of
his own life or of that of the being dearest to him for an hour.' The
natives not unnaturally looked with gratitude to the man who alone had
the will and power to put an arrest on this course of proceeding, and
to prevent its extension all over the land. No doubt, as I have said,
Canning earned a substantial claim to the gratitude of the native
chiefs by adopting a more liberal and considerate policy towards them
than that pursued by his predecessor. It was perhaps not surprising
that he should have done so. Situated as we are in this country--a
small minority ruling a vast population that differs from us in blood,
civilisation, colour and religion, monopolising in our own territories
all positions of high dignity and emolument, and exercising even over
States ostensibly independent a paramount authority--it is manifest
that the question of how we ought to treat that class of natives who
consider that they have a natural right to be leaders of men and to
occupy the first places in India, must always be one of special
difficulty. If you attempt to crush all superiorities, you unite the
native populations in a homogeneous mass against you. If you foster
pride of rank and position, you encourage pretensions which you cannot
gratify, partly because you dare not abdicate your own functions as a
paramount power, and, partly, because you cannot control the arrogance
of your subjects of the dominant race. Scindiah and Holkar are
faithful to us just in proportion as they are weak, and conscious that
they require our aid to support them against their own subjects or
neighbours: and among the bitterest of our foes during the Mutiny were
natives who had been courted in England.... Canning saw the evils
which the crushing policy of his predecessor was entailing, and he
reversed it. It was a happily timed change of policy. The rebellion
broke out while it was yet recent; and no doubt, the hopes and
gratification inspired by it had their effect in inducing a certain
number of chiefs to pause and to require more conclusive proof that
the British Raj was to kick the beam, before they cast their weight
into the opposite scale of the balance.

After the rebellion was suppressed, the inducement to persevere in
this line of policy was still more stringent. To grant to native
Potentates who were tremb