The Sun.
London, England, 1849-05-03 00:00:00

THE RAJA OF SATTARA.
There has been a ballot at the India House—a ballot
not about a personal question, net about an election to a
vacancy in the direction, not even about a piece of job •
bery --41 ballot, too, not detnanded by the proprietors of
India stock in defence of their 10 per cent.; not called
for by that earnest and sincere friend of India, Sir
Charles Forbes ; not insisted on by that .naughty,
pertinacious fellow, Mr. George Thompson; but a ballot
on a question 'of principle, on a subject of surpassing
interest to every Ilindoo prince and native ally in India
—a ballot required by Sir Archibald Galloway, chairman
of the court, and by certain of the court of directors, to
protect themselves from a numerical defeat; to inter-
pose the ignorance of the absent proprietors against
the knowledge of those present at Wednesday and Fri-
day's debates; to save the Government of India from the
censure and condemnation which then threatened it.
And this appeal from knowledge to ignorance has suc-
ceeded to the wish of those who had recourse to it.
The determination of Mr. Holt Mackenzie, Mr. Sulli-
liven, and the able participators in their opinions, to ar-
rest, if possible, the determination of the Indian Ge-
vernment to overthrow a great rule of Ilindoo succession,
and a great principle of Hindoo religion, for the pur-
pose of absorbing territory and gainirg revenue, has
raised a question tin which every man of property in
India, whether of the Hindoo or Mahomedan faith, is
deeply concerned. The subject has, however, come
so suddenly on the public; that the press was quite
unprepared to report the debates at the India House.
The discussion was thought to be only an obstinate
repetition of the old Sattara question; on which we are
bored to death. And the consequence is, that though
the debate on one side was conducted with ability un-
rivalled in the arena of the Court of Proprietors, and by
men of the highest authority on all Indian matters;
though it exhibited a deep schism in the Court of Di-
rectors, and left the majority of that Court in a nume-
rical minority in the more popular assembly, neither we h
nor any of our contemporarres eve given the faintest
notion of what was occurring in Leadenhall-street on
Wednesday and Friday last. The debate will, however,
be published separately; and thus a record of the trans-
action will be preserved for the instruction of our pos-
terity, even if the lesson should be lost on ourselves.

Pertaub
eshaeauekThrse
tnitchhabohe:iwhanboarsnvrasusocobtibl
thjrnveeeeegreuchnpntot,
odhwr
ltoeeihrwrefi
esyat
mttltoeohuetonrres
doitiatifroscndcepdehoToobsarihrpari
eteoadi eyykcne,
jtemoeudnarfeson,
troodbi
fuctuoesrhttt
jo,ohfosoffhof
former
ohmutwohwi
cbsheecejriedvecsltecehsarprt
oet
,soeraoisotnAi
treatment
pteott
itphhnni
aaeeet,
ballot, arise out of the Sattara case, about which so
of these last descendants of Sevajee. They flow, indeed,
from these transactions, but they relate to a point even
more important than any before raised. And it is quite
possible for a man who viewed favourably the conduct of
the Indian Government in deposing Pertaub Singh, to
regard with indignation and disgust the policy it is
now pursuing, in seizing on the Sattara state.
Both Pertaub Singh, the deposed Raja of Sattara, and
Appa Sahib, the substituted Raja, are now deceased.
One brother died in exile at Benares, where his family
languish in poverty; the other in his palace in the capi-
tal of his dominions. Both departed childless-, but both
followed the custom of their race and the dictates of
their religion—for each adopted an heir to light his
funeral pile, and to succeed to his inheritance. Was it
then a contest between these rival heirs on which the
Court of Proprietors was called to give an opinion by
ballot? Nothing of the sort. The Government of India
has equally disregarded the rights of either, and has
consigned both to obscurity by proclaiming itself heir to
the Sattara dynasty. And the question for decision was
its power and the policy of doing this.
By the Hon. Mountstuart Elphinstone's treaty, which
re-constituted the Sattara state, after the downfal of
the Peishwa and surrender of Pertaub Singh to the
British troops during the battle of Ashtee, that state
was made over to Pertaub Singh, his heirs and succes-
sors from generation to generation. The words of the
treaty did not confine the succession to his lineal heirs:
they left the succession upon the rules of Ilindoo law;
amthey
hto
sacredrrietys voeodvotroridtheeorßsreittitshhomGoayseidrne.meNntownoooreigohftthoor
the absence of lineal heirs. It is a power as well recog-
nisede of those rules is the power of adoption in
rt
amongst Hindoos, be they princes or ryots, as
the right of the eldest son in England to succeed to
tisapow
bye
Ilindooh e fee simple
r
t deceasedes t tt tae s f
Ilindoo
wa tel r I
as
authorisedle a
ve an heir
lineal or adopted, to fire his funeral pile, his religion as-
signs to him additional punishment and purification in
another world. So indispensable, indeed, is its exercise
dictatedt b
law; for ouf Ilindoo
his
religions
s
in a religious point of view, that, though the British Re-
sident at Sattara had always objected to Appa Sahib
adopting an heir, the religious scruples of that Prince
compelled him on his death-bed to disregard those ob-
jectione, and to send for a child distantly connected with
his femily, and from poverty ho presented the infant to
his courtiers as his heir; and by the lad his funeral obse-
quies were performed. Up to the period of that Prince's
decease, this power of adoption by Ilindoo Rajas had
been undisputed by the British Government; and their
adopted heirs succeeded to the musnud as quietly and
ordered as their lineal or collateral descendants.
It is now, for the first time since we acquired an em-
pire in India, disregarded and set aside. In spite of Lord
Cornwallis' law, which binds us to the consequences of
Hindoo rules and of the Ilindoo faith, Lord Dalhousie
has advocated the disinheritance of both the adopted
sons, and the Board of Control and a majority of the
Court of Directors have confirmed his sentence of ex-
clusion. In spite of Mr. Elphinstone's treaty, guaran-
teeing the Sattaist state to the heirs and successors of
Pertaub Singh, it has been annexed to our dominions.
asguailiniartan this, andvioltahteioirn it
A principle of Hindoo law, most sacred, and of univer-
sal application, has thus been violated by the British,
and isthat
slplrolotaiDelda:
thoughke nz i e
for the present in vain. friends,
Mr.
It was in vain Sir Archibald Galloway argued
in his written oration that there was justification
for the violation in the treaty itself, that he de
scended to assert that the British Government was not
bound by the Mabratta version of that treaty • that he
quibbled like an Old Baileylawyer " from
on the words
generation to generation,' as if that form of expression
required lineal succession. Not all the special pleading
in Westminster-hall can rail away the words " heirs and
successors" in the treaty; can get rid of the right of
Iliadoo adoption in the absence of lineal heirs; can
conceal the intentions of the Indian Government to
absorb and annex native state after native state as
excuse affords an opportunity. All the weight of Indian
practice and all the pressure of Indian authority were
opposed to his idle reasoning. The old servants of the
Indian Government rushed to town from their rural re-
tirements to protest against this violation of native
rights; and Mr. Holt Mackenzie, in a speech of irre-
sistible power, demolished all the flimsy pretences on
which it has been abused.
The British author of the treaty, Mr. Elphinstone, and
its British ratifier, Captain Duff Grant, are still alive,
to be appealed to as to its meaning. Yet, though the
Court of Directors has been entreated to procure their
opinion as to its meaning, they have not dared to ask it.
For ten years have all these distressing questions rela:
tire to the Sattara state been. ending; counsel aon ad
vice have the Court of Directors and the Board f' d
most
Con-
trol sought from all quarters except
fromterenthce those
has been
competent to advise and direct them.
Re
made to every one but Mr. Elphinstone and Captain Duff
Grant ; and in this omission wo have some clue to the
spirit and intentions that have moved the Indian Govern-
meat.
that we may learn the motive
It is from this last step
of the first. The extinction of Sattara as a state is but
the complement of the deposition of Pertaub Singh. It
is, however, a measure which may rouse the remaining
natiee Princes to a sense of the dangerons tenure by
which they preserve the remnants of their power, and
which may tench the people of India the unscruptilous
'aithlessness of the British Government, when their ex-

istence impedes its designs. Lord Dalhousie has re-
corded in a formal minute the anxiety of the Indian Go-
vernment to absorb their sovereignties and to annex
their territories as time and opportunity may serve. And
the extinction of Sattara as a state will show them the
means by which this end is to be gained. The majority
for the Directors on the ballot, gained by a muster of
subservient voters and unscrupulous finesse, cannot
finally settle so important a question. The Directors
have not yet heard the last of it.—Daily News.

A BALLOT AT THE INDIA HOUSE.
TO TUE EDITOR OF THE DAILY NEWS.
Sir,—A ballot was taken this day at the India House.
You may not be incurious to know how this kind of
thing is managed in Leadenhalstreet, and what it there
means.
One side of an inner room is partitioned off by a bar,
behind which are three tables; the centre one is occupied
by two directors, having each a balloting urn before
him, the table on each side by two or three clerks, who
write down the balloter's name, and by cne clerk who
administers the usual declaration to him previous to his
balloting.
A proprietor coming to vote naturally goes up to the
directors' table, upon which are, or ought to be depo-
sited the ballot papers, having printed upon them the
words " for the motion" or " against the motion." No
were to-day standing close to the table in question when
a proprietor approached. Before he had time to utter a
ord he was thus apostrophised by the clerk, the worthy
who administers the declaration, " Are you come, Sir,
to support the Court?" (meaning, of course, the Court of
Directors.) This was said not only authoritatively,
but pointedly and offensively, in the very hearing of one
of the directors, who is placed there ostoisibly to :ice
that the balloting is fairly and impartially conducted; it
indicated, as plainly as words so delivered could, that, if
the proprietors did not come "to support the Court,"
his presence the] e was an intrusion. So much so for the
spirit of this ballot. To understand why certain direc-
tors, headed by Mr. Charles Mills, called for it, your
readers should know that, at an ordinary Court, each
proprietor of East India stock has only one vote when
the Court proceeds to a division ui'on any resolution be-
i maye enables him or
fore it; but at a ballot he is one gentleman or lady rolled
isnestosestwaos,
mtlairneye,vootresfoausrh, ass or th
her
e casestock he, and pos.
her to hold. This is what the directors call '° taking the
sense of the propriotors," and this is the outrage upon
common decency which, under the guile of a public