Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 60.djvu/224

 member of his council, he had given a strong support. It was mainly by this reversal of Wellesley's policy that the third Mahratta war of 1817 and 1818 was brought about.

The leading feature of Wellesley's foreign policy in India was the system of subsidiary alliances which he introduced. It enabled the British government to establish a preponderating influence in the native states without actually annexing them; but it was not altogether free from objection. Sir Thomas Munro [q. v.], who was at first a warm supporter of the system, ended by deprecating its further extension. His deliberate opinion was that the presence of a British force in a native state, by supporting the prince on his throne against any foreign or domestic enemy, acted as an encouragement to misgovernment. Sir Arthur Wellesley also had doubts at one time as to the usefulness of the system. In June 1803 he wrote that such treaties entirely ‘annihilated the military power of the governments with which we contracted them,’ and that he would ‘preserve the existence of the state and guide its actions by the weight of British influence rather than annihilate it.’ A year later, however, he recognised that the subsidiary treaties conferred ‘enormous benefits’ upon the British government: ‘The consequences of them have been that in this war with the Mahrattas, which it is obvious must have occurred sooner or later, the company's territories have not been invaded, and the evils of war have been kept at a distance from the sources of our wealth and our power. This fact alone, unsupported by any others which could be enumerated as benefits resulting from these alliances, would be sufficient to justify them’ (, Selections from the Wellington Despatches, No. 259, p. 463).

Wellesley was by no means inattentive to the internal administration of the British provinces. At an early period he discerned the importance of improving the personnel of the civil service. He framed during 1800 an elaborate and comprehensive scheme for the establishment of a college in Fort William at Calcutta, in which the education of the young civil servants sent out from England should be completed. He pointed out that the members of the Indian civil service could no longer be regarded as the agents of a commercial concern; that they would have to discharge the functions of magistrates, judges, ambassadors, and governors of provinces, and would require to be educated in those branches of literature and science which form the basis of the education of persons destined to perform similar duties in Europe, added to which they should acquire an intimate acquaintance with the history, languages, and customs of the people of India, with the Muhammadan and Hindoo codes of law and religion, and with the political and commercial interests and relations of Great Britain in Asia. The scheme did not commend itself to the court of directors, who pronounced it to be too vast and too expensive; but it led some years later to the formation of a college in England for the education of Indian civil servants, which, established first at Hertford and afterwards transferred to Haileybury, was successfully maintained until the appointments to the service were thrown open to public competition under the act of 1853.

The refusal of the court to sanction his scheme was bitterly resented by Wellesley. It was one of several causes—the others being acts of interference with his patronage, some of a very offensive character—which on 1 Jan. 1802 led him to request that he might be relieved from his office in the following October.

Another method which Wellesley adopted for improving the civil service, although necessarily carried out on a very limited scale, was to gather round him some of the younger members of the service and employ them at government house in drafting despatches under his own orders and writing them to his own dictation. The late Lord Metcalfe was one of the assistants thus employed. Among the others were John Adam [q. v.], William Butterworth Bayley [q. v.], (Sir) Richard Jenkins [q. v.], and Henry Cole. Under such a man as Wellesley these young men enjoyed a splendid opportunity of learning how public affairs of the highest importance were carried on, and not one of them failed to profit by the experience. The despatches which were issued on the outbreak of the Mahratta war were among the documents which were thus prepared.

The observance of the Sunday in India was a matter to which Wellesley attached considerable importance, as tending to disabuse the natives of the idea that the English had no religion, and, with this view, shortly after his return from Madras he ordered a public and general thanksgiving for the successes which had attended the British arms. He also directed by a public notification the observance of Sunday as a day of rest.

The seditious character of many of the publications of the native press was a matter which then, as in more recent times, caused some anxiety. Wellesley dealt with it by introducing a mild censorship.

Wellesley was not himself a financier, but he speedily realised the importance of placing