Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/416

366 This group of primitive tribal chiefships, the last surviving relics of mediæval India, had outlasted the Afghan and the Moghul empires, and had weathered the tumultuous anarchy of the eighteenth century. But they were rent by intestine feuds, and the militia of the Rajput clans was quite incapable of resisting the trained bands of the Marathas or the Afghan mercenaries of Amir Khan. Some of these states were now remonstrating earnestly with the British government for refusing to admit them within its protectorate, which they claimed as a matter of right; so that, as Sir Charles Metcalfe, the Resident for Rajputana, wrote in June, 1816, "They said that some power in India had always existed to which peaceable states submitted, and in return obtained its protection against the invasions of upstart chiefs and the armies of lawless banditti; that the British government now occupied the place of that protecting power, and was the natural guardian of weak states which were continually exposed to the cruelties and oppression of robbers and plunderers, owing to the refusal of the British government to protect them."

Lord Minto, who had gone out to India with the intention of maintaining what was called the defensive policy, changed his views materially before 1813, when he made over the Governor-Generalship to Lord Moira, afterwards Marquis of Hastings. He had found himself compelled to interpose with an armed force for the protection of Holkar's government against a captain of banditti, and to place an army in the field to