SHORT-LIVED TRIUMPH OF THE NAWA'B. 347 affection of the Hindús, constituting nine-tenths of the population of the district. It failed to give him a sense of security. In a few short months, it was this blood which choked his utterances for pardon, and which, when the penalty he had incurred had been remitted by the unauthorised action of a subordinate official, condemned him to an existence more miserable than death. The Government could not recede from the plighted word of their officer, but though the Nawab was allowed to live, he lived only to see the utter annihilation of his own schemes, the complete restoration of the authority he had insulted and defied, to be made conscious every day of the contempt and disgust he had brought upon his person and his name. BOOK VIII. Chapter VI. 1857. July. BOOK IX. CHAPTER I. WHATEVER may be the justification offered for the annexation of Oudh, it cannot be questioned that, having regard to the manner in which that policy was carried out, it not only failed to conciliateit even tended to alienate from the British every class in India. Under any circumstances the absorption of an independent Mahomedan kingdom would have afforded to the already disaffected section of the Masalmáns throughout India, especially in the large cities, not only a pretext, but a substantial cause of discontent Effects of the and disloyalty. But the annexation of Oudh did far more than alienate a class already disaffected. It alienated the rulers of Native States, who saw in that act indulgence in a greed of power to be satiated neither by unswerving loyalty nor by timely advances of money on loan to the dominant power. It alienated the territorial aristocracy, who found themselves suddenly stripped, by the action of the newly introduced. annexation of Oudh, BOOK IX. Chapter I. 1857. every class British system, sometimes of one half of their estates, sometimes even of more. It alienated the Mahomedan aristocracy-the courtiers-men whose income depended upon the appointments and pensions they received from the favour of their prince. It alienated the military class ser- in alienating ving under the king, ruthlessly cast back upon from the their families with small pensions or gratuities. British. It contributed to alienate the British sepoys recruited in Oudh,-and who, so long as their country continued independent, possessed, by virtue of the privilege granted them of acting on the Court of Lakhnao by means of petitions presented by the British Resident, a sure mode of protecting their families from oppression.* It alienated alike the peasantry of the country and the petty artisans of the towns, who did not relish the change of a system, which, arbitrary and tyrannical though it might be, they thoroughly understood, for another system, the first elements of which were taxation of articles of primary necessity. In a word, the annexation of Oudh converted a country, the loyalty of whose inhabitants to the British had become proverbial, into a hotbed of discontent and of intrigue. On the 20th of March 1857, Sir Henry Lawrence had assumed the Chief Commissionership of Lakhnao. His clear and practical eye saw at a glance that the new system was not working When it is considered army the immense importance hat there was scarcely a of this privilege may be easant family in Oudh un- conceived. epresented in the British Sir Henry es Lawrence Chapter I. BOOK IX. satisfactorily; that his predecessor had thrust it en masse on the province, and that its effect had been-alienation. Of all the men who have ever 1857. His fitness for attained a prominent position in India, Sir Henry the office. He at once detects the discontent, Which he regards as justifiable, Lawrence was, perhaps, the most qualified to remove a discontent engendered by action on the part of the Government too fast, too hard, and too reckless. He had great sympathies with the people. He thoroughly understood them. He knew that their feelings, their instincts, were thoroughly conservative; that they distrusted change in the abstract; that if one thing more than another would rouse their long-suffering and docile nature, it would be change coming upon them suddenly, harshly, unaccompanied either by warning or argument. Sir Henry Lawrence noted, then, not only that there was discontent, but that there was reason for that discontent; and he at once made it his business to lessen, as far as he could, the oppressive action of the newly imposed regulations. The correspondence of Sir Henry Lawrence with the Governor-General and with his family shows clearly not only how the discontent of the people had impressed him, but how deeply he regretted the too hasty and too zealous action of the officials who had unwittingly fomented the ill-feeling. Suddenly to introduce a system which will have the immediate effect of depriving the territorial aristocracy of a country of one half of its estates is not a policy consistent with the diffusion of a spirit of loyalty, and yet within a month of his installation in Lakhnao Sir Henry BOOK JX. Chapter I. 1857. on the grounds Lawrence wrote to Lord Canning to inform him which he Amongst the population thus seething the The "caste dangerous spark of the caste question was sud- question." denly thrown. Who threw it? Was it, as some have asserted, the ill-judged order of a thought. less official? Was it, as others maintain, the Was it an original cause, angry retort of a low-caste lascar? Or was it, or a pretext, rather the eager grasp, the clever appropriation of discontent? of a clique thirsting for an opportunity? That is a question on which perfect agreement is perhaps impossible. This, at least, seems clear to me that the hold which this question took of the minds of the sepoys was due mainly to the fact that they were for the most part men of Oudh, and that annexation and its consequences had prepared the minds of the men of Oudh to accept any absurdity which might argue want of faith on the part of content indethe British. That the sepoys believed that the pendent of the greased cartridges were designed to deprive them tion; of their caste is, I think, not to be questioned. But they believed that calumny mainly because the action of the British Government, with respect to their own province, had so shattered their faith in the professions of the ruling power, that they were ready to credit anything against it. Reasons for believing that there was a caste ques |