regarding internal management so far as might be necessary to cure disorders or scandalous misrule. A British Resident was appointed to the courts of all the greater princes as the agency for the exercise of these high functions; while the subsidiary forces and the contingents furnished by the states placed the supreme military command everywhere under British direction.
This great political settlement of Central India – the disarmament and pacification of the military chiefships, and the adjustment of distinct relations of supremacy and subordination – established universal recognition of the cardinal principle upon which the fabric of British dominion in India has been built up. It completed and consolidated the policy of Lord Wellesley. The last shadow of interference by any European rival had now for the time faded away. The contest with the native states for ascendency was finally decided, and not only the right but the duty of intervention for the security and tranquillity of the Indian people was now everywhere acknowledged, from the two seas northward up to Sind and the Sutlaj River. From the Sind frontier at the mouths of the Indus River, down the west coast of the peninsula to Cape Comorin, and thence northeastward again along the Bay of Bengal to the frontier of Burma, the whole sea-line of India was under the authority of England. On the north she held a long belt of the Himalayan highlands, and her political jurisdiction extended to the western edge of the deserts bordering on upper Sind and the Panjab.
