THE 111-ZdIrS GIFT.
THE liberal gift of £600,000 juet made by the Nizam in aid of the expenditure QA frontier defence, and probably suggested to him by the British officer who is now his private secretary, and who is rapidly rising to a position indistinguish- able from that which Prince Albert once held in British polities. The suggestion, however, mast have been acceptable to the Nizam, who is in no way bound to take Colonel Marshall's advice, and it will, we hope, help to disabuse the English public of one prevalent superstition, for which, as we believe, there is absolutely no foundation,—the belief, namely, that the "Indian Princes" are likely to intrigue with Russia for the invasion of our dominions. Why on earth should they do anything so stupid? They have nothing to fear from Burnie, as the Sultan has, and the Shah has ; and what have they to hope I They do not love the British Government, it is true, for Asiatics rarely love Europeans, and Englishmen annoy Asiatics of position by a thousand failures in reaped ; but they like it quite as well as any possible successor, said a great deal better than any successor coming from abroad. The majority of them are exceedingly well off under the shadow of the Throne. They lose, it is true, under its sway the right of making war at discretion, which is galling to energetic Princes; but they receive in return advantages which they thoroughly appreciate,—viz., complete exemption from the danger of external attack, which was formerly- never absent ; and a guarantee, almost too perfect to be defensible, against insurrection from below, formerly so frequent that the normal condition of most Indian States WBS one of chronic civil war. More than half the Indian Princes represent usurpers. It may not be pleasant for an Indian Prince to be afraid of Lord Dufferin, who never thinks about him ; bat it is most com- fortable not to be afraid of the Great Mogul, who was always asking money ; or of his own army, which, till the British
arrived, had the throne in its hands ; or of his own Barons, most of whom, except in one or two Hindoo cases where the Sovereign's pedigree places him above rivalry, acknowledge no right to reign except the power of reigning. The Princes as a body are not plundered—witness Scindiah's amazing but not singular hoards—they are not humiliated, for with rare exceptions, like Oodeypore, Jeypore, and Travancore, Indian States are of yesterday ; and they are exceedingly little inter- fered with. The Resident, who is supposed here to be always checking, no more checks administration in Hyderabad than Bismarck does in Bavaria. The Nizam is as absolute within his own dominions as any European Monarch of the Middle Ages. The Prince must not, it is true, be a Caligula ; he must not tax his subjects to the skin—though he may go wonderfully near it, and in some States, notably Cashmere, he does—and he must not affront openly the general body of religions sentiment among his subjects, lest he should cause a popular explosion. For the rest, however, he may govern as arbi- trarily as Henry VIII, if he will only govern as successfully, may spend or hoard at his own discretion, and may raise up or put down those he favours or hates, as independently as Haroun Alraschid ever did. One Prince, still living, took a fancy to a girl imprisoned for child-murder or some such offence, made her his Queen by sovereign order, and left the reins of the State mainly in her hands ; and the British Government never interfered with a whim which turned out, as it happened, the salvation of a province and a people. What could a Russian Czar do that would attract Princes in such a situation ? Just as little as an Emperor of Delhi ; and it was because they dreaded the rise of an Emperor of Delhi, and their own obliteration, that the greater Indian feudatories during the Mutiny adhered to the British Government, in the face, in many instances, of pronounced popular disapproval. Indeed, the Czar would be worse than the Great Mogul, for he would be more powerful, more grasping, and more inclined to interfere with the religious freedom of his subjects. The Princes know the facts around them well enough, and know that the British Government, though " opinionated " on the question of successions, and sometimes illiberal about money, does not care one straw what religion its subjects profess, or if they profess none. Hindoos are by no means so sure in that respect of the head of the Orthodox Church, while Mussulmans are quite sure that between them and the Russians there flows a river of blood.
The Princes of India, if they ever rise against British ascendency—and they are not half so likely to rise as the peasantry, ruined by our prejudice in favour of paying your debts —will rise for themselves, and not for Russia ; and so long as they remain faithful, they and their armies are politically sources of safety to the British dominion. The Indian thrones break the rush of that awful peasant democracy of two hundred millions which, without them, would be the only force left in India except the white army. Their States offer careers to the Indians ambitious of military distinction, or sick of the limited and much supervised authority which we mock with the name of power. In their dominions, the competent can still rise without being examined as to their knowledge of equations, and a man can still command regiments because, though, like Ryder, he cannot write, he can put down his master's foes. They keep up in the vast peninsula the military virtues, which other- wise threaten to die out altogether, and they leave some hope to the born statesmen, who otherwise would see none except in overthrowing the British flag. Our shadow falls as it is with fearful weight upon men like Dinknr Rao. Above all, the Native States perform for us, by keeping armies, the ineatimable service of giving discontent a military direction. Our rebels in India descend into the field, where they can be crushed, and where, when crashed, they stay so, instead of keeping up for generations a smouldering war to which we must in the end succumb. What would we give if rebellious Ireland could put fifty thousand drilled soldiers in the field? If we are ever turned out of India, it will be when her inhabitants, having unlearned the trade of war, and being governed by agitators instead of Princes, provoked by some decree which we think philanthropic and they think impious, display their marvellous patience and contempt for personal suffering in some universal act of passive resistance. They have only to decline to pay taxes, and the British Empire in India, the most anomalous and the most wonderful political structure ever reared by the hand of man, will have disappeared, to be recollected only as an inexplisable though momentary phenomenon in Asiatic
history. The Princes help to postpone that outburst, which may not arrive for centuries, if only we will do our work ; and to quarrel with them for keeping armies is evidence only of short-sightedness. Their armies, while they are faithful, are useful auxiliaries ; and when they are unfaithful, are merely armed and disciplined invaders, whose career will end on the first day the British garrison faces them in strength. In no case will they join Russia, who, if she came at all, would come crashing down into the secluded peninsula, followed by soldiers of fortune from every tribe in Northern Asia, from the Caucasus to Vladivostock. The Princes of India do not want the Russians, any more than the people do; and if they are but wisely managed, they can give us real assistance in a defence which, until the Czar strikes Persia to the ground, will be rather a soldier's nightmare than a pressing necessity of Indian politics. The Indian peoples still take foreign policy from the Indian Princes, and while the latter dread a Russian victory, the rear of the frontier will remain safe and well supplied.
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