Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/422

372 military footing which they had lost in the previous war.

The subsidiary system, moreover, had other consequences besides those of causing the disbanding of the loose mercenary militia and the condensation of the freebooting plague. As the military power of the states which contracted these treaties was conveyed into British hands, the result was to weaken the internal authority of their rulers, by diminishing their feeling of responsibility for governing well and moderately, because they were sure of English protection in the event of attack or revolt. Undoubtedly the sense of dependence upon a higher power relaxed the energies of a native prince, who knew that in the last resort he could always call in the British government to save him from utter destruction.

Against these disadvantages of the subsidiary alliances must, however, be set the consideration that without British protection most of the allied states would certainly have been dismembered in the incessant warfare that prevailed wherever they were left to themselves. The effect of English alliances upon the majority of these states was, therefore, to arrest the natural process of their disruption, but not to strengthen the internal authority of their rulers. In this manner the burden of repressing disorder within the territory of England's allies followed the transfer of the duty of external defence and gradually became shifted to the shoulders of the British government. Her policy might vary, backward or forward, but England still found