Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v3.c41.s2.4

v3.c41.s2.4

Hesitation to accept the Treaty.—Various considerations combined to check the ardour with which we naturally expected our offer of protection would be embraced. The Jaipur court retained a lively, but no grateful remembrance, of the solemn obligations we contracted with her in 1803, and the facility with which we extricated ourselves from them when expediency demanded, whilst we vainly attempted to throw the blame of violating the treaty upon our ally. To use the words of one who has been mixed up with all the political transactions of that eventful period, with reference to the letter delivered by the envoy at the Jaipur court from our viceroy in the East, notifying the dissolution of the alliance: “The justice of these grounds was warmly disputed by the court, which, under a lively sense of that imminent danger to which it had become exposed from this measure, almost forgot for a moment the temper and respect which it owed to the English nation.” But the native envoy from Jaipur, attending the camp of the gallant Lake, took a still higher tone, and with a manly indignation observed, that " this was the first time, since the English government was established in India, that it had been known to make its faith subservient to its convenience ": a reproach the more bitter and unpalatable from its truth.¹