the jewellery". Not 
 one of them had taken any part in the unsanctioned 
 and unreported rearrangement of 1872. You and Mr. 
 Rungacharloo, and you two only, are " the responsible 
 officers". 
 
 Mr. Krishna Murti says : "I never had charge of 
 the jewellery at any time."t He acted as Controller of 
 the Household, under the Tutor, Captain (now Major) 
 F. A. Wilson, while Mr. Rungacharloo was absent on 
 leave at a very critical time, as we shall see in 
 1877. 
 
 Mr. Sheshadri Iyer acted as Controller, under Colonel 
 Hay, in 1878 and 1879, and "had no exclusive charge 
 of the Palace jewellery". J 
 
 Mr. Ananda Rao says : " I have not at any time 
 had immediate charge of the Palace jewellery." He 
 was only Assistant-Commissioner superintending the 
 Household under Colonel Hay, from May 1879. 
 
 Colonel Hay only answers for his "general charge of 
 the Palace duties" since April 1879.|| 
 
 * Mysore Papers, No. 1 of 1881, p. 167. t Ibid., p. 171. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 177. Ibid., p. 178. || Ibid., p. 169. 
 
19 
 
 To these disclaimers of responsibility there is one ap- 
 parent exception. Major F. A. Wilson, who, "although 
 invited, was unable to attend" at Mysore, writes from 
 Hyderabad: "As Tutor to His Highness the Maharaja, 
 I was in charge of the Guardian's office from July 1876 
 till relieved by Mr. Gordon early in 1878, and, in that 
 capacity, had charge of the Palace jewellery, holding in 
 my possession the key of an iron safe (under a sentry), 
 in which were deposited the keys of the jewel-room and 
 of the cases containing the jewellery."* He had, in 
 short, from July 1876, to February 1878, been in charge 
 of the master-key. That is all he means. 
 
 It does not appear, and I certainly do not assert, 
 that even you were ever in " exclusive" or "immediate" 
 charge of the jewellery. 
 
 Out of the seven persons, yourself included, whose 
 signatures or depositions are attached to the report of 
 November 1880, only one was "at any time since the Ma- 
 harajah's death", in "immediate" and "exclusive" charge 
 of the Palace jewellery. This was Mr. Rungachaiioo. 
 He was, from July 1869 to May 1879, "vested with 
 authority in the Palace", over all " the various depart- 
 ments/'f He alone kept the key of the wardrobe. He 
 had charge of the "jewellery in daily use of the several 
 departments", as Colonel Malleson states in his letter 
 to the Chief Commissioner of the 22nd of December 
 1874.J In addition to this jewellery in daily use, often 
 amounting to " a lakh of rupees, or more, in value", 
 which had to " remain out for days and months", there 
 was "jewellery of the value of some lakhs of rupees", 
 left out for the use of " the Dowager Maharanis, and 
 other ladies", from the time of Colonel Elliot's settle- 
 ment until the decease of those ladies. Thus, during 
 several years, jewels, " of the value of some lakhs of 
 rupees", including the "especially large" collection of 
 the Ranee Chundra Vilasa, were subject to the absolute 
 control of Mr. Rungacharloo. He does, indeed, assert, 
 in his deposition, that " in every instance of the death 
 
 * Mysore Papers, No. 1 of 1881, p. 170. 
 
 t Papers, Mysore Government, 385 of 1878, p. 130. 
 
 J Appendix A. 
 
 c 2 
 
20 
 
 of these Maharanis and ladies, the jewellery was com- 
 pletely accounted for.* But that assertion, as will be 
 seen, is falsified by this very Report of November 1880, 
 and by other official records that will be cited ; and 
 the extent or limits of that falsification can only be de- 
 fined by a revaluation of the jewels. 
 
 Mr. Rungacharloo, moreover, and he alone, had, as 
 we shall see, the master-key in his possession, for days 
 and weeks together, without the check or supervision 
 of any English officer. 
 
 Let us now recapitulate what you did in October 
 1880. You "invited" six officials to form a Committee 
 of Inquiry into the condition of the Mysore jewels, on the 
 strange ground that they had all been in charge of the 
 jewels. You called on these officers to assume a judi- 
 cial position, when they were obviously disqualified as 
 judges. You called on them to come forward as wit- 
 nesses to matters of which they were, with one excep- 
 tion, necessarily ignorant. Not one of them, with the 
 exception of Mr. Rungacharloo, had been even in partial 
 or temporary charge of the jewels before July 1876. 
 But all the " specific statements" as to "losses" with 
 which you had to deal, referred to misfortunes or mal- 
 practices before the completion of your unsanctioned 
 rearrangement of the jewels in July 1872. It was then, 
 according to your official note of September 5th, 1877, 
 that you discovered a jewel (No. 32 of the Chundra 
 Vilasa collection) valued in 1868 at Rs. 6,000 (600) 
 to be only worth a tenth of that sum, about Rs. 600 
 (60), and found, likewise, "a great number of such in- 
 accuracies". Another article from the same Chundra 
 Vilasa collection (No. 171), a diamond bracelet, valued 
 at Rs. 5,000 (500), was found by the Committee of 
 1880 to be only worth about Rs. 2,000 (200). The 
 report adds : "It is believed in the Palace that the 
 relations of the lady substituted an inferior jewel whilst 
 it was in her possession, "t 
 
 The statement as to belief " in the Palace" is one 
 that is very easily made, but being made by the very 
 * Mysore Papers, No. 1 of 1881, p. 174. f Ibid-., p. 168. 
 
21 
 
 person who must be more or less responsible and blame- 
 worthy, at least for any irregularities or negligence that 
 may have facilitated malpractices, this vague reference 
 to invisible and anonymous culprits can hardly be con- 
 sidered conclusive by any one. It must be taken for 
 what it is worth, as an excuse put forward by Mr. 
 Eungacharloo, who was for ten years " vested with au- 
 thority over all the departments" of the Palace. It is 
 manifestly worth nothing, and less than nothing, as a 
 proof of what you claim to have established, "that the 
 arrangements for the preservation of the Palace jewel- 
 lery have been, since the original registration in 1868, 
 carefully and duly observed".* But it is worth a great 
 deal as a proof, extracted from your packed Committee, 
 that between 1868 and 1872 the process of "abstrac- 
 tion and substitution" was actually employed as a 
 means of depredation on the Maharajah's jewels. " Ab- 
 straction and substitution" are the words I used in 
 paragraph 14 of the Memorandum, signed "E. B".t You 
 protested against them, and charged me with " strange 
 misstatements" as to a supposed loss of jewels. J In the 
 last paragraph but one of your Memorandum, dated the 
 29th of July 1880, offered to the Government of India 
 as a full and sufficient answer to my Memorandum on 
 the Mysore jewels, you "have no hesitation in assuring 
 the Government that, notwithstanding the inconveni- 
 ence occasioned by the large quantities of jewellery 
 frequently required for the use of the Maharaja and the 
 Maharani, there is no reason ivhatever to believe that 
 any loss or malpractices have taken place" .\ 
 
 In July you declare " any loss or malpractice" to be 
 incredible. In November 1880, you had to report a 
 " loss" of 300 in value on one item, by the very " mal- 
 practice" of "abstraction and substitution" suggested in 
 my Memorandum, and which four months before you 
 had " no hesitation" in declaring incredible. 
 
 You and your subordinates had also to admit in that 
 same report of November 1880 that this instance of 
 
 * Mysore Papers, No. 1 of 1881, p. 168. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 144. } Ibid., p. 146. Ibid., p. 149. 
 
22 
 
 abstraction and substitution was discovered "when that 
 lady", the Eanee Chundra Vilasa, " died, in 1871". It 
 must, therefore, have formed one of the " great number 
 of inaccuracies" of which you took note in your rear- 
 rangement and "fresh lists" of July 1872, and which 
 you reserved in petto, until one of them was acci- 
 dentally revealed in 1877. 
 
 We learn, also, from your Committee of November 
 1880, that out of a parcel of thirty-eight diamonds, 
 No. 566, valued in the original catalogue at Us. 1,500, 
 twenty-four were wanting. " This deficiency", a defi- 
 ciency in value, on one item, of about 100, "had been 
 noticed in the examination of 1872."* It may have 
 been noticed, but it was not reported, either to the 
 Chief Commissioner, or to Colonel Malleson. There is 
 no suggestion of a clerical error, but you say : " It 
 will probably be found on inquiry that they have been 
 used in repairs of other jewels."t This simply means 
 that this deficiency of 100 in value is not accounted 
 for, that it is not traced, and that no one is held 
 responsible for it. 
 
 There is another little parcel that the Committee of 
 November 1880, returns as "not found": " No. 544. 
 Six loose addikes (links) belonging to a pounchi 
 (bracelet), value Rs. 600. It is a question whether our 
 not finding No. 544 is due to a mistake in the original 
 list of 1868, or to its being mixed up with other jewels, 
 as in 1868 it was recorded as consisting of loose pieces 
 of a broken jewel."} 
 
 This, likewise, being translated into the vulgar 
 tongue, means that another item, No. 544, valued at 
 60, is not accounted for, is not traced, and that no 
 one is held responsible for it. 
 
 Mr. Krishna Murti, also, informs us, by the way, of 
 another lost jewel, no mention of which appears any- 
 where else, and the value of which is not stated. " One 
 jewel", he says, " was accounted for as having been 
 stolen in the Palace Treasure burglary ;" one of the 
 
 * Mysore Papers, No. 1 of 1881, p. 168. 
 
 t Ibid, p. 168. } Ibid., p. 168. Ibid., p. 173. 
 
23 
 
 incidents called by that name which recur so frequently 
 during Mr. Rungacharloo's Controllership, without ap- 
 parently exciting more than a languid curiosity in any 
 official bosom. 
 
 These "facts now reported", after an eight days' 
 hasty examination, and, as Mr. Krishna Murti inno- 
 cently betrays to us, without any " valuation", by no 
 means " establish conclusively" to my mind, that there 
 is any weight in your assurance as " Chief Commis- 
 sioner", " that this valuable property has been through- 
 out preserved with the strictest fidelity and care".* 
 
 On the contrary, no one can now deny that the 
 annals of the Controller's Department during the last 
 nine years testify to the accuracy of the " specific state- 
 ments" regarding "losses" of some of " the very valuable 
 property kept in the Palace", and to some remarkable 
 deficiencies in its value, as estimated and recorded in 
 1868. 
 
 The Wardrobe was entirely and exclusively in Mr. 
 Rungacharloo's charge, as we learn from Colonel Malle- 
 son's letter to the Chief Commissioner, of the 22nd of 
 December lS74.f The Wardrobe was estimated by 
 Colonel Elliot and Mr. Rungacharloo in 1868 to be 
 worth about 25,000. J Before the end of 1874, as we 
 are told by Sir Richard Meade, the Chief Commissioner, 
 in his Order dated the 30th of November in that year, 
 Mr. Rungacharloo had managed to lose about a sixth 
 part of this " very valuable property" clothes to the 
 value of at least 4,000 having disappeared in a series 
 of what were called " burglaries". These incidents were 
 very lightly treated by Sir Richard Meade, who did 
 not even know how many had occurred, though he 
 seems to have known that the first of them had never 
 been reported. In his Order of the 30th of November 
 1847, the loss of Rs. 36,000 (3,500) in one of these 
 " burglaries", does not seem to strike him as a matter 
 
 * Mysore Papers, No. 1 of 1881, p. 167. 
 t Appendix A. 
 
 J Mysore Government, 385 of 1878, p. 91. 
 
 I have heard that there were no less than five of these " bur- 
 glaries." 
 
24 
 
 of great moment, though he censures Mr. Rungacharloo 
 for " supineiiess" and "inadequate action" on the loss 
 being discovered. 
 
 In this respect your tone and touch throughout, both 
 as Guardian and as Chief Commissioner, are quite in 
 harmony with Sir Richard Meade's instrument. Having 
 discovered in 1872 "a great number" of such discre- 
 pancies between the actual value of jewels and the 
 estimate formed by a jury of experts in 1868, as re- 
 duced them to a fraction of their recorded value, you 
 did not consider this discovery of sufficient importance 
 to be either made known "at the time", or at any time, 
 to your official superior, the Chief Commissioner, or 
 communicated, on his return, to Colonel Malleson, the 
 Guardian, for whom you were acting, or to anyone else 
 who was in a position to institute a serious inquiry. 
 
 Again, having in July 1880, denied that "any loss 
 or malpractices had taken place,"^ you admit both loss 
 and malpractice in November 18SO,t but pronounce 
 the " differences" arising therefrom to be " slight" and 
 immaterial ."$ Deficiences of 540, 300, 100, and 60 
 in the value of single items in the list of jewellery, 
 (No. 32, 171, 566, and 544) maybe considered by you 
 to be "slight" and "immaterial"; they would hardly 
 seem so in the eye of an ordinary man of business. 
 They would certainly not be so accounted either in the 
 Viceroy's Tosha-khana, or in the jewel- room of a reign- 
 ing Kajah ; but in the Palace of Mysore the Viceroy 
 had no concern, and the Rajah had no control. 
 
 Mr. C. Rungacharloo is in complete accordance with 
 you as to the "slight" and "immaterial" nature of the 
 deficiencies in value. 
 
 " The result of the examination", he says, "was that 
 all the jewels have been fully accounted for ; the four 
 or five items of differences found in articles of trifling 
 value, some in excess and others by way of deficiency, 
 were such as must be expected from the confused 
 manner in which numerous petty articles have been 
 
 * Ante, p. 21. f Ante, pp. 21, 22. 
 
 } Mysore Papers, No. 1 of 1881, p. 167. Ante, pp. 21, 22. 
 
25 
 
 mixed np with the larger jewels in the original regis- 
 tration."* 
 
 He thus professes to consider such articles as a seven- 
 string necklace (No. 32) valued at 600, and a diamond 
 bracelet valued at 500, to be " of trifling value", and 
 " the four or five items of difference" such as 540 on 
 No. 32, 300 on No. 171, 100 on No. 5GG, and 60 on 
 No. 544 to be "such as must be expected". The whole 
 of this answer will be seen to be irreconcilable with 
 the facts. The jewels in which deficiencies appear are 
 not " of trifling value", and were not in any instance 
 " mixed up" with "petty articles." 
 
 Nor is Mr. Kungacharloo's plea of petty articles " in 
 excess", to counterbalance deficiencies, admissible. No 
 excess worth speaking of appears; nor would any 
 such excess do away with the acknowledged abstraction 
 and substitution in the instances of No. 32 and No. 
 171, instances which might, for all that we can know 
 until Mr. Krishna Murti's " proper valuation" is insti- 
 tuted, be greatly multiplied. 
 
 Mr. Sheshadri Iyer, one of Mr. Eungacharloo's 
 lieutenants, brings forward, likewise, this groundless 
 plea, of an "excess". He echoes your assurances of 
 July 1880, in the following words : " I have no hesita- 
 tion in saying that the whole of the palace jewellery, 
 as per Colonel Elliot's list of 1868, has been fully and 
 satisfactorily accounted for." And he gives as his rea- 
 son for this conclusion, that although some "articles of 
 small value" may not be forthcoming, "on the other 
 hand, an excess was found, consisting of loose pearls 
 and precious stones and sundry small articles of jewel- 
 lery, and this would, in my opinion, to a great extent 
 account for the deficiencies above referred to."f It is 
 perfectly clear, for the reasons already given, that it 
 would not account for any one of the serious deficiencies. 
 
 The truth is, that in reviewing your proceedings of 
 November 1880, even the discrepancies regarding the 
 value of jewels therein acknowledged, are not as re- 
 
 * Mysore Papers, Xo. 1 of 1881, pp. 175, 176. 
 t Ibid. p. 178. 
 
26 
 
 markable as the discrepancies between the acknowledg- 
 ments of the " Joint Report", and the denials that 
 each separate member of the packed Committee gives 
 in his answers to your eight leading questions. 
 
 Mr. C. Rungacharloo says : " I have no reason to 
 suspect any irregularities of any kind. Everything has 
 been so completely and accurately accounted for."' 
 
 Mr. T. Ananda Rao says : "I have found no sufficient 
 reason to suspect that a less valuable jewel has been 
 fraudulently substituted for a more valuable one, or that 
 any jewel has been altered for the purpose of diminish- 
 ing its value. "f 
 
 Mr. K. Sheshadri Iyer says : " I have no reason 
 whatever to suspect any fraudulent substitution or 
 alteration of any jewel."J 
 
 Colonel A. C. Hay says : " Opinions may differ as 
 to the absolute correctness of the valuation of the 
 jewels, but there is no reason to suspect that any frau- 
 dulent substitutions or alterations have been made." 
 
 And this although they had just signed, or were 
 about to sign, the Report declaring a flagrant instance 
 of fraudulent substitution and alteration, discovered by 
 you and Mr. Rungacharloo in 1872, and unrevealed 
 until 1880. 
 
 You had "no hesitation", in July 1880, in pronounc- 
 ing the notion of "any loss or malpractices" to be quite 
 incredible, and in expressing your " confident belief" iri 
 the "scrupulous care and fidelity" with which the 
 jewels had been preserved. || Your " want of hesita- 
 tion" is reproduced, and your " confident belief" is re- 
 peated, for the most part, as we have just seen, in the 
 answers given separately by the members of the Com- 
 mittee, who collectively, in their " Joint Report", admit 
 the occurrence of both "loss and malpractice". But 
 even amidst this inconsistent unanimity there are some 
 perceptible reservations. Major F. A. Wilson, for ex- 
 ample, in his reply to Question 2, seems to be more 
 anxious than the other deponents to give no opinion as 
 
 * Mysore Papers, No. 1 of 1881, p. 176. t Ibid., p. 179. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 177. Ibid., p. 170. || Ibid., p. 149. 
 
27 
 
 to occurrences beyond the limits of the time when he 
 was acting as Tutor to the Maharajah. He says: " I 
 cannot remember ever to have heard or in any way 
 become aware of any irregularity or impropriety in con- 
 nexion with the palace jewellery during the period of 
 my charge."* 
 
 Having made answer so far, he does not seem to have 
 considered himself called upon to say anything with 
 reference to the second part of Question 2, requesting 
 him to state " in detail", whether he took any " action 7 ', 
 in consequence of " information" received as to irregu- 
 larities. I shall have immediately to show that Major 
 Wilson did take very effective "action" for the better 
 security of the jewels. He may have done so without 
 any information, and without any rumours as to pre- 
 vious irregularities ; but this is by no means clear, and 
 is in itself highly improbable. It would seem rather 
 that at the critical moment of 1877, Major F. A. 
 Wilson, or some one at his elbow, was on the verge of 
 avowing suspicion. The following sentence from para- 
 graph 6 of the Tutor's letter of 21st August 1877, 
 looks very much as if he suspected that there had been 
 some previous malpractices or negligence in the de- 
 partment : " Care is, however, at present, taken to 
 see that jewels taken out are restored to the jewel- room 
 in the same state in which they were taken out."f 
 This hint covers nearly the whole ground of the 
 scandals that have long been prevalent in Mysore, as 
 to the abstraction and substitution of jewels, well 
 founded scandals as we now know from the reluctant 
 acknowledgments that my pressure has forced from, 
 you and your select Committee of 1880. 
 
 Mr. Krishna Murti, and Mr. Ananda Rao, whose 
 position and connections, as I understand, secure them 
 from being entirely dependent on the goodwill of Mr. 
 Rungacharloo, do not seem to me to join in the chorus 
 of general content with the same vigour and fervour as 
 Mr. Sheshadri Iyer. They guard themselves with 
 
 * Mysore Papers, No. 1 of 1881, p. 170. 
 t Ibid, Xo. 1, p. 150. 
 
28 
 
 qualifications, and they let out little facts of consider- 
 able significance, that we do not find anywhere else. 
 Between them, they open our eyes to the path and the 
 process by which the " malpractices" of " abstraction 
 and substitution", denied in your own despatches, but 
 admitted in the " Joint Report", where their subdued 
 voices are heard, may have been carried on, and to the 
 possibility that these "malpractices" may have been 
 much more extensive than you are inclined to believe. 
 
 "The main stock of jewellery", says Mr. Ananda 
 Rao, "is kept in a room on the first floor of the Palace, 
 not far from the Maharajah's sleeping apartments, and 
 quite accessible from the zenana apartments of the 
 palace."* "Quite accessible from the zenana," let us 
 take note of that. The room is described by Mr. 
 Krishna Murti as being " in the middle of the Palace 
 buildings, surrounded on all sides by several sets of 
 rooms and walls. There are no approaches to it from 
 outside, except through the usual passage. So, there- 
 fore, the best room available for the purpose has been 
 utilized." (That opinion as to its being " the best 
 room for the purpose," is rather awkwardly placed, con- 
 sidering what follows.) " This room", he continues, 
 " had, when it was first opened during my Controller- 
 ship, three doors, two of which in the side walls were, I 
 learnt, only chained from inside, while the third main 
 door was locked and sealed from outside. Captain Wil- 
 son and I took the additional precaution of putting on 
 locks to the two side doors. Since then I see the doors 
 have been, as was thought desirable by us, shut up and 
 walls raised."^ 
 
 And here is Major Wilson's testimony as to the same 
 point : " Two side doors of the jewel room, secured on 
 the inside but not locked, of which I had previously 
 been unaware, came to my notice on one of these occa- 
 sions. These doors were, under my directions, provided 
 ivith locks, as I considered their condition out of har- 
 mony with the otherwise generally rigid arrangements 
 
 * Mysore Papers, No. 1 of 1881, p. 178. t Ibid., p. 172. 
 
29 
 
 for the safe custody of the jewels, which were in my 
 opinion efficient and satisfactory."* 
 
 This very peculiar arrangement of doors was, there- 
 fore, not considered by Major Wilson and Mi\ Krishna 
 Murti to be either " efficient" or " satisfactory" "for 
 the safe custody of the jewels", and they had it altered. 
 Yet Mr. Rungacharloo had been satisfied with it for 
 eight years, and you if it was ever brought to your 
 notice could not have considered it objectionable. But 
 I think the Tutor and the Acting Controller were more 
 discreet than you and Mr. Rungacharloo. The caution 
 evinced by Mr. Krishna Murti, and the "action taken" 
 by Major F. A. Wilson, when they found out the double 
 back-entry, " quite accessible from the zenana", into the 
 jewel-room, in addition to the front or formal entry, 
 seem to me to have been most judicious. Unfortu- 
 nately, they came a little too late. Your own official 
 Note of the 5th of September 1877, and the Report 
 of your Committee of November 1880, prove that it 
 was a case of shutting the stable-door when the steed 
 was stolen. The very imperfect revelations called forth 
 by my Memorandum in the Statesman very imperfect 
 in the absence of Mr. Krishna Murti's " proper valua- 
 tion" show that the felonious alteration of No. 32 
 and No. 171, causing a loss of 840 in value in two 
 items, and the disappearance of twenty-four diamonds 
 worth 100, from No. 566, besides other similar 
 " slight and immaterial differences", all occurred before 
 
 O ' 
 
 you inaugurated the " great improvement", as you 
 call it, of new bureaus and Chubb's locks in 1872. 
 Mr. Krishna Murti and Major F. A. Wilson introduced 
 a still greater improvement when they locked the two 
 superfluous doors ; but it was too late. The Chubb 's 
 locks, the master-key and the seals, before and after 
 1872, are exposed as a mere sham safeguard, when we 
 know that by the dexterous detachment of a chain 
 from a hook, during an official visit, the jewel-room 
 could at any time have been left open to clandestine 
 and predatory incursions. Mr. Ananda Rao and Mr. 
 * Mysore Papers, No. 1 of 1881, p. 171. 
 
30 
 
 Krishna Murti, between them, explain how the jewel- 
 room was " quite accessible", and could be got at 
 through "the Zenana", where we know there was at 
 least one inmate, Murree Mullapa, familiar with the 
 ways of the place, and well qualified for participating 
 in the work of "abstraction and substitution". No- 
 thing but the " proper valuation", for which Mr. 
 Krishna Murti calls, can reveal how far that work had 
 proceeded in 1872, beyond such instances as No. 32 
 and No. 171, which are no longer to be denied or dis- 
 puted, but which you now call " slight and imma- 
 terial". 
 
 In the course of the proceedings of your Committee 
 of November 1880, you do not offer any explanation, 
 or even a remark, regarding these two doors, masked 
 inside and unfastened outside until 1877. You pro- 
 bably considered this circumstance, like the deficiency 
 of 1,000 in four items of jewellery, to be " slight and 
 immaterial". And perhaps when the date of Major 
 Wi] son's and Mr. Krishna Murti's precautions is consi- 
 dered, you would be, in a certain sense, right. 
 
 Mr. Rungacharloo, likewise, is silent as to the doors. 
 He thinks it quite enough to "appeal in regard to the 
 success of" his "arrangements" "to the high and strict 
 morale" maintained by him in the Palace.* We have 
 Mr. Rungacharloo J s word for this " high and strict 
 morale", and for " the success of his arrangements", 
 which are not, however, made brilliantly manifest by 
 the fact that when Mr. Rungacharloo had been for five 
 years in direct and exclusive charge of the Palace 
 Wardrobe, one-sixth of that property, to the value of 
 at least 4,000, was lost. 
 
 Mr. Rungacharloo, having attributed "the success of 
 his arrangements" to the " morale" prevailing in the 
 Palace under his fostering care, remembers that there 
 was one person in the Palace, very frequently men- 
 tioned in the Statesman, very closely associated with 
 himself, whose "morale", instead of being "high and 
 strict", was notoriously low and loose. This was Murree 
 * Mysore Papers, C 3,026 of 1881, p. 175. 
 
31 
 
 Mullapa. Mr. Rungacharloo makes a show of taking 
 the bull by the horns. Alluding to this man, he says: 
 "I must, however, specially refer to one of the lead- 
 ing subordinate officials who was connected with the 
 jewellery department of the Palace till his death some 
 six years ago." 
 
 It is remarkable that, at the outset, Mr. Runga- 
 charloo should misplace the date of this person's death. 
 Murree Mullapa did not die about six, but about nine 
 years before November 1880. Mr. Rungacharloo, 
 nevertheless, had many reasons to recollect this death, 
 and the circumstances connected with it. Murree 
 Mullapa died in December 1871, six months after the 
 widowed Ranee Chundra Vilasa, in whose " especially 
 large" collection of jewels we have found some striking 
 deficiencies. About six months after Murree Mullapa's 
 death you commenced, in July 1872, that rearrange- 
 ment of the jewels during which some of those defi- 
 ciencies were observed, but not reported. 
 
 " This man, named Murree Mullapa," continues Mr. 
 Eungacharloo, " was an influential and important official 
 under the late Maharajah, and was chiefly in charge of 
 the jewellery department under him. His reputation 
 was not of the best kind, as indeed was the case with 
 several of the higher officials in the Palace, who were 
 exposed to the corrupting influences and intrigues car- 
 ried on in the former regime, a misfortune which did 
 not so much affect the smaller officials. He was re- 
 tained by Colonel Elliot, as by long experience he was 
 useful, and the Maharanis would have objected to the 
 removal of so old a servant." 
 
 The truth I believe to be that Colonel Elliot, who 
 was well aware of the man's infamous character, did 
 not appoint him, and would not have retained him, if 
 he could have exercised any choice in the matter. The 
 Maharanis were never consulted. The only person 
 who found Murree Mullapa's " experience useful", and 
 wanted him, was Mr. Rungacharloo. Colonel Elliot, 
 in fact, was not strong enough, any more than was 
 Colonel Gregory Haines, the Guardian chosen by the 
 
32 
 
 old Maharajah and the Secretary of State, to get the 
 man removed.* 
 
 I return to Mr. Rungacharloo's apology for Murree 
 Mullapa. "I can only say that whatever he had been, 
 he was guilty of no misconduct in connection with the 
 jewellery department during the time I was employed 
 in the Palace." 
 
 Mr. Rungacharloo having already declared that there 
 was " no reason to suspect any irregularities of any 
 kind",t can, of course, express no suspicion of any par- 
 ticular person. 
 
 " Indeed/' continues Mr. Rungacharloo, " the ar- 
 rangement was such, and there were so many people 
 jointly responsible, that any irregularity on the part of 
 any one individual was not feasible." 
 
 There we are quite in accord. I certainly do not 
 believe that " any individual" alone or single-handed, 
 carried out the work of " abstraction and substitution". 
 
 But, according to Mr. Rungacharloo, this pander 
 and poisoner, who was regarded with such dread and 
 horror that, in the words of Colonel Haines, the people 
 " spoke of him with bated breath" made a fine end, 
 and went off in the odour of sanctity. 
 
 " I may add that even this individual was so in- 
 fluenced by the altered tone and ideas that he be- 
 queathed almost the whole of his property for the 
 education and improvement of his eastern en." f 
 
 Mr. Rungacharloo hardly does himself justice by 
 omitting all mention of his own share in these pious 
 dispositions, and of the subsequent vexations im- 
 posed upon himself. The records of the several suits 
 brought against him in the Civil Courts of Mysore by 
 the widow of Murree Mullapa, not settled before the 
 end of 1879, prove that the strange intimacy with the 
 horrible parasite from whose contaminating presence 
 Colonel Haines tried in vain to protect the Maharajah, 
 terminated by Mr. Rungacharloo dictating a death-bed 
 codicil to Murree Mullapa's will, and undertaking its 
 
 * Ante, p. 6. t Ante, p. 26. 
 
 } Mysore Papers, C 3,026 of 1881, p. 175. 
 
33 
 
 execution, whereby the widow was prevented from 
 adopting a son, and reduced to a mere maintenance 
 out of the estate, while Mr. Rungacharloo became cus- 
 todian of the property, including a large amount in 
 jewels. 
 
 Thus we see that, besides the unexplained loss of 
 one sixth of the Wardrobe, to the value of 4,000, 
 there are two singular, not to say sinister, facts in the 
 history of Mr. Rungacharloo's nine years' Controller- 
 ship, on which no light is thrown the dark doors, 
 " quite accessible from the zenana", and his close and 
 intimate alliance with a man of such hideous infamy as 
 Murree Mullapa. As to those two facts, both he and 
 you are quite silent. 
 
 And there is a third fact, that of his having held 
 possession of the master-key for days and weeks 
 together, which he denies. In that denial you support 
 him. Mr. Rungacharloo denies that fact in the follow- 
 ing sentence of his deposition : " The jewels were 
 deposited in wooden almirahs in a room in the centre 
 of the Palace, the keys of which were and have ever 
 since been in charge of the Guardian or other European 
 officer in charge of the Palace/'* You very decidedly 
 deny that fact in paragraph 5 of your Memorandum of 
 the 29th of July 1880, in reply to the Memorandum 
 on the Mysore Jewels signed "E. B." : 
 
 "I should add," you say, "that the keys of the 
 jewel-room and jewel cases have always been kept in 
 an iron safe in the Palace under a military guard, and 
 that the key of that safe has always been in the hand 
 of the Guardian, or other high European official resi- 
 dent at Mysore."t 
 
 Your statement, as well as that of Mr. Rungacharloo, 
 on whose word, I presume, you relied, is inaccurate. 
 On several occasions when the Guardian, Colonel 
 Malleson, was absent on leave or duty, the master-key 
 was handed over to Mr. Rungacharloo, and not to 
 any European official. 
 
 Colonel Malleson, on his first arrival at Mysore in 
 
 * Mysore Papers, No. 1 of 1881, p. 174. \ Ibid., p. US. 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 July 1869, received the master-key from Colonel John 
 Campbell, then Commissioner of the Ashtagram Divi- 
 sion, into whose charge it had been committed by 
 Colonel Gregory Haines, on his resigning the office of 
 Guardian. The key never again came into the hands of 
 Colonel John Campbell, though he remained at Mysore, 
 holding the same position of Commissioner, until 
 February 1873. He was succeeded by Colonel Thomas 
 Clerk until July 1874, when Colonel A. C. Hay took 
 up the appointment. 
 
 When Colonel Malleson left Mysore, in company with 
 the Ursoos, members of the Maharajah's family, in 
 December 1870, to wait on Lord Mayo at Calcutta, the 
 master-key was transferred to Mr. Rungacharloo, and 
 not to Colonel John Campbell, or any other " high 
 European official". 
 
 Colonel Malleson proceeded a second time to Calcutta, 
 with the Ursoos, in December 1873, when the master- 
 key was again given to Mr. Rungacharloo not to 
 Colonel Thomas Clerk, who was then Commissioner of 
 the Division, or to any other high European official 
 and the key so remained in Mr. Rungacharloo's posses- 
 sion until the Guardian's return in February 1874. 
 
 When Colonel Malleson was relieved of the Guardian- 
 ship in June 1876, he was directed to give over charge 
 to Mr. Rungacharloo, who once more held possession of 
 the master-key for some weeks. 
 
 Major F. A. Wilson will be a.ble to satisfy you as to 
 the person from whom he received the key on his 
 arrival at Mysore in August 1876, to take up his 
 appointment as Tutor ; and you will find that person 
 to have been Mr. Eungacharloo, and not Colonel A. C. 
 Hay, or any other " high European official". It is, in 
 short, Major F. A. Wilson, Colonel Malleson, Colonel 
 John Campbell, Colonel Thomas Clerk, and Colonel 
 A. C. Hay that I summon to justify my flat contradic- 
 tion of the assertions made by you and Mr. Runga- 
 charloo that the master-key was always in the hand of 
 the Guardian or other " high European official". I have 
 before me now a note from Colonel Hay to Colonel 
 
35 
 
 Malleson, dated "61, Lee Park, Blackheath, Oct. 22nd, 
 1881", in which he says : 
 
 "While you held the office of Guardian at Mysore it 
 never was the practice for you to make over the master- 
 key of the jewel-room to me, and I cannot recall a 
 single instance of your having done so/' 
 
 You have accused me of having made " strange 
 misstatements", but have totally failed to support or 
 justify that accusation, even in the most trifling point. 
 I have now convicted you of having, in concurrence 
 with Mr. Hungacharloo, misled the Government of 
 India, by a strange misstatement in a matter of the 
 very greatest importance. 
 
 In your Memorandum of July 29th, 1880, you say: 
 " What I did in the matter of the re-arrangement of 
 the jewels was not done in secret, as asserted, but was 
 duly made known at the time to the Chief Com- 
 missioner, Sir Richard Meade."* 
 
 I never asserted that the re-arrangement of 1872 
 was a secret affair, but that it was a highly irregular 
 affair, begun without any official sanction, and finished 
 without any official report. It may not have been a 
 secret affair, and yet, considering the interesting nature 
 of the work, and the long period over which it ex- 
 tended, it seems to have been " made known at the 
 time", " duly" or unduly, to very few people. It was 
 not known to Colonel John Campbell, the Commis- 
 sioner of the Division, with whom you were in daily 
 social intercourse, and who had himself been for a short 
 time in charge of the jewel-room keys. It was not 
 known to Colonel (now Major-General) James Puckle, 
 then Secretary to the Chief Commissioner, who must 
 have been aware if there had been any official or demi- 
 official communication. It was not known to several 
 other officers of the Mysore Commission, who, in the 
 ordinary course, must have heard of such proceedings, 
 and who, on the other hand, came to hear those pre- 
 
 * Mysore Papers, No. 1 of 1881, p. 148. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 
 
 valent rumours as to misappropriation of the Palace 
 jewels, of which you say you never heard anything, 
 "save in the Memorandum published in the States- 
 
 man". 
 
 In March 1872, Major (now Lieutenant-Colonel) 
 Charles Elliot, C.B., who, assisted by Mr. Runga- 
 charloo, had arranged the jewels in 1868, resigned his 
 office as Commissioner of the Mysore Division, and 
 went home, about three months before the rearrange- 
 ment of the jewels was commenced in July 1872. 
 You had then been for more than a year officiating 
 as Guardian, Colonel Malleson having gone away on 
 leave in March 1871. You entered on a rearrange- 
 ment of the jewels without consulting the officer 
 who had received the thanks of the Government in 
 1868 for "the excellent arrangements" he had made 
 " to prevent any spoliation or loss". 
 
 You insist upon it, however, that what you "did in 
 the matter" was "duly made known at the time to Sir 
 Richard Meade". The term "at the time" is vague 
 and indefinite. The word "duly" seems to convey an 
 improper assumption. I can conceive no "due" mode 
 of making known the rearrangement of property valued 
 at more than 300,000, except that of correspondence 
 duly dated, in which the sanction, the commencement 
 and the conclusion of such an important work would 
 be duly recorded. 
 
 We know to a certainty that there is no contem- 
 poraneous order, permission, sanction, report or com- 
 munication, official or demi-official, relating to the six 
 weeks' manipulation of the jewels in 1872, or to the 
 "great number of inaccuracies" alleged to have been 
 then detected by yourself and Mr. Eurigacharloo in 
 that original catalogue for which Mr. Rungacharloo 
 had received the thanks of Government. 
 
 In your Order of the 14th of March 1881, dismissing 
 the Residency Sheiistadar, you declare, likewise, that 
 " Sir Richard Meade, who had been Chief Commis- 
 sioner in 1872, was familiar with what had then taken 
 , place". Here are your exact words in paragraph 6 of 
 that Order : 
 
37 
 
 " Mr. Gordon did not make any formal or official 
 reply, but returned the Secretary's letter No. 110 at 
 once, with a few words written at the moment on the 
 back of it, mentioning, for the Chief Commissioner's 
 information (Mr. Saunders having become Chief Com- 
 missioner in Sir Richard Meade's place, who had been 
 Chief Commissioner in 1872, and was familiar with 
 what had then taken place), that he had rearranged 
 the jewels, and placed them in new and suitable recep- 
 tacles in 1872, and that during that rearrangement he 
 had noticed errors such as that under notice, though 
 he could not from memory distinctly recall the par- 
 ticulars of the jewel referred to by Captain Wilson." 
 
 Your style is not always as lucid as could be wished, 
 and this passage might be taken to mean that Sir 
 Eichard Meade was not only "familiar" with the fact 
 that a rearrangement had taken place in 1872, but was 
 also "familiar" with the fact that you had found "a 
 great number of inaccuracies" in the catalogue. But 
 that cannot have been your meaning, because it is clear 
 Sir Richard Meade can never have heard of these 
 
 " errors". 
 
 Even if you were now to throw some light on the 
 very obscure terms, "familiar", "duly", and "at the 
 time", there would still be need of some further expla- 
 nation. For it is clear that whatever you may have 
 "made known" to Sir Richard Meade, and whenever, 
 and in whatever style, it may have been made known, 
 everything that you "'did in the matter of the re- 
 arrangement of the jewels", was not made known " at 
 the time", or at any time, to Sir Richard Meade, or to 
 anybody concerned. On the 29th of July 1880, for 
 example, you tell the Government of India that 
 in July 1872 "fresh additional lists of the jewels, 
 in the order of the rearrangement, were made".* 
 This was not "duly made known" to Sir Richard 
 Meade. No fresh list was furnished to the Chief 
 Commissioner. This was not "duly made known" to 
 Colonel G. B. Malleson on his resuming charge of the 
 * Mysore Papers, No. 1 of 1881, p. 148. 
 
38 
 
 office in 1873. It is perfectly certain that neither of 
 these gentlemen the head of the Mysore Government 
 and the permanent Guardian was ever informed either 
 of "the great number of inaccuracies" in the old lists, 
 first divulged in 1877, or of the "fresh lists", first 
 mentioned in 1880. For Sir Eichard Meade, in para- 
 graph 7, of his Order No. 135, of 30th November 
 1874, when the u burglaries" from the Wardrobe had 
 suggested some doubt as to "the security of the very 
 valuable property kept in the Palace", calls for "copies 
 of the lists of the property, prepared in 1868, for record 
 in this office, any changes that have taken place being 
 duly noted in them". According to your explanatory 
 Memorandum of July 1880, the whole had been changed, 
 and new lists had been made in July 1872. But not 
 a hint as to "fresh lists" was given to Sir Richard 
 Meade in reply to his requisition in November 1874. 
 On the contrary, Colonel Malleson i.e., Mr. Runga- 
 charloo proclaims "the accuracy of the original lists", 
 even to the absence of "a single error". '* 
 
 It was on the strength, in fact, of Mr. Rungacharloo's 
 assurances, conveyed in the Guardian's letter of the 
 22nd of December 1874, as to the perfect security of 
 "the whole of this complicated property", proved by 
 not "a single error" having been found during the re- 
 arrangement of 1872, that Sir Richard Meade consented 
 in his letter dated the llth of January 1875, to miti- 
 gate the censure he had passed upon the want of care, 
 vigilance, arid activity evinced by Mr. Rungacharloo 
 with regard to the Palace " burglaries". 
 
 It is remarkable, to say the least, that throughout 
 the proceedings that have seen the light, or have been 
 instituted, in consequence of the casual disclosures of 
 1877, and of my Memorandum of 1880, less infor- 
 mation is derived, and, strange to say, less appears to 
 be demanded, from Mr. Rungacharloo, than from those 
 who must have had less knowledge, and who clearly 
 have less responsibility. 
 
 When we review the Report of your "final" Com- 
 * Appendix A. 
 
39 
 
 mittee of November 1880, we find that Mr. Runga- 
 charloo, the original and permanent keeper of the 
 jewels, tells us very little, while the temporary cus- 
 todians, Major Wilson, Mr. Krishna Murti. and Mr. 
 Ananda Rao, tell us a great deal. 
 
 During that critical period between July and Sep- 
 tember 1877, when the facts as to the abstraction and 
 substitution of jewels were within reach of the Chief 
 Commissioner, if he had been of an inquiring turn of 
 mind, Mr. Rungachaiioo happened to be out of the 
 way happened, in fact, to go out of the way just 
 when he might naturally have been called upon to 
 answer questions as to the discrepancies between the 
 actual value of certain jewels, and their value as ascer- 
 tained by a jury of experts in 1868. Colonel Elliot 
 and Mr. Rungacharloo had certified to the accuracy of 
 the catalogue, and had been thanked by Government 
 for "their excellent arrangements to prevent spoliation 
 and loss". Moreover, Mr. Rungacharloo, speaking 
 through the voice of Colonel Malleson in the letter 
 dated 22nd of December 1874, had assured the Chief 
 Commissioner that during the rearrangement of the 
 jewels in 1872, "the accuracy of the original lists" was 
 "proved" by not "even a single error" being found "in 
 the whole of this complicated property".* 
 
 At this time no discrepancies of value, no instances 
 of "abstraction and substitution" had been discovered, 
 or were officially suspected, outside of the department. 
 
 And yet, even at this time, it is to be observed that 
 Mr. Rungacharloo, the real custodian of the Wardrobe 
 and Jewel-room, is allowed quietly to assume, in that 
 same letter of December 22nd, 1874, that "the security 
 of property in the Palace' 7 is a mere question of rules 
 and forms, " of the existing arrangements", " made by 
 Major Elliot and approved of by his successors". He 
 is permitted, without any adverse comment, to go very 
 near divesting himself of all personal responsibility. 
 "I am not aware", he says, in conclusion, "that any 
 improvement could be made in them" the arrange- 
 
 * Appendix A. 
 
40 
 
 ments. " If any farther instructions are given on the 
 subject, they will be obeyed."^ He has, in short, no 
 duty but that of obeying the rules imposed by his res- 
 ponsible superior. Nevertheless, it may be observed, 
 en passant, that Sir Richard Meade's ' instructions' for 
 an annual examination of the Jewels were not 
 'obeyed'/' But in July 1877, discrepancies of value 
 had been discovered, and either Major Wilson or the 
 Chief Commissioner, by making inquiries and insisting 
 on answers from the only person present who had been 
 thanked for the original catalogue, and had ever since 
 been in sole charge of the property, might have been 
 put on the scent of the process by which the jewels 
 had been reduced in value. 
 
 The two extra doors, "quite accessible from the 
 zenana", were also detected about the same time, and 
 by the same persons, Mr. Krishna Murti and Major 
 F. A. Wilson, in temporary and partial charge. 
 It seems, therefore, to have been an equally un- 
 fortunate and notable concurrence of circumstances, 
 fortuitous, perhaps, but strange, that just at 
 the crisis when his explanations were wanted, Mr. 
 Hungacharloo should have gone away on leave. The 
 fact is not easily to be gathered from the published 
 papers, but, as you must be aware, is none the less a 
 fact, that when " the Chief Commissioner's proceedings, 
 No. 42, of the 16th June" 1877,t giving sanction to 
 the list of jewels to be presented to Subrarnanya Urs on 
 the occasion of his marriage, were issued, Mr. Hungachar- 
 loo, Controller of the Household, the working head of 
 the Department, was present at Mysore. But during 
 the inquiry that immediately followed into the puzzling 
 deficiency of about 540 in the value of one of the 
 selected articles, Mr. Rungacharloo took his departure, 
 leaving all inquiries and all explanations alike to be 
 made by inexperienced and irresponsible persons. 
 Captain (now Major) F. A. Wilson, the Tutor, presents 
 the scanty intelligence and halting opinions contained 
 in his letter of the 21st of August 1877, as coming, 
 
 * Appendix A. t Mysore Papers, No. 1 of 1881, p. 149. 
 
41 
 
 not from Mr. Rungacharloo, whose name is not men- 
 tioned in it, but from the Jewel Sheristadar Rama 
 Kristnia, a poor fellow on thirty rupees a month, who in 
 your presence, or before Mr. Rungacharloo, would not 
 have dared to call his soul his own. In July 1877, just 
 when Captain F. A. Wilson was going to let out for 
 the first time those discrepancies in value which are 
 now disclosed as the results of abstraction and substi- 
 tution, " noticed in the examination of 1872",* Mr. 
 Rungacharloo was off, leaving the burden of defence to 
 be borne by Captain Wilson and Mr. Krishna Murti, 
 who were safe in their ignorance, and by you, the Ju- 
 dicial Commissioner of Mysore, and already for several 
 terms Acting Chief Commissioner, who were not only 
 safe, but strong and unimpeachable by your official 
 position. 
 
 When you were asked to elucidate the strange fact 
 that Jewel No. 32, valued in 1868 by a jury of experts 
 at 600, was represented in 1877 by an inferior article 
 worth not more than 60, you had not much of an ex- 
 planation to offer, but it sufficed. Your answer to the 
 reference from the Chief Commissioner was dated the 
 5th of September 1877, and ran as follows : 
 
 " I revised, and re-arranged, and placed in new re- 
 ceptacles designed by myself, the Palace jewels in July 
 1 8 72, or about that time. The work was done in my 
 presence, in that of Mr. Rungacharloo, the Controller, 
 and all the Palace officials concerned. It was a work 
 much required. It occupied us for several hours daily 
 for more than six weeks. I found several such errors 
 as that under notice, but at this distance of time, and 
 considering the very great number of jewels and the 
 great number of such inaccuracies, cannot recall the 
 particulars of the jewels referred to herein 5, 9, 77. "f 
 
 To express astonishment at Mr. C. B. Saunders, the 
 Chief Commissioner, having been satisfied with this 
 
 * O 
 
 answer, might seem a little hard on that gentleman, 
 considering that the very unsatisfactory answers by 
 
 * Ante, pp. 20, 22. 
 
 t Mysore Papers, No. 1 of 1881, p. 144. 
 
42 
 
 yourself, Mr. Rungacharloo, and your packed Com- 
 mittee, have satisfied the Viceroy in Council. But I 
 must point out that in 1877, as at every subsequent 
 period, the essentials for a retrospective and compara- 
 tive inquiry were much more accessible at Mysore than 
 at Calcutta. For example, I do not feel at all sure 
 that the combined appeal of Colonel Malleson and Mr. 
 Rungacharloo to the Chief Commissioner, dated 22nd 
 of December 1874, was ever transmitted to the Go- 
 vernment of India, but there it was at Bangalore, 
 and by no means pushed away into some dark pigeon- 
 hole, when your very unexplanatory Note of the 5th 
 of September 1877, came in. I am a little astonished 
 that the eulogies on " the original lists" by Colonel 
 Malleson and Mr. Rungacharloo, contradicting your 
 assertion of their inaccuracy, should have escaped 
 notice in 1877, because that very correspondence of 
 December 1874 and January 1875, on the subject of 
 the " burglaries" and the neglected order for an annual 
 examination, had been brought before the Chief Com- 
 missioner by the Secretary, Colonel Tredway Clarke, 
 in September 1876.^ How came it that Colonel 
 Tredway Clarke did not bring these two irreconcileable 
 documents into conjunction in September 1877? If the 
 Secretary was not capable of such very moderate per- 
 spicacity , there ought surely to have been some Assistant 
 Secretary, confidential clerk or keeper of records, to 
 bring to the Chief Commissioner's notice that while you 
 declared " a great number of such inaccuracies" as that 
 which reduced jewel No. 32 to a tenth of its recorded 
 value, to have been found in the lists of 1868, when 
 you and Mr. Rungacharloo rearranged the jewels in 
 1872, Colonel Malleson and Mr. Rungacharloo, referring 
 to that same rearrangement, had certified to " the 
 accuracy of the original lists", and that there was not 
 " even a single error in the whole of this complicated 
 property". 
 
 I am, then, a little surprised that the Chief Com- 
 
 t See the deposition of B. Ramaswamy lyengar, Residency Sheris- 
 tadar, before you on the 26th of August 1880. 
 
43 
 
 missioner was so easily satisfied with your Note of the 
 5th of September 1877. I am not, on the other hand, 
 at all surprised to observe that since its more public 
 appearance in the Memorandum signed "E. B.", you are 
 much dissatisfied with it yourself, so dissatisfied that 
 you have made an example of an innocent victim on 
 account of that publication. Your Note, lightly and 
 indifferently glanced at by Colonel Tredway Clarke and 
 Mr. C. B. Saunders, assumed a very different aspect 
 when brought by me into the light of day, and placed 
 in due relation with other documents. So at least it 
 seems to have struck you, for on every subsequent oc- 
 casion you have cried it down, sought to modify and 
 minimise its meaning, and even to make it mean the 
 very reverse of its obvious purport. In your Memor- 
 andum of the 29th of July 1880, paragraph 2, you 
 term it " no official report", ''but a few words on the 
 back of the letter".* In paragraph 4 you say that 
 you " wrote a few remarks from memory upon Captain 
 Wilson's letter".t In paragraph 6 of your Order of the 
 14th of March 1881, condemning and dismissing the 
 Sheristadar, you say that you " did not make any for- 
 mal or official reply, but returned the letter at once with 
 a few words written at the moment on the back of it". 
 
 My experience of such matters does not show me 
 anything informal, unofficial, or unusual in the mode 
 or language of your Note. Certainly its consisting of 
 a " few words", its being written " at once", " at the 
 moment", and "from memory", did not make it informal 
 or unofficial in the eyes of the Chief Commissioner, 
 Mr. Saunders. If he considered the brevity and 
 promptitude of a reply to be an official merit and the 
 best of formalities, I think he was right. 
 
 You say it was written " from memory". Your 
 memory, then, on the 5th of September 1877, told you 
 that during the rearrangement of the jewels begun in 
 July 1872, you and Mr. Rungacharloo had found "a 
 great number of inaccuracies" in the original register 
 
 * Mysore Papers, No. 1 of 1881, p. 147. 
 t Ibid., p. H8. 
 
44 
 
 of 1868. Your memory told a different tale when you 
 had to answer my Memorandum signed " E. B." In 
 your Memorandum written with that object, and dated 
 the 29th of July 1880, you say :- 
 
 " My belief is that my strong impression at the time 
 I made the re-arrangement (eight years have now 
 elapsed), was that the original register of 1868 was, in 
 all essentials, remarkably accurate ; surprisingly so 
 when the circumstances were considered."* 
 
 In July 1880, not eight years, but less than three, 
 had elapsed since you wrote " from memory" your 
 statement of September 1877. When you wrote the 
 later statement of July 29th, 1880, your memory told 
 you that " your belief" was that your " strong impres- 
 sion at the time" had been that the original register of 
 1868 "was, in all essentials, remarkably", even "sur- 
 prisingly'', " accurate". But " at the time", three 
 years before, on the 5th of September 1877, you had 
 written " from memory" that the original register con- 
 tained " a great number of inaccuracies". Now the 
 probability clearly is that the earlier impression is the 
 more correct, because, though a man might forget in 
 1880 that he had some years before found inaccuracies 
 in a list, he could not possibly, from any defect of 
 memory, forget himself in 1877 into a belief that he 
 had found " a great number of inaccuracies" in 1872. 
 That would be a freak of fancy, not an effort of memory. 
 
 And in fact there was no freak of fancy. Your 
 earlier impression was quite correct. There were a 
 great number of inaccuracies in 1872. Such attention 
 as could be given by your select Committee during the 
 eight days' gallop through which you conducted them, 
 without any valuation, brought out some capital speci- 
 mens of abstraction and substitution, " noticed in the 
 examination of 1872", but not reported, showing a 
 deficiency in value of 1,000 on only four items of 
 jewellery".! 
 
 If so much evidence, confirmatory of the scandalous 
 
 * Mysore Papers, No. 1 of 1881, p. 148. 
 t A nte, pp. 20 to 24. 
 
45 
 
 rumours which you proclaimed to be incredible, slipped 
 out in your perfunctory and illusive examination, how 
 much more might not have been extracted by a strict 
 and independent inquiry, and, as Mr. Krishna Murti 
 suggests, by " a proper valuation". 
 
 If such an important fact, quite breaking down one 
 buttress in Mr. Rungacharloo's defensive structure/ 
 could be drawn out of Colonel A. C. Hay not, as you 
 will admit, a hostile witness, by one straightforward 
 question^, how much more light might riot have been 
 thrown into dark places, if "the responsible officers in 
 Mysore" had been called upon to meet the "specific 
 statements regarding losses", not by a general chorus 
 in your company, but by separate depositions before 
 an impartial and capable authority ! 
 
 Although I may be admitted to have shown very 
 conclusively that there were at one time good grounds 
 for a special inquiry ; although I may have cleared 
 myself from your charges of " misstatement", " mis- 
 chievous invention", and the " garbling" of documents, 
 what object, it may still be asked, can I now have, 
 except one of sheer mischief or malevolence, in stirring up 
 unpleasant matters that have been definitively settled ? 
 The Palace Jewels have been transferred from your 
 custody to that of the Maharajah, and the Government 
 of India, in a despatch dated the 26th of May 1881, 
 approve and confirm your proceedings. There is an 
 end of the whole thing. That despatch, with the re- 
 port and receipt of Basavappajee Urs and five others, 
 on behalf of the Maharajah, has been condescendingly 
 communicated for my information, with reference to 
 two official letters addressed by me to the Indian Go- 
 vernment in November and December ISSO.f What 
 can I want or expect more ? 
 
 My last letter in the official correspondence^ ex- 
 plains why, notwithstanding the approval of Govern- 
 ment, I cannot acknowledge your first proceedings in 
 this matter as Resident, to be more correct or more 
 
 * Ante, p. 35. t Appendix B. J Appendix B. 
 
46 
 
 conclusive than your last proceedings as Chief Com- 
 missioner. The report and receipt from the Committee 
 nominated by Mr. Rungacharloo, accepted and for- 
 warded by you, exactly constitute that mutual acquit- 
 tance between Mr. Rungacharloo and yourself, which I 
 foresaw would be proffered, and which I must still pro- 
 nounce to be good for nothing. Under the circumstances 
 already explained, the report of the Select Committee 
 assembled by Mr. Rungacharloo in April 1881, is as 
 worthless as that of the Select Committee assembled 
 by you in November 1880, of which, indeed, it is a 
 mere echo. One gentleman, Mr. Ananda Rao, who 
 from his ability and official position must have taken 
 the lead on the second occasion, was also on the former 
 Committee. Your deputy, Colonel Hay, took part in 
 both transactions. 
 
 The same deficiencies vitiate the two ostensible ex- 
 aminations, and render them equally illusory and futile 
 as a release or acquittance between Ward and Guardian. 
 There is no disinterested or independent party present. 
 The whole question being one of value, there is no 
 valuation. This last fatal defect, against which I 
 raised, in good time, but in vain, a warning voice, is, 
 also, noticed by Mr. P. Krishna Murti, the Jaghiredar 
 of Yellandur and head of Poornia's family. " I am no 
 judge", he says, " of the values, and no proper valua- 
 tion was now taken. "* 
 
 Perhaps he attached no particular meaning to those 
 words when he placed them on record. Perhaps he 
 had no particular doubt or misgiving when he revealed 
 the two masked and unsecured doors, j" I know no- 
 thing of this gentleman's capacity or strength of 
 character, but the peculiarities of his position are suffi- 
 ciently intelligible. He has probably felt himself help- 
 less for some years ; but, on the other hand, he alone 
 among the seven signatories of your Report of Novem- 
 ber 1880, is rooted in Mysore by the enduring relations 
 of ancestral fealty. Your official indemnities cannot 
 absolve him. His honour and his house are pledged 
 
 * Mysore Papers, No. 1 of 1881, p. 173. f Ante, p. 28. 
 
47 
 
 to the Maharajah, and he may well wish them, and ex- 
 pect them, to outlast your incumbency and Mr. Run- 
 gacharloo's domination. 
 
 I do not believe, and no wel]-informed person be- 
 lieves, that these matters are definitively settled. 
 Discussions and scandals of many years' currency, al- 
 though they may be embittered, cannot be closed or 
 dispelled by a dictatorial decree, but only by fair and 
 open investigation. Though silence may seem to pre- 
 vail in Mysore, the scandal subsists in full force. It 
 may break out at any time, the later the worse, but 
 its propagation in the dark, and in an aggravated form, 
 must be even more injurious to Imperial authority. 
 These considerations alone would sufficiently justify 
 my persistence, and acquit me of any mischievous or 
 malevolent object. My political purpose, however, is 
 more complex and of wider extent. 
 
 I have resented not unnaturally or unreasonably, 
 I think your imputations on my good faith ; I have 
 defended myself against them, not, I trust, ineffectu- 
 ally. But there never has been any malice or malevo- 
 lence in my heart against you ; while I entered on the 
 inquiry, which led to my writing the Memorandum of 
 1880, signed " E. B.", with a positive prejudice in 
 favour of Mr. Rungacharloo. 
 
 Almost the only act that seems to have seriously 
 shaken his official credit and prospects, and brought 
 down upon him, I believe, a reprimand, I was inclined 
 to consider as a proof at once of his judgment and of 
 his public spirit. Mr. L. B. Bowring, who, as that gen- 
 tleman himself complained in a letter published in the 
 Bangalore Spectator, dated "Torquay, 8th July 1874", 
 " nominated him to the post of Controller", and was 
 thereby " brought into an unfortunate collision with 
 his superior", Colonel Haines,^ had not long retired 
 from the post of Chief Commissioner, before Mr. Run- 
 gacharloo, disguised as " a Native of Mysore", made an 
 anonymous attack on his patron, accusing him of " a 
 narrow policy" and of " a want of regard for the con- 
 
 * Ante, p. 6. 
 
48 
 
 venience of the people". There was so much in this 
 pamphlet^ identical with my contention that nearly all 
 the superfine changes in the administration of Mysore 
 since General Cubbon's time have been changes for the 
 worse, t that I did not feel at all inclined to find fault 
 with Mr. Rungacharloo for what Mr. Bowring, in the 
 letter already quoted, indignantly called " kicking 
 down the ladder by which he rose". Mr. Rungacharloo 
 seems, however, to have made a practice of thus kicking 
 down ladders. I have become acquainted with his 
 furtive detractions of Colonel Elliot and Colonel Mal- 
 leson ; I have been struck with his constant plan of 
 submissively lurking behind each nominal superior in 
 succession while present, and reviling him confidentially 
 when absent or out of place. But until my attention 
 was drawn to the matter now belbre us, I was dis- 
 posed to think highly of Mr. Rungacharloo. The con- 
 sistency with which I have always upheld the eligibility 
 of natives of India for the very highest offices in their 
 own country, might, I should hope, gain credit for the 
 declaration that I have most reluctantly, in this in- 
 stance, impugned the merits of an Indian who has at- 
 tained an eminent position. 
 
 Leaving out of consideration, however, those matters 
 of the Wardrobe and Jewel-room which, I maintain, 
 have been unaccountably slurred over, Mr. Rungachar- 
 loo has attained this eminent position by means of 
 some of the worst points in our system of Indian ad- 
 ministration. Not being " a Native of Mysore", having 
 no weight or influence by birth or connections, by 
 character or conduct, either in the Palace or among the 
 people, being, in fact, an object of general distrust 
 and dislike, he has been forced on the reconstituted 
 State as Minister, when he is known throughout 
 Mysore simply as your man. The Maharajah has had 
 no choice in the matter. The Imperial Government 
 has not, either in the person of the Viceroy or of the 
 Secretary of State, had any real voice or share in the 
 
 * British Administration of Mysore, Longmans, 1874. 
 t Ante, p. 5. 
 
49 
 
 appointment. The over-centralisation at Calcutta de- 
 feats itself. Efficient control by the Viceroy in Council 
 has become impossible. Each provincial authority who 
 has the knack of keeping his files clear and his connec- 
 tion with " the Office" close, and who can give a good 
 account of himself in an Administration Report, is, for 
 his day, sole autocrat. He tells his own story, and 
 there is no one to question it. Everything of conse- 
 quence that goes to head-quarters is private and confi- 
 dential ; and many an important matter is settled by 
 unrecorded notes or a quiet talk, before the form is 
 gone through of taking the orders of Government. In 
 all this, and in every instance, the public opinion of a 
 province, better informed always, and in time of need 
 far more important, than any official opinion,- is inar- 
 ticulate and inaudible. 
 
 Ever since I took to writing on Indian affairs I have 
 preached one doctrine; and my single "political pur- 
 pose" has been to make that doctrine understood and 
 accepted by my fellow-countrymen. My doctrine is that 
 India can only be kept under British supremacy, with 
 any prospect of permanence and peace, as an Empire 
 of confederated States and provinces, and not as a cen- 
 tralised Kingdom. 
 
 The policy proposed by Mr. Bright, in his great 
 speech of the 24th of June 1858, on the second reading 
 of the India Bill, of breaking up the Empire into at 
 least five independent Presidencies, defined in general 
 by differences of language and geographical position 
 still shadows forth the only true policy in the stage at 
 which we have arrived, for promoting the stability of 
 the Empire and the peaceful progress of India. Mr. 
 Bright's plan of decentralisation a plan as sound and 
 as practicable now as in 1858 was a statesmanlike 
 protest against the vain attempt at governing two hun- 
 dred millions of people, "twenty nations, speaking 
 twenty languages," by means of a compact and central- 
 ised bureaucracy. If logically carried out, liberalised, 
 as we may be sure he would approve, by a wise and 
 generous confidence in our own consultative and re- 
 
 E 
 
50 
 
 preservative principles, and by an equitable admission 
 of qualified Natives to the highest posts, it might go 
 a long way at least towards solving the almost insolv- 
 able problem of making our direct administration popu- 
 lar. "The essential problem of Indian statesmanship", 
 as I have said elsewhere, "is how to reconcile self- 
 
 Syvernment for India with Imperial supremacy for 
 reat Britain. The true solution is that the more 
 we concede the former, the more we confirm the latter/' 
 At present, however, it is only in a reformed Native 
 State that the possession of local self-government and 
 submission to Imperial supremacy, can be completely 
 reconciled. The most efficacious method of decentral- 
 isation, efficacious at once for the financial relief and 
 the moral reinforcement of the Paramount Power, 
 would be that of contracting the territories under our 
 direct rule, reinstating and extending native admi- 
 nistration in reformed and protected States. We 
 could then greatly reduce our civil and military esta- 
 blishments. We could shift the burden of debt in 
 great part from the Imperial Power to the allied 
 Princes, by the legitimate and irresistible temptation 
 of territorial aggrandisement. 
 
 Our direct administration has not as yet certainly 
 become popular with any class, or in any locality. The 
 divergence of feeling and interest between our people, 
 official and non-official, and the Natives in our Pro- 
 vinces, is not an evil that tends to decrease or to cure 
 itself. The Princes, on the other hand, fully appre- 
 ciate the solid advantages of British Imperial supre- 
 macy. Our Commissioners and Collectors have no 
 social influence, because they have no social intercourse 
 with the people. But our Government is in close 
 enough contact, and can keep up a clear enough under- 
 standing with the Indian Sovereigns and Chieftains 
 through whom, if the practice of its " Political" repre- 
 sentatives were so prescribed and so circumscribed as 
 to be congenial and encouraging, it could govern and 
 guide all the nations of India, and make Imperial 
 supremacy popular. In proportion as we destroy, 
 
51 
 
 weaken, or alienate these manageable conservative 
 powers, we shall stimulate and set loose the unman- 
 ageable brute force and fanaticism over which we have 
 no control or influence whatever. 
 
 With these convictions and on these grounds, my 
 course, however obscure, has been at least consistent. 
 Before the great rebellion of 1857 opened the eyes of 
 so many statesmen to the true conditions of our Indian 
 Empire, my feeble voice had raised its petty protest, 
 officially recorded, under peculiar circumstances, in a 
 then recently annexed province, against the policy of 
 annexation. 
 
 Before helping Colonel Macqueen and Dr. Campbell 
 in London to counteract the importunate applications 
 from Calcutta for the annexation of Mysore, I had, at 
 Madras in 1861, recommended the very process of 
 maintaining the State under an adopted heir, and of 
 gradually restoring Native agency,* decreed by Lord 
 Cranborne (now Marquis of Salisbury) and Sir Stafford 
 Northcote in 1867, protracted and perverted by your 
 predecessors and yourself. 
 
 Even with a Dewan of distinction, of good report 
 and marked capacity, it would be no easy task now 
 to "restore to the Maharajah the powers of govern- 
 ment",j" or to reconstitute Mysore as a substantive 
 State, which were the professed objects of the states- 
 men of 1867, and of all their successors. With the 
 Dewan you have set up, whose antecedents and public 
 repute are such as I have indicated in this Letter, the 
 task is an impossible one. 
 
 This is what attracts me, in pursuance of my " poli- 
 tical purpose", to the situation in Mysore, even more 
 than the unjustly discharged Sheristadar's personal 
 appeal to me for help, or your charges against me of 
 " garbling documents", " mischievous invention", and 
 " weaving a malicious story". The whole course of 
 Anglo-Indian official dealings with Mysore, from the 
 
 * Empire in India (Trubuer, 1864), pp. 304 to 316, 338 to 342, 
 and 384 to 402. 
 
 f Mysore Papers, 385 of 1878, p. 135. 
 
 E 2 
 
52 
 
 unwarranted sequestration in 1832, through forty 
 years of constantly growing jobbery, and a strange 
 period of heedless unconcern as to the evaporation of 
 our Ward's valuables, threatens to lead up to an 
 apparent failure of the policy of reforming decentral- 
 isation in this recent and conspicuous essay. Be- 
 lieving the decided and systematic adoption of that 
 policy, as a new departure in Imperial rule, to be the 
 most efficient, if not the only remedy for the costliness 
 and contemptuousness of our direct administration, I 
 can only contemplate such an apparent failure as a 
 disastrous probability. I might say much as to the 
 means of yet averting it, but to those who are con- 
 vinced of the disease the first measures for its cure 
 are obvious enough. 
 
 After all, but for your mention of " a political pur- 
 pose", as an aggravation of my " malicious story", I 
 should hardly have been justified in extending so far 
 the topics of this Letter. In the Memorandum of 
 " E. B. " I called for an independent examination and 
 revaluation of the Mysore jewels. I have now endea- 
 voured to show that my suggestion was well founded, 
 and that such a scrutiny, if it has not by this time 
 become impossible, is still much to be desired. I have 
 endeavoured, also, to clear myself from those charges 
 of malicious and mischievous misrepresentation which 
 you have ventured to make against me, and which, as 
 yet, you have entirely failed to justify. 
 
 I have the honour to be, 
 
 Your most obedient servant, 
 
 EVANS BELL. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 (A.) 
 
 In the latter part of 1874, the Chief Commissioner of Mysore, 
 Sir Richard Meade, had before him the record of a trial in the 
 preceding month before Major Hill, the District Magistrate of 
 Mysore, of certain persons charged with being concerned in a 
 " burglary" at the Mysore Palace, and he passed the following 
 "Order thereon": " 
 
 No. 135. 
 
 " BANGALORE, 30th Nov. 1874. 
 
 " From the proceedings in the Magistrate's Court, it would appear 
 that at least two burglaries were committed in the Maharajah's Palace 
 at Mysore. The first seems from the evidence to have occurred in 
 June 1872, when Mr. Vardon, the Police luspector, drew the atten- 
 tion of Mr. Ruugacharla, the Controller of the Palace, to the rumour 
 prevailing iu the bazaar to the effect that certain valuable cloths had 
 been stolen from the Jagan Mahal in the Palace. Mr, Rungacharlu 
 thereupon inspected the room in which the property was kept, and 
 found one of the iron bars of the window loose. This circumstance, 
 however, raised little or no suspicion in his mind, and he merely or- 
 dered that the bar should be re-fastened. 
 
 "2. The second robbery took place early in May 1874. Soon 
 afterwards, on inspection of the store-room, Mr. Ruugacharlu dis- 
 covered that a number of cloths were missing, and noticed that two 
 of the iron bars in the same window were loose. Being then on the 
 eve of proceeding to the Neelghiries on duty, he deferred taking any 
 action till his return a fortnight after, merely ordering that the bars 
 should be refastened, and private inquiries instituted in the matter. 
 On the 17th of June, after examining five of the boxes containing 
 the more valuable clothes, he found a large number missing, and then 
 gave information to the Police, which resulted in the detection and 
 conviction of the principal culprits. The number of cloths stolen 
 was 234, and their cost is estimated at Rs. 49,080. Of these, 71 
 cloths, valued at Rs. 12,970, have been recovered, the actual loss is, 
 therefore, estimated at Rs. 36,110. 
 
 " 3. On the first occasion the action taken by the Controller was 
 altogether inadequate. The boxes containing the valuable property 
 kept in the store-room ought to have been at once carefully examined, 
 
54 
 
 and their contents checked with the original lists. Not only was this 
 obvious and simple measure neglected, but the repair of the window- 
 bar was executed in an inefficient manner. 
 
 " 4. On the occasion of the second robbery, the condition of the 
 window-bars ought at once to have satisfied Mr. Rungacharlu, as to 
 the reality of the theft and the modus operandi of the thieves. 
 
 " Nevertheless, no attempt to ascertain the condition of the pro- 
 perty was made, and no action beyond the measure, that had already 
 proved futile, of re-fastening the bars, until the 17th of June, or 
 nearly a month and a half afterwards, when some of the chests were 
 examined, and cloths found missing. The Chief Commissioner notices 
 that the evidence of the carpenters and other witnesses, who have 
 deposed to the condition in which the bars were found, differs from 
 that of the Controller, aud indicates that due attention was not given 
 by that officer to this most important of all the suspicious circum- 
 stances to which his attention has been called. 
 
 11 5. It is, in fact, almost impossible to understand why so obviously 
 serious a matter was, until the 17th of June last, dealt with so 
 supinely. The slightest indication of anything suspicious in the 
 state of the windows of a room containing property of such value 
 ought, when coupled with the rumour which the Inspector brought 
 to the notice of the Controller, to have been made the subject of 
 prompt and full inquiry. 
 
 " 6. It is clear that there is a want of system in the arrangements for 
 the security of the very valuable property kept in the Palace. The 
 Chief Commissioner requests that in future a formal examination of 
 such property may be made every year, between the 1st of January 
 and the 31st of March, under the superintendence of the Guardian. 
 A report of the result should be submitted to this office. Where the 
 property is packed in boxes, duly sealed and labelled, with a list of 
 the contents, and which have not been opened, and are in proper con- 
 dition, it will be sufficient to notice the fact. 
 
 " 7. In order that reference may be made to them if necessary, the 
 Chief Commissioner requests that copies of the lists of the property 
 in question, prepared in 1868, may be furnished for record in this 
 office, any changes that have taken place being duly noted in them. 
 
 " Ordered that a copy of these proceedings be submitted to the 
 Government of India in the Foreign Department. 
 
 " (Sd.) H. WELLESLEY, Ofg. Secretary." 
 
 Evidently the Chief Commissioner and his Secretary had 
 heard nothing of the " fresh lists" made in 1872, or of the 
 "numerous inaccuracies" then found in the lists " prepared in 
 1868". 
 
 They seem to have taken things rather coolly in Mysore. 
 According to the evidence given by Mr. Vardon, Inspector of 
 Police, on the 12th September 1874, at the trial of the alleged 
 burglaries of " the second occasion", Mr. Bungacharloo did on 
 " the first occasion", in June 1872, examine the store-room, 
 
55 
 
 although the fact of the robbery, which undoubtedly had been 
 perpetrated, seems not to have commended itself to his judg- 
 ment. This is the substance of Mr. Vardon's testimony : 
 
 " I told Mr. Eungacharloo my suspicions about two years 
 ago, regarding the abstraction of cloths from the palace store- 
 room, and their being hooked out through the window. Mr. 
 Eungacharloo said he did not believe it, as he kept the keys, 
 but would go and see. I met him a few hours afterwards, and 
 he told me my information was incorrect, and that no cloth 
 were missing, but that an iron bar was loose. He quite dis- 
 armed my suspicions, and I made no further inquiry. I do not 
 think I reported the matter to the Town Magistrate." 
 
 The Police Inspector makes no report of a " burglary" in the 
 Palace to the Town Magistrate. The Controller of the House- 
 hold and the Acting Guardian, Mr. J. D. Gordon, apparently 
 make no report to anybody. The Chief Commissioner of Mysore 
 in 1872, is left in blissful ignorance of the Wardrobe being 
 robbed in June, and without any official report of the Jewel- 
 room being opened in July for a six weeks' manipulation. He 
 is neither informed that the strong-room has been found to be 
 insecure, nor that the catalogue of " the very valuable property 
 kept in the Palace" has been found to be very inaccurate. In. 
 consequence of a judicial inquiry in 1874, the " burglaries" in 
 the Wardrobe and the laxity of " system in the arrangements", 
 became incidentally known to the Chief Commissioner, but it is 
 not until 1877 that another Chief Commissioner quite acci- 
 dentally hears of the discrepancies and deficiencies in the Jewel- 
 room, and of the unsanctioned and unreported operations of 
 1872, whereby the arrangements and lists of 1868, for which 
 Major Elliot and Mr. Eungacharloo had received the thanks of 
 Government, had been discredited, and discarded, in favour of a 
 new arrangement and " fresh lists", by Mr. Gordon, without any 
 official report. 
 
 In November 1874, however, the Chief Commissioner is 
 roused to a sense that the "action" of Mr. Eungacharloo on 
 " the first occasion" was " inadequate", and that " the valuable 
 property kept in the store-room ought to have been at once 
 carefully examined", and he directs an examination of " the very 
 valuable property kept in the Palace" to be carried out between 
 the 1st of January and the 31st of March in every year, "under 
 the superintendence of the Guardian". A very striking proof 
 of the loose discipline and inattention to the enforcement of 
 orders which prevailed in this department of the Mysore ad- 
 ministration is to be found in the fact that the examination 
 thus ordered was never once instituted between November 1874 
 and October 1880. The Guardian, prompted by ]\Ir. Eunga- 
 
56 
 
 charloo, at once objected to this new scrutiny. The Chief Com- 
 missioner insisted, but his reiterated orders were of no effect. 
 
 The following correspondence was published, by direction or 
 permission of the Chief Commissioner, in the Bangalore news- 
 papers of the 14th of October 1880, after the Governor-General 
 in Council had pronounced that Mr. Gordon's explanation in 
 reply to the Memorandum signed " E.B.", was " completely satis- 
 factory".* 
 
 The Bangalore paper, in which I saw the letters, introduced 
 them with these words of acknowledgment : 
 
 " The following official papers about the property of the 
 Mysore Palace have been kindly placed at our disposal." 
 
 No. 63. 
 
 " GUARDIAN'S OFFICE, MYSORE, Dated 22nd December 1874. 
 " To the SECRETARY TO THE CHIEF COMMISSIONER OF MYSORE. 
 
 " SIR, With reference to the proceedings of the Chief Commis- 
 sioner dated 30th November 1874, No. 135, I have the honour to 
 forward herewith a Memorandum from the Controller giving an ex- 
 planation of the circumstances connected with the robbery of clothes 
 in the Palace, and trust that a perusal of the same may satisfy the 
 Chief Commissioner that the action of the Controller, however it may 
 appear in the light of subsequent discoveries, was in accordance with 
 the view which the actual circumstances of the time justified his 
 taking. 
 
 " 2. With regard to the arrangements existing for the security of 
 the Palace property, I beg to state that the property in question con- 
 sists of, firstly, jewellery, which are deposited in a room the key of 
 which is held by me, and which is only opened in the presence of 
 myself and that of the Controller. Secondly, of clothes which are 
 perishable articles expended from time to time at the request of the 
 Kanees, or for purposes connected with the Palace. The key of this 
 room has been always in the custody of the Controller, in consequence 
 of the necessity of frequently taking out cloths for Palace purposes. 
 This room is opened only in the presence of the Controller with a 
 number of Departmental Officers and a Sepoy guard ; Thirdly, some 
 jewellery belonging to the Chamundy Totty, or religious department, 
 the key of which is also held by the Controller ; and, Fourthly, of 
 articles of jewellery, etc., in daily use of the several departments, 
 which are necessarily left in their charge, subject to periodical exami- 
 nations by the Controller. Lists of all this property, inclusive of the 
 cloths, were prepared in 1868, and were forwarded to the Chief Com- 
 missioner's Office, and all subsequent changes of them are duly re- 
 corded in books kept in duplicate, one copy of which is kept with 
 the Palace Officer and the other forwarded to the Guardian's office 
 for record. I may add that changes in the jewellery can only take 
 
 * Mysore Papers, No. 1 of 1881, p. 150. 
 
57 
 
 place with the sanction of the Chief Commissioner, which is duly re- 
 corded. 
 
 " With regard to periodical examinations of these properties, I may 
 state that such are made of those in the hands of subordinate 
 officers. But the examination of the great bulk of jewellery and 
 cloths would require a very lengthened time, and may seem unneces- 
 sary so long as the key of the jewellery-room is held by me, and for 
 which myself and the Controller are jointly responsible, and that of 
 the cloth-room by him, and for which he is responsible, besides the 
 regular Police Establishments, who look to the security of the room 
 from day to day and keep their accounts. After the first preparation 
 of the lists by Major Elliot, in 1868, an examination of the jewellery 
 was made by Mr. Gordon, when he was officiating Guardian, in con- 
 junction with the Controller, for the purpose of re-arranging them. 
 It occupied nearly two months, and the accuracy of the original 
 lists and the care with which these rooms have always been opened on 
 subsequent occasions, have been remarkably proved by the absence 
 of even a single error in the whole of this complicated property. 
 Such examinations, I need hardly add, cannot be resorted to fre- 
 quently with due regard to other work on hand, though it may some- 
 times be made with advantage, and I have only to assure the Chief 
 Commissioner that every attention is bestowed on the careful preser- 
 vation of the property and the proper keeping of the accounts. 
 
 " I have, etc., 
 
 " (Sd.) G. B. MALLESON, 
 " Guardian to H. H. the Maharajah of Mysore." 
 
 [Enclosure in the above.~\ 
 
 MEMORANDUM. 
 
 " The Proceedings of the Chief Commissioner, dated 30th November 
 1874, No. 135, place the circumstances of the robbery of cloths in 
 the Palace in such a light that I deem some explanation from me on 
 the subject necessary, and I beg to submit the same. 
 
 " 2. These Proceedings seem to be based on the judgment recorded 
 by the District Magistrate on the case. But the inquiry before that 
 officer being only directed to the trial and conviction of the prisoners 
 brought before him, any explanation of my action in the case can 
 hardly find a place in it. 
 
 " 3. First, with regard to the robbery of June 1872, I beg to state 
 that both myself and the Police Inspector, Mr. Vardon, were at the 
 time engaged in endeavouring to trace out the perpetrators of the 
 Treasury Robbery. Many persons were arrested and many houses 
 were searched without any success. In the course of this inquiry, 
 Mr. Vardon stated to me that he heard it mentioned that people 
 were in the habit of drawing and taking away, by hooked sticks 
 through the windows, cloths which were hung on the ropes in the 
 Gagan Mahal. I was able to tell him at once that though cloths 
 
58 
 
 used to be so hung in the late Maharajah's days, they were all now 
 in boxes, and that the report, like several others of the kind, was 
 probably invented by those apprehended in the Treasury Robbery case, 
 to put us on a wrong scent. I, however, thought it proper to open 
 and examine the room, and found, as I expected, no cloths hung on 
 ropes. My attention was necessarily drawn to the possibility of any 
 access to the room, and neither myself nor the departmental officers 
 who were all then with me could think of any. I noticed an iron 
 bar in one of the skylight windows of the room was wanting, and I 
 gave orders to the department concerned to have a new one fixed. 
 There was nothing, however, in the circumstances to lead to any sus- 
 picion, as the building was old, and the possibility of any access 
 through such narrow windows, thirty or forty feet from the ground, 
 in a room situated in the middle of the zenana, and within reach of 
 two guards, and in the vicinity of the cattle sheds, where several 
 servants, who were considered to be generally of good conduct, always 
 slept in the night, did not occur to my mind nor to the several 
 officers of experience who were then with me. That the Inspector 
 took no further notice of the matter, which, indeed, altogether passed 
 out of his mind, would show what he then thought of the report, and 
 it was only during my last inquiry that the circumstances brought to 
 light seemed to confirm the old reports, and I myself brought it to 
 notice. 
 
 " 4. On the second occasion I received a vague anonymous petition 
 charging the Karohutty servants with the theft of cloths. False 
 petitions of this description have always been numerous. Horses 
 were posted for the Maharajah, and I had to start at once for Ootaca- 
 mund. But I examined the room, found the bars in the window 
 originally repaired loose, which was to be attributed to the imperfect 
 manner in which the repair was made, or to actual theft. I examined 
 one of the boxes containing the more valuable cloths, which seemed to 
 contain a smaller number than usual. But, as cloths were expended 
 out of the box, the exact state of things could only be found by 
 examining the accounts. There was a suspicion of the robbery, and 
 whilst I could not postpone my journey or leave the key of the room 
 in any other hands, I made every adequate arrangement for the neces- 
 sary preparation of the accounts for my further examination after my 
 return, for placing additional guards in that part of the Palace, and, 
 what seemed to be most important of all, for watching the suspected 
 individuals. I returned about the 20th of May, and immediately set 
 to work. The accounts of the expenditure of cloths, which were 
 regularly kept in a book, had to be cast up in order to deduct the 
 same from the original list, and, with the accounts thus prepared, I 
 set myself to the examination of the 102 boxes in the room, which 
 necessarily occupied several days. The Guardian having also returned, 
 I communicated with him, and also gave information to the Magis- 
 trate and the Police Inspector. I must here explain that, owing to 
 the failure of the measures taken by the Police to trace the perpe- 
 trators of the Treasury Robbery, I was inclined to trust very much 
 to myself in the present case, and was especially anxious to avoid any 
 
59 
 
 needless display -which might put the perpetrators on their guard. 
 That, altogether, my plans were well concerted, and that, so far from 
 being ' supine', my days and nights were anxiously devoted to the 
 subject, would be seen from the fact that whilst the Police were not 
 able to make any discovery from the 17th June, when they had 
 information, to the 28th July, my exertions were crowned with suc- 
 cess. I succeeded in tracing out the perpetrators of the robbery, the 
 full information which I obtained led to some of them confessing, and 
 indications of the houses in which the stolen cloths were deposited, 
 were also obtained. I placed the particulars of the information I ob- 
 tained before the Magistrate, the confessions were taken down, the 
 suspected houses were searched, and a considerable number of 
 valuable cloths, with Palace marks, were found ; and thus, in the 
 course of a single day, the perpetrators were apprehended, with such 
 complete evidence as rendered their escape hopeless. I then left it 
 to the Police to discover the other cloths from the information given 
 by the prisoners, which they did successfully, in communication with 
 me. I may thus state, without intending any disparagement of the 
 efforts of the Police, that the discovery of the robbery in this instance 
 was entirely the result of my exertions and the measures which I 
 adopted.* Whilst I deeply deplored an event which could not have 
 been foreseen by me, and, when dispassionately looked into, could 
 only be regarded as a misfortune, I hoped that my exertions for the 
 discovery of the robbery would contribute to remove any discredit to 
 the department resulting from it. 
 
 " 5. As regards the arrangements existing for the security of pro- 
 perty in the Palace, they were carefully made by Major Elliot and 
 approved of by his successors, and I am not aware that any improve- 
 ment could be made in them. If any further instructions are given 
 on the subject, they will be obeyed. 
 
 "(Sd.) C. RUNGACHARLOO, 
 
 " Controller of H. H. the Maharajah's Household. 
 " Dated 22ud December 1874." 
 
 No. 164. 
 " MYSORE CHIEF COMMR.'S OFFICE, CAMP PALLIEM, 
 
 " llth Jan. 1875, Residency Department. 
 " To the GUARDIAN TO H. H. THE MAHARAJAH. 
 
 " SIR, I am directed to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, 
 dated the 22nd December 1874, forwarding a memo, from the Con- 
 troller giving an explanation of the circumstances connected with the 
 robbery of cloths in the Palace, and offering certain remarks in con- 
 nection therewith. 
 
 * A very remarkable fact indeed. Mr. Rungacharloo traced and 
 recovered some of the stolen goods when the Police were quite at fault. 
 
60 
 
 " 2. In reply, I am to state that the view taken by the Chief Com- 
 missioner in this case, as recorded in the order dated 30th November 
 
 1874, referred to by you, was formed on the Judicial Proceedings of 
 the District Magistrate who investigated it, and which was trans- 
 mitted by you as containing full particulars of the circumstances of 
 the robbery, and without any comment on its statements. As you 
 had been called on for a full report of these circumstances, it was 
 naturally concluded that the account of the facts given in the said 
 Proceeding was in all respects complete and satisfactory, and it is to 
 be regretted that the further explanation now submitted was not for- 
 warded with it, as the cause of the Controller's apparent inaction 
 when the second robbery came to his notice, which was commented on 
 in the order of 30th ultimo, is to some extent satisfactorily accounted 
 for now ; and the Chief Commissioner considers that the Controller 
 is entitled to be relieved to some extent from the imputation of 
 supineness to which he previously appeared to be fairly open. 
 
 " 3. There is, however, I am to remark, one point in this explana- 
 tion calling for notice, viz., that the looseness of the bars of the 
 window, found by Mr. Rungacharloo on his examinination of the room 
 on that occasion, was attributed by him to the imperfect manner in 
 which the previous repairs had been made. It seems to the Chief 
 Commissioner that this would have been impossible if as ought to 
 have been the case a duly responsible person had superintended the 
 repairs. With a ledge below the window, and the opposite house 
 only three feet across, the perfect security of the windows should 
 have been most jealously guarded, and there can be no question that 
 from inadvertence this was not the case. 
 
 " 4. From what has recently come to the Chief Commissioner's 
 knowledge in connection with this case, it appears that the most 
 valuable of the cloths are very rarely issued for use, and he thinks 
 that they should be packed in secure boxes separately by themselves, 
 which would admit of their being dealt with similarly to the jewels. 
 
 " 5. It is not, of course, desired to give any unnecessary trouble 
 in carrying out a periodical examination of the Palace valuables, in 
 respect to which you may make such arrangements as you may deem 
 most suitable and adequate. But an annual report of their security 
 and general condition appears, to Sir Richard Meade, to be necessary, 
 and he requests that a report may accordingly be made on 1st April 
 
 1875, as previously directed. 
 
 " I have, etc., 
 
 " (Signed) H. W. WELLESLEY, 
 
 " Ofg. Secretary:' 
 
 If Colonel Malleson, who, instructed by his ministerial subor- 
 dinate, Mr. Kungacharloo, had just testified to the perfect 
 accuracy of the original catalogue, had carried out Sir Richard 
 Meade's reiterated orders, he must soon have ascertained some 
 of the " great number of inaccuracies", and anticipated by nearly 
 three years the partial disclosures of 1877. But Sir Richard 
 
61 
 
 Meade's orders were not carried out, notwithstanding Mr. 
 Eungacharloo's assurances that all "instructions" should "be 
 obeyed". 
 
 No report was made on 1st April 1875, or in any subsequent 
 year. 
 
 (B.) 
 "No. 673 I. P. 
 
 " From SIR A. LYALL, K.C.B., Secretary to tlu Government 
 
 of India, 
 
 " To MAJOR EVANS BELL, LONDON. 
 " FOREIGN DEPARTMENT, dated Simla, the 26th August 1881. 
 " (Political.) 
 
 " SIR, I am directed to acknowledge the receipt of your letters, 
 dated respectively the 26th November and 17th December 1880, 
 regarding the Mysore State Jewels. 
 
 ["From ASSISTANT TO THE RESI- " 2. In reply, I am to forward, 
 DEXT ix MYSORE, for your information, copy of the 
 
 " No. 8, dated 23rd April 1881, correspondence marginally noted, 
 " To RESIDEXT ix MYSORE, which has reference on the sub- 
 " No. 463, I.P., dated 26th May ject. 
 1881.] 
 
 " I have the honour to be, Sir, 
 
 " Your most obedient servant, 
 
 "A. C. LYALL, 
 " Secretary to the Government of India. 
 
 " No. 8 (CAMP), dated Ootacamund 23rd April 1881. 
 " (Confidential.) 
 
 " From W. J. CUNINGHAM, Esq., Bo.C.S., Assistant to the 
 
 Resident in Mysore, 
 
 " To A. C. LYALL, Esq., C.B., Secretary to the Govt. of India, 
 Foreign Dept., Simla. 
 
 " I am directed by the Resident to forward, for the information of 
 His Excellency the Viceroy and Governor-General in Council, copies 
 of the receipt granted in acknowledgment of having received charge 
 of the Mysore Palace jewels by the officers appointed for the purpose 
 by His Highness the Maharajah, and of their report to His Highness. 
 
 " 2. It seemed to the Resident, I am to explain, to be expedient, with 
 regard to certain statements recently made, and to the inquiries 
 which had been instituted into the safety of the jewels, that special 
 steps should now be taken for delivering and receiving charge of 
 
62 
 
 these jewels, with the utmost care and precision, and he requested 
 that suitable arrangements should be made for doing so, and accord- 
 ingly His Highness appointed the undermentioned officers to go 
 through the lists of jewels, examine the jewels themselves, and, if 
 found correct, to give an acquittance for them to Colonel A. C. Hay, 
 late Commissioner of the Ashtagram Division, the officer who, under 
 the directions of the Chief Commissioner, had immediate charge of 
 them. 
 
 " 3. The officers were Bukshee Basavappajee Urs, Bukshee Viraraja 
 Urs, Bukshee Nunjaraja Urs, P. Krishna Row Rai Bahadur, A. R. 
 Sabanputty Mudaliar Rai Bahadur, and T. Ananda Row. The three 
 first are His Higbness's relations and principal officials in the Palace, 
 the two next following are members of the recently -formed Council 
 of His Highness the Maharajah, and the last is the officer who has 
 been in joint charge of the Palace establishments and jewels. 
 
 " 4. The nomination of these officers appeared to Mr. Gordon to 
 be perfectly suitable, and the result of their careful examination has 
 been quite satisfactory, entirely corroborating, as it does, the result 
 of the special inquiry made in October last under Mr. Gordon's per- 
 sonal supervision, which was duly reported to the Government of 
 India." 
 
 " Having, by Memorandum No. 1, dated 6th instant, from the Dewan 
 of Mysore,* been appointed by His Highness the Maharajah to take 
 over charge of the Palace jewels hitherto placed, under the orders of 
 the Chief Commissioner of Mysore, in charge of Colonel A. C. Hay, 
 Commissioner of the Ashtagram Division, and Assistant Commis- 
 sioner Mr. Ananda Row, in charge of Palace duties, and to give an 
 acquittance to the officers of the British Government referred to, we 
 have examined the said jewels and have submitted a report to His 
 Highness the Maharajah, copy of which we subjoin, in which we state 
 that we found all the jewels enumerated in Colonel Elliot's list, with 
 the exception of those otherwise accounted for, to be forthcoming as 
 described in the report of Mr. Gordon and other officers in December 
 1880, which we found to be correct in every particular ; and we 
 hereby acknowledge that we have received and taken charge of the 
 said jewels, with the keys of the jewel-room, the locks of which have 
 been secured under the seals of Bukshee Basavappajee Urs and 
 P. Krishna Row, Esq., Rai Bahadur, one of His Highness's Coun- 
 cillors. 
 
 " (Sd.) BUKSHEE BASAVAPPAJEE UES. 
 
 BUKSHEE VIRARAJA URS. 
 
 BUKSHEE NUNJARAJA URS. 
 
 P. KRISHNA Row. 
 
 A. R. SABANPUTTY MUDALIAR. 
 
 T. ANANDA Row. 
 
 "Mysore, 18th April 1881." 
 
 * Mr. C. Rungacharloo. 
 
" Dated Mysore, 18th April 1881. 
 
 " From BUKSHEE BASAVAPPAJEE URS and five others, 
 "To His HIGHNESS THE MAHARAJAH OF MYSORE. 
 
 " We, the undersigned, beg respectfully to submit that, in pur- 
 suance of your Highness's instructions, conveyed through the Dewan, 
 and the wishes of the British Resident, communicated by Colonel Hay, 
 we proceeded to take an account of the Palace jewels in presence of 
 that gentleman. The operation commenced on Saturday the 9th 
 instant, and was concluded on Saturday the 16th. 
 
 " We took for our guide the original list of 1868, prepared under 
 the orders of Colonel Elliot, and the Palace diaries, and went on 
 examining jewel by jewel, noting down against each number any 
 little variation in the number of precious stones, etc., that might be 
 noticed. In cases of doubtful identity, we counted the most valuable 
 precious stones in the jewel, and in a few instances had the article 
 weighed, or the metal assayed as necessity arose, and were thus 
 enabled satisfactorily to identify the whole of the jewels. 
 
 " Our task was greatly facilitated by the minute examination made 
 by Mr. Gordon and other officers in October 1880, the report of which 
 found to be correct in every particular, and by the excellent classifi- 
 cation and arrangement of the jewels made by the Palace authorities. 
 
 " Feeling thus satisfied that all the jewels enumerated in Colonel 
 Elliot's list, with the exception of those that are noted as being 
 otherwise disposed of, or in Your Highness's own use, are forthcoming 
 and are identical, we have taken over charge of the jewel-room, and 
 put on an additional padlock, with our several seals affixed on it, 
 pending further instructions, and have likewise given an acquittance 
 to Colonel Hay, a copy of which we humbly submit for Your High- 
 ness's information." 
 
 " No. 463 I.P., dated SIMLA.. 26th May 1881. 
 " From SECRETARY TO THE GOVT. OF INDIA, Foreign Dept., 
 " To RESIDENT, Mysore. 
 
 " I am directed to acknowledge the receipt of your Assistant's 
 letter Xo. 8 of the 23rd April 1881, regarding the transfer of the 
 Palace jewels to His Highness the Maharajah. 
 
 "2. Having regard to the importance of the matter, you very 
 properly arranged for a careful examination of the jewels, before 
 transfer, by officers of the Mysore Durbar ; and their report, enclosed 
 in your letter, is entirely satisfactory. I am to say that your pro- 
 ceedings are approved by the Government of India." 
 
64 
 
 " From MAJOR EVANS BELL, 
 
 " To the SECRETARY TO THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA IN THE 
 FOREIGN DEPARTMENT, CALCUTTA. 
 
 "110, HOLLAND ROAD, KENSINGTON, LONDON, W. 
 
 "September 30th, 1881. 
 
 " SIR, I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your letter 
 No. 673, I. P., dated the 26th of August 1881, enclosing for my infor- 
 mation copy of a letter from the Assistant Resident in Mysore, dated 
 the 23rd of April, and of a receipt and report signed by Basavappajee 
 Urs and five others, dated the 18th of May last, relating to the 
 transfer of the Mysore Palace jewels from the charge of certain 
 British officers into the custody of the Maharajah's own servants. 
 The Government of India, in a letter to the Resident in Mysore, 
 No. 463, I. P., dated the 26th of May last, with a copy of which I am 
 also furnished, pronounce the proceedings regarding this transfer to 
 be entirely satisfactory. 
 
 " 2. The communication with which I have thus been honoured is 
 made, you inform me, with reference to my letters dated respectively 
 the 26th of November and the 17th of December 1880, with which 
 I beg to be allowed to associate the Memorandum on the Mysore 
 jewels, published with my initials, E. B., in the Calcutta Statesman on 
 the 7th of April and 16th of June 1880. 
 
 " 3. That Memorandum, which was, of course, written in the hope of 
 leading to some inquiry and to certain precautions, has already been 
 noticed in the proceedings of the Government of India, No. 813, 
 dated 25th December 1880, and in a despatch to the Secretary of 
 State, No. 114, dated the 29th of December 1880, which are pub- 
 lished in the Papers presented to Parliament, C 3026 of 1881. 
 
 " 4. I considered it my duty, in the last paragraph of that Memo- 
 randum, after pointing out what seemed to me to be grave reasons 
 for an independent inquiry, to urge that ' if the very same func- 
 tionaries who had been singled out by circumstances for sole respon- 
 sibility, were to be left unprotected by any inquiry or supervision, to 
 hand over to the young Maharajah, by their own method and pro- 
 cess, property valued in 1868 at more than 350,000, and virtually 
 to grant themselves an acquittance, the seed would be sown for 
 future crops in mischievous rotation of incurable scandals and unan- 
 swerable claims'. I learn from the papers you have now forwarded 
 to me, that the very course which I humbly ventured to deprecate 
 has been pursued. No independent inquiry has been made ; no pre- 
 cautions have been taken. Sir James Gordon, lately Chief Commis- 
 
65 
 
 sioner and Guardian, now Resident, and Mr. C. Rungacharloo, for- 
 merly Controller of the Household, now Dewan, have been left to 
 effect the transfer by their own method and process, and have granted 
 themselves a mutual acquittance. 
 
 " 5. I considered it my duty in the last paragraph of my letter 
 dated the 26th of November 1880, to remind the Government of 
 India that the persons within the Mysore territory most deeply 
 interested, and most fully informed as to the jewel affairs, as well as 
 those who must be more or less implicated in any irregularities or 
 malpractices, if any such had occurred, were either persons in 
 authority, or under authority, either in a position to dominate, or 
 liable to intimidation. I ventured, therefore, with great deference, 
 to urge that any investigation guided and presided over by the local 
 authorities in Mysore, must be delusive and inconclusive, and that 
 the agency for such an investigation ought to be, as recommended by 
 Captain F. A. Wilson in 1877, ' special', and, I added, of unquestion- 
 able independence. The papers published, and the papers now for- 
 warded by you to me, show that no real investigation has been made ; 
 that such ostensible inquiries as have taken place have been guided 
 and presided over by the local authorities ; that the several Com- 
 mittees appointed to examine, transfer, and receive charge of, the 
 Mysore jewels, have been selected by Sir James Gordon, as Chief 
 Commissioner and Resident, and by Mr. C. Rungacharloo as Secretary 
 and Dewan. Not only was the Committee assembled in October 1880 
 to examine the jewels composed of Mr. Gordon's own subordinates, 
 but it was composed exclusively of officers who at one time or another 
 had been partially in charge of the jewels. According to Sir James 
 Gordon's own despatch of the 18th of December 1880, ' specific 
 statements' having been made, he seriously announces to the Govern- 
 ment of India that he has met the specific statements by combining 
 all the persons whom they affect, more or less, into a Committee to 
 give them a general contradiction. 
 
 " 6. In the same letter, I ventured to urge on the Government of 
 India that the main point for investigation being the actual present 
 value of the jewels, as compared with the estimated value of 1868, 
 a valuation was essential. I learn from the receipt and report ap- 
 pended to your letter to me, dated 18th April 1881, from Bukshee 
 Basavappajee Urs, and five others, appointed by the Dewan, Mr. 
 (.'. Rungacharloo, that no valuation of the jewels was made by 
 them. 
 
 " Moreover, I learn from Enclosure No. 5 of the despatch from 
 the Government of India to the Secretary of State, No. 114, dated 
 the 29th of December 1880, that no valuation of the jewels was 
 made by the Committee assembled under the guidance and control of 
 Mr. Gordon and Mr. Rungacharloo at Mysore in 1880. Mr. P. N. 
 Krishna Murti, Deputy-Commissioner, states, in answer to Ques- 
 tion 7 : ' I am no judge of the values, and no proper valuation was 
 now taken.' 
 
66 
 
 " 7. The Government of India not having judged it necessary or 
 advisable to make any such inquiry, or to take any such precautions 
 as I considered it my duty to suggest, before handing over charge of 
 the Mysore jewels to the Maharajah, I do not conceive that it 
 would be either useful or becoming for me to submit any further 
 observations on the subject for the judgment of the Government of 
 India. 
 
 " I have the honour to be, Sir, 
 
 " Your most obedient servant, 
 
 " EVANS BELL, Major, 
 " Late of the Madras Staff Corps." 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 I have said at page 52 of this Letter that the sequestration 
 of Mysore in 1832 was " unwarranted". That the sequestration 
 of the State was not warranted, either from the subsidy being 
 in arrears or in jeopardy, or by any other provision in the Treaty, 
 or by the exigencies of the time, I shall prove clearly in 
 
 SOME WORDS AND WORK OF 
 GENERAL JOHN BRIGGS, 
 
 which I hope to publish before the end of the year. I shall, also, 
 show why, in the interests of the Empire, these facts ought to be 
 understood and appreciated. 
 
A 
 
 LETTER 
 
 TO 
 
 H. M. DURAND, ESQ., C.S.I., 
 
 MAJOR EVANS BELL. 
 
LETTER 
 
 TO 
 
 H. M. DUKAND, ESQ., C.S.I., 
 
 OF THE BENGAL CIVIL SERVICE, BAKKISTER-AT-LAW ; 
 
 MAJOR EVANS BELL, 
 
 LATK OF THE MADRAS STAFF CORPS; 
 LCTHOH OF "LAST COVXSKLS OF AN UVKNOWN COUVSELLOR", "THE oxus AND THE INDUS' 
 
 " RKTKOSPECTS AND PROSPECTS OF INDIAN I'OLICV", ETC. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY 
 
 1834. 
 
LONDON : 
 WHITING AND CO., LIMITED, SAB&OIA STREET, LINCOLN's-INN-PJELDS. 
 
NOTICE. 
 
 I WISH to explain, in as few words as possible, that although the 
 publication of this Letter is forced upon me by a personal attack, 
 it is not merely to a personal controversy, or to a private grievance, 
 that I ask public attention. I claim to represent the interests of 
 the Empire in opposition to Mr. H. M. Durand, who champions 
 the interests of a family, a class, and a profession. 
 
 A Prince of the Empire, marked out by the Imperial Govern- 
 ment in 1858 as one of the intended recipients of " honorary dis- 
 tinctions" and " territorial grants", in reward for services rendered 
 during the rebellion, has received no reward at all, and has, on the 
 contrary, been treated with contumely and calumny. Against this 
 treatment he has continuously protested, more especially since its 
 renewal in 1870, but without obtaining redress. 
 
 The only Eesident at a Native Court of any consequence who 
 broke down completely in the crisis of 1857 was Colonel (afterwards 
 Sir Henry) Durand, in charge of the Residency at Indore, Holkar's 
 capital, during the absence of Sir Robert Hamilton. He was so 
 blind as to what was passing close to his own doors ; so neglectful 
 of friendly intercourse with the Court and its notabilities ; so arro- 
 gantly regardless of Native counsels and opinions, that a combined 
 attack by mutineers in our service and in that of Holkar took him 
 quite by surprise, forced him to leave the Residency, and to take 
 refuge in the British station of Hoshungabad. Here he jumped to 
 the conclusion that Holkar was implicated in the revolt ; declared, 
 in the style of Napoleon, " The dynasty of Holkar has ceased to 
 reign", and denounced the Maharajah's " Mahratta treachery" in 
 his despatches. But at that very time the Maharajah was co- 
 operating most gallantly with the English gentlemen who had 
 taken up Colonel Durand' s duties during his unlucky retirement. 
 Colonel Durand would give no credit to Holkar or to any of his 
 own brother officers for what was done while he was absent from 
 the scene. He ever afterwards acted as if any acknowledgment 
 on his part of Holkar's good influence and services would leave his 
 own failure and flight without excuse. Circumstances placed him 
 for eleven years in a position to prevent any redress of the injustice 
 done to the Maharajah. His Assistants and successors at Calcutta 
 have always made common cause with him, as English officials 
 generally incline to do where the appellant, even though he may 
 
VI 
 
 be a Prince, is "only a Native". In the words of Sir John Kaye, 
 the historian of the Sepoy [Pay',"Holkar was sacrificed to Durand". 
 I will add, and I will prove, that the authority, the dignity, and 
 the honour of the Empire, have been sacrificed to sustain the 
 interests and the credit of " the Office" and " the Service". 
 
 I will now give, in the most striking and succinct form that sug- 
 gests itself to me, a brief hint and outline of the hitherto unequal 
 contest that has been going on, in this matter, between 
 
 IMPERIAL INSTRUCTIONS AND 
 
 OFFICIAL OBSTRUCTIONS. 
 
 1858-1860. 
 
 Lord Stanley (now Earl of Derby) 
 President of the Board of Control, 
 writes as follows (through the 
 Secret Committee of the Court of 
 Directors), on the 28th of July 
 1858, to the Governor- General : 
 
 " We desire that you will, as ex- 
 peditiously as possible, furnish 'us 
 with a list of those Princes, Chiefs, 
 and others, who have distinguished 
 themselves by acts of fidelity and 
 friendship to the British Govern- 
 ment, together with a statement of 
 their services, and of your views 
 with respect to the best means of 
 rewarding them, whether by terri- 
 torial grants, by pensions or gra- 
 tuities, or by honorary distinctions. 
 
 " The first of these modes would 
 doubtless be the most acceptable 
 to those whom we desire to gratify. 
 
 " High on the list you will, we 
 feel assured, place the names of 
 Scindia, HOLKAR, the Nizam, and 
 the King of Nepaul." 
 
 In a despatch, dated 31st De- 
 cember 1858, Lord Stanley, Secre- 
 tary of State for India, observes 
 that he is waiting for a reply to 
 the letter just quoted, and adds : 
 
 " I trust no long time will elapse 
 before I receive from your Lordship 
 further reports of the same kind, 
 including the names of the more 
 'influential Princes of India, especi- 
 ally those of the Maharajahs Scindia 
 and HOLKAR, and of his Highness 
 the Nizam." 
 
 Territorial rewards were con- 
 ferred upon " Scindia, the Nizam, 
 and the King of Nepaul". But 
 with regard to the fourth Prince, 
 " high on the list" of those whom 
 Her Majesty's Government " de- 
 sired to gratify", the Viceroy, Lord 
 Canning, in a despatch dated Janu- 
 ary 16th, 1860, wrote as follows : 
 
 " It is not my intention to pro- 
 pose that his Highness" (the Maha- 
 rajah HOLKAR) "should receive 
 any gift of territory. His conduct 
 on the day on which his troops 
 mutinied and attacked the P^esi- 
 dency at Indore was not such as to 
 command either the respect or the 
 gratitude of the British Govern- 
 ment." 
 
 This dishonouring and insulting 
 sentence was not preceded, accom- 
 panied, or followed by any justifica- 
 tion or explanation. 
 
VI 1 
 
 1864. 
 
 Her Majesty's Government, hav- 
 ing never been told why Holkar 
 was blamed and unfavourably dis- 
 tinguished from the other Princes 
 in the list, Sir John (now Lord) 
 Lawrence, soon after his arrival 
 as Viceroy at Calcutta, receives 
 from Sir Charles Wood (now Lord 
 Halifax), Secretary of State, a 
 letter dated 4th of July 1864, 
 inquiring why no reward had 
 been conferred on the Maharajah 
 HOLKAR, and asks for information 
 from the " Office". 
 
 In answer to Sir John Lawrence's 
 requisition, Colonel Durand, now 
 Foreign Secretary to the Govern- 
 ment of India, sends up a secret 
 " Office-note", dated August 4th, 
 1864, to the Viceroy in Council, 
 with these words : 
 
 " HOLKAR has got all that Lord 
 Canning thought he should get. 
 He was, also, given the Star of 
 India why, no one could ever 
 make out and it deteriorated the 
 value of the decoration in the eyes 
 of those who, like the Begum of 
 Bhopal, knew HOLKAR'S conduct." 
 
 These remarks, as will be shown 
 more fully and clearly in my Letter, 
 are at once unmannerly and un- 
 meaning. They were accompanied 
 by no explanatory statement. 
 
 1870. 
 
 The Earl of Mayo, Viceroy of 
 India, unable to account for HOL- 
 K AH'S disgrace and forfeiture, asks 
 for information from "the Office". 
 
 In answer to Lord Mayo's requi- 
 sition, the Foreign Secretary, Mr. 
 (now Sir Charles) Aitchison sends 
 up a secret "Office-note", dated 
 5th August 1870, of which the 
 following is an extract : 
 
 " HOLKAR did not, at the first 
 burst of the mutiny, take that 
 open and decided part with us 
 that he ought to have done. The 
 attack upon the Indore Residency 
 occurred on the 1st July 1857. 
 It was not till the 5th that he 
 took any decided steps to show 
 with which cause he intended to 
 throw in his lot." 
 
 " On the 5th of July the Mahara- 
 jah, and not before, sent a deputa- 
 tion to Mhow to express his regret 
 at what had occurred." 
 
 This was the first intelligible charge that had ever been made 
 against the Maharajah Holkar, and it is entirely false. It has no 
 foundation in any official report, and it is contradicted by official 
 reports on record, 
 
 My lamented friend, John IMukinson, had occupied himself for 
 
Vlll 
 
 years with Indian politics, as other men of large means and abun- 
 dant leisure may take up horse-racing, numismatics, or entomology. 
 He had a friendly correspondent, Captain Fenwick, in Holkar's ser- 
 vice,* and thus became acquainted, from day to day, with all the in- 
 cidents of the rebellion, and with all the perverse influences by which 
 the Maharajah Holkar's character was maligned and his life em- 
 bittered. Mr. Dickinson worked at the redress of this great wrong 
 until his death, and left it as a legacy to me, previous arrangements 
 having been made so that I should be enabled on occasion, and as 
 opportunity offered, to give some time to the very unprofitable pur- 
 suit of what Mr. H. M. Durand would call " a hired advocate", or 
 " a paid agitator". 
 
 I have tried, with my very modest appliances, and in my very 
 obscure position, to fulfil to the utmost the responsibilities thus 
 entailed iipon me. I was really beginning to think that I had 
 done my utmost, and that my responsibilities were drawing to a 
 close. I was on the point of telling both appellant and judge that 
 I had made my last effort, when Mr. H. M. Durand insists on a 
 combat a entrance which I had hardly contemplated, and compels 
 publicity being given to certain details which I had intended to 
 keep in reserve. I cannot profess to regret this compulsion, either 
 on private or on public 'grounds. 
 
 Since Mr. H. M. Durand has ventured to accuse me, without 
 subverting, or, indeed, impugning, anything that I have written, of 
 having published " a tissue of untruths", " a string of misstate- 
 ments", I have placed in the British Museum a copy of a volume 
 called Holkar's Appeal, containing all the documents and pieces 
 justificatives quoted in the following pages, and in the Last Counsels 
 of an Unknown Counsellor. I have placed another copy in the 
 London Library, and have distributed a few more where attention 
 is likely to be given to them. 
 
 KB. 
 
 * See Last Counsels of an Unknown Counsellor (Macmillan, 1877), p. 20. 
 
TO 
 
 H. M. DUEAND, ESQ., C.S.I., 
 
 OF THE BENGAL CIVIL SEEVICE, BAEBISTER-AT-LAW ; 
 
 Author of Central India in 1857,* and of the Life of Sir Henry Marion 
 Durancl, K.C.S.L, C.B.f 
 
 SlB, 
 
 On the best and latest authorities I find that you 
 hold the place of Under- Secretary to the Government 
 of India in the Foreign and Political Department, and 
 that you held it in December, 1883, when you published 
 the second work mentioned in the superscription of this 
 letter. Those who have the best experience and opinion 
 of your talents, will not deny that this early preferment 
 was partly due to your father's professional and social 
 connections. It would but be in accordance with Anglo- 
 Indian tradition and precedent if you were to look 
 forward to rising from the second to the highest place 
 in that Office over which Sir Henry Durand presided for 
 five years, and exercised considerable control for five 
 subsequent years. That Secretaryship, you tell us, 
 " has been, and is still, regarded as the blue riband of the 
 Civil Service, is greatly coveted for its own sake, and is 
 an almost certain stepping-stone to the highest posts in 
 the Empire. "J In the meantime you seem to have 
 formed a sufficiently high estimate of your duties, and of 
 the qualifications demanded for their fulfilment. At the 
 beginning of the chapter in which you describe your 
 father's tenure of that appointment, you observe that it 
 
 * Ridgway, Piccadilly, 1876 ; originally published as an article in the 
 Calcutta Review for April, 1876. 
 
 t \V. H. Allen, Waterloo Place, 1883. 
 
 Life of Sir Henry Dnrand, vol. i, p. 282. 
 
 B 
 
is " one of the most interesting and important in India. 
 The control of our relations with the feudatory States of 
 India, comprising one fourth of the entire continent, and 
 containing a population of nearly sixty millions, is", as 
 you very justly observe, "a weighty task, and requires 
 much firmness and tact." " Such qualifications", you 
 continue, "are rare, and they should be possessed by an 
 Indian Foreign Secretary ; for, as regards this important 
 branch of our Indian policy, he is in fact the responsible 
 adviser and right hand of the Viceroy." It is, indeed, 
 as you remark, " hardly too much to say that, by the 
 bulk of the Native Chiefs, his office is regarded as second 
 in importance only to that of the Viceroy."* 
 
 Neither the question of your possessing the "rare 
 qualifications" for this important office, nor that of your 
 father having possessed them, would ever have been 
 raised by me, had you not forced rne to enter on them 
 both by a very serious personal charge. You accuse me 
 of having published a book which you declare to be "a 
 tissue of untruth". The feeble style in which you deliver 
 this poisoned and Parthian dart, in the very last 
 paragraph of your Appendix, betrays a deficiency both 
 in " tact " and in " firmness". The blow, as I shall prove, 
 is a foul one and badly aimed. You say that the 
 " attacks " upon your " father's character", on the subject 
 of his treatment of the Maharajah Holkar, have been 
 " shameless", . " violent and acrimonious", and that "it 
 would now be equally impossible and useless" to "avoid 
 the controversy "; t and yet you do avoid it. You did 
 not answer my book, Last Counsels of an Unknown 
 Counsellor, when it appeared, and you " do not purpose" 
 to do so now although its " refutation " would have 
 been "clear and easy"- because you are "assured" it 
 must "die a natural death". "Firmness" is decidedly 
 wanting here. 
 
 There seems to me to be a want of " tact" in the use 
 
 of offensive and provoking language without justifying 
 
 its use by reason and evidence. If my book had really 
 
 been a "violent and acrimonious tissue of untruth", "a 
 
 * Vol. i, pp. 280, 282. t Pp. 236, 476. 
 
3 
 
 string of misstatements",* its refutation must have been 
 to you, with all the records of Government, and all your 
 father's papers, at your command, the most easy matter 
 in the world. Yet you have not attempted it. There is 
 neither " firmness" nor " tact" in calling Mr. Dickinson 
 " a pamphleteer", or in making dark hints about " paid 
 advocates" and "hired agitators", .while you express a 
 hope that the book, which you cannot answer, may " die 
 a natural death". Such language is not, in any sense of 
 the word, strong. It is at once evasive and abusive. 
 Language is never truly strong, unless it is just. The 
 charge, moreover, you bring against Mr. Dickinson and 
 myself, of being "violent and acrimonious", is utterly 
 unfounded. You are as incapable of justifying it as you 
 are of justifying the more serious charge of "untruth" 
 which, to adopt your language but not your tactics, I 
 now find it " impossible to avoid". I do not intend to 
 avoid it. Without imitating your acrimonious language, 
 I retort that charge in substance upon you, and shall 
 prove it up to the hilt. 
 
 The Protest and Rejoinder on behalf of the Maharajah 
 Holkar, which formed the second portion of the Last 
 Counsels of an Unknown Counsellor, is rightly called by 
 you " the posthumous work of Mr. John Dickinson". t 
 Had he lived, he would have been solely responsible for it, 
 and my name, in all probability, would not have appeared 
 at all. He was a wealthy and influential man, and I was 
 his paid assistant. At his death I revised and published 
 the book, a great part of which I had written. I then 
 became alone responsible for what you venture to charac- 
 terise as " a tissue of untruth". With my name on the 
 title-page, and my statement that I had " for a long time 
 been associated" with Mr. Dickinson in his work,J all 
 this was obvious enough, and had been, also, made known 
 to you by my private explanations when the book was 
 published. Under these circumstances, I can see no 
 "tact" in your affected aversion "to speak of Mr. 
 
 * P. 476. f Life of Sir H. Durand, vol. i, pp. 463, 476. 
 
 J Last Counsels of an Unknown Counsellor (Macmillan & Co., 1877), 
 p. 59. 
 
 B 2 
 
Dickinson in the tone which he", according to your com- 
 plaint, "adopted towards your father and yourself",* 
 while you insult him by impeaching his veracity. You 
 make no attempt to justify that impeachment, because 
 " Mr. Dickinson is dead", and because you are " assured" 
 his posthumous work will "certainly die a natural death". 
 I can see no " firmness" in this manoeuvre to the rear. 
 Your assurance was very ill-founded. The book is intact, 
 and Mr. Dickinson's representative is alive. 
 
 You should have remembered that the book in question 
 was a rejoinder to the pamphlets published by General 
 Travers and yourself. You might have remarked a 
 peculiar difference in the style with which I treated his 
 pamphlet and yours. Notwithstanding his bitter pre- 
 judice against Holkar, blindly accepted from his personal 
 friend, Colonel Durand, in General Travers I always 
 recognised a chivalrous and gallant soldier, and a perfectly 
 trustworthy informant as to matters that had fallen under 
 his own observation. He is one of my most important 
 witnesses, the more valuable because reluctant and 
 hostile. 
 
 But I charged you with misstatements and exaggera- 
 tions which could not easily be explained or excused even 
 with the most liberal allowance for filial respect and 
 affection. Your method of meeting this charge is peculiar. 
 You will not answer my book, but you admit that you 
 " have been accused of exaggerating ".f You then main- 
 tain and repeat the exaggerations of your pamphlet in 
 more vague and general terms, omitting the salient 
 points that had made my exposure of your inaccuracy so 
 effective and so conspicuous. For example, in the large 
 volume you no longer say that your father " saw the 
 whole of Holkar's troops surging up to surround the 
 Residency ". | Still, as they stand at present, the ex- 
 aggerations, direct or suggested, are sufficiently remark- 
 able in your later publication. 
 
 *' The attack," you say, " w~as no longer a tentative one. 
 Encouraged by the impunity with which the guns had 
 
 * Vol. i, p. 47G. t P. 467. { Central India in 1857, p. o5. 
 
for nearly two hours cannonaded the Kesidency, Holkar's 
 troops in the City came pouring up to their support."* 
 
 And then you go on to say that Holkar had " nine good 
 English guns, 1,400 Cavalry and about 2,000 Infantry", 
 and that " the lines were rapidly emptied " just as if all 
 these troops had appeared on the scene, or had made a 
 threatening demonstration. Refusing to answer or notice 
 my "violent and acrimonious" book, in the hope that it 
 may " die a natural death ", you remain obstinately silent 
 as to the conclusive evidence therein adduced that no such 
 demonstration was made. Dr. Charles Thomson, in 
 medical charge, who was present during the attack, and 
 accompanied Colonel Durand's retreat, in the written 
 statement he made on the 22nd of January, 1858, says : 
 
 " After having retired a very short distance from the Kesidency, 
 the mutineers did not molest us, and during the whole of the mutiny 
 
 I ni fcr saw any of the mutineers.""^ 
 
 A fortiori, he never saw " Holkar's troops pouring up", 
 " Cavalry, Infantry, and Artillery pouring up in a mass", 
 " the whole of Holkar's troops surging up", " surging up 
 to surround the Residency, masses of Holkar's troops, 
 consisting of 1,400 Cavalry, 2,000 Infantry, and 25 to 30 
 guns, besides any amount of armed rabble from the city."J 
 
 The unimpeachable evidence of your father's friend, 
 General Travers, which I shall quote in a passage from 
 your own book, proves likewise that neither he nor your 
 tat her saw, or fancied they saw, any additional force of 
 Holkar's troops from the City arriving to join in the 
 attack on the Residency. This is what you say : 
 
 " The overwhelming strength of the enemy's force on this 
 occasion has never, I think, been fully realised. General Travers 
 in his pamphlet speaks of the ' overwhelming numbers ' against 
 us ; but he further describes the force as follows : ' Three field 
 guns, one more or less damaged, nine or ten companies of Infantry, 
 
 * Vol. i, p. 215. 
 
 t Letter from Governor-General's Agent to Secretary in Foreign 
 Department (General No. 309A), No. 47, 9th February, 1858; Last 
 Counsels, p. 99. 
 
 { Central //><//>/ in 1857, pp. 53, 54, 55. 
 
and an increasing armed crowd from the City.' Similarly, Colonel 
 Malleson writes of " six hundred trained Sepoys, swelled by the 
 constantly augmenting rabble of the City."* 
 
 But where are the " nine good English guns, the 1,400 
 Cavalry, and the 2,000 Infantry", "surging up" ? You 
 do not give us the explanatory statement of Colonel 
 Malleson, from the. personal information of General 
 Travers, that the force of " six hundred trained Sepoys" 
 consisted of "about two hundred of all ranks of Holkar's 
 men, and the Contingent Infantry"- our own Sepoys 
 " who just about this time fairly went over to the rebels." t 
 There is nothing here as to " Holkar's troops from the 
 City pouring up to their support ". 
 
 Neither in his original military despatch, enclosed in 
 Colonel Durand's letter to Government, dated Hoshunga- 
 bad, 9th of July, 1857, nor in the equally modest and 
 candid narrative of his exploit published in 1876, does 
 General Travers speak of any assailants or opponents 
 except the " Regular Infantry" and " three guns", " sent 
 by the Maharajah Holkar for the protection of the 
 Residency", and " an armed crowd from the direction of 
 ' the City'." He never said one word as to any hostile 
 Cavalry, additional guns, or troops of any description 
 arriving or looming in the distance. 
 
 In describing the first incidents of the attack, you say 
 that the guns " were supported by Holkar's Cavalry".| 
 This is an utterly unfounded and unwarrantable mis- 
 statement, contradicted by the military despatch of 
 Major Travers, as well as by the gallant General's 
 published narrative of 1876. There is nothing to show 
 that even as many as a dozen rebel horsemen were 
 seen by anyone in addition to the " eight troopers" who, 
 according to General Travers, accompanied Saadut 
 Khan, and who doubtless were cowed by the dashing 
 
 fr Vol. i, Appendix, pp. 466, 467. 
 
 t Mallesoris History of the Indian Mutiny, vol. i (Allen, 1878), foot- 
 note to. p. 224. See also General Travers' "Evacuation of Indore (H. S. 
 King & Co., 1876), pp. 9 and 56. 
 
 + J J . 214. Evacuation of Indore, p. 12. 
 
charge of the English Commandant, in which their leader 
 was wounded. 
 
 You say, quite correctly, that " the force from the 
 Residency retired at a walk".* 
 
 The party consisted of seventeen English persons, 
 besides eight women and two children. General Travers 
 says, " Our draught bullocks could riot be forced beyond a 
 rate of two and a half to three miles an hour."t If even 
 a hundred horsemen to say nothing of " masses" or 
 " swarms pouring up "- had intervened or pursued, the 
 whole party must have been massacred. 
 
 The gross and palpable exaggerations of your pam- 
 phlet, unretracted. but reproduced in a more shadowy 
 form, in your large book, are not only unsupported but 
 absolutely contradicted by the recorded, statements of 
 General Travers and of Sir Henry Durand. For example, 
 Colonel Durand, writing to Lord Lovaine on September 
 the 29th, 1857, speaks of "the humiliation of being forced 
 to withdraw before an enemy that I despised, and who, 
 could I have got anything to fight, would have been easily 
 beaten back. As it was, with only fourteen Golundauz 
 w T ho would stand by their guns, we not only held our 
 own for about a couple of hours, but beat back their 
 guns, and gained temporary advantage. We retired 
 unmolested in the face of superior masses. "\ Can any- 
 one believe that Holkar's troops, " Cavalry, Infantry, and 
 Artillery in a mass, with additional guns", " swarming ", 
 "surging", and "pouring up", could have been " easily 
 beaten back" by Colonel Durand and his "fourteen 
 Golundauz", or if he had seen them, would have been 
 " despised " ? Observe particularly that Colonel Durand 
 says he was "forced to withdraw before " the " enemy he 
 despised", not before "masses", whom he could not 
 have despised, "swarming", " surging" or "pouring up ". 
 The " masses ", the " swarms ", the " Cavalry cutting off 
 the retreat ", existed only in the treacherous voices of our 
 Mahidpore and Bhopal Sepoys, with whom the hasty and 
 
 * P. 471. t Evacuation of Indore, p. 16. 
 
 J Kaye's Sepoy War, vol. iii, pp. 332, 333 ; Last Counsels, p. 105. 
 
half-pretended attack of Holkar's detachment was con- 
 certed. 
 
 The exaggerations in which you persist compel me to 
 call attention to the true nature and proportions of the 
 attack on the Indore Residency. You speak of the 
 imaginary mass of Holkar's troops " pouring up from the 
 City", having been "encouraged by the impunity with 
 which the guns had for nearly two hours cannonaded the 
 Residency."* More remarkable than " the impunity" of 
 the cannonade was its ineffectiveness. Here is your own 
 description of the Residency. It "was a stone building, 
 standing in an open space, and pierced in the lower story 
 by some five-and-twenty or thirty glass and Venetian doors, 
 incapable ", according to Colonel Malleson, " of resisting 
 even a kick."t "Holkar's guns", you say in another 
 place, " had now moved round to their original position, 
 where they had more shelter, and were pouring a well- 
 directed fire of round shot and grape into the Residency 
 building itself. This did little harm, beyond breaking a 
 few panes of glass. "J 
 
 In this cannonade of two hours " well directed," you 
 say, for some time a few panes of glass were broken, 
 and only one of the English defenders, Sergeant Murphy, 
 was wounded. " In the fight itself", you say, " our loss 
 had not been heavy. A few Bhopal Contingent horsemen, 
 a few Bheels and some bullocks were killed ; and one of 
 the European sergeants was wounded. These were the 
 only casual ties. " 
 
 The affair of the Indore Residency was, with the 
 exception of the daring charge of Major Travers, entirely 
 an artillery duel, in which all the skill, and probably all 
 the real fighting, was on our side, and in which our side 
 had the best of it ; for while only one of the men with our 
 guns was wounded, we disabled one of the enemy's guns, 
 which is not likely to have occurred without some of the 
 enemy being killed. It is not easy to understand how so 
 many cannon-balls could fly about harmlessly ; and you 
 may be right in saying that " a few Bhopal horsemen, a 
 
 * P. 215. t P. 466, footnote. + P. 215. P. 210. 
 
few Bheels and some bullocks were killed". But there is 
 much reason to believe that the assailants had no wish to 
 hurt any of our Sepoys, with whom the outbreak was 
 concerted. Colonel Durand, in his despatch of 13th 
 August, 1857, says : " There cannot be the slightest 
 doubt that the attack on the Residency was concerted 
 with the Bhopal and Malwa Contingents, and with the 
 conspiracy of the Mhow troops." 
 
 It was in the fact that Major Travers did not know 
 what he was charging that the gallantry of the deed 
 which won him the Victoria Cross consisted. For all he 
 knew, he was leading five troopers against three guns sup- 
 ported by a compact body of Infantry. He was really 
 attacking a halfhearted and bewildered body of mutineers, 
 without a leader, without any object except that of 
 plundering the Residency, and without any intention of 
 coming to blows with their treacherous accomplices. 
 Major Travers could only rally five of his men to follow 
 him for five minutes. It was treachery, not physical 
 cowardice, that kept his men back. The General himself, 
 with that touching reluctance to abandon faith in his own 
 men that was admirably but fatally conspicuous in so 
 many instances during the mutinies, talked to the last of 
 their " loyalty", and of distrust and panic among them. 
 But there was no panic : there was, as you say, treason 
 in their ranks. General Travers, in a passage which you 
 quote,* states that when he tried to form the picket for 
 his charge on the guns, the formation was three times 
 broken from the rear by a native officer, who was after- 
 wards hung for his misconduct.t It was, also, proved at 
 the trial of Saadut Khan in 1874 that the rebel leader 
 was accompanied at his parade on the 2nd of July, 1857, 
 by several troopers of Major Travers' regiment. 
 
 The sole excuse for the false notions as to the origin 
 and basis of the outbreak under which Colonel Durand 
 left the Residency, and made his first reports to Bombay 
 and to Calcutta, is to be found in the lies that were told 
 to Major Travers by his treacherous troopers/with the 
 
 * P. 213. t Evacuation of Indore, p. 13. 
 
10 
 
 obvious intention of hastening the evacuation of the 
 Residency, and leaving it clear for plunder. " On the 
 field at Indore", says General Travers, " one of my Sepoys 
 (Gunesh Singh, I think), told me that the Maharajah had 
 ordered the attack", that " most of the Sepoys had 
 heard the order given, and that it had turned many 
 against us."* This was a malignant lie, but it led 
 Colonel Durand at once to commit himself in his notes to 
 the Commandant of Mho w, and in his early correspondence 
 with Lord Elphinstone and Lord Canning, to the assertion 
 that they were "attacked by Holkar" "with true 
 Mahratta treachery". 
 
 Major Travers, again, in paragraph 5 of his military 
 despatch, enclosed in Colonel Durand's letter from 
 Hoshungabad of the 9th of July, 1857, says: "I was 
 led to believe by reports from my Cavalry that our left 
 flank would be immediately assailed by troops from the 
 City, who were said to be working round into our rear." 
 This, likewise, was a lie, but you produce one of the 
 exaggerated effects in your original pamphlet by intro- 
 ducing the recreant trooper's false report as if it 
 represented a real incident. "Some of Holkar's guns and 
 Cavalry", you said, " were moving round to cut off the 
 retreat. "t In the text of your large book you only say, 
 as authorised by Major Travers, " Some of Holkar's guns 
 and Cavalry were said to be moving round to cut off the 
 retreat."^ But in your Appendix, avowedly controversial 
 with regard to Sir John Kaye though you leave my 
 book to "die a natural death" you reproduce the 
 trooper's lie. " After Holkar's troops had begun to cut 
 off the retreat, there was no time left to wait." But it 
 is quite untrue that anyone had begun to cut off the 
 retreat. The line of retreat on Mhow was quite open, 
 and there was no pursuit, or menace of pursuit. 
 
 " The slow and orderly retreat from the Residency", 
 you complain, " was denominated a ' flight'. "|| It was 
 just its " slow and orderly character" that made it a 
 
 * Evacuation of Indore, p. 1 2, footnote. 
 
 f Central India in 1857, p. 24. 
 
 { P. 215. P. 466. || P. 226. 
 
11 
 
 " flight", and showed that "the post", i.e., the post of 
 Governor-General's Agent, which could have been held, 
 and was held so advantageously by Hungerford and 
 Hutchiiison at Mhow, " had been needlessly abandoned." 
 It has already been shown that neither General Travers, 
 in his official despatch and his pamphlet of 1876, nor Sir 
 Henry Durand, in any public or private letter, ever stated 
 that they saw, or that anybody saw, any additional force 
 of Holkar's troops proceeding from the City to join in the 
 attack on the Residency. But there is a paragraph in 
 Colonel Durand's despatch from Mhow of August 18th, 
 1857, which, giving you very large license on account of 
 filial regard and respect, does in some degree extenuate 
 the exaggerations of your pamphlet and of your large 
 volume. It is as follows: 
 
 " 4. Considering the deliberate arrangements made by Holkar's 
 Cavalry for cutting off European fugitives, even before a shot was 
 fired, it was strange that the Durbar should have failed in receiving 
 early intimation that some unusual movement was taking place. 
 When the treacherous attack of Holkar's guns and troops which 
 were at the Residency, was supported by additional guns and troops 
 hurrying to the scene of action from their lines, and no word or 
 message came from the Maharajah, there certainly was every 
 appearance that the troops acting so unanimously must be ad- 
 vancing by order of the Durbar. This conclusion was natural, and 
 at once pervaded the few troops that were loyal to the British 
 officers that commanded them." 
 
 This paragraph really contains nothing but a repro- 
 duction of the lies devised by our mutinous Sepoys 
 " the few troops that were loyal" to clear out the 
 Residency for plunder. Major Travers, in his despatch, 
 mentions the same "natural conclusion" on the part of 
 his men, but obviously as a false, or at least a doubtful 
 report, which he could neither verify by his own obser- 
 vation, nor confirm by authentic intelligence. Colonel 
 Durand, having committed himself to denunciations of 
 Holkar, based on the Sepoys' lies, from that day forward 
 allowed the "natural conclusion" of our "loyal" troops 
 to harden by frequent repetition into a positive statement. 
 The statement was utterly unauthenticated, and was not 
 
12 
 
 merely unconfirmed, but contradicted, by all subsequent 
 inquiries ; but it suited Colonel Durand's apologetic pur- 
 poses, and held its place accordingly in his irresponsible 
 talk and in his private correspondence. 
 
 Here is another absolute, though vague, misstatement 
 by Colonel Durand, in a matter most essential to Holkar's 
 justification, which you cannot but know to be a mis- 
 statement, and to have been exposed in the Last Counsels, 
 and which you, nevertheless, reproduce in its vaguest 
 form, as if it were a true statement, left quite intact by 
 your "violent and acrimonious" opponents. 
 
 On the 18th of August, 1857, a fortnight after Colonel 
 Durand's return to Mhow, he wrote a despatch to Govern- 
 ment which in one place you cite as "far from unfavour- 
 able"* to the Maharajah, and in another as written " in 
 Holkar's favour. "t Yet in this despatch, as you know, 
 the best that Colonel Durand can say of the Maharajah, 
 is that "he 'may have been as ignorant of ivhat was plotting ', 
 and as much surprised and intimidated when the attack 
 took place, as he represents." Everyone but yourself 
 will, I am sure, appreciate the odious use here of the word 
 intimidated. But, you say, Colonel Durand observed that 
 " a marked distinction was to be drawn between the 
 Maharajah and his Durbar". j Exactly that is the 
 absolute though vague misstatement by Colonel Durand 
 that I now have in hand, a misstatement adopted by 
 the Calcutta Foreign Office, though contradicted by 
 explicit details on record, and repeatedly placed before 
 the Viceroys by your predecessors, as you now place them 
 before the public, as genuine materials for a decision. 
 These are the words of the despatch : 
 
 " Whatever may be thought of the conduct of those who sur- 
 rounded his person, many of whom must have known what was 
 plotting, and some of whom were actual participators and leaders, 
 as Saadut Khan, there can be no doubt of his Highness' s anxiety 
 to separate his own name and fame from the guilt of participation 
 in an attack marked by equal treachery and atrocity." 
 
 Of course, if Holkar had been guilty, this anxiety 
 * P. 221. t P. 469. J P. i>21. 
 
13 
 
 would have been equally manifest, so that there is nothing 
 said in his Highness's favour so far. He goes on : 
 
 " I have drawn a marked distinction between the Maharajah 
 and his Durbar. Personally, he may have been as ignorant of 
 what was plotting, and as much surprised and intimidated when 
 the attack took place, as he represents, but this was not possible 
 as to the members of the Durbar. Some of these w^ere leaders in 
 the insurrection, and many more must have been cognisant of the 
 intrigues and tampering with the troops that was going on." 
 
 The " marked distinction " which Colonel Durand most 
 unwarrantably drew between the Maharajah and his 
 Durbar, was not really " favourable " to his Highness, as 
 you try to make out,* but most injurious to him. No- 
 thing could be more insidiously hostile. Anyone of 
 ordinary common sense would say that if the Prince's 
 daily associates and advisers had been conspiring against 
 the British Government, in concert with our mutinous 
 troops, he could hardly have been ignorant of what was 
 going on. Colonel Durand, positively denouncing the 
 Durbar, only suggests that Holkar "may have been 
 ignorant". The insinuation is most unfavourable, under 
 colour of moderation and fairness, while the denunciation 
 of the Durbar is entirely devoid of truth. 
 
 In this letter of the 18th August, 1857, written at 
 Mhow, while the local inquiries on which a report could 
 be founded were in progress, Colonel Durand describes 
 Saadut Khan as " in his Highness s Court and about his 
 person", and declares that some " members of the Durbar " 
 " were leaders in the insurrection'] the only leader whom 
 he names being that same Saadut Khan, who was not in 
 the Durbar, was not " in his Highness's Court and about 
 his person", but was out of employ, and in disgrace. 
 
 The Viceregal Government eventually treated this 
 denunciation of the Indore Durbar as if it had been, as 
 it was, a rash and hasty denunciation, quite devoid of 
 truth, for in reply to Sir Robert Hamilton's report, dated 
 April 26th, 1858, founded on the local inquiries instituted, 
 but not used, by Colonel Durand, all the members of the 
 
 * Pp. 221, 469. 
 
14 
 
 Durbar, with five other officers of rank at Holkar's Court, 
 received " the cordial thanks" of the Governor- General 
 for their "excellent services", "loyalty", and "assistance" 
 given to the British Government.* 
 
 The only person that Colonel Durand names as being 
 an "actual participator and leader in the insurrection", is 
 Saadut Khan. Saadut Khan, as you know very well, 
 was not a member of the Durbar, and was not attached 
 to the Maharajah's person. In your original pamphlet, 
 Central India in 1857, to which the Last Counsels was 
 expressly a rejoinder, you said of the insurgents, "A 
 Durbar officer of high rank called them out to the attack," 
 and in another passage, " One of the leaders of the in- 
 surgents was a Durbar officer named Saadut Khan, who 
 was hanged two years ago for his share in that day's 
 work."t 
 
 You must know now, if you did not know then, both 
 from the details given in my book, which you leave un- 
 answered in the hope it may " die a natural death", and 
 from the records in your own Office, exactly what the 
 position of Saadut Khan was. He was not an officer "of 
 high rank". He was a Rissaldar without a Rissala, 
 drawing pay but having no command. He was, also, 
 Deputy Collector of Customs, but under suspension. He 
 was "a Durbar officer" in the same way that Captain A. 
 is "a Queen's officer", and in no other way, in the 
 service of Government, but not in the Prince's house- 
 hold or counsels. He was a discredited person, employed 
 in a subordinate place under Captain Fen wick, an East 
 Indian in Holkar's service. He was a man with a 
 grievance ; and his grievance was the refusal of the 
 Maharajah to recognise him as a member of the Durbar, 
 as entitled to hereditary rank and emolument. When 
 he actually became a ringleader in the conspiracy and 
 outbreak he was a disgraced and discontented man, 
 disgraced by the Durbar, and discontented with the 
 position the Durbar had assigned to him. 
 
 You do not, however, admit or notice the error 
 
 * Appendix A, The Durbar. 
 
 t Central India in 1857, pp. 24 and 52. 
 
15 
 
 exposed by me. You content yourself with dropping the 
 name of Saadut Khan altogether out of your book. You 
 say nothing now about the special " officer of high rank", 
 but employ a general insinuation that " some of his " 
 (Holkar's) " officers were prominent among the insur- 
 gents."* None of the Maharajah's officers, except the 
 two or three belonging to the detachment, were 
 "prominent" or present in the outbreak. Besides the 
 substitution of this misleading generality for the name of 
 Saadut Khan, " an officer of high rank", you adhere to 
 " the broad distinction to be drawn between Holkar and 
 his Durbar. "t And this " distinction " you profess to 
 consider as " far from unfavourable" to his Highness, and 
 as having been written " in Holkar's favour ".t It was 
 at any rate the very best thing that Colonel Durand 
 could ever bring himself to write regarding Holkar's 
 conduct. 
 
 Let us now see what is the very worst that, according 
 to your newest and latest version, he ever alleged against 
 Holkar. 
 
 Before entering on that part of my subject, I must say 
 that in my humble judgment the "tact" of an Under- 
 secretary in the Indian Foreign Office who takes upon him- 
 self to malign publicly one of the most influential of Indian 
 Princes, appears rather open to doubt. I will add, and I 
 shall prove, that your "tact", in the private capacity of 
 apologist for Sir Henry Durand, is very much at fault, 
 when you bring prominently forward those dark in- 
 sinuations against Holkar which your father, to all 
 appearance, was desirous of keeping in the background. 
 I have long searched in vain for the very worst accusation 
 or imputation that Colonel Durand could bring against 
 the Maharajah. I have dragged it out of you at last, and 
 it is just what I expected, an impalpable slander, 
 without even an ostensible foundation. This is the very- 
 worst that you, Under- Secretary in the Foreign Office, in 
 possession of your father's papers, and with access to all 
 the records of the Government of India, can say against 
 the Maharajah Holkar : 
 
 * P. 220. f Pp. 221 and 469. 
 
16 
 
 " So far as I have been able to make out from the several 
 references to this subject scattered throughout his letters, he (Sir 
 Henry Durand) did not consider that Holkar had actually gone 
 against us or instigated his troops to rise. But he gradually came 
 to the conclusion that Holkar had been trimming, and trying to 
 stand fair with both sides, and that he had known a good deal 
 more than he had told. ' Holkar's waiting game,' he wrote to 
 Lord Ellenborough, ' was spoilt by the leaders of the Indore 
 insurrection hurrying his troops and people into untimely action. 
 He felt that their precipitation had hopelessly ruined him unless 
 he could patch up matters with us.' "* 
 
 Here I find the strongest and most complete confirma- 
 tion of all that I have written as to Sir Henry Durand's 
 treatment of Holkar. You can only "make out" what 
 your father's professed views in this matter were from 
 " scattered references " in his private correspondence. 
 In no document, public or private, in none of Sir Henry 
 Durand's despatches, minutes, or familiar letters, can you 
 find any more than Sir John Kaye could anything 
 definite or intelligible against Holkar, or anything to 
 verify the vague imputations and scornful calumny with 
 which the Maharajah was continuously and confidentially 
 persecuted by Sir Henry Durand for more than eleven 
 years. 
 
 Let us, however, take the general purport of the 
 " scattered references". Sir Henry Durand, having 
 originally denounced Holkar as his treacherous assailant, 
 " gradually came to the conclusion that Holkar had been 
 trimming, and trying to stand fair with both sides". 
 With "both sides"! What is meant by this? The 
 British Government was on one side, but who was on the 
 other in June and July, 1857 ? The Sepoy mutineers, and 
 more particularly and immediately the mutineers of the 
 Mhow brigade. The Maharajah Holkar was a highly 
 intelligent and well-educated Prince, who had visited 
 some of the great centres of British power in India, had 
 made the personal acquaintance of Lord Elphinstone at 
 Bombay, and was on terms of the closest and most 
 cordial affection with Sir Robert Hamilton, whose children 
 he was accustomed to call his brothers and sisters. 
 
 * P. 236. 
 
17 
 
 I can anticipate the sneers with which you will greet 
 this mention of the distinguished gentleman who carried 
 the infant Prince in his arms to the Musnud, was virtually 
 guardian and regent during the minority, and occupied 
 the place of Governor-General's Agent at Indore for the 
 long period of fourteen years. During the eight months 
 of Sir Robert Hamilton's absence, from April to December 
 1857, Colonel Durand, who was acting for him, managed 
 to blast the reputation and to blight the life of Holkar, 
 and to produce a dilemma for himself very much like 
 what you say Sir John Kaye propounded, viz : " that the 
 justification of Holkar implied" your " father's condem- 
 nation,"* that unless Holkar was a traitor, Colonel 
 Durand was " a bad political officer". 
 
 Sir Robert Hamilton, although the natural protector 
 of Holkar, did not, on resuming his charge in December 
 1857, so much espouse the Maharajah's cause as place 
 before Government the simple facts regarding the out- 
 break at Indore collected but neglected by Colonel 
 Durand. Before leaving Indore, Sir Robert Hamilton had 
 been authorised to read, and had read in Durbar, to 
 Holkar, a letter from the Viceroy, Lord Canning, dated 
 " Calcutta, 26th March 1859", announcing that his 
 Highness was to receive a territorial reward " in due 
 proportion" to the " Nizam and Scindia".t Until this 
 promise, made by him as the Viceroy's representative and 
 in the Viceroy's own words, was redeemed, Sir Robert 
 Hamilton felt that the honour of our Government was 
 compromised, and that his own honour was pledged to make 
 every effort to ensure the fulfilment of that promise. 
 You not only upbraid Sir Robert Hamilton without any 
 apparent grounds, as " unfriendly" and " hostile" to your 
 father, but make offensive incursions into the regions of 
 private life, which, although they may suit your notions 
 of "tact and firmness", appear to me hardly consistent 
 with good manners and fair dealing. The rather ill- 
 natured gossip about Sir Robert Hamilton's large esta- 
 blishment of horses, carriages, and servants, and the 
 
 * P. 475. f Appendix B. 
 
18 
 
 marriages of his daughters, which you have extracted 
 from Colonel Durand's private letters,* was assuredly 
 never meant, even by him, for publication. It has no 
 bearing whatever on the subject, except so far as it 
 confirms a very general belief in Sir Henry Durand's 
 habit of treating anyone who stood in his way as a 
 personal foe and a noxious creature, and of privately 
 denouncing him all round. 
 
 Unfortunately for Holkar, facilities for private 
 denunciation were afforded to Colonel Durand at a very 
 early moment, and remained constantly open to him for 
 eleven years. Very soon after Sir Robert Hamilton 
 had resumed charge of the Residency at Indore, on the 
 15th of December 1857, Colonel Durand was called "on 
 special duty", to Lord Canning's side. From that day 
 his private reports of what he had not seen, and of the 
 operations in which he had not taken part, and of the 
 Prince whom he had seen twice in three months, prevailed 
 against the public and official statements made by the 
 officers at Mhow who had succeeded in the work which 
 Colonel Durand had abandoned as impracticable, and by 
 Sir Robert Hamilton, who had been for thirteen years at 
 Indore. 
 
 I do not hesitate to say that if he even for a time 
 suspected Holkar, as you say he did, of " trimming with 
 both sides", and of " playing a waiting game", that 
 suspicion is enough to stamp Colonel Durand as "a 
 bad political officer". It was not merely that, as Sir 
 John Kaye justly said, he wanted " tolerance", lacked 
 "imagination", and " could not Orientalise himself". He 
 could not understand or appreciate, though the problem 
 was easy enough, the personalities with which he had to 
 deal. Holkar was, as I have said, and as no one disputes, 
 an intelligent and well-educated Prince. He was sur- 
 rounded by enlightened and English-speaking councillors, 
 and was absolutely without any turbulent or fanatical 
 connections. The best possible excuse for Colonel Durand 
 having made the utterly unfounded report that "some 
 of those who surrounded the Maharajah s person", and 
 
 * P. 198. 
 
19 
 
 " some of the Durbar", were " actual participators and 
 leaders in the attack", would be that in the three months 
 he had passed at Indore he had, as you say, " only seen 
 Holkar twice",* that he did not care to know who were 
 in the Prince's confidence and intimacy, or how the 
 Durbar was constituted. This, I say, is the best and 
 most charitable excuse for Colonel Durand's gross mis- 
 statement regarding the Indore Durbar, but then it fixes 
 upon him indelibly the stain you are trying to efface. 
 The Agent who, at such a crisis, could hold aloof, in a 
 supercilious and unsympathetic attitude, from the Prince 
 and the Court that formed the very centre and heart of 
 his charge, was essentially, root and branch, " a bad 
 political officer". 
 
 You deny that your father had " an antipathy" to 
 Holkar. You claim to have " shown" that he " wrote in 
 Holkar's favour to Lord Canning", and that "nothing can 
 be less inimical or indicative of the antipathy which 
 Kaye most unjustly attributes to him than the tone of 
 these letters". t The tone of those letters, as I have just 
 proved, was as thoroughly inimical as their tenor was 
 inaccurate. Not a word can be found in them that is 
 really written " in Holkar's favour". But before coming 
 to the " inimical" stage, for you state that Colonel 
 Durand "gradually" lost faith in "the Maharajah's 
 loyalty", and that " as time went on his doubts were 
 strengthened",! it is necessarv to make some remarks on 
 the Agent's intercourse with Holkar before the insurrec- 
 tion. You bring forward as evidence that there could be 
 no " antipathy", the fact that Colonel Durand " had been 
 three months at Indore, and had only seen Holkar twice". 
 You do not perceive the true significance of that fact as 
 evincing Colonel Durand's contempt for information and 
 advice from Native sources, and his disregard for close 
 and friendly relations with the Court of Indore and its 
 notabilities. In three months Colonel Durand saw 
 Holkar twice ; one of these visits being his formal pre- 
 
 * P. 474, and Central India, p. 69. t P. 469. 
 
 t Pp. 235, 236, 469. 
 
 c 2 
 
20 
 
 sentation on arrival, the other having been solicited by 
 the Maharajah ; and he never invited his Highness to 
 visit the Residency. 
 
 On the 9th of June 1857, three weeks before the out- 
 break, at a conference which he specially called at the 
 palace, Holkar warned Colonel Durand that, in the event 
 of a mutiny at Mhow, his own troops could not be trusted, 
 and gave the wisest advice for the emergency, that the 
 treasure about 130,000 in specie and 240,000 in 
 Government paper should not be left, as a temptation 
 to attack, in the Residency, but should be sent off at once 
 to the military cantonment of Mhow. The Maharajah 
 also urged that the English ladies should immediately go 
 to the same place, and that the Residency buildings should 
 be made into a strong military post. Colonel Durand 
 would not take this advice. He said that European 
 troops were shortly expected, and that the precautions 
 recommended would only cause alarm and tend to en- 
 courage the evil-disposed. Alarm could not be prevented. 
 From the 9th of June to the 1st of July not only alarm 
 was felt but frequent warnings were given to Colonel 
 Durand. With every well-informed person expecting an 
 outbreak, no preparations were made to meet it. He 
 even rejected the military advice of two Engineer officers, 
 Captains Ludlow and Cobbe coincident and identical 
 with that of the Maharajah that the Residency should 
 be entrenched, and that the treasure should be moved 
 from a detached building into the Residency, so that 
 there should be only one place to defend. The Un- 
 covenanted servants complained afterwards that, although 
 their numbers were considerable, they were not embodied 
 or organised, and had no place of security selected into 
 which they could retire.* The contemptible nature of 
 the attack, when the outbreak occurred, and the ease with 
 which a slow retirement was effected, are enough to sug- 
 gest very strongly that if due preparations had been 
 made, the results of the mutiny at Indore on the 1st 
 
 * Sir R. Hamilton's despatch, No. 47, of the 9th February 1858, to 
 the Government of India. 
 
21 
 
 of July 1857, might have been very different from what 
 they were. 
 
 When we take into consideration these timely but 
 neglected counsels, the good faith of which it is impossible 
 to doubt, and those points as to the talents, training, and 
 associations of Holkar and his councillors, with which 
 Colonel Durand ought to have been familiar, his hasty 
 suspicion and condemnation of the Maharajah and of his 
 Durbar," are enough to convict him of being "a bad 
 political officer". When Colonel Durand avoided the 
 cantonment of Mhow, because he thought it would be 
 attacked by Holkar, w r hen he wrote to Lord Elphinstone 
 that " Holkar's treachery was of the true Mahratta 
 stamp",* he showed himself to be a "bad political 
 officer". 
 
 Your contention, however, is that although, "to begin 
 with", Colonel Durand "certainly imagined that Holkar 
 had thrown in his lot against us", " directly Holkar 
 disclaimed such intention, he accepted and favourably 
 noticed the Maharajah's explanations." With the 
 "favourable notice" I have already dealt. Then came 
 an unfavourable stage. " He was not entirely convinced 
 of the Maharajah's loyalty ; and as time went on his 
 doubts became strengthened."t And in another part of 
 your book you say that your father " lost his former con- 
 fidence in Holkar, and left Indore under the impression 
 that justice would not be done". At first he had, you 
 say, been inclined to consider him" (Holkar) "sincere 
 in disclaiming participation with the mutineers. Never- 
 theless, he had felt some doubts on the subject, and they 
 had been confirmed by one or two circumstances which 
 occurred during the rainy season, by conversation with 
 various natives of the country, and by the additional 
 information which he had acquired regarding events at 
 Indore before and during the rising. "J 
 
 This is a very remarkable passage. Although you are 
 a barrister-at-law, and have been, I presume, a magistrate, 
 you seem not only to be quite ignorant as to what 
 
 * Kaye's Sepoy War, vol. iii, p. 347 
 t P. 469. ' % Pp. 235, 236. 
 
22 
 
 constitutes evidence, but not to comprehend the enormity 
 of the charge that you are making here, in your father's 
 name, against the Maharajah Holkar. In your Appendix 
 you say that Colonel Durand's " doubts " amounted to 
 nothing more than this, that at the " beginning of the 
 outbreak Holkar was playing a waiting game". And 
 there is nothing, you urge, very dreadful in this, 
 " considering that Sir John Kaye expresses the same 
 doubt regarding all the Native Chiefs in India."* In the 
 
 O C5 
 
 passage just quoted from the text you say that when 
 your father left Indore he no longer considered " Holkar 
 sincere in disclaiming participation with the mutineers", 
 his " doubts on the subject " having " been confirmed by 
 one or two circumstances which occurred during the 
 rainy season, by conversation with various natives, and 
 by additional information which he had acquired". t 
 
 Will you be so good as to tell us whether this 
 " additional information" was communicated to the 
 Government of India ? I can find no trace or hint of it 
 in the official proceedings. 
 
 You have now informed us that Colonel Durand, who, 
 to begin with, inaccurately denounced "members of the 
 Durbar" as " participators and leaders in the outbreak", 
 and made a favourable distinction between the Mahara- 
 jah and his Durbar, believed at last, likewise, in Holkar's 
 personal " participation with the mutineers". Thus he, 
 according to you, dropped the " marked distinction" he 
 had made in Holkar's favour. 
 
 You endeavour, moreover, to show some cause for this 
 change. Colonel Durand's doubts were " confirmed", you 
 say, "by one or two circumstances", one of which you give, 
 as follows, in a footnote : " For example, by finding that 
 while professing the utmost fear of their troops, the 
 Durbar were importing a large quantity of pig-lead for 
 musket ammunition. The lead was seized and lodged in 
 Mhow fort."J 
 
 You have, throughout your narrative, adopted the 
 highly coloured and exaggerated pictures drawn by 
 
 * Pp. 469, 470. t Pp. 236, L>:.J<>. { Footnote, p. 235. 
 
23 
 
 Colonel Durand, when he found out his mistake in having 
 avoided Mhow, as to the unanimous misconduct of Holkar's 
 troops. You have even improved upon them, with some 
 little excuse from your father's loose diction, by present- 
 ing the troopers' lies about the retreat being cut off, arid 
 more guns and Cavalry approaching, as if they represented 
 actual events that Colonel Durand had seen with his 
 own eyes.* In the same way you grossly exaggerate 
 Holkar's temporary loss of authority and influence during 
 the wild excitement caused by the evacuation of the 
 Residency. You make the most unwarrantable assertion 
 that *' Holkar was entirely powerless. He neither had 
 nor pretended to have the smallest remnant of control 
 when his troops rose". "He could not",t you continue, 
 " punish or keep under restraint the leader of the attack, 
 who came to him in his Palace, and boasted of having 
 wounded a sahib ".j He did restrain Saadut Khan for 
 several hours, and that miscreant was in confinement 
 when the Residency was evacuated, so that the mutineers 
 were without a leader at the critical moment when Colonel 
 Durand's little band was without defence. The conse- 
 quence was that the English party was able to retire, 
 " unmolested", "at the rate of two-and-a-half miles an 
 hour". 
 
 You base your wild assertions as to Holkar's whole army 
 " surging up", on an alleged statement by the Durbar 
 Vakeel to Colonel Durand, that "the lines were empty ". 
 These words convey no information unless we know to 
 what hour in the day they refer. Even in your father's 
 own account of his conversation with Ganesh Shastri, 
 which you vainly imagine to " set the point at rest", 
 there is not one word to show that " the lines were 
 empty " before Colonel Durand had retired. || That 
 the Durbar Vakeel, Ganesh Shastri, who is still, 
 I believe, living, ever said that the " lines were empty" 
 during the attack or the retirement " at the rate of two- 
 and-a-half miles an hour", is utterly untrue, and will not 
 bear a minute's reflection. If any such movement of 
 
 * Ante, p. 4; Central India in 1857, pp. 53, 55. t P. 164. 
 
 t Ibid. Pp. 215, 467. || P. 467. 
 
24 
 
 Holkar's troops had taken place nay, if a hundred 
 horsemen had assailed them the fugitives must have 
 perished. It is quite true that an utter overthrow 
 of discipline followed the news of the British officers 
 having retired. The greed of plunder led nearly all the 
 troops to visit the Residency in the course of the day ; 
 but some of the Durbar troops behaved very well from 
 first to last ; a certain number were accounted for as on 
 guard at the Palace and other posts ; some, including the 
 Maharajah's Household Cavalry, obeyed the orders to 
 remain in their quarters. 
 
 You must know or you ought to know, with the best 
 information at hand that even if Holkar's troops had all 
 behaved badly, the greater part soon returned to their 
 allegiance and their duty. Within three days after 
 Holkar was relieved from the pressure of our Sepoy 
 mutineers, three columns of his troops were sent out for 
 the rescue of British officers. And not only were several 
 detachments of Holkar's troops constantly employed, to 
 the end of the war, in keeping the country quiet and 
 suppressing marauders, but they served under British 
 officers in some of the most decisive actions against the 
 rebels in the neighbourhood, on which occasions the 
 Maharajah and his commanders were thanked by the 
 Bombay and Supreme Governments. 
 
 If, then, some of the Maharajah Holkar's troops, after 
 the terrible excitement caused by the mutiny of British 
 troops and the flight of British officers had cooled down 
 a little, were doing good and faithful service, it was right, 
 I suppose, that they should be supplied with the ordinary 
 munitions of war. I have no doubt as to the fact that 
 Colonel Durand seized some "pig-lead", and lodged it in 
 Mhow Fort. That at such a time he should have osten- 
 tatiously proclaimed, by many offensive and insulting 
 words and acts, his dislike of the Maharajah Holkar, 
 proves that he was " a bad political officer". But the 
 circumstance you consider so important has no other sig- 
 nificance. 
 
 You have yet another explanation of Colonel Durand's 
 gradual belief in Holkar's " participation with the muti- 
 
25 : - ;, :<Ji % 
 
 neers". Referring to your father's opinion as to "Holkar's 
 waiting game", you say, " His opinion was greatly 
 strengthened by finding that Lord Elphinstone, who had 
 at first written strongly in favour of Holkar, was after- 
 wards inclined to take the same view, and this upon 
 information gained independently in the Bombay Presi- 
 dency." 
 
 This is what Lord Elphinstone wrote to the Viceroy, 
 Lord Canning : 
 
 " Colonel Durand appears to be under the impression that 
 Holkar had turned against us, and that he was attacked by his 
 orders. This, however, is certainly not the case. On the same 
 evening Holkar wrote to Colonel Durand and to me, protesting 
 his innocence, and entreating that the march of General Wood- 
 burn's force should be hastened as much as possible."* 
 
 This is what he wrote to Colonel Durand : 
 
 " If he (Holkar) had been ill-disposed towards us, the whole 
 country would have risen. All the smaller Chiefs seem to have 
 taken their cue from him ; and even to the borders of Gujerat, the 
 effects of his conduct would have been apparent. This comes to 
 me from too many sources to admit of any doubt. Let me, there- 
 fore, beg you not to harbour any prejudices against Holkar, to 
 whom I cannot but think we are very much indebted for the pre- 
 servation of the peace in Malwa and also in Gujerat."-)- 
 
 You object, however, to Sir John Kaye's assertion that 
 Lord Elphinstone, " with all the facts before him", pro- 
 nounced in favour of Holkar's loyalty and condemned 
 Colonel Durand's " prejudice". What, according to you, 
 " appears from the letters quoted by Sir John Kaye", 
 is " that very shortly after the outbreak, w r hen Lord 
 Elphinstone had not all the facts before him, he wrote to 
 my father and others asserting Holkar's innocence". ;f I 
 will not trouble you now to answer my big book, let us 
 consider that it has " died a natural death", but should 
 you decide on making an example of this little pamphlet 
 and its author, perhaps you will tell us what "all the facts' 
 are, and what in particular are the facts which were not 
 
 * Kaye's Sepoy War, vol. iii, p. 349. 
 
 t //,/(/., pp. 349, 350. { P. 474. 
 
26 
 
 before Lord Elphinstone, when he rebuked Colonel Durand 
 and recommended Holkar to the Viceroy's protection 
 against that official's prejudice. You have given us your 
 one little "circumstance" of the "pig-lead". But what 
 are " all the facts'? We have under Lord Elphinstone's 
 hand his detection and rebuke of Colonel Durand's 
 " prejudices" against Holkar ; his declaration of Holkar's 
 good influence over " the smaller Chiefs" of Western 
 India, " even to the borders of Gujerat"; his assurance 
 that Holkar's valuable services in time of need " will not 
 be forgotten by the British Government". 
 
 I think, under the circumstances, impartial readers will 
 prefer this written testimony consistent with all officially 
 recorded facts to your vague, inexplicit, and unauthen- 
 ticated statements as to " personal assurances", and as to 
 Colonel Durand " finding" that Lord Elphinstone was 
 "afterwards inclined"* to alter his views. I cannot see 
 that you have acquired any right or title by the scrupu- 
 lous candour and accuracy of your method, to have your 
 " scattered references" accepted without verification in 
 preference to testimony for which I give chapter and 
 verse. 
 
 I regret to observe that you still persist, notwith- 
 standing my very full exposure of your error, in the pre- 
 sumptuous impertinence of censuring Major Hungerford, 
 who assumed the duties of Agent to the Governor-General 
 when Colonel Durand left the precincts of his charge. 
 You endeavour to stigmatise Major Hungerford, whose 
 conduct was approved and warmly commended by the 
 Viceroy, the Commander-in- Chief, and the Commandant 
 of Artillery, as having not been " strong before the out- 
 break", as having not been " ready during the outbreak", 
 and as having been " injudicious after the outbreak". 
 You attempt to ridicule this gallant officer, who died in 
 1858, as "the Artilleryman, who, unable to stir out of 
 Mhow, and ignorant of Holkar s conduct before the rising, 
 established himself as representative of the Governor- 
 General", for which, be it observed, he received Lord 
 
 * P. 47-4. 
 
Canning's thanks, and you take upon yourself to cen- 
 sure Lieutenant (now Colonel) Hutchinson as " an equally 
 ignorant Political Assistant, who icas a fugitive under t/<e 
 protection of Holkars troops'* 
 
 In all this, it is true, you merely echo Colonel Durand, 
 who wrote in terms of complaint and blame, though 
 without producing any impression on the Government of 
 India, regarding the Commandant of Mhow, and the 
 two Assistants who took up his duties when he had 
 retired to a distance of two hundred miles from Indore. 
 " }Vhy Captain Hungerford assumed the powers he did" , 
 he could " neither understand nor approve', it was un- 
 derstood and approved by the Viceroy in Council. "Nor" 
 could he "approve that men in the position of dependence 
 upon Holkar, like Lieutenant Hutchinson and the occu- 
 j>< '/its of the Mhow Fort, should assume the political func- 
 tions of the Agent", although nobody knew where he 
 was, and he neither wrote to his Assistants nor answered 
 their letters, " and take upon themselves to judge the 
 conduct of Holkar and the Durbar". 
 
 You protest against Sir John Kaye saying that 
 Colonel Durand " had disappeared from his charge, 
 no one seemed to know whither, and that he did not 
 answer Hungerford's letters. This", you say, "is untrue. 
 The force from the Residency retired at a walk, and 
 passed Holkar's roadside posts on the march towards 
 Bhopal. The Durbar knew perfectly well in what di- 
 rection it had retired, and that my father was within the 
 limits of his charge, for Bhopal was as much a part of his 
 charge as Indore." You are incapable, of course, of being 
 disingenuous, but you seem to have overlooked the fact 
 that Colonel Durand remained less than twenty-four 
 hours at Bhopal, the Begum having explained her ina- 
 bility to protect him, and that he went on at once to 
 Hoshungabad, a British station, two hundred miles from 
 Indore, and not within the limits of his charge. 
 
 "He was", you continue, "throughout within two 
 days' post, and he answered all letters sent to him."t 
 
 * Pp. 222, 223, 470, 471. t P. 471. 
 
28 
 
 I think not, I think he was not, to say the least, 
 very prompt in acknowledging the letters he received 
 from Indore and Mhow. For more than three weeks 
 after his retreat nothing had been heard from Colonel 
 Durand by any of his Assistants, by Captain Hungerford, 
 who by force of circumstances had fallen into the charge 
 both of military and political affairs, or by the Maharajah. 
 They had all written to him, but the Agent would not 
 vouchsafe a reply. Although, by his own account, "com- 
 munication was easy and rapid"* he stopped all communi- 
 cation for nearly a month with the English officers who 
 were doing his work, and for more than a month with 
 the Prince to whom he was accredited. Not a word of 
 counsel or of encouragement came from him. 
 
 The first communication received by Holkar from 
 Colonel Durand after the 1st of July, was an alarming 
 letter dated Mhow, the 3rd of August 1857, containing 
 two charges against his Highness, of having held aloof 
 during the attack on the Residency, and of having 
 allowed supplies and carriage to be furnished to the 
 mutineers. The perverse and bitter spirit pervading this 
 letter is, perhaps, most strongly exemplified by the first 
 words in it that are intended for commendation. Colonel 
 Durand says : 
 
 " I have no doubt that the Eight Honourable the Governor- 
 General of India will hear with satisfaction that you avoided the 
 disgrace which would for ever have clung to your name, had you 
 pusillanimously given up innocent persons who had sought refuge 
 in your Palace, to be massacred by blood-thirsty miscreants." 
 
 He cannot even be so gracious as to say, " You have 
 done well"; he can only say, " You have not acted like a 
 pusillanimous wretch, or a blood-thirsty miscreant." 
 
 The man who could write in such a tone, at such a 
 time, was emphatically " a bad political officer". 
 
 I shall introduce you to some little notes you may 
 verify them in " the Office" which confirm my state- 
 ments on this point, not yours. Before coming to these, 
 
 * Despatch to Government of India, No. 207, dated Mhow, 18th 
 August 1857. 
 
29 
 
 however, I must notice your new and very preposterous 
 complaint that the officers who performed Colonel 
 Durand's duties efficiently and successfully during his 
 retirement, " were endeavouring to supplant him". This 
 is too ridiculous. Were they to run away from Mhow 
 because he fled from Indore ? Were the two Assistants, 
 Captain Hutchinson and Captain Elliot, to strike work 
 because the Agent had disappeared ? The period of 
 Colonel Durand's absence had been well employed by the 
 English gentlemen at Mhow, with Holkar's help, in 
 restoring postal and telegraphic communications, in re- 
 gaining a firm hold over local resources, and in smoothing 
 the way for military operations. The Maharajah, forti- 
 fied by friendly intercourse with our officers, was able to 
 tranquillise the country, and to spread abroad a general 
 impression that the cause of the insurgents was doomed. 
 If Colonel Durand's Assistants had followed their 
 superior's example, or if Captain Hungerford had shrunk 
 from responsibility, Holkar and his Ministers, in the 
 absence of any British political authority, would have 
 lost much, if not all, of their influence for good, and the 
 rebellious faction and predatory tribes of Malwa would 
 have gained proportionate strength. 
 
 " It would be interesting to know", you say, " what 
 these gentlemen would have done, if while they were 
 acquitting themselves so much to their own and Holkar's 
 satisfaction" and, let me add, to the Viceroy's " the 
 man whom they were endeavouring to supplant had let 
 the barrier of the Nerbudda drop behind them, and 
 allowed Woodburn to march off to Nagpore."* 
 
 Colonel Durand had no authority over General Wood- 
 burn, and no influence whatever over the march of his 
 column. I have never understood, and I have never met 
 anyone who did understand, what you mean by this 
 mysterious rubbish about " the barrier of the Nerbudda". 
 
 The following sentence in a letter, dated 12th of July, 
 from Hungerford to Durand, does not look as if "these 
 gentlemen" were very much afraid of "the barrier of the 
 
 * P. 471. 
 
30 
 
 Nerbudda being dropped", and was innocently calculated 
 to be very galling to Colonel Durand, an Engineer officer, 
 if he and Colonel Travers had decided as their mes- 
 senger on the 1st of July 1857, reported on not going to 
 Mhow, because they believed that Holkar was going to 
 attack it. 
 
 " This fort, thanks to the hard labour of the Europeans, has been 
 placed in such a state of defence, and we are so well provisioned, 
 that it would take an army to attack it." 
 
 Six weeks after the receipt of this letter, Colonel 
 Durand takes upon himself to say that, during his 
 absence, Hungerford, Elliot, and Hutchinson had been 
 " in a position of dependence on Holkar'. Yet he gives 
 no credit to Holkar, and objects to a " favourable report" 
 being made on his Highness's "conduct". 
 
 For Colonel Durand thus continues : 
 
 " It was, however, an object with the Durbar to anticipate, if 
 possible, a deliberate review of its conduct, by obtaining favour- 
 able reports and opinions which might clog after-measures, and 
 these gentlemen all fell into the trap." 
 
 " So did Lord Elphin stone then", was the marginal 
 comment of Mr. (afterwards Sir George F.) Edmonstone, 
 the Foreign Secretary, on this passage in Colonel Durand's 
 despatch of the 18th of August 1857. With reference 
 to Colonel Durand's animadversions against Captain Hun- 
 gerford, Mr. Edmonstone likewise made the following 
 marginal note : 
 
 " The assumption of political functions by Captain Hungerford, 
 and the manner in which he discharged those functions, have been 
 warmly approved and commended by the Governor-General in 
 Council. Colonel Durand did not keep these officers informed of 
 his movements ; nor, indeed, did he keep the Government informed. 
 He left Hoshungabad about the 16th of July, and nothing was 
 heard of him until he reappeared at Mhow. Captain Hungerford 
 has already explained that Major Cooper ceded the command of 
 the Mhow Fort in his favour, because Captain Hungerford was 
 the only officer who had any troops to command. No troops were 
 left except the European Battery." 
 
31 
 
 In the same paragraph of his despatch of August 18th, 
 1857, Colonel Durandsays : " His Highness knows well 
 that the Agency was never out of my charge, and that 
 there was, therefore, no resuming of the Agency." 
 
 On this Mr. Edmonstone remarks : " But neither 
 Holkar nor anyone else knew what had become of Colonel 
 Durand and his office." 
 
 Unfortunately, these notes and marginal comments, 
 though prepared hy high Ministerial officers for the aid 
 and guidance of the Executive authorities, and often 
 throwing much light on the progress and vicissitudes of 
 a case, are not always forwarded home for the information 
 of Her Majesty's Government. I shall bring a few more 
 of them to your notice. 
 
 You urge that your father's " influence", and his 
 alleged " prejudices" and " misrepresentations", could 
 not " have kept Holkar out of his due"; that the Mahara- 
 jah had " a steady advocate in Sir Robert Hamilton, and 
 had perfectly impartial judges. Lord Canning, Lord 
 Lawrence, and Lord Mayo, during my father's life", you 
 continue, " Lord Northbrook and Lord Lytton, after his 
 death, and the various Secretaries of State concerned, 
 were surely capable of forming an opinion for them- 
 selves."* 
 
 Certainly they were, if the proper materials for 
 " forming an opinion" had ever been placed before them. 
 But, as I shall show, " the Office" has ruled the Empire ; 
 " the Service" has conspired against an impartial judg- 
 ment. In the words of Sir John Kaye, " Holkar has 
 been sacrificed to the justification of Durand. "f A vague 
 denunciation of Holkar was convenient as a screen for 
 Colonel Durand's failure and flight. Colonel Durand had 
 committed himself, by his declarations and his move- 
 ments, to a prejudiced view of Holkar 's conduct. He 
 had reported that he was " attacked by Holkar", and that 
 " Holkar's treachery was of the true Mahratta stamp". 
 Under that suspicion he had left the precincts of his 
 charge at the critical moment, and had, in particular, 
 kept away from the military station at Mhow, where he 
 
 * P. 470. t Sepoy War, vol. iii, p. 346. 
 
32 
 
 would have been quite safe and at his post. Subsequent 
 inquiries, instituted by himself, entirely negatived every 
 suspicion against Holkar. He could not justify these 
 unfounded suspicions, or the false movement into which 
 they had misled him. But he never distinctly renounced 
 them. On the contrary, he came back to them again 
 and again, in every form but that of a formal report, or 
 of an intelligible accusation. He kept up the bad 
 impression by his personal presence and influence in 
 high office for eleven years, and it was carried on and 
 heightened by his colleagues and successors. Rules and 
 principles of Executive procedure have been set aside, 
 and records have been misrepresented, with no better 
 motive than private and professional sympathy. The 
 result is that a Prince of the Indian Empire, who 
 did good service in time of need, is branded with a false 
 charge of cowardice and treachery for that is what it 
 amounts to without the foundation of any official report 
 or statement, in defiance of the only official report on his 
 conduct that ever was made, by the suppression of 
 existing evidence, and the suggestion of evidence that 
 has never existed. 
 
 Two Secretaries of State, one of whom is now in the 
 Cabinet Lord Derby and Lord Halifax have in vain 
 issued instructions and expressed wishes in favour of jus- 
 tice being done to this injured and slandered Prince. 
 The Viceroys and the Secretaries of State have been 
 unable to contend against departmental earwigging, and 
 the misuse of records in Calcutta. 
 
 The Indian Foreign Secretary is, as you say, " the 
 responsible adviser and right hand of the Viceroy". Upon 
 him and his Assistants devolves the important duty of 
 collecting and laying before the Viceroy and his Coun- 
 cillors all the papers bearing on each case awaiting deci- 
 sion, usually with an " Office-note", summarising its his- 
 tory, and frequently submitting an opinion on the merits, 
 and some suggestion for a settlement. I shall show that 
 with regard to the conduct and services of the Maharajah 
 Holkar in 1857 this duty was not performed in good faith 
 by the Political Department, but was perverted for the 
 
33 
 
 exculpation of Sir Henry Durand, and that thus the 
 Viceroys and Secretaries of State were prevented from 
 " forming an opinion for themselves". Veiy naturally 
 relying on the guidance of their Ministerial subordinates, 
 they were led to overlook the fact that all the formal 
 documents of the time bore witness to the Maharajah 
 Holkar's fidelity and active help, and that there was no 
 official report or statement on record condemnatory of his 
 Highness's conduct on any particular day or in any par- 
 ticular incident. The permanent officers of the Calcutta 
 Foreign Department offered certain gratuitous and ob- 
 scure expressions of dislike and ill-will against the Maha- 
 rajah Holkar, which seem to have been taken as if they 
 were founded on some adverse report or statement 
 against his Highness, written at the period in question. 
 No such document exists. 
 
 I shall show that in 1870, the occasion demanding 
 something more than these obscure expressions of dislike, 
 a hostile statement was at last presented by Mr. (now 
 Sir Charles) Aitchison, sufficiently definite in its purport, 
 but without any foundation or verification of an official 
 nature, contradicted, in fact, by documents which Mr. 
 Aitchison did not bring forward. 
 
 It is by the suppression of the truth as officially re- 
 ported, and the suggestion of false matter or malignant 
 fancy in conversation, private correspondence, and secret 
 " Office-notes", that Holkar has been " kept out of his 
 due", and our statesmen kept in the dark. I make no 
 complaint of official routine. Ordinary routine has been 
 set aside and violated throughout these proceedings. 
 The distinguishing peculiarity of Holkar's case is, that if 
 any Viceroy or Secretary of State, dissatisfied with vague 
 imputations and hints of " awkward revelations" in re- 
 serve, were to call for any official report condemning 
 Holkar's conduct on the 1st of July 1857, it could not be 
 pioduced, for no such official report exists. There is 
 nothing definite or intelligible on official record against the 
 Maharajah Holkar. He has been publicly condemned and 
 deprived of his promised reward on the strength of secret 
 hints and surmises ; and whenever one of these involves 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 an allegation of fact, a very brief and simple inquiry 
 invariably proves that allegation to be untrue. 
 
 When it seemed, from the lapse of time, that you had 
 no intention of answering my book, published in 1877, I 
 began to hope that I had done with you and with Sir 
 Henry Durand. Even w T hen the advocate's duty, the 
 just cause and the strong case, are all equally clear, the 
 task of refutation, exposure, and detraction cannot be 
 agreeable. You have compelled me to resume it most 
 unwillingly by your unjustifiable charge against me of 
 having published " a tissue of untruth". And though 
 the task is rendered imperative by your book, it is not 
 rendered more congenial to my nature. I must not dwell 
 on the subject, but I may be allowed simply to claim for 
 myself, even in your estimation, those homely human 
 feelings that can honour filial reverence for a personality 
 in which there was assuredly much to be admired and 
 much to be loved. Nor have I, let me assure you, been 
 able to read unmoved the details of that sad and strange 
 fatality which ended a distinguished and laborious career 
 at a moment of hardly earned success, or of the still more 
 sad and affecting fatality that may well have made your 
 father think for ever after of " Mhow and Indore" with 
 " the same feelings" of " burning, because suppressed, in- 
 dignation" and of " boiling wrath".* 
 
 I wish I could say no more. But my ungracious duty 
 must be fulfilled. There is nothing, then, in your book 
 to dispel, and much to confirm, the impression of Colonel 
 Durand's character commonly entertained by his contem- 
 poraries, that he was a man with whom, to use a collo- 
 quialism, it was "difficult to get on", a mauvais cou- 
 cheur, a man who was intolerant of his neighbours' 
 objects and opinions when they diverged from his 
 own, and who was morbidly over -conscious of his own 
 merits and claims. The numerous passages in your 
 book tending to confirm that impression may be said 
 to culminate in that extraordinary sentence written by 
 him in 1864 : 
 
 * See pp. 227, 228, 291. 
 
35 
 
 " Bare justice is not what I have had meted out to me through 
 life. 1 speak of mau, not God."* 
 
 At least, it may be said, he drew the line somewhere 
 in his protest against the want of appreciation in high 
 places. If he did not bear his crosses and his losses as 
 patiently as Job, he did not go quite so far in his com- 
 plaints against the powers that be as Job's wife sug- 
 gested. 
 
 He did not get on well with Lord Lawrence when the 
 latter was Viceroy. Lord Lawrence writes as follows 
 to the Secretary of State, in a letter dated March 
 13, 1868 : 
 
 " I may say with perfect truth that I was instrumental in Sir 
 Henry Durand getting his seat in Council. Nevertheless, ever 
 since he entered it, I have had difficulties in managing matters 
 with him. He is so unbending, so acrimonious, that it is hard to 
 work with him." 
 
 Lord Lawrence's biographer, forming his judgment not 
 only from the documents at his disposal, but also, as he 
 says, from " conversations with other members of the 
 Council, and high officials who were best acquainted with 
 all the circumstances", pronounces Sir Henry Durand to 
 have displayed habitually "a highly impracticable temper 
 in public matters", and when in Council to have "acted 
 as though he were inclined to oppose every measure 
 which did not originate with himself. "t 
 
 But he was not in Council when Lord Lawrence arrived 
 in India in 1864. He was then Secretary to Government 
 in the Foreign and Political Department, and in that 
 capacity, as you tell us, he got on badly with the Vice- 
 roy. And one great cause of their difference was, you 
 inform us, the style and character of Colonel Durand's 
 " Office-notes". That is a very curious and interesting 
 fact in connection with the matter in hand, because 
 " Office-notes", prepared and submitted at each stage of 
 the proceedings by the gentleman who for the time being 
 
 * P. 315. 
 
 t Life of Lord Lawrence, by R. Bos worth Smith, M.A. (Smith, Elder, 
 and Co., 1883), vol. ii, p. 534. 
 
 D 2 
 
3G 
 / 
 
 was " the right hand of the Viceroy", have heen, as I shall 
 prove and as you are well aware the chief engines for 
 Holkar's confusion. The differences with regard to these 
 " Office -notes" rose to such a height, you say, that at last 
 the Governor-General issued orders " that all Foreign 
 Office work should be submitted to him without note or 
 opinion".* Whether the first Office-note of the series I 
 shall cite, written by Colonel Durand and dated the 4th 
 of August 1864, was one of those to which Lord Law- 
 rence objected, I have no means of knowing, but it will 
 strike most people, I think, as being well calculated to 
 call forth such a prohibition. You can look at the original 
 in the Office, and satisfy yourself on this point, and on 
 the accuracy of my citation. t 
 
 Sir John Lawrence, Viceroy of India, sends a memo- 
 randum to the Foreign Office on the 1st of August 1864, 
 stating that the Secretary of State, Sir Charles Wood 
 (now Viscount Halifax) has written, under date 4th July, 
 requesting that he "will take care that Holkar receives 
 certain advantages in reward for his conduct during the 
 Mutiny, as promised to him by Lord Canning", and he 
 calls for " the particular papers which bear on this point". 
 Colonel Durand, Foreign Secretary, desired that they 
 should be previously sent to him by Mr. Aitchison, the 
 Under Secretary, with a note. Mr. Aitchison's note, 
 dated 3rd August 1864, embodied a statement as to 
 alleged liberal concessions and compensations that had 
 been granted to Holkar, and ended by saying that there 
 was no trace in the Foreign Office records "that Sir 
 Robert Hamilton was ever instructed to make any pro- 
 mise to Holkar at all". Lord Lawrence remarks on 
 this : 
 
 " But Lord Canning must have written to Sir Eobert Hamilton 
 demi-officially, for Sir Charles Wood tells me, as a matter beyond 
 all doubt, that a promise was made and communicated in open 
 Durbar." 
 
 One of the concessions to Holkar mentioned in Mr. 
 Aitchison's note was the repayment of the expense of 
 
 * P. 321. f Appendix C, The Secret Papers. 
 
37 
 
 troops raised by his Highness during the rebellion to 
 replace our mutinied Contingents no reward or " dona- 
 tion", of course and it is to this that Colonel Durand 
 alludes in the following note, which also accompanied the 
 papers : 
 
 " I refer to my note of the 6th of December 1863, from which 
 it will he seen that the three lakhs' charge made by Holkar was 
 ridiculous, and that the Governor-General made him a pure dona- 
 tion when his Excellency allowed that sum to be paid to Holkar. 
 The latter has got, therefore, all that Lord Canning thought he 
 should get. He was, also, given the Star of India why, no one 
 could ever make out and it deteriorated the value of the decora- 
 tion in the eyes of those who, like the Begum of Bhopal, knew 
 Holkar's conduct. 
 
 4-8-64. " H. M. DURAND." 
 
 Here we find Colonel Durand appealing to a bad 
 opinion of Holkar entertained by the Begum of Bhopal. 
 You have already brought him before us declaring that 
 Lord Elphinstone eventually gave up the good opinion of 
 Holkar, which, in his Lordship's recorded words, " had 
 come from too many sources to admit of any doubt". * 
 This " Office-note" is thus extremely remarkable in itself, 
 and worthy of our attention at present, both with refer- 
 ence to the occasion that called it forth, and to the 
 occasion that has compelled me to come forward.- 
 
 Colonel Durand, in 1864, wishing to cry down Holkar 
 as a false and recreant Prince, cannot " make out" why 
 the Star of India was conferred on his Highness by Her 
 Majesty the Queen. In 1884, you, with the same object, 
 now become essential as an apology for your father's 
 procedure, cannot " make out" why the " territorial 
 reward", assigned to Holkar by Her Majesty's Govern- 
 ment and by the Viceroy, has been refused and is with- 
 held. You acknowledge at last, what no one had ever 
 previously been able to extract, that Colonel Durand 
 unofficially and secretly set down Holkar as " a partici- 
 pator with the mutineers", but you cannot "make out" 
 why he did so. With all your " scattered references" 
 you cannot " make out" what your father meant. You 
 
 * Ante, p. 25. 
 
38 
 
 do your very best. You call Mr. Dickinson " a pamphlet- 
 eer"; you suggest that all who have defended Holkar 
 are either " paid agitators" or " ignorant enthusiasts". 
 Although, you say, it would have been " easy" to answer 
 my book, you "do not attempt it". Instead of the 
 " refutation" of " a string of misstatements", which, you 
 say, would have been " easy", you offer the very charac- 
 teristic story about the " pig-lead", and the very question- 
 able invocation of Lord Elphinstone. That is all that 
 you can " make out" in 1883. 
 
 And all that Colonel Durand could "make out" in 
 1864 was that Holkar ought not to have had the Star of 
 India, and that the Begum of Bhopal " knew Holkar's 
 conduct". As to what Lord Elphinstone knew, you are 
 quite silent. Colonel Durand was equally silent as to 
 what the Begum of Bhopal knew. 
 
 These are notable specimens of the " tact, firmness, and 
 judicial aptitude"* which you, no doubt, assume to be 
 hereditary and inherent in the Calcutta Foreign Office. 
 For my part, I am quite confident that to all impartial 
 readers a very distinct impression of the weakness, even 
 to nullity, of Colonel Durand's imputations, and of the 
 strength of his rancour against Holkar, will be given by 
 the tenor and temper of the brief note in which the Cal- 
 cutta Secretary even goes out of his way to impugn the 
 grant of honours by Her Majesty a matter quite beyond 
 his province. With what political or judicial propriety, 
 in what logical connection, was the name of the Begum 
 of Bhopal invoked to point a sarcasm against Holkar ? 
 Even if she could have been called upon for her tes- 
 timony, in place of that which Colonel Durand had never 
 supplied, or for her opinion, in support of Colonel Durand's 
 solitary prejudice, what could she have known in July 
 1857, 100 miles off, more than was known by the British 
 officers at Mhow ? It must be remembered that on the 
 9th of July, when Colonel Durand was writing to Bom- 
 bay and Calcutta that Holkar's "treachery' was "palpable", 
 and "of the true Mahratta stamp", Holkar had already been 
 for four days in close intercourse and active co-operation 
 
 * Pp. 280, 281. 
 
39 
 
 with the Commandant^ of Mhow, and three columns of 
 the Maharajah's troops were out in concert with our offi- 
 cers. In all probability Colonel Durand was merely re- 
 calling to mind in 1864 something that he had told the 
 Begum of Bhopal himself in 1857 during the perturbation 
 of his flying visit, and not anything that could possibly 
 have come within the Begum's own cognisance. This is, 
 in all probability, the sole basis of the assumption that 
 Lord Elphinstone's opinion was altered. Colonel Durand 
 privately gave free expression to his loose guesses as to 
 Holkar's " waiting game", and Lord Elphinstone, who 
 was a man of exquisite courtesy, did not rudely put him 
 down. The strange invocation of the Begum of Bhopal, 
 as a witness or a judge, by the Foreign Secretary to the 
 Government of India, passed, likewise, without the anim- 
 adversion it deserved in the Council Chamber at Calcutta, 
 and was, unfortunately, never forwarded to London. The 
 adverse opinions already recorded were once more sent, 
 in reply to Sir Charles Wood's requisition, accompanied 
 by Mr. Aitchison's unfavourable report, but, under Sir 
 John Lawrence's direction, without Colonel Durand's note. 
 If Sir Charles Wood had seen that note he could hardly 
 have failed to detect its weakness, its malice, and its 
 impropriety. 
 
 But I am really not sure that the eccentric note of the 
 4th of August 1864, is the worst specimen from your 
 Office that I have to produce. 
 
 The mystery of Lord Canning's and Lord Lawrence's 
 refusal to do justice to Holkar is almost entirely cleared 
 up by the personal presence and influence of Colonel 
 Durand for eleven years, from 1859 to 1870. The as- 
 sumption of his local and immediate knowledge supplied 
 every deficiency in the records, and superseded every- 
 thing that conflicted with his irregular imputations. But 
 in July 1870 there were great grounds of hope that 
 Holkar's claim would receive impartial consideration. Sir 
 Henry Durand was no longer present at head-quarters. 
 He had been appointed Lieutenant-Governor of the Pun- 
 jaub. The Viceroy, Lord Mayo, well disposed after a 
 personal interview with his Highness, promptly repelled 
 
40 
 
 an attempt by the permanent officials to reject or impede 
 the Maharajah's appeal on a point of etiquette or form. 
 Mr. Aitchison, the assistant and successor of Colonel 
 Durand at the Calcutta Foreign Office, happened, also, 
 to be temporarily absent at the commencement of the 
 proceedings of 1870. These favourable conditions were, 
 however, made of no effect, just as the Viceregal Govern- 
 ment was on the verge of perceiving the truth, by the 
 personal intervention of Mr. Aitchison, immediately on 
 his return. 
 
 In 1864, Colonel Durand, unable to produce any testi- 
 mony or official statement describing Holkar's misconduct, 
 invokes the Begum of Bhopal as a witness or a judge of 
 something he does not specify. 
 
 In 1870, Mr. Aitchison, equally unable to produce any 
 testimony or official statement, gives for the first time a 
 description of Holkar's misconduct as if it had come from 
 official records, but really in flagrant contradiction to 
 authentic records which might have been, but were not, 
 produced. 
 
 In the absence of Mr. Aitchison, Mr. LePoer Wynne, 
 his Assistant, had stumbled over the strange fact that 
 Colonel Durand had promised to report on " the conduct 
 of Holkar and his troops"; and although Mr. LePoer 
 Wynne was assured in the Calcutta Foreign Office that 
 " no such paper had ever been received", " much search" 
 was made, under his directions, and he announces " a 
 renewed search", these " missing papers " being most 
 " important as illustrating the reasons which induced 
 'Lord Canning and Lord Lawrence to refuse a territorial 
 reward". 
 
 It was time for some one better acquainted than Mr. 
 LePoer Wynne with all the previous incidents to stop 
 this critical inquiry, which, if pushed on too far, must 
 have disclosed the fact that there was nothing on record 
 as to any misconduct on the part of Holkar or the Durbar. 
 There was nothing to " illustrate" the previous adverse 
 conclusions but vague rumours, and the menacing promise 
 of a report, which was " missing". The total deficiency 
 of " reasons " as to Holkar's forfeiture struck Mr. LePoer 
 Wynne as a very remarkable point. 
 
41 
 
 Mr. Aitchison came back at this crisis. He knew, of 
 course, that no papers were missing, but in his supple- 
 mentary " Office-note" he does not refer to Mr. LePoer 
 Wynne's bootless research. He does not mention Colonel 
 Durand's name. Mr. (now Sir Charles) Aitchison can 
 alone explain whence he extracted the stuff which he 
 laid before the Viceroy in Council as the evidence, and 
 the "reasons" which Mr. LePoer Wynne declared to be 
 wanting. He quotes no despatch ; he names no in- 
 formant ; but, by a direct accusation against the Maha- 
 rajah Holkar of coquetting with treason for four days, he 
 covers up the bare place which Mr. LePoer Wynne had 
 so inconveniently displayed. Here are Mr. Aitchison's 
 own words in a note dated 5th August 1870 : 
 
 " There is this difference between Holkar and those Chiefs who 
 have received territorial rewards, that Holkar did not, like them, at 
 the first burst of the mutiny, take that open and decided part with 
 us that he ought to have done.. The attack upon the Indore Residency 
 occurred on the 1st July, 1857. It was not till the 5th that he took 
 any d<:ul>:d steps to show with which cause he intended to throw 
 in his lot!' 
 
 Mr. Aitchison makes a charge against Holkar of having 
 wavered and hesitated for four days. Now he proceeds 
 to explain how base the motives were under which that 
 hesitation at last came to an end. 
 
 " During these four days our position at Mlunu had been rendered 
 secure l)ij the vigorous measures adopted by Captain Hungerford. 
 TJicre was no longer any doubt as to the strength of our position. 
 Accordingly, on the 5th of July, the bodies of the slain were buried 
 by Holkar's order, and the Maharajah on that date, and not before, 
 sent a deputation to Mhmv to express his regret at what had occurred. 
 I think, therefore, that Lord Canning took a thoroughly just view 
 of the Maharajah's services when, in his despatch, No. 6, of 18th 
 January, 1860, he wrote," quoting the passage in full, that Holkar's 
 " conduct" was unworthy of " either respect or gratitude". 
 
 These, in short, are the " reasons", hitherto " missing", 
 " which induced Lord Canning and Lord Lawrence to 
 refuse a territorial reward". Colonel Durand's declama- 
 tory prejudices, detected and rebuked by Lord Elphin- 
 stone at Bombay, had struck deep root in the official 
 
42 
 
 circle at Calcutta. Here we have them reproduced by 
 Mr. Aitchison, when pressed for evidence and reasons, in 
 the form of definite and injurious charges against Holkar. 
 What was Mr. Aitchison's authority for the inaccurate 
 story with which he misled Lord Mayo ? Whether he 
 received it as scripture or as tradition, its inaccuracy 
 is manifest and indisputable. 
 
 Mr. Aitchison says that "Holkar did not, at the first 
 burst of the mutiny, take an open and decided part with 
 us", and that "Holkar took no decided steps to show with 
 which cause he intended to throw in his lot" until the 5th 
 of July. He says that " this is the difference between 
 Holkar and those Chiefs who have received territorial 
 rewards": and the despatch consequent on these pro- 
 ceedings, points to this as the " clear and broad distinction 
 between the case of Holkar on one side, and those of 
 Scindia and of the Begum of Bhopal on the other". But 
 there was no real ground for any unfavourable distinction 
 between the conduct of Holkar " at the first burst of the 
 mutiny", and that of Scindia and the Begum of Bhopal ; 
 or if there was any distinction, it was entirely in favour 
 of Holkar. There was no more truth in the distinction 
 between Holkar and Scindia, than there was in the dis- 
 tinction, which you vainly imagine to have been meant 
 as favourable to Holkar, between the Maharajah and his 
 Durbar. 
 
 In briefly referring to the difficulties which assailed 
 the rulers of Gwalior and Bhopal in the great convulsive 
 crisis of 1857, and of the temporising expedients to which 
 they had to resort, there is no wish to detract from their 
 great services. I am deprecating, not instituting, an 
 invidious comparison. 
 
 When, on the mutiny breaking out at Gwalior, the 
 Resident, Colonel Macpherson, sought refuge at the 
 Palace, Scindia declared that, in consequence of the 
 feeling of his troops, " he could not protect" him "for an 
 hour". The Resident therefore left Gwalior for Agra.* 
 When Colonel Durand, in his retreat from Indore, arrived 
 
 * Return to the Lords (77 of 1860), Honours and Rewards, pp. 102, 
 103. 
 
43 
 
 at Sehore, the capital of Bhopal, the Begum expressed 
 her inability to shelter him or any English officer at her 
 capital, or in her dominions. Colonel Durand, therefore, 
 instantly left Bhopal, and made for the British canton- 
 ment of Hoshungabad. 
 
 For fully four months, from the 14th of June to the 
 15th of October 1857, Scindia was only able to restrain 
 the mutineers of the Gwalior Contingent in the words 
 of Colonel Macpherson, the Political Agent by dona- 
 tions of pay, and " by the delusion that he must at 
 length place himself at the head of the rebels".* Holkar 
 was not compelled to carry temporising expedients to 
 such an extremity. He was not reduced to disguise his 
 adherence to the British cause for a day, or for an hour. 
 On the very day of the outbreak he openly resisted it. 
 On the very day of the first outburst of the mutinies at 
 Indore and Mhow, Holkar did noble service. Although 
 he could not communicate with the Governor- General's 
 Agent during the terrible hour and a half that preceded 
 his retreat, the Maharajah apprehended the leader of the 
 outbreak and kept him in charge during the most dan- 
 gerous crisis ; he sent back to the scene of bloodshed and 
 confusion the misguided leader of his detachment, with 
 orders that must have damped the ardour of all who 
 feared or hoped anything from their own Prince ; he 
 stopped any reinforcement of the mutineers and rabble 
 engaged in attacking the Residency ; checked the con- 
 course that would otherwise have flocked there with 
 irresistible effect, and prevented the pursuit of Colonel 
 Durand. It is almost certain that by remaining close to 
 his Palace, keeping as tight a hold as was possible for 
 some time over the bulk of his troops, he did much more 
 good than if he had started for the Residency in the 
 midst of an infuriate crowd, ignorant of his real inten- 
 tions, but bent on mischief themselves. 
 
 Holkar, moreover, on the very day of the outbreak, 
 and in the words of Sir Robert Hamilton, "at the risk of 
 his own life", saved within his Palace the lives of a 
 number of Europeans, East Indian and Christian subjects 
 
 * Return in tlif Lords (77 of 1860), Honours and Rewards, p. 107. 
 
44 
 
 of the Queen. On tnat very day he sent a deputation 
 to the British authorities at Mhow, and sent off letters 
 to Colonel Durand and to Lord Elphinstone, the Governor 
 of Bombay. 
 
 Mr. Aitchison says that on the 1st of July 1857, 
 Holkar did not " take an open and decided part with 
 us"; that " it was not till the 5th that he took any de- 
 cided steps to show with which cause he intended to 
 throw in his lot"; and that "on that date, and not before, 
 he sent a deputation to Mhow". But there were then 
 within Mr. Aitchison's reach despatches proving that 
 Holkar had sent a deputation to Mhow on the 1st of 
 July, the day of the outbreak, and that he had never 
 hesitated or ceased for an hour to take an open and 
 decided part on our side.* 
 
 This new indictment was, nevertheless, quite enough 
 for Lord Mayo, when he was assured by Mr. Aitchison 
 that it had sufficed for Lord Canning. "For my own 
 part", says Lord Mayo, " I am quite satisfied with the 
 description given in the Secretary's note of Holkar's 
 actions at the time of the mutiny." That description, 
 with the accompanying inferences and surmises, was not 
 only unsupported by the records at Mr. Aitchison's dis- 
 posal, but was contradicted by them. 
 
 The adverse decision was, in due course, conveyed 
 in the form of a letter to the Governor-General's 
 Agent at Indore, dated 10th November 1870, in which 
 the Maharajah is told again that although graciously 
 " overlooked", in consideration of the services he "subse- 
 quently rendered", his conduct on the day of the outbreak 
 not having been worthy of " either the respect or the 
 gratitude of the British Government", necessitated " a 
 clear and broad distinction" between his case and those 
 of Scindia and the Begum of Bhopal, and " invalidated" 
 his claim "to an acknowledgment of his services by the 
 extension of his territory". 
 
 In the same letter, the Maharajah is, moreover, told 
 that he has received certain " pecuniary concessions " 
 arid " substantial marks of favour", which constitute " a 
 * Appendix D, " The Deputation to Mhow". 
 
45 
 
 cordial appreciation" of his services, and a sufficient re- 
 ward for them. Even if it could be shown that the 
 transactions detailed in the despatch were exclusively 
 beneficial to Holkar, which he denies, the argument would 
 still be quite irrelevant. The question is not of inci- 
 dental concessions or courtesies or compliments, but of a 
 condemnatory sentence, and of a promised reward with- 
 held on account of it. 
 
 It became the duty of Major-General Sir Henry Daly, 
 Agent to the Governor- General, to communicate the con- 
 tents of this despatch to the Maharajah, and to leave 
 him a copy of it. In the conversation which ensued, as 
 narrated by Sir Henry Daly, in a despatch dated " Indore 
 Residency, 21st November 1870", his Highness, " speak- 
 ing quietly and calmly", said : " I see Lord Mayo can do 
 nothing for me, that nothing can be done in India, there- 
 fore I must press my case in every possible way in 
 England." In order to dissuade him from taking this 
 course, the Agent urged upon Holkar that it would be 
 most imprudent for him to brave an open discussion or to 
 court publicity. In Sir Henry Daly's own words, " / 
 endeavoured to impress upon his Highness the pain which 
 would certainly fall upon him by dragging to light events 
 which the Government of India will willingly let sleep, that 
 the British officers who were in the Residency at Indore on 
 the 1st of July are still living, and that should he force an 
 inquiry, the evidence of the Natives, too, would tend to 
 prove on that day, at any rate, the Maharajah had not 
 chosen our part" 
 
 It is obvious, from Sir Henry Daly's silence on that 
 point, that the Maharajah showed no apprehension as to 
 the publication which Sir Henry Daly " endeavoured to 
 impress upon" him " would certainly" cause him " pain". 
 The Maharajah made no objection to " events being 
 dragged to light". Sir Henry Daly, in short, com- 
 pletely failed in " impressing upon his Highness", as 
 he had wished, the imprudence of "forcing an inquiry". 
 He totally failed, likewise, in creating any alarm in 
 his Highness's mind at the prospect of the despatch 
 of the 10th of November 1870, being published, "for 
 
40 
 
 public, information" " in order that the merits of the 
 case might be generally understood". Sir Henry Daly 
 is a very distinguished soldier ; and the Government 
 of India may have had better material for estimating 
 his diplomatic and judicial capacity than this one 
 instance of an offensive exhortation, aimed point blank 
 at a Prince in person, and quite missing its mark. 
 It is worthy of notice that Sir Henry Daly having 
 completely failed in his object, seems to have been inca- 
 pable of appreciating or even perceiving the significance 
 of his failure. What his failure really meant was that no 
 evidence, British or Native, against Holkar, had ever 
 existed. 
 
 Mr. Aitchison, in an " Office-note" sent round with Sir 
 Henry Daly's despatch, thinks that " for the present it 
 would be very improper to publish the papers, but if 
 Holkar begins to agitate, Colonel Daly's proposal is not 
 a bad one". Holkar, Mr. Aitchison also says, " will act 
 very foolishly if he begins to agitate his case at home, 
 and will force Government to make awkward revelations of 
 his conduct during the first four days after the outbreak at 
 Indore." 
 
 The combined assurance of these two high functionaries 
 must have only tended still more to the satisfaction of a 
 Viceroy in Council already contented with Mr. Aitchison's 
 " description of Holkar's actions". It made such an im- 
 pression upon one Councillor, Sir Richard Temple, that 
 he at once minuted as follows : " If Holkar l tries it on, 
 and gets his 'face blackened' in consequence, his Highness 
 will have himself to thank" 
 
 And yet there was not then, and there is not now, any 
 such evidence as that which Sir Henry Daly conjured up 
 in vain for the intimidation of Holkar. There were not 
 then, and there are not now. any " awkward revelations" 
 held in reserve, which could " blacken Holkar's face". 
 You have not been able "to make out" anything, with all 
 your " scattered references". 
 
 If any hostile evidence had been recorded or attainable, 
 if any " awkward revelations" had really been kept in the 
 background, some hint of them must have come out in 
 
47 
 
 the course of these proceedings. But there is no such 
 hint or trace. Every deliberate report, everything that 
 is in official form and order, is favourable to Holkar. 
 Everything that is against him is vague in sense, and 
 irregular in form. When Colonel Durand was driven to 
 say something in 1864, he could only express his feelings 
 by a mysterious invocation of the Begum of Bhopal, and 
 an indiscreet impeachment of Her Majesty's prerogative. 
 When Mr. Aitchison was closely pressed in 1870 on 
 account of " the missing papers", he could not cite any- 
 thing official, but had to draw his condemnatory " de- 
 scription of Holkar's actions" from some private or per- 
 sonal source without a name. 
 
 The case, as now presented, is a very simple one. It 
 is narrowed to the direct citation of two living persons, 
 Sir Charles Aitchison, Lieutenant-Governor of the Pun- 
 jaub, and General Sir Henry Daly, who resides in this 
 country. The judgment of independent politicians, and 
 even of Ministers, has always been on the side of the 
 injured and insulted Prince ; but officialism supports its 
 professional colleague, statesmanship is baffled and defied, 
 and a Prince's honour is sacrificed to an Agent's credit. 
 On the other side, there was until 1870 only one accuser 
 an accuser who brought no charge Colonel Durand. 
 For eleven years the disgrace and deprivation of the 
 Maharajah Holkar depended on the inexplicit vilifications, 
 secretly reiterated in 1864, of Colonel Durand, and on his 
 almost constant presence. So the matter stood until 
 1870. From that year Sir Charles Aitchison and Sir 
 Henry Daly are morally responsible. On the " descrip- 
 tion of Holkar's actions" by Sir Charles Aitchison, also 
 secretly recorded, the decision of 1870 is expressly 
 grounded, that being the only adverse decision in which 
 any grounds of judgment have ever been set forth. 
 
 Until Mr. Aitchison's " description of Holkar's actions", 
 there was not on record, even in secret, one distinct or 
 intelligible word explaining what was the Maharajah's 
 misconduct " at the time of the mutiny" which had ren- 
 dered him unworthy of " either respect or gratitude", and 
 created the " broad distinction" in favour of the Begum 
 
48 
 
 of Bhopal and Scindia. In his " Office-note" of the 5th 
 of August 1870, Mr. Aitchison gives the much required 
 and missing word, quite distinct and intelligible, but 
 quite unwarranted. This " description of Holkar's ac- 
 tions" satisfied Lord Mayo, because he naturally assumed 
 that it was drawn from official records. It was not. It 
 was unauthenticated even as an accusation. It was quite 
 new, and quite untrue. 
 
 At the same crisis, when the redress of a great wrong 
 was within reach of Lord Mayo, Sir Henry Daly, by 
 alleging that there was "evidence", both European and 
 Native, of Holkar's misconduct, confirmed the unfounded 
 statement by which Sir Charles Aitchison had "satisfied" 
 the Viceroy. 
 
 These two living accusers have rejected a personal 
 challenge to justify or withdraw their accusations, which 
 I felt bound to offer for their acceptance. It is natural 
 and easy for them, with all their advantages of position 
 and prescription, to revile and ridicule my mission. I 
 certainly have no power to force an answer from them. 
 Evidently I have no power to extort an answer from you. 
 My book was so sure "to die a natural death" that you 
 would not refute it, although the task would have been, 
 you think, an easy one. You may now flatter yourself, 
 and may be flattered in the narrow circle of Chowringhee 
 or Simla, into the belief that this Letter demands no 
 more attention, because you could, if you chose, refute 
 it likewise. But in the much larger circle I address, and 
 where I shall be heard, the vapouring evasions of your 
 class will not avail you. 
 
 . It will not avail to say that the acts of Sir Charles 
 Aitchison and of Sir Henry Daly have obtained the 
 approval and confirmation of the Government of India. 
 That superior sanction, as I have shown, was wrong- 
 fully obtained. In their unjustifiable treatment of the 
 Maharajah Holkar's appeal, those two gentlemen must 
 have been actuated and biassed almost unconsciously, 
 I believe by considerations arid motives neither judicial 
 nor political, but private, personal, and professional. In 
 common charity I am driven to refer to the prevailing 
 
49 
 
 Anglo-Indian prejudices of race and class, because I see 
 no milder method of accounting for Mr. Aitchison's un- 
 warrantable "description of Holkar's actions on the day 
 of the meeting", or for Sir Henry Daly's equally unwar- 
 rantable declaration as to " evidence" of the Maharajah's 
 misconduct. 
 
 Sir Henry Daly and Sir Charles Aitchison, and a great 
 many Anglo-Indian officials, like yourself, probably had, 
 and have now, a feeling that the unretracted bad word 
 of a British dignitary like Sir Henry Durand is as good 
 as evidence against a Mahratta Prince, and ought to 
 counterbalance all opposing testimony. But you, as a 
 barrister-at-law, ought to know that this is a very 
 serious error. It is, likewise, more than probable that 
 in Anglo-Indian official circles, at home and abroad, a 
 feeling would prevail that a highly placed member of 
 the Civil or Military Service is, from every point of view, 
 a person of far greater consequence, of more importance 
 and value to the Empire, than any Nawab or Rajah. 
 But this, also, is a very great mistake. The truth is not 
 to be rejected because the Ministerial officer who, under 
 some strange misconception, put it aside, and put some- 
 thing else in its place in 1870, is now the Lieutenant- 
 Governor of the Punjaub. Lieutenant-Governors come 
 and go. The House of Holkar is firmly rooted in the 
 soil, and is an invaluable factor in the conservative equi- 
 librium of India. Were it just, it would not be politic 
 to outrage and disregard the permanent realities of the 
 Empire, in order to uphold an error, or to screen from 
 discredit for a time the mere accident of a day and a 
 Department. 
 
 The supply of officials, even of Secretaries, Political 
 Agents, and Lieutenant-Governors, quite up to the aver- 
 age standard, is constant and practically unlimited. But 
 Princes of the Empire, though easily destroyed or dis- 
 heartened, cannot be made and cannot be replaced, either 
 by patronage or by competitive examination. 
 
 The Indian Principalities, the self-governed provinces, 
 are, and always have been, not accidental, but essential, 
 constituents of British power in India. Our Indian 
 
50 
 
 Empire would never have come into being, and cannot 
 continue to flourish or to exist, without them. Without 
 Native allies, Great Britain could not have won her way 
 to virtual supremacy between 1756 and 1819. Without 
 the aid and influence of the Indian Princes, the mutinies 
 of 1857 would have swelled into a general rebellion, so 
 tremendous that the restoration of British rule could 
 only have taken place at an incalculable cost, and with 
 horrible and ruinous results of devastation and disor- 
 ganisation. 
 
 The mere existence of the Princes, irrespective of their 
 active aid or countenance on our side, prevented the 
 rebels from getting leaders of weight and capacity, and 
 from obtaining anything like a political centre or even a 
 belligerent status. The Nizam's authority was invaluable 
 in the Deccan, and was more or less of a restraint over 
 Mohammedan fanaticism in every part of India. The 
 good effect produced by the combined support of Holkar 
 and Scindia throughout Hindostan and Malwa can hardly 
 be over-estimated. But during the most critical months 
 of 1857 and .1858, when the provinces round Delhi and 
 Lucknow were in full revolt, Holkar stood alone in 
 Malwa and Central India ; for Scindia was a fugitive 
 his Durbar arid army had "gone", and he was only able 
 to return to Gwalior in June 1858, escorted by British 
 troops. The influence of Holkar was, also, pre-eminent 
 among theMahrattas of Western India. "All the smaller 
 Chiefs", said Lord Elphinstone, "seem to take their cue 
 from him." In a remarkable article which appeared in 
 the Quarterly Review for July 1858, well known to have 
 been from the pen of Mr. (now the Right Honourable Sir 
 Henry) Layard, who had lately returned from a tour 
 through India, while the rebellion was at its height, the 
 writer attributes ' ' the maintenance of our rule in India 
 to the fidelity of the Nizam of the Deccan, Scindia, 
 Holkar, and the Rajah of Putteeala", and adds: "The 
 Presidency of Bombay has been saved only by the energy, 
 foresight, and judgment of Lord Elphinstone, although 
 its army was on the eve of revolt, and its population, 
 
51 
 
 especially that of the Mahratta country, ready for insur- 
 rection."* 
 
 As to the condition of Central India, take the follow- 
 ing extract of a letter from Sir John Lawrence to Lord 
 Stanley: 
 
 "June 16, 1858. 
 
 " Gwalior has fallen into the hands of the mutineers, with, I 
 fear, a couple of millions of treasure. Unless we can retake it, 
 which is at least problematical, a general insurrection throughout 
 the Mahratta States may be anticipated. Central India is a strong 
 country, difficult for military operations ; and, with plenty of 
 money, soldiers can be procured in any numbers."f 
 
 This gives force and strong confirmation to the follow- 
 ing passage in Sir Robert Hamilton's letter of the 26th 
 of April 1858, the only official report on the conduct of 
 Holkar and his Durbar in 1857 that was ever made : 
 
 " What has really foiled them has been the personal fidelity of 
 Holkar, Scindia, and Baiza Baee. Had any one of these declared 
 for the Peishwa, our difficulties would have been beyond concep- 
 tion ; the smaller thakoors and rural chiefs would have instantly 
 joined the standard of their sovereign ; every village would have 
 KM-H openly hostile." J 
 
 And here is a similar extract from one of Earl Can- 
 ning's published despatches : 
 
 " There is no doubt that if the Mahratta plots in the West had 
 not, by active operations on a comparatively small scale, been 
 nipped in the bud, the great body of rebels in the East that is, in 
 Central India, Bundelcund, and near the Jumna would have 
 acquired much greater strength for resistance on a large scale." 
 
 You can, confessedly, "make out" nothing against 
 these historical facts with your " scattered references", 
 nor can they be nullified either by Colonel Durand's 
 equivocal sneer of 1864, or by Mr. Aitchison's novel 
 figment of 1870. As you have nothing else to offer, 
 I cannot doubt that from your disclosures alone, without 
 
 * Quarterly Review, July 1858, p. 265. 
 
 t Life of Lord Lawrence, by R. Bosworth Smith (Smith, Elder, and 
 Co.), vol. ii, p. 302. 
 
 + Return to the Lords (77 of I860), p. 116. 
 
 Military Letter from the Viceroy in Council to the Secretary of 
 State, dated 4th April 1861, No. 5. Papers, 498 of 1863, p. 5. 
 
 E 2 
 
52 
 
 the aid of my comments and my additional revelations, 
 impartial readers will begin to have grave misgivings as 
 to the " tact and firmness", the " sympathy with the 
 feelings of rulers and people", the integrity and the 
 public spirit, with which the work of the Foreign and 
 Political Department is carried on the chief place in 
 which, you say, " is regarded as the blue riband of the 
 Civil Service", "an almost certain stepping-stone to the 
 highest posts in the Empire". 
 
 God help the Empire, when those who have stepped 
 into its highest posts are possessed by such " tact" and 
 such " firmness", such " sympathy with rulers and people", 
 such "judicial aptitude", and such public spirit, as have 
 been displayed by Sir Henry Durand, Sir Charles Aitchi- 
 son, and yourself, in your dealings with our " loyal, 
 steadfast, and faithful ally",* the Maharajah Tookajee 
 Rao Holkar. 
 
 But you have yet another specific offence, in addition 
 to the " pig-lead" affair, to lay to the charge of the 
 Maharajah Holkar. "Not many years ago", you say, 
 " the Governor- General was forced to return one of his 
 memorials as containing remarks regarding my father 
 and Lord Canning, which were positively intolerable, "t 
 Yes, the Governor- General was "forced". That is the 
 very word. Lord Northbrook, who had then been about a 
 week at Calcutta, was misled by Mr. Aitchison, his " right 
 hand", and keeper of the papers, as completely as Lord 
 Mayo had been, by the very safe and convenient device 
 of not allowing him to see the papers at all. Redress 
 was refused to Holkar in 1872 by the absolute rejection 
 of his memorial, without hearing or consideration, on 
 the ground of his having "presumed to write of the 
 Governor-General's Agent, Sir Henry Durand, and even 
 of the late Viceroy, Lord Canning, in highly unbecoming 
 and objectionable terms". Leaving out of consideration 
 its evasive character and object, this is a plea quite 
 peculiar to Anglo-Indian officialism. It seems to me to 
 be very feeble and very unjudicial. 
 
 * Return to the Lords (77 of 1860), p. 119. 
 t P. 462. 
 
53 
 
 If it should be urged that the reputation and credit of 
 the late Sir Henry Durand are more precious than those 
 of Sir Robert Hamilton, who is living, or that more faith 
 ought to be placed in the infallibility of the late Lord 
 Canning than in the judgment of the present Earl of 
 Derby or of Viscount Halifax, I can only say that all 
 these considerations appear to me to be wide of the mark. 
 Respect ought certainly to be paid to the memory and 
 reputation of the dead, but not at the expense and to 
 the dishonour of the living, or at the risk of public 
 mischief. This is a question of truth and justice, and of 
 great political import, not one of personal deference or 
 forbearance. For example, Holkar is living. The un- 
 justified maintenance of this calumny is not merely an 
 injury to that Prince, his House and State, but is an un- 
 purged and unrebuked offence against the Imperial Crown 
 and the British Government of India. This is pre- 
 eminently a case in which it may be said, Nullum tempus 
 occur r it Regi. There can be no term of limitation for 
 the redress of a calumny which has misled the Viceroy, 
 and frustrated the declared intentions of Her Majesty's 
 Government. 
 
 Sir Henry Durand, who hastily denounced and per- 
 sistently maligned Holkar, is dead. Lord Elphinstone, 
 who eulogised Holkar, and warned Sir Henry Durand 
 " not to harbour prejudices" against the Maharajah, is 
 also dead. Sir Henry Durand, who was then living, was 
 mentioned, it is said, in Holkar's memorial of 1870, "in 
 highly unbecoming and objectionable terms". On the 
 other hand, Sir Robert Hamilton, who, in the only 
 official despatch on the subject, described Holkar's con- 
 duct on the 1st of July 1857, as admirable, and who 
 traced the ultimate safety of British power in Central 
 India to the personal fidelity of Holkar, is mentioned by 
 the Ministerial subordinates of the Indian Foreign Office 
 in terms that are beyond a doubt " highly unbecoming 
 and objectionable". He is put down as a " notorious 
 advocate" of Holkar "at home", whose "mischievous 
 advocacy" is quite undeserving of credit. You have 
 clone all that bad taste and a bad case could prompt, to 
 improve on this unprovoked insolence. 
 
54 
 
 Sir Robert Hamilton is living, surrounded by children 
 and grandchildren, and neither to him nor to them, it 
 may be presumed, can his reputation be a matter of 
 indifference. 
 
 You seem, by-the-by, to attach great importance to 
 the fact, communicated to your father by Sir John Kaye, 
 that the latter was "an intimate personal friend" of Sir 
 Robert Hamilton. I was misled by the " my dear Sir" style 
 of one or two notes I came across among Mr. Dickinson's 
 papers into forming a different opinion, and expressed it 
 hastily and, I regret to say, somewhat rudely, not in 
 the book which has escaped " severe treatment" at your 
 hands because you consider it "violent and acrimonious",* 
 but in an unpublished paper, which you have probably 
 seen. I owe an apology to you for this error the only 
 one of any description that you have helped me to 
 correct but the point itself is utterly insignificant. Sir 
 John Kaye's careful impartiality is quite unimpeachable; 
 while the positive, as well as the weightier negative, 
 evidence of prejudice and calumny is drawn from 
 Colonel Durand's own papers, not from anything that 
 Sir Robert Hamilton could have supplied. The error 
 of judgment that Kaye imputes to Colonel Durand 
 in evacuating the Residency (absurdly exaggerated 
 by you into the imputation of "an act of poltroon- 
 ery""!") is, as you very justly observe, an " entirely 
 separate matter" from Colonel Durand's " treatment of 
 Holkar",J the real matter at issue. But, as you consider 
 the question of intimacy to be important, I may as well 
 mention that I have never seen Sir Robert Hamilton. 
 When I was preparing the Last Counsels for the press I 
 applied to him for information as to one or two facts ; 
 but, during the last seven years, I have had no corre- 
 spondence or communication with him, or with any 
 member of his family. It is not, therefore, as a personal 
 friend, but simply as one who has always upheld those 
 views of the position of the allied and protected States 
 in the Indian Empire, upon which there was a substantial 
 agreement between Sir John Kaye, Mr. Dickinson, and 
 * P. 476. t P. 475. I P. 464. 
 
55 
 
 Sir Robert Hamilton, that I undertake to defend the 
 last-named gentleman from your reiterated suggestion 
 that he was very wrong, and w r as deservedly censured by 
 the Government of Lord Ellenborough for " the un- 
 authorised elevation of young Tookajee Holkar" to the 
 musnud of Indore. Sir Robert Hamilton, as you may 
 see from his despatch to Lord Canning's Government of 
 1st February 1859,* has never 'acknowledged any error in 
 this case. He was entirely in the right, and Lord Ellen- 
 borough's advisers were entirely in the wrong. The 
 Government of India was saved by him for the time, and 
 in a most momentous instance, from drifting into that 
 stream of sham precedent, sham prerogative, and flagrant 
 prevarication, which carried Lord Dalhousie into the 
 disastrous policy of breaking up the Empire and con- 
 structing new departments. Sir Robert Hamilton was 
 so well informed as to the law, custom, and precedents 
 really applicable to Hindu successions, that he never 
 suspected the perverse and grasping heresy propounded 
 at Calcutta, until he found himself censured for not 
 having fallen into it. 
 
 But you gentlemen of " the blue riband and stepping- 
 stone" department, in defiance of statesmanlike instruc- 
 tions from home, in the face of Viceregal and depart- 
 mental recantations, are perpetually relapsing into that 
 same heresy the heresy that sanctifies the extinction 
 of allied States and the growth of salaried Commissions. 
 
 I have had good occasion to watch the sayings and 
 doings of the Calcutta Foreign Office ; and I declare that 
 not one of those distinguished persons who have occu- 
 pied the place of what you call " the right hand of the 
 Viceroy" during the last twenty-five years, has ever been 
 able to stick to a consistent principle on the subject of 
 succession and annexation for a single year, or even 
 through a single despatch. When the practical temptation 
 of aggrandisement and patronage presents itself before 
 the departmental mind, precept and principle give way 
 at once. 
 
 You say that Sir Henry Durand was " decidedly op- 
 * Return to the Lords (11 of 1860), pp. 121, 123. 
 
50 
 
 posed to the sweeping annexations of Lord Dalhousie, 
 which, while they weakened our military position, had 
 also unsettled the minds of our Indian feudatories, and 
 sown fear and distrust broadcast".* Yet with reference 
 to the only two actual cases that were proposed while he 
 was at the head of the Foreign Office those of Dhar 
 and Mysore, most iniquitous and impolitic both of them 
 he was bitterly bent on annexation. 
 
 The retrogressive heresy that you accept as doctrine 
 would cover a complete recurrence to the " sweeping 
 annexations" of the Dalhousie reign of terror. " It would 
 be extremely interesting," you say, " in face of all that has 
 been talked and written by ignorant enthusiasts or paid 
 agitators in England, to work out this question. There 
 is hardly a great Native State in India which has not, 
 strictly speaking, lapsed to the Crown ; and under any 
 other Government but that of England the majority of 
 these States would long ago have been absorbed. By the 
 English Government their existence has been artificially 
 prolonged." This is totally erroneous, and exhibits com- 
 plete ignorance on your part of the International law, the 
 Indian law, and the Indian history, bearing on the ques- 
 tion. It is totally untrue, and without the least political 
 or historical foundation, that " the great Principalities of 
 Gwalior, Indore, Jeypoor, and Baroda" have "lapsed to 
 the Crown", or that "under any other Government but 
 that of England these States would have been absorbed". t 
 
 The whole question of adoption, and of confirmation 
 and investiture, has been so fully argued, and the iniquity 
 of Lord Dalhousie's doctrine of "lapse" so thoroughly 
 and unanswerably exposed by Mr. J. M. Ludlow,|and by 
 myself, that I will only bring to your notice the candid 
 
 * P. 282. t P. 286. 
 
 { Thoughts on the Policy of the Crown towards India, (Ridgway, 
 1859). 
 
 Retrospects and Prospects of Indian Policy (Triibner, 1868), pp. 
 10 to 26. See also an excellent pamphlet on "Adoption", by a distin- 
 guished gentleman now at Calcutta, the Hon. Vishwanath Narayim 
 Mandlik, member of the Legislative Council, published in London by 
 Smith, Elder, and Co. in 1866. Mr. Robert Knight, editor of the 
 Statesman, has also exhausted the subject, from every point of view, 
 with reference to estates as well as States,. 
 
57 
 
 confession of the Indian Government in Lord Canning's 
 Adoption Despatch of April 30th, 1860, which contains 
 (paragraphs 17, 19) the following passages : 
 
 " We have not shown, so far as I can find, a single instance in 
 which adoption by a Sovereign Prince has been invalidated by a 
 refusal of assent by a Paramount Power." 
 
 " There is no example of any Hindoo State, whether in Rajpootana 
 or elsewhere, lapsing to the Paramount Power, by reason of that 
 Power withholding its assent to an adoption." 
 
 You say that the "connection" of the reigning Princes 
 of Indore and Gwalior " with the former ruling family" 
 begging the question audaciously with that word 
 "former" " is very slight". You are quite mistaken. 
 The present Maharajah Holkar of Indore is first cousin, 
 the present Maharajah Scindia of Gwalior is " nearest in 
 blood",* to his immediate predecessor. Both of them are 
 descended in the male line from the common ancestor of 
 all their predecessors. What more could you say,, what 
 more could you expect in any Royal family our own, for 
 example of Europe or Asia ? 
 
 But I am wandering from my real object, already, I 
 think, fully attained, that of clearing myself from the 
 charge, which you do not attempt or " propose" to 
 justify, of having published " a tissue of untruth". I 
 really had not any intention, when I began this Letter, 
 of carrying the war so far into the enemy's camp. I cer- 
 tainly had no intention, and have none, of denouncing 
 your method as not being in harmony with the utterances 
 and the style of those who have stood of late years at 
 " the right hand of the Viceroy", and into whose place 
 you may very naturally aspire to step in your turn. On 
 the contrary, both your pamphlet and your book strike me 
 as eminently characteristic of your department, and quite 
 in keeping with the tone and manner of the very best 
 official society in Calcutta, You say that you were 
 "much tempted" to answer my book.t Well, you resisted 
 the temptation, but you succumbed to another, far more 
 excusable in your case than in that of Sir Charles Aitchi- 
 
 * /Succession by Adoption of Princes in India (50 of 1850), pp. 37 
 and t P. 476. 
 
58 
 
 son, and one of the besetting temptations of the class to 
 which you belong. You thought more of the narrow 
 circle in which you move, and of its petty maxims, than 
 of the broad bounds of the Empire, and of the great 
 principles on which its peace and stability depend. You 
 thought more of the personal credit of your father and 
 here is the great excuse for you, and for you only than 
 of what you would, perhaps, call abstract justice. You 
 have been relying too much on the dignity and security 
 of Anglo-Indian officialism, on your big salaries and your 
 sky-blue ribands. These things count for a great deal 
 with Anglo-Indian functionaries and their parasites, but 
 for very little with Imperial statesmen, or with intelli- 
 gent citizens of the Empire, when once they are roused 
 no easy matter, I confess to look into anything 
 Indian. 
 
 You think that Mr. Dickinson's posthumous work will 
 " die a natural death", and that more people will read 
 your book than have " ever heard of Mr. Dickinson or 
 his pamphlets".* It is possible that the establishment 
 of " The John Dickinson Association" in London, and the 
 names on its first Committee, may very soon convince 
 you that here, also, you have made a great mistake. 
 
 You appear to imagine, in common with most of your 
 official compeers, that the suggestion of an advocate 
 being paid, is enough to destroy all the effect of his 
 advocacy. "The cap fits!" Yes you are quite right. 
 I apply your indirect sarcasm, as you wished your readers 
 to apply it, directly to myself. I am a half-pay officer, 
 with no private means worth mentioning, and my large 
 expenditure in advocating the redress of many Indian 
 wrongs and the adoption of a liberal and truly Imperial 
 policy, during the last twenty years, with substantial 
 and, as I believe, beneficial results, has not come 
 entirely from my own resources. I have done much un- 
 paid work, and have seen myself in print much too often 
 at my own cost. I am under the guidance and control 
 of no one. But it has been very satisfactory to myself, 
 and not devoid, I believe, of public advantage, when I 
 
 * P. 476. 
 
59 
 
 have been able to combine literary and political work, 
 and to obtain material aid from a publisher, or a client, 
 or a fellow-worker. All that I claim is that my work 
 has been conscientiously taken up and conscientiously 
 performed. I have never accepted the position of advo- 
 cate in a cause which I did not conceive to be at once 
 just and capable of some settlement, and to have in it no 
 element of hostility or mischief to the Empire. I have 
 always aimed at scrupulous accuracy and moderation in all 
 my statements and in all my arguments. I have, to the 
 best of my judgment and ability, done my work well. 
 
 I have too often had to complain, and never more 
 often than with reference to the case now before us, 
 that the gentlemen of your department, although very 
 handsomely paid, do their work badly. In the year 1870, 
 Mr. Aitchison, " the right hand of the Viceroy", was 
 receiving a salary of 4,000 a year. When he evolved 
 from his inner consciousness the inaccurate statement 
 that Holkar had played "a waiting game" for four days,* 
 in contradiction to the records in his keeping, and 
 thus misled Lord Mayo, I think he did his work badly. 
 Judging by the standard I have set up for myself, it 
 appears to me that in the month of August 1870 Mr. 
 Aitchison's work was badly done, and his large salary not 
 fairly earned. 
 
 If there is, indeed, no power in the Empire to redress 
 the wrongs done in your Office and to improve the quality 
 of its work in general, then my humble efforts as a critic 
 and an advocate are entirely thrown away. But I do 
 not yet despair of the commonwealth. There are latent 
 forces in the Crown and in the constituencies that may 
 wake us all up before long, and save the Empire from the 
 selfish and stifling pressure of " the Office" and " the 
 Service". 
 
 I have Sir, the honour to be, 
 
 Your most obedient servant, 
 
 EVANS BELL. 
 
 * Ante, pp. 41 to 44, and Appendix D. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 A. 
 
 THE DURBAR 
 (Page 14.) 
 
 The persons who formed the Durbar or Council at Indore, and 
 with whom alone the Maharajah was in the habit of consulting in 
 affairs of State, were (1) his own brother, Kashee Kao Holkar 
 (K. C.S.I.) ; (2) his preceptor and Private Secretary, Oomed Singh ; 
 (3) the acting Dewan, Kamchunder Eao Bhao; (4) Bukhshee 
 Knoman Singh, the Maharajah's fellow-student, Commandant of 
 Cavalry (C.S.L) ; (5) and G-unput Eao Seetarain, commonly called 
 Gunesh Shastree, the Durbar Wakeel, or agent for daily communi- 
 cations with the British Resident. These five were all good 
 English scholars, and during the two days of rebel ascendancy at 
 Indore 2nd and 3rd July actually became as much the objects 
 of the mutineers' hate and fury as if they had been Europeans. 
 Besides these there were (6) Bhowanee Singh Sir-nobut, head of 
 the Household Horse ; (7) Bhim-gir, head of police; and (8) Earn 
 Eao Narain, the hereditary and titular Dewan. During Colonel 
 Durand's retirement, their own observations and experience, and 
 their inquiries at Mhow and Indore, convinced Major Hungerford 
 and Captains Hutchinson and Elliott, as certified, for example, by 
 Major Hungerford in a letter to Eao Oomed Singh, the Maharajah's 
 Preceptor and Councillor, dated "Mhow, February 1st, 1858", that 
 " the whole of the members of the Indore Durbar, during the time 
 of the disturbances of the city, vied with the Maharajah in dis- 
 playing feelings of unflinching loyalty and devotion to the British 
 Government, even at a time when such feelings exposed them to 
 great danger from a mutinous soldiery". All of the above-named 
 members of the Durbar, with five other officers of rank at Holkar's 
 Court, received " the cordial thanks" of the Governor-General for 
 their " excellent services", " loyalty", and " assistance" given to the 
 British Government [Lords Return (77 of 1860), Honours and 
 Rewards, pp. 119, 120, 125]. 
 
 It may be said in extenuation of Colonel Durand's hasty sus- 
 picion and denunciation of the Indore Durbar, that he can have 
 
61 
 
 known little of the character and qualifications of any of these 
 gentlemen, with the exception of Gunput Rao Seetaram, the Durbar 
 Wakeel, who afterwards accompanied him in the field and received 
 a specific reward from our Government, for during the three 
 months of his residence at Indore, he had only seen the Maharajah 
 himself twice. 
 
 B. 
 
 LETTER OF THE VICEROY, EARL CANNING, TO SIR 
 ROBERT HAMILTON, BART, K.C.IJ. 
 
 Which -urns read by the British Agent in the Indore Durbar. 
 (Page 17.) 
 
 " Calcutta, March 26, 1859. 
 
 " DEAR SIR ROBERT, This letter will catch you at Bombay, and I am 
 sincerely sorry to think that it is the last which I shall address to you 
 in India. Your departure is a great loss to the Government, and I 
 only hope that it may be a proportionate gaiu to yourself in recruited 
 strength and health. 
 
 " I had not much hope that the news which I telegraphed to you from 
 the India House would detain you, and am not surprised at your deci- 
 sion. 
 
 " I wish that the rewards to Scindia and Holkar and the Nizam could 
 have been settled before your departure, though with the latter you 
 have nothing to do directly. It will require a strong influence to make 
 all of them contented, and a new Governor-General's Agent will be at a 
 disadvantage in this respect. There is not much difficulty about the 
 Nizam. The difficulty is to reward Scindia and Holkar in due propor- 
 tion to the Nizam without disturbing our Customs Line to an extent 
 which we cannot afford, and without making over to their rule popula- 
 tions which have long been under ours. But the problem is nearly 
 approaching to a solution, though not one which satisfies me. 
 
 " I do not see much difficulty about the Contingents ; but we shall 
 have to spend more money upon them. 
 
 " I have not been able to find your Memorandum upon military 
 operations, respecting which you wrote some time ago. It was with me 
 at Allahabad when I first went there, and possibly the Commander-in- 
 Chief may have it. I have asked him, and will send it after you when 
 I get hold of it. 
 
 " Do you think that there would be any gain in dividing the Central 
 India Agency into two Agencies? This has been suggested, on the 
 ground that the one is more than a single officer can properly manage. 
 So far as regards having a chief officer at Scindia's Court, as well as at 
 Holkar's, instead of a subordinate officer as at present, I like the pro- 
 posal. The working of the Gwalior business through Indore is, on 
 
62 
 
 urgent matters, a serious disadvantage ; but in other respects I see no 
 gain in it. Of course, the salary of each reduced Agency would be below 
 that of Indore as it stands. Indeed, this will be diminished in the case 
 of your successor, irrespectively of any division of duties. 
 
 "I have not forgotten your heavy losses in 1857 ; but your compen- 
 sation must stand or fall with that of others. You have, I hope, a good 
 chance of recovering a considerable portion. 
 
 " Good-bye, my dear Sir Robert, and once more accept my sincerest 
 thanks for your indefatigable and valuable aid. I have received none 
 that has been given with a more hearty willingness, I well know ; and 
 therefore there has been none which it has been more agreeable to me to 
 accept. 
 
 "Believe me, etc., 
 
 " (Signed) CANNING. 
 
 " There is a farewell despatch from the Governor-General in Council 
 still to go to you. 
 
 " To Sir R. Hamilton, Bart. " (Signed) C." 
 
 C. 
 
 THE SECRET PAPERS. 
 (Page 36.) 
 
 The following note from Mr. John Dickinson's pen, evidently 
 intended to have been inserted somewhere in that " Protest and 
 Rejoinder" on behalf of the Maharajah Holkar which he did not 
 live to finish, is necessary as a partial explanation of his access to 
 records that are not usually brought to light. 
 
 " I must observe, as I shall have to quote a number of ' secret ' papers 
 in the course of my argument, that there was nothing dishonourable in 
 the way these papers came into my possession, and therefore there is 
 nothing dishonourable in my using them. I have always been perfectly 
 frank and aboveboard in my dealings with the Government, whether 
 friendly or hostile. I have defended them at my own cost and peril in 
 cases where I thought they were right as, for example, in their sharp 
 struggle with the Indigo Planters, and in the matter of Her Majesty's 
 assumption of the Imperial title, and I have attacked them in the 
 most public manner when they seemed to me to have been in error ; so 
 that when I attack, if the gates of the fort are opened to me by friends 
 within, it is legitimate warfare for me to take advantage of it. When 
 copies of documents which demonstrate the injustice with which Holkar 
 has been treated, are freely given to me by a third party, I should be 
 doing a great wrong to Holkar if I suppressed them." 
 
63 
 
 The "secret" documents constitute in themselves a history of 
 Holkar's remonstrance, and of the manner in which the Govern- 
 ment of India was, on each successive occasion misinformed and 
 misled. Copies of them have been placed in the British Museum 
 and in the London Library. 
 
 D. 
 
 (Page 45.) 
 
 DEPUTATION TO MHOW ON THE NIGHT OF 
 1st JULY 1857. 
 
 E, '.-tract of Letter from Captain Hungerford to the Brigade Major, 
 Sauyor, No. 422, dated Mhow, Fortified Square, 2nd July 1857. 
 
 "6. At 9 p.m. last night, it was reported that an agent from Holkar 
 had arrived to communicate with Colonel Platt, and had been stopped 
 by the cavalry piquet stationed on the Indore Road." 
 
 The officer with the picquet was Major McMullen, afterwards 
 Cantonment Magistrate at Mhow. 
 
 I have said (p. 45) that Mr. (now Sir Charles) Aitchison ought 
 to have known that the Maharajah Holkar sent a deputation to 
 Mliow on the very day of the outbreak, and that he did not wait 
 till the 5th of July. Here is the proof of it. 
 
 No. 4207. 
 
 To Sir ROBERT N. C. HAMILTON, Bart., Agent G.-G. for Central 
 India. Foreign Department. 
 
 " SIR, I am directed by the Governor-General in Council to forward 
 for your information the accompanying copy of a letter from Captain 
 T. Hungerford, Commanding Bengal Artillery, Mhow, dated 19 ultimo, 
 No. 460, in which favourable mention is made of Gunnesh Seetaram 
 Shastree, the Sudder Vakeel at Mhow of the Maharajah of Indore. 
 
 " I have, etc., 
 
 " (Signed) G. F. EDMONSTONB, 
 
 " Secretary to the Government of India. 
 " Fort William, 13th October 1857." 
 
 No. 460. 
 
 To the Secretary to the Government of India, dated Mhow, 19th 
 September 1857. 
 
 " SIR, In my Report to your address I omitted to mention the ser- 
 vices of Gunnesh Seetaram Shastree, the Sudder Vakeel at Mhow, on 
 the part of H.H. the Maharajah of Indore. 
 
64 
 
 " Almost all communications with the Durbar passed through the 
 hands of the Vakeel, and I am much indebted to him for delivering 
 them faithfully and promptly. On the night of the 1st July he came 
 over to Mhow from Indore for the purpose of reporting what had 
 occurred at .Indore to the Officer Commanding the station, but unfor- 
 tunately was stopped by a picquet on the Indore road, tfnd the commu- 
 nications he then wished to make were not received. The Europeans 
 saved at Indore when the massacre occurred received much kindness and 
 attention at the hands of the Vakeel, and when they could be safely 
 brought to Mhow, were conducted to the Fort by the Vakeel. 
 
 " The Maharajah will doubtless duly appreciate the services of his ser- 
 vant, but I beg to bring his services to the notice of Government, in the 
 hope that, as he exerted himself ably and faithfully to aid communication 
 between the Durbar and myself, the Government may be pleased to 
 encourage an officer who has fulfilled his duties so well. 
 
 " (Signed) T. HUNGERFORD, 
 
 " Captain, 
 " Commanding Bengal Artillery, Mhow." 
 
 " True Copy. 
 
 " (Signed) W. R. SHAKESPEAR, 
 
 " Officiating 1st Assistant Agent G.-G. for C. I." 
 
 " Docket No. 765. 
 
 " Forwarded to Gunnesh Seetaram Shastree Vakeel for information 
 by desire of Officiating Agent G.-G. for C. I. [Colonel H. M. Durand.] 
 
 " (Signed) W. R. SHAKESPEAR, 
 
 "Officiating 1st Assistant A. G.-G. for C. India. 
 " Indore Residency, Camp Mhow, 30th Octr. 1857." 
 
 Sir Robert Hamilton was then in Political charge with the Field 
 Force under Sir Hugh Rose (Lord Stratlmairn), and did not arrive 
 at Indore until December 15th. The letter from the Government 
 of India with its enclosure was consequently delivered to the 
 Officiating Agent, Col. H. M. Durand. Thus it is certain that 
 Colonel Durand was fully aware of the fact that on the night ol 
 the outbreak on the 1st of July 1857, Holkar sent a deputation to 
 Mhow. 
 
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