Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 60.djvu/221

 Shortly after the conquest of Mysore it devolved upon Wellesley to deal with the right to the throne of the native state of Tanjore. It lay between Sarfoji, the adopted son of the late rájá, and Amír Singh, the half-brother of the latter, who was actually on the throne. Wellesley decided that the right clearly lay with Sarfoji, and moreover that the country had been grossly misgoverned by Amír Singh. Sarfoji, however, was very young and inexperienced, and by no means well qualified to conduct the government of the country. In these circumstances Wellesley decided to place Sarfoji in the position of a mediatised prince, and to vest the actual administration in the company's government. This was effected by a treaty concluded on 25 Oct. 1799, which remained in force until 1855, when, owing to the death of the last rájá without leaving a male heir, Tanjore was annexed. Under British rule, both before and since the annexation, Tanjore has prospered wonderfully, and has long been one of the richest districts in India.

A few months later Wellesley placed the nawáb of Surat in a position similar to that of the rájá of Tanjore.

A greater difficulty was presented by the case of the nawáb of the Carnatic. Here the relations between successive nawábs and the company had long been unsatisfactory. Muhammad Ali, who had been secured on his throne by Stringer Lawrence and Clive, was a spendthrift, as was his son, Omdat ul Omrah, and they neither of them had met their engagements to the company, to which they were heavily in debt. About the time when Wellesley took up the question, papers were discovered at Mysore which showed that both Omdat ul Omrah and his father had been engaged in a clandestine correspondence with Tippu, having for its object the expulsion of the English from India. At the moment when this discovery was made Omdat ul Omrah was on his deathbed, and in consequence the question of the succession had to be postponed until his death. Wellesley had previously endeavoured to obtain his assent to an arrangement similar to that which had been made at Tanjore, but had been met, not only by a refusal, but by a demand that the nawáb should share in the distribution of the territories just taken from Mysore. On the nawáb's death Wellesley offered similar terms to his reputed son, Ali Hussain, but by him also the terms were refused. Wellesley then proceeded to treat with Azim ud Dowlah, a nephew of the late nawáb, and with him a treaty was made on 31 July 1801 which provided for the practical annexation of the Carnatic. Under this treaty the complete civil and military administration was vested in the company, one-fifth of the net revenues being assigned to the nawáb. James Mill the historian condemns the arrangement, and affects to throw doubt upon the genuineness of the documents upon which Wellesley acted, stigmatising the whole transaction as ‘an unmanly fraud.’ But his views have not been accepted by any of the authorities best qualified to form a judgment upon such a question; and when we remember that if the documents upon which Wellesley acted were forged, such men as General Harris, General Baird, Colonel Arthur Wellesley, Colonel Close, Henry Wellesley, Captain Macaulay, Neil Benjamin Edmonstone [q. v.], and Josiah Webbe must have been parties to the forgery, it is impossible to suppose that there can have been the slightest foundation for the charge. The treaty of 1801 was a personal treaty, and as such was held in 1855 to justify the government of India in their refusal to put up another mediatised nawáb. The chief members of the Arcot family are now pensioners, liberally pensioned, but coming under the category of subjects.

Wellesley next directed his attention to Oudh. In that frontier state the existing state of things was extremely unsatisfactory. The nawáb, Saádat Ali, was a mere voluptuary, a coward, and a miser. The long-threatened invasion by the Afghan ruler, Zamán Shah, was still by no means improbable, and the army of Oudh was a disorderly rabble. This state of affairs was obviously a serious danger to the company's territories. Wellesley in the first instance despatched Colonel Scott, the Bengal adjutant-general, to explain the situation to the nawáb, and to urge him to replace his so-called army by a British subsidiary force. Saádat Ali's reply was an offer, by no means genuine, to abdicate; but Wellesley did not wish to annex Oudh, and he soon discovered that the offer to abdicate was a mere sham. He therefore despatched to Lucknow his brother, Henry Wellesley, who succeeded in convincing the nawáb that temporising and dilatory shifts would not be tolerated, and that Oudh must be placed either upon the footing of Tanjore or upon that which had been adopted in the case of Hyderabad. The latter arrangement was eventually accepted by the nawáb, and a treaty was made under which certain districts were ceded to the company, who were to maintain a force for the protection of Oudh, the nawáb agreeing to reduce his own troops, and to