Mughal Administration c13.s5.5

c13.s5.5

The political effect of the escheat system was most disastrous. It prevented India from having one of the strongest safeguards of public liberty and checks on royal autocracy, namely, an independent hereditary peerage, whose position and wealth did not depend on the king's favour in every generation, and who could, therefore, afford to be bold in their criticism of the royal caprice and their opposition to the royal tyranny. It also made the Mughal nobility a selfish band, prompt in deserting to the winning side in every war of succession or foreign invasion, because they knew that their lands and even personal property were not legally assured to them, but depended solely on the pleasure of the king *de facto*. A baronage like that which extorted Magna Carta from King John, or cheerfully courted exile, confiscation and even death under the banners of King Charles I, was impossible in the Mughal empire. Mediæval India had no independent nobility or trading class to act as a barrier between the Emperor at the top of society and the poor peasants and common people at the bottom. Such a Government is most unstable and unsound, from the political and economic points of view alike.