But during the second quarter of the century, the British Government gradually determined to enforce its rights as the Suzerain Power in this latter class of cases. It did so, for example, by annexing Kolaba in 1841[1], and Mandavi in 1842[2]. In the cases in which it permitted the succession of a dependent Native State to pass by adoption, it did so for special reasons, or as a mark of special favour or indulgence.
Nothing can be clearer than the words in which the principle was enforced, with reference to dependent Native States. 'To permit the adoption,' writes the Court of Directors when dealing with Kolaba in 1841, 'would therefore be to give up by an act of mere grace, a territory which has undoubtedly lapsed to the British Government as the Paramount Power.'
Once, and so far as I have discovered only once, did the Government of India contemplate the application of this principle to a sovereign Native State. In 1841, the Governor-General in Council, fortified by the principle laid down by the Court of Directors in 1834, unanimously declared their intention, as we have seen, 'to persevere in the one clear and direct course of abandoning no just and
