INDIA. 



375 



tribes, or commanding unruly neighbors, great 

 forts are to be erected. 



The first General "Durbar" (assembly of 

 native princes and chiefs) in "Western India was 

 held at Bombay in the first week of October, by 

 Sir Seymour Fitzgerald, in his character as rep- 

 resentative of the Queen in Western India. His 

 predecessor, Sir Bartle Frere, though familiar 

 with the people and languages of Western India 

 from his youth up, never ventured to assemble 

 together in Durbar at one time and place more 

 than one section of the native chiefs of the 

 presidency; but Sir Seymour Fitzgerald as- 

 sembled to meet him the rajahs, chiefs, and 

 sirdars, both of Guzerat and the Deccan. 

 There were present the Rajpoot and kindred 

 chiefs from the far northeast of Guzerat ; Mus- 

 sulman chiefs from the extreme south near the 

 borders of Mysore; a representative of "the 

 Hnbsbee," the African chief from the coast 

 territory of Jinjeera (seventy miles south of 

 Bombay harbor), and Mahrattas of the Deccan 

 of every degree, from the Eajah of Kolapoor, 

 the representative of Sivajee, to the smallest 

 jagheerdar privileged to appear in public with 

 his ancestors' sword of state. The result was 

 entirely satisfactory to the British authorities ; 

 the assembly professing, in an address to the 

 throne, the most loyal sentiments. 



New and valuable information on the native 

 states of India is contained in the annual admin- 

 istrative reports made by the political agents, 

 who are attached to the native states as the re- 

 presentatives of the Governor-General. The 

 rule that such annual reports be prepared by 

 the political agents was established by Sir John 

 Lawrence in 1865. Regarding the territories 

 which are directly administered by England, 

 similar reports have been annually published 

 since 1853. But feudatory India one-fourth 

 of the whole peninsula was practically a 

 blank, so far as the public are concerned, till 

 this order was issued. As yet it has been only 

 partially obeyed. No reports of Cashmere, 

 Nepaul, or the Nizam's country, have yet ap- 

 peared. The Travancore, and Cochin states in 

 the far south of India, which are of little politi- 

 cal importance, have long been in the habit of 

 issuing reports. Since 1865-'66 full and inter- 

 esting accounts have 'been published, of the 

 seventy-one states of Central India, by Colonel 

 Meade, who influences them from Indore, and 

 of the nineteen states of Rajpootana by the late 

 Colonel Eden, and his recent successor, Colo- 

 nel Keatinge, V. 0. These reports furnish 

 the materials for a much more trustworthy 

 judgment regarding the comparative merits of 

 English and Asiatic rule than were afforded by 

 the information accessible before the publica- 

 tion of these reports. From the report of Colo- 

 nel Meade we learn that, of the seventy-one 

 states of Central India, four are ruled by Mah- 

 rattas and seven by Mohammedans, the two re- 

 cently invading and conquering races. Of these 

 eleven only four are entered as minor and petty 

 states, the other seven being principal or sec- 



ondary. In truth, the two Mahrattas, Sindiah 

 and Holkar, and the Mussulman Begum of 

 Bhopal, divide the greater part of Central In- 

 dia among them. The other sixty states are, 

 with a few exceptions, petty, and are held by 

 Rajpoots, Brahmins, and Boondelas. The an- 

 nual revenue of these seventy-one states is 

 about two and half millions sterling, raised 

 chiefly from the land. That of the Central 

 provinces (which are directly administered by 

 English authorities), with roads, railways, and 

 navigable rivers, such as native chiefs abhor, is 

 slightly above a million sterling. That is, add- 

 ing all possible local cesses and funds, Eng- 

 land takes from the people only one-half of 

 the sum exacted by the chiefs from a popula- 

 tion somewhat less, but of the same race and 

 habits, and with inferior physical advantages. 



India, during the year 1868, enjoyed an al- 

 most uninterrupted peace. Slight disturbances 

 in the northwestern provinces were promptly 

 and easily suppressed. The greatest danger to 

 the continuance of peace is apprehended from 

 the fanatical Mohammedan sect of the Waha- 

 bees. The influence of the Wahabees is rapid- 

 ly growing in the Mohammedan world, and 

 alarming not only the English authorities in 

 India, but the Governments of Turkey and 

 Egypt. As so little is known in Christian 

 countries about this sect, and as they are likely 

 to occupy a more prominent place in the history 

 of the coming years, we condense the follow- 

 ing information concerning them from an ar- 

 ticle in the Friend of India : 



For forty years the Hindostan Wahabees have been 

 at war with the British Government. In the mutiny 

 campaigns and sieges in the expedition of Sir Sydney 

 Cotton, in the disastrous war of Umbeyla, many a 

 brave English officer and many a faithful Sepoy mer- 

 cenary feu a victim to their intrigues and even their 

 matchlocks. Again and again the Punjab Govern- 

 ment, and still more emphatically the Government of 

 India, has declared that the Wahabees are so danger- 

 ous to the peace of the empire, that thev must be 

 rooted out. It was small satisfaction to kill half of 

 their nine hundred fighting-men in the pass of Um- 

 beyla when our own casualties amounted to eight 

 hundred and fifty of the bravest, and the rest escaped 

 once more to recruit their ranks, and stir up against 

 us a second 'Fifty-seven. What Major Abbott wrote 

 when, as Deputy Commissioner of Hazara, he dis- 

 covered the traitorous correspondence of the fanatics 

 with their recruiting-agents in Patna in 1853, is more 

 than ever true " For thirty years they have, by their 

 admirable arrangements, set the Government at de- 

 fiance." The mutiny soon showed that the holy war 

 against the Sikhs, the Chinese, and the Nazarenes, 

 which Syud Ahmed proclaimed at Peshawur in 1824, 

 was a reality. Government possesses the sealed pat- 

 ent by which he bequeathed his spiritual office to 

 Sheik Mohammed Hoossein of Patna, and so made 

 the very heart of the most peaceful province of the 

 empire the focus of revolt. The power descended to 

 his son-in-law Yahiya Ali, who, with the members of 

 his family, Ahmedoolla and Fyaz Ali, are now felons 

 at Port Blair. Abdoolla, their connection, still leads 

 the crescentaders on the frontier, and others still re- 

 cruit for him in Bengal, as if Sir Sydney Cotton, 

 General Chamberlain, and General Wilde had never 

 led armies into their haunts, as if the state trials at 

 Umballa in 1864 and at Patna in 1865 had never taken 

 place. Lord Elgin's Government, in September, 1853. 



