After admiring in Moultan, on the one hand, the grandeur of the citadel which still shows signs of the terrible bombardment which it suffered at our hands after the murder by the Sikhs of Mr. Van Agnew in 1848, and, on the other hand, the modesty of the sensitive mimosa which grows plentifully about the city, I set off by railway for Sher Shah, the point at which the railway comes to its end upon the banks of the united Jhelum and Chenab, two of the rivers of the Punjaub. The railway company once built a station on the river-bank at Sher Shah, but the same summer, when the floods came down, station and railway alike disappeared into the Indus. Embanking the river is impossible, from the cost of the works which would be needed; and building wing-dams has been tried, with the remarkable effect of sending off the river at right angles to the dam to devastate the country opposite.
The railway has now no station at Sher Shah, but the Indus-steamer captains pick out a good place to lie alongside the bank, and the rails are so laid as to bring the trains alongside the ships. After seeing nothing but flat plains from the time of leaving Umritsur, I caught sight from Sher Shah of the great Sooleiman chain of the Afghan Mountains, rising in black masses through the fiery mist that fills the Indus valley.
I had so timed my arrival on board the river-boat that she sailed the next morning, and after a day‘s uneventful steaming, varied by much running aground, when we anchored in the evening we were in the native State of Bhawulpore.
While we were wandering about the river-shore in the evening, I and my two or three European fellow-travelers, we met a native, with whom one of our number got into conversation. The Englishman had heard that Bhawulpore was to be annexed, so he asked the native whether he was a British subject, to which the answer was to the effect that he did not know. “To whom do you pay your taxes?” “To the government.” “Which government? the English government or the Bhawulpore government?” His answer was that he did not care so long as he had to pay them to somebody, and that he certainly did not know.
Little as our Bhawulpore friend knew or cared about the color of his rulers, he was nevertheless, according to our Indian government theories, one of the people who ought to be most anxious for the advent of English rule. Such has been the insecurity of life in Bhawulpore, that, of the six last viziers, five have been murdered by order of the Khan, the last of all having been strangled in 1862; and no native State has been more notorious than Bhawulpore for the extravagance and gross licentiousness of the reigning princes. The rulers of Bhawulpore, although nominally controlled by us, have hitherto been absolute despots, and have frequently put to death their subjects out of mere whimsy. For years the country has been torn by ceaseless revolutions, to the ruin of the traders and the demoralization of the people; the taxes have been excessive, peculation universal, and the army has lived at free quarters. The Khans were for many years in such dread of attempts upon their lives, that every dish for their table was tasted by the cooks; the army was mutinous, all appointments bought and sold, and the Khans being Mohammedans, no one need pay a debt to a Hindoo.
Bhawulpore is no exceptional case; everywhere we hear of similar deeds being common in native States. One of the native rulers lately shot a man for killing a tiger that the rajah had wounded; another flogged a subject for defending his wife; abduction, adultery, and sale of wives are common among them. Land is seized from its holders without compensation being so much as offered to them; extortion, torture, and denial of justice are common, open venality prevails in all ranks, and no native will take the pledged word of his king, while the revenues, largely made up of forced loans, are wasted on all that is most vile.
In a vast number of cases, the reigning families have degenerated to such an extent, that the scepter has come into the hands of some mere driveler, whom, for the senselessness of his rule, it has at last been necessary to depose. Those who have made idiocy their study, know that in the majority of cases the infirmity is the last stage of the declension of a race worn out by hereditary perpetuation of luxury, vice, or disease the effect of vice. Every ruling family in the East, save such as slave marriages have reinvigorated, is one of these run-down and exhausted breeds. Not only unbounded tyranny and extortion, but incredible venality and corruption, prevail in the greater number of native States. The Rajah of Travancore, as it is said, lately requiring some small bungalow to be added to a palace, a builder contracted to build it for 10,000rs. After a time, he came to apply to be let off, and on the Rajah asking him the reason, he said: “Your highness, of the 10,000rs., your prime minister will get 5000rs., his secretary 1000rs., the baboos in his office another 2000rs., the ladies of the zenana 1000rs., and the commander of your forces 500rs.; now, the bungalow itself will cost 500rs., so where am I to make my profit?” Corruption, however, pervades in India all native institutions; it is not enough to show that native States are subject to it, unless we can prove that it is worse there than in our own dominions.
The question whether British or native rule be the least distasteful to the people of India is one upon which it is not easy to decide. It is not to be expected that our government should be popular with the Rajpoot chiefs, or with the great nobles of Oude, but it may fairly be contended that the mass of the people live in more comfort, and, in spite of the Orissa case, are less likely to starve, in English than in native territory. No nation has at any time ever governed an alien empire more wisely or justly than we the Punjaub. The men who cry out against our rule are the nobles and the schemers, who, under it, are left without a hope. Our leveling rule does not even, like other democracies, raise up a military chieftainship. Our native officers of the highest rank are paid and treated much as are European sergeants, though in native States they would of course be generals and princes.
Want of promotion for sepoys and educated native civilians, and the degrading treatment of the high-caste people by the English, were causes, among others, of the mutiny. The treatment of the natives cannot easily be reformed; if we punish or discourage such behavior in our officers, we cannot easily reach the European planters and the railway officials, while punishment itself would only make men treat the natives with violence instead of mere disdain, when out of sight of their superiors. There is, however, reason to believe that in many districts the people are not only well off under our government, but that they know it. During the native rule in Oude, the population was diminished by a continual outpour of fugitives. The British district of Mirzapore Chowhare, on the Oude frontiers, had a rural population of over 1000 to each square mile—a density entirely owing to the emigration of the natives from their villages in Oude. Again, British Burmah is draining of her people Upper Burmah, which remains under the old rulers; and throughout India the eye can distinguish British territories from the native States by the look of prosperity which is borne by all our villages.
The native merchants and townsfolk generally are our friends. It is unfortunately the fact, however, that the cultivators of the soil, who form three-fourths of the population of India, believe themselves worse off under us than in the native States. They say that they care not who rules so long as their holdings are secured to them at a fixed rent, whereas under our system the zemindars pay us a fixed rent, but in many districts exact what they please from the competing peasants—a practice which, under the native system, was prevented by custom. In all our future land-settlements, it is to be hoped that the agreement will be made, not with middlemen, but directly with the people.