LORD LYTTON'S LAST STROKE. pretty sharply, have provided them good
weapons, and in some cases have availed themselves of European officers. Holkar, Scindiah, the Regent of Hydrabad, the Maharajah of Mysore, and we believe, the Prince of Jeypore—important from his birth—have all done this ; and have found, of course, that their sovereignty within their own . territories has been greatly solidified. No baron dare now oppose Scindiah ; there is some sort of regular order on the vast plateau which obeys the Nizam, and which has been for a century as disorderly as England under John ; and Holkar gets in his dues as regularly as the British Government. The new instrument, in fact, is irresistible by any local levies, even though the men who fill them have been brigands or professional fighters for generations. Naturally, therefore, the Princes try to improve their military machines, and their anxiety to do so has recently been deepened by another cause. Our readers must take the statement on our authority, but we are assured that a dread of another rising in India, possibly vague, possibly very distinct, has reached all Native Courts, and has induced the Princes, who know from their experience of the great Mutiny that they are as much threatened as the English, to feel that they ought in prudence to be unusually strong. At all events, be this their motive, or any other, the Government of India has been surprised, not to say alarmed, by applications for arms of precision, Artillery, drillmasters and European officers, and has met the applications by a Circular to its Governors, which is, in fact, a thundering rebuke to all the Princes, great and small, loyal and disloyal alike. The Governors of the Presidencies are told that the Feudatory armies are too strong, that they must be limited to the number "sufficient for internal protection "—a number, of course, to be settled by the Resi- dents—that European officers must be supplied "with great caution," that arms of precision are not to be supplied at all, that the strength of such armies is to be carefully and minutely ascertained, and that armies and arsenals alike are to be periodically inspected by Government officials, whose reports, we need not say, will be as well known to the Princes as to the Foreign Office. With the exception, perhaps, of this last order, which savours of espionage, and which will be bitterly resented, none of these orders are illegal. The right to limit the feudatory forces exists in every treaty, and as regards individual Princes, has repeatedly been exercised ; but a public Circular of this kind will alarm the whole body, and utterly destroy the con- fidence which, since 1858, it has been the policy of successive Viceroys to endeavour to inspire in the minds of the great Feudatories. The Princes, wounded to the quick in their most sensitive pride, told before their whole people that the Suzerain distrusts them, and in many instances enfeebled in their own territories, will for years to come be sullenly suspicious of the in- tentions of the Government. Why, they will argue, if all are not distrusted, if all are not to be attacked in some new way, should all be warned, and crippled, and lowered in their dignity as Gene- rals? Why, if they are trusted, should they all be refused the best weapons and the best drill, weapons and drill which enable them to reduce both numbers and expense, and yet remain entirely masters within their own territories ? These Princes, it should be remembered, think of themselves as soldiers first of all.
Some of them, Scindiah in particular, are as proud of their own talents for disciplining soldiers as ever were Hohenzollems ; and all will feel humiliated till, if they were capable of combination, we do not doubt that their remonstrance would take a shape fatal to Lord Beaconsfield's action in Eastern Europe. They control collectively 350,000 men. Fortunately, from differences of race, creed, pedi- gree, and history, from jealousy of each other and of Mussul- man ascendancy, they cannot combine to purpose ; but they undoubtedly will be provoked into a mood which will make them most difficult to manage, and most reluctant to warn the Govern- ment of any coming danger. Their dependence will have been brought home to them on the one point on which they felt independent. And it is all so needless. The Indian Govern- ment, which has the whole Empire constantly before it, may be quite justified in thinking that the feudatory armies collectively are growing too strong, and in disliking so many camps full of men not under their own control ; but they could have applied pressure to the Princes one by one, have insisted on this reduction and that disbandment, have spared men certainly loyal and squeezed men whom there was reason to suspect, have avoided treating the Princes as a corpora- tion, and have refused requests for officers, artillery, indeed without giving reasons at all. Such requests are, on the well-understood system of India, requests for favours, not demands for rights. The Indian Government knows per- fectly well how to instruct each Resident to tell his Prince quietly that the Government having expeditions on hand, this is a bad time for him to be arming or increasing his army, or asking for military privileges. Above all, it was possible for the Indian Government to have held its tongue. That tele- gram to the Times is as official as if Lord Lytton had signed it, and a more intolerable piece of folly than despatching it to all the world, the Natives included, we never remember in Indian history. What conceivable gain can there be in telling all mankind that the Government of India, at a moment of pressure, entertains a certain distrust of its great Barons, and contemplates putting them all in straiter waistcoats ? Is that statesmanship ? Suppose Prince Bismarck, just as he burst once more into Bohemia, to sign a decree de- priving all German Princes of the right to keep bodyguards, what would all politicians say ? Surely one of two things, —either that the German Empire was so honeycombed with treason that desperate measures were indispensable, and being desperate, might as well be public ; or that the Chancellor had lost for a time alike his astuteness and his self-control. It is part of statesmanship to understand seasons, and this Circular, even if justified in its general policy, seems to us a miracle of inopportuneness.
Previous page
