was as nothing to it.  His executions were completed in twelve hours.  But for months after the last fall of Delhi, no one was sure of his own life or of that of the being dearest to him for an hour.’  The natives not unnaturally looked with gratitude to the man who alone had the will and power to put an arrest on this course of proceeding, and to prevent its extension all over the land.  No doubt, as I have said, Canning earned a substantial claim to the gratitude of the native chiefs by adopting a more liberal and considerate policy towards them than that pursued by his predecessor.  It was perhaps not surprising that he should have done so.  Situated as we are in this country—­a small minority ruling a vast population that differs from us in blood, civilisation, colour and religion, monopolising in our own territories all positions of high dignity and emolument, and exercising even over States ostensibly independent a paramount authority—­it is manifest that the question of how we ought to treat that class of natives who consider that they have a natural right to be leaders of men and to occupy the first places in India, must always be one of special difficulty.  If you attempt to crush all superiorities, you unite the native populations in a homogeneous mass against you.  If you foster pride of rank and position, you encourage pretensions which you cannot gratify, partly because you dare not abdicate your own functions as a paramount power, and, partly, because you cannot control the arrogance of your subjects of the dominant race.  Scindiah and Holkar are faithful to us just in proportion as they are weak, and conscious that they require our aid to support them against their own subjects or neighbours:  and among the bitterest of our foes during the Mutiny were natives who had been courted in England....  Canning saw the evils which the crushing policy of his predecessor was entailing, and he reversed it.  It was a happily timed change of policy.  The rebellion broke out while it was yet recent; and no doubt, the hopes and gratification inspired by it had their effect in inducing a certain number of chiefs to pause and to require more conclusive proof that the British Raj was to kick the beam, before they cast their weight into the opposite scale of the balance.

After the rebellion was suppressed, the inducement to persevere in this line of policy was still more stringent.  To grant to native Potentates who were trembling in their shoes, and ready to receive the boon on any terms which you might prescribe, the reversion of States which had become vacant because you had, of your own authority and mere motion, hanged their chiefs, and declared them to be escheated, was a wise, a graceful, and under the circumstances a perfectly safe policy.  The same may be said of the measures taken to put the talookdars of Oude on their legs, and which were preceded by the confiscation of all their properties.  I believe that this policy, like the policy of Clemency, was sound and right in principle; but in forming a just estimate of its success and of its applicability to all seasons and emergencies, it is necessary to take into account the specialities of the time to which I have referred.

[Sidenote:  (3) Assertion of British sovereignty.]