THE INDIAN STATES ig

States formed alliance with the Company by treaties and
others secured their position by some form of engagement
granted to them. By the middle of the nineteenth century
all these States had to recognize the Company as the Para-
mount Power and sought to defend their independence in
internal affairs over which the Company had no right to
intervene. After the Mutiny, when the Company's govern-
ment was transferred to the Crown by the Act of 1858, the
position of the States was made clear by the Proclamation
of the Queen :

" We hereby announce to the Native Princes of India
that all treaties or engagements made with them by or under
the authority of the Honourable the East India Company
are by us accepted and will be scrupulously maintained,
and we look for the like observance on their part."

In matters of status, relations with the Paramount Power
and administrative efficiency, there is a considerable variation
among the States. They are generally governed by the
absolute will of their Princes, subject to the degrees of internal
sovereignty conceded to them by treaties and engagements
with the Paramount Power. The policy of the British
Government towards the States is of non-interference in
their internal administration ; but, since the beginning of
the nineteenth century " it became the universal principle
of public policy/' writes Sir Alfred Lyall, {< that every State
in India should make over the control of its foreign relations
to the British Government, should submit all external
disputes to British arbitration, and should defer to British
advice regarding internal management so far as might be
necessary to cure disorders or scandalous misrule. A British
Resident was appointed to the Courts of all the greater
Princes as the agency for the exercise of these high functions;
while the subsidiary forces and the contingents furnished
by the States placed the supreme military command every-
where under British direction/'*

1 " British Dominion in India/* by Sir Alfred Lyall.