the adopted child to inherit the treasures and private estate of the deceased Raja. But under the rule laid down by the Government of India seven years previously, in 1841, they could not admit that any valid claim had been created to succeed to the government of Sátára. As to the legal soundness of this view, there can now be no question. The sanction of the Paramount Power was necessary to constitute an adopted son 'an heir' or 'successor' to the government of a subordinate State. That sanction had been withheld, and the adopted child at Sátára never came within the category of 'heirs' so far as the succession to the government of the State was concerned.
'Sir George Clerk, who was then Governor of Bombay, alone, of all the authorities in India,' writes the Duke of Argyll[1], 'was in favour of allowing the succession of the child. But among the reasons urged by this eminent servant of the Company for the advice he gave, there is no trace of several assertions which have since been popularly believed. Sir George Clerk did not deny that adoption with the effect of continuing the Raj required the sanction of the Paramount Power. He did not affirm that this was a mere form, or a matter of course, or that all previous
- ↑ Reprint of articles in the Edinburgh Review of January, 1863, published as India under Dalhousie and Canning, pp. 24-25. Longmans, 1865.
