One result of the Mutiny of 1857 was to profoundly modify the attitude of the British Government to the Native Princes. The East India Company had regarded them as semi-foreign allies; of whom the more powerful were to be bound tightly by treaties { 9} and overawed by subsidiary troops; while the weaker should be absorbed into the British dominions whenever a just occasion arose. This system of annexation was 'the one clear and direct course' deliberately laid down by the East India Company's Government in 1841. When the Queen assumed the direct control of India, her first act was to reverse that policy. In solemn words she assured the loyal Princes and Chiefs of her desire to maintain their rule over their own States. The Feudatories became thenceforward an integral part of the British Empire of India, with a clearly defined position, intermediate between the Sovereign and the native nobility in our own provinces.
In order to secure the perpetuation of their power and dignity in their own families, Her Majesty gave up a cherished principle of the preceding Mughal Empire; namely, that in the Feudatory States which directly owed their existence to the Imperial throne, the succession to the government of the State depended on the Emperor's pleasure. This principle which the East India Company had enforced for its own aggrandisement in the absence of natural male heirs, the Queen in 1858 deliberately renounced for ever. The right of adoption and of succession to the government of the Feudatory States of all classes, was placed on the same firm basis as the right of adoption and of inheritance to private property. The Native Chiefs became as deeply interested as the landed proprietors in our own provinces in the stability of the Queen's rule. For henceforth they held alike their { 10} governments and their estates under charters granted by the British Power.
This important change in the status of the Feudatory Princes carried with it increased responsibilities both on their part and on the part of the Suzerain. It became the duty of the Suzerain, in subjecting fifty millions of Indians to permanent feudatory rule, to secure, by a closer supervision, that such rule should prove a blessing and not a curse to the people. It became the duty of the Chiefs to co-operate more cordially with the Suzerain Power to give that good government to their subjects, which was the fundamental postulate of the new order of things. The changed status of the Feudatory Princes gradually evolved its practical incidents, not always without friction, during the ten years after India passed to the Crown. Those years were years of consolidation. To Lord Mayo, as we shall see, fell the more beneficent work of conciliation: the task of infusing into the old sense of self-interest new sentiments of loyalty, and of awakening new conceptions of solidarity between the Feudatory Chiefs and the Suzerain Power.