THE TRIAL OF THE GIIICOWAR.
THERE must be more imagination in Lord Northbrook than people in England had given him credit for. His latest action in the Baroda affair, as. reported by a corre- spondent who can hardly be mistaken, impresses us in ith originality and courage as a positive stroke of genius. Otxr readers will remember that the Guicowar of Baroda, the potentate whose country, and Court, and pomp may partly be understood from the pictures in the most original book about India that has appeared for years, " L'Inde des Rajahs," by M. Louis Rousselet, had been warned to mend his alleged mis- government—misgovernment, it was said, more resembling that of Heliogabalus than anything known in the modern history of the West—or he would be deposed. Immediately after the warning an attempt was made to poison the Resi- dent, Colonel Phayre, and as he was evidently a marked. man, Sir Lewis Pelly, the Resident of Ajmere, and Agent for Rajpootana, was nominated to succeed him, Baroda affairs at the same time passing under the immediate control of the Viceroy. A rigid investigation by Sir Lewis and Mr. Soutar, the head of the Bombay Police, followed, and a mass of evidence was collected which induced Lord Northbrook to believe that the Guicowar might have been an accessory to the crime, and to put forth one of those extraordinary powers with which he is invested as representative of the successor of the Emperors of Delhi, powers of which no lawyer in the world could accurately define either the origin or the limits. They certainly exist, for they have been used ; and they as
certainly rest neither on Acts of Parliament, nor on treaties, ' in theory a sovereign ruler, and but lately claiming precedence nor on local statutes. He ordered the arrest of the Guicowar, of the Viceroy, will be tried for his life by an absolute in the midst of his own Court and surrounded by his Sovereign—for except as representing an absolute Sovereign, own troops, on a charge of being accessory to an attempt Lord Northbrook has no authority to order trial—through a on the life of a British Envoy. The arrest was effected by Sir tribunal in which sit ranged an English Chief Justice, Sir Lewis Pelly, with the daring adroitness characteristic of the R. Couch ; a civilian Judge, Mr. West ; a great political, man, and the people of Baroda, after a gasp of surprise, sub- Colonel Meade ; a Mahratta sovereign of the highest class ; a milted to the inevitable. For twelve hours the danger must Rajpoot Rajah whose ancestors were reigning a century before the have been extreme. The Guicowar, bad as his character may Norman Conquest, and Dinkur Rao, formerly Dewan of Gwalior, seem to Europeans, was not unpopular with his soldiery, or perhaps the ablest native politician within the entire peninsula, the upper classes, or the populace of the capital ; he was fin- and certainly the best representative man in the long list of mensely rich in tangible treasure, and he was protected in Indian Premiers. Before a Court like this, unknown to the many ways by that suspicion of latent insanity which of late law, yet legal in fact and irresistible in authority, he will be years has attached to every ruler of Baroda. There were few accused in a foreign tongue by a Government agent of a crime British troops at hand, and no army on its road, though forces which scarcely belongs to our civilisation, and defended also in might rapidly have been converged on Guzerat, and had a foreign tongue by an advocate summoned from a Court seven a signal been given, the transaction might, nay, must have thousand miles off, for his ability in persuading juries of English ended in a massacre and a war. All went quietly, however, tradesmen. Nothing so bizarre, so utterly confusing to modern and the Viceroy resolved to give the Indian world a grand notions, has ever occurred even in a land where only the other day proof at once of British power and British justice, by trying an English Judge, Sir J. Arnould, had to decide whether a native the Sovereign of Guzerat on a capital charge, before a public noble, known chiefly on the Turf, was or was not possessed of Court within his own dominions. revenues as lineal heir to the position and prerogatives of There was, however, another danger to be faced fast. the Prince of the Assassins who attempted the life of Richard Since the issue and acceptance of Lord Canning's Golden Bull, Coeur de Lion ; yet no man can say there is a failure of sub- no Indian Prince has ever, we believe, attempted to deny the stantial justice. The Suzerain must either be able to punish " suzerainty " of the Empress, or to limit the rights and Princes who do wrong, or must withdraw the guarantee against powers implied in that very vague term, borrowed from rebellion which enables them to do it with impunity. The feudalism, but applied to an empire in which feudalism has Court is the Court a wise Prince unjustly accused would have no legitimate place. They certainly extend to all forms of chosen for himself. The defence will be as unfettered by political action—to rebuke, arrest, sequestration, deposition, external authority as if Serjeant Ballantine were pleading in and perpetual imprisonment—for the Supreme Courts have Westminster, and much less fettered, we suspect, by ordinary virtually admitted that much in their repeated refusals to rules of evidence. The accused is as sure, if blameless, of interfere with "political orders" of the kind, and there is acquittal as if he were an Englishman tried in England. But one precedent at least for extending them much farther, that all this should happen at all to a Guicowar ; that he should In 1858 Lord Canning tried the Emperor of Delhi, the be tried by Englishmen ; that one of his Judges should be heir of Timour himself, who certainly was neither rebel Scindiah ; that Scindiah should be sitting as Commissioner of a nor subject in any just interpretation of either term, for Queen who never saw Hindostan, where by deputy she is exer- the murder of English ladies, and but for the unauthorised cising the supreme right of life and death over Sovereigns; guarantee given to the Emperor by Captain Hodson, sen- that the Court of lawyers, Princes, and Premiers should be so tones of death would, it is well known, have been carried irregular that no full precedent exists for its creation, yet so just out. As it was, the Emperor was condemned as an ordinary that it is worth while to pay thousands for the pleading of an criminal to imprisonment for life in Rangoon, where he English barrister before it,—these things make up an event died, and where we believe the Empress of India still of which it is an intellectual loss not to perceive the full lives, indistinguishable from any other native woman under wonder and picturesqueness. • It is as if a Chinese conqueror guard. No exercise of authority could be conceived more who had mastered Germany had summoned the late supreme than that, and from that day to this it has been Duke of Brunswick to answer for himself before a Court held that the rights of the Suzerain in India are limited only composed of Chinese lawyers, the King of Hanover, the by her policy and her conscience. Nevertheless it was necessary Prince of Reuss, and Count Beust, with ultimate re. to make it perfectly clear that the British Government was in- ference to the supreme justice of the Brother of the Sun tent on simple justice, was not seeking occasion for annexations, and Moon. The light in which Germans would regard such and not acting out of any caprice or spite. The Princes generally an incident is precisely the light in which Indians regard this were not likely to approve the trial of so prominent a member of one, with this single difference,—that they do not doubt that their Order for any offence whatever, holding themselves above in a public trial justice, according to English ideas, will be all laws save those imposed by treaties; and the Mahratta Princes done. It is most important to keep up that belief, and Lord were sure to feel strongly the possible consequences of a leading Northbrook's open trial, though an innovation on the political member of the old Confederacy, a Mahratta Sovereign not like etiquette of India, may therefore prove as wise an arrange- the Nana a titular dignitary, but actually reigning, and possessed ment as it is certainly a strange one. There is no danger that on the day before his arrest of the power of life and death, being it will ultimately limit the Viceroy's power to deal with held personally responsible for alleged crime. They might Indian Princes—will prevent, for example, action on confidential dread a similar fate for themselves or their descendants, and information—for the Government of India is responsible only to at all events would feel an increased sense of insecurity. Lord its own conscience, and in the hour of danger, in Asia, pre- Northbrook, therefore, by a stroke of high political daring, con- cedents do not bind. Necessity has no law, and that crisis in trived not only to make them assent to the trial, but to take such a India must be very singular in which its Government cannot part in the proceedings that, whatever their result, they could plead that, for the safety of the Empire, there was but one never again object to the authority which had instituted them, course of action left.
Drawing, consciously or unconsciously, on a media3val prece- dent, the trial of King John by Philip Augustus of France and his great feudatories for the murder of Prince Arthur, the Viceroy invited the nearest feudatories to the Guicowar,— Holkar, the first Mahratta; Scindiah, the Mahratta who surren- dered the Nana; and the Rajah of Jeypore, a ruler distinguished at once by birth—his House has reigned in Jeypore since 964— and by administrative ability, to sit on the Commission. Holkar, who never grants what he can refuse, and regards all British pro- ceedings with a haughty aversion, declined on pretext of domestic affairs; but Scindiah accepted, and in accepting acknowledged to the world that the rights of the Suzerain in India extend to the trial of the reigning Princes of the Empire for alleged crime. If he convicts, he cannot murmur at the sentence ; if he acquits, he has acknowledged and used the authority of the Tribunal. The Court is to be open, and the scene ought to be one of unparalleled picturesqueness, as it certainly will be one of absorbing interest for all natives of India. A native Prince still certainly rest neither on Acts of Parliament, nor on treaties, ' in theory a sovereign ruler, and but lately claiming precedence nor on local statutes. He ordered the arrest of the Guicowar, of the Viceroy, will be tried for his life by an absolute in the midst of his own Court and surrounded by his Sovereign—for except as representing an absolute Sovereign, own troops, on a charge of being accessory to an attempt Lord Northbrook has no authority to order trial—through a on the life of a British Envoy. The arrest was effected by Sir tribunal in which sit ranged an English Chief Justice, Sir Lewis Pelly, with the daring adroitness characteristic of the R. Couch ; a civilian Judge, Mr. West ; a great political, man, and the people of Baroda, after a gasp of surprise, sub- Colonel Meade ; a Mahratta sovereign of the highest class ; a milted to the inevitable. For twelve hours the danger must Rajpoot Rajah whose ancestors were reigning a century before the have been extreme. The Guicowar, bad as his character may Norman Conquest, and Dinkur Rao, formerly Dewan of Gwalior, seem to Europeans, was not unpopular with his soldiery, or perhaps the ablest native politician within the entire peninsula, the upper classes, or the populace of the capital ; he was fin- and certainly the best representative man in the long list of mensely rich in tangible treasure, and he was protected in Indian Premiers. Before a Court like this, unknown to the many ways by that suspicion of latent insanity which of late law, yet legal in fact and irresistible in authority, he will be years has attached to every ruler of Baroda. There were few accused in a foreign tongue by a Government agent of a crime British troops at hand, and no army on its road, though forces which scarcely belongs to our civilisation, and defended also in might rapidly have been converged on Guzerat, and had a foreign tongue by an advocate summoned from a Court seven a signal been given, the transaction might, nay, must have thousand miles off, for his ability in persuading juries of English ended in a massacre and a war. All went quietly, however, tradesmen. Nothing so bizarre, so utterly confusing to modern and the Viceroy resolved to give the Indian world a grand notions, has ever occurred even in a land where only the other day proof at once of British power and British justice, by trying an English Judge, Sir J. Arnould, had to decide whether a native the Sovereign of Guzerat on a capital charge, before a public noble, known chiefly on the Turf, was or was not possessed of Court within his own dominions. revenues as lineal heir to the position and prerogatives of There was, however, another danger to be faced fast. the Prince of the Assassins who attempted the life of Richard Since the issue and acceptance of Lord Canning's Golden Bull, Coeur de Lion ; yet no man can say there is a failure of sub- no Indian Prince has ever, we believe, attempted to deny the stantial justice. The Suzerain must either be able to punish " suzerainty " of the Empress, or to limit the rights and Princes who do wrong, or must withdraw the guarantee against powers implied in that very vague term, borrowed from rebellion which enables them to do it with impunity. The feudalism, but applied to an empire in which feudalism has Court is the Court a wise Prince unjustly accused would have no legitimate place. They certainly extend to all forms of chosen for himself. The defence will be as unfettered by political action—to rebuke, arrest, sequestration, deposition, external authority as if Serjeant Ballantine were pleading in and perpetual imprisonment—for the Supreme Courts have Westminster, and much less fettered, we suspect, by ordinary virtually admitted that much in their repeated refusals to rules of evidence. The accused is as sure, if blameless, of interfere with "political orders" of the kind, and there is acquittal as if he were an Englishman tried in England. But one precedent at least for extending them much farther, that all this should happen at all to a Guicowar ; that he should In 1858 Lord Canning tried the Emperor of Delhi, the be tried by Englishmen ; that one of his Judges should be heir of Timour himself, who certainly was neither rebel Scindiah ; that Scindiah should be sitting as Commissioner of a nor subject in any just interpretation of either term, for Queen who never saw Hindostan, where by deputy she is exer- the murder of English ladies, and but for the unauthorised cising the supreme right of life and death over Sovereigns; guarantee given to the Emperor by Captain Hodson, sen- that the Court of lawyers, Princes, and Premiers should be so tones of death would, it is well known, have been carried irregular that no full precedent exists for its creation, yet so just out. As it was, the Emperor was condemned as an ordinary that it is worth while to pay thousands for the pleading of an
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