BERAR.
[TO THE EDITOR Or THE "SPECTATOR."]
you kindly enable me to invite attention to a radical error underlying the otherwise fair and cordial recognitions of Sir Solar Jung's multiform service and staunch loyalty to England which his Excellency's visit, now closing, has induced,—the mis- conception, I mean, which is encouraged by the misleading official title (or heading), "Cession of Berar ?" This attorney- like device has been allowed for full fifteen years to mystify a transaction as clear of ambiguity as plainest treaty terms can make it. These fair and fertile districts never were, as constantly assumed, annexed. They were assigned, and reassigned, by the Treaties of 1853 and 1860, as security for the maintenance of the Contingent (auxiliary force) which, during a peace of thirty-three years, had been kept up, at English beck and call, to the amount of 40 Ines per annum, an extravagant outlay, speedily reduced by the assignee (our Government) to 24, with entire disregard of a stipulated transfer of surplus revenue to the Nizam, which, so far back as '67, had been estimated to credit his Highness's treasury with heavy and accruing arrears. In the Examiner of that year (May 18), it was not obscurely hinted that views of this transac- tion, unmusical in Calcutta ears, were firmly held and calmly main- tamed by that able and upright Resident, Colonel Davidson, in his official despatch of 1862, the political section whereof has been per- sistently suppressed. Indeed, the entire despatch, when last ordered, was kept back, and the previous year's substituted. His views of
the Nizam's claims and wrongs are said to have been here sub- stantiated, point by point, with citations of precedent and treaty, and the so long-buried document may be found to imply at head- quarters a cynic determination not only to over-ride manifest obligations, but to neutralise the legitimate weight of an honoured name by perpetuation of a shabby device.
Assuming, Sir, that a frank and gracious condescension has deigned to regard Sir Salar's prompt attention in the light of a return visit, it were surely no incongruous stretch of official courtesy to spontaneously anticipate claims which innate delicacy might withhold a guest from urging.—I am, Sir, &c., Exur..
[Sir Saler has a case, but it is not as clear as " Exul " thinks. In India, every subject to whom a jaghire was assigned on con- dition of maintaining a regiment was allowed to make all he could of it. To force the Government of India to surrender the surplus revenue of an assigned province, when the surplus is created solely by their rule, is hardly fair to the 140,000,000 of taxpayers who enable them to govern so welL—En. Spectator.]
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