DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.49383#0018
10
CHAPTER II.
good faith and political sagacity in its treatment of the feudatorv allies.
The statesmen who built up the fabric of British Dominion in India
have consistently followed a generous and magnanimous policy towards
the Native States—a policy which has preserved the integrity of
about 680 principalities. The Roman Empire, which offers man}'
parallels to the general course of British Rule in India, failed in its
attempts to maintain the treaty rights of its allies. But this cannot
be said of the British Raj. It is only in rare cases of misrule and
oppression on the part of the Indian Princes that the British have
resorted to a policy of intervention or annexation, as it is incompatible
with the existence of a sovereign paramount power to suffer misrule
and oppression outside the territories under its direct jurisdiction.
The map of British India, studded as it is with principalities in
subordinate alliance with the Empire, bears eloquent testimony to the
magnanimity, good faith, and noble policy of the British people. The
British Empire is a living emblem of Imperial unity. The policy of
trust and good faith followed by the British towards the Indian Princes
accounts for the marvellous success of the experiment of Imperial
solidarity and fellowship. The Great Akbar who anticipated by
nearly four centuries the broad, imperial outlook of the British, noble
in conception and execution alike, was vouchsafed only a brief glimpse
of the Promised Land. His noble vision which Lord Tennyson has
beautifully summed up in “Akbar’s Dream,” has, at last, been realized
under the Pax Britannica:—
“I watched my son,
And those that followed me, loosen, stone from stone,
AU my fair work; and from the ruin arose
The shriek and curse of trampled millions, even
As in the time before; but while I groaned,
From out the sun-set pour’d an alien race,
Who fitted stone to stone again, and 'truth,
Peace, Love, and J ustice came and dwelt therein.
Like Akbar, English statesmen have converted the Indian Princes
into the props and pillars of their splendid Empire, by the shaping
CHAPTER II.
good faith and political sagacity in its treatment of the feudatorv allies.
The statesmen who built up the fabric of British Dominion in India
have consistently followed a generous and magnanimous policy towards
the Native States—a policy which has preserved the integrity of
about 680 principalities. The Roman Empire, which offers man}'
parallels to the general course of British Rule in India, failed in its
attempts to maintain the treaty rights of its allies. But this cannot
be said of the British Raj. It is only in rare cases of misrule and
oppression on the part of the Indian Princes that the British have
resorted to a policy of intervention or annexation, as it is incompatible
with the existence of a sovereign paramount power to suffer misrule
and oppression outside the territories under its direct jurisdiction.
The map of British India, studded as it is with principalities in
subordinate alliance with the Empire, bears eloquent testimony to the
magnanimity, good faith, and noble policy of the British people. The
British Empire is a living emblem of Imperial unity. The policy of
trust and good faith followed by the British towards the Indian Princes
accounts for the marvellous success of the experiment of Imperial
solidarity and fellowship. The Great Akbar who anticipated by
nearly four centuries the broad, imperial outlook of the British, noble
in conception and execution alike, was vouchsafed only a brief glimpse
of the Promised Land. His noble vision which Lord Tennyson has
beautifully summed up in “Akbar’s Dream,” has, at last, been realized
under the Pax Britannica:—
“I watched my son,
And those that followed me, loosen, stone from stone,
AU my fair work; and from the ruin arose
The shriek and curse of trampled millions, even
As in the time before; but while I groaned,
From out the sun-set pour’d an alien race,
Who fitted stone to stone again, and 'truth,
Peace, Love, and J ustice came and dwelt therein.
Like Akbar, English statesmen have converted the Indian Princes
into the props and pillars of their splendid Empire, by the shaping