Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/473

Rh possession of a subordinate state that has clearly and indubitably lapsed to the sovereignty by total failure of heirs natural, unless there should be some strong reason to the contrary. Satara was accordingly absorbed; Jhansi followed in 1853; and in 1854 came the lapse of Nagpur, when Lord Dalhousie emphatically declared that "unless I believed the prosperity and the happiness of its inhabitants would be promoted by their being placed permanently under British rule, no other advantage which could arise out of the measure would move me to propose it."

There has never been any doubt about the recognized principle of public policy, based on long usage and tradition, that no Indian principality can pass to an adopted heir without the assent and confirmation of the paramount English government. Lord Dalhousie did not deny that succession might pass by adoption, but he claimed and exercised the prerogative of refusing assent, on grounds of political expediency, in the case of states which, either as the virtual creation of the British government, or from their former position, stood to that government in the relation of subordinate or dependent principalities. And if he withheld assent, the state underwent incorporation into British territory by lapse. Nothing, thought the Governor-General, could be more fortunate for the subjects of a native dynasty than its extinction by this kind of political euthanasia.

It may be worth while to add here that this doctrine of lapse is now practically obsolete, having been