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Henry Lawrence's name was struck out from the list of Punjabee administrators. It was said that he sympathized over much with the fallen state of Sikhdom, and sacrificed the revenue to an idea-that he was too eager to provide for those who suffered by our usurpation-whilst Dalhousie, deeming that the balancesheet would be regarded as the great test and touchstone of success, was eager to make the Punjab pay." Henry Lawrence was sent to Rajpootana, and his generous system thrown over. This was the beginning of blunders. It was the old plan to associate freely with the people, "with tents open to all points of the compass." Sir John Malcolm used to say, Mr. Kaye reminds us in a note, that the only way to govern the people of a newlyacquired country was by means of char durwash kolah, or "four doors open." The Punjabee officials thoroughly understood this; but under the operation of the Annexation principle all that was gradually changed-though, happily, Lord Dalhousie was unable to counteract in the Punjab what Henry Lawrence had accomplished, and at the supreme moment of trial that province remained faithful when other annexed principalities were the focus of rebellion.

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Even if Lord Dalhousie's policy had been sound, he proceeded much too fast in dealing with political adoptions by the right of lapse." The privilege of adoption was highly prized among the Hindoos, and with it descended all titular dignities and territorial sovereignty. The GovernorGeneral, in default of lawfully-begotten male heirs, by the "right of lapse" absorbed various native principalities in succession. "The opinions, the practical expression of which were subsequently to be called the 'policy of Annexation,' were formed at the very outset of his career, and rigidly maintained to its close." "The Government," wrote Lord Dalhousie in 1848, "is bound in duty, as well as policy, to act with the purest integrity; .. but where the right to territory by lapse is clear, the Government is bound to take that which is justly and legally its due, and to extend to that territory the benefits of our sovereignty, present and prospective." "In like manner," he

added, "I hold that, on all occasions where heirs natural shall fail, the territory should be made to lapse, and adoption should not be permitted, excepting in those cases in which some strong political reason may render it expedient to depart from this general rule." This Lord Dalhousie called "consolidating our territories"

under which phrase he deceived himself both as to the morality and polity of those measures.

This fatal policy was sanctioned by Leadenhall-street, but protested against by the most experienced Anglo-Indians. Colonel Low recorded two important Minutes against Annexation, and nothing could be sounder or more statesmanlike than his counsel that, although in the course of time the whole of India would in all probability become one British province, "we ought most carefully to avoid unnecessarily accelerating that change." "It is remarkable," he added, "that every native who ever spoke to me respecting the annexation of Sattarah, asked precisely the same question, 'What crime did the late Rajah commit that his country should be seized by the Company? thus clearly indicating their notions, that if any crime had been committed our act would have been justifiable, and not otherwise." Of course, those opinions were disregarded both in Calcutta and London, and the Dalhousian policy went forward. Nor, in carrying it out did the Company render equal justice to the native princes. Mr. Kaye prints from the manuscript records the Memorial of Nana Sahib, of Bhitoor, forwarded in 1852 to the Court of Directors, a document ably drawn up, in which the treatment given to the memorialist, as the representative of the family of the Peishwah, is pointedly contrasted with that received by other princes. This petition the Company contumeliously rejected, on the ground that the pension of the late Peishwah had been sufficient to enable him to make a provision for his family. The Nana Sahib, before this answer was received, had sent, as his agent to England, one Azim-oollah Khan, of whom, and his Mahratta confederate and fellow-conspirator, Mr. Kaye says:

"Azim-oollah Khan, finding that little or

nothing could be done in the way of business for his employer, devoted his energies to the pursuit of pleasure on his own account. Passing by reason of his fine clothes for a person of high station, he made his way into good society, and is said to have boasted of favours received from English ladies. Outwardly he was a gay, smiling, voluptuous sort of person; and even a shrewd observer might have thought that he was intent always upon the amusement of the hour. There was one man, however, in England at that time, who,

perhaps, knew that the desires of the plausible Mahomedan were not bounded by the

enjoyment of the present. For it happened that the agent, who had been sent to England by the deposed Sattarah Family, in the hope of obtaining for them the restoration of their principality, was still resident in the English metropolis. This man was a Mahratta named Kungo Bapojee. Able and energetic, he had pushed his suit with a laborious, untiring conscientiousness, rarely seen in a native envoy; but though aided by much soundness of argument and much fluency of rhetoric expended by others than hired advocates, upon the case of the Sattarah Princes, he had failed to make an impression on their judges. Though of different race and different religion, these two men were knit together by common sympathies and kindred tasks, and in that autumn of 1853, by like failures and disappointments to brood over and the same bitter animosities to

cherish. What was said and what was

done between them no historian can relate. They were adopts in the art of dissimulation. So the crafty Mahratta made such a good impression even upon those whom his suit had so greatly troubled, that his debts were paid for him, and he was sent back at the public expense to Bombay with money in his pocket from the treasury of the India House; whilst the gay Mahome dan flated about the surface of society and made a conspicuous figure at crowded watering-places, as if he dearly loved England and the English, and could not persuade hims if to return to his own dreary and benighted land."

Passing over other cases of “lapse" and other annexations made with a stroke of the pen, hardy thought worth mentioning in a Minute, we come to the great Oude question. It is neediess to recount the crimes and immoralities of the native sovereigns, or examine the grounds, arising from treaties and otherwise, on which intervention was justified. Granting that we could not avoid interfering with the independence of the King of Oudh, did it follow that we should pur et simple absorb the country

Henry Lawrence is found here again, along with Sir W. H. Sleeman, on the side of moderation and morality. 64 Assume the administration," was the counsel of the latter, "but do not grasp the revenues of the country." Lawrence was equally strong-"let the administration of the country, as far as possible," he wrote, "be native. Let not a rupee come into the Company's coffers." Sleeman added, with a prophet's foresight, "If we do this all India will think us right;" but "to annex and confiscate," if profitable in a pecuniary point of view, would be most injurious in a political one." "It would," he continued, "tend to accelerate the crisis which the doctrines of the absorbing school must sooner or later bring on us."

It was not without solemn and repeated warning, therefore, that the policy was pursued which was to convulse India from end to end within four years more. Lord Dalhousie, with a curious misconception of the effects experience had shown that his policy was likely to produce, determined upon a scheme which did not positively annex the province, but appropriated its revenues. Outram received his instructions to carry out this scheme in January, 1856, and presented himself to the King of Oudh, That Sovereign, however, atfected great helplessness, and assumed such an attitude as increased the appearance of cruelty in the acts of the invader. He met Outram with a sort of non possumus, and there was nothing left for the Company but to complete their purpose at once by absolute Annexation. With the proclamation of this new act of absorp

tion Lord Dalhousie's career closed.

At the same time, too, when the native princes were being knocked over like so many ninepins, the native artstoeracy were not conciliated. There came to be no friendly class between the British Government, represented by its officials, and the masses of the people. Mr. Kaye says soundly— "If we had allowed ourselves to understand the genius and the institutions of the people, we should have respected the rights, natural and acquired, of all classes of the community, instead of working out any abstract theory of our own." How, in particular, the privileged classes were depressed in Oude it is un

necessary to show at length. The Settlement officers soon made enemies of the most powerful section of the community by treating the Talookhdars as upstarts and usurpers. "To oust a Talookhdar was held by some young Settlement officer to be as great an achievement as to shoot a tiger." This, again, was in defiance of the opinions of men of the Old School, one of whom, Tucker, had declared in 1832, that the way to conciliate the peasantry was not to dissolve the connexion between them and the superior Talookhdars or Zemindars.' In later years this advice, resting on the large experience of men long familiar with the country, was frequently repeated, only to be, unhappily, overruled. At the same time the minds of the priesthood were inflamed. "It seemed as though a great flood of innovation were about to sweep away all their powers and privileges."

The railway and the telegraph also alarmed the natives. It appeared as if the Feringhees had power over supernatural agencies which put to utter shame Brahminical knowledge and resources.

"That the fire-carriage on the iron road was a heavy blow to the Brahminical Priesthood is not to be doubted. The lightning post, which sent invisible letters through the air and brought back answers, from incredible distances, in less time than an ordinary messenger could bring them from the next street, was a still greater marvel and a still greater disturbance. But it was less patent and obtrusive. The one is the natural

complement of the other; and Dalhousie, aided by the genius of O'Shaughnessy, had soon spread a network of electric wires across the whole length and breadth of the country. It was a wise thing to do; a right thing to do; but it was alarming and offensive to the Brahminical mind. It has been said, that as soon as we had demonstrated that the earth is a sphere revolving on its axis, there was an end to the superstitions of Hindooism. And so there was--in argument, but not in fact. The Brahminical teachers insisted that the new doctrines of Western civilization were mere specious inventions, with no groundwork of eternal truth, and as their disciples could not bring the test of their senses to such inquiries as these, they succumbed to authority rather than to reason, or perhaps lapsed into a state of bewildering doubt. But material experiments, so palpable and portentous that they might be seen at a distance of many miles, convinced whilst they astounded.

The most ignorant and unreasoning of men could see that the thing was done. They knew that Brahminism had never done it. They saw plainly the fact that there were

wonderful things in the world which their indeed, with all their boasted wisdom, they own priests could not teach them-of which, had never dreamt; and from that time the Hindoo hierarchy lost half its power, for the people lost half their faith."

It was when the native mind was in this inflammable condition that the authorities remained entirely blind to the condition of the Sepoy army. Lord Dalhousie declared in his Farewell Minute that it needed no improvement. Mr. Kaye's chapter on the Sepoy and his officers, and the older mutinies, is probably the most striking and instructive in his volume. He dates the "decline" of the Sepoy army from the close of the Affghan The frequent mutinies which

war.

the whole but ill succeeded, on repressed by the penal measures resorted to, left the soldiery un

settled and discontented. The victories of Hardinge and Gough had a great moral effect; still the Sepoy looked forward to a day when he would be in the ascendant. In reference to his impressions of this sort, which had so mysterious an origin, the author says in a note, that he could find no trace in contemporary documents of the story told in a pamphlet, published by Mr. Stocqueler in 1857, that over ten years before, after the Patna Conspiracy, the year named (1857), was declared to be the date when they would see the English expelled. Whether there was any foundation for the tale or not, it is certain that the Sepoy held closely to his faith in a universal rising, to occur at some period not very far distant.

The character of the Sepoy is thus sketched by Mr. Kaye :

"He was, indeed, altogether a paradox. He was made up of inconsistencies and contradictions. In his character, qualities, so adverse as to be apparently irreconcilable with each other, met together and embraced. He was simple and yet designing; credulous and easily deceived by others, and yet obstinately tenacious of his own in-bred convictions; now docile as a child, and now hard and immovable in the stubbornness of his manhood. Abstemious and yet self-indulgent, calm and yet impetuous, gentle and yet cruel, he was indolent even to langour in his daily life, and yet capable of being roused to acts of the most desperate

Our

"Many were the strange glosses which were given to the acts of the British Government; various were the ingenious fictions woven with the purpose of unsettling the minds and uprooting the fidelity of the Sepoy. But, diverse as they were in many respects, there was a certain unity about them, for they all tended to persuade him that our measures were directed to one common end-the destruction of Caste, and the general introduction of Christianity into the land. If we annexed a province, it was to facilitate our proselytizing operations, and to increase the number of our converts. Our resumption operations were instituted for the purpose of destroying all the reli gious endowments of the country. legislative enactments were all tending to the same result-the subversion of Hindoo ism an! Mahomedanism. Our educational theasures were so many direct assaults upon the regions of the country. Our penal system, according to their showing, dis gused a monstrous attempt to annihilste caste, by compelling men of all den mina tions to feed together in the gaols. In the lines of every regiment there were men eager to tell lies of this kind to the Sepoy, In led with assurances that the time was coming when the kering tires would be destroyed to a man; when a new empire would be establ shed, and a new military system inaugurated, under which the high rank and the higher pay monopolized by the English would be trat der i to the people of the country. We knew settle of what is starring in the depths of Talaan society ; we dwell so much apart from the prople; w- see so little of them, ex ept in full dress and on their best bedava ur, that trikotas intres and deserate pits m woven under the very sha-1 w of our bungalows without cur pero ving any aye m toms of danger. But still lema can we disea

is continually flowing on without any immediate or definite object, and which, if we could discern it, would battle all our efforts to trace it to its source. But it does not the less exist because we are ignorant of the form which it assumes, or the fount from which it springs, The men whose business it was to corrupt the minds of our Sepoys, were, perhaps, the agents of some of the old princely houses which we had destroyed, or members of old baronial families which we had brought to poverty and disgrace. They were, perhaps, the emissaries of Brahturning into folly, and whose power we minical Societies, whose precepts we were were setting at naught. They were, perhaps, mere visionaries and enthusiasts, moved only by their own disordered imainations to proclaim the coming of some new prophet or some fresh avatar of the Deity, and the consequent downfall of Christian supremacy in the East. But, whatsoever the nature of their mission, and whatsoever the guise they assumed, whether they appeared in the lines as passing travellers, as journeying hawkers, as religious mendicants, or as wandering puppet-showmen--the seed of sedition which they scattered struck root in a soil well prepared to receive it, and waited only for the ripening sun of circumstance to develop a harvest of revolt."

This passage, besides being in a high degree historically valuable, may be taken as a fair specimen of that clear, vigorous, and compact style whica Mr. Kaye carries with him throughout the whole volume, proving his qualifications for fulfilling that theory of the historian's function which imposed upon him the duty of preSenting his materials in the form of conclusions carefully deduced, and conveyed in language in some measure attractive. Coming down to the eve of the Crisis in 1957, the author adds: