The feeling of the natives of India towards Canning was in some measure due to a similar cause. The clamour for blood and indiscriminate vengeance which raged around him, and the abuse poured upon him because he would not listen to it, imparted in their eyes to acts which carried justice to the verge of severity the grace of clemency.
[Sidenote: (2) Consideration for native chiefs.]
I could give you plenty of proofs of this…. The following sentences occur in a letter written from Delhi during our recent panic, by an officer…. 'The native force here is much too small to be a source of anxiety, and unless they take the initiative it is my opinion that there can be no important rising. The Mussulmans of Delhi are a contemptible race. Fanatics are very rare on this side of the Sutlej. The terrors of that period when every man who had two enemies was sure to swing are not forgotten. The people declare that the work of Nadir Shah was as nothing to it. His executions were completed in twelve hours. But for months after the last fall of Delhi, no one was sure of his own life or of that of the being dearest to him for an hour.' The natives not unnaturally looked with gratitude to the man who alone had the will and power to put an arrest on this course of proceeding, and to prevent its extension all over the land. No doubt, as I have said, Canning earned a substantial claim to the gratitude of the native chiefs by adopting a more liberal and considerate policy towards them than that pursued by his predecessor. It was perhaps not surprising that he should have done so. Situated as we are in this country—a small minority ruling a vast population that differs from us in blood, civilisation, colour and religion, monopolising in our own territories all positions of high dignity and emolument, and exercising even over States ostensibly independent a paramount authority—it is manifest that the question of how we ought to treat that class of natives who consider that they have a natural right to be leaders of men and to occupy the first places in India, must always be one of special difficulty. If you attempt to crush all superiorities, you unite the native populations in a homogeneous mass against you. If you foster pride of rank and position, you encourage pretensions which you cannot gratify, partly because you dare not abdicate your own functions as a paramount power, and, partly, because you cannot control the arrogance of your subjects of the dominant race. Scindiah and Holkar are faithful to us just in proportion as they are weak, and conscious that they require our aid to support them against their own subjects or neighbours: and among the bitterest of our foes during the Mutiny were natives who had been courted in England…. Canning saw the evils which the crushing policy of his predecessor was entailing, and he reversed it. It was a happily timed change of policy. The rebellion broke out while it was yet recent; and no doubt, the hopes and gratification inspired by it had their effect in inducing a certain number of chiefs to pause and to require more conclusive proof that the British Raj was to kick the beam, before they cast their weight into the opposite scale of the balance.
After the rebellion was suppressed, the inducement to persevere in this line of policy was still more stringent. To grant to native Potentates who were trembling in their shoes, and ready to receive the boon on any terms which you might prescribe, the reversion of States which had become vacant because you had, of your own authority and mere motion, hanged their chiefs, and declared them to be escheated, was a wise, a graceful, and under the circumstances a perfectly safe policy. The same may be said of the measures taken to put the talookdars of Oude on their legs, and which were preceded by the confiscation of all their properties. I believe that this policy, like the policy of Clemency, was sound and right in principle; but in forming a just estimate of its success and of its applicability to all seasons and emergencies, it is necessary to take into account the specialities of the time to which I have referred.
[Sidenote: (3) Assertion of British sovereignty.]
What then was the scope and extent of application which Canning in action was prepared to give to this policy? Here is the important question, and it is not altogether an easy one to answer. For like most wise administrators, Canning dealt with the concrete rather than the abstract, and it would not be difficult to cull from his decisions sentiments and sentences which seem to clash. When you meet with an individual ruling which appears not to tally with what you have assumed to be his general principles, you say it is 'unnatural.' This is one way out of the difficulty. But is it the right way? My own opinion is, that Canning never intended to let the chiefs get the bit into their mouths, or to lose his hold over them. It is true that he rode them with a loose rein, but the pace was so killing during the whole of his time, that it took the kick out of them, and a light hand and silken thread were all that was required. His policy of deference to the authority of native chiefs was a means to an end, the end being the establishment of the British Raj in India; and when the means and the end came into conflict, or seemed likely to do so, the former went to the wall. Even in the case of the chieftainship of Amjherra, he looked, as the Yankees say, 'ugly,' when Scindiah, having got what he wanted, showed a disposition to withhold the grants to loyal individuals which he had volunteered to make from the revenues of the chieftainship. It is true that the ostensible ground of Canning's dissatisfaction was the violation of a promise, but what title had he to claim this promise, or to exact its fulfilment, if the escheat belonged as of right to Scindiah? Again, when I came to this country, I found that he was walking pretty smartly into a parcel of people in Central India who were getting up a little rebellion on their own account, a tempest in a teapot, not against us, but against their own native rulers. In this instance he interfered, no doubt, as head policeman and conservator of the peace of all India. But observe, if we lay down the rule that we will scrupulously respect the right of the chiefs to do wrong, and resolutely suppress all attempts of their subjects to redress their wrongs by violence, which, in the absence of help from us, is the only redress open to them, we may find perhaps that it may carry us somewhat far—possibly to annexation—the very bugbear from which we are seeking to escape. Holkar, for instance, unless common fame traduces him, has rather an itching for what Mr. Laing calls 'hard rupees.' His subjects and dependents have decided, and not altogether unintelligible, objections to certain methods which he adopts for indulging this propensity. When they—those of them more especially who have Treaty claims to our protection, come to us to complain, and to ask our help—are we to say to them:—'We have too much respect for Holkar's independence to interfere. Bight or wrong you had better book up, for we are bound to keep the peace, and we shall certainly be down upon you if you kick up a row'? In the anomalous position which we occupy in India, it is surely necessary to propound with caution doctrines which, logically applied, land us in such dilemmas.
[Sidenote: Problems for a time of peace.]
At a future time, if I live, and remain here, it is possible that I may take the liberty of submitting to you some views of my own on these questions. It may perhaps turn out that a time of peace is better fitted than one of revolution for the discovery of the true theory according to which our relations with native States ought to be conducted; or, it may be, for the discovery that no theory can be framed sufficiently elastic to fit all those relations and the complications which arise out of them, and that, after all, we must in a great measure rely on the rule of common sense and of the thumb. When the circumstances of the time are such that it is deemed right and proper to abrogate all law, and to establish over the land a reign of terror and of the sword—to pour out, in deference to the paramount claims of the safety of the state, public money, whether obtained from present taxation or the mortgage of posterity, with profusion absolutely uncontrolled—to decree confiscation on a scale of unprecedented magnitude; it is obvious that a reputation for clemency, economy, and respect for the native rights of property, is obtainable under conditions that are not strictly normal. If you want to ascertain whether your system will stand in all weathers, you must test it when the rule of law and order have replaced that of arbitrary will—when men present themselves, not as the scared recipients of bounty, but as the assertors of admitted rights. We shall see how far, in such piping times, it may be possible for the Governor-General to enforce on the British local authorities the claims of public economy, without resorting to any interference which can be supposed to militate against the hypothesis that the said authorities understand a great deal better than he does what their wants are, and how they ought to be supplied; or to maintain the peace of India without questioning the indefeasible title of the native chiefs to do what they like with their own.
Meanwhile all I want as regards this matter is, to learn what Canning's policy really was, and to follow it out faithfully. It is neither fair to him nor to the cause, that we should misjudge its character by founding our estimate of it on a partial or incomplete induction.
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