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RULERS OF INDIA

VOL. I

THE MUTINY ERA AND AFTER

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DALHOUSIE CANNING. HENRY LAWRENCE CLYDE
AND STRATHNAIRN LORD LAWRENCE

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PRINCIPAL OF RAJKUMAR COLLEGE, RAIPUR, CENTRAL PROVINCES, INDIA

UNIV. OF
CALIFORNIA

OXFORD

AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

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INTRODUCTION

'I SPEAK in the name of the whole Empire when I say that we deeply appreciate the conspicuous services rendered by the survivors of the memorable Indian Mutiny of 1857 and their comrades who have now passed away, under most trying circumstances and with a gallantry and an endurance which were the means, under Providence, of saving the Indian Empire from a great peril.' Such was the gracious message of His Majesty, the King Emperor, read to the great assemblage that came together for the historic banquet held to commemorate the Jubilee Year of the Mutiny. The Viceroy of India, Lord Minto, sent a message of hearty good wishes to the historic gathering of the Indian Mutiny veterans whose services in the hour of peril can never be forgotten'. Similarly, the Commander-in-Chief of the Forces in India, Lord Kitchener, cabled,' Please convey the hearty greetings and good wishes of the Army in India to the Mutiny Veterans. Their past gallant deeds are not forgotten in this Country.'

An Indian critic has recently pronounced all such commemorations to be in bad taste. Herein he has shown his ignorance of their real significance to the Englishman. They by no means signify a vainglorious spirit on the part of those who organize or take part in them. Earl Roberts has revealed their real significance: what he has said with regard to the monuments and memorials of the illustrious dead, is equally applicable to such commemorations as these: 'It has been suggested that all outward signs of the Mutiny should be obliterated, that the monument on the Ridge should be levelled, and the picturesque Residency at Lucknow allowed to fall into decay. This view does not commend itself to me. These relics of that

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tremendous struggle are memorials of heroic services performed by Her Majesty's soldiers, Indian as well as British, and by the civilians who shared the duties and dangers of the Army. They are valuable as reminders that we must never again allow ourselves to be lulled into fancied security, and above all they stand as warnings that we should never do anything that can possibly be interpreted by the people of India into disregard for their various forms of religion.' A consideration of the messages read, and of the composition of the great assemblage present on the special occasion of this historic commemoration, will reveal its significance. It stands forth as a recognition of the work of the three great services of the Empire, the Civil Service, the Navy, and the Army.

The Civil Service has been well represented in the persons of the illustrious rulers whose careers have been briefly sketched in the following pages. Lord Dalhousie and Lord Mayo have each their proper place in any presentment of the era of the Indian Mutiny. It has sometimes been charged against Lord Dalhousie that in his policy of conquest and annexation was to be found one of the moving causes of the crisis that his successor was called upon to meet. It may well be considered what an opposite policy, one of laisser-faire, would have entailed in its consequences. Most writers who have studied the History of India to any advantage, are agreed that such a mutiny was bound to come sooner or later. As far back as 1843, at a time when some of the Bengal Sepoys were exhibiting signs of insubordination, approaching indeed actual mutiny, Sir Henry Lawrence, with that foresight which was one of his most marked characteristics, had written: 'Let Delhi fall into the hands of a hostile force, and does any sane man doubt that twenty-four hours would swell the hundreds of rebels into thousands, and in a week every ploughshare in the Delhi States would be turned into a sword? And when a sufficient force had been mustered, which could

not have been effected within a month, should we not then have a more difficult game to play than Clive at Plassey, or Wellington at Assaye? Should we not have to strike anew for our Indian Empire?' Delhi, as history has related, did fall, but fortunately only to be recaptured within a fairly reasonable time. But Lord Canning had found it necessary to write in almost similar terms of Lucknow and he urged upon his Commanders the pressing necessity of its recapture : 'Every eye,' he wrote, 'is upon Oudh, as it was upon Delhi. Oudh is not only the rallying-place of the Sepoys, the place to which they all look, and by the doings in which their own hopes and prospects rise or fall, but it represents a dynasty; there is a King of Oudh seeking his own.' There had been a King in Delhi: what if there had been a King, not merely seeking his own, but actually reigning in Lucknow? What if there had been, moreover, a Bhonsla still on the throne of Nagpur; a Queen ruling at Jhansi and a Sikh Maharaja at Lahore? And what if the Ruler of Afghanistan had not been made by the tactful treatment he received from Lord Dalhousiethat which his name in Persian signifies, a true friend ? Can any one, knowing the feudal spirit that is still so strong in India, doubt that in such a case the prophecy of Henry Lawrence would have become literally true, and every ploughshare in the regions ruled by these Potentates would have been turned into a sword, and not one province alone, but the whole of India might have been ' engulphed in a welter of blood and confusion, and have reeled back into chaos'? Peace, doubtless, would in the end have arrived, but it would have been a peace that only solitude brings with it. Lord Dalhousie's work of consolidation saved India from such a fate and so brought it about that, when the crisis that did occur was overpassed, a work of reconstruction only, and not one of laying anew the foundations of an Empire, lay before the Rulers of India. And to Lord Mayo's great gifts of administration and

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