But this amendment was not to be. The Native Council of Management went on with its work of improvement and reform. The Chief held himself sullenly aloof, and sank deeper and deeper into the slough of evil habits, until he died, a worn-out old man of twenty-nine, in 1874. This was the most serious case of Native misrule during Lord Mayo's Viceroyalty, and the only one in which he had to push interference to the point of superseding the hereditary Prince. Another instance of mal-administration was visited with a severe rebuke, which the Chief resented, and refused to take his proper place at a Viceregal darbar in the seat below the head of the ancient Udaipur house. The offender was promptly ordered to quit British territory in {111} disgrace, and was further punished by having his salute reduced from seventeen to fifteen guns. It is only fair to the Indian Feudatories to state, that against these examples of misrule many instances could be cited of wise government and a high sense of duty. Lord Mayo gathered round him a circle of Chiefs whose character he personally admired, and in whose administration he took a well-founded pride. Of such territories, Bhopal may serve as an illustration. It is one of the Feudatory States of Central India which exercise sovereign powers over their own subjects: has an area of 6764 square miles, a population of 663,656 souls, and yields a revenue to its Chief of 240,000 pounds a year. Its army, besides a British Contingent which the Chief was bound to maintain by the treaty of 1818, amounted to 4000 men. The State of Bhopal was founded in 1723 by an Afghan adventurer, who expelled the Hindu Chiefs, built a fortress, and assumed the title of Nawab. In 1778, when a British army under General Goddard marched through Central India, Bhopal stood forward as the one State friendly to our power. The Maratha aggressions of the early part of the present century compelled it, like many other Indian States, to seek English aid. In 1819 it acknowledged the supremacy of our Government, was received under the British protection, and was rewarded by some valuable districts which we had won from the Marathas. The Mutiny of 1857 found Bhopal under the government of a {112} lady, the celebrated Sikandar Begam, whose wise administration had raised her State to a high rank among the Indian Feudatories. For her loyal services at that juncture she was created a Grand Commander of the Star of India, and dying in 1868, left her territory to a daughter worthy of her blood.