of Shah Allum and his impoverished court; the object of the unexpected deposit being manifestly to elude the well-earned claims of the conquerors. The sum in dispute was accordingly distributed among the troops; but in consideration of the distressed condition of the old emperor, instructions were issued to pay into the royal treasury the sum of six lacks of rupees, with the view of providing for the immediate wants of his Majesty. Owing, however, to the pressing exigencies of the public service, funds could not be collected until 1807, when the whole amount was discharged at one

payment. Shah Allum no longer survived to experience the benefit of this generosity, his troubles having ceased in December 1806: the sum was, in consequence, paid into the treasury of his successor, Acber the Second, to whom it was not unacceptable.

Soon after the surrender of Delhi, the Maharatta sway being completely destroyed in Upper Hindostan by a series of discomfitures, the Bengal government proceeded to make arrangements for the support of their blind protegé, and, as a commencement, restored to the royal family all the houses, gardens, and lands, of which they had been deprived by the Maharattas, and which, from the increased scarcity of property, soon became of great value. It was also determined that a specified proportion of the territories in the vicinity of Delhi, situated on the right bank of the Jumna, should be assigned in part of the provision for the maintenance of the royal family; these lands to remain under the charge of the resident at Delhi, but the revenue to be collected, and justice to be administered, in the name of his Majesty Shah Allum, under regulations to be promulgated by the supreme government: That his Majesty should be permitted to appoint a dewan, and other inferior officers, to attend at the office of the collector, for the purpose of ascertaining and reporting to his Majesty the amount of the collections, and satisfying his mind that no part of the revenue of the assigned territory was misappropriated: That two courts of justice should be established, for the distribution of civil and criminal justice, according to the Mahommedan law, to the inhabitants of the city of Delhi and the

assigned territory: That no sentences of the criminal court, extending to the punishment of death, should be carried into execution without the express sanction of his Majesty, to whom the proceedings in all trials of this description were to be reported; and that sentences of mutilation should be commuted: That, to provide for the immediate wants of his Majesty and the royal household, the following sums should be paid in money from the treasury of the resident at Delhi:

Rupees, per month. To his Majesty, for his private expenses, 60,000 To the heir apparent, exclusive of certain roa favourite son of his Majesty, named jaghires,

Mirza Izzit Baksh,

To his Majesty's 50 younger sons and

daughters,

To Shah Nawauz Khan, his Majesty's treasurer,

To Seid Rizzee Khan, British agent at his Majesty's court, and related to him by marriage,

Total per mensem,

10,000

5,000

10,000

2,500

2,500 90,000

£125,280 per annuin.

To be afterwards augmented to one lack of rupees per month, if the produce of the assigned lands admitted of it-exclusive of all the private property, and of 10,000 rupees to be paid to his Majesty on the celebration of certain festivals.

The most urgent wants of the aged monarch and his family being supplied, various municipal improvements were effected, some of the canals were cleaned, the principal streets cleared of rubbish, and an efficient police established. The punishment of mutilation was abolished in this and in all the territories adjacent subject to the British jurisdiction, and a regulation was enacted, directing, that when a person, by the Mahommedan law, was condemned to lose two limbs, the decree should be commuted to imprisonment and hard labour for a term of fourteen years; and if one limb, the same for seven years. The frequent assassinations which were customary during the Maharatta administration were effectually suppressed, more by the institution of regular courts, to which persons aggrieved could appeal, than by any extension of the penal code, or sanguinary examples; the long suspension of justice having in a manner compelled the inhabitants to take the law into their own hands, and to seek redress by poison and the dagger.

In thus protecting the person and

increasing the comforts of the blind and despised Mogul emperor, it was never intended by the British government to employ the royal prerogative as an instrument to establish any control over the different states and chief tains of India. An object of importance was attained by his rescue from the custody of the French and Maharattas, who made use of his name to sanction their machinations for the subversion of the British dominion in Hindostan, and retained, in the most degraded condition of poverty and insult, this unhappy representative of the house of Timour. The most rational course appeared to be, to leave the king's authority exactly in the state in which it was found, and to afford the royal family the means of subsistence, not merely in a style of comfort, but of decent splendour, not unsuitable to a fallen but illustrious race, to whose power the British nation had in a great measure succeeded.

From this period (September 1803) the tranquillity of Delhi remained undisturbed, until 1801, when Holcar, who was retreating from Mathura before Lord Lake, sent his infantry, provided with a formidable train of artillery, to invest the city; and the siege was accordingly commenced on the 7th day of that month. Owing to a variety of pressing exigencies in other quarters, the garrison was at this time not only too small for the defence of so immense a city (the walls of which, besides their great extent, were accessible on all sides), but extremely faulty in its composition, consisting partly of 300 Mewaties, robbers by profession, and of a body of irregular horse, whose fidelity could not be relied on. The Mewaties justified their character, by going over to the enemy at an early stage of the siege; and the irregular horse fled on the approach of the enemy, and could not be prevailed on to impede his advance by an attack while on the march. The enemy, a few days afterwards, having opened their batteries, and several breaches being effected, as much by the concussion of the guns on the crumbling ramparts, as by their shot, an attempt was made to carry the place by escalade, in which they were repulsed; and soon after the guns were spiked in their batteries, during a sortie, by a detachment under Lieutenant Rose. Finding they had mis

calculated the facility of gaining the town, they moved off on the 15th, although they had prepared three mines laid under the bastions between the Turkoman and Ajmeer gates, one of them pushed directly under the bastion, and ready to be loaded. In this manner, by the judicious arrangements of Colonels Burn and Ochterlony, and the determined resistance of their troops, a small force was enabled to sustain a siege of nine days, repelled an assault, and defended a city ten miles in circumference, which had ever heretofore been given up on the first appearance of an enemy.

The siege of his capital by a rapacious enemy was viewed by the aged sovereign with the characteristic apathy of a person whose life had been a succession of vicissitudes; nor did the danger to which they were exposed in the slightest degree animate the inhabitants. Like Hudibras in the stocks, they seemed to think, that he that is down can fall no lower, and waited the event as indifferent spectators. Shah Allum also probably foresaw, that in whichever way it might end, his interest in the drama would not be of long continuance, as his health had been gradually declining, and his advanced age precluded all hopes of a protracted existence. Accordingly it came to a close in December 1806, when he finished, in his eighty-third year, a long and calamitous reign of forty-five years; and on the same day his eldest legitimate son, Acber, was placed on the throne. In happier times Shah Allum might have been a beneficent sovereign; but his abilities, or perhaps any human abilities, were unequal to the task of retrieving the fortunes of that tottering dynasty he fell with a falling state, and appears neither to have retarded nor accelerated the impetus of the descent.

The accession of Acber the Second wss marked by the most unexampled tranquillity, the commencement of every prior reign having been invariably stained with bloodshed, and disturbed with tumult and commotion. Of this prince nothing very brilliant was anticipated, as, during his father's life, he had been for many years entirely under the guidance of a woman of low extraction, weak, proud, ignorant, and of insatiable rapacity. The peculiarities of his destiny, however, did not call for the exertion of any

transcendent energies-as he was protected by the British power from external invasion; for his internal comforts a large stipend had been assigned; and from within the extensive walls of his seraglio, where his sway was not questioned, he might apparently, like the gods of Epicurus, or the inhabitants of the happy valley, have viewed with indifference the passing events of an agitated world, enjoying, in all its perfection, leisure and a large pension. But of all institutions ever invented by the ingenuity of man for the promotion of his own misery, a seraglio appears to be the most efficacious; as the materials of which it is composed, consisting of wives, concubines, slave-girls, eunuchs, poets, musicians, singing and dancing boys and girls, dealers in sweetmeats, venders of opium and perfumes, tumblers, snakedancers, barbers, nail-cutters, hairextirpators, and shampooers, are certainly the best adapted for producing the greatest quantity of discord from the smallest causes. As might be expected in a community so constituted, the buzz and ferment are incessant; discordant interests, low amours, petty intrigues, plots, and squabbles, lies, messages, notes, and whispers, keep up the combustion, while the intervention of the anarch old, by his decision, more embroils the fray.

Being entirely under the influence of such advisers, Acber the Second had scarcely ascended the throne, when he commenced a series of intrigues, with the view of effecting the exclusion of his eldest son (to whom he had taken a most preposterous aversion), from the succession, and of procuring the sanction of the British government to the nomination of his fourth and favourite son, Jehandar Shah, as Wulli Ahud, or heir apparent. The causes of the different princes were supported by parties within the walls of the palace; and the most contemptible acts of meanness and absurdity were practised by the different factions. The cause of the legitimate heir, however, was fast declining, owing to the unnatural hatred of his father; and he was described to the British functionaries at the court of Delhi as an idiot, who, so far from being equal to the government of an empire, was scarcely able to perform the commonest offices for himself, and in intellect little superior to the brute creation. Nor

could these strong assertions be controverted, as, owing to the complete state of seclusion in which he had been retained by his father, his character was wholly unknown, while the mind of the infatuated sovereign, naturally weak, was perplexed by the artifices of his servants, among whom no honest man could remain without external support. Being entirely ignorant, also, of his relative situation to the British government, he persevered in his determination to alter the line of the succession, notwithstanding the reiterated remonstrances of the resident, who soon found that the effect of the kindness of the British government was quite destroyed by the impositions practised on him by his family and attendants, each of whom claimed the merit of accomplishing every object which the British administration acquiesced in.

The operation of this intestine war at length reached beyond the walls of the seraglio, and threatened to disturb the peace of the metropolis. The Emperor, after several preliminary steps, proceeded to the extremity of openly proclaiming his fourth son, Jehandar Shah, heir apparent, to the exclusion of his eldest son, under the pretext, that he was disqualified for such an elevation, by the weakness of his intellects, not reflecting that the same allegation, if listened to, might have precluded his own accession. In this emergency, the interposition of the British government became necessary, and the resident at Delhi was accordingly directed to institute an investigation regarding the sanity or derangement of the legitimate successor. The result proved highly favourable, as, on examination, he was found to possess a perfectly sound, although not very capacious mind-a mind certainly fully equal to that of his worthy parent, or to the transaction of any affairs to which his fortune seemed ever likely to destine him. This fact being established, his Majesty was informed, that it was an invariable maxim of British policy, never to pass over the next in succession and lawful claimant to the throne, unless circumstances were so strongly against him as to shut out all hopes of amendment or improvement: That in the present case, no such urgency existed, as the heir apparent's mind seemed quite ade quate to his duties, and that the e

which would originate from an irregular succession were too great to permit so momentous a deviation, merely for the possible benefit to be derived from a successor of greater abilities. Nor could any thing very satisfactory be expected from the conduct of such a sovereign as his favourite Jehandar Shah, whose youth, and whatever abilities he possessed, had been directed to the base purpose of supplanting his eldest brother. To prevent the repetition of the miserable artifices which had so long distracted the interior of the seraglio, and now threatened the capital with commotion, Jehandar Shah was ordered to take up his future residence at Allahabad, there to remain under the supervision of the judge and magistrate.

Acber the second reluctantly acquiesced in what he could not prevent, and shrunk into the recesses of his seraglio. But it soon appeared that he was not the only discontented person within the royal precincts; for in 1809 the brothers of the king represented to Lord Minto, then governorgeneral, and ex officio the arbiter elegantiarum of the palace, the severe restraints under which they were kept by his Majesty, being deprived of their arms, horses, and equipage, and not permitted to take the slightest recreation, or to pass the gates of the royal residence. This harsh treatment was attributed to the influence of Boodsua Begum, the king's mother, who, accustomed to the forms that had subsisted during the reign of Shah Allam, could not be prevailed on to depart from them, alleging their great antiquity, and the number of centuries during which they had regulated the etiquette of the Mogul court. Nor probably, in more tempestuous times, would these relations of his Majesty have wished for greater liberty, as they would have been inevitably involved in the intrigues of the factions that agitate all oriental courts, and have become objects of distrust and jealousy to the reigning prince, whose suspicions would have consigned them to a closer prison, or expedited their final exit. Within the last half century, great alteration has taken place in the peculiar feelings of the higher classes of natives, who used formerly to consider seclusion as essential to their dignity and safety; but since the establishment of the British judicial sys

tem, and the consequent individual security which they have experienced, imprisonment for life does not now excite the same degree of admiration. Of this change, in process of time the female portion of the population will also feel the benefit, as in all probability they were originally doomed to strict seclusion, only from the absence of efficient laws to protect them from violence, if exposed to public notice.

In consequence of this appeal from the royal brothers, the governor-general was induced to proffer his kind offices, and a reconciliation, at least in appearance, was effected in this disunited family. The Emperor's brothers were permitted to attend his Majesty during the customary religious processions and ceremonies, and also at certain festivals to visit the tomb of their father, a gratification from which they had been hitherto debarred, and for the recovery of which they expressed the utmost gratitude to the mediator.

The mortifications which the Delhi sovereign experienced from these petty alterations, were qualified to a certain degree in 1807, by the donation of the six lacks of rupees already mentioned, and in 1812 by the augmentation of his stipend to one lack of rupees (£11600) per month, the prosperous. state of the assigned territories fully admitting of this augmentation. On their acquisition in 1803, they were leased on a triennial settlement, and the first year they yielded only 353,952 rupees (£41,058); the second 390,701 rupees; and the third 432,432 rupees; but so rapidly did a few years of tranquillity and good government ameliorate the condition of the cultivators, and the productive powers of lands, that

In 181 2 they yielded 994,944 rupees. 1,039,560 1,256,505

1813

1814

(£145,754.)

and the revenue was not only sufficient to defray the expences of the royal family, but also to leave a considerable surplus applicable to general purposes. Within the assigned territories are several jaghires, the principal holders of which are the Nabob Bhamboo Khan, the Nabob Nijabut Ali Khan, and the Seik chiefs Bhang, Singh, and others; a further increase of revenue may therefore be expected on the falling in of these by the decease of the existing incumbents, besides what may be anticipated to arise

on the reconstruction of the Nuhri Fyz, or canal of bounty.

Nor did the ancient and venerable capital experience less benefit from the transfer than the surrounding territory, although the effects were not so quickly perceptible, and although no improved system of government could at once compensate for the absence of a splendid and luxurious court, which in India will always collect a population, and create a city, as if by enchantment. Notwithstanding its great antiquity, and the long period of time during which it has ranked as the first city of Hindostan, there is nothing in the situation of Delhi peculiarly attractive, the adjacent soil being rather of a sterile than fruitful description, and the river not navigable during the dry season for boats of any considerable burthen. Under these disadvantages, however, it had become a city of great fame and magnitude prior to the Mahommedan invasion, when it was distinguished in the Hindoo books of history, or rather Mythology, by the appellation of Indraprest; but it never appears to have had the same sanctity of character in popular estimation as Mathura and Kanoje. In 1011 it was taken and sacked by Sultan Mahmood of Ghizni; but it did not become the permanent residence of a Mussulmaun dynasty until A. D. 1193, since which date, with the exception of a short interval during the reign of Acber I., when the royal court was removed to Agra, it has continued to be the metropolis of Hindostan.

According to popular tradition, during its splendid era, Delhi covered a space twenty miles in circumference; and its ruins still occupy that surface, although its present walls cannot be reckoned at more than ten miles in compass. Ever since the death of Aurengzebe in 1707, the population has been decreasing, and it received a serious blow in 1739, during the invasion of Nadir Shah, who massacred 100,000 of the inhabitants; nor was it likely to recover during the state of anarchy which subsisted in Upper Hindostan from that period until the British conquest in 1803. Under the Sindia family its decline was uninterrupted, every year exhibiting some palace newly dilapidated, or some street choked up with rubbish or jungle. In fact, the decay was so rapid, and apparently so hopeless, that

VOL. IV.

the land within the walls became of little or no value to the owners, who carelessly disposed of their rights for any trifle of ready money, and frequently to escape extortion, left their properties unclaimed altogether. Of this supineness they had subsequently cause to repent; for no sooner had the city surrendered to Lord Lake, than the value of houses and lands within the walls instantaneously doubled, and it has been progressively increasing ever since.

Among the most magnificent and useful memorials of the taste and splendour of the Emperor Shah Jehan remaining at Delhi, is the well belonging to the Jamma Musjeed (mosque), which was excavated at an immense expense out of the solid rock on which that edifice stands. The water is raised by a complicated machinery, and a succession of reservoirs, to the area of the mosque, where, at the top of a grand flight of steps, it fills a small fish-pond; it is of great utility to all ranks of persons, but more especially to the Mahommedans in performing their prescribed ablutions. For many years the decayed state of some of the principal wheels, and the ruinous condition of the masonry, rendered the supply of water both difficult to be procured, and extremely scanty. At length, in 1809, it completely failed, and the consequences during the intensity of the hot season were extremely distressing to the inhabitants, and excited considerable interest in the mind of the Emperor. Under these circumstances, Mr Seton, the resident at Delhi, conceiving that the repair of the well, at the expence of the British government, would be highly gratifying to the inhabitants, authorised its being put in a state of repair, and the expense incurred was sanctioned by the governor-general.

Many other repairs and improvements of a similar description were gradually carried into execution; but much remains still to be done, especially the renewal of the great canal, excavated in the reign of Shah Jehan, by Ali Mordan Khan, a Persian nobleman, which is now choked up as useless. In the reconstruction of this, the credit of the British government is implicated, and the augmented fertility of the tract it intersects would more than compensate for the expenditure. There is no region in Hindostan su

R