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Government of India is betrayed into blunders, there is a tendency to stifle the voice of criticism. Lord Ripon, with the approval of the Home Government, repealed this Vernacular Press Act.

It was also the pleasing duty of the Marquis of Ripon to hand over the State of Mysore once more to its Indian ruler in 1881, after the State had been under British administration for half a century. The high credit of this just and generous act does not belong to Lord Ripon, or to the Liberal Government of the time, but to the Conservative Government of 1867, and to Sir Stafford Northcote, then Secretary of State for India.

Mysore had been conquered from Tipu Sultan in 1799. And after the British Government and their ally the Nizam had carved out large slices of the conquered territory for themselves, the remainder had been made over to the old Hindu royal family by the Marquis of Wellesley. The gallant and sympathetic Sir John Malcolm was the first British Resident; and after his departure in 1804, the Indian Minister, Purnea, managed the State with an ability and success which won the admiration of the Duke of Wellington.

But the officials of Madras continued to cast longing eyes on this State, and the belief was general among the people of the State that their opposition to their Raja would be viewed with complacency by the East India Company's Government.1 There was an insurrection in Mysore, and the management of the State was temporarily assumed by the Company's Government in 1832. Lord William Bentinck was influenced by exaggerated reports against the Raja in taking this action, and he afterwards felt that he had been misled. For after his return to England he repeatedly declared that the supersession of the Raja of Mysore was the only incident in his Indian administration which he looked back upon with sorrow.

1 See Report of the Special Committee on the Mysore Insurrection, dated December 12, 1833; paragraph 199.

2 See Major Evans Bell's Mysore Reversion (1865), p. 20.

The Raja repeatedly asked for restoration; and Lord Hardinge, after a careful examination of the question, expressed a doubt if British occupation could continue after British pecuniary claims were satisfied.1 The Court of Directors replied that the real hindrance to restoration was the hazard which would be incurred to the good government of the State.

Lord Dalhousie, who succeeded Lord Hardinge, was of a different disposition. He recorded a Minute stating that the deposed Raja was sixty-two years of age, and had no son; and he trusted that, on his death, "the territory of Mysore, which will then have lapsed to the British Government, will be resumed, and that the good work which has been so well begun will be completed." 3

"3

Fortunately the doctrine of lapse, and the spirit which inspired that doctrine, disappeared when the Queen assumed the direct government of India in 1858. Lord Canning acknowledged the fidelity and the attachment of the old Raja, and his endeavours to preserve peace in Mysore during the Indian Mutiny; and promised to convey his wishes to the Secretary of State.* The question was ripe for decision in 1867 when Sir Stafford Northcote was Secretary of State; and the Conservative Government decided to maintain the family of the Maharaja of Mysore on the throne of that province in the person of His Highness's adopted

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Eight years after, a Conservative Government was again in power, and Lord Salisbury was Secretary of State for India. And he made some remarks on the education of the heir to the Mysore throne, as proposed by Colonel Malleson, which deserves to be on record.

1

"Literary proficiency is not in this instance the

Despatch dated August 6, 1846.

8 Minute dated January 16, 1856.

2

Despatch dated July 14, 1847. 4 Letter dated June 28, 1860.

5 Despatch of the Secretary of State to the Indian Government, dated

April 16, 1867.

principal object to be attained. At an age when the education of other men is not complete, His Highness will be invested with powers upon the due exercise of which the happiness of large numbers will depend, and will be charged with duties which will leave to him little leisure for the pursuits of a student's life. It is of great importance that he should be well instructed in the knowledge which will help him to success in his high vocation. The principles of the government which will be administered by his authority and in his name, the special dangers and errors to which it is exposed, the blessings which if rightly directed it may confer, the warnings or the encouragement furnished by the history of other princes of his own race, are matters to which his mind should be specially turned during the remaining years of his minority."

"1

When the Liberal Party came into power in 1880, the time had arrived to restore the State. British management had reorganised the administration of Mysore, but had not been financially successful. The famine of 1877 was as severe in Mysore as in Madras; and, as in British India, a vast debt had been accumulated.

The revenues of the State were burdened with a debt of £800,000 to the Government of India, in addition to liabilities incurred for the construction of the Bangalore-Mysore Railway. And it was therefore decided that in restoring the State to the Raja, the old annual subsidy of £245,000 should be continued for five years, and the proposal to increase it to £350,000 should be kept in abeyance.2

The Instrument of Transfer contains twenty-four

1 Despatch to the Governor-General in Council, dated June 17, 1875. If the education of minor rulers and chiefs had always been shaped on these principles, and if they had always been kept in touch with their own people and with the administration of their own States, they would not have turned out failures so often.

2 Despatch from Lord Hartington, Secretary of State for India, to the Governor-General in Council, dated August 12, 1880.

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clauses; and the transfer, which took place on March 25, 1881, was notified by a Proclamation to the chiefs and the people of Mysore.

In British India, the measures adopted for the further protection of cultivators were among the most beneficent acts of Lord Ripon. The Bengal Rental Acts of 1859 and 1868 required to be strengthened, and the prolonged deliberations on this subject ended in a Bill which, with some modifications, was passed by Lord Ripon's successor in 1885. For the Ryotwari tracts in Madras and Bombay, Lord Ripon proposed the judicious rule that the State-demand in settled districts should not be enhanced except on the ground of an increase in prices. These land reforms will be fully narrated in a subsequent chapter.

A small amendment which Lord Ripon proposed to the criminal law of India, by giving Indian magistrates jurisdiction to try European offenders, evoked a violent opposition. And the proposal was ultimately carried in a modified form, with a provision permitting European offenders to claim a jury. But the measure for which Lord Ripon's administration is best known is his introduction of Local Self-Government in districts and in municipal towns. In a resolution of the Financial Department,' the Governor-General formulated the principle in the following words: "The Provincial Governments, while being now largely endowed from Imperial sources, may well in their turn hand over to Local SelfGovernment considerable revenues at present kept in their own hands."

Letters were accordingly addressed to the Provincial Governments indicating branches of expenditure which appeared most suited for local control. Provincial Governments accepted the new principle, and offered their suggestions; and the Governor-General in Council then dealt with the question in greater detail. A few 1 Resolution dated September 30, 1881.

extracts from this subsequent resolution1 will elucidate the objects of the new scheme.

"It is not primarily with a view to improvement in administration that this measure is put forward and supported. It is chiefly desirable as an instrument of political and popular education. His Excellency in Council has himself no doubt that, in the course of time, as local knowledge and local interest are brought to bear more freely upon local administration, improved efficiency will, in fact, follow."

"There is reason to fear that previous attempts at Local Self-Government have been too often over-ridden and practically crushed by direct, though well-meant, official interference. In the few cases where real responsibility has been thrown upon local bodies, and real power entrusted to them, the results have been very gratifying."

"The Governor-General in Council desires that the smallest administrative unit the Sub-division, the Taluka, or the Tahsil the Tahsil shall ordinarily form the maximum area to be placed under a Local Board."

"The Municipal Committees will, of course, remain the Local Boards for areas included within town limits."

"The Local Boards, both urban and rural, must everywhere have a large preponderance of non-official members."

"Members of Boards should be chosen by election whenever it may, in the opinion of the Local Governments, be practical to adopt that system of choice."

"The Government should revise and check the acts of the Local bodies, but not dictate them."

"It does not appear necessary for the exercise of these powers that the chief Executive Officers of towns, Sub-divisions, or Districts, should be chairmen or even members of the Local Boards. There is, indeed, much reason to believe that it would be more convenient that

1 Resolution dated May 18, 1882.

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