They are all too proud for manual labour, even at the plough. No
Bundelkhand Rajput will, I believe, condescend to put his hand to
one.
Among the Maratha states, Sikhs, and Muhammadans, there is no bond of
union of this kind. The establishments, military as well as civil,
are everywhere among them composed for the most part of foreigners;
and the landed interests under such Governments would dread nothing
from the prospect of a transfer to our rule; on the contrary, they
and the mass of the people would almost everywhere hail it as a
blessing.
There are two reasons why we should leave these small native states
under their own chiefs, even when the claim to the succession is
feeble or defective; first, because it tends to relieve the minds of
other native chiefs from the apprehension, already too prevalent
among them, that we desire by degrees to absorb them all, because we
think our government would do better for the people; and secondly,
because, by leaving them as a contrast, we afford to the people of
India the opportunity of observing the superior advantages of our
rule.
'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,' in governments as well
as in landscapes; and if the people of India, instead of the living
proofs of what perilous things native governments, whether Hindoo or
Muhammadan, are in reality, were acquainted with nothing but such
pictures of them as are to be found in their histories and in the
imaginations of their priests and learned men (who lose much of their
influence and importance under our rule), they would certainly, with
proneness like theirs to delight in the marvellous, be far from
satisfied, as they now are, that they never had a government so good
as ours, and that they never could hope for another so good, were
ours removed.
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