The Punjab annexed, 1849. Its pacifi cation. Second native hills. The Punjab, annexed by proclamation on the 29th March 1849,1 became a British Province-a virgin field for the administrative talents of Dalhousie and the two LawMahárájá Dhulíp Sinh received an allowance of £58,000 a year, on which he now lives as an English country gentleman in Norfolk. rences. The first step in the pacification of the Punjab2 was a general disarmament, which resulted in the delivery of no fewer than 120,000 weapons of various kinds. Then followed a settlement of the land tax, village by village, at an assessment much below that to which it had been raised by Síkh exactions; and the introduction of a loose but equitable code of civil and criminal procedure. Roads and canals were laid out by Colonel Robert Napier (afterwards Lord Napier of Magdala). The security of British peace, and the personal influence of British officers, inaugurated a new era of prosperity, which was felt to the farthest corners of the Province. It thus happened that, when the Mutiny broke out in 1857, the Punjab remained not only quiet, but loyal. The second Burmese war, in 1852, arose out of the illwar, 1852. treatment of some European merchants at Rangoon, and the insults offered to the captain of a frigate who had been sent to remonstrate. The whole valley of the Irawadi, from Rangoon to Prome, was occupied in a few months; and as the King of Ava refused to treat, it was annexed by proclamation on the 20th December 1852, under the name of Pegu, to the Provinces of Arakan and Tenasserim, which we had acquired in 1826. Since annexation, the inhabitants of Rangoon have multiplied tenfold in number. The trade of the port, which in four years after annexation (1857-58) amounted to £2,131,055, had increased in 1877-78 to £8,192,025.4 British Burma annexed, 1852. under our Its prosThe towns and rural parts have alike prospered. Before perity 1826, Amherst District was the scene of perpetual warfare between the Kings of Siam and Pegu, and was stripped of inhabitants. In February 1827, a Talaing chief with 10,000 followers settled in the neighbourhood of Maulmain; and rule. 1 In terms of the agreement with Mahárájá Dhulíp Sinh, of same date. -Aitchison's Treaties and Engagements, vol. vi. p. 47 (ed. 1870). 2 For the annexation and administrative history of the Punjab, see Imperial Gazetteer, vol. vii. pp. 422, 423, and 427-433. 3 For further details, see article BURMA, Imperial Gazetteer, vol. ii. p. 305; and for subsequent administration, pp. 283-291. See article RANGOON, Imperial Gazetteer, vol. viii. pp. 14, 15. For growth of trade in other Burmese ports, see also article AKYAB, Imperial Gazetteer, vol. i. p. 124. after a few years, a further influx of 20,000 immigrants took place. In 1855, the population of Amherst District amounted to 83,146 souls; in 1860, to 130,953; and in 1875, to 275,432. Or, to take the case of a seaport,-in 1826, when we occupied the Province, Akyab was a poor fishing village. By 1830, it had developed into a little town with a trade valued at £7000. In 1879, the trade exceeded 2 millions sterling; so that the trade of Akyab has multiplied itself close on three hundredfold in fifty years. States. Lord Dalhousie's dealings with the Feudatory States of India The revealed the whole nature of the man. That rulers only exist Feudatory for the good of the ruled, was his supreme axiom of government, of which he gave a conspicuous example in his own daily life. That British administration was better for the people than native rule, followed from this axiom. He was thus led to regard native chiefs from somewhat the same point of view as the Scotch regarded the hereditary jurisdictions after 1745, namely, as mischievous anomalies, to be abolished by every fair means. Good faith must be kept with rulers on the throne, and with their legitimate heirs. But no false sentiment should preserve dynasties which had forfeited our sympathies by generations of misrule, nor prolong those that had no natural successor. The 'doctrine of lapse' was the practical application of these principles, complicated by the Indian practice of adoption. It has never been doubted that, according to Hindu private law, an adopted son entirely Hindu fills the place of a natural son, whether to perform the religious adoption. obsequies of his father or to inherit his property. In all respects he continues the persona of the deceased. But it was argued that, both as a matter of historical fact and as one of political expediency, the succession to a throne stood upon a different footing. The paramount power could not recognise such a right, which might be used as a fraud to hand over the happiness of millions to a base-born impostor. Here came in Lord Dalhousie's maxim of 'the good of the governed.' In his mind, benefits to be conferred through British administration weighed heavier than a superstitious and often fraudulent fiction of inheritance. doctrine of Sátára, The first State to escheat to the British Government in Lapsed States. accordance with these principles was Sátára, which had been reconstituted by Lord Hastings on the downfall of the Peshwa 1849. in 1818. The Rájá of Sátára, the last direct representative of Sivají, died without a male heir in 1848, and his deathbed adoption was set aside (1849). In the same year, the Rajput State Jhánsí. Nágpur, 1853. Berars handed over, 1853. Annexa tion of Oudh, 1856. of Karauli was saved by the Court of Directors, who drew a fine distinction between a dependent principality and a protected ally. In 1853, Jhansi suffered the same fate as Sátára. But the most conspicuous application of the doctrine of lapse was the case of Nágpur. The last of the Marhattá Bhonslás, a dynasty older than the British Government itself, died without a son, natural or adopted, in 1853. His territories were annexed, and became the Central Provinces. That year also saw British administration extended to the Berars, or the Assigned Districts, which the Nizám of Haidarábád was induced to hand over as a territorial guarantee for the subsidies which he perpetually kept in arrear. The relics of three other dynasties also passed away in 1853, though without any attendant accretion to British territory. In the extreme south, the titular Nawab of the Karnatic and the titular Rájá of Tanjore both died without heirs. Their rank and their pensions died with them, though compassionate allowances were continued to their families. In the north of India, Báji Ráo, the ex-Peshwá who had been dethroned in 1818, lived on till 1853 in the enjoyment of his annual pension of £80,000. His adopted son, Nána Sahib, inherited his accumulated savings, but could obtain no further recognition. Lord Dalhousie annexed the Province of Oudh on different grounds. Ever since the Nawáb Wazír, Shujá - ud - Daulá, received back his forfeited territories from the hands of Lord Clive in 1765, the existence of his dynasty had depended on the protection of British bayonets.1 Guarded alike from foreign invasion and from domestic rebellion, the long line of Nawabs had sunk into private debauchees and public oppressors. Their one virtue was steady loyalty to the British Government. The fertile districts between the Ganges and the Gogra, which now support a denser population than any rural area of the same size on this globe, had been groaning for generations under an anarchy for which each British GovernorLord Dal- General felt himself in part responsible. Warning after warning view of the had been given to the Nawabs (who had assumed the title of measure. Sháh or King since 1819) that they must put their house in housie's order. What the benevolent Bentinck and the soldierly Hardinge had only threatened, was reserved for Lord Dalhousie, who united honesty of purpose with stern decision of character, to perform. He laid the whole case before the Court of Directors, who, after long and painful hesitation, resolved on 1 For the history of Oudh since 1765, and the misrule which compelled its annexation, see article OUDH, Imperial Gazetteer, vol. vii. pp. 220-226. annexation. Lord Dalhousie, then on the eve of retiring, felt that it would be unfair to leave the perilous task to his successor in the first moments of his rule. The tardy decision of the Court of Directors left him, however, only a few weeks to carry out the work. But he solemnly believed that work to be his duty to the people of Oudh. With this feeling on my mind,' he wrote privately, and in humble reliance on the blessing of the Almighty (for millions of His creatures will draw freedom and happiness from the change), I approach the execution of this duty, gravely and not without solicitude, but calmly and altogether without doubt.' The pro The king, annexation. At the commencement of 1856, the last year of his rule, he issued orders to General (afterwards Sir James) Outram, then Resident at the Court of Lucknow, to assume the direct administration of Oudh, on the ground that 'the British Grounds of Government would be guilty in the sight of God and man if it were any longer to aid in sustaining by its countenance an administration fraught with suffering to millions.' clamation was issued on the 13th February 1856. Wajid Alí, bowed to irresistible force, although he refused to recognise the justice of his deposition. After a mission to England, by way of protest and appeal, he settled down in the pleasant suburb of Garden Reach near Calcutta, where he still lives (1881) in the enjoyment of a pension of £120,000 a year. Oudh was thus annexed without a blow. But this measure, on which Lord Dalhousie looked back with the proudest sense of rectitude, was perhaps the one act of his rule that most alarmed native public opinion. housie's The Marquis of Dalhousie resigned office in March 1856, being then only forty-four years of age; but he carried home with him the seeds of a lingering illness, which resulted in his Lord Dal death in 1860. Excepting Cornwallis, he was the first, though death, by no means the last, of English statesmen who have fallen 1860. victims to their devotion to India's needs. Lord Dalhousie completed the fabric of British rule in India. The Empire as His work mapped out by Lord Wellesley and Lord Hastings, during the in India. first quarter of the century, had received the addition of Sind in 1843. The Marquis of Dalhousie finally filled in the wide spaces covered by Oudh, the Central Provinces, and smaller States within India, together with the great outlying territories of the Punjab on the North-Western Frontier, and the richest part of British Burma beyond the sea. The great Governor-General was succeeded by his friend Earl Canning, Lord Canning, who, at the farewell banquet in England given 1856-62. to him by the Court of Directors, uttered these prophetic words, 'I wish for a peaceful term of office. But I cannot forget that in the sky of India, serene as it is, a small cloud may arise, no larger than a man's hand, but which, growing larger and larger, may at last threaten to burst and overwhelm The Sepoy us with ruin.' In the following year, the Sepoys of the Bengal Mutiny, army mutinied, and all the valley of the Ganges from Patná to Delhi rose in rebellion. 1857. Its causes. The The various motives assigned for the Mutiny appear inadequate to the European mind. The truth seems to be that native opinion throughout India was in a ferment, predisposing men to believe the wildest stories, and to rush into action in a paroxysm of terror. Panic acts on an oriental population like drink among a European mob. The annexation policy of Lord Dalhousie, although dictated by the most enlightened considerations, was distasteful to the native mind. The spread of education, the appearance of the steam-engine and the telegraph wire, seemed at the same moment to reveal a deep plan to substitute an English for an Indian civilisation. The Bengal sepoys, especially, thought that they could see further than the rest of their countrymen. Most of them were Hindus of high caste; many of them were recruited from Oudh. They regarded our reforms on Western lines as attacks on their own nationality, and they knew at first hand what annexation meant. They believed it was by their prowess that the Punjab had been conquered, and that all India was held. The numerous dethroned princes, or their heirs and widows, were the first to learn and to take advantage of this spirit of disaffection and panic. They had heard of the Crimean war, and were told that Russia was the perpetual enemy of England. Our munificent pensions had supplied the funds with which they could buy the aid of skilful intriguers. They had much to gain, and little to lose, by a revolution. In this critical state of affairs, of which the Government had no official knowledge, a rumour ran through the cantonments that the cartridges of the Bengal army had been greased with 'greased cartridges,' ,' the fat of pigs-animals unclean alike to Hindu and Muham1857. madan. No assurances could quiet the minds of the sepoys. Fires occurred nightly in the native lines; officers were insulted by their men; confidence was gone, and only the form of discipline remained. The events which followed form contemporary annals. Any narrative of them beyond the barest summary would involve the criticism of measures on which history has not yet pro |