India, its administration & progress / Sir John Strachey.

  • John Strachey
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: India, its administration & progress / Sir John Strachey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    511/552 page 481
    authority; new laws can only be made under a regular system of procedure, and they require the sanction of the Governor-General in Council. The objects with which this system was initiated were summed up as follows by the Government of Lord Lytton :— “ The experiment of placing the Maharaja of Mysore at the head of a constitutional government—that is, a government con- ducted upon fixed and fundamental principles — makes a new departure in the policy of the Imperial Government towards the Native States of India. To determine the proper method of dealing with these States, and of discharging the responsibilities which they entail upon the paramount power, has always been, and still is, a problem of great difficulty; for the improvement of their condition, and their gradual assimilation to the general system and standard of the Imperial Government, is almost essential to their preservation. . . . The Supreme Government has been obliged of late years to interpose frequently in the affairs of Native States. The incapacity or grave misconduct of a ruler has produced complications which have demanded immediate and stringent remedies, or the interval of a long minority has made it necessary to superintend more closely a State’s management. . . . The policy now framed proceeds upon the broad principle that in order to guard against chronic misrule in a Native State, and to obviate the necessity for frequent and arbitrary interposition by the Supreme Government to remedy the consequences of such misrule, it is expedient to avail ourselves of every opportunity of placing some reasonable limitations upon the personal power of the ruler, or of the minister to whom the administration may be entrusted. The limitations thus imposed must be brought on public record, in order to place them beyond question or contro- versy, and in certain cases the general power of supervision to be exercised by the Supreme Government may need to be strengthened and extended. These principles may form the groundwork of a settled policy which will guide the Government of India in the general discharge of its responsibilities towards Feudatory States. A new and valuable precedent will have been established, and this, with the experience which will have been gained in Mysore, may enable us in future to deal systematically with similar
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image