Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/539

Rh ing war and peace; but they make their own laws and levy their own taxes; and the British treat their territory as foreign, although the dividing border-line can hardly be called a frontier, since most of these states are entirely surrounded and shut in by British India. Nevertheless, their history serves to illustrate at every turn the bearing of this system of protectorates on the Anglo-Indian frontier; and what is now going on is chiefly the continuation of what went on from the beginning.

It will be found that from the time when the English became a power on the mainland of India, that is, from their acquisition of Bengal in 1765, they have constantly adopted the policy of interposing a border of protected country between their actual possessions and the possessions of formidable neighbours whom they desire to keep at arm's length. In the eighteenth century we supported and protected Oudh as a barrier against the Marathas; and early in the nineteenth century we preserved the Rajput states in Central India for the same reason. The feudatory states on the Sutlaj were originally maintained and strengthened by us, before we took the Panjab, as outworks and barricades against the formidable power of the Sikhs. The device has been likened to the invention of buffers; for a buffer is a mechanical contrivance for breaking or graduating the force of impact between two heavy bodies; and in the same way the political buffer checked the violence of political collisions, though it rarely prevented them altogether.