Our own impression is that neither view is correct.  It was too much the habit of English politicians to take it for granted that there was in India a known and definite constitution by which questions of this kind were to be decided.  The truth is that, during the interval which elapsed between the fall of the house of Tamerlane and the establishment of the British ascendency, there was no such constitution.  The old order of things had passed away; the new order of things was not yet formed.  All was transition, confusion, obscurity.  Everybody kept his head as he best might, and scrambled for whatever he could get.  There have been similar seasons in Europe.  The time of the dissolution of the Carlovingian empire is an instance.  Who would think of seriously discussing the question, what extent of pecuniary aid and of obedience Hugh Capet had constitutional right to demand from the Duke of Brittany or the Duke of Normandy?  The words “constitutional right” had, in that state of society, no meaning.  If Hugh Capet laid hands on all the possessions of the Duke of Normandy, this might be unjust and immoral; but it would not be illegal, in the sense in which the ordinances of Charles the Tenth were illegal.  If, on the other hand, the Duke of Normandy made war on Hugh Capet, this might be unjust and immoral; but it would not be illegal, in the sense in which the expedition of Prince Louis Bonaparte was illegal.

Very similar to this was the state of India sixty years ago.  Of the existing governments not a single one could lay claim to legitimacy, or could plead any other title than recent occupation.  There was scarcely a province in which the real sovereignty and the nominal sovereignty were not disjoined.  Titles and forms were still retained which implied that the heir of Tamerlane was an absolute ruler, and that the Nabobs of the provinces were his lieutenants.  In reality, he was a captive.  The Nabobs were in some places independent princes.  In other places, as in Bengal and the Carnatic, they had, like their master, become mere phantoms, and the Company was supreme.  Among the Mahrattas, again, the heir of Sevajee still kept the title of Rajah; but he was a prisoner, and his prime minister, the Peshwa, had become the hereditary chief of the state.  The Peshwa, in his turn, was fast sinking into the same degraded situation into which he had reduced the Rajah.  It was, we believe, impossible to find, from the Himalayas to Mysore, a single government which was once a government de facto and a government de jure, which possessed the physical means of making itself feared by its neighbours and subjects, and which had at the same time the authority derived from law and long prescription.