Page:The Marquess of Dalhousie.djvu/161

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NÁGPUR
153

for him the British protection against the vengeance of his subjects. 'Now go away,' he said to a newly-appointed Minister, 'and study the provisions of the treaty, so as to see that they are enforced to protect me in the enjoyment of those pleasures of dancing and singing that I have loved from my boyhood.' In 1853, this contemptible being died, leaving no son or legitimate daughter. Mr. Mansel had, as an advocate of succession by adoption, urged the Raja during his last two years to adopt a child. The Raja had persistently refrained from doing so. 'The silence of the Raja,' wrote Mr, Mansel the Resident, 'was thus a deliberate act of his own.' Indeed Mr. Mansel admitted 'that the Raja possessed no right to transmit his Kingdom but to the heirs male of his body lawfully begotten.' Yet Mr. Mansel thought that it might be well to artificially create an heir, after the Rajahs death, by consenting to an adoption by one of his widows. Lord Dalhousie came to the opposite conclusion.

'We set up a Raja at Nágpur,' he wrote[1]. 'We afforded him every advantage a Native Prince could command. His boyhood was trained under our own auspices; an able and respected Princess was his guardian and the Regent of the State. For ten years, while he was yet a youth, we

  1. Papers relating to the Raja of Berár, 1854. Quoted from the Duke of Argyll's India under Dalhousie and Canning, pp. 37, 38, ed. 1865.