The History of the Indian Revolt and of the Expeditions to Persia, China and Japan 1856-7-8. Dodd George

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СКАЧАТЬ Oude – a king, however, with a greater king at his elbow in the person of the British resident at the court of Lucknow. The Company again became a borrower from Ghazee, during the Mahratta and Burmese wars. In 1827, the throne of Oude was ascended by Nussir-u-Deen Hyder – an aspirant to the throne who was favoured in his pretensions by the Company, and who was, as a consequence, in bitter animosity with most of his relations during the ten years of his reign. Complicated monetary arrangements were frequently made with the Company, the nature and purport of which are not always clearly traceable; but they generally had the effect of increasing the power of the Company in Oude. On the death of Nussir, in 1837, a violent struggle took place for the throne. He, like other eastern princes, had a large number of sons; but the Company would not acknowledge the legitimacy of any one of them; and the succession therefore fell upon Mahomed Ali Shah, uncle to the deceased sovereign. The begum or chief wife of Nussir fomented a rebellion to overturn this arrangement; and it cost Colonel (afterwards General) Low, resident at Lucknow, much trouble to preserve peace among the wrangling members of the royal family.

      Now approaches the arrangement which led to the change of rulers. Oude had been most miserably governed during many years. The king and his relations, his courtiers and his dependents, grasped for money as a substitute for the political power which they once possessed; and in the obtainment of this money they scrupled at no atrocities against the natives. The court, too, was steeped in debaucheries of the most licentious kind, outraging the decencies of life, and squandering wealth on the minions who ministered to its pleasures. The more thoughtful and large-hearted among the Company’s superior servants saw here what they had so often seen elsewhere: that when the Company virtually took possession of a native state, and pensioned off the chief and his family, a moral deterioration followed; he was not allowed to exercise real sovereignty; he became more intensely selfish, because he had nothing to be proud of, even if he wished to govern well; and he took refuge in the only oriental substitute – sensual enjoyment. When Mahomed Ali Shah died in 1842, and his son, Umjud Ali Shah, was sanctioned by the Company as king, a pledge was exacted and a threat foreshadowed: the pledge was, that such reforms should be made by the king as would contribute to the tranquillity and just government of the country; the threat was, that if he did not do this, the sovereignty would be put an end to, and the Company would take the government into its own hands. In 1847, Umjud Ali Shah was succeeded by his son, Wajid Ali Shah: a king who equalled or surpassed his predecessors in weakness and profligacy, and under whom the state of matters went from bad to worse. The Marquis of Dalhousie was governor-general when matters arrived at a crisis. There can be no question that the Company, whatever may be said about aggressive views, wished to see the millions of Oude well and happily governed; and it is equally unquestionable that this wish had not been gratified. The engagement with Umjud Ali Shah had assumed this form: ‘It is hereby provided that the King of Oude will take into his immediate and earnest consideration, in concert with the British resident, the best means of remedying the existing defects in the police, and in the judicial and revenue administration of his dominions; and that if his majesty should neglect to attend to the advice and counsel of the British government or its local representative, and if (which God forbid!) gross and systematic oppression, anarchy, and misrule, should hereafter at any time prevail within the Oude dominions, such as seriously to endanger the public tranquillity, the British government reserves to itself the right of appointing its own officers to the management of whatsoever portion of the Oude territory, either to a small or great extent, in which such misrule as that above alluded to may have occurred, for so long a period as it may deem necessary.’ The marquis, finding that thirteen years had presented no improvement in the internal government of Oude, resolved to adopt decisive measures. He drew up a treaty, whereby the administration of the territory of Oude was to be transferred to the British government: ample provision being made for the dignity, affluence, and honour of the king and his family. The king refused to sign the treaty, not admitting the allegations or suppositions on which it was based; whereupon the marquis, acting with the sanction of the Company and of the imperial government in London, announced all existing treaties to be null and void, and issued a proclamation declaring that the government of the territories of Oude was henceforth vested exclusively and for ever in the East India Company. The governor-general in his minute, it will be remembered, spoke of this transfer of power in the following brief terms: ‘The kingdom of Oude has been assumed in perpetual government by the Honourable East India Company; in pursuance of a policy which has so recently been under the consideration of the Honourable Court, that I deem it unnecessary to refer to it more particularly here.’

      Everything tends to shew that the king violently opposed this loss of his regal title and power. When the governor-general and the resident at Lucknow waited on him with the draft of the proposed treaty, towards the close of 1855, he not only refused to sign it, but announced his intention to proceed to England, with a view of obtaining justice from Queen Victoria against the Company. This the marquis would not prevent; but he intimated that the king must travel, and be treated by the Company’s servants, as a private individual, if he adopted this step. The stipend for the royal family was fixed by the Company – of course without the consent of the king and his relations – at £120,000 per annum. The reasons for putting an end to the title of King of Oude were thus stated, in a document addressed by the directors of the East India Company to the governor-general of India in council, many months after the transfer of power had been effected, and only a short time before the commencement of the Revolt: ‘Half a century ago, our new and critical position among the Mohammedans of Northwestern India compelled us to respect the titular dignity of the Kings of Delhi. But the experiences of that half-century have abundantly demonstrated the inconveniences of suffering an empty nominal sovereignty to descend from generation to generation; and the continuance of such a phantom of power must be productive of inconvenience to our government, and we believe of more mortification than gratification to the royal pensioners themselves. It fosters humiliating recollections; it engenders delusive hopes; it is the fruitful source of intrigues that end in disappointment and disgrace. The evil is not limited to the effect produced upon the members of the royal house: prone to intrigue themselves, they become also a centre for the intrigues of others. It is natural, also, that the younger members of such a family should feel a greater repugnance than they otherwise would to mix with the community and become industrious and useful subjects. Strongly impressed with these convictions, we therefore observe with satisfaction that no pledge or promise of any kind with regard to the recognition by our government of the kingly title after the death of the present titular sovereign, Wajid Ali Shah, has been made to him or to his heirs.’ The reasoning in this declaration is probably sound; but it does not apply, and was not intended to apply, to the original aggressive movements of the Company. Because the shadow of sovereignty is not worth retaining without the substance, it does not necessarily follow that the Company was right in taking the substance fifty-five years earlier: that proceeding must be attacked or defended on its own special ground, by any one who wishes to enter the arena of Indian politics.

      It appears from this document, that four of the British authorities at Calcutta – the Marquis of Dalhousie, General Anson, Mr Dorin, and Mr Grant – had concurred in opinion that, as the king refused to sign the treaty, he should, as a punishment, be denied many of the privileges promised by that treaty. They proposed that the annual stipend of twelve lacs of rupees (£120,000) should be ‘reserved for consideration’ after the demise of the king – that is, that it should not necessarily be a perpetual hereditary stipend. To this, however, Colonel Low, who had been British resident at Lucknow, very earnestly objected. He urged that the king’s sons were so young, that they could not, in any degree, be blamed for his conduct in not signing the proposed treaty; that they ought not to be made to lose their inheritance through the father’s fault; that the father, the king, would in any case be pretty severely punished for his obstinacy; and that it would not be worthy of a great paramount state, coming into possession of a rich territory, to refuse a liberal stipend to the descendants of the king. These representations were listened to, and a pension to the amount already named was granted to the king and his heirs – ‘not heirs according to Mohammedan usages, but only those persons who may be direct male descendants of the present king, born in lawful wedlock.’ A difficult duty was left to the Calcutta government, to decide how many existing persons had a claim to be supported out of the pension, seeing that an eastern king’s family СКАЧАТЬ