3
From the point of view of the ministry the question was clearly
two-fold : internal as regarded the Company, external as regarded
the French and other foreign nations.
From the point of view of the ministry the question was clearly
two-fold : internal as regarded the Company, external as regarded
the French and other foreign nations.
Cambridge History of India - v5 - British India
It is further my
intention that the whole population should be disarmed. . . . as was done with
such excellent effect in the Punjaub in 1849.
It is thus clear that Lord Dalhousie, while he deprecated half-
measures, was strongly opposed to the policy of annexation, though
he was convinced that, so far as the people of Oudh were concerned,
it would be far the best course to take.
In a letter to Sir George Couper written on 15 December, 1855,3
before the orders of the court had arrived, he says:
I understand that they (the Directors] mean to force the King to form a
new treaty or to assume the government of his country. This is all very well
for the home authorities but it was not for me to suggest it. . . . The course
proposed by the Court is not warranted by international law. It would be
either conquest or usurpation of the power of government by force of arms.
This argument of international law would not in these days be raised
in connection with the Indian states.
Sleeman, however, Outram's predecessor as Resident at Lucknow,
expressed the opinion that the annexation was a political blunder,
holding that we should have acted under the treaty of 1837, abrogated
though it was. The confiscation of the state would, he said, “cause
our good name to suffer", and "that good name is more valuable
1 Parliamentary Papers, 1857, XI, 109-17.
2 Dalhousie, op. cit. p. 399.
3 Idem, p. 363.
## p. 586 (#614) ############################################
586
THE INDIAN STATES, 1818-57
to us than a dozen Oudes". We had used our giant's strength like
a giant, he said, and had injured our reputation in the eyes of all
India. This opinion was largely instrumental in leading to the grant
of “Adoption sanads” in 1862. But any such step would have been
impossible in Dalhousie's day as it would have savoured of interfering
with the "independent” states.
The other cases with which Lord Dalhousie had to deal were the
extinction of the pension granted to Baji Rao, the last Peshwa, the
disappearance of the Carnatic and Tanjore titles, and the question
of the Hyderabad contingent.
Baji Rao died in 1852 leaving no heir, and the governor-general
ruled that the pension, being personal, terminated with his death,
though the large private fortune accumulated by Baji Rao would
pass to his adopted son, Dhondu Pant, who later on became notorious
in the Mutiny, as Nana Sahib.
Trouble arose in regard to payment of the Hyderabad contingent
force by that durbar, an din 1853 the Nizam under pressure placed
the administration of the Berar province of his state under our control
so that its revenues might be devoted to the up-keep of that force.
This arrangement, made with such reluctance in the first instance,
has since been the cause of much contention and is likely to remain so.
The nawab of the Carnatic, in 1855, died leaving no son and, on
the ground that his state was created by us in 1801, and on the fact
that his title was personal, his estate escheated and the title did not
descended to his successors, who have since then been styled Princes of
Arcot. ' A similar case arose on the death of the raja of Tanjore.
Reviewing Lord Dalhousie's administration in so far as it affected
the Indian states, it is clear that the policy of absorbing them in cases
of failure of direct heirs was not of his making but was inherited by
him, and, whether right or wrong, was at that time the avowed
policy of the Company, whose one anxiety was to consolidate its
possessions.
Lord Dalhousie was careful to confine action under this policy
to the “dependent” states. Thus, when he was urged by the directors,
soon after he reached India, to take a strong line and interfere in
Hyderabad, he threatened to resign; while in Bahawalpur, when the
newly-installed ruler was ousted by his brother, he refused to sup-
port the fugitive nawab, although we had recognised his succession,
in view of the fact that the people of the state did not wish to have
him as their ruler, and it was for them alone to decide. These two
cases occurred in "independent" states. Lord Dalhousie was one of
the most scrupulous and conscientious governors-general who ever
guided the destiny of India; he was absolutely incapable of doing an
injustice.
On the other hand, a sincerely religious man, he was
convinced of the desirability of substituting our rule for that of the
i Parliamentarij Papers, 1860, LII, 531-78.
## p. 587 (#615) ############################################
DALHOUSIE'S POLICY
587
1
2
Indian princes, whenever it could in fairness be effected. He says
himself, writing on 21 July, 1857, to Sir George Couper :
I never advised annexing any principality unless it lapsed naturally for
want of heirs or was forfeited for misconduct. But when a principality does
so fall to our disposal it does seem to me to be cruel to hand over its inhabit-
ants to be squeezed and skinned by a native despot, merely that our own sub-
jects may be able to compare their own lot favourably with that of those
whom we have abandoned. . . .
His unflagging warfare against abuses of all kinds and his desire
to extend to all the benefits of the new era he had introduced into
British India certainly dimmed his perception of other points of view;
as for instance that of the hereditary ruling princes themselves, that
of their subjects with the innate reverence for their natural rulers
which then did (if it does not now) distinguish the people of India,
and by their preference, in spite of abuses, for the less rigid govern-
ment of an Indian state. Never did his administration justify the
fancifully fierce condemnation levelled at it as being "more like
counting out the spoil of brigands. . . than. . . the acts of English
statesmanship”,» nor did any man ever merit less the stigma of being
called the "very worst and basest of rulers”. 3 We must not judge
those days by these. Besides an entire change of policy on our side,
the Indian states have themselves, for the most part, travelled far
administratively since 1856, and, though still in the main autocratic,
have reached a much higher standard than they then possessed,
while they are now subjected to the glare of criticism and the anti-
septic of publicity to a degree impossible in those days of a limited
public press and very inadequate communications.
The sudden upheaval which followed so soon after his departure
was quite unforeseen by Lord Dalhousie who in his farewell minute
considers that he is justified in saying that he leaves India "at peace
without and within".
To summarise the results of the policy pursued towards the
Indian states between 1818 and 1856.
This period is by far the most important in the history of the
relationship of the states to the British Government. It witnessed
their metamorphosis from a congeries of quasi-independent units,
some openly hostile, most, at heart, antagonistic to us, and all
doubtful and resentful of our intentions towards them, into a body
with so complete an acquiescence in our paramount position that
even the shock of the Mutiny could not subvert it. This result we owe
mainly to Lord Hastings, who built so carefully on the foundations
laid by Lord Wellesley, the structure being completed by the generous
policy adopted when India came directly under the crown. For Lord
4
1 Dalhousie, op. cit. p. 381.
2 Edwin Arnold, The Marquis of Dalhousie's Administration of British
India, p. 199.
* Major E. Bell, The Empire in India, p. 26.
+ Parliamentary Papers, 1855-6, XLV, 107-52.
## p. 588 (#616) ############################################
588
THE INDIAN STATES, 1818-57
Hastings introduced those distinct relations of supremacy and sub-
ordination which still fundamentally control the position between us
and the states. In his time those parts of India not directly under
our administration passed equally under our sovereignty; and our
ascendancy, as also our indefeasible right to interfere if the peace and
security of India was menaced, became henceforth unquestioned.
Step by step, sorely against its will, the Company had been driven,
by inexorable fate, to abandon its policy of the ring-fence and of
non-interference, and so we passed through the system of subordinate
alliance to the wise and generous policy of co-operative partnership
which holds at the present day.
## p. 589 (#617) ############################################
CHAPTER XXXII
"
THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
IN BRITISH INDIA
“British authority in India”, says Ilbert, “may be traced to
a two-fold source. It is derived partly from the British crown and
parliament, partly from the Great Mogul and other native rulers of
India. " 1 The development has been slow and at times obscure. It
has lent itself to much misinterpretation, and has involved strong
contrasts between facts and theories. One of the great difficulties
has arisen from the fact that in the East public law has not been
subject to the same scrutiny and definition that it has undergone in
Europe. Technical terms, such as sovereignty, and their Persian
equivalents, seem to have been used with the greatest laxity, both
by Indians and by Englishmen in India; while in most of our docu-
ments the needs of current controversies 'are predominant, and one
is seldom sure whether Hastings and Clive were laying down general
principles which they were prepared to support in every case or only
drawing temporary arguments from an ambiguous position in order
to defend a particular action.
It is clear that from the first the position of the English in India
was variable and uncertain. The fact may be illustrated by the
different positions held by the English in the seventeenth century
in their principal settlements of Bombay, Madras and Calcutta
respectively. In the first the Company exercised sovereign powers
under the English crown, to whom the island had been ceded by the
Portuguese. The right to fortify and defend the place, to maintain
troops there, to administer justice, to levy taxes, to coin money, was
clear, full and indisputable. All inhabitants, whether English or
Indian, were presumably subjects of the English crown.
Madras fell in another category. That place was held under a
grant of the chief of Wandiwash, who empowered the English Com-
pany to build a castle and fortress, to mint money, together with
full power and authority to govern and dispose of the government of Madras-
patam for the term and space of two years next insueing after they shall be
seated there and possesst of the said fortifications; and for the future by an
equal division to receive half the customs and revenues of that port. 2
After the Hindu power had been overthrown by the Muslim kingdom
of Golconda, the grant was in effect continued; but, as complaints
perpetually arose over the division of the customs, a new grant was
1 The Government of India, p. 1.
? Love, Vestiges, I, 17.
## p. 590 (#618) ############################################
590
DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
made in 1672, which commuted the share of the customs for a quit-
rent of 1200 pagodas; the grant continues :
Neither shall any avaldare or any of the diwan's people ever be kept or
placed in the town of Chinapatam, and, as I have done, that no person what-
soever shall have to do in the least with the town of Chinapatam, but that it
shall remain wholly and for ever under the English,, where they may accord-
ingly act all the command, government and justice of the said town as they
shall think necessary and most convenient to be done. 1
When, in 1687, Golconda was conquered by Aurangzib, no change
seems to have been made in the English status. Here then was a
position quite different from that at Bombay. The English exercised
all the powers of sovereignty subject however to Indian superiority
shown by the payment of quit-rent. Here too it should be noted,
that as the local coinage bore no superscription, but only the figures
of Hindu deities, it did not carry with it the same implications that
it would have done in Northern India; and when the Moghul
authorities permitted the coinage of rupees at Madras, those coins
bore the usual marks of Moghul supremacy.
At Calcutta the position was again different. There the English
had been allowed to purchase the zamindari of the three villages that
grew into the capital of British India. Their jurisdiction, as at Madras,
was therefore two-fold. Over Englishmen the Company relied upon
its chartered powers; but over Indians, and especially over Muslims,
in whom alone the local government took any great interest, its
authority was that of a minor zamindar under the local faujdar. The
position is shown with special clearness by the fact that the Company
could not, till the treaty of 1757, obtain the right of minting coin at
Calcutta, and by the jurisdiction of the law courts there. The Com-
pany's criminal court, established by the royal charters of 1727 and
1753, was limited to Europeans. Indians were tried in the zamindar's
court. In theory all sentences of death should have been submitted
to the faujdar of Hugli and the Nazim at Murshidabad before being
put into execution. " In practice this does not seem to have been
done; but the Calcutta Council was clearly very cautious of putting
Muhammadans to death. We must discount Bolts's story, that they
were flogged to death instead of being hanged, out of deference to
Muslim opinion; but one case at least is on record, where the
Muhammadan members of a party of criminals were spared for fear
of the nawab's interference.
This position at Madras and Calcutta was profoundly changed by
the course of events which may be dated from the War of the Austrian
Succession. Madras was the first to be affected. During the war it
.
passed into the hands of the French by right of conquest, in defiance
1 Love, op. cit. I, 345. “Chinapatam" is Madras.
? Committee of Secrecy, 1773, Sixth Report, pp. 2 and 11.
3 Bolts, Considerations, 1, 80.
4 Long, Selections, p. 51. .
## p. 591 (#619) ############################################
THE CARNATIC
591
of the prohibitions of the nawab; it remained in French hands during
the war, although Dupleix agreed to make a formal recognition of
the nawab's position by flying his flag over the place for a week. '
At the end of the war it was restored to the English by the Treaty
of Aix-la-Chapelle. From that time the English might have claimed
to hold it independently of any Indian prince. However, they were
on the best of terms with Muhammad 'Ali, whom they were seeking
to establish as against the French nominee; and so, in 1752, as a mark
of gratitude the quit-rent was abolished, and with it went the last
fragment of dependence upon an Indian prince at Madras. ?
That, however, only applied to Madras itself and a very narrow
strip of land round its walls. The rest of the country lay within the
undisputed control of the nawab under the nominal sovereignty of
Delhi. When, in 1780, the nawab applied to Hastings to secure a
settlement of outstanding questions, he was specially eager to secure
declarations from the English that he was hereditary prince of the
Carnatic, with full power over the administration of his country and
the right to nominate his successor, under the general protection of
the Company and the English nation. It is apparent that all thoughts
of the Moghul emperor have disappeared, although doubtless his
name was still recited in the Friday prayers at Arcot, and for that
matter at Madras. In fact the very application shows that the Com-
pany, and not the emperor, was now suzerain. In 1792 the old nawab
died and was succeeded by the son whom for so many years he had
striven to disinherit; but the succession took place with the approval
of the Company. Finally, ten years later, for reasons which have been
explained in a previous chapter, on the next demise of the nawabship,
the Company intervened decisively. Its representative refused to
recognise any succession except on terms which at a stroke reduced
the nawab to the same position to which the nawab of Bengal had only
fallen after a term of years. He became a pensioner. On this occasion
we hear no mention of Delhi or the emperor. Sovereign powers over
the Carnatic passed to the Company, not indeed by conquest, but
in virtue of a long-established political situation, in which the
Company was in fact, though not in name, the overlord. For three
generations the old title and dignity were allowed to survive; but in
1855, in the time of Dalhousie, they were deliberately extinguished,
as a "semblance of royalty without any of the power is a mockery
of authority which must be pernicious”. 5
The case of Bengal was much more complicated, partly because
of the inferior status from which the Company set out, partly because
4
1 P. 122 supra.
2 Madras Public Consultations, 31 August, 1752.
3 Requests of the Nawab Walajah of the governor-general, Madras Military
Consultations, 22 August, 1781, p. 2280.
4 P. 361 supra.
5 Lee-Warner, Dalhousie, II, 140.
## p. 592 (#620) ############################################
592
DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
1
1
it offered the first example of something like territorial acquisitions
on a large scale, and partly because of the conflicts and hesitations
of the crown and Company in England. The status of zamindar
persisted at Calcutta until the year 1756. But when at the close of
that year. Clive recovered the place, we may suppose that the logic
of events had already begun to modify the position. It was recovered
by force; and we may infer that when the English returned, they
returned no longer as humble dependents of the nawab. The change
is clearly indicated in the treaty which Clive made with Siraj-ud-
daula on 9 February following. In future the place might be fortified
as the English thought proper; the privilege of a mint was granted;
and the English nation and Company agreed to live on good terms
with the nawab so long as he observed the treaty. The theory of
Moghul sovereignty still stood, but a large breach had been made in
it. The breach was further enlarged when the English proceeded to
overthrow the ruling nawab and set up another. In the treaty with
Mir Ja'far, although the sovereignty over the country, in whosesoever
hands it lay, was not formally impaired, the English were nevertheless
established as an imperium in imperio with the right of doing them-
selves justice. The revolution of 1760 was designed to strengthen
the nawab and led, as we have seen, to a conflict between the person
invested with the sole rights of administration in the province, and
the corporation controlling the only efficient military force therein.
Again the nawab was overthrown and Mir Ja'far restored, not as had
formerly been the case, with the aid and concurrence of his friends
and supporters, but by the mere act of the Calcutta Council. In 1763
this de facto power assumed the right of nominating the nawab's
principal minister, and in the same year, under Clive's Treaty of
Allahabad, it was invested with the right of revenue administration.
The formal sovereignty still lay where it had; but alongside of the
emperor and nawab there had sprung up a body which not only
possessed the sole military force in Bengal, but also had conquered
the province in 1763, had assumed the power of nominating the
nawab's chief officer, and was now invested with the right of collect-
ing the revenues. It was an indefinite situation which could not
readily be brought within the scope of any western formulae.
The situation, perplexing as it was, was prolonged by the hesita-
tion of the English authorities to assume formal sovereignty over the
territories which in fact they controlled. Neither the crown nor the
Company was prepared, though for very different reasons, to lay
claim to territorial sovereignty in India. The Company feared that
any such claims would provoke or hasten interference
by the ministry;"
the crown was unwilling to assail the legal rights of the Company. 4
i Hill, Bengal in 1756-7, II, 215 sqq.
2 P. 171 supra.
3 Verelst, op. cit. p. 81.
4 E. g. Chatham to Shelburne, 24 May, 1773 (Chatham Correspondence, iv,
264).
## p. 593 (#621) ############################################
CROWN AND COMPANY
693
Indeed, the establishment of such a position was the precise motive
with which Clive seems in 1765 to have desired the diwanni of Bengal
rather than any territorial cession, which could have been obtained
just as readily. It placed the Company in a strong tactical position
alike as regards foreign powers and as regards the government at
home.
This had not always been Clive's aim. After Plassey he had sought
to induce Pitt to take over the government of the Company's pos-
sessions in despair of ever seeing that body establish good govern-
ment. But Pitt had then been reluctant to intervene in so complicated
a position. How complicated it was may be seen from an opinion
delivered by the law-officers on 24 December, 1757, on the Company's
memorial praying for the grant of all booty and conquests made in
India.
"In respect to such places”, they say, "as have been or shall be acquired by
treaty or grant from the Mogul or any of the Indian princes or governments,
your Majesty's letters patent are not necessary, the property of the soil vesting
in the Company by the Indian grants, subject only to your Majesty's rights of
sovereignty over the settlements as English settlements, and over the inhabi-
tants, as English subjects who carry with them your Majesty's laws wherever
they form colonies. . . . In respect to such places as have lately been acquired
or shall hereafter be acquired by conquest, the property as well as the dominion
vests in your Majesty by virtue of your known prerogative, and consequently
the Company can only derive a right to them by your Majesty's grant. . . . ”2
But although the Company could not acquire territory by conquest,
it could nevertheless "cede conquests made upon Indians", since by
its charters it had power to make war and peace with them. In 1765
the legal view undoubtedly was that British sovereignty was estab-
lished in Calcutta, in the 24-Parganas, and in the districts of Burdwan,
Midnapur and Chittagong ceded by Mir Kasim, but not in the
diwanni districts, a result which accorded well with the Company's
policy of that time. The question as to where and at what point
Indian inhabitants of places subject to English sovereignty became
English subjects does not seem to have been considered, as is clear
enough from the uncertain and ambiguous language of the Regulat-
ing Act. It was declared at Calcutta in 1773 that Sepoy officers were
“not. . . subjects of Britain, but aliens and natives of Hindustan”.
3
From the point of view of the ministry the question was clearly
two-fold : internal as regarded the Company, external as regarded
the French and other foreign nations. It will be most convenient
to sketch the development of policy under these two heads, and
finally to describe the relations between the Company's government
in India and the Moghul emperor—the de facto and the de jure
wielders of Indian dominion.
1 Malcolm, Life of Clive, , 119 sqq. ; Williams, Life of Chatham, 1, 28-9.
? Public Record Office, C. O. 77-19; cf. an undated and unsigned minute, ap.
Chatham MSS, I, 99.
8 Forrest, Selections from the State Papers of the Foreign Department, I, 89.
38
## p. 594 (#622) ############################################
594
DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
The first direct exercise of sovereign power in India by the crown
since the cession of Bombay to the Company resulted from an inter-
national document, the Treaty of Paris of 1763, in which both the
French and the English governments recognised Muhammad 'Ali as
nawab of the Carnatic and Salabat Jang as subahdar of the Deccan.
No one seems to have considered how far these stipulations were
consistent with the structure of the Moghul Empire. Indeed they
were at the time intended only to secure the peace between the two
European nations in India by preventing them from continuing to
support rival, princes in those regions. At a later time, however, the
clauses were put to a new use. The disputes between the crown and
the Company which came to a head in 1766-7 made the ministry
anxious to find some means by which it could learn how matters were
actually going in India. There was reason to distrust the execution
which the Company's servants had given to the treaty in the East;
and the upshot of the matter was that when the Company sent out
its supervisors to reform its Indian administration, the ministry sent
out in command of the squadron an officer vested with plenipotentiary
powers from the king to the princes of India. About the commission
of this officer there was much underhand work that ill became the
dignity of the ministry; the commission, for instance, was not com-
municated to the Company; and so when the commodore arrived in
India he found that the Company's governments knew nothing about
the powers that had been granted to him. The natural result was the
outbreak of violent disputes between the representative of the king's
majesty and the councils which exercised the powers of the Company.
These divided and undefined powers were bound to weaken and
impede, rather than to strengthen the conduct of affairs, and the
time had not yet come when the ministry was prepared to take a
decisive part in determining Indian policy. However, it is curious to
note that among the other duties of the plenipotentiary was included
a mission to the Moghul emperor, who had sent presents to George III
by the hands of Clive, and these, by some oversight, had never been
acknowledged. Commodore Lindsay was entrusted with a letter of
thanks from the king, whose titles were for the occasion strangely
inodified, obviously with a view to impressing the court of Delhi with
a due sense of the king's importance. "George III”, the letter is
headed, "King. . . Defender of the Christian faith. . . and Sovereign
of the Seas, etc. " 1 A generation later the same style was employed
in a letter addressed to the emperor of China.
The next step after this ill-concerted effort to interfere in the
Company's Indian administration was the Regulating Act of 1773.
That act takes for granted the existence of British sovereignty in
Calcutta and its immediate neighbourhood, but not apparently
"1
1 Weymouth to Lindsay, 14 September, 1769, and George III to the Moghul,
of the same date (Brit, Mus. Add. MSS, 18020; ff. 46 verso and 50 verso). .
## p. 595 (#623) ############################################
ACTS AND TREATIES
695
beyond. At best its language is hesitating and uncertain. A dis-
tinction appears between British subjects and the native-born in-
habitants. The India Act of 1784 leaves the question still untouched,
although it legislates for the full exercise of all sovereign powers in
territory that in 1773 was clearly not yet a part of the dominions of
the crown. The act of 1793 merely declared that all territorial
acquisitions and their revenues were to remain in the possession of
the East India Company for the next twenty years, thus leaving the
question of sovereignty still open. Not until 1813 do we find the claim
to sovereignty formally asserted. In the act renewing the Company's
privileges in that year the territorial acquisitions were continued
under its control "without prejudice to the undoubted sovereignty
of the crown of the United Kingdom, etc. in and over the same”.
But at what moment that sovereignty came into being still remained
a riddle.
Much the same attitude is displayed by the treaties concluded in
this period. At first the question of sovereignty is not raised except
in regard to the factories possessed by the European nations, and
which it was taken for granted formed part of their respective terri-
tories. Thus Article 11 of the Treaty of Paris declares,
Dans les Indes Orientales la Grande Bretagne restituera à la France. . . les
différents comptoirs que cette couronne possédait. . . Et sa majesté Très Chré-
tienne renonce à toute pretention aux acquisitions qu'elle avait faite sur la
côte de Coromandel et d'Orixa depuis le dit commencement de l'année 1749. . . .
Elle s'engage de plus à ne point ériger des fortifications et à ne point entretenir
des troupes dans aucune partie des états du soubah de Bengale. . . .
It is clearly implied that the English enjoyed a special position in
Bengal by the limitations which the French engaged to observe; but
neither then nor till long after was the least attempt made to define
the position by the use of any of the political terms employed in
Europe. The article in the Treaty of Versailles of 1783 even more
obviously evades the matter. After providing for the restoration of
the French factories in Bengal, it continues :
Et sa Majesté Britannique s'engage à prendre les mesures qui seront en
son pouvoir pour assurer aux sujets de la France dans cette partie de l'Inde,
comme sur la côte de Coromandel, et de Malabar, un commerce sûr, libre et
indépendant. . . .
In 1786-7, when troubles with the French in Bengal produced
renewed discussions in Europe, leading to the convention of 1787,
the most inconsistent language was used, showing that the English
still had not been able to make up their minds as to their position
in India. Thus the Committee of Secrecy writes to the Governor-
General in Council, 19 July, 1786, stating that the French could
hardly expect the benevolent intervention of the Company so long
as they assumed a position of independence and did not "acquiesce
in the general controuling power existing in the English Companv
## p. 596 (#624) ############################################
596
DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
as Dewan of the provinces". 1 But in Paris, on 6 February, 1787, Eden,
who was negotiating the convention, took up a very different position
in an explication confidentielle which he delivered to Montmorin.
His proposals, he said, were intended,
sans rien faire qui soit censé déroger à la souverainté possessoire et exclusive
dont l'Angleterre jouit dans l'Inde, de donner à la France toutes les facilités
praticables, dans la vue de former un traité de commerce. . . . C'est un fait
incontestable que l'Anglettere possède tous les droits substantiels de la souve-
rainté dans les provinces de Bengale, Bahar, et Orixa. . . . C'est en supposant
cette qualité effective de la souverainté que les deux cours ont formés l'article
11 de traité de Paris et l'article 13 de celui de Versailles. . . . ?
The French, however, did not accept this doctrine, which can hardly
be read into the treaties mentioned without vigorous interpolation.
The position is clearly summed up in an unpublished letter of Corn-
wallis to the Committee of Secrecy, dated 16 November, 1786. "From
this complicated system”, he says, "founded on grants conferred and
powers assumed, of sovereignty exercised though not avowed, many
difficulties arise in all negotiations with foreign nations. ” 3
The Treaty of Amiens only dealt with India under a general
article, but the Treaty of Paris of 1814, and the convention with the
Netherlands of the same year, both place the position of the English
Government in India beyond question internationally. Both refer
specifically to the British sovereignty in India, which was then for
the first time acknowledged by the French and the Dutch. In this
connection, and as displaying the contrast which this treaty displays
with previous diplomatic language, a sentence from Article 12 of the
Treaty of Paris may be quoted :
Sa Majesté Britannique s'engage à faire jouir les sujets de sa Majesté Très
Chrétienne relativement au commerce et à la sûreté de leurs personnes et pro-
priétés dans les limites de la souverainté britannique sur le continent des
Indes, des mêmes facilités, privilèges et protection, qui sont à présent ou seront
accordés aux nations les plus favorisées.
Thus the claim put forward by the legislation of 1813 was in the
following year formally announced to the diplomatic world of Europe
and recognised by the two powers principally interested in the East.
We must now turn to see how in India itself the position of the
East India Company gradually developed. The obvious point of
departure is the Treaty of Allahabad, by which Clive secured for the
Company a grant of the diwanni, agreeing in return to pay to the
emperor twenty-six lakhs of rupees a year besides giving him posses-
sion of Allahabad and the revenues of the neighbouring country.
The emperor at the time when he made the grant was a fugitive from
his capital, without money, without troops, dependent on the English
for his daily bread. His grant gave them nothing which they could
1 India. Office, French in India, vol XII.
Idem.
8. Idem.
## p. 597 (#625) ############################################
THE BENGAL TRIBUTE
597
1
> 3
not very well have taken for themselves had they been so minded,
and Clive's reason for his generosity, as has been pointed out above,
referred not to the position of affairs in India but to the Company's
relations with the crown and the French. The grant was, Hastings
said, “a presumptuous gift of what was not his to give", and
The sword which gave us the dominion of Bengal must be the instrument of
its preservation; and if. . . it shall ever cease to be ours, the next proprietor
will derive his right and possession from the same natural charter. 2
Holding these views Hastings was inevitably opposed to Clive's
settlement so far as it concerned the action of the governments in
India. Indeed, he had hardly taken over the government in Bengal
in 1772 before an opportunity arose for him to give effect to his ideas.
The emperor, Shah Alam, having quitted English protection at
Allahabad for Maratha protection at Delhi, Hastings decided to stop
payment of the Bengal tribute. “I think I may promise", he wrote,
“that no more payments will be made while he is in the hands of
the Mahrattas, nor, if I can prevent it, ever more. " 3 The refusal was
diplomatically placed to the account of the Bengal famine of 1769-70.
There followed an unceasing stream of letters from Delhi, in which
the emperor or one of his ministers called upon the English to
withdraw from their position, or at the least to lend the emperor
troops who might be paid out of the arrears. Hastings at last wrote,
“I must plainly declare that until the safety and welfare of these
provinces will admit of it, I cannot consent that a single rupee be
sent out of them which it is in my power to retain”. 4 The payment of
tribute was the one really crucial element in the relations between the
emperor and the rulers of the provinces. A governor might strike
coin and have Friday prayers read in the emperor's name; he
might pay handsomely to obtain the imperial confirmation of his
succession, and offer large sums for the continuance of his predecessor's
titles; but these things meant little except when they were accom-
panied by the regular remittance of the annual tribute, which alone
signified a real, living allegiance to the imperial power. Hastings's
refusal of tribute was in effect a declaration of the practical inde-
pendence of Bengal.
It was accompanied by another act which in its way was equally
significant. The districts of Kora and Allahabad were ceded to the
nawab of Oudh. Clive's arrangement by which they had been given
to the emperor might conceivably have been represented as obedience
to the monarch's commands. Not so the decision which dispossessed
the imperial revenue-officers and transferred the districts back to the
nawab of Oudh in return for fifty lakhs paid into the Company's
1 Minute, ap. Bengal Select Committee, 4 October, 1773.
2 Minute, loc. cit. 12 October, 1772.
3 Hastings to Purling, 22 March, 1772 (Monckton Jones, op. cit. p. 147).
+ Ilastings to Shah 'Alam, 13 September, 1773 (Forrest, op. cit. 1, 58).
## p. 598 (#626) ############################################
598
DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
treasury. As if in order to make the position clearer still, Hastings
declined the title which the emperor offered him. In another way,
too, Hastings aimed at introducing English sovereignty, though
circumstances did not allow him to carry it into execution.
He
advocated the replacement of alliances between Indian princes and
the Company by alliances between them and the crown. The first
occasion on which he placed these ideas on paper seems to have been
in a letter to North of 26 February, 1775; 2 but from a later letter to
Elliot of 12 January, 1777, it appears that the subject must have been
discussed between him and Shuja-ud-daula when he visited Benares
in 1773. He states that the nawab was desirous of alliance with
George III and even offered to coin money in the name of the English
monarch. Hastings was still in favour of this project in 1777, and
thought it might be applied not only to Oudh but also to Berar.
Had this policy been carried into effect, it would have led to a formal
assertion of English paramountcy in India. But the directors, had it
even been proposed to them, would have objected to it as lessening
their importance, while the ministry of the time had no clear-cut
conception of its own purposes. The plan thus came to nothing, and
survives only as a project, foiled, like so many of Hastings's plans, ov
the opposition or the inertia of others.
While Hastings was thus bent on repudiating the emperor's
authority over Bengal, he was equally active in reducing even the
ostensible part played by that phantom the nawab in its internal
management-implanting, as he said, the authority of the Company
and the sovereignty of Great Britain in the constitution.
“The truth is”, he wrote to the Secret Committee on 1 September, 1772,
"that the affairs of the Company stand at present on a footing which can neither
last as it is nor be maintained on the rigid principles of private justice. You
must establish your own power, or you must hold it dependent on a superior,
which I deem to be impossible. " 4
In these ideas he was encouraged by the Company's decision
"to stand forth as diwan”. One of the guiding principles which
inspired the reforms of the period 1772-4 was to make Calcutta
the visible capital of the province. Thither was moved the chief
revenue-office, and thither went the appeals from the courts which
he established. "In a word", he claimed in 1773, "the sovereign
authority of the Company is firmly rooted in every branch of the
state. " 5
But in this he had out-run the intentions of his masters, the
directors, and their masters, the parliament and crown. Lawyers like
Thurlow might with brutal directness declare that in India existed no
1 Hastings to Shah 'Alam, 1 August, 1773 (Calendar of Persian Correspond-
ence, IV, 77).
2 Gleig, op. cit. I, 508.
3 Idem, u, 136.
4 Idem, I, 254.
5 Idem, p. 332.
## p. 599 (#627) ############################################
HASTINGS AND THE COUNCIL
599
powers or rights but force, and that it was "a country with no public
moral or faith". 1 But no one in England was yet ready to accept the
idea of filling with British sovereignty the void created by the disso-
lution of the Moghul Power. The vagueness of the Regulating Act
corresponded in its own way with the vagueness of the directors'
orders. They might resolve directly to administer the Bengal revenues
on reports that their Indian deputy was playing them false; but
though they enjoyed the powers they were not prepared to assume
the position of the masters of Bengal. When they received complaints,
for instance, that the French were refusing to obey the orders issued
in the nawab's name, they replied :
We direct that you afford the Country Government all necessary assistance
in the execution of such equitable laws as are or may be framed for the pro-
tection of the natives. . . . If the French persist in their contempt of the Nabob,
it is our order that you decline as much as possible entering into a discussion
of such of their complaints as shall be cognizable by the Nazim of the province,
for so long as the English pay attention to His Excellency, it cannot be expected
that other Europeans should be allowed to disregard him. . . .
So when Clavering and his followers arrived in India, and found that
Hastings had adopted a different policy, and above all when they
found the Supreme Court taking the same line, calling the nawab
"a man of straw", and demanding that the majority should make
oath that he was a sovereign independent prince, conducting his
own affairs independently of their government and capable of making
war and peace with Calcutta, though they were unable to make the
required affidavits they were strongly inclined to adopt, support, and
enforce the Company's views, reviving the phantom which Clive had
summoned up. Not impossibly the latter had urged this course on
Francis in some of those meetings which took place at Walcot shortly
before the majority sailed from England and which were full of evil
cmen for the relations between the governor-general and his new
colleagues. Hence their endeavour to maintain the fiction of the dual
government and to hide the authority of the East India Company.
Accordingly they insisted on re-establishing Muhammad Riza Khan
as deputy nazim and supported their decision by taunting Hastings
with neglect of the Company's intentions.
"The Governor roundly insists”, we read, "on the futility of attempting to
maintain a country government. . . . An old servant of the Company might at
least have treated their deliberate and invariable opinion with greater respect.
With regard to us, if our ideas on this subject had not entirely concurred with
theirs, and if we had not been convinced that in their circumstances it was the
only rational system they could pursue, we should still have thought it our
duty. . . to have adopted their doctrines. "
1 Thurlow's Opinion on Clive's Jagir Case.
2 Company to Bengal, 3 March, 1775, paras. 59 sqq.
: Bengal Secret Consultations, 29 February, 1776.
## p. 600 (#628) ############################################
600
DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
Besides these thin and hollow declarations should be placed Hastings's
vigorous and (in this case) accurate language.
All the arts of policy cannot conceal the power by which these provinces
are ruled, nor can all the arts of sophistry avail to transfer the responsibility
of ihem to the Nabob, when it is as visible as the light of the sun that they
originate from our own government, that the Nabob is a mere pageant without
so much as the shadow of authority, and even his most consequential agents
receive their appointment from the recommendation of the Company and the
express nomination of their servants. 1
Absolute as the opposition appears, it is nevertheless deceptive.
The majority were ready to use any stick to beat Hastings with, even
if it was not one of their own growing; and although under the stress
of controversy they found themselves committed to the views set
down above, they had not always considered the dual system of
government that best adapted to the situation of Bengal. In a letter
written early in 1775 Francis had pointed out that under the system
which in the next year the majority advocated so heartily, the people
of Bengal had either two sovereigns or none, and that the only course
to follow was to declare the sovereignty of the king of Great Britain
over the whole of the provinces; and at this time his criticisms of
Hastings's conduct seem confined to the fact that in abolishing the
Moghul sovereignty he had not formally declared the British. ?
Francis had recorded similar sentiments in a minute of 8 March, 1775.
After this it is odd to find him, in a private, unpublished letter to
Lord North, declaring that the English should set about giving or
restoring an active constitution to the Moghul Empire. “The autho-
rity of the Emperor should be in a considerable degree restored and
means given him to support it. ” 3 The revival of the empire would
have been wholly inconsistent with English authority in Bengal.
It is worth noting that in this respect the policies of the English
and the French had been, and continued to be, diametrically opposed.
intention that the whole population should be disarmed. . . . as was done with
such excellent effect in the Punjaub in 1849.
It is thus clear that Lord Dalhousie, while he deprecated half-
measures, was strongly opposed to the policy of annexation, though
he was convinced that, so far as the people of Oudh were concerned,
it would be far the best course to take.
In a letter to Sir George Couper written on 15 December, 1855,3
before the orders of the court had arrived, he says:
I understand that they (the Directors] mean to force the King to form a
new treaty or to assume the government of his country. This is all very well
for the home authorities but it was not for me to suggest it. . . . The course
proposed by the Court is not warranted by international law. It would be
either conquest or usurpation of the power of government by force of arms.
This argument of international law would not in these days be raised
in connection with the Indian states.
Sleeman, however, Outram's predecessor as Resident at Lucknow,
expressed the opinion that the annexation was a political blunder,
holding that we should have acted under the treaty of 1837, abrogated
though it was. The confiscation of the state would, he said, “cause
our good name to suffer", and "that good name is more valuable
1 Parliamentary Papers, 1857, XI, 109-17.
2 Dalhousie, op. cit. p. 399.
3 Idem, p. 363.
## p. 586 (#614) ############################################
586
THE INDIAN STATES, 1818-57
to us than a dozen Oudes". We had used our giant's strength like
a giant, he said, and had injured our reputation in the eyes of all
India. This opinion was largely instrumental in leading to the grant
of “Adoption sanads” in 1862. But any such step would have been
impossible in Dalhousie's day as it would have savoured of interfering
with the "independent” states.
The other cases with which Lord Dalhousie had to deal were the
extinction of the pension granted to Baji Rao, the last Peshwa, the
disappearance of the Carnatic and Tanjore titles, and the question
of the Hyderabad contingent.
Baji Rao died in 1852 leaving no heir, and the governor-general
ruled that the pension, being personal, terminated with his death,
though the large private fortune accumulated by Baji Rao would
pass to his adopted son, Dhondu Pant, who later on became notorious
in the Mutiny, as Nana Sahib.
Trouble arose in regard to payment of the Hyderabad contingent
force by that durbar, an din 1853 the Nizam under pressure placed
the administration of the Berar province of his state under our control
so that its revenues might be devoted to the up-keep of that force.
This arrangement, made with such reluctance in the first instance,
has since been the cause of much contention and is likely to remain so.
The nawab of the Carnatic, in 1855, died leaving no son and, on
the ground that his state was created by us in 1801, and on the fact
that his title was personal, his estate escheated and the title did not
descended to his successors, who have since then been styled Princes of
Arcot. ' A similar case arose on the death of the raja of Tanjore.
Reviewing Lord Dalhousie's administration in so far as it affected
the Indian states, it is clear that the policy of absorbing them in cases
of failure of direct heirs was not of his making but was inherited by
him, and, whether right or wrong, was at that time the avowed
policy of the Company, whose one anxiety was to consolidate its
possessions.
Lord Dalhousie was careful to confine action under this policy
to the “dependent” states. Thus, when he was urged by the directors,
soon after he reached India, to take a strong line and interfere in
Hyderabad, he threatened to resign; while in Bahawalpur, when the
newly-installed ruler was ousted by his brother, he refused to sup-
port the fugitive nawab, although we had recognised his succession,
in view of the fact that the people of the state did not wish to have
him as their ruler, and it was for them alone to decide. These two
cases occurred in "independent" states. Lord Dalhousie was one of
the most scrupulous and conscientious governors-general who ever
guided the destiny of India; he was absolutely incapable of doing an
injustice.
On the other hand, a sincerely religious man, he was
convinced of the desirability of substituting our rule for that of the
i Parliamentarij Papers, 1860, LII, 531-78.
## p. 587 (#615) ############################################
DALHOUSIE'S POLICY
587
1
2
Indian princes, whenever it could in fairness be effected. He says
himself, writing on 21 July, 1857, to Sir George Couper :
I never advised annexing any principality unless it lapsed naturally for
want of heirs or was forfeited for misconduct. But when a principality does
so fall to our disposal it does seem to me to be cruel to hand over its inhabit-
ants to be squeezed and skinned by a native despot, merely that our own sub-
jects may be able to compare their own lot favourably with that of those
whom we have abandoned. . . .
His unflagging warfare against abuses of all kinds and his desire
to extend to all the benefits of the new era he had introduced into
British India certainly dimmed his perception of other points of view;
as for instance that of the hereditary ruling princes themselves, that
of their subjects with the innate reverence for their natural rulers
which then did (if it does not now) distinguish the people of India,
and by their preference, in spite of abuses, for the less rigid govern-
ment of an Indian state. Never did his administration justify the
fancifully fierce condemnation levelled at it as being "more like
counting out the spoil of brigands. . . than. . . the acts of English
statesmanship”,» nor did any man ever merit less the stigma of being
called the "very worst and basest of rulers”. 3 We must not judge
those days by these. Besides an entire change of policy on our side,
the Indian states have themselves, for the most part, travelled far
administratively since 1856, and, though still in the main autocratic,
have reached a much higher standard than they then possessed,
while they are now subjected to the glare of criticism and the anti-
septic of publicity to a degree impossible in those days of a limited
public press and very inadequate communications.
The sudden upheaval which followed so soon after his departure
was quite unforeseen by Lord Dalhousie who in his farewell minute
considers that he is justified in saying that he leaves India "at peace
without and within".
To summarise the results of the policy pursued towards the
Indian states between 1818 and 1856.
This period is by far the most important in the history of the
relationship of the states to the British Government. It witnessed
their metamorphosis from a congeries of quasi-independent units,
some openly hostile, most, at heart, antagonistic to us, and all
doubtful and resentful of our intentions towards them, into a body
with so complete an acquiescence in our paramount position that
even the shock of the Mutiny could not subvert it. This result we owe
mainly to Lord Hastings, who built so carefully on the foundations
laid by Lord Wellesley, the structure being completed by the generous
policy adopted when India came directly under the crown. For Lord
4
1 Dalhousie, op. cit. p. 381.
2 Edwin Arnold, The Marquis of Dalhousie's Administration of British
India, p. 199.
* Major E. Bell, The Empire in India, p. 26.
+ Parliamentary Papers, 1855-6, XLV, 107-52.
## p. 588 (#616) ############################################
588
THE INDIAN STATES, 1818-57
Hastings introduced those distinct relations of supremacy and sub-
ordination which still fundamentally control the position between us
and the states. In his time those parts of India not directly under
our administration passed equally under our sovereignty; and our
ascendancy, as also our indefeasible right to interfere if the peace and
security of India was menaced, became henceforth unquestioned.
Step by step, sorely against its will, the Company had been driven,
by inexorable fate, to abandon its policy of the ring-fence and of
non-interference, and so we passed through the system of subordinate
alliance to the wise and generous policy of co-operative partnership
which holds at the present day.
## p. 589 (#617) ############################################
CHAPTER XXXII
"
THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
IN BRITISH INDIA
“British authority in India”, says Ilbert, “may be traced to
a two-fold source. It is derived partly from the British crown and
parliament, partly from the Great Mogul and other native rulers of
India. " 1 The development has been slow and at times obscure. It
has lent itself to much misinterpretation, and has involved strong
contrasts between facts and theories. One of the great difficulties
has arisen from the fact that in the East public law has not been
subject to the same scrutiny and definition that it has undergone in
Europe. Technical terms, such as sovereignty, and their Persian
equivalents, seem to have been used with the greatest laxity, both
by Indians and by Englishmen in India; while in most of our docu-
ments the needs of current controversies 'are predominant, and one
is seldom sure whether Hastings and Clive were laying down general
principles which they were prepared to support in every case or only
drawing temporary arguments from an ambiguous position in order
to defend a particular action.
It is clear that from the first the position of the English in India
was variable and uncertain. The fact may be illustrated by the
different positions held by the English in the seventeenth century
in their principal settlements of Bombay, Madras and Calcutta
respectively. In the first the Company exercised sovereign powers
under the English crown, to whom the island had been ceded by the
Portuguese. The right to fortify and defend the place, to maintain
troops there, to administer justice, to levy taxes, to coin money, was
clear, full and indisputable. All inhabitants, whether English or
Indian, were presumably subjects of the English crown.
Madras fell in another category. That place was held under a
grant of the chief of Wandiwash, who empowered the English Com-
pany to build a castle and fortress, to mint money, together with
full power and authority to govern and dispose of the government of Madras-
patam for the term and space of two years next insueing after they shall be
seated there and possesst of the said fortifications; and for the future by an
equal division to receive half the customs and revenues of that port. 2
After the Hindu power had been overthrown by the Muslim kingdom
of Golconda, the grant was in effect continued; but, as complaints
perpetually arose over the division of the customs, a new grant was
1 The Government of India, p. 1.
? Love, Vestiges, I, 17.
## p. 590 (#618) ############################################
590
DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
made in 1672, which commuted the share of the customs for a quit-
rent of 1200 pagodas; the grant continues :
Neither shall any avaldare or any of the diwan's people ever be kept or
placed in the town of Chinapatam, and, as I have done, that no person what-
soever shall have to do in the least with the town of Chinapatam, but that it
shall remain wholly and for ever under the English,, where they may accord-
ingly act all the command, government and justice of the said town as they
shall think necessary and most convenient to be done. 1
When, in 1687, Golconda was conquered by Aurangzib, no change
seems to have been made in the English status. Here then was a
position quite different from that at Bombay. The English exercised
all the powers of sovereignty subject however to Indian superiority
shown by the payment of quit-rent. Here too it should be noted,
that as the local coinage bore no superscription, but only the figures
of Hindu deities, it did not carry with it the same implications that
it would have done in Northern India; and when the Moghul
authorities permitted the coinage of rupees at Madras, those coins
bore the usual marks of Moghul supremacy.
At Calcutta the position was again different. There the English
had been allowed to purchase the zamindari of the three villages that
grew into the capital of British India. Their jurisdiction, as at Madras,
was therefore two-fold. Over Englishmen the Company relied upon
its chartered powers; but over Indians, and especially over Muslims,
in whom alone the local government took any great interest, its
authority was that of a minor zamindar under the local faujdar. The
position is shown with special clearness by the fact that the Company
could not, till the treaty of 1757, obtain the right of minting coin at
Calcutta, and by the jurisdiction of the law courts there. The Com-
pany's criminal court, established by the royal charters of 1727 and
1753, was limited to Europeans. Indians were tried in the zamindar's
court. In theory all sentences of death should have been submitted
to the faujdar of Hugli and the Nazim at Murshidabad before being
put into execution. " In practice this does not seem to have been
done; but the Calcutta Council was clearly very cautious of putting
Muhammadans to death. We must discount Bolts's story, that they
were flogged to death instead of being hanged, out of deference to
Muslim opinion; but one case at least is on record, where the
Muhammadan members of a party of criminals were spared for fear
of the nawab's interference.
This position at Madras and Calcutta was profoundly changed by
the course of events which may be dated from the War of the Austrian
Succession. Madras was the first to be affected. During the war it
.
passed into the hands of the French by right of conquest, in defiance
1 Love, op. cit. I, 345. “Chinapatam" is Madras.
? Committee of Secrecy, 1773, Sixth Report, pp. 2 and 11.
3 Bolts, Considerations, 1, 80.
4 Long, Selections, p. 51. .
## p. 591 (#619) ############################################
THE CARNATIC
591
of the prohibitions of the nawab; it remained in French hands during
the war, although Dupleix agreed to make a formal recognition of
the nawab's position by flying his flag over the place for a week. '
At the end of the war it was restored to the English by the Treaty
of Aix-la-Chapelle. From that time the English might have claimed
to hold it independently of any Indian prince. However, they were
on the best of terms with Muhammad 'Ali, whom they were seeking
to establish as against the French nominee; and so, in 1752, as a mark
of gratitude the quit-rent was abolished, and with it went the last
fragment of dependence upon an Indian prince at Madras. ?
That, however, only applied to Madras itself and a very narrow
strip of land round its walls. The rest of the country lay within the
undisputed control of the nawab under the nominal sovereignty of
Delhi. When, in 1780, the nawab applied to Hastings to secure a
settlement of outstanding questions, he was specially eager to secure
declarations from the English that he was hereditary prince of the
Carnatic, with full power over the administration of his country and
the right to nominate his successor, under the general protection of
the Company and the English nation. It is apparent that all thoughts
of the Moghul emperor have disappeared, although doubtless his
name was still recited in the Friday prayers at Arcot, and for that
matter at Madras. In fact the very application shows that the Com-
pany, and not the emperor, was now suzerain. In 1792 the old nawab
died and was succeeded by the son whom for so many years he had
striven to disinherit; but the succession took place with the approval
of the Company. Finally, ten years later, for reasons which have been
explained in a previous chapter, on the next demise of the nawabship,
the Company intervened decisively. Its representative refused to
recognise any succession except on terms which at a stroke reduced
the nawab to the same position to which the nawab of Bengal had only
fallen after a term of years. He became a pensioner. On this occasion
we hear no mention of Delhi or the emperor. Sovereign powers over
the Carnatic passed to the Company, not indeed by conquest, but
in virtue of a long-established political situation, in which the
Company was in fact, though not in name, the overlord. For three
generations the old title and dignity were allowed to survive; but in
1855, in the time of Dalhousie, they were deliberately extinguished,
as a "semblance of royalty without any of the power is a mockery
of authority which must be pernicious”. 5
The case of Bengal was much more complicated, partly because
of the inferior status from which the Company set out, partly because
4
1 P. 122 supra.
2 Madras Public Consultations, 31 August, 1752.
3 Requests of the Nawab Walajah of the governor-general, Madras Military
Consultations, 22 August, 1781, p. 2280.
4 P. 361 supra.
5 Lee-Warner, Dalhousie, II, 140.
## p. 592 (#620) ############################################
592
DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
1
1
it offered the first example of something like territorial acquisitions
on a large scale, and partly because of the conflicts and hesitations
of the crown and Company in England. The status of zamindar
persisted at Calcutta until the year 1756. But when at the close of
that year. Clive recovered the place, we may suppose that the logic
of events had already begun to modify the position. It was recovered
by force; and we may infer that when the English returned, they
returned no longer as humble dependents of the nawab. The change
is clearly indicated in the treaty which Clive made with Siraj-ud-
daula on 9 February following. In future the place might be fortified
as the English thought proper; the privilege of a mint was granted;
and the English nation and Company agreed to live on good terms
with the nawab so long as he observed the treaty. The theory of
Moghul sovereignty still stood, but a large breach had been made in
it. The breach was further enlarged when the English proceeded to
overthrow the ruling nawab and set up another. In the treaty with
Mir Ja'far, although the sovereignty over the country, in whosesoever
hands it lay, was not formally impaired, the English were nevertheless
established as an imperium in imperio with the right of doing them-
selves justice. The revolution of 1760 was designed to strengthen
the nawab and led, as we have seen, to a conflict between the person
invested with the sole rights of administration in the province, and
the corporation controlling the only efficient military force therein.
Again the nawab was overthrown and Mir Ja'far restored, not as had
formerly been the case, with the aid and concurrence of his friends
and supporters, but by the mere act of the Calcutta Council. In 1763
this de facto power assumed the right of nominating the nawab's
principal minister, and in the same year, under Clive's Treaty of
Allahabad, it was invested with the right of revenue administration.
The formal sovereignty still lay where it had; but alongside of the
emperor and nawab there had sprung up a body which not only
possessed the sole military force in Bengal, but also had conquered
the province in 1763, had assumed the power of nominating the
nawab's chief officer, and was now invested with the right of collect-
ing the revenues. It was an indefinite situation which could not
readily be brought within the scope of any western formulae.
The situation, perplexing as it was, was prolonged by the hesita-
tion of the English authorities to assume formal sovereignty over the
territories which in fact they controlled. Neither the crown nor the
Company was prepared, though for very different reasons, to lay
claim to territorial sovereignty in India. The Company feared that
any such claims would provoke or hasten interference
by the ministry;"
the crown was unwilling to assail the legal rights of the Company. 4
i Hill, Bengal in 1756-7, II, 215 sqq.
2 P. 171 supra.
3 Verelst, op. cit. p. 81.
4 E. g. Chatham to Shelburne, 24 May, 1773 (Chatham Correspondence, iv,
264).
## p. 593 (#621) ############################################
CROWN AND COMPANY
693
Indeed, the establishment of such a position was the precise motive
with which Clive seems in 1765 to have desired the diwanni of Bengal
rather than any territorial cession, which could have been obtained
just as readily. It placed the Company in a strong tactical position
alike as regards foreign powers and as regards the government at
home.
This had not always been Clive's aim. After Plassey he had sought
to induce Pitt to take over the government of the Company's pos-
sessions in despair of ever seeing that body establish good govern-
ment. But Pitt had then been reluctant to intervene in so complicated
a position. How complicated it was may be seen from an opinion
delivered by the law-officers on 24 December, 1757, on the Company's
memorial praying for the grant of all booty and conquests made in
India.
"In respect to such places”, they say, "as have been or shall be acquired by
treaty or grant from the Mogul or any of the Indian princes or governments,
your Majesty's letters patent are not necessary, the property of the soil vesting
in the Company by the Indian grants, subject only to your Majesty's rights of
sovereignty over the settlements as English settlements, and over the inhabi-
tants, as English subjects who carry with them your Majesty's laws wherever
they form colonies. . . . In respect to such places as have lately been acquired
or shall hereafter be acquired by conquest, the property as well as the dominion
vests in your Majesty by virtue of your known prerogative, and consequently
the Company can only derive a right to them by your Majesty's grant. . . . ”2
But although the Company could not acquire territory by conquest,
it could nevertheless "cede conquests made upon Indians", since by
its charters it had power to make war and peace with them. In 1765
the legal view undoubtedly was that British sovereignty was estab-
lished in Calcutta, in the 24-Parganas, and in the districts of Burdwan,
Midnapur and Chittagong ceded by Mir Kasim, but not in the
diwanni districts, a result which accorded well with the Company's
policy of that time. The question as to where and at what point
Indian inhabitants of places subject to English sovereignty became
English subjects does not seem to have been considered, as is clear
enough from the uncertain and ambiguous language of the Regulat-
ing Act. It was declared at Calcutta in 1773 that Sepoy officers were
“not. . . subjects of Britain, but aliens and natives of Hindustan”.
3
From the point of view of the ministry the question was clearly
two-fold : internal as regarded the Company, external as regarded
the French and other foreign nations. It will be most convenient
to sketch the development of policy under these two heads, and
finally to describe the relations between the Company's government
in India and the Moghul emperor—the de facto and the de jure
wielders of Indian dominion.
1 Malcolm, Life of Clive, , 119 sqq. ; Williams, Life of Chatham, 1, 28-9.
? Public Record Office, C. O. 77-19; cf. an undated and unsigned minute, ap.
Chatham MSS, I, 99.
8 Forrest, Selections from the State Papers of the Foreign Department, I, 89.
38
## p. 594 (#622) ############################################
594
DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
The first direct exercise of sovereign power in India by the crown
since the cession of Bombay to the Company resulted from an inter-
national document, the Treaty of Paris of 1763, in which both the
French and the English governments recognised Muhammad 'Ali as
nawab of the Carnatic and Salabat Jang as subahdar of the Deccan.
No one seems to have considered how far these stipulations were
consistent with the structure of the Moghul Empire. Indeed they
were at the time intended only to secure the peace between the two
European nations in India by preventing them from continuing to
support rival, princes in those regions. At a later time, however, the
clauses were put to a new use. The disputes between the crown and
the Company which came to a head in 1766-7 made the ministry
anxious to find some means by which it could learn how matters were
actually going in India. There was reason to distrust the execution
which the Company's servants had given to the treaty in the East;
and the upshot of the matter was that when the Company sent out
its supervisors to reform its Indian administration, the ministry sent
out in command of the squadron an officer vested with plenipotentiary
powers from the king to the princes of India. About the commission
of this officer there was much underhand work that ill became the
dignity of the ministry; the commission, for instance, was not com-
municated to the Company; and so when the commodore arrived in
India he found that the Company's governments knew nothing about
the powers that had been granted to him. The natural result was the
outbreak of violent disputes between the representative of the king's
majesty and the councils which exercised the powers of the Company.
These divided and undefined powers were bound to weaken and
impede, rather than to strengthen the conduct of affairs, and the
time had not yet come when the ministry was prepared to take a
decisive part in determining Indian policy. However, it is curious to
note that among the other duties of the plenipotentiary was included
a mission to the Moghul emperor, who had sent presents to George III
by the hands of Clive, and these, by some oversight, had never been
acknowledged. Commodore Lindsay was entrusted with a letter of
thanks from the king, whose titles were for the occasion strangely
inodified, obviously with a view to impressing the court of Delhi with
a due sense of the king's importance. "George III”, the letter is
headed, "King. . . Defender of the Christian faith. . . and Sovereign
of the Seas, etc. " 1 A generation later the same style was employed
in a letter addressed to the emperor of China.
The next step after this ill-concerted effort to interfere in the
Company's Indian administration was the Regulating Act of 1773.
That act takes for granted the existence of British sovereignty in
Calcutta and its immediate neighbourhood, but not apparently
"1
1 Weymouth to Lindsay, 14 September, 1769, and George III to the Moghul,
of the same date (Brit, Mus. Add. MSS, 18020; ff. 46 verso and 50 verso). .
## p. 595 (#623) ############################################
ACTS AND TREATIES
695
beyond. At best its language is hesitating and uncertain. A dis-
tinction appears between British subjects and the native-born in-
habitants. The India Act of 1784 leaves the question still untouched,
although it legislates for the full exercise of all sovereign powers in
territory that in 1773 was clearly not yet a part of the dominions of
the crown. The act of 1793 merely declared that all territorial
acquisitions and their revenues were to remain in the possession of
the East India Company for the next twenty years, thus leaving the
question of sovereignty still open. Not until 1813 do we find the claim
to sovereignty formally asserted. In the act renewing the Company's
privileges in that year the territorial acquisitions were continued
under its control "without prejudice to the undoubted sovereignty
of the crown of the United Kingdom, etc. in and over the same”.
But at what moment that sovereignty came into being still remained
a riddle.
Much the same attitude is displayed by the treaties concluded in
this period. At first the question of sovereignty is not raised except
in regard to the factories possessed by the European nations, and
which it was taken for granted formed part of their respective terri-
tories. Thus Article 11 of the Treaty of Paris declares,
Dans les Indes Orientales la Grande Bretagne restituera à la France. . . les
différents comptoirs que cette couronne possédait. . . Et sa majesté Très Chré-
tienne renonce à toute pretention aux acquisitions qu'elle avait faite sur la
côte de Coromandel et d'Orixa depuis le dit commencement de l'année 1749. . . .
Elle s'engage de plus à ne point ériger des fortifications et à ne point entretenir
des troupes dans aucune partie des états du soubah de Bengale. . . .
It is clearly implied that the English enjoyed a special position in
Bengal by the limitations which the French engaged to observe; but
neither then nor till long after was the least attempt made to define
the position by the use of any of the political terms employed in
Europe. The article in the Treaty of Versailles of 1783 even more
obviously evades the matter. After providing for the restoration of
the French factories in Bengal, it continues :
Et sa Majesté Britannique s'engage à prendre les mesures qui seront en
son pouvoir pour assurer aux sujets de la France dans cette partie de l'Inde,
comme sur la côte de Coromandel, et de Malabar, un commerce sûr, libre et
indépendant. . . .
In 1786-7, when troubles with the French in Bengal produced
renewed discussions in Europe, leading to the convention of 1787,
the most inconsistent language was used, showing that the English
still had not been able to make up their minds as to their position
in India. Thus the Committee of Secrecy writes to the Governor-
General in Council, 19 July, 1786, stating that the French could
hardly expect the benevolent intervention of the Company so long
as they assumed a position of independence and did not "acquiesce
in the general controuling power existing in the English Companv
## p. 596 (#624) ############################################
596
DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
as Dewan of the provinces". 1 But in Paris, on 6 February, 1787, Eden,
who was negotiating the convention, took up a very different position
in an explication confidentielle which he delivered to Montmorin.
His proposals, he said, were intended,
sans rien faire qui soit censé déroger à la souverainté possessoire et exclusive
dont l'Angleterre jouit dans l'Inde, de donner à la France toutes les facilités
praticables, dans la vue de former un traité de commerce. . . . C'est un fait
incontestable que l'Anglettere possède tous les droits substantiels de la souve-
rainté dans les provinces de Bengale, Bahar, et Orixa. . . . C'est en supposant
cette qualité effective de la souverainté que les deux cours ont formés l'article
11 de traité de Paris et l'article 13 de celui de Versailles. . . . ?
The French, however, did not accept this doctrine, which can hardly
be read into the treaties mentioned without vigorous interpolation.
The position is clearly summed up in an unpublished letter of Corn-
wallis to the Committee of Secrecy, dated 16 November, 1786. "From
this complicated system”, he says, "founded on grants conferred and
powers assumed, of sovereignty exercised though not avowed, many
difficulties arise in all negotiations with foreign nations. ” 3
The Treaty of Amiens only dealt with India under a general
article, but the Treaty of Paris of 1814, and the convention with the
Netherlands of the same year, both place the position of the English
Government in India beyond question internationally. Both refer
specifically to the British sovereignty in India, which was then for
the first time acknowledged by the French and the Dutch. In this
connection, and as displaying the contrast which this treaty displays
with previous diplomatic language, a sentence from Article 12 of the
Treaty of Paris may be quoted :
Sa Majesté Britannique s'engage à faire jouir les sujets de sa Majesté Très
Chrétienne relativement au commerce et à la sûreté de leurs personnes et pro-
priétés dans les limites de la souverainté britannique sur le continent des
Indes, des mêmes facilités, privilèges et protection, qui sont à présent ou seront
accordés aux nations les plus favorisées.
Thus the claim put forward by the legislation of 1813 was in the
following year formally announced to the diplomatic world of Europe
and recognised by the two powers principally interested in the East.
We must now turn to see how in India itself the position of the
East India Company gradually developed. The obvious point of
departure is the Treaty of Allahabad, by which Clive secured for the
Company a grant of the diwanni, agreeing in return to pay to the
emperor twenty-six lakhs of rupees a year besides giving him posses-
sion of Allahabad and the revenues of the neighbouring country.
The emperor at the time when he made the grant was a fugitive from
his capital, without money, without troops, dependent on the English
for his daily bread. His grant gave them nothing which they could
1 India. Office, French in India, vol XII.
Idem.
8. Idem.
## p. 597 (#625) ############################################
THE BENGAL TRIBUTE
597
1
> 3
not very well have taken for themselves had they been so minded,
and Clive's reason for his generosity, as has been pointed out above,
referred not to the position of affairs in India but to the Company's
relations with the crown and the French. The grant was, Hastings
said, “a presumptuous gift of what was not his to give", and
The sword which gave us the dominion of Bengal must be the instrument of
its preservation; and if. . . it shall ever cease to be ours, the next proprietor
will derive his right and possession from the same natural charter. 2
Holding these views Hastings was inevitably opposed to Clive's
settlement so far as it concerned the action of the governments in
India. Indeed, he had hardly taken over the government in Bengal
in 1772 before an opportunity arose for him to give effect to his ideas.
The emperor, Shah Alam, having quitted English protection at
Allahabad for Maratha protection at Delhi, Hastings decided to stop
payment of the Bengal tribute. “I think I may promise", he wrote,
“that no more payments will be made while he is in the hands of
the Mahrattas, nor, if I can prevent it, ever more. " 3 The refusal was
diplomatically placed to the account of the Bengal famine of 1769-70.
There followed an unceasing stream of letters from Delhi, in which
the emperor or one of his ministers called upon the English to
withdraw from their position, or at the least to lend the emperor
troops who might be paid out of the arrears. Hastings at last wrote,
“I must plainly declare that until the safety and welfare of these
provinces will admit of it, I cannot consent that a single rupee be
sent out of them which it is in my power to retain”. 4 The payment of
tribute was the one really crucial element in the relations between the
emperor and the rulers of the provinces. A governor might strike
coin and have Friday prayers read in the emperor's name; he
might pay handsomely to obtain the imperial confirmation of his
succession, and offer large sums for the continuance of his predecessor's
titles; but these things meant little except when they were accom-
panied by the regular remittance of the annual tribute, which alone
signified a real, living allegiance to the imperial power. Hastings's
refusal of tribute was in effect a declaration of the practical inde-
pendence of Bengal.
It was accompanied by another act which in its way was equally
significant. The districts of Kora and Allahabad were ceded to the
nawab of Oudh. Clive's arrangement by which they had been given
to the emperor might conceivably have been represented as obedience
to the monarch's commands. Not so the decision which dispossessed
the imperial revenue-officers and transferred the districts back to the
nawab of Oudh in return for fifty lakhs paid into the Company's
1 Minute, ap. Bengal Select Committee, 4 October, 1773.
2 Minute, loc. cit. 12 October, 1772.
3 Hastings to Purling, 22 March, 1772 (Monckton Jones, op. cit. p. 147).
+ Ilastings to Shah 'Alam, 13 September, 1773 (Forrest, op. cit. 1, 58).
## p. 598 (#626) ############################################
598
DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
treasury. As if in order to make the position clearer still, Hastings
declined the title which the emperor offered him. In another way,
too, Hastings aimed at introducing English sovereignty, though
circumstances did not allow him to carry it into execution.
He
advocated the replacement of alliances between Indian princes and
the Company by alliances between them and the crown. The first
occasion on which he placed these ideas on paper seems to have been
in a letter to North of 26 February, 1775; 2 but from a later letter to
Elliot of 12 January, 1777, it appears that the subject must have been
discussed between him and Shuja-ud-daula when he visited Benares
in 1773. He states that the nawab was desirous of alliance with
George III and even offered to coin money in the name of the English
monarch. Hastings was still in favour of this project in 1777, and
thought it might be applied not only to Oudh but also to Berar.
Had this policy been carried into effect, it would have led to a formal
assertion of English paramountcy in India. But the directors, had it
even been proposed to them, would have objected to it as lessening
their importance, while the ministry of the time had no clear-cut
conception of its own purposes. The plan thus came to nothing, and
survives only as a project, foiled, like so many of Hastings's plans, ov
the opposition or the inertia of others.
While Hastings was thus bent on repudiating the emperor's
authority over Bengal, he was equally active in reducing even the
ostensible part played by that phantom the nawab in its internal
management-implanting, as he said, the authority of the Company
and the sovereignty of Great Britain in the constitution.
“The truth is”, he wrote to the Secret Committee on 1 September, 1772,
"that the affairs of the Company stand at present on a footing which can neither
last as it is nor be maintained on the rigid principles of private justice. You
must establish your own power, or you must hold it dependent on a superior,
which I deem to be impossible. " 4
In these ideas he was encouraged by the Company's decision
"to stand forth as diwan”. One of the guiding principles which
inspired the reforms of the period 1772-4 was to make Calcutta
the visible capital of the province. Thither was moved the chief
revenue-office, and thither went the appeals from the courts which
he established. "In a word", he claimed in 1773, "the sovereign
authority of the Company is firmly rooted in every branch of the
state. " 5
But in this he had out-run the intentions of his masters, the
directors, and their masters, the parliament and crown. Lawyers like
Thurlow might with brutal directness declare that in India existed no
1 Hastings to Shah 'Alam, 1 August, 1773 (Calendar of Persian Correspond-
ence, IV, 77).
2 Gleig, op. cit. I, 508.
3 Idem, u, 136.
4 Idem, I, 254.
5 Idem, p. 332.
## p. 599 (#627) ############################################
HASTINGS AND THE COUNCIL
599
powers or rights but force, and that it was "a country with no public
moral or faith". 1 But no one in England was yet ready to accept the
idea of filling with British sovereignty the void created by the disso-
lution of the Moghul Power. The vagueness of the Regulating Act
corresponded in its own way with the vagueness of the directors'
orders. They might resolve directly to administer the Bengal revenues
on reports that their Indian deputy was playing them false; but
though they enjoyed the powers they were not prepared to assume
the position of the masters of Bengal. When they received complaints,
for instance, that the French were refusing to obey the orders issued
in the nawab's name, they replied :
We direct that you afford the Country Government all necessary assistance
in the execution of such equitable laws as are or may be framed for the pro-
tection of the natives. . . . If the French persist in their contempt of the Nabob,
it is our order that you decline as much as possible entering into a discussion
of such of their complaints as shall be cognizable by the Nazim of the province,
for so long as the English pay attention to His Excellency, it cannot be expected
that other Europeans should be allowed to disregard him. . . .
So when Clavering and his followers arrived in India, and found that
Hastings had adopted a different policy, and above all when they
found the Supreme Court taking the same line, calling the nawab
"a man of straw", and demanding that the majority should make
oath that he was a sovereign independent prince, conducting his
own affairs independently of their government and capable of making
war and peace with Calcutta, though they were unable to make the
required affidavits they were strongly inclined to adopt, support, and
enforce the Company's views, reviving the phantom which Clive had
summoned up. Not impossibly the latter had urged this course on
Francis in some of those meetings which took place at Walcot shortly
before the majority sailed from England and which were full of evil
cmen for the relations between the governor-general and his new
colleagues. Hence their endeavour to maintain the fiction of the dual
government and to hide the authority of the East India Company.
Accordingly they insisted on re-establishing Muhammad Riza Khan
as deputy nazim and supported their decision by taunting Hastings
with neglect of the Company's intentions.
"The Governor roundly insists”, we read, "on the futility of attempting to
maintain a country government. . . . An old servant of the Company might at
least have treated their deliberate and invariable opinion with greater respect.
With regard to us, if our ideas on this subject had not entirely concurred with
theirs, and if we had not been convinced that in their circumstances it was the
only rational system they could pursue, we should still have thought it our
duty. . . to have adopted their doctrines. "
1 Thurlow's Opinion on Clive's Jagir Case.
2 Company to Bengal, 3 March, 1775, paras. 59 sqq.
: Bengal Secret Consultations, 29 February, 1776.
## p. 600 (#628) ############################################
600
DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
Besides these thin and hollow declarations should be placed Hastings's
vigorous and (in this case) accurate language.
All the arts of policy cannot conceal the power by which these provinces
are ruled, nor can all the arts of sophistry avail to transfer the responsibility
of ihem to the Nabob, when it is as visible as the light of the sun that they
originate from our own government, that the Nabob is a mere pageant without
so much as the shadow of authority, and even his most consequential agents
receive their appointment from the recommendation of the Company and the
express nomination of their servants. 1
Absolute as the opposition appears, it is nevertheless deceptive.
The majority were ready to use any stick to beat Hastings with, even
if it was not one of their own growing; and although under the stress
of controversy they found themselves committed to the views set
down above, they had not always considered the dual system of
government that best adapted to the situation of Bengal. In a letter
written early in 1775 Francis had pointed out that under the system
which in the next year the majority advocated so heartily, the people
of Bengal had either two sovereigns or none, and that the only course
to follow was to declare the sovereignty of the king of Great Britain
over the whole of the provinces; and at this time his criticisms of
Hastings's conduct seem confined to the fact that in abolishing the
Moghul sovereignty he had not formally declared the British. ?
Francis had recorded similar sentiments in a minute of 8 March, 1775.
After this it is odd to find him, in a private, unpublished letter to
Lord North, declaring that the English should set about giving or
restoring an active constitution to the Moghul Empire. “The autho-
rity of the Emperor should be in a considerable degree restored and
means given him to support it. ” 3 The revival of the empire would
have been wholly inconsistent with English authority in Bengal.
It is worth noting that in this respect the policies of the English
and the French had been, and continued to be, diametrically opposed.
