No one who has considered the solemn obligations involved in treaties, or the importance to nations of maintaining their terms inviolate, will lightly talk of dissolving them, except by mutual consent. But the best authorities on international law distinguish widely between treaties which are purely personal and those that are national; between those that are for the mutual benefit of nations, and those where the benefit originally was, or where it has through changes of circumstances become, on one side; and no treaty surely ever was more personal, or had the benefit more on one side, than that of the British Government with the minister of Kotah. In announcing to the Raj Rana an intention to modify the terms of our alliance with him, or altogether to recede from it; we do not save ourselves from any immediate responsibility from any fear of involvement in war or other consequences; nor do we resign the state to foreign conquest or aggression: considerations which could alone render it dishonorable in either party to retire from the obligations of international relations. But the period when it may be necessary to make such a declaration may still be distant; and under good management, may never arrive.

In December, 1825, an engagement was entered into with the Raj Rana; the object of which was to protect our Benares and Patna opium monopoly. The agent reported that the minister made no difficulty, whatever, in complying with the wishes of the British Government, although he was very candid and free in his observations upon the consequences, which, he said, could not fail to result from a policy destructive to the commerce of Central India. Yet he considered it his duty to obey. It has since appeared, that there were very strong objections taken both on the part of the Kotah and Boondee states to entering on this engagement, the one professing its willingness to do so, after the other should have complied thus showing a combination to resist encroachment, which they had not formerly recourse to on more trying occasions. These objections were however overruled, and Kotah agreed to collect from its cultivators, and to deliver to our opium agent, at a fixed price, all the opium produced in its territory, and to prevent the exportation and importation of the drug. Persons guilty of clandestinely exporting or importing opium were to be held liable to punishment, agreeably to the opinion and advice of the political agent, and the opium to be liable to confiscation. The value of opium so confiscated to be divided in equal shares between the Kotah Government and the persons making the seizure. An allowance was also made to the Kotah Government for the loss it sustained in transit duty. Custom-house officers, or other servants, or subjects, of the Kotah state, intentionally or otherwise, allowing of the importation or exportation of opium, to be punished according to the advice of the political agent. One-third of the value of the opium was to be paid for at the time the poppy was sown, onethird at the time the juice was extracted, and one-third at the time of delivery. The Raj Rana declared these advances to be necessary,

that he might establish a claim on the people to the produce of their labour, at the prices fixed by the opium agent; which else would fall into the hands of merchants and bankers.

Kotah is the principal state in Rajpootana where opium is grown, and I have been thus particular in describing the nature of our engagements with that state, because it will show the nature of the system established throughout Rajpootana and Malwa. In those states, which were the principal thoroughfares towards the coast, such as Oudeepore, larger allowances were made for the loss of transit duties; and these were so much greater than had ever been derived from that source of revenue, whilst their profits on the confiscation of the drug were also considerable, that they favored and supported rather than otherwise our views. Scindiah, Jeypore, Kishengurh, and some other states considered these measures to be so injurious to their interests, and those of their subjects, that they resisted all our endeavours to draw them into our views, and gained great credit with the people generally, but with the mercantile community in particular, for so doing.

It is remarkable enough that in discussing and negotiating these measures, the Government of that day avoided the agency of the most distinguished of their servants who held the principal political authority, Sir David Ochterlony and Sir Charles Metcalfe, whose opinions were known to be adverse to the system; and went to work either through the medium of the opium agent, who had been established in Malwa and Rajpootana, or directly with the local agents at the several courts. Government must have known that their measures were both offensive and injurious to the chiefs and people of those regions, but they did not know the extent to which they were so. They did not know that they had raised up a cloud of spies, and opium-seizers, whose hand was in every man's house, and in every man's cart; that they were teaching the Governments of those countries to lend us their aid to forward views most opposed to the interests of their own subjects, whether agricultural or commercial, or the extent to which the odium of the whole system fell upon themselves.

It has often been a source of just complaint, that the Indian Governments do not receive from their officers that free and manly description of the evils which peculiar measures are calculated to produce, when it is known or suspected that such exposition would not be palatable; and in no case has this been more apparent than in the negotiation of our opium treaties in Malwa and Rajpootana, and in the adoption of measures necessary to support their stipulations, all of which were alike subversive to the power of the princes of those regions, and destructive to the best interests of their subjects. Government was not entirely ignorant of the injustice and evil tendency of those measures, but neither was it fully aware of the extent of the evil which they inflicted.

It was however soon discovered, that the system did not work well for us; that opium found its way to the foreign settlements of

Damaun and Diu, for exportation to the China market, in such quantities as injuriously to affect our monopoly prices there; and it was sought to negotiate new treaties with the several states, which should strike at the root of this evil by limiting production, for prices in Malwa and Rajpootana had continued so high as to serve as a premium. The Raj Rana of Kotah was the first who had courage to speak out, and Sir Charles Metcalfe being at the time on a tour through Rajpootana, he was not only listened to, but the voice of complaint was sure to reach Government in a shape that could not be resisted. Revenue to the extent of upwards of a million sterling was however considered to be involved in the discussion, and as that is a sum which no Government can readily afford to part with, this struggle against nature continued for some time longer. At last, opium-carriers armed to oppose opiumseizers, and a sort of civil war had in some places arisen, which was likely to become more extended. It was therefore found necessary to relinquish the system, and to endeavour to bolster up our internal agriculture and trade, by levying a protecting duty on the commerce of those states.

6. BOONDEE is the principal state from its antiquity in that portion of Rajpootana called Harowtee; Kotah being a branch state. The other three divisions of that great region are Doondar, of which Jeypore is the capital, and Ulwar, a branch state; Marwar, of which Joudpore is the capital, and Beekaneer, Kishengurh, and Sirohee are branch states; and Mewar, of which Oudeepore is the capital, and Banswarra, Purtabgurh, and Doongerpore are branch states. The Raja of Boondee had been of important assistance to Colonel Monson in his disastrous retreat before the army of Holkar, in 1804, and was believed in the subsequent operations of the Mahrattas in that quarter to have suffered the more on that account. We were not bound by any stipulations, like those with Jeypore, of the same period, to protect Boondee, which was left to its fate, without subjecting us, as in the other case, to the imputation of being guilty of a breach of faith.

The treaty with Boondee is of the 10th of February, 1818. The tribute amounting to 88,000 Rupees, which the state had formerly paid to Holkar, was remitted in return for former services; and some territorial possessions, which had passed from it, were recovered and gratuitously restored. The other articles of the treaty were conformable with those of other treaties of the same class.

Our friend Rao Raja Bishen Singh died on the 14th of July, 1821. He had conducted the affairs of his Government from the period of his alliance with us, in a manner perfectly satisfactory, and was succeeded in his possessions by the present Rao Raja Ram Singh, then a boy of eleven years of age.

On the Raja's death, a Council of Regency was established, consisting of four influential persons, servants of the late Rao Raja, named apparently by the political agent of the day, and approved

by the British Government; by whom however he was desired to avoid all direct interference in the internal affairs of Boondee.

Very soon after this arrragement was completed, the Mother of the young Raja informed the political agent, "that the system would not work; that four English Gentlemen might conduct state affairs in concert, but that four natives never could." An arrange. ment through which the banker of the political agent was substituted for the former banker of the state, was deemed particularly objectionable; and it was declared that most of the members of the Regency were leagued with the English; that as the political agent had assumed the entire executive authority in Mewar, and merely allowed the Rana sufficient for his daily expenses, so would he take upon himself the entire management of Boondee affairs, and allow them a daily stipend, by which means the reins of Government would fall from their hands.

The administration of affairs was therefore entrusted by the Queen Mother to an individual minister, Bora Sumboo Ram, and the agent's measure set aside, which was of easier accomplishment, as he resigned his office about the same time. Some measures of the Regent Mother, which character she now assumed, were considered objectionable; and she was informed by Government that unless œconomy, and the interests of the young Raja, were more attended to, it might become necessary to entrust the management of affairs to abler and better hands.

In January, 1823, the minister died, and the young Raja reported to the agent that he had made an election in his room. The political agent was much surprised at this exhibition of independent spirit. But after proceeding to Boondee, for the purpose of inquiring into the fitness of the person named, he found that there was no better man in the principality, and the arrangement was allowed to stand.

In April, 1823, the young Rao Raja, then in his twelfth year, espoused a daughter of Maha Raja Man Singh of Joudpore, who was in her twenty-fifth, a very unusual disparity in years amongst Rajpoots on the wrong side; but the alliance was considered highly advantageous to Boondee. The political agent had the support of a single minister very much at heart, and required the removal from the mother's councils of three persons of low station, who were supposed to be inimical to that officer, viz. an eunuch, a Budarun, and a barber, and the British Government authorized the agent to insist on their removal from the presence and councils of the Regent. They were accordingly removed; but others of similar character immediately took their place, and the perverse disposition of the Ranee was excited to constant opposition by a Mootsudee and a Furash of the palace. The Ranee continued to beg hard for the restoration of her former servants, and the agent to oppose their admission, even into the palace, in which he was supported by his Government. These are not singular instances of the exercise of the political power of our agents, and of our Govern

ment to secure the removal of menials. At Jeypore we insisted on the removal of Roopa Budarun, and in Chota Nagpore, we insisted on the removal of a certain Dhae, probably the Rajah's

wet nurse.

The affairs of the Boondee state continued however to prosper under the superintendance of the political agent, and the administration of an able minister, during the minority of the Rao Raja.

The Queen Mother was suspected during the whole period of the minority, of withholding from her son that description of education, and of denying him access to those friends and associates, which would have most tended to improve his mind and form his morals, in a manner conducive to his future fitness for the high station which it was his destiny to fill. She was even suspected of pandering to the vices of her son, and this, of course, for the purpose of prolonging the period of her own power.

The education of the young Raja was here, as at Jeypore and other places, considered by the chiefs of the state a national object. But it was on the part of the mothers, who claimed in each case to be the natural guardians, asserted that those chiefs only desired to exercise a controul over the state, in the name of the Raja, to serve their own interested purposes. At Boondee, as has already been stated, the young Raja was married to a sister of the Raja of Joudpore. She, as seems to be always the case in these Rajpoot states, was accompanied to the court of her lord, by certain attendants, who permanently took up their residence, to watch over her interests. In the case of a minority in particular, these persons may be supposed generally to exercise, or to desire to exercise, some influence in court affairs; and as few characters are more scorned in the eyes of natives, than even a brother (Sala) who follows, or attaches himself to the fortunes of a sister, these personages are not likely to be treated with much respect at the court where they reside. In the present instance, they resented the treatment of the young Princess by her still younger lord, and publicly declared that, but for the apprehension they entertained of exciting the displeasure of the British Government, they would revenge the wrongs and insults offered to their mistress. In 1827, they appealed to the political agent, to interfere, for the purpose of inducing the Queen Mother and the minister, (between whom, as usual, a criminal connexion was suspected,) to conduct the affairs of the Zenana in a manner more conformable with usage, and consonant to the dignity of the Prince and the character of the ladies of the palace. We shall see presently that this spirit produced more serious results. It is to be observed, that the females in these states are kept as rigidly secluded as under any Mahomedan Government, although they exercise far greater influence in state affairs. The line of eunuchs guarding the approach to the Zenana of Jeypore is greater than perhaps in any other court in India; and as might be expected, the state of morals under such guardianship is believed to be laxer than elsewhere.

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