Froude's "English in Ireland," no apology will be felt necessary for the following extract:

"The forces which govern the evolution of human society are so complex that the wisest statesman may misread them. The highest political sagacity, though controlled by conscience and directed by the purest motives, may yet select a policy which, in the light of after history, shall seem like madness. The 'event' may teach the inadequacy of the intellect to compass the problems which at times present themselves for solution. The 'event' alone will not justify severe historical censure where a ruler has endeavoured seriously to do what, in the light of such knowledge as he possessed, appeared at the moment most equitable." Lord Canning need not be condemned for yielding to arguments at the moment unanswerable, which later history has too effectually answered."

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CHAPTER VII.

TEN YEARS OF TALUQDA'RI' POLICY [1858-1868].

THE profound change of tone and altered standpoint which have marked the policy of the Government of India since the Mutiny, could hardly be more strikingly illustrated than by a comparison of the instructions addressed to Sir James Outram on the 4th of February 1856 with those issued to Sir Robert Montgomery on the 6th of October 1858. The judgment which the reader may pass upon their respective merits is likely to depend to some extent on the opinion which he holds as to the true aims and duties of the English in India. The object of Lord Dalhousie's Government was to benefit the masses with a lofty disregard of the impression which by so doing they might produce upon the native aristocracy. And to this end they sought to put themselves into direct contact with the people, "with no miscrowned man's head" between them. They were resolved, in short, that "everybody should count as one, and nobody as more than one."

When we turn to Lord Canning's instructions of the 6th of October, everything is changed. Not the good of the masses, but, as a writer in the "Calcutta Review" of September 1860 approvingly puts it, "to hold the Eastern Empire with the least strain on the population and finances

of Great Britain is the problem of Indian Government." Popular welfare has retired into the background, and its place is taken by the "urgent necessity of pacifying the country." The Taluqdárs, who for Lord Dalhousie had been mere middlemen, had for Lord Canning become an "ancient, indigenous and cherished" institution of the country, with whom the settlement was to be made wherever they were found to exist. It was even declared that, prior to annexation, "village occupancy, independent and free from subordination to Taluqdárs, had been unknown" in Oudh, an assertion so monstrous, and so obviously and notoriously incorrect, that one is at a loss to understand how it can have found its way into an elaborate State paper. Lord Canning, however, had the excuse that he was writing comparatively in the dark, and after a great crisis.

Whatever may be thought of the process by which he arrived at it, his conclusion was that "these village occupants, as such, deserve little consideration from us." He argued that they had behaved as if regardless of their own rights, and ungrateful to the British Government for maintaining them; and that if they had not considered themselves as wholly subordinate to the Taluqdárs, they would certainly have afforded us active assistance in resisting them when they went into rebellion. "On these grounds," of which one was an entire misconception of fact, and the other a false inference, "as well as because the Taluqdárs, if they will, can materially aid us in the re-establishment of our authority and the restoration of tranquillity," it was determined that a Taluqdárí settlement, "so framed as to secure the village occupants from extortion," should be made. This settlement was begun without any expectation that it would be final, was crowded into six months, and then declared irrevocable as regards the superior proprietary right. There can be no doubt that mistakes were made, and that villages were decreed to Taluqdárs of which they had not been in possession at annexation, and even, in some cases, of which they had not been in possession for some years previously. This, however, is somewhat anticipating the course of events, and it must be admitted, in justice to Lord Canning, that if

in this respect he went beyond the advice of Sir James Outram's farewell memorandum of the 29th of January 1858, yet in others he did much to mitigate the spirit of blood and iron which pervaded its counsels. Sir James recommended the exclusion of natives from judicial employ; that there should be no appeal in criminal cases; that the native bar and native amlah or office establishment should be abolished, and the place of the latter supplied by "respectable European serjeants"; that any one found in possession of arms after one month from the issue of a proclamation for their surrender should be put to death; and that the lash should as far as possible be resorted to as a means of punishment, the number of lashes, up to two hundred, "to be determined only by the pulse of the offender under the fingers of the civil surgeon." He paid what was perhaps an unintentional compliment to civilians by "earnestly requesting" that the officers appointed to carry out the system which he advocated might be selected "principally from the military services." Without any desire to cavil at the utterances of one who was undoubtedly a great and good man, one cannot but remark the spirit of severity, almost ferocity, which inspires this momorandum, as an instructive illustration of the extent to which even a great and good man may be overpowered by reactionary impulses. If such was the effect of the Mutiny upon Outram, what was to be expected of lesser men, when armed, as was, ex officio, every Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner in Oudh up to the beginning of 1859, with irresponsible power of life and death? The system of administration imposed upon Oudh after reoccupation was the outcome of a deadly and ferocious struggle between alien races. It is not in a crisis such as that of the Mutiny, or by men "fresh from war's alarms," that schemes of broad, humane, and far-seeing statesmanship are likely to be conceived. The change which since 1857 has come over the attitude of the Government of India towards its subjects has been perhaps more marked in Oudh than in any other province of the Empire. Everywhere is discernible the tendency to treat the native aristocracy as a species of breakwater between ourselves and the masses,

and to subordinate to them the interests of the latter.

But more especially has this been the case in Oudh. The province was made over to the advocates of feudalism as a subject on which they were at liberty to work their will, and try what experiments they chose.

It must be admitted that the Dalhousie policy had the defects of its qualities, and the policy of Lord Canning the qualities of its defects. The North-West Provinces Collector, brought up in the school of Bird and Thomason, was doubtless prone to treat the native gentleman with scant ceremony, and in this respect it may be gladly conceded that his successor of the present day is more commendable than he. Insufficient regard was, no doubt, often shown both to the feelings and the vested rights of the chieftain, who was apt to be mistaken for the mere revenue contractor, and not unfrequently suffered by the confusion. But all this to the contrary notwithstanding, it must still be maintained that the Dalhousie-Thomason doctrine contained in it the root of the matter; that the welfare and independence of thousands are of more intrinsic importance than the feelings and privileges of individuals. It is to be regretted that natives of rank were not always treated with due deference by the Thomasonian school, and that in some cases their claim to engage for the revenue was not admitted in villages where it was well-founded. But these, after all, are lesser evils than that millions who might have been raised into peasant proprietors should be degraded to tenants at will; than that robbery of the worst type should be sanctioned and upheld by a civilised government; than that the statute book should be defaced by invidious and arbitrary laws in the interests of an exceedingly limited class. The policy of conciliating the strong by allowing them to lord it over the weak may be safe, but it is not noble. If we are not here to uphold the cause of the poor and of him that hath no helper, we have no right to be here at all. Therefore, while but too gladly admitting that in many respects we have advanced much during the last twenty years, in conciliatoriness, in thoroughness, in mastery of details, in systematic method, in laboriousness, in the desire to do things elaborately; it must