THE MAIN DEFECTS OF A NA'T'IVE STATE.
THERE are two evils in the constitution of every Indian State, as now organized, upon which we were unable to touch last week, but which must be described to make its poli- tical machinery intelligible. The first of these is the peculiar form taken by the ascendancy of the Paramount Power, the second, the total absence of any system of taxation properly so called. The first is the source of almost all the political evils in the State ; the second, the main cause of its social disorders. The character and limits of British ascendancy in India are entirely misunderstood, and frequently deliberately misrepresented in Europe, where it is habitually confounded with the feudal idea of suzerainty. The power itself, were it only complete, would probably be alike beneficial and popular. The British Government, as heir of the Great Mogul, does not interfere with the feudatories more than he did, is far less oppressive in its pecuniary demands, and preserves the masses of the people from all, or nearly all, the evils of foreign war. Its authority is always exercised through an Envoy, who is usually a sensible and experienced man, and who holds the position of a very influential member of the Cabinet without special office. His advice is usually sound, and his presence in the Native Court prevents those spasms of self-will, of an almost insane volition, to which all natives are liable, and compels the Prince, when he does anything important, to think it out first. Scindia, for example, could not move his capital twenty miles by decree, and ruin a hundred thousand people in doing it, as many a Prince has done, without a sharp argumentative battle with the Resident, in which he would be nearly sure of defeat. The only real mischief of the Re- sident's authority is the air of intrigue it gives to some transactions which the Prince is anxious to keep, and never succeeds in keeping, from his knowledge. The mischief is not the presence of the black-coated man, who is as often Good Angel to the Court as not, but in the fact that his presence guarantees the Prince against his subjects' opinion. As we have explained, it is not what the Prince does, but what he fails to do, which ruins a Native State. He is Grand Refer- endary, and if he goes to sleep, or is a fool, or a sot, affairs go as they would in France without Emperor, or Chamber, or Courts, or public opinion. Under such circumstances every- body who can get armed followers oppresses everybody who cannot get armed followers, `till the people, wearied out,— and outside Bengal they are not a patient people,—apply, or rather used to apply, one of two great constitutional remedies. They either killed the imbecile Sovereign, and put up some one of his House who could rule, or they applied to the Paramount Power at Delhi to do it for them. The British Government forbids both processes. It guarantees the ruler, and it will not remove him. The people of Onde, for example, would have deposed their late Sovereign—a very bad specimen, even for Lidia—and sent him either to Mecca or to Heaven in a week, but for the impervious shield of the British guarantee. The whole Empire cannot fight the Viceroy, and of course each State, however unanimous, knows that it is helpless. The people of Oude did make one effort, but Lord Dalhousie, though aware of their grievances, could not stand revolution, and a wave of his hand concentrated a corps (ramie of 16,000 men at Cawnpore and terminated the movement. At the same time the Paramount Power claims no right of removal, indeed has barred all suggestions of removal, by establishing the absurd rule that the eldest son shall always succeed, a rule which, as native Princes die young, would, if removals were frequent, keep the State under a perpetual Regency. If we confined the succession to the House, and not to the eldest child, we could almost always secure a competent Prince, and supersession would in all gross cases be considered by the population merely an act of sovereign justice. In Oude, for instance, the people did not want either their " King " or us, but a new native ruler, preferentially one of the "old Vizier's stock, and had we appointed one would neither have mur- mured nor resisted. This power, which is the indispensable moral correlative of onr guarantee, as otherwise our bayonets may be supporting a fiend, we do not claim, and no power of interference in detail can remedy the evil. The Resident can order the Prince not to do so and so, but cannot compel him to do anything ; can prevent his harrying such an estate, but cannot pull him by the ears on to the judgment- seat to hear the complaint of the landlord who has been harried. The slothful Prince, therefore, is the most secure, and in India the reign of a slothful Prince means anarchy, with all its attendant miseries. This is the master evil of the Native State, and it cannot be remedied except by the Paramount Power exercising the right of supersession, not in its own favour, but that of its subjects. If there is no able agnate, take a child, and nominate a good Regent; if no child at all, let a committee of notables, called together ad hoc, elect a new dynasty. But of all political wickednesses, that of guaranteeing an Oriental Bourbon against his subjects without claiming the right of superseding him for some decent Bourbon is the worst, and we are always committing it. We are doing it in Cashmere at this moment, till life in Cash- mere is rather worse than the popular notion of life under an Inquisition. Everybody, from the Viceroy to the Cashmere peasant, admits the duty of interference, but the Government recognizes only two alternatives,—abstention and annexation, annexation has been abandoned, and so Cashmere is ruined.
Then native finance works badly. Strictly speaking a Native State is under no taxation at all. There is a monopoly here and there of salt or tobacco or pepper vines, and a Prince every now and then tries to establish transit duties till the rage of the merchants moves the Resident to interfere, but the expenses of Government are usually paid from the rental alone. It has a right by immemorial custom to a share in the crop, varying from one-tenth to one-fourth, but usually two-tenths,—the Hindoo tithe, with theMussulman tithe super- added. All services are paid for in grants of the right to take this Government share, the only form of landlordism exist- ing in a Native State. One man gets a county in hereditary right on condition of supplying two regiments, a second a county for life because he has been a good Minister, a third half a county because he is a personal favourite, a fourth a few villages because he is of old blood, impoverished bat popular. All these grants are resumable, except those for military service, and are, in fact, the substitute for the " pen- sions " of the old French regime. Then a proportion of the country, often as much as a clear third, is gradually devoted to temples, and to institutions half religious, half philanthropic, caravanserais, tanks, asylums, and " universities," and these estates cannot by an etiquette stronger than law be resumed for any cause save overt rebellion. There remain the ungranted lands, usually, says the Native Envoy who writes in the Calcutta Review, about one-third of the State, and they, and they only, have to furnish all the specie the Central Administration requires. The demand crushes the cultivators on those lands as it crushed the peasantry of France, when, under a system absolutely iden- tical in principle, the nobility owned a third of the soil, and were exempt because they fought ; and the clergy another third, and were exempt because they prayed. The condition of such peasants is often pitiable, and when not so bad, is always fatal to that habit of accumulation which allows a middle class to develop itself and grow strong. To make matters worse, the collection of the taxes over this third is sold to Nazims (fermiers-gneraux), who are removable, who buy their offices, who must make a profit, and who are in- vested, for the purposes of collection, with the whole authority of the State. The old nobles are kindly enough, and the religious grantees are often exceedingly lenient, but invading armies could hardly be worse than these Farmers-General and their troops. They have no means of levying except military force, and no motive to spare, and they sometimes, if the Grand Referen- dary is an imbecile, blacken the country with burnt villages, fired orchards,- and ruined villas. The country is to all appearance ruined, yet so excellent in one respect is the Native system of finance, that if a district thus treated only falls to a decent noble, or is exempted from the Farmers-General by decree, it revives at once. The " land " exists, and the peasant has no taxes to pay. He may cultivate exactly as he likes, her has no landlord to fear, he can mortgage his plot for stock and' ploughs, and when his crop comes he has only to surrender every fifth sheaf. That once done, tax-gatherer, landlord, poor-rate collector, all the myriad vampires of Europe, have for him no existence. He pays in kind, if he likes, there is no possibility, as in Bengal, of ouster or increased rent, no dread, as in the North-West, of the ubiquitous, worrying. insatiable " deputy Tehsildar." The peasant on religious land, or the estate of a good jaghiredar, or a Crown estate under a manager instead of a farmer-general, is as well off as a Westmoreland "statesman," and in very much the same position. It is not a position which allows of progress in India, any more than in Westmoreland, but it is comfortable enough and independent enough, and enables the peasant to have pride in his pedigree, and his caste, and his liberality in dowers, and gifts to temples, and so on. Every peasant, however badly off, thinks. this will be his ultimate position, and knows that whatever happens he can never lose his land. His house may be burned, or his land harried, or he himself dragged through a. pond, or in very extreme cases tortured, but the land cannot be taken away, he cannot be reduced from his rank as a free, cultivator into a day labourer—the last of social degradations. Consequently, he goes on hoping and enduring, and looks on. the British system, under which his house is safe, and his body secure, but his land may be seized for debt or rent, as. oppressive in the highest degree. Given a reasonable system of collection and no exemptions, and the Native financial system would be excellent, would be the only one in which a regular Administration was supported without indirect taxes.
Previous page
