Page:The Marquess of Dalhousie.djvu/145

Rh hold by a poor and uncertain tenure, indeed, if we resolve now to continue the Raj, and deliver it over to a boy brought up in obscurity, selected for adoption almost by chance, and of whose character and qualities nothing whatever was known by the Raja who adopted him, nothing whatever is known to us.' 'I do not presume to dispute the wisdom of creating the Raj of Sátára,' in 1819, he elsewhere writes. 'I conceive that the same reasons do not prevail for its reconstitution now, when it is again placed by events at our disposal.'

The Court of Directors dealing with the case not as a question of conscience, but as one of law and expediency, thus recorded its final decision. I repeat certain sentences already quoted.

'The result of our deliberation is, that, concurring with you in opinion, we are fully satisfied that, by the general law and custom of India, a dependent principality, like that of Sátára, cannot pass to an adopted heir without the consent of the Paramount Power; that we are under no pledge, direct or constructive, to give such consent; and that the general interests committed to our charge are best consulted by withholding it. The pretensions set up in favour of the adopted son of the ex-Raja being wholly untenable, and all claims of collaterals being excluded by the fact that none of them are descended from the person in whose favour the principality was created, the ex-Raja Partáb Singh,