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war, the world being asked the while to believe that all has been done unwillingly, in self-defence.

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On the 20th December 1852, a proclamation was issued, which, after reciting undisguisedly the ineffably inadequate pretext for the war, informed the inhabitants that the Governor in Council had resolved that the maritime vince of Pegu should henceforth form a portion of the British territories in the East, and warning the King of Ava, "should he fail to renew his former relations of friendship with the British Government, and seek to dispute its quiet possession of the province, the Governor-General would again put forth the power he held, which would lead to the total subversion of the Burman State, and to the ruin and exile of the King and his race." But no depth of humiliation could bring the Sovereign or his Ministers to acknowledge the hopelessness of defeat or the permanency of dismemberment. Envoys came from Amarapoora offering to buy off the invaders, by payment of all the expenses of the war, if they would retire within the former landmarks; and subsequently Captain Phayre was sent on an embassage tendering a treaty couched in the threadbare phrascology of eternal friendship and peace, but it came to nothing. Twenty years have passed, and no treaty recognising the alienation of Pegu has yet been signed. Is there a Statute of Limitations barring the execution of predatory threats, or may the obduracy of Burmah be one day set up as a pretence for its further partition?

and Jhansi was by proclamation incorporated with the Company's possessions. Luckshim Bai grieved unforgivingly. At the first note of insurrection in 1857, she took to horse, and for months in male attire headed bands, squadrons, and at length formidable corps of the Mahrattas, until she became in her way another Joan of Arc to her frenzied and fierce followers. No insurgent leader gave more trouble to the columns of Sir Hugh Rose; but not even in desperate and deadly fight, lasting for many hours, could she be persuaded to quit the field. In the general melée of defeat, Luckshim fell by a random shot, but not until she had exacted terrible retribution for the wrongs and insults to her family and her country.

native principalities and chieftainries, which but yesterday had been like their own. Of those that still retained nominal independence, none any longer struggled or, save in passing dreams, realised the possibility of secession from our Empire in Asia. Some acknowledged unreservedly their allegiance to the Suzerain whose sword had taken the place of the sceptres of Mahratta and Mohammedan dominion: others murmuringly bowed to kismet, but questioned no more the overruling authority of the Paramount Power. With all of them its relations were defined in treaties actually subsisting; and in each of these engagements one of the chief considerations named was the recognition of State severalty, and its permanent guarantee by the indefeasible inheritance acknowledged in the family of the reigning prince. On what principles the law of inheritance was based, to what exceptions, if any, it was liable, and according to what rule contingent remainderships were to be traced, was not set down in any of the pacts made in the name of England by successive Viceroys with the chiefs or rulers of Asia. Has any one ever heard of stipulations of the kind being embodied in similar documents by any other Government in the world, in any age or clime? Treaties have throughout all time been for the most part brief in language, general in the terms employed, and confessedly intended, not as exhaustive anticipations of all imaginable contingencies, but as laying down broadly, and in simple forms of speech, the outlines of peace and amity; upon the implied condition that the application of these terms to any and every case that might thereafter arise should be such as the common understanding of both communities would admit, or the judgment of an impartial arbiter declare. Tested by this obvious rule of international right,

the guarantee of perpetual inheritance was undoubtedly intended, and undoubtedly understood, to imply the devolution of title, dignity, and power to whatever heirs could from time to time establish their respective claims,not according to the lex loci of the foreign and alien party to the compact, but according to the lex loci of the State whose autonomy the treaty had been confessedly framed to assure. Until the circumambiency of conquest was complete, scarce the whisper of a doubt was ever overheard as to the simple honesty of this rule. The case of Coorg has indeed been sometimes relied on as furnishing an early precedent for lapse to the Paramount Power through want of male heirs. But it is enough to say, that no case resembling that of Coorg, either in point of fact or in point of principle, has arisen of recent years. Those which of late have engrossed unhappily the minds of men in India, have each and all of them turned upon the right of succession by collateral heirs, or heirs by adoption. About the traditional usages which recognised in native states such claims to succession, there is hardly, among unofficial men, standing room for doubt. The assumption by Lord Dalhousie, in the case of Sattara, that notwithstanding the treaties of 1818 and 1819, the Raj had lapsed to the British Crown, because the heir of Pratab Singh was not his son, was as blunt and bald an act of usurpation as though it had been made in the form of asserting that he was not of Pictish or Norman lineage. Time out of mind the rights and duties of adoption have been as notoriously part and parcel of Hindu law and religion, as the powers to dispose of feesimple at the pleasure of the owner has been part and parcel of our own system of jurisprudence. The limitations. as to property and privilege varied in different states, and when the Mussulmans began to interweave portions of Hindu

law and custom with their own, one of the most prominent and important they appropriated was that of adoption. So long as the Nawab or Maharajah retained life and health, the hope of posterity remained, and he seldom bequeathed by anticipation his diadem, lest his grey hairs, like those of Lear, might prematurely be discrowned. But when his end palpably drew nigh, the childless prince was wont to nominate his successor, whose first duty after the decease was to perform his obsequies with pious care. If he were young, feeble, or depraved, a pretender sometimes started, bid high for popular support, and offered to abide the arbitrament of battle. Have we not heard of like questioning and conflict amongst kings and feudatories in Christendom, where the title by primogenitural right could not be disputed? But revolution is the converse of law, not a part of it; and the Paramount Power which would rely on the success of supplanters vi et armis, must prepare for the crop which proverbially springs from the teeth of the dragon. Death, which is no respecter of longitudes, any more than of conditions, sometimes stole upon the sick man in his sleep, so that he woke not on the morrow to fulfil his purpose of naming a successor; and then Muftis and Brahmins held that the Ranee or Begum should carry into effect the intention of the deceased, which she was naturally presumed to be most likely to know. Numberless instances are upon record where this course was followed, for the most part without cavil or controversy. Avarice or ambition occasionally brought an uncle or cousin to wrestle with the adoptive heir. We too have heard of struggles not dissimilar, of a disinherited Tudor superseding and beheading the successor by adoption named by the previous king, and of a Saxon monarch actually in possession overthrown by a

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