differentiation, poetry, or common sense. Indian writers pay no true homage to the valour of Rajasthan, and no just tribute to the pity of its fate, when they represent its people as demigods with the minds of savage children. It was this idealisation of Udaipur that made the efforts of the British Government to extirpate suttee in native States so slow in meeting with success. For, Whatever a Hindoo knows of chivalry or nationality he deems to be exemplified in this model race. Since, therefore, Rajpoots were renowned for the frequency of their suttees, the great independent States thought it beneath their orthodoxy to return any other answer to the remonstrances of the British Government against the rite than that " it would be time enough for them to prohibit it when Rajpootana led the way.' But, as in the years preceding Bentinck's action in British India, so in the Native States individual officers were sometimes able to do more than Government felt entitled to attempt. The first substantial Rajput success came at Jaipur. Major Ludlow, President of the Council of Regency, in the Maharaja's minority, first persuaded the Rajput States to abolish female infanticide; then, after long endeavour, his tact and personal popularity won the Jaipur Council over as to suttee also. Already, some of the powerful Jaipur nobles had suppressed it in their own territories; but his success with the Council took everybody by surprise. Lord Hardinge, the Governor-General, notified the prohibition in the Gazette (September 22, 1846), thanking Ludlow for his service. The example set by Jaipur, a State second only to Udaipur in influence, was quickly followed. Before Christmas, 1846, eleven of the eighteen Rajput States and five independent States outside Rajasthan forbade suttee. Kotah suppressed it in March, 1847, and Jodhpur in the time of Hardinge's successor, Dalhousie. If the honour of the abolition within British India is Bentinck's, that of the final suppression in Native States is Dalhousie's. Though practically no promises were made in his time, he insisted that promises already made must be kept and those who broke them punished. The "Encyclopædia Britannica" says that in Native States "suttee he kept down with an iron hand."† *Bushby," Hindu Widow-Burning " (1855), p. 11. Like almost every statement on the subject, this needs qualification, which Dalhousie's own Minute of February 28, 1856 (par. 146), reviewing his administration, supplies : The prohibition of suttee by the British Government is now a familiar tale. In the time of those who preceded me, great progress had been made in persuading all native princes to unite in denouncing the rite, and in punishing those who should disregard the prohibition. The Government of India, since 1848, has had only to follow up the measures of preceding years. When suttee has occurred in an independent State, no opportunity of remonstrating has been lost. When it has occurred in any district which was within our control, no indulgence has been shown to the culprits. Thus, renewed remonstrances have been addressed to Ulwar, Beeckaneer, and Oodeypore; but in Doongurpore, a British State under our direct management, where a thakoor's son took part in a suttee, the son and a Brahmin who abetted his crime were condemned to imprisonment for three years in irons; while the thakoor himself, for the same three years, was mulcted in half the revenue of his possession. The performance of suttee is now a rare occurrence. Whatever assurance Dalhousie may have thought he had obtained from Udaipur, after he had gone the State swung back, and in 1861 Maharana Sarup Singh's funeral was disgraced by the murder of a slave-girl. More than thirty years had passed since suttee had been made illegal in British India, and eighteen since slavery had been abolished. As the last suttee at the funeral of a reigning chief of protected India, the Udaipur one deserves that we should read of it in a nearly contemporary official document: After the demise of the last Maharana of Udaipur, the first Hindu prince of India, the acknowledged head of the Rajputs, and the ruler of a principality wherein ancient customs and usages are cherished more religiously than perhaps in any other State, each wife was successively asked to preserve the honour of the Sesodia tribe, the chief of which had never burnt alone. One and all most positively declined, and a favourite slave girl was then appealed to by her brother. In speaking to the wretched girl, he dwelt strongly upon the fact that all the late chief's lawfully-married queens had refused to preserve the honour of the house; and that the greater credit would redound upon her, were she prepared to set an example of devotion to those who so wilfully declined to evince any themselves; that their perversity, in short, had afforded her an opportunity to earn a world-wide reputation for fidelity, which it were madness to neglect. His arguments prevailed. . . . The royal corpse, dressed up in regal attire, was conveyed from the palace to the burning place (called the Mahasati) in a species of sedan-chair; the funeral procession, composed of all loyal subjects of the State, one and all, high and low, even the successor to the throne, proceeded the whole distance on foot; one alone in this vast multitude was allowed to ride, and she had but a short time to live. Mounted on a gorgeously caparisoned horse, herself richly attired as for a festive occasion, literally covered with jewels and costly ornaments; her hair loose and in disorder; her whole countenance wild with the excitement of the scene and the intoxicating effects of the drugs she had swallowed, she issued forth with the body. As customary on such occasions, the victim, as the procession moved on, unclasped the ornaments with which she was profusely decorated, and flung them to the right and to the left amongst the crowd. On reaching the Mahasati, in a space enclosed by tent walls, the corpse was unrobed, and the slave girl seating herself with the head of the lifeless body in her lap was built up, as it were, with wood steeped in oil. The kanats, or canvas walls, were then removed, and the pyre lighted; and as the flame shot up bright and fierce, the crowd around raised a great clamour, which lasted until the dreadful scene was over.. Shocking as this sati was felt to be, the fact that every wife had, for the first time in the annals of Mewar, declined to die on such an occasion, cannot but react favourably on the feelings and sentiments of other Rajput families.* The Mutiny was one of those rare episodes that are not only impressive in themselves, but mark the end of an era. It left the native chieftains dependent on the paramount Power as they had never been before no longer princes, but at best barons. Those that kept their status were those that had shown themselves friendly to the British Raj: their salutes were augmented, but no additional ceremonial could hide the fact that their real importance was diminished. Inevitably, popular sympathy had been with the insurgents, and those chieftains who had helped the British were aware that they were out of favour with their countrymen, even with their own subjects. They had to draw closer to the Protecting Power, and in subtle ways this sense of dependence moulded even their deepest and oldest prejudices. They could not ignore the strong feeling of the British Government, even in such an immemorial custom as suttee. The Udaipur suttee of 1861 was an isolated instance—the last legal one. It was possible, partly because during the Mutiny Udaipur, by giving asylum to British families, established a claim on the gratitude of the Supreme Government, partly because the State was in a condition almost of anarchy, in which old traditions alone were powerful and no one could be made responsible. ** Report on the Political Administration of Rajputana, 1865-7," by Colonel W. F. Eden, Agent of the Governor-General. Between 1860 and 1862, the British Government overhauled its relations with the Native States: sanads were given, guaranteeing and defining the status of each, and engagements were taken. The lesser States renewed their promises to prohibit suttee; and, though such a promise was not required explicitly from the greater States, we may assume that it was understood between the contracting parties that suttee was to cease. Sarup Singh was succeeded in Udaipur by a minor, and the real power rested with the Political Agent, who proceeded to introduce many reforms and to pull the State out of its long-continued anarchy. The revenues were managed so economically that when the Rana took over the government in November, 1865, there was a balance in the treasury; life and property were made secure, and the law courts overhauled. We are justified, then, in taking 1862 as the approximate date when suttee became illegal in Rajasthan, and in States where it had fallen into desuetude, Kashmir, Bhopal, and Bhurtpur. It became "illegal" in this sense, that the paramount Power would not have tolerated its continued existence; and it ceased, because Rajput ladies refused to mount the pyre. The story of the suppression of suttee in Native States is one of the minor stories of Indian history, and one that has never been told, partly because the Imperial Government keeps its correspondence with the greater States strictly secret and the tale of what happened is scattered over many hundreds of memoirs, district gazetteers, and contemporary newspapers, most of which have long ago perished and survive only in some quoted scrap. The story has not the obvious importance that attaches to that of a great campaign in the field; but I think that there is no story that more clearly brings out the watchfulness and courage that were required, in the thirty years during which British officers, bound by their instructions-which were rarely exceeded, and then only for such terrible reason as Erskine had at Ahmadnagar— not to go beyond verbal and diplomatic protest, slowly and patiently persuaded princes to abandon their most cherished honour. If the British Government was needlessly timid in prohibiting suttee in British India and unnecessarily delayed this act of humanity, it made amends in the following thirty years by the persistence with which it took its opportunities in the Native States. The story is one that in all its details is entirely creditable both to the Government and to its officers. EDWARD THOMPSON I. 2. SOCIETY AND POLITICS The Life of Sir W. Harcourt. By A. G. GARDINER. Constable. 1923. 3. Fifty Years of Parliament. By the EARL OF OXFORD AND ASQUITH. Cassell. 4. 1926. The Two-Party System in English Political History (Romanes Lecture). 5. Disraeli. By D. L. MURRAY. Ernest Benn. 1927. THE "HE most momentous fact in the political history of Great Britain since the war is the disappearance, or practical disappearance, of the Liberal party. Of the two great parties which, since the Revolution of 1688, have directed the destinies of England, one now scarcely exists. That is a development which people as a whole have taken calmly enough, but which, to historians, must always be of tremendous significance. Lecky, in his " History of England in the Eighteenth Century," has an interesting passage in which he proves that the Liberal party, as it was when he wrote of it in the latter part of the nineteenth century, was simply the historic Whig party under another name. It was to this party or "connection" that the English people since the Revolution of 1688, on the whole, steadily adhered. To the Tory or Conservative connection the people periodically returned for brilliant intervals, attracted by some commanding personality such as Pitt, Peel, Disraeli or Salisbury. But the Whigs had a record of steadier ascendancy. Strongly based upon " borough interest," the possession of ample wealth and broad acres, the great Whig families held the destiny of England in their hands, at any rate down to the accession of George III. Under Pitt and Canning the Tories became supreme; but the Reform Act of 1832 restored the ascendancy of the Whigs, who gradually came to be known as the Liberal Party; and although the powerful genius of Peel gave the Tories or Conservatives another fruitful turn in office, the "split " over the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 gave the Whigs commanding majorities again for nearly twenty years. Indeed, except for Disraeli's last ministry, the Liberals were almost continuously |