he said, 'from the guilt of robbery — of taking property from those who had an unquestionable right to it in order to bestow it on those who had no real claim to it.' 'We have no right,' he wrote to Sir John Kaye, 'to rob a man because he spends his money badly or because he illtreats his peasantry. We may protect and help the latter without putting their rents into our own pockets.' 'Our remedy for gross mismanagement,' he also said, referring to ruling princes, 'is to take over the management, temporarily or even permanently.'
How his views have latterly been adopted, and with what success, can be best seen by naming the cases of Mysore and of the Rájputána Colleges.
Of jágírdárs, only one word more need be said beyond what has already appeared in these pages. He would have the borders of the Punjab, he wrote to Lord Hardinge, lined by a cordon of jágírdárs to meet and manage the Hill-men — a pertinent suggestion in view of the subsequent border difficulties. As to annexations, he held unquestionably that, within India, in cases of dire mismanagement the Supreme Government should annex a State in respect of its management but not in respect of the absorption of its revenues into the revenues of India. In the case of Oudh this seems to have been Lord Dalhousie's view also, though it was overruled in England.
In direct opposition to Lord Dalhousie's general policy of absorption of territory, he held strongly, in common with all the old school of Indian statesmen, and with such men as Sir George Clerk in more
