ling in their shoes, and ready to receive the
boon on any terms which you might prescribe, the reversion of States
which had become vacant because you had, of your own authority and
mere motion, hanged their chiefs, and declared them to be escheated,
was a wise, a graceful, and under the circumstances a perfectly safe
policy. The same may be said of the measures taken to put the
talookdars of Oude on their legs, and which were preceded by the
confiscation of all their properties. I believe that this policy, like
the policy of Clemency, was sound and right in principle; but in
forming a just estimate of its success and of its applicability to all
seasons and emergencies, it is necessary to take into account the
specialities of the time to which I have referred.

[Sidenote: (3) Assertion of British sovereignty.]

What then was the scope and extent of application which Canning in
action was prepared to give to this policy? Here is the important
question, and it is not altogether an easy one to answer. For like
most wise administrators, Canning dealt with the concrete rather than
the abstract, and it would not be difficult to cull from his decisions
sentiments and sentences which seem to clash. When you meet with an
individual ruling which appears not to tally with what you have
assumed to be his general principles, you say it is 'unnatural.' This
is one way out of the difficulty. But is it the right way? My own
opinion is, that Canning never intended to let the chiefs get the bit
into their mouths, or to lose his hold over them. It is true that he
rode them with a loose rein, but the pace was so killing during the
whole of his time, that it took the kick out of them, and a light hand
and silken thread were all that was required. His policy of deference
to the authority of native chiefs was a means to an end, the end being
the establishment of the British Raj in India; and when the means and
the end came into conflict, or seemed likely to do so, the former went
to the wall. Even in the case of the chieftainship of Amjherra, he
looked, as the Yankees say, 'ugly,' when Scindiah, having got what he
wanted, showed a disposition to withhold the grants to loyal
individuals which he had volunteered to make from the revenues of the
chieftainship. It is true that the ostensible ground of Canning's
d