Page:The Garden of India.djvu/202

 CHAPTER VII.

TEN YEARS OF TALUQDA'RI' POLICY [1858-1868].

The profound change of tone and altered standpoint which have marked the policy of the Grovernment of India since the Mutiny, could hardly be more strikingly illustrated than by a comparison of the instructions addressed to Sir James Outram on the 4th of February 1856 with those issued to Sir Eobert Montgomery on the 6th of October 1858. The judgment which the reader may pass upon their respective merits is likely to depend to some extent on the opinion which he holds as to the true aims and duties of the English in India. The object of Lord Dalhousie's Govern- ment was to benefit the masses with a lofty disregard of the impression which by so doing they might produce upon the native aristocracy. And to this end they sought to put themselves into direct contact with the people, " with no miscrowned man's head " between them. They were re- solved, in short, that " everybody should count as one, and nobody as more than one."

When we turn to Lord Canning's instructions of the 6th of October, everything is changed. Not the good of the masses, but, as a writer in the " Calcutta Eeview " of Sep- tember 1860 approvingly puts it, " to hold the Eastern Empire with the least strain on the population and finances