Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/371

Rh Lord Wellesley's political system was now reaching its climax. His subsidiary troops were encamped at the capitals of the four great Indian powers which had been his political rivals, at Mysore, Haidarabad, Lucknow, and Poona; all disputes among these states were to be submitted to his arbitration; and the interference of all other European nations was to be rigidly excluded. Upon these pillars he was firmly building up the inevitable preponderance of a steady, civilized, orderly administration over the jarring, incoherent rulerships by which it was surrounded. But it was not to be expected that the Treaty of Bassein would be otherwise than unpalatable to the Maratha chiefs, who saw that a blow had been struck at the root of their confederacy, and that the establishment of paramount British influence at Poona not only checkmated their movement against the capital, but was a sure step toward the subversion of their own independence. The maintenance of the head of the Maratha Empire in a condition of dependent relation to the British government would naturally, in the course of time, tend to reduce the other Maratha powers into a similar condition of subordination, which was precisely what they feared and were determined to resist. They withheld acknowledgment of the treaty, questioned the Peshwa's right to conclude it without their consent, suspended their internal feuds, and seemed inclined to combine against the common danger.

The Maratha chief of Nagpur (commonly called the Raja of Berar), who had great influence over all the