But this was only one of Bentinck's reforms. Armed with peremptory instructions from the home government, he effected large retrenchments in the growing expenditure of the Indian services, both civil and military, and a considerable increase in the Indian revenue. It may be doubted whether one of these retrenchments, involving a strict revision of officers' allowances known as "batta," was considerable enough to be worth the almost mutinous discontent which it provoked. Another, affecting the salaries of civilians, was aggravated, in their eyes, by the admission of natives to "primary jurisdiction," in other words, by enabling native judges to sit in courts of first instance. This important change had been gradually introduced before the arrival of Bentinck, but it was he who most boldly adopted the idea of governing India in the interest and by the agency of the natives. On the other hand, it was he who, supported by Macaulay's famous minute, but contrary to official opinion in Leadenhall Street, issued the ordinance constituting English the official language of India. In a like spirit, he promoted the work of native education, partly for the purpose of developing the political and judicial capacity of the higher orders among the Hindus, but partly also for the purpose of making the English language and literature the instrument of their elevation. He earnestly desired to raise the standard of Indian civilisation, but he equally desired to fashion it in an English mould.
THE EXTIRPATION OF "THAGÍ".
Under the rule of Bentinck, the revenue was largely augmented by a reassessment of land in the north-western provinces, where an increasing number of zamíndárs had fraudulently evaded the payment of rent, and by the imposition of licence-duties on the growers of opium in Málwá, who had carried on a profitable but illicit trade through foreign ports. But the social benefit of the people was ever his first concern, and not the least of his claims to their gratitude was the final extirpation of "thagí". This institution was a secret association of highway robbers and murderers who had plagued Central India almost as widely as the roving troops of Pindárís. Their victims were travellers whom they decoyed into their haunts, plundered, strangled, and buried on the spot. For years they carried on their infamous trade with impunity, and no member of the conspiracy had turned informer. At last, however, a clue was found by a skilful and resolute agent of the government, and the spell of mutual dread which held together the murderous confederacy was effectually broken in India. Meanwhile, the same period of peaceful development witnessed the execution of important public works, the relaxation of restrictions on the liberty of the press, and a general advance towards a more paternal despotism, coincident with the progress of liberal ideas at home. These benign influences were favoured by the continuance of peace and the maintenance of non-intervention, disturbed only by the minor annexations of Cachar and Coorg, to which may be added the assumption of direct control over Mysore.
When the charter of 1833 transformed the "company of British merchants trading to the east" into the "East India Company," with administrative powers only, Bentinck was in failing health, and he soon afterwards returned home. On his resignation in 1835, Metcalfe became provisional governor-general, but his liberal policy displeased the court of directors, and Lord Heytesbury was selected by the short-lived government of Peel as Bentinck's successor. Palmerston, however, on resuming the foreign office, was believed to have used his influence to set aside this nomination, and to procure the appointment of Lord Auckland, then first lord of the admiralty. The supposed objection to Heytesbury was his known sympathy with Russia, at a moment when distrust of Russia's designs on the north-west frontier was about to become the keynote of Anglo-Indian statesmanship. During the interregnum between Bentinck's retirement and Auckland's accession, three more remedial measures were carried into effect, the wisdom of which is not even yet beyond dispute. These were the complete liberation of the Indian press, the abolition of the exclusive privilege whereby British residents could appeal in civil suits to the supreme court at Calcutta, and the definite introduction of English text-books into schools for the people. For all these reforms Macaulay was largely responsible, but the impulse had been given by Bentinck, and was accelerated by Metcalfe.
During the years 1835-37 domestic affairs occupied much less space in the counsels of Indian statesmen than schemes for counteracting the growth of Russian influence at Tihran, and securing the predominance of British influence in Afghánistán. For a time their anxiety was concentrated on Herat, which the Sháh of Persia was besieging, with the intention of penetrating into the heart of Afghán territory, while the Afghán rulers themselves were suspected of secretly conspiring with Persia against our ally, Ranjít Singh. Since Persia, having again lost faith in British support, was drifting more and more into reliance on Russia, this forward movement was regarded as the first step of the Russian advance-guard towards India. The fate of India was felt to depend on the defence of Herat under Pottinger, a young British officer, who volunteered his services without instructions from home. The siege, conducted under Russian officers, lasted ten months, and its ultimate failure was hailed as a triumph of British policy, for Herat was recognised, since the days of Alexander the Great, as the western gate of India.
COMMUNICATION WITH INDIA.
About the same time the question of a shorter route to India attracted much attention both in Russia and in England. The first project was that, ultimately adopted, of a sea passage by Malta to Alexandria, a land transit across Egypt to Suez, and a second voyage by the Red Sea to Indian ports. The alternative line was more properly described as an "overland route," since it was proposed to make the journey from some port in the eastern Levant across Syria and by the Euphrates to the Persian Gulf. Colonel Chesney was sent out in 1835 as the pioneer of an expedition by this route, and parliament twice voted money for its development, but it was vigorously opposed by Russia, and abandoned as impracticable owing to physical difficulties in navigating the Euphrates, then considered as a necessary channel of communication with the sea. The scheme has since been revived on a much grander scale in the form of a projected railway traversing Asia Minor to Baghdad, and running down the valley of the Tigris. In the meantime, the Red Sea route, at first discredited, has far more than justified the hopes of its promoters. With the aid of steam-vessels, since 1845, and of the Suez Canal, since 1869, it has reduced the journey to India from a period of four months to one of three weeks, and profoundly affected its relations with Great Britain.
It would be well if the premature, but not unfounded, fear of Russian invasion had produced no further effects on Anglo-Indian policy. Unhappily, those who justly perceived the importance of Afghánistán, as lying between Persia and the Punjab, were possessed with the delusion that it would prove a more solid buffer as a British dependency than as an independent state. In their ignorance of its internal condition and the sentiments of its unruly tribes, the Indian government despatched Sir Alexander Burnes to Kábul, nominally as a commercial emissary, but not without ulterior objects. They could not have chosen a more capable agent, for he added to a knowledge of several languages a minute geographical acquaintance with Central Asia and an insight into the character of its inhabitants which probably no other Englishman possessed. He was to proceed by way of Sind to Pesháwar, and in passing through Sind he received news of the siege of Herat, the significance of which he was not slow to appreciate. Thenceforward his mission inevitably assumed a political complexion, since the future of Afghánistán became a practical question. His rash negotiations with Dost Muhammad, the Amír of Kábul, and his brother at Kandahár, his return to India, his second mission to Afghánistán in support of a policy which he had deprecated, and his tragical death in the Kábul insurrection,—these are events which belong to a later chapter of history. But, though Burnes cannot be held responsible for the first Afghán war, there can be no doubt that his travels in disguise through Central Asia, and confidential reports on the border countries between the Russian and British spheres of influence, were the immediate prelude to a campaign the most ill-advised and the most disastrous ever organised by the Indian government and sanctioned by that of Great Britain.
FOOTNOTES:
[138] Despatch of July 13, 1804, Selection from Wellesley's Despatches, ed. Owen, pp. 436-41. See Sir A. Lyall, British Dominion in India, p. 260.