THE EARL OF DALHOUSIE. 411 and north to Kashmir. On the east side alone he was hemmed in by the Sutlej, up to which river the authority of the British Government had advanced in 1804. Until his death, in 1839, Ranjit Singh was ever loyal to the engagements which he had entered into with Metcalfe in 1809. But he left no son capable of wielding his sceptre. Lahore was torn by dissensions between rival generals, ministers, and queens. Its disThe only strong power was the army of the Central Committee of Generals or khálsá,1 which, since our disaster in Afghánistán, burned to measure its strength with the British Sepoys. The French or European Generals, Avitabile and Court, were foolishly ousted by the Sikh commanders, and the supreme military command was vested in a series of panchayats or elective committees of five. sensions. 150 First Sir Sikh war, 1845. In 1845, the Sikh army, numbering 60,000 men with guns, crossed the Sutlej and invaded British territory. Hugh Gough, the Commander-in-Chief, together with the Governor-General, hurried up to the frontier. Within three weeks, four pitched battles were fought, at Múdkí, Firozshahr, Aliwál, and Sobráon. The British loss on each occasion was heavy; but by the last victory, the Sikhs were fairly driven back into the Sutlej, and Lahore surrendered to the British. The British, however, declined to annex the prostrate province; but appointed a Sikh protectorate. By the terms of peace which we then dictated, the infant son of Ranjít, Dhulip Dhulip Singh, was recognised as Rájá; the Jalandhar Doáb, or tract Singh, 1845. between the Sutlej and the Ráví, was annexed to British territory; the Sikh army was limited to a specified number; Major Henry Lawrence was appointed Resident, to assist the Sikh Council of Regency, at Lahore; and a British force was sent to garrison the Punjab on behalf of the child-Rájá. The Governor-General, Sir H. Hardinge, received a peerage, and returned to England in 1848. Lord Dalhousie succeeded. The eight years' rule of this Earl of Dalhousie, greatest of Indian proconsuls (1848-56) left more conspicuous 1848-56. results than that of any Governor-General since Clive. A high-minded statesman, of a most sensitive conscience, and earnestly desiring peace, Lord Dalhousie found himself forced against his will to fight two wars, and to embark on a policy of annexation. His campaigns in the Punjab and in Burma 1 The Persian word khálisah, literally 'pure' or 'sincere,' means in Indian official language the royal exchequer, and hence more loosely the bureau of the central administration. His administrative reforms. His Second Sikh war, 1848-49. Chilián ended in large acquisitions of territory; while Nagpur, Oudh, and several minor States also came under British rule. But Dalhousie's deepest interest lay in the advancement of the moral and material condition of the country. His system of administration carried out in the conquered Punjab, by the two Lawrences and their assistants, is probably the most successful piece of difficult work ever accomplished by Englishmen. British Burma has prospered under our rule not less than the Punjab. In both cases, Lord Dalhousie himself laid the foundations of our administrative success, and deserves a large share of the credit. No branch of the administration escaped his reforming hand. He founded the Public Works Department, with a view to creating the network of roads, railways, and canals which now cover India. He opened the Ganges Canal, still the largest work of the kind in the country; and he turned the sod of the first Indian railway. He promoted steam communication with England via the Red Sea, and introduced cheap postage and the electric telegraph. It is Lord Dalhousie's misfortune that these benefits are too often forgotten in the recollections of the Mutiny, which followed his policy of annexation, after the firm hand which had remodelled British India was withdrawn. But history is compelled to record not only that no other Governor-General since the time of Lord Wellesley had ruled India with such splendid success from the military and political point of view, but also that no other Governor-General had done so much to improve the internal administration since the days of Warren Hastings. Lord Dalhousie had not been six months in India before the second Sikh war broke out. The attempt to govern the Punjab by a Sikh protectorate broke down. The Council of Regency was divided against itself, corrupt and weak. The Queen-Mother had chosen her paramour as prime minister. In 1848, the storm broke. Two treacherously assassinated at Múltán. Lawrence was at home on sick leave. not ready to act in the hot weather; and, despite the singlehanded exertions of Lieutenant (afterwards Sir Herbert) Edwardes, this outbreak of fanaticism led to a general rising of the Sikh confederacies. British officers were The khálsá army again came together, and once more fought on even terms with the British. On the fatal field of Chiliánwála,1 wála, 1849 which our patriotism prefers to call a drawn battle, the British See articles CHILIANWALA and GUJRAT, The Imperial Gazetteer of India. lost 2400 officers and men, besides four guns and the colours of three regiments (13th January 1849). But before reinforcements could come out from England, bringing Sir Charles Napier as Commander-in-Chief, Lord Gough had restored his reputation by the crowning victory of Gujrát, which absolutely Gujrát destroyed the Sikh army. Múltán had previously fallen; and victory. the Afghán horse under Dost Muhammad, who had forgotten their hereditary antipathy to the Sikhs in their greater hatred of the British name, were chased back with ignominy to their 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 Lawrences. Mahárájá Dhulíp Singh received an allowance of £58,000 a year, on which he now lives as an English country gentleman in Norfolk. cation. The first step in the pacification of the Punjab was a general The Punjab disarmament, which resulted in the delivery of no fewer than annexed, 120,000 weapons of various kinds. Then followed a settle- 1849. ment of the land-tax, village by village, at an assessment much Its pacifibelow that to which it had been raised by Sikh 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. Burmese war, 1852. The second Burmese war, in 1852, arose out of the ill- Second treatment of some European merchants at Rangoon, and the insults offered to the captain of a British frigate who had been sent to remonstrate.3 The lower 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 proclama- British tion on the 20th December 1852, under the name of Pegu, annexed, to the Provinces of Arakan and Tenasserim acquired in 1826. 1852. Since annexation, the inhabitants of the town of Rangoon have multiplied nearly fifteen-fold. The trade of this 1 In terms of the agreement with Mahárájá Dhulip Singh, of same date. -Aitchison's Treaties and Engagements, vol. vi. p. 47 (ed. 1876). 2 For the annexation and administrative history of the Punjab, see article PUNJAB in The Imperial Gazetteer of India. 3 For further details, see article BURMA, The Imperial Gazetteer of India. Burma Its prosperity under our rule. The States. port, which four years after annexation (1857-58) only amounted to £2,131,055, had increased to £8,192,025 in 1877-78, and to 13,174,094 in 1883.1 The towns and rural parts have alike prospered. Before its annexation in 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 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; in 1875, to 275,432; and in 1881, to 301,086. Or, to take the case of a seaport, -in 1826, when we occupied that part of 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 had multiplied itself close on three hundred-fold in fifty years. Lord Dalhousie's dealings with the Feudatory States of India Feudatory revealed the whole nature of the man. That rulers only exist 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 housie's 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. Dal doctrine of ' lapse.' Hindu adoption. According to Hindu private law, an adopted son entirely doctrine of fills the place of a natural son, whether to perform the religious 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 1 See article RANGOON, The Imperial Gazetteer of India. For growth of trade in other Burmese ports, see also article AKYAB, The Imperial Gazetteer of Ind.a. DALHOUSIE'S ANNEXATIONS. 415 different footing. It was affirmed, not always with a complete knowledge of the facts, that the Mughal Emperors had asserted an interest in successions to the great fiefs, and demanded heavy payments for recognising them. It was therefore maintained that the paramount power could not acknowledge without limitations a right of adoption, 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. 1849. The first State to escheat to the British Government in Lapsed accordance with these principles was Sátára, which had been States. reconstituted by Lord Hastings on the downfall of the Peshwá Sátára, in 1818. The Rájá of Sátára, the last lineal representative of Sivají, died without a male heir in 1848, and his deathbed adoption was set aside (1849). In the same year, the independence of the Rajput State of Karauli was saved by the Court of Directors, who drew a fine distinction between a dependent principality and a protected ally. In 1853, Jhánsí suffered the Jhánsí. same fate as Sátára. handed over, 1853. But the most conspicuous application of the doctrine of lapse Nagpur, was the case of Nagpur. The last of the Maráthá Bhonslas, 1853. 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 Berars Districts, which the Nizám of Haidarábád was induced to hand over to us, as a territorial guarantee for his arrears of subsidy, and for the pay of the Haidarábád contingent which he perpetually kept in arrear. The relics of three other dynasties also passed away in 1853, although without any attendant accretion to British territory. In the extreme south, the titular Nawab of the Karnátik and the titular Rájá of Tanjore both died without heirs. Their rank and their pensions died with them, but 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 Sáhib, inherited his accumulated savings, but could obtain no further recognition. Lord Dalhousie annexed the Province of Oudh on different Annexation of grounds. Ever since the Nawáb Wazír, Shujá -ud-Daulá, Oudh, received back his forfeited territories from the hands of Lord 1856. |