Another, and perhaps more conspicuous, example was the Mayo College at Ajmere, to which the Native Chiefs themselves subscribed 70,000 pounds sterling. This institution Lord Mayo intended to be a purely aristocratic College for Rájputána, where the sons of the Rájput Princes and noblemen would be brought into direct contact with European professors and European ideas, and under the healthy influences of physical and moral training. The Council of the College consists of all the principal Chiefs of Rájputána and the British Political Agents accredited to their States, with the Viceroy as President, and the Agent to the General-Governor in Rájputána as Vice-President.
I believe, if Lord Mayo were now alive, it would be his educational policy for the Native Princes of India, rather than his immediate dealings with them, however successful, that he would regard as the most beneficent memorial of his feudatory rule.
When Lord Mayo entered on his Viceroyalty, three Asiatic States were in disorder beyond the North-Western Frontier, and two great Powers were stealthily but steadily advancing towards India through those disordered States. On the Punjab Frontier, Afghánistán had just emerged from six years of anarchy; and Russia was casting hungry eyes on Afghánistán as a line of approach to India. On the Sind Frontier, Balúchistán was the scene of a chronic struggle between the ruling power and the tribal Chiefs; while Persia was taking advantage of that struggle to encroach upon the Western Provinces of Balúchistán. In the far north, beyond Kashmír, the new Muhammadan State of Eastern Turkestán had erected itself on a ruined fragment of the Chinese Empire, and was looking eagerly out for recognition on the one side to Russia, and on the other side to the British Government of India.
Lord Mayo's foreign policy was therefore of necessity a Central Asian policy. Its immediate object was { 120} to create out of the disordered territories of Afghánistán and Balúchistán two friendly powers, who should have not only the desire to be our friends, but also the strength which might make their friendship worth having. Its ulterior design was, by thus erecting a breakwater of faithful States around the North-Western Frontier of India, to counterbalance the ominous preponderance which Russia had lately acquired in Central Asia. Its result has been, as I mentioned in my opening chapter, to supply the necessary complement to the change inaugurated by Dalhousie; and to remove the relations of Russia and England in the East from the arena of Asiatic intrigue to the jurisdiction of European diplomacy.