What then was the scope and extent of application which Canning in action was prepared to give to this policy?  Here is the important question, and it is not altogether an easy one to answer.  For like most wise administrators, Canning dealt with the concrete rather than the abstract, and it would not be difficult to cull from his decisions sentiments and sentences which seem to clash.  When you meet with an individual ruling which appears not to tally with what you have assumed to be his general principles, you say it is ‘unnatural.’  This is one way out of the difficulty.  But is it the right way?  My own opinion is, that Canning never intended to let the chiefs get the bit into their mouths, or to lose his hold over them.  It is true that he rode them with a loose rein, but the pace was so killing during the whole of his time, that it took the kick out of them, and a light hand and silken thread were all that was required.  His policy of deference to the authority of native chiefs was a means to an end, the end being the establishment of the British Raj in India; and when the means and the end came into conflict, or seemed likely to do so, the former went to the wall.  Even in the case of the chieftainship of Amjherra, he looked, as the Yankees say, ‘ugly,’ when Scindiah, having got what he wanted, showed a disposition to withhold the grants to loyal individuals which he had volunteered to make from the revenues of the chieftainship.  It is true that the ostensible ground of Canning’s dissatisfaction was the violation of a promise, but what title had he to claim this promise, or to exact its fulfilment, if the escheat belonged as of right to Scindiah?  Again, when I came to this country, I found that he was walking pretty smartly into a parcel of people in Central India who were getting up a little rebellion on their own account, a tempest in a teapot, not against us, but against their own native rulers.  In this instance he interfered, no doubt, as head policeman and conservator of the peace of all India.  But observe, if we lay down the rule that we will scrupulously respect the right of the chiefs to do wrong, and resolutely suppress all attempts of their subjects to redress their wrongs by violence, which, in the absence of help from us, is the only redress open to them, we may find perhaps that it may carry us somewhat far—­possibly to annexation—­the very bugbear from which we are seeking to escape.  Holkar, for instance, unless common fame traduces him, has rather an itching for what Mr. Laing calls ‘hard rupees.’  His subjects and dependents have decided, and not altogether unintelligible, objections to certain methods which he adopts for indulging this propensity.  When they—­those of them more especially who have Treaty claims to our protection, come to us to complain, and to ask our help—­are we to say to them:—­’We have too much respect for Holkar’s independence to interfere.  Bight or wrong you had better book up, for we are bound to keep the peace, and we shall certainly be down upon you if you kick up a row’?  In the anomalous position which we occupy in India, it is surely necessary to propound with caution doctrines which, logically applied, land us in such dilemmas.

[Sidenote:  Problems for a time of peace.]