British India 1600-1828

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111 140

THE ENGLISH

BRITISH INDIA

1600-1828

BY

A. WYATT TILBY

BOSTON ANP NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
1912

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

THE whole of this volume has been carefully revised for

reprinting. In the first part the alterations are only

t
verbal ; but two new chapters on the last Maratha War

and the Ocean Highway of Britain have been added
towards the end, and the whole of the last Book has
been recast and in part rewritten.

A. WTATT TILBT.

HOW-STEAK, CAMBRIDGE ROAD,
WIMBLEDON, September 1910.

CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION v

BOOK VI
THE EUROPEAN INVASION OF ASIA : 1498-1757

OH A P.

i. THE UNDISCOVERED ORIENT 1

ii. INDIA 4

in. THE ENGLISH EAST INDIA COMPANY: 1600-1700 . . 21

iv. THE STRUGGLE FOR INDIA : 1700-57 40

BOOK VII
THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA : 1757-1828

i. CLIVE AND His POLICY : 1757-67 77

ii. WARREN HASTINGS: 1767-85 93

in. PARLIAMENT AND THE EAST INDIA COMPANY : 1772-98 . 133

iv. THE FORWARD POLICY : 1798-1805 156

v. THE LAST MARATHA WAR : 1805-28 .... 179

BOOK VIII

THE END OF THE WORLD-STRUGGLE : 1789-1815 *

i. THE UNITED KINGDOM 205

u. THE EUROPEAN WAR : 1793-1814 229

in. ENGLAND TRIUMPHANT AT SEA : 1793-1815 . . . 239

iv. THE OCEAN HIGHWAY OF BRITAIN 243

v. THE FINAL BECKONING : 1815 280

vii

THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

BOOK VI

THE EUROPEAN INVASION OF ASIA :
1498-1757

CHAPTER I
THE UNDISCOVERED ORIENT

To the Grecian and Roman world Asia was little more than
a name. The cities of Asia Minor were indeed linked with
the civilised states that had sprung up around the Mediter-
ranean. The expedition of Alexander the Great had made
a temporary bridge between East and West. The products
of China were transported slowly by adventurous merchants
to the marts of Europe. The artistic wares of India were
carried equally slowly by raft and boat across the ocean to
Suez, or by lagging caravan overland through Persia to
Damascus. And the students of Athens and Rome had some
rudimentary ideas of oriental geography, which their maps
and manuscripts have preserved. But to the Greek the
world was Greece and barbarism; to the Roman the
world was Rome, and again barbarism. To the north of
the Alps they knew of great cold lands inhabited by
savages. In Africa, to the south of the few Latin cities
that modern discoverers have disinterred, they knew of
great hot lands, mostly desert, inhabited by wander-
ing negro tribes that were hardly human to the cultured
European. To the west the Atlantic rolled unexplored,

VOL. II. A

2 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

and the Pillars of Hercules were the gates of the world
and the limit of human knowledge. To the east, beyond
Asia Minor, the same cloud of mystery hung, and the great
continent was peopled only by the imagination of poets and
the speculations of philosophers, both equally fantastic.
There lay the civilisation of China, where a unique form of
human life was evolved ; the only unchanging, undestroyed
civilisation that the world has seen. There lay Japan, where
institutions curiously analogous to those of feudal Europe
were developed centuries before knight and squire and lady
stood for the chivalry of the West. There lay Tibet, the
sacred home of the world's greatest religion; and to the
south lay India, whose people, though still Asiatics, were separ-
ated from the rest of Asia by an almost impassable barrier.
But the empires, the arts, the literatures, and the philo-
sophies of the East were unknown in ancient Europe ; and
Asia likewise continued its tranquil, passive way, ignorant
of the subtle Greek and the forceful Eoman. It was very
gradually that knowledge came. European travellers pene-
trated to the East but seldom, and those who returned filled
their narratives chiefly with accounts of ' the anthropophagi
and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders/
The Middle Ages saw little change from older times. Only
Marco Polo can be said to have brought back any real in-
formation from the Orient ; and even that accurate explorer
was often misinformed. The other writers on Asiatic
matters are sufficiently characterised by Sir John Mande-
ville, the best known to English readers, and the most
popular author of his time. 1 But his book, fuU of childish
fables and astounding adventures as it is, was less extra-

1 Whoever wrote the work which goes by th name of the worthy
knight, and which is now known to be a forgery, he was at least an
entertaining liar. I can hardly say so much for the other travellers of
the time, who are generally as dnll as they are inaccurate. An exception
may perhaps be made in favour of one Friar Jordan, a fourteenth-century
author, the more intimate details of whose descriptions might well have
caused some scandal among his clerical brethren*

THE EUROPEAN INVASION OF ASIA 3

ordinary than others on the same subject. Whoever peruses
the lengthy collections of mediaeval voyages that repose in
our libraries, may indeed gain much curious insight into the
state of ignorance that then prevailed in Europe; but he
will assuredly find little trustworthy information about Asia.

Nevertheless the very mystery which hung over the Orient
made it the more attractive. Its unknown riches were the
theme of many a poem and many a wild romance. The
great Musalman kingdoms of the East were regarded with
awe. The culture of Bagdad was justly celebrated in the
West. Palestine was the land of God, the Holy Land ; and
when it fell before Isldm, it became the one desire of Christen-
dom to restore the sacred soil to the true faith.

Then for the second time Europe and Asia met in arms.
But the Crusaders achieved no real success ; and two cen-
turies of warfare with the Saracens left the opponents as
they had begun. There was no sign whatever of any European
superiority ; on the contrary, the Christians had learnt much
from the opponents whose religion they hated, and whose
strength they feared. At one time, in fact, it seemed that
Europe was fated to fall before the onward march of Asia ;
and the close of the Middle Ages saw the Byzantine Empire
in the hands of the Turks. Constantinople still remains
largely oriental in character, as the European capital of an
essentially Asiatic state ; but all danger of another Musal-
man invasion died away soon after its fall in 1453. And the
first success of the Portuguese in India a few years later
were the beginning of European dominion in the East.

Enmity between the two continents was instinctive and
inevitable, as a matter of race and creed, and the terror that
springs from ignorance.

We look back to-day on the history of Asia as on a volume
in an unknown tongue. We turn its pages industriously, but
its significance we fail to realise. It is only a sentence here
and there that we can understand. To the world at large

4 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS

there is no Asiatic history, save in the conquests of alien
nations ; to the student there is also no Asiatic history, but
in another sense. The field is too great for generalisation.
There is no Asiatic thought ; there is no Asiatic character ;
there is no Asiatic religion. The differences between civilisa-
tions are matters of race, not of continents ; and there is no
one Asiatic race. There is as much distinction between
Chinaman and Hindu as between aboriginal American and
aboriginal African. There can be no Asiatic synthesis.
The contrasts of Asia are not the contrasts of Europe. The
Spaniard and the Saxon, the Teuton and the Gaul have
developed in varying directions, but they have many points
in common ; the radical differences between Mongol and
Hindu come in an altogether different category.

CHAPTER II

INDIA

THE English East India Company was founded on 31st Decem-
ber 1600. The first Dutch voyages to the East had begun
a few years before; the Dutch East India Company was
founded a few years later. The first French East .India
Company was formed in 1604 ; the first Danish Company
in 1612. The Portuguese had already been trading regularly
for a century in the eastern seas ; a German corporation was
likewise formed a century later. And between these six
nations of Europe the prize of Indian commerce was dis-
puted for over two hundred years, until it ultimately rested
in the hands of the English.

The purpose of all save the Portuguese was at first trade,
not empire. The Europeans who came to the East held
generally but little communication with the natives. The
main reason for the existence of India, in the eyes of the

THE EUROPEAN INVASION OF ASIA 5

merchant, was the enriching of the West, and particularly
of his own country, or the commercial corporation by which
he was employed. The standpoint of the missionary, if higher,
was in one sense scarcely more useful. Looking on the millions
of Asiatics with pity, as lost souls doomed to eternal tor-
tures, he laid down his life in the heroic attempt to draw a
few fish into the net of salvation. 1

But merchant and missionary alike, proud in the superiority
of the true civilisation and the true religion, had little sym-
pathy with the people by whom they were surrounded. They
were generally ignorant of the languages of India. The exist-
ence of a literature and philosophy rivalling those of Europe
was not suspected; indeed they could not be, guarded as
they were by jealous care by the Indians themselves. And
to the European, the religion of the Hindu was not merely
false ; it was a contrivance of the devil to keep poor savages
from the true faith. Christianity recognised in Mohammedanism
an old foe ; in the various forms of Hinduism it saw nothing
but a debased superstition. The modes of life and national
customs which had grown slowly during thirty centuries
were not understood. The art of the East, which delighted
to decorate with lavish hand what nature had so lavishly
given, was stigmatised as barbaric. The architecture of
India, differing fundamentally alike from the sombre, mystic
Gothic and the proudly pure renascence styles of Europe,
was necessarily condemned by critics who could see beauty
only in the buildings with which they were familiar.

To men such as these, it is little wonder that the East
remained a sealed book. And the Indians themselves kept
aloof from the invader. They, too, had the same pride of

1 The Portuguese evangelists followed hard on the steps of the
explorers ; but the first English missionaries did not appear in India
until early in the nineteenth century. Lord Minto, who was then
Governor-General, complained that they denounced 'hell fire and still
hotter fire ' against all who were not of their way of thinking. He was
forced to euro their activities to preserve the public peace.

6 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

race that animated the European. They, too, were satisfied
with their own civilisation. Trained in the placid school
of the East and enervated by a tropical climate, they looked
with some contempt on the strenuous life of the Western,
who seemed satisfied to spend his energies solely in the acquire-
ment of wealth.

But the true meaning of European influence in India can-
not be understood without looking back to a time when no
Primeval European had set foot there ; when in fact there
India. were no Europeans as we now know them even
in Europe, but only those aboriginal tribes whose rude
remains still excite the curiosity of the antiquary. To under-
stand anything of the social and religious phenomena that
have played so great a part in Indian life and the annals of
British India, it is necessary to turn to the origin of Indian
history, some two thousand years before the Christian era
began.

The then possessors of that vast peninsula were rough
tribes, who were still in the nomadic state which marks man's
first advance above the beasts that roam in the forest. Each
preyed on the other ; and the rude instruments of primitive
man perhaps equalised the superior strength of the animal.
To raise the corn that had become a necessary of life, a method
pathetic in its simplicity was used. The ground was burnt
bare, seed was thrown on the fertile soil ; and a good crop
soon rewarded the exertions of the primitive farmer. When
a further supply was needed, the tribe moved on to a fresh
abode ; the same process gave the same result ; and there
could be little reason for anxiety in that favoured land, where
nature rendered toil almost superfluous. But despite the
earthly paradise in which their lot had fallen, life can have
had few attractions to the ignorant savages. If nature had
given abundantly she had also cursed with no sparing hand.
Existence was rendered hazardous by wild beasts, by serpents,
by venomous insects, and by the deadly swamps engendered

THE EUKOPEAN INVASION OF ASIA 7

in the tropical vegetation. Exposed to peril on all sides, it
is little wonder that the aborigines believed the world to be
ruled by demons, and strove to propitiate their evil deities
by sacrifice. Eemains of these tribes survive to-day, in a
state scarcely better than that of their ancestors four thousand
years ago. The magnificent land they inhabited was worthy
of better men than these.

It is only with the immigration of the northern tribes that
Indian history begins, as European history begins, however
dimly, with the arrival of what seems to have Tlie
been another branch of the same great family. Northern
We can form some idea of their life in Central Invaders -
Asia before the great exodus ; but the life of the inferior
race they supplanted has gone into silence. There is no
record left of the half-formed, indistinct conceptions that
stood for thoughts to the first human dweller in India.
There is no echo more of his cry of anguish as he saw friend
or child carried off by beast of prey or mysterious fever ; his
terror, his offerings, his occasional wild outbursts of mad-
ness, when, impatient of the religious fetters his ignorance
had forged, he felt powerless to break them save by the
murder of himself and others ; all his petty life and struggles
have vanished before the onward march of a superior race.

The earliest known invasion of India lingers on the border-
land of history and imagination. What reasons impelled
the northerners to leave their old settlements, to seek a path
through the mountain fastnesses that guard the north of
India, what vague unrest drove them to find new homes,
we can only conjecture. But the struggle with the aboriginal
Indian tribes still lives obscurely in the hymns of the sacred
book of India, the Eig-Veda. The petitions for victory,
the songs of triumph for success hardly won, the lamenta-
tions over comrades fallen in the hour of peril, tell us
something of that primeval race-conflict. The commentators
of a later age have allegorised the tales of battle into spiritual

8 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

combats with those universal powers of the air that in every
religious system are so ready to lead men astray. But to
the poets who first framed their hymns, and to their first
hearers, dwellers both in a land not yet their own, threatened
still by danger from man and beast, they must have appealed
with awesome reality.

The Punjab was the first land occupied, and it became a
basis for all future conquest. Slowly the aborigines were
driven further and further downwards, overborne by the
greater intelligence and moral force of the newcomers. After
centuries of warfare, now grown very indistinct to a world
that has seen the same tragedy so often enacted, the invaders
became masters of India.

But a change had occurred in the course of the struggle.
The aborigines were no longer driven from the land. In
fact, they could not be ; for they had no further retreat
save the ocean, and they dared not adventure themselves
on what must have seemed the wastes of infinity. They
submitted perforce to the law of conquest; submissive
in fact but not in will, they still cherished in their hearts
a confused sense of injustice a feeling that ever and again
has broken out in passionate revolt against those iron
laws of nature which decree the subjection of the lower to
the higher man, the stagnant to the progressive.

Conqueror and conquered were destined to live together
for all time. India became a world apart. On two sides
of that enormous triangle the sea cut off communication
with other lands. On the third, the great mountain ranges
seemed an equally strong defence. Seldom indeed was the
barrier broken.

It is from the Rig- Veda, one of the earliest records extant
The Religion ^ an y branch of the human race, that we can
of the form some idea of the men who first conquered
Rig-veda. j n( jj a> jo ^em, living in a world of marvels,
a world whose course had not yet become tedious in the

THE EUKOPEAN INVASION OF ASIA 9

passing of many generations, all things appeared in wonder-
ment as to the poet. Looking on the ever-changing, ever-
changeless order of nature ; trying, as each generation that
is not blind tries, to understand something of the hidden
forces that animate river, mountain, tree or storm; still
endeavouring to read the great riddle, the why and where-
fore of human life ; reaching later the half-despairing, half-
rejected conclusion of its purposelessness ; forming uncon-
sciously the gods for their future generations to worship :
thus in the Kig-Veda lies the record of their early thought.
It is the key with which to unlock the ancient history of India.

The invaders of India had no settled theological system.
The stern caste customs which in later times confined learning
to the priests had not yet arisen. The head of the family, as in
all primitive nations, undertook the simple rites of worship for
his sons and dependants. The spirits of deceased ancestors,
who were believed to have returned beyond the mountains
to that forsaken fatherland of which some memory remained,
were often honoured. Many gods were evoked in prayer ;
it was natural to see beneficent deities in the river that brought
life and plenty to the parched land, in the majestic moun-
tains that were a protection against invasion, in the spread-
ing trees that offered shade. At times, indeed, came the
higher thought that the entire universe, both as a whole and
in its minutest parts, animate or inanimate, was pervaded
and governed by one great deity, united and indivisible.

But that idea has always proved too abstract and perhaps
too lofty for the crowd; and while in India it has been
worked out to its logical end by the esoteric schools, the
people at large have ever clung to the facile creed of Brah-
manism. Its many gods offer the worshipper much choice ;
its spiritual ideals have risen and fallen with the life of the
nation, reaching now into a lofty conception of humanity,
and anon sinking to a debasing superstition that can rever-
ence the self-inflicted tortures of the fakir.

10 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

But when the invaders made their first settlements in
India, there were no holy places that could draw, as now,
their thousands of pilgrims yearly. A people that can find
its gods in nature needs no temples. Before the develop-
ment of much that now seems most characteristic of Indian
Hfe, when the priests had not yet perfected the forms of
ritual, and caste had not yet crushed the individual, each
man could offer from his own house the sacrifice that pleased
him to the god that he had chosen for his personal protector.
And the passionate questionings that occur and recur in each
book of the Big- Veda show how far the poet-prophets who
formed it were from believing they had solved the riddles
that surrounded them. ' The stars up there that are seen
at night/ cries one, ' where do they hide in the day ? The
sun, not hanging on to anything, not made fast, how comes
it that he falls not from such height ? By whose guidance
does he travel ? "Who has seen it ? How great is the interval
that lies between the dawns that have arisen and those which
are yet to arise ? Of dawn and night, which of them is the
older and which the younger ? Who knows, ye sages ?
They carry between them all that exists, revolving on one
wheel. Where is the sun now ? Who knows it ? Over
which heaven do his rays extend ? What, indeed, was the
wood, what the tree, out of which they fashioned the heaven
and the earth? These two stand fast and grow not old
for ever, while many days and mornings pass away* Where
is the life, the blood, the self of the universe ? Who went to
ask of any who knew ? Not knowing, I go to ask of those who
know, that I may know, I who do not know : he who stretched
apart and established the six worlds in the form of the un-
born, did he also establish the seventh ? '

Such deep queries, now high in hope, at times give way to
despair. * You will never behold him who gave birth to
these things : something else it is that appears among you.
Wrapped in darkness and stammering, wander through life

THE EUKOPEAN INVASION OF ASIA 11

the singers of hymns/ The unread riddle reaches across the
gulf of time ; the helplessness of the first thinkers grappling
with the unseen is echoed by our own. 'Nor aught nor
aught existed then : not the aerial space, nor heaven's bright
woof above. What covered all ? "Where rested all ? Was
it water, the profound abyss ? Death was not then, nor
immobility ; there was no difference of day and night. That
One breathed breathless in Itself: and there was nothing
other than It. In the beginning there was darkness in dark-
ness enfolded, all was undistinguishable water. That One
which lay in the empty space, wrapped in nothingness, was
developed by the power of heat. Desire first arose in It
that was the primeval germ of mind, which poets, searching
with their intellects, discovered in their hearts to be the bond
between Being and Not-Being. The ray of light which
stretched across these worlds, did it come from below or from
above ? Then seeds were sown and mighty forces arose,
Nature beneath and Power and Will above/

But the singer knows no more ; and the enigma that can-
not be answered ends again in despair. e Who indeed knows ?
Who proclaimed it here ; whence, whence this creation was
produced ? The gods were later than its production who
knows whence it sprang? He from whom the creation
sprang, whether He made it or not, the All-Seer in the highest
heaven, He knows it or He does not/ The poet stops
abruptly. The terrible melancholy that could doubt whether
the great author of all Himself understood the work He
had made overwhelmed belief in the minor powers to
which man had learnt to cling. Sim, moon, and river
remained the deities of the people; but the thinker,
striving steadfastly for the origin of life itself, saw the
pettiness of the ideals that served the crowd. In baffled
ignorance he flung away all that before had satisfied;
and in one great negative turned hopeless from a problem
inexplicable to the sons of men.

12 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS

Sucli might be the higher thoughts of the inspired singer ;
but the people required a positive faith that allowed of spiritual
peace. The poet himself in quieter moments returned to
the older, lesser gods of nature; and could rejoice in the
beauty of form and colour that they renewed every day.
The sun was the impassioned wooer of the dawn; the
dawn a timid maiden fleeing from the embrace of a too
ardent lover. The sun again was the great protector and
father, rising in might to visit and comfort his children after
the terrors of darkness, conquering his enemies as he rose
higher, at last to sink in triumph, or it might be, in clouds
of defeat as his allotted time drew near. Agni, god of fire,
was the mysterious mortal brother of man, whose home was
the sun, the water and the plants, and whose parents were
two pieces of wood that he devoured at his birth.

But from the plea of remorseful agony uttered when the
unsolved mystery ever returned to perplex * Have mercy,
Almighty, have mercy ; let me not yet enter into the house
of clay; have mercy, Almighty, have mercy/ cries the
poet one sees dimly that the old faith was no longer
sufficient. Symbols that had been accepted without demur
in infancy became inadequate in the light of fuller knowledge.
And the nation lay in danger as the upheaval of thought be-
came more marked. The old road was henceforth impossible ;
but whither led the new ? Half-unconsciously and perhaps
not understanding the greatness of the thoughts working in
him, the poet sees the change. ' I now say farewell to the
father, the Asura ; I go from him to whom no sacrifices are
offered to him, to whom men sacrifice. In choosing Indra, I
give up the father, though I have lived many years in friend-
ship with him. Agni, Varuna, and Soma must give way,
the power goes to another : I see it come/ Encompassed
with mysteries, seeking the unknown God, discarding the old
creed as it became impossible, but stifl filled with sadness at
the loss of a lifelong friend, the poets groped towards the new,

THE EUROPEAN INVASION OF ASIA 13

real truth that should bring peace to themselves and to their
people.

In this change of belief we first mark the change of life that
has made India what it is. With the settlement of the nation
the time had ceased when each family was all-
sufficing and independent. The specialisation of
labour had begun ; and with the separation of man from
man as their work set them in different stations in the eyes of
the world lay the first sign of the caste. That system sprang
from the same root that brought forth mediaeval feudalism
in Europe ; from the absolute necessity of an orderly succes-
sion of degrees in the general working of the state. The
first castes rose naturally in India, as the organisation of
the people became more complex; and these primitive
social divisions were such as can be seen at some period in
almost every country.

In the great Brahmanic code, the Laws of Manu of a later
date, the principles regulating the castes are laid down. ' To
Brahmans (the priests) he (Brahma) assigned teaching and
studying the Veda, sacrificing for their own benefit ; for
others, the giving and accepting of alms. The Kshatriya
(warrior) he commanded to protect the people, to bestow
gifts, to offer sacrifice, to study the Veda, and to abstain
from attaching himself to sensual pleasure. To Vaishya
(the working class) to tend cattle, to bestow gifts, to offer
sacrifices, to study the Veda, to trade, to lend money, and
to cultivate land. One occupation the Lord prescribed to
the Shudra, to serve meekly the other three castes/ In
these few words we find the basis on which India has been
founded, and on which its social scheme of life has been
governed for more than twenty centuries. While the less
steadfast western world has its customs which vary with
every generation and with every kingdom, its philosophers
who represent every shade of thought from anarchy to
despotism, its empires that have been founded on religion,

14 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

on freedom, on revolution, or on mere brute force: the
unchanging course of life in India has flowed on from genera-
tion to generation through the same channels. The brief
revolt of Buddha appears now but as an episode in such
stupendous annals: and save for the elaboration of the
system, the world has not altered in the East, from the age
of Socrates to the age of Herbert Spencer.

' The duty of Brahmans is to teach and to study the Veda/
declares the code. The sacred books were collected and
systematised ; the worship which each man had freely given
as his heart moved him was now decked with an elaborate
ritual, performed only by professional priests. They taught,
they investigated science and doctrine ; they made the laws ;
in their caste was concentrated the intellectual life of the land.
They were not backward in asserting their power in the great
code of Manu, which they originated. ' A Brahman coming
into existence is born as the highest on earth, the lord of all
created beings, for the protection of the treasury of the law.
Whatever exists in the world is the property of the Brahman ;
on account of the excellence of his origin, the Brahman is
indeed entitled to it all. The Brahman eats but his own
food, wears but his own apparel, bestows but his own in alms ;
other mortals subsist but through the benevolence of the
Brahman. Know that a Brahman of ten years and a Ksha-
triya of a hundred years stand to each other in the relation
of father and son ; but between these two the Brahman is
the father. A Brahman, be he ignorant or learned, is a great
divinity. Though Brahmans employ themselves in all kinds
of mean occupations, they must be honoured in every way :
for each of them is a very great deity/ Such was the
orthodox doctrine, the ideal of unlimited power; but it
was modified as necessity occasionally dictated. 'Ksha-
triyas prosper not without Brahmans; Brahmans prosper
not without Kshatriyas. Brahmans and Kshatriyas, being
closely united, prosper both in this world and the next/ An

THE EUROPEAN INVASION OF ASIA 15

alliance between moral and material force seems sometimes
to have been necessary ; nor is it only in the East that the
priests and warriors have found interests in common.

The third class, the Vaishya, were the bulk of the people.
Commerce and agriculture were in their hands : the day-
labour, honourable, and in those fertile territories then not
hard, belonged to them. But the division between trade
and trade, which developed with appalling nicety in after
centuries until every occupation to the very thieves and
beggars formed a caste, had not yet taken place. The
later and more minute classification, logically sequent as it
was on the first division in the Laws of Manu, was part of
the order-loving method to which India clung. The trade
guilds of mediaeval Europe, the trade unions of modern
industrial life, offer but a faint comparison to the hereditary
castes of India. Even the Venetian glass-blowers, the most
exclusive of all Western societies, must hide its diminished
head before the least important of its Hindu rivals..

The fourth caste that the great code recognised was the
Shudra. * One occupation the Lord prescribed to the Shudra
to serve meekly the other three castes/ Strictly speaking,
they were of no caste. They had no rights. Their highest
aspiration could be but to serve their superiors. All others
were twice born, as the mystic doctrine of the East laid down :
they alone were not. Esteemed lower than the domestic
animals which the Hindu of caste held as friends, as pro-
tectors, and later as gods, the casteless man stood without
the pale of humanity. None of the proud twice-born would
hold communication with the Shudra. The very drinking-
vessel from which he quenched his thirst was defiled. Has
touch was contamination. He alone, of all the things that
God had made, was accursed. The twice-born lost his caste
if he had sinned ; he could be degraded to the level of the
Shudra ; but never could Shudxa rise from slavery and con-
tempt. The sadness of their fate and the drear monotony

16 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

of their life runs like a dark thread of tragedy through all the
history of India. To be casteless is to be hopeless. But it is
not in the literature of the land that we may look for their
cry of misery, uttered or unuttered, that went up from
generation to generation. Learning lay in the hands of
the Brahmans alone ; and they, busied with their schemes
of a perfect life and an ideal philosophy, had no more
interest in the Shudra than a modern sweater or rack-rent
proprietor has in the wretched beings from whom he gains
his wealth.

It was as a protest against this injustice, and against the
growing ceremonialism of religion and the power of the priest-
hood, that Buddhism found its strength. The
life of Buddha throws the soft light of mercy
over the gloomy record of the time ; and later generations,
with a loving recognition of the human sympathy that he
helped to bring back to earth, have surrounded his career
with poetic legends that still teach their own lesson.

Siddartha, the founder of Buddhism, was a king's son.
He was born close to Nepal, in Northern India, where the
snowy bosoms of the Himalayas seem to touch the skies.
Prodigies attended his birth ; and all the portents declared
that the new prince should be a great conqueror. This
was perhaps no more than was proclaimed by courtiers
as' the future lot of every prince of every royal house ;
but the father of Siddartha had visions of prostrate peoples
and captive monarchs that should bow before Ms son's
strong arm. Later ages have remembered in another way
the victory of the Prince of the Great Renunciation.

As he grew, all that the heart of man could desire was
his. Sensual luxury and refined art, the most attractive
that the age could boast, were poured out before him.
But he was not happy. The palace seemed a prison ; and
a vague consciousness of misery without, in the unknown
world that lay around, troubled the gentle heart.

THE EUKOPEAtf INVASION OF ASIA 17

The beauty of the legend that tells of his discovery of
pain and suffering has immortalised it. When the king
his father permitted him to come forth to see his subjects,
a proclamation was made that all should be happiness among
the people. The blind, the old, the maimed, the halt
and lame must remain within; only the young and hale
might come to rejoice before the prince who honoured
them.

The day arrived : and as Siddartha rode in triumph, all
indeed seemed bright. He too rejoiced; the misgivings
that had troubled him faded. He had watched the per-
petual war of beast against beast in jungle, lake, or forest ;
and had wondered as he saw the cruelty of slaughter hidden
beneath the fair face of nature. But to mankind at least
the gods had granted happiness.

He was quickly undeceived as an aged cripple groped his
way across the street, begging an alms. The misery that
could not be hid woke the prince from his dream of pleasure.
He returned home sick at heart. e I have seen that I did
not think to see/ He could not be comforted as he thought
of the sad fate that drew weak and strong alike to the same
dark ending.

The very joy that his coming had brought to the people
was not a part of their daily life ; and he determined to see
that life as it was lived on ordinary days, when no royal
proclamation bade them rejoice. He wandered disguised
and unknown through the city, seeing the common round
of joy and sorrow that changes little from one generation
to another. The pains of birth, the pains of death, the many
pains that lie between, were spread before the prince ; and
more saddened than before, the tranquil ease of his own
existence appealed no longer to him. The wife he had
chosen, the luxury that surrounded him, brought no comfort
to the prince who thought ever of the misery without the
palace.

VOL. II. B

18 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS

It was then that Siddartha renounced the glory to which
he had been born, and wandered forth to beg his bread with
the meanest ; hoping to find in meditation some solution of
the dark mystery of life. Six years he pondered ; but no
clue came to the riddle of the waste, the futility of life itself,
so constant in its misery, so transient in its joy.

The legends tell of the deep humility, the broad humanity
he showed. A casteless man lamented that he could not
give him milk ; the touch of the Shudra was accursed. The
reply was full of pity for the slave that his fathers had made.
' Pity and need make all flesh kin. There is no caste in
blood. "Who doeth right deeds is twice-born, and who doeth
ill deeds vile/

The doctrine of caste that was eating like a canker into
Indian life was confronted by the doctrine of equality, of a
caste that could only be recognised as a man's work was
good or evil. Full of pity for the weak, denouncing those
whose wrong causes suffering, Siddartha found in the
mystical doctrine of transmigration, of continual promo-
tion or degradation in each successive existence, the solution
of his problem : until, as life after life was passed on higher
and higher plane, the perfect soul that had struggled free
from the world's shadows could find peace at last in absorp-
tion with the infinite Nirvana.

Such principles as these struck at the heart of Brahmanism.
The struggle between the two religions became long and
ardent. The priests of the older dispensation were forced
to adopt some of the tenets of their rivals ; and the merciful
humanity of the great prince softened a little for a time the
rigid doctrines that had enslaved India. But the compro-
mise proved fatal to Buddhism, as it weakened the popular
resistance to Brahmanism ; and it passed away from the land
of its birth to other parts of Asia, where the gentle creed has
brought peace to millions, as Buddhism still remains numeri-
cally the greatest of the religions of mankind.

THE EUROPEAN INVASION OF ASIA 19

But whatever relief it brought to China and Japan, in
India the iron bands of caste again descended on the Hindus.
The growth of observances and ceremonies increased un-
checked, as ignorance and superstition descended on the
people ; and the terrible rite of widow-burning, introduced
through a mistaken reading of a text in the Rig- Veda, is but
the most notorious instance of many which might be
adduced to show the degradation of India.

In the older days, the Upanishad, the books of Brahmanical
philosophy, had indicated how high the ideal of life could
rise. Certain sacramental rites ushered a new- T n e
born son into the world* At any time between ffpaaisbad.
seven and eleven years of age, when the little mind-
atom had enlarged itself somewhat above mere wonder-
ment, and had akeady accumulated the first few ele-
mentary facts of life, the child was sent from home to be
educated. Returning after some twelve years, his own true
life began. He was married ; and with ritual and sacri-
fice and such daily work as was necessary, the wedded life
passed as happily as might be. With the birth of the first
grandchild his duty to the world was done. He retired into
the forest to a contemplative life that was but a prepara-
tion for his end. Ritual and ceremony for him were no more ;
he had passed through the stage when they were necessary :
and in the more advanced philosophy to which he had
attained, their utter uselessness and even detrimental effect
were recognised.

The last retirement was still admitted by the Laws of
Manu; but as the Hindus sank from the former standard
it was afterwards abolished; and there is a world of sig-
nificance in the fact. The old ideals were slowly pass-
ing; and to replace them, came the worship of cow and
monkey.

In all but material arts the nation seemed dead. Their
craftsmen could still weave the wonderful fabrics that moved

20 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

the astonishment and envy of Europe. Palace after palace
was built with oriental profusion ; the workers toiled
lovingly then as now, at dainty trifles still inimitable by the
rougher hand of the West. But no new teacher came, whose
higher thoughts should lead to new endeavours for the holy
life ; no great poet lived again among the people, to echo
back new Vedas to his brethren of the past ; no second
Buddha came, when the message of the first had been driven
out to other lands.

And meanwhile the distinction between esoteric and
exoteric, that has more or less characterised all religions,
but especially those of the East, became more strongly
marked. The Brahman, proud of his creed, his philosophy,
his purity, lived apart ; taking little thought for those whom
he no longer recognised as fellow-men. The Kshatriya, con-
fident in their privileges as warriors, passed their days also ;
and when the hour of reckoning came, they were weighed
in the balance and found wanting. For the Mughal and
Mohammedan descended on India, and the stronger sons
of war founded their kingdom among a nation they dispos-
sessed and despised, even as the Hindus had conquered and
despised those whom they had found in the land centuries
before.

Still, however, the life of the village communities went on
much as of old. The tides of war and victory rolled past
and were exhausted in the struggle ; but famine, plague,
and savage beast were worse enemies, and brought more
terror to the lower castes. Saint or pilgrim came or
went ; fakir and devotee begged and showed their useless
wounds; generation after generation of caste and no-caste
travelled alike into the great unknown ; and the tradition
of the blessed abode behind the northern mountains from
which their ancestors had sprung yet lingered among the
people.

THE EUROPEAN INVASION OF ASIA 21

CHAPTER III
THE ENGLISH EAST INDIA COMPANY: 1600-1700 *

ALTHOUGH there is an untrustworthy tradition that an
Englishman travelled to the Far East early in the ninth
century, the first of our countrymen who is known actually
to have set foot in India, is one Thomas Stevens, a Jesuit
who landed at the Portuguese settlement of Goa in the year
1579. The letters which he sent home contained little that
was remarkable, or that could not have been gathered from
other sources ; but they added to the lively interest that
was already felt among all classes as to the possibility of
opening up commercial relations with Asia. But indeed
all the attempts that had been made by Englishmen of recent
years to find both the North-East and North-West passages
had been in order to open up trade with the Orient, and the
companies which had promoted those enterprises hoped to
reach India themselves in due course.

Four years after Stevens landed in India, three English
merchants made their way overland to the East; but on

1 Authorities. There is no history of the East India Company which
can be regarded as authoritative, but most of its transactions are pre-
served at the India Office in London, from which an abstract has been
made by Hunter. The enormous number of pamphlets published in
England, both condemning and defending the Company, which are
collected at the British Museum and the Guildhall Library, are of
interest, and frequently throw much light on the conduct of affairs by
the directors. The official series of Indian records and Indian texts now
being published promise to be of great value. Of the regular historians,
Orme and Mill are good representatives of the older school ; but every
other writer has been superseded by the monumental works of Sir w .
Hunter. I follow him on almost every occasion in preference to all other
authorities : practically the only noteworthy point, indeed, on which I
have ventured to differ from him was in the last chapter, where I
have used the term ' northern invaders ' instead of Aryan. It is a much
debated problem whether philology alone can be considered a safe guide
to racial origin, and many now incline to doubt whether the early union
of the European and Indian peoples can be assumed, until at least
additional corroborative evidence in other branches of science is adduced.

22 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

arrival at Goa they were imprisoned by the Portuguese,
and nothing came of their enterprise, save that one of their
number eventually entered the court service of the Great
Mughal.

The beginning of the direct commercial connection between
England and the Orient twenty years later was curiously
The East simple. Towards the close of the reign of
India com- Elizabeth the Dutch traders raised the price
pany, 1599. Q p e pp er f rom thiee to eight shillings a pound.
Mainly in consequence of this extortionate increase, though
perhaps with some touch of romance still stirring in the
hearts of the worthy citizens, the Lord Mayor and
merchants of London met on 22nd September 1599, at
Founders Hall, Lothbury, and there agreed * with their own
hands to venture in the pretended voyage to the East Indies,
the which it may please the Lord to prosper/ Under their
auspices, an association was formed on 31st December 1600,
with the title of ' The Governor and Company of Merchants
in London trading to the East Indies/ The association had
125 shareholders and a capital of 70,000 ; and the charter
gave it power to export 30,000 in bullion, the same to be
returned at the end of the voyage. The charter of incorpora-
tion was for fifteen years.

On 2nd April 1601 the first fleet for the East sailed from
London, laden with 28,742 in bullion, and English goods
The First worth 6860, such as glass, cutlery, and hides,
voyage. Particulars of the vessels have been preserved
and run as follows :

Red Dragon, 600 tons, James Lancaster, master, with 202
men.

Hector, 300 tons, James Middleton, master, with 108 men.

Ascension, 260 tons, William Brand, master, with 82 men.

Susan, 240 tons, John Heywood, master, with 88 men.

Guest, 130-Jtons, accompanying the fleet as victualler.

The pilot was John Davis.

THE EUROPEAN INVASION OF ASIA 23

The fleet arrived at Sumatra without incident ; a trading-
house was founded at Bantam, and commercial relations
were established with the king of Achin.

On the return of their vessels in 1603, with a cargo of
peppers and rich spices from the Moluccas, Banda, Amboyna,
Sumatra, and Bantam, the promoters of the enterprise realised
a profit of ninety-five per cent.

There was thus nothing to distinguish .the East India
Company from the other corporations which had been formed
in recent years for the purpose of trading abroad ; the Russia
Company, the Turkey Company, and the Morocco Company
stood on the same footing, and might anticipate as good results.
There was certainly nothing to indicate that the company
which was formed on the last day of the sixteenth century
would out-distance all its competitors, English and foreign,
and at length develop into an empire.

But the first decade of the East India Company was
smooth and prosperous, and the merchants of^the time
doubtless congratulated themselves on their success, as they
gossiped on the Exchange, or counted their gains in the
offices of Cheapside and Gresham Street.

Success naturally generated opposition and rivalry at home.
There were some who were jealous of the Company ; there
were others who believed that the temporary The
export of bullion impoverished the home country ; O ft&* en s
there were those who could not see any advan- company,
tage in either trade or communication with foreign lands.
But the East India Company proved singularly well qualified
to defend itself. One or two extracts from the pamphlets
published under its direction will show that it left no stone
unturned to convince the public of the benefits conferred by
the oriental trade.

During a dispute that occurred in 1621, a tract was issued
by one Thomas Nun to controvert the growing contention
that "it were a happier thing for Christendom (say many

24 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

men) that the navigation of the East Indies by way of the
Cape of Good Hope had never been found out/ He pleaded
that since the discovery of this route, ' the kingdom is purged
of desperate and unruly people who, kept in awe by the good
discipline at sea, do often change their former course of life
and so advance their fortunes * ; the new trade with the
East, he urged, was ' a means to bring more treasure into
the realm than all the other trades of the kingdom (as they
are now managed), being put together ' ; indeed, ' since the
beginning of the trade until the month of July last, anno
1620, there have been sent thither 79 ships in several voyages,
whereof 34 are already come home in safety richly laden,
four have been worn out by long service from port to port
in the Indies, two were overwhelmed in the trimming thereof,
six have been cast away by the perils of the sea, twelve have
been taken and surprised by the Dutch, whereof divers will
be wasted and little worth before they be restored, and 21
good ships do still remain in the Indies. First there hath
been lost 31,079 in the six ships which are cast away, and
in the 34 ships which are returned in safety there have been
brought home 356,288 in divers sorts of wares which have
produced here in England towards the general stock thereof
1,914,000. So there ought to remain in the Indies to be
speedily returned hither 484,088. Pepper, mace, nutmegs,
indigo, rum, silk, which would have cost 1,465,000 if pur-
chased at the old rate, could now be purchased in the East
Indies for 611,468.'

Again in 1628 a petition was made to the House of Commons
showing that of late years * some evil encounters, not only
of the seas and enemies, but more especially the undue pro-
ceedings and actions of our professed friends and allies, have
infinitely damnified the said traffic . . . the aforemen-
tioned disasters, and the carrying of foreign coins out of
this kingdom into the Indies, have begot such causeless com-
plaint in the mouths of many of His Majesty's subjects, of all

THE EUROPEAN INVASION OP ASIA 25

degrees and in all places of the realm, that the adventurers
are thereby much discouraged to trade any longer under
the evil censure of the multitude, desiring nothing more
than to obtain their private wealth with the public good/
The trade was declared by those concerned in it to e increase
the strength, wealth, safety, treasure and honour of this so
great a king and kingdom/ and it was vaunted that fifteen
thousand tons of shipping, and two thousand five hundred
sailors were akeady employed by the Company. 1

Such replies had their effect, in saving the Company from
suffering under the assaults of its enemies ; but the assaults
themselves continued, and a lively paper war was waged for
over a century between the opponents. The nature of the
attacks may be gauged from the titles of some of the later
pamphlets. In the year 1681, for instance, was published a
' treatise wherein is demonstrated that the East India trade
is the most national of all foreign trades, that the clamours,
aspersions, and objections made against the present East
India Company are sinister, selfish, or groundless/ This
was for the defence, replying to the complaint that the
shares of the Company were engrossed in few hands, and

1 The East India Company grew into one of the greatest private
shipping powers afloat. A special committee sat in London to control
its marine ; its vessels, which were armed against attack on the high
seas, were celebrated throughout the civilised world, and the post of
captain in the Company's fleet was highly esteemed as both an honour-
able and profitable occupation. The outward or homeward voyage might
last any time from six months to a year ; calls were made at St. Helena,
and sometimes at Cape Town, for refreshment and water. But in spite
of putting in at these and other places for rest and change of diet, scurvy,
that, ancient scourge of the sea, ravaged the ships on every voyage.
Sometimes all the men were down with sickness, and unable even^ to
unfurl the sails, or to navigate the vessel into port. The following
records of the vessels of the Dutch Bast India Company, which Mr. Theal
has transcribed in his History of Gape Colony, give an idea of the fearful
mortality among the seamen. In 1693, for example, 221 men of the
Bantam died of scurvy on the voyage between Holland and Cape Town ;
the Ooude Buys had only 12 men in a crew of 190 that were not sick ;
the Schoondyk reported that 134 men out of a crew of 254 had died, and
the whole of the remainder were down with scurvy. Many other cases
could be cited ; and it is improbable that the crews of English vessels
suffered less from disease than the Dutch.

26 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

that the price of the stock, of which 100 then stood at
280, was too high. The complaint, indeed, was the best
testimonial of its prosperity that the Company could have.

Another pamphlet of 1695 objected that they e have not
been pleased to make war upon any other nation but the
English/ and speaks of ' the frauds which this Company
exercises over the rest of the nation/ One dated 1730 is
entitled e a collection of papers relating to the East India
trade, wherein are shewn the disadvantages to a nation by
confining any trade to a corporation with a joint stock/

It was not only rival merchants and capitalists who were
envious ; the Company for many years built its own
ships, and thus roused the intense opposition of those who
were injured thereby. * Every man not his own shipbuilder,'
is the title of an angry philippic of 1778 : and the c dangers
and disadvantages 9 of this enterprise had already been set
out at length in 1768.

It was all of no use ; the Company knew how to defend
itself sufficiently well. The directors never hesitated to
its Policy bribe their more dangerous enemies ; the others
in England, faey could disregard. The opposition continued
as long as the Company 'existed; one of its most virulent
antagonists indeed was James Mill, the historian of British
India, whose prejudice is shown on every page of his
voluminous work. But of more importance was the
jealousy of competing merchants, and, at least in earlier
years, the greed, of the Crown. It needed considerable tact
and not ajiffle unscrupulousness for a rich commercial cor-
poration to weather the political storms of the seventeenth
century, and perhaps the greatest praise that can be given
to the Eas\b India Company is that, attacked by rivals as it
was both in Europe and Asia, it not only did not go under,
but actually advanced considerably in wealth and influence.
Its Indian policy changed from time to time as necessity
dictated, and ,the early directors would have been aghast

THE EUROPEAN INVASION OF ASIA 27

at the discretionary powers allowed to the Company's Indian
servants in Olive's day : but the home policy hardly ever
altered.

The East India Company possessed by law a terminable
monopoly ; and it was the first business of the Company to
keep it. If any infringement of that monopoly was threatened
a petition was at once lodged with the King or the Commons,
whichever for the time being was the more powerful : and
according to the motives most likely to influence the one
or the other, the directors offered either a bribe or a loan,
or if uprightness happened to be in fashion at the moment, a
consideration of the advantage their trade was to the kingdom
at large.

If these means failed, and a new competitor was fairly
launched on the oriental trade, his capacity was gauged as
quickly as possible. Did he appear of small importance, he
was mercilessly crushed ; was it a company of large capital
but indifferent management, it was contemptuously let alone
till its funds were exhausted, in the certainty that it must
then withdraw from the trade, and its failure deter other
adventurers. Should it be, on the other hand, an enterprise
that promised success, the advantages of amalgamation
were ceaselessly paraded, and sooner or later the two combined.

Such a policy could not be worked out all at once, or even
for many years in its entirety ; but it was evolved gradually
in the same way that the simple body of independent mer-
chants who formed the Company up to the year 1612 changed
step by step into an oligarchy, or closed corporation, direct-
ing operations of enormous extent by means of committees
and sub-committees,

By the year 1708 the work of the Company was systematised
and the mere list of its officials and divisions shows how well
arranged were its affairs. The shareholders were
divided into Courts of Proprietors, from whom
were selected committees, the members of which were after-

28 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS

wards called directors. The qualification for a vote in the
Court of Proprietors was 500 in stock ; the qualification
for a director, of whom there were twenty-four, was 2000.
The latter were headed by a chairman and deputy-chairman,
and each director was to be re-elected annually. Thirteen
directors formed a quorum, and meetings were held as often
as necessary. The directors divided their work among ten
committees and others were added later. These ten were :

1. Of correspondence : its work was the most private and

responsible of any; all Indian questions were re-
ferred to it, all diplomatic and political affairs, as well
as matters of patronage.

2. Of law-suits.

3. Of treasury.

4. Of warehouses.

5. Of accounts.

6. Of buying.

7. Of the house : that is, the management of the office in

London.

8. Of shipping.

9. Of regulating private trade : that is, to see that the

Company's servants did not exceed the amount allowed

by the Company's regulations.
10. Of checking private trade : that is, to discover and

put down, or give orders to put down, the trade of

other English merchants in the East, which threatened

the monopoly of the Company.

But before the Company had become so imposing as to
divide its work into sub-committees, it had undergone many
its vicissi- "vicissitudes ; and had it not been for the ex-
tudesin traordinary sagacity displayed by the directors,
England. ^. WOIl j ( j cer t a inly have failed altogether. In
1604 already the shareholders were needlessly alarmed
at a charter granted to Sir E. Michelborne, to trade with
Cathay, China, Japan, Corea, and Cambay. In spite of its

THE EUEOPEAN INVASION OF ASIA 29

imposing character and pretensions, however, the latter scheme
came to nothing, and in 1609 the East India Company
had its own charter renewed in perpetuity, but termin-
able at three years' notice. In 1612 it was put on a joint-
stock basis, but the operation of that system was as yet
imperfectly understood, and the opposition that came from
ignorance was naturally increased when both profits and
dividends decreased. The general attack made on monopolies
at this time looked threatening, though it passed without
danger to the Company : but King Charles and the Duke of
Buckingham claimed a share of the prize-money taken in the
East. The directors protested, but Buckingham detained
their ships when about to sail on the season's journey to India.
The claim was then at once admitted, and an order made to
pay ; it cannot, however, be ascertained that the amount
was ever actually made over.

But the profits continued to decrease, and fewer ships
were sent out, although the general condition of England was
prosperous ; and it would seem that, had the management
not been temporarily at fault at this time, things should have
gone favourably, and oriental goods been sure of finding a
profitable market.

In 1632 further subscriptions were required and obtained ;
but three years later the king granted a licence to another
company, taking a share in it himself. Again the danger
was serious, and the older Company remonstrated before the
Privy Council : after repeated petitions, the king disallowed
the rival licence ; but new difficulties now arose, since more
capital was required ; and there were but few subscriptions,
owing to the upheaval caused by the beginning of the Civil
War in England.

At this time, too, the king seized on the Company's store
of pepper in London to replenish his purse ; he gave a bond
to pay, but the debt seems never to have been settled. For
the next few unquiet years, little information has been pre-

30 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS

served as to the doings of the Company, and it may be con-
jectured from this and the political troubles of the day, that
the business did not flourish.

Under the Commonwealth its privileges were again
threatened, but eventually secured : by now, however, there
was considerable confusion amongst the various stockholders,
each of whom had entered the Company at different dates,
and each of whom put forward different claims.

At last in 1658 a new Company was formed, which bought
up the old at a valuation, as well as disposing of a rival that
had disappeared. No sooner was the Restoration accom-
plished than the directors petitioned Charles n. for a renewal
of their charter, which was granted ; but trade again lan-
guished until new capital was provided in 1667. In that
year sixteen ships sailed for India, and each year thence-
forward more were sent, and with a more valuable cargo.
In the same year, 1667, the first order was given for a pro-
duct that afterwards became a staple of the Company's
trade : the factors were e to send home by these ships
100 Ib. weight of the best tey that you can get/ l

All went smoothly from now until the year 1690, when
the House of Commons decided on the formation of a new
Company. Protests were in vain : Parliament obstinately

1 The trade in tea soon became a source of great profit to the Company,
as the taste for the beverage grew in England. In 1676 the agents of the
Company at Bantam in Java were instructed to invest a hundred dollars
annually in tea, which was probably the extent of the demand at home ;
but in 1684 a trading-station was opened at Canton, which became the
centre of the Chinese export tea trade, and eventually led to a regular
traffic with China in other things besides tea, as well as to diplomatic
complications. In the early decades of the eighteenth century tea was
already a popular drink among the wealthier classes in England ; it was
beyond the reach of the poor, however, for the greater part of the next
hundred years. But the price fell continuously, and even the humble
Uriah Keep could afford to drink it in his cottage at Canterbury, as
well as the more prosperous Wellers at Dorking, in the later years of
George iv. It may be noticed that in those days tea was generally served
immediately after dinner, as is still the custom in some houses in
Holland ; not until Victorian times did 'five o'clock tea } become a social
institution in England.

THE EUROPEAN INVASION OF ASIA 31

affirmed the c right of all Englishmen to trade to the East
Indies/

But Sir Josiah Child, the chairman of the old Company, was
prepared to meet opposition; he ordered the servants of
that body in India to seize and imprison all Englishmen who
might be found in the East, and who were not in the employ
of his Company. The Governor of the Company's Asiatic
stations in answer stated his willingness to obey commands,
but weaMy expressed his fear that the laws of England stood
in the way of illegal confinement. Child's reply was sublime
in its contempt for the home authorities : e he expected his
orders were to be rules, and not the laws of England, which
were an heap of nonsense, compiled by a few ignorant country
gentlemen, who hardly knew how to make laws for the good
of their own private families, much less for the upholding
of companies and foreign commerce/

But Parliament, though unconscious of this contempt for
its ordinances, had discovered that the Company was guilty
of bribery to the extent of some 90,000 in one year : and
the Commons, seeing a chance to score a point against the
Upper House, impeached the Duke of Leeds for having
accepted a gift of 5000.

There is small doubt that he was guilty ; but through the
adroitness of Child, the prosecution fell through. The two
companies were now allowed to trade on equal terms ; but
this was not enough for the older body, accustomed as it was
to the monopoly of Indian commerce. It therefore brought
an accusation of piracy against its rivals at the Asiatic Courts,
having first carefully provided some foundation for the charge.

* Two East India Companies in England/ it was said, ' could
no more subsist without destroying one the other, than two
kings ' : but the new company destroyed itself. To obtain
its privileges, it had offered the enormous loan or bribe of
two millions sterling at eight per cent, to the English Govern-
ment; and when this was accepted and paid, there was

32 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

nothing left for working capital. It struggled on for a few
years, subject to every financial embarrassment at home,
and reviled, obstructed, and defamed by its more energetic
and capable competitor in India : but it was obviously of
no use continuing in this manner, and on 22nd July 1702 the
two companies amalgamated. The union was made final
and indivisible six years later.

The success of the original Company had been as fluctuat-
ing in India as at home. The first trading depots, or
THeEast factories as they were called in the language of
Sany fa ^ e ^ mej were esta blished at Bantam and the
India. Moluccas, and others were attempted at Surat

and Cambay. The two former aroused the hostility of the
Dutch; the two latter were for a time frustrated by the
Portuguese. Thus early was the Company made aware of
the uncompromising enmity it would have to face from its
competitors : but victory over the Portuguese in a skirmish
in 1614 gave the English some reputation in India.

They had already received a firman from the Mughal
Emperor on llth January 1612, giving them liberty to trade
in his dominions ; and the embassy of Sir Thomas Roe, two
years later, did much to establish their position as legitimate
traders in the East. From the despatches he sent home it
may be gathered that the advisability of building forts in
India had already been debated. 'If the emperor would
offer me ten/ he wrote, ' I -would not accept of one. ... If
you will profit, seek it at sea, and in quiet trade ; for without
controversies, it is an error to afEect garrisons and land wars
in India/

Roe did something for his countrymen, too, in another
direction. ' I have done my best to disgrace the Dutch/ he
wrote, ' but could not turn them out without further danger/
He quickly realised the power of money in the court of an
Asiatic potentate. ' Half my charge si all corrupt all this
court to be your slaves/ Here again did the Company

THE EUROPEAN INVASION OF ASIA 33

receive its first lessons in an art at which its chief officials
later became adepts. Efforts were now made to open up
trade with the Spice Islands and with Persia ; in the latter
case with little result, in spite of an agent being sent to the
court of the Shah.

In the Spice Islands it was another matter, but here
the success of the English soon caused a collision with the
Dutch. A treaty between the Governments of
England and Holland was concluded on 17th July
1619, guaranteeing mutual amnesty ; it was ob- Holland,
served in the East for one hour, while the rivals saluted
each other courteously from their ships. The ceremony
over, war at once began again ; and it culminated in 1623
in the Amboyna outrage.

Amboyna was one of the great Dutch trading stations in
Asia ; and the competition of the English, which had never
been welcomed, soon became uncomfortably keen
in the neighbourhood. At length the Dutch
attacked the English East India Company's 1023.
factory there, seiang its occupants. These, consisting of
ten Englishmen, nine Japanese, and a Portuguese, were
told that in Dutch territory they must obey Dutch laws ;
they were tortured and found guilty of conspiracy to sur-
prise the Dutch garrison, condemned, and executed. The
charge may or may not have been true ; but the judicial
murder was at any rate a convenient, and, as the event
proved, a not very expensive means of getting rid of a dan-
gerous rival.

As soon as the news of the Amboyna outrage reached
England, the country was in an uproar ; and the directors
of the East India Company inflamed the indignation to the
best of their ability, by descanting on the barbarity of the
deed, and especially on the horrors of torture. The latter
was still a* legitimate method of forcing a reluctant witness
to speak in Holland, and it had not long been abandoned in

VOL. II. C

34 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

England itself ; but popular indignation has a short memory
when it is convenient not to remember ; and the directors
continually published pamphlets and ghastly pictures of the
outrage, to ensure that there should be no slackening in the
demand for revenge against Holland. 1 Litigation ensued,
but the matter was not finally settled till thirty years later.
The dispute was then referred to arbitration, the English
claiming two and a half millions sterling compensation, the
Dutch nearly three minions : in the end the East India Com-
pany received judgment for the insignificant sum of 3615.

The massacre practically stopped English enterprise in
the feast Indian archipelago for two centuries, diverting it to
the mainland instead ; but from that time till 1689 there was
a bitter contest with Holland on the high seas and in the
Indian peninsula itself. Neither English nor Dutch would
be content without the monopoly of trade, and neither nation
was deterred by excessive scrupulousness as to the means
employed to gain it.

On the ocean the fight was fair and square as between
seamen. In the Asiatic courts it was conducted by intrigue,
and the impartial historian finds it difficult to decide which
nation produced more finished experts in the useful art
of deception. In the Asiatic markets the Dutch agents would
buy up the whole native produce at a higher price than the
English were able to afford, and sell their European stock

1 The outrage indirectly gave a new play to the English language, for
Dryden wrote Amboyna, in 1673, in order to inflame his countrymen in
general, and Londoners in particular, against the Dutch. The following
lines from the prologue show the character of the play :

' The dotage of some Englishmen is such
To fawn on those who ruin them, the Butch.
They shall have all, rather than make a war
With those who of the same religion are. . . .
Be gulled no longer ; for you '11 find it true,
They have no more religion, faith, than you ;
Interest's the god they worship in their State ;
And you, I take it, have not much of that.'

The play may have answered its purpose politically ; but considered
as drama it is very poor stuff.

THE EUROPEAN INVASION OF ASIA 35

so low that the English could not sell theirs at all. In the
West again both nations tried their hardest to undercut each
other. The Dutch on the whole seem to have been more
successful at first, since theirs was a great state-trading com-
pany with practically unlimited funds at its disposal, whereas
the English East India Company was a private enterprise
frequently kept in check by the national hatred of monopoly ;
but the Dutch ruined themselves later by a short-sighted
policy in not adapting themselves to the changing conditions
of oriental trade, while the English kept fast hold of what
they had, and were ever pushing forward for something
more.

Both English and Dutch East India Companies were abso-
lutely dependent on the fidelity and industry of their servants
in the East ; and to judge by the results in T]ie
India and the East Indies, both were served well, company's
The directors of the English Company were Senrants -
indeed continually grumbling that their employees in
Asia were dishonest to their masters and lax in their execution
of their duties, and the Dutch archives would probably reveal
precisely similar complaints. But the commercial corpora-
tion has yet to be found that is completely satisfied with
the work of its employees. Serious and well-founded grounds
for discontent there undoubtedly were on both sides, but
the original fault generally lay with the directors.

Although to enter the service of the Company soon became
known as affording a promising career to young men, em-
ployment at one of its Indian stations was valued rather for
ulterior reasons than for any direct advantages. The pay
was small ; the voyage was tedious ; the exile was long.
The climate was not always healthy ; it was frequently diffi-
cult or impossible to obtain the conveniences of life, and
promotion was seldom quick. The service required of the
clerks, at least in the lower grades, was monotonous and
irksome. Yet to those who desired to escape from the limits

36 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

of their own narrow isle, or as it more generally was in those
days of few travelling facilities, from the neighbourhood in
which they were born, life in a strange country was full of
romantic possibilities ; while it was always feasible to make a
steady income, frequently a good competence, and occasionally
to amass great wealth, by indulging in private trade. In
the later days of the Company other opportunities offered, of
extortion from the native princes and peoples, and the English
in India were not slow to exact a profit from them as well ;
but this was not until the Company had embarked on terri-
torial sway. For the first century and a half of its existence
the operations of the employees were restricted to private
trade. It is true that this was forbidden, and that the
directors did their utmost to suppress it. They complained
with reason that the Company's servants looked after their
personal interests before those of the Company ; but the pay
was so small that they could not expect them to do anything
else. The salary of the Governor of Madras, for instance, was
only 300 yearly, and in 1664 he was given 200 extra on
condition that he ceased trading on his own account. He
accepted it, but it has not been ascertained that he took no
further advantage of his opportunities* 1

From the nature of the case, the directors in London could
not keep a complete check upon affairs in India, and private
trade continued as long as the Company was a commercial
body ; even Clive was unable entirely to suppress it. But if
the directors lost on the one hand, they occasionally gained
with the other. Some of their agents in the East did more
to extend their trade than the remissness or cupidity of a
whole generation of clerks did to lessen it. In 1651, for
instance, an English surgeon, who happened to be at the
court of Bengal, was successful in curing diseases that had

1 The Dutch West India Company made the same complaint that its
servants carried on private trade ; but that great corporation was equally
powerless to stop the abuse.

THE EUROPEAN INVASION OF ASIA 37

baffled the native doctors ; and on being asked to name his
reward, he obtained a state licence for the East India Com-
pany, which, on payment of three hundred rupees, allowed
the corporation to carry on unlimited trade in the country
without toll of customs. In 1664, again, the Company's
servants at Surat repelled an enemy who attacked that city ;
the natives had already fled in fear ; and on their return
further privileges were granted to the defenders.

The Indian system of the Company was simplicity itself.
Trade was carried on at a station, where English goods
were exposed for sale to the natives, and where The Method
the natives could bring their own goods to be of Trading,
bought or exchanged. The Company's servants at each
station were divided into ranks, named successively writer,
factor, junior merchant, and senior merchant. Promotion
was made from step to step. The stations were responsible
to the presidencies, of which there were three, at Bombay,
Madras, and Calcutta. Each of the presidencies was absolute
and independent, except to the Company as supreme head ;
each was ruled by a Governor and a Council consisting of
various members. None of the earlier servants of the Com-
pany have left any name ; they seem to have been of average
type, generally more or less capable and industrious. It
was not until the next age that there was any opportunity for
a great administrator ; at present they were, and they could
only be, business men pure and simple.

The stations of the East India Company in India were at
first mere unprotected European settlements ; but the dis-
turbed state of the country soon necessitated Terr itoriai
their fortification. In this step may be seen the Acctuisi-
germ of the territorial sway of the Company, as ons '
in the authority of the Governor and Council of the Presidency
lay the origin of its later system of rule.

But the responsibility of owning and administering land
in India was naturally shirked by the directors. A trading

38 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

company has nothing to do with government. And the
East India Company in particular had been warned by Sir
Thomas Koe not to copy the Portuguese and Dutch, but to
remain contented with commerce. His advice had been
followed, and good results had accrued. It was by no wish
of the Company that it became anything more than a simple
mercantile body. It possessed indeed civil, criminal, and
martial jurisdiction over its own people in India ; it
obtained the power of making peace and war, and conclud-
ing treaties with non-Christian peoples. Such functions were
recognised by the directors as necessary ; but they had no
desire for more, and for nearly a century they protested
against any further power or responsibility.

The first sign of a change is in a despatch dated 1689.
' The increase of our revenue/ it says, ' is the subject of our
care, as much as our trade ; 'tis that must maintain our
force, when twenty accidents may interrupt our trade ; 'tis
that must make us a nation in India ; without that we are
but as a great number of interlopers, united by His Majesty's
royal charter, fit only to trade where nobody of power thinks
it their interest to prevent us ; and upon this account it is
that the wise Dutch, in all their general advices which we
have seen, write ten paragraphs concerning their govern-
ment, their civil and military policy, warfare, and the in-
crease of their revenue, for one paragraph they write concern-
ing trade/

The remarkable change of view shown in this despatch was
due to two or three different causes. The unsettled state
of India had now rendered it incumbent on every man to
guard his own possessions by the strength of his arm. The
English Government could annul the rights of a trading
company that depended on nothing but trade; it could
hardly confiscate the property of a corporation whose posses-
sions were situated on the other side of the world. But the
East India Company soon resumed its old attitude of dislike

THE EUROPEAN INVASION OF ASIA 39

towards any territorial acquisitions made by too zealous
servants.

The value of the stations which it already possessed had
been proved, and the course of events had made the Company
owners of territories other than these. The island of St.
Helena in mid-Atlantic was used as a port of call for its
vessels ; l and in India itself the Company had made further
advances. Fort St. George was erected in the year 1639
at Madraspatam, or Madras as it appears in the English
abbreviation. Four years later it became a Presidency.

Towards the end of the Commonwealth, when a period of
misfortune menaced the Company, it was decided to relin-
quish the out-stations, concentrating all business in Surat and
Madras ; and at the Restoration, when Charles n. offered the
directors the isle of Bombay, which was part of the marriage
portion he had received from Portugal, it was refused. To
the king, however, that place was more trouble than it was
worth, and in 1668 the Company took it over, e to be held
in free and common soccage, as of the manor of East Greenwich,
on the payment of the annual rental of 10 in gold, on the
30 September in each year/

In 1687 Bombay was erected into a regency, with un-
limited power over all the other English settlements in India ;
at the same time Madras became a corporation, equipped
with the mayor and civic officials dear to the citizen's
heart.

Already, too, on 20th December 1686, the agent and council
of the Company had left the old factory at Hugli, and come
to Sutanati, where, after some diplomatic fencing with the
Mughal Emperor, three towns were granted to the English,
among which was Calcutta. As Fort William, it became a
Presidency in 1700.

The nucleus of each of the three great Indian dependencies
therefore already belonged to the East India Company a

1 For St. Helena see book viii. chap. v.

40 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

hundred years after the merchants of London had embarked
on the ' pretended voyage * to the Orient.

Thus, at the close of a century of generally prosperous con-
nection with Asia, England, as represented by the East India
Company, was in an anomalous position. A mercantile
corporation had begun to acquire powers hardly suited to
its original character ; but as yet the anomaly was scarcely
very evident. At any rate, there was absolutely no indica-
tion that it would eventually extirpate all its rivals in the
East.

Still less could the wildest dreamer have imagined that
another hundred years would see the subjugation of the
greater part of India by a body of foreign merchants. Any
one in the reign of Queen Anne who had prophesied half so
great a future for the Company would have been quite justi-
fiably detained in Bedlam. Yet the prophecy would have
been no less than the truth.

CHAPTER IV
THE STRUGGLE FOR INDIA: 1700-57 *

THE riches of the Indies had become a proverb in Europe
during the seventeenth century. The wealth of those who
engaged in the Indian trade was obvious to all; the
mystery which surrounded the country made its fascination
greater. And as it became slowly evident that Asiatic com-
merce meant also Asiatic conquest, the competition between
different nations became sharper, and the means employed
among their agents grew more dubious. We have noticed
the growing settlements of the English East India Company
in the Orient during the seventeenth century : but the decay

1 Authorities. As before, with Macaulay's Essay on Olive and the
biography of him by Malcolm. Also Malleson's History of the French in
India.

THE EUKOPEAN INVASION OF ASIA ' 41

of Portugal and the rise of Holland came about during the
same epoch. ; and the Danes and the Scots endeavoured to
obtain a share of the traffic, while the French entered with
zest into the promotion of new interests in India. The first
half of the eighteenth century is the history of a general
and decisive struggle between all these powers.

After the decline of the Portuguese in the East it was a
Frenchman who first conceived the magnificent idea of bring-
ing India as a whole under occidental rule. The prize was
not for his nation ; but it was no fault of the Gallic pioneers
in Asia that the tiger and the elephant were never quartered
with the pure white lilies on the Bourbon shield. It was
a Frenchman who first saw that the disruption of the ancient
kingdoms of India was full of possibilities for the ambitious
European. The Western invasion of the East came in fact
just at the time when the old order of things was passing
away.

The invasion of Timor had long since swept through
India, by which the * streets of Delhi were rendered impass-
able by heaps of dead/ Other invaders had come Indian
and gone as he. The Musalman invasion had Ananfliy.
founded a powerful dynasty, and introduced a new popula-
tion in India, whose pride it was that they alone possessed
the true faith and the key to the gates of Paradise. The
Mohammedans were aliens in the country they had conquered,
and they boasted of it. But in time their empire also broke
up into separate kingdoms ; and at the period when Europeans
were first settling in the East a new synthesis of the Indian
peoples was forcibly evolved by Akbar the Great, the real
founder of the Mughal power. The states that had become
independent were reduced, whether Hindu, Kajput, or
Musalmdn, by a series of wars and affiances; the Indian
Empire, which at his accession was confined to the Punjab
and the districts round Agra and Delhi, in a few years
extended from the heart of Afgh&nist&n southwards to

42 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

Orissa and Sind ; only the South successfully defied Akbar
still.

The magnificence of the Mughal Empire astounded Sir
Thomas Roe when he arrived at its capital of Delhi early
The Mughal & ^ e seventeenth century. Akbar, its sovereign,
Empire. was no t only a great soldier; he was equally
great as an administrator. A new system of government
and revenue was introduced, whereof the latter continues
in part to this day. Reforms were everywhere undertaken :
the inhuman rites and customs of the Hindus were put down ;
animal sacrifices, child-marriage, and trial by ordeal were
abolished; widow-burning was discouraged, although it
could not be stamped out.

In the Emperor's court there was a wise toleration. Akbar
loved to gather round him professors of all the creeds ; and
Jew, Christian, Musalman, Parsi, or sceptic each stated their
belief, debating points of doctrine openly with one another.
From their discussions Akbar himself evolved a new eclectic
religion, which found as much acceptance as such schemes
always do.

It was an era of the most exquisite taste in the fine arts :
Akbar and his successors enriched Delhi and Agra with the
purest gems of Indian architecture. The Taj Mahal is but
the most perfect of a series of beautiful creations that have
been unparalleled in oriental history.

The Mughal Empire, in short, was the most imposing, as
it was perhaps the best, that India had yet known. Yet
its Decline ^itib. all its splendour, that Empire was but as a
and Fan. j^ge that is built on the sand. The death of
its founder shook it severely; the dissensions of his
successors wrecked it altogether. The sons of Akbar
rebelled against him and quarrelled among themselves;
Aurungzeb, the last great native monarch of India, marched
to the throne through a sea of blood after deposing his father
and murdering his brothers.

THE EUROPEAN INVASION OF ASIA 43

He extended the authority of the Mughals into provinces
that had never before acknowledged them. He subjugated
much of Southern India, and proudly styled himself the ' con-
queror of the universe/ IDs court was as brilliant and
magnificent as that of Akbar.

But corruption had eaten it through and through. The
unending wars that had been necessary to his victories had
in the long-run only enfeebled the army. The chief power
of the South still defied him at his death in 1707. The
tributary princes had always girded at his authority. The
foundations of the Empire had altogether decayed, and the
end of his reign of forty-eight years was the signal for a period
of disastrous anarchy to begin in India, from which it was only
rescued when the British became supreme.

All through his reign the power of his rivals, the Marathas,
had been increasing ; and when he spoke his last words,
' Come what may, I have launched my vessel on the waves ;
farewell ! farewell ! farewell ! * they had already become
a formidable confederacy, which proved able to withstand
for over a century the continued onslaughts of the British.

The break-up of the Mughal Empire was now quick, com-
plete, and absolute. There was again a contest for the suc-
cession. Three sovereigns in a few years were boys and mere
puppets. Others were deposed and murdered. The Deccan
declared its independence, Haidardbad broke away from the
nominal control to which it had been subjected. The Punjab,
one of the oldest provinces, was lost long before it finally
forced itself free in 1751.

The Mughal Empire continued indeed to exist for many
years more. But it existed only in name, and the last
occupants of the throne of Delhi were pensioners of the
English, living lives of effeminate sloth and luxury in the
seclusion of their palaces, protected indeed from harm or
the resentment of their subjects, but powerless to influence
by one act or word the destinies of that vast country which

44 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

their ancestors had gloriously conquered, and had frequently
ruled with wisdom.

Meanwhile India was devastated by invasions, and she was
unable to repel them. The Sikhs alone w'ere defeated ; but
India the cruelties that were inflicted on them remained

invaded. burned into the memory of that warrior race for
ever. Their leader was carried about in an iron cage,
robed in mockery as an emperor with scarlet turban and
cloth of gold. His son's heart was torn out before his eyes,
and thrown in his face. He himself was pulled to pieces
with red-hot pincers, and his followers were exterminated
as though they had been dogs. But if in this case the enemy
were defeated, the very victory was a disgrace to the people
that won it, and a proof of the barbarity to which they had
descended. A terrible retribution was to overtake them at
the hands of others.

In the year 1739 Nadir Shah invaded India from Persia ;
and when he captured Delhi there was a frightful massacre
in its streets, while the devoted city was given over to a
plunder that lasted fifty-eight days. After the army retired,
sated with excess, it was estimated that the booty they
carried with them was of the value of thirty-two millions
sterling.

More terrible even than this were the invasions that
followed from Afghanistan. Six times in rapid succession
the savage tribes beyond the River Indus descended on
India, ravaging and slaughtering whithersoever they went,
slaying the dwellers in lonely hamlets as well as in wealthy
towns ; outraging the religious feelings of the Hindus by
despoiling the shrines of the country ; murdering the votaries
who worshipped at the holy places ; leaving ruin and despair
around them on all sides. The border lands were swept bare
of inhabitants, crops, and riches,; the settlers fled to the hills,
to the jungles, to any hiding-place that offered, preferring
rather to share the lairs of wild beasts than to face certain

THE EUROPEAN INVASION OF ASIA 45

torture and death at the hands of the Afghans. In this
dread catastrophe vanished the last vestige of the Mughal
power.

It seems almost a satire to" say that few years in the
history of the English East India Company had been quieter
or more prosperous than those in which these TheEjlgllsh
awful events took place. From 1708, when the in India,
two authorised corporations which had struggled 1708 ' 46 -
for the Anglo-Indian trade were amalgamated, until after
1745, when the great contest of the Europeans in India finally
began, its records are practically devoid of interest. There
was the frustration of a new project for an India Company
in England in 1730. There was a gradual increase of sales in
India until in the record year of 1744 they stood at nearly
two millions sterling. A regular dividend of seven or eight
per cent, was paid. An embassy was sent to the Mughal
Emperor in 1715, which, having waited on him for two years,
received various privileges, such as the right to purchase land
and towns, and to pass goods through the imperial territories
free of duty or inspection. A mission station was estab-
lished at Madras in 1728. A dockyard was built at Bombay
in 1736. An attack of the Marathas on Madras was repelled
in 1741. In consequence, the forts of that settlement were
enlarged and strengthened. Such were the commonplace
matters that occupied the directors and servants of the
East India Company while India itself was torn from end
to end.

Other nations had come and gone, as tihte struggle for
oriental trade became keener. The vast Asiatic empire of
the Portuguese was already destroyed. They ot]ler
had been swept from the seas by the Dutch and Europeans
the English. On land the perpetual attacks of ialndia '
the Dutch had reduced them to three wretched towns,
Goa, Daman, and Diu, which contained nothing worth
keeping, and which showed, in the words of Hunter, a mere

46 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

miserable chronicle of pride, poverty, and high-sounding
titles. The Portuguese had ever been crusaders rather than
settlers or traders ; their cruelties caused them to be hated
by the Hindus, while their business incapacity made them
the laughing-stock of more commercial nations. There were
few Portuguese of pure blood left in the East ; and their
descendants were the Eurasian half-castes who are now
hardly distinguishable from the native Indian stock. 1

The Dutch had since become the leading power throughout
the East, although their diminishing weight in Europe made
it less likely that they would remain so in the future. It
was not till 1758 that the knell of their existence on the
Asiatic mainland was sounded by the English capturing the
Dutch settlement at Chinsurah ; but Holland still retained,
and even extended, her power in the East Indian islands.
The Danes formed an East India Company in 1612, and
another in 1670 : but beyond founding a few small trading
stations they did nothing in the East. The same causes
that prevented Scandinavian development in America pre-
vented it also in India. 2 The merchants of Ostend, under
the protection of the Emperor of Austria, had also formed
an East India Company in 1723 ; but after a few years'
commercial operations, it also perished. The Scots, too, had
tried to compete in the race for oriental trade, but the
company promoted by them in 1695 was a failure from
its birth. Not a single Scottish enterprise that was pro-
jected overseas before the union with England had any
measure of success whatever, whether directed towards Nova
Scotia, Panama, or India.

But by far the most brilliant and successful of the European

1 The Portuguese seem to have had no idea that miscegenation might
have an evil effect on the dominant race. They allied themselves freely
with the- natives in India and South America, while Livingstone observed
the same thing as a regular custom in South Africa. There is undoubtedly
a strong alien strain in the blood of very many Portuguese families in
Portugal at the present day.

2 See vol. i. book iii. chap. iv.

THE EUEOPEAN INVASION OF ASIA 47

powers in the East at this time was France, and the history
of the efforts made by a few great men of that nation to
found a French Empire in India has a tragic interest of its own.
The early years of their connection with Asia contained
nothing remarkable. The first French expedition thither
was fitted out in 1503 by some Rouen merchants : _

Ajl6 CX&QCQ,

it sailed for the East, but nothing more was in India,
heard of it. A century passed; and in 1604 1503 - 1748 -
the first French East India Company was formed. It also
came to nothing. The second, in 1611, showed better results ;
the third, inaugurated by Richelieu in 1642, endeavoured
to found a colony in Madagascar, and having failed in that,
ceased operations. The next Company was formed in 1664 :
it was encouraged by the king, who declared that oriental
trade was not derogatory even to the nobility ; settlements
were made in the islands of Mauritius and Bourbon, and in
1668 the first factory was established at Surat.

But for years the Company was almost uniformly unfor-
tunate. Surat had to be abandoned. Pondicherri, which,
founded in 1674, became the French headquarters in Asia, was
taken by the Dutch in 1693. Even when the place was re-
stored four years later, trade continued to languish. The
Company quickly lost half its capital, and had not yet declared
a dividend. It possessed neither ships nor money. The
directors were forced to lease the right of making oriental
voyages to the merchants of St. Malo. The rent of the Indian
stations was frequently in arrear. The salaries due to the
Company's servants were irregularly paid.

In 1719, indeed, relief seemed at hand. The French East
India Company was amalgamated with those trading to China
and Senegal; and under the guidance of Law, a young
Scottish adventurer who endeavoured to restore order to the
French national exchequer, the shares jumped to a premium.
As great a rage for speculation suddenly sprang up in France
as during the South Sea Bubble the next year in England.

48 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

The merchants almost worshipped Law ; the nobility ran
after him. ' A duchess kisses his hand/ reported the scandal-
mongers of the day, 'how then will other women kiss
him? 5

But in a few months the entire project collapsed, and the
Company was left in a worse position than before. It was
Dupieix, now that & e one man wbo might have secured
1730. India for France appeared. Joseph Frangois

Dupleix was appointed, through the influence of his
father, first councillor at Pondicherri in 1720. From the
moment of arrival his energetic nature infused fresh life into
that unprosperous settlement. He stimulated the commerce
of the Company, and by indulging in private .trade on his own
account, laid the foundations of the splendid fortune which
within a few years was dissipated in too faithful service to his
country's interests in Asia. The English merchants at the
neighbouring station of Madras were wealthy but unenterpris-
ing ; and Dupleix saw at once that Pondicherri might be made
the emporium of the whole south of India. His exertions
were fast succeeding when in 1726 the directors ordered his
recall on a point of detail. He refused to return, and after
four years of incessant wrangling his appeal was allowed.
Appointed intendant of Chandanagore, he again found a miser-
able and stagnant French settlement a few miles from Calcutta,
where the English trade was increasing every year. Again his
spirit revolted against the poverty of his compatriots in the
East. He embarked his private means, already great, in
bringing trade to Chandanagore. He attracted the native
merchants away from the rival European stations on the
Hugli, and in four years the quays of the deserted settlement
were teeming with goods ; a fleet of some forty vessels was
soon regularly employed in the French trade ; relations were
opened up with the interior, and even with Tibet. In 1741
Dupleix was promoted to be Governor of Pondicherri. He
was now supreme in the French Indies.

THE EUKOPEAN INVASION OF ASIA 49

At exactly what time lie began to evolve those schemes of
conquest which so nearly gave the Empire of India to Prance
instead of England cannot be decided. As a boy he had
been of a speculative turn of mind, loathing commerce, but
delighting to indulge in day-dreams of all sorts. To cure
him, a prudent father had sent him to sea, and he returned
apparently ready to become a good man of business. Such,
indeed, he was ; but there is little doubt that the old specu-
lative spirit had only been strengthened by what he had seen
on his eastern voyage. In any case, even if it lay dormant
during his early years in India, his imagination was at length
fired by the magnificence of the opportunity which, with
further knowledge, he saw presented itself to a resolute man
of action.

India was given over to anarchy. It might be ruined by
the feuds of the native princes. It might, on the other hand,
be conquered by any one of them who was strong enough
to impose his will on the rest. But it was evident that the
superiority of the European over the strongest native was at
least as great as that of the strongest native over the weakest.
A few thousand Europeans, possessed of European military
appliances and training, might have conquered the immense
armies and clumsy artillery even of the greatest Asiatic
princes. They could certainly rout most of the petty chiefs
with ease. By a judicious system of alliances, they could
disarm the hostility of perhaps half India until it was too late
to resist. Certainly no Western power had as yet succeeded
in such a project. But the directors of the French East India
Company at home could not be expected to realise its possi-
bility ; and those Europeans who had been in India hitherto
were only stolid and somewhat stupid traders like the English
and the Dutch, or hot-headed knights-errant like the Portu-
guese. In any event, they were not strong enough in the
seventeenth century, even had the Mughal power at that time
not been in its prime, and even had the idea entered their heads,

VOL. n. D

50 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

But in the eighteenth century France was the greatest
military power in the world. And her diplomacy had secured
her victories as splendid as those which had been won by her
arms. There was no ambitious project in which she might
not hope for success. All the vast and magnificent countries
of India lay within her grasp. The other traders from the
West could be easily expelled ; or they might, with contemp-
tuous pity, be allowed to remain as simple merchants. The
French authority, once secure, could be exercised either openly
or secretly ; the French Governor-General might, if he chose,
be Emperor of India in fact as well as in name ; or he might,
with all the essentials of command, still find it convenient to
yield a nominal allegiance as vassal to the puppet he had set
up on the throne.

Such, in substance, must have been the thoughts of Dupleix
as supreme governor of the French Indies. Certain advan-
tages he had already. He was possessed of a profound know-
ledge of Indian native character, its love for panoply and
display, its reverence for exterior form, its submission before
authority. Able men had preceded him : for although the
directors of the French East India Company had been ineffi-
cient and inept to a degree, they had been served far better
than they merited.

The same thing, in fact, was taking place in India ^ in
Canada. In the latter country the pioneers of France, scarcely
assisted at all by the home authorities, were carrying the name
and influence of their country far into the great West. In
India a series of wise governors, likewise unaided from Paris,
often indeed acting directly contrary to the pusillanimous
orders sent out from the capital, were establishing close and
cordial relations with the natives. In the East as in the West,
the French were the only European nation that realised the
importance of a good understanding with the aboriginal in-
habitants. The Portuguese tried to convert by force all whom
they found ; the Dutch tyrannised everywhere they could ;

THE EUROPEAN INVASION OF ASIA 51

the English kept aloof from everything but commerce. The
French, on the other hand, whenever it was possible always
treated the natives as friends, as allies, as equals.

It is true that neither in Canada nor India did they possess
any real stability. They placed government before trade,
the shadow before the substance ; and in the end they lost
both. But the faults of their administration, grave as they
were, might have been overcome, had it not been for the fatal
corruption and neglect that prevailed in France. It is true
that their rulers overseas, great as they were, all showed the
same defect, in being jealous of each other, and in allowing
the heart-burnings inevitable in every community to result
in a lack of subordination and co-operation for the general
good of the whole. That also need not necessarily have ruined
them. It was the combination of both causes that reduced
the French, from the nucleus of a splendid empire both in
America and Asia, to a few wretched islands in the one, and
an insignificant township in the other.

When Dupleix was appointed Governor of Pondicherri, the
French were already practically the masters of the south
Coromandel coast, and their influence extended far into the
Karnatic. He quickly put the older settlement in order, and
returned to Chandanagore, to be installed there as Nawab of
that place. Returning to Pondicherri, he used his new title
as a means of overawing the neighbouring chieftains ; his
magnificence dazzled them, and he was soon recognised as
sovereign of the South.

But the clouds of approaching war were now gathering with
England in Europe ; and war with England in Europe meant
also war with England in Asia. Yet the directors of the French
East India Company wrote that expenses must be reduced
by at least one half, and that all outlay on buildings and forti-
fications must, be stopped. To obey would have been to
leave Pondicherri defenceless and open to the first attack of the
English. The order, however, was explicit, and in any event

52 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

communication with Europe was too slow to get it counter-
manded in time, if indeed the timorous directors had dared to
do so. Dupleix, therefore, at once undertook to pay for the
entire fortification of the place out of his own pocket ; at the
same time economising within the settlement as much as
possible by reducing salaries, and putting down those few
abuses which still remained. The directors were glad to see
their work done at the expense of another, although it involved
disobedience to their orders ; they sent word that they were
* very much pleased ' with their governor in the East : a com-
pliment which doubtless was still a source of gratification to
Dupleix when their stupidity a few years later ruined both
themselves and him.

But war had by now broken out, and he was left to defend
Pondicherri with but 436 men in the garrison, one small war-
war between S ^P> the great defensive works yet unfinished,
England and and no prospect of further succour from Europe.
France, 1744. j^ a pp ea j was ma( j e ^o the British at Madras

to exclude Asia from the sphere of hostilities ; but they
would have none of it. The two nations had certainly
traded side by side for over half a century without a collision ;
but the British had seen with alarm the rising star of Dupleix,
and though they had formed no definite plans of resistance,
they knew that one of their naval squadrons was sailing for
the East, and was even now destroying French commerce on
the way.

Dupleix had foreseen the refusal, and he at once prepared
to obtain assistance from the native chiefs. Appeal was also
made to Labourdonnais, Governor of the French colony at
Bourbon. Here again the French administration at Paris
displayed its incapacity. Still believing that the war would
be confined to Europe, it had refused the latter permission to
send his forces to India, and rendered it impossible by recall-
ing his fleet. In some respects a man of the same tempera-
ment as Dupleix, he disobeyed ; and, having improvised a

THE EUEOPEAN INVASION OF ASIA 53

fleet of his own by commandeering every foreign vessel that
put in at Bourbon, he set sail for India with his small garrison.
After being nearly wrecked by the monsoon, he arrived off
Pondicherri, drove away the English squadron which was
about to attack that place, and saved the capital of the French
Orient.

Only one policy was now possible. Either the English
must drive the French out of Pondicherri, or the French must
drive the English out of Madras ; and both Dupleix and Labour-
donnais were determined that it should be the latter. Dupleix
thought it ' very easy ' to do so ; and he was probably well
informed as to the weakness of the English position in
Madras, where Fort St. George was in no condition to resist
him, the whole garrison consisting only of 300 men, of whom
34 were Portuguese or negroes, and 70 more were unfit for
duty ; while the officers were three lieutenants, of whom two
were foreigners, and seven ensigns who had risen from the
ranks.

Labouxdonnais was equally anxious to capture the place ;
but the fear that the British fleet he had recently dispersed
would return and take Mm at a disadvantage made him hesi-
tate. He had, as it proved, no reason to fear ; but the tradi-
tion of our success at sea here stood us in good stead, as it has
so often done elsewhere.

Eventually Madras was . besieged on 15th September 1746 ;
and after six days it 'surrendered with precipitation/ to
quote' from the letter in which Labourdonnais me LOSS
announced the capitulation to Dupleix. The of Madras,
latter rightly wished to press the advantage to the utter-
most, by at once attacking the other English stations in
India, and expelling his rivals altogether; but a host of
difficulties now arose. Labourdonnais was jealous of the
authority of Dupleix, and would obey neither appeals nor
commands ; he had already listened to the suggestions of a
ransom, and he fell before the offer of a bribe from the English

54 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

Governor of Madras. With insane treachery, he agreed to
restore the city.

Dupleix was furious, but he could do nothing, for he was
involved in a dispute with the local Nawab from whom both
Pondicherri and Madras were leased. That prince had re-
strained the English from attacking the French two years
before ; on an appeal from Madras, he had half-promised
to protect the English against their enemies : and nothing
would appease him for the violation of the neutrality which
all Europeans were supposed to preserve in foreign lands.

In this perplexity, Dupleix, ready to do anything rather
than restore Madras to the English, assured the Nawab that
it had been conquered in order to present it to him. Still
suspicious at such unwonted generosity, the native ruler
waited on events ; but seeing the French flag continue to fly
over Madras, as Labourdonnais haggled about ransom and a
personal bribe, he at last refused to believe, and came to the
conclusion that he had been doubly duped.

Another disaster now ensued. The French fleet was driven
out to sea and wrecked by the monsoon ; while with the few
shattered vessels that alone were rescued Labourdonnais
returned to Bourbon.

It is probable that Dupleix did not regret the loss of so
sorry an auxiliary : but with him he lost likewise all those
reinforcements to whom he owed not only the capture of
Madras, but also the defence of Pondicherri against the British
fleet. And at the same time, more ill news arrived. Des-
patches from Europe announced that war with Holland was
imminent ; the Dutch therefore would soon be added to the
number of his foes. The patience of the Nawab, too, was
exhausted, and he marched to attack the French, who were
still in Madras.

A painful dilemma now confronted Dupleix. Should he
restore the city to the English, or resign it to the Indian ?
The latter course was preferable, but there was still another

THE EUROPEAN INVASION OF ASIA 55

alternative, and on that Dupleix decided. He determined
to repudiate the arrangement which Labourdonnais had made
with the English, and so dismiss them from India, thus keep-
ing Madras in his own hands, while risking a rupture with the
Nawab.

So far as the native prince was concerned, the matter was
quickly settled. The French and Indian troops came into
conflict on 4th November 1746 ; but after a few rounds of
artillery had been fired the natives fled in confusion. From
that day the Nawab submitted to Dupleix, and not Dupleix to
the Nawab. Never before in modern times had the superiority
of European over Asiatic troops been so plainly demonstrated ;
since then it has seldom been questioned in India.

The battle, which took place at St. Thome before Madras,
relieved Dupleix of his more pressing anxieties : he proclaimed
Madras a French possession by right of conquest ; and the
English, protesting loudly at the breach of faith, were forced
to abandon the Presidency.

It was certainly unfortunate for our people that the bribe
accepted by Labourdonnais had been wasted to no purpose ;
but Dupleix could not be expected to recognise the corrupt
bargain of a subordinate at a critical stage in the struggle
for India. Himself the soul of honour in his dealings with
Europeans he followed, as did everybody in that age, a
different course when negotiating with Asiatics he was not
bound to compromise France because one of her sons had
failed her in the hour of need. The English prisoners were
marched to Pondicherri, and thence they were to be sent to
Europe ; but some escaped to Fort St. David, an English pos-
session south of the French capital, and at that time our sole
remaining station on the Coromandel coast.

Dupleix, determined to be supreme in that part of India,
decided to drive us from our last refuge. Had he acted at
once, victory should not have been difficult. Our garrison
was 300 men, with 1000 native irregulars. The alliance to

56 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

which we had agreed with the Nawab since his rupture with
the French was not of much value. There were no signs of
succour by sea, except for some twenty men landed by a
passing merchant vessel. Our people, too, were depressed by
their late losses and lack of success, and awed by the con-
spicuous greatness of Dupleix.

But there was one vulnerable point in the French Governor's
armour, and that the Nawab discovered by accident. He
was an administrator, a politician, a merchant, a ruler ; but
he was not a soldier. He was forced to rely for his victories
on the fragments of an army which he possessed : and when
he wished to entrust the attack on Fort St. David to Paradis,
the young officer who had routed the Nawab at St. Thome,
the whole service protested at the disregard .of the rules of
seniority. A further argument was found in the fact that
Paradis was a Swiss ; and Dupleix gave way for the moment.
The command was given to an old and incompetent general,
who allowed himself to be attacked unexpectedly and defeated
by the Nawab at the outset of the campaign.

Angry at the loss, Dupleix appealed to the patriotism of
the army, and Paradis was at last appointed to lead. But
meanwhile over two months had been lost, and in that time
the defences of Fort St. George had been strengthened. In
better condition to resist the enemy, fortune seemed also to
turn in our favour. At the moment that the fort was attacked
an English squadron arrived from Calcutta, and the French
were repulsed.

It was now tihe turn of Pondicherri to be on the defensive.
Once again the advantage given by sea-power was proved, for
Dupleix was unable to prosecute his schemes further : indeed,
had it not been for his energy and ability, and a knowledge of
defence which he attributed chiefly to his early love of mathe-
matics, it is probable that the French Empire in India would
have fallen there and then. Judging from the unskilful, dila-
tory, and jejune tactics which the majority of his countrymen

THE ETJEOPEAN INVASION OF ASIA 57

displayed during the next few critical years, it seems certain
that the days of Pondicherri under French rule would have
been few without the inspiring presence of Dupleix. As it
was, the English were repulsed, and retired in dejection. It
appeared hopeless to fight against the genius of this man.

It was now the end of the year 1748. The war had dragged
out its weary length in Europe, devoid of interest or important
consequences. Every nation was sick of a struggle xne p ea ce
that led nowhere, and the Treaty of Aix-la- ofl748 -
Ohapelle brought about a peace that was in fact only a tem-
porary truce. A mutual restitution of conquests was agreed
upon; and Cape Breton, an island that the British Government
considered of little importance, on one side of the world, was
exchanged for Madras, potentially at least of enormous value,
on the other. The whole work of Dupleix was thus cancelled
at a stroke; but, at least, he had the supreme pleasure
of being complimented by his employers for the services he
had rendered. ' If/ said the directors of the French East
India Company, "all his other achievements merited the
thanks of the France he had served so well, his last crowning
success of saving Pondicherri placed him beyond the reach
of ordinary applause/

With peace secured, it was hoped by both the English and
French East India Companies that unaggressive trade in Asia
would continue as of old. Little did they know their servants
in the East ; little did they realise the conditions prevailing
there. As in America, so it was during these years in India :
there was not room for the two nations to exist together.

The next three years were those in which the power of France
was at its zenith in India. The brilliant victories of Bussy
in the Deccan consolidated French influence in
the interior. The vigorous policy of Dupleix
at Pondicherri gave France the empire of the 1748-51.
whole South. His puppet was placed on the throne of
the Karnatic. His authority was soon supreme over thirty-

58 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

five millions of natives. The city of Dupleix-fiittah-abdd
the City of the Victory of Dupleix began to rise, as a
memorial of his past actions, and as a menace to those who
might venture to oppose him in the future.

Meanwhile the English were dispirited and unsuccessful.
They, too, attempted to form political alliances with the
natives, and endeavoured to imitate Dupleix in setting up
their own candidates on Indian thrones ; but it was to no
purpose. They did not yet understand the game which they
afterwards played with such consummate skill.

Through the genius of one man, the French seemed thus
about to sweep all before them in India. Yet the decline of
their power was at hand ; and its decline was as rapid as its
rise. No more help arrived from France, since the French
East India Company could not see the need of any. Practi-
cally all the expenses of the forward policy in India were
paid out of the private purse of Dupleix. The one act of
assistance to which the directors condescended went astray ;
a vessel containing reinforcements of 700 men was burnt at
sea. The Company became more and more distrustful of
its energetic representative in the East, for he was forsak-
ing the peaceful pursuits of trade for the dangers of empire :
instead of concentrating all his attention on the buying of
silks and spices, he was straying into schemes that a C&sar
or an Alexander might devise. As he paid for his vagaries
himself, the directors had patience yet a little while ; but
they were suspicious of him, as only the ignorant and stupid
can be of the far-seeing and wise, for years before his ultimate
recall and final betrayal.

India was at this time the land of meteoric careers, as
America and South Africa became at a later day ; but the star
dive, that was now rising in the East was not French.

1725-74. Eobert dive was the son of a small English
landowner near Market Drayton in Shropshire. Born on
29th September 1725, he was in his earlier years far from a

THE EUKOPEAN INVASION OF ASIA 59

favourite of fortune. Passionate and wayward in his youth,
looked on as a booby by his father, but as a plague by the local
townspeople, from whom he levied a tribute of halfpence in con-
sideration of not breaking their windows, lazy in school and a
scapegrace out of it, young dive seemed destined to become
a ne'er-do-weel. ' Fighting/ said an uncle, c to which he is
out of measure addicted, gives his temper such a fierceness
and imperiousness, that he flies out on every trifling occa-
sion ' \ and soon he was renowned as the daredevil of the
county. Once he climbed to the top of the lofty steeple of
Market Drayton Church, and seated himself on the stone spout
near the summit, to the terror of the onlookers.

There was nothing to be done at home with such a boy ;
and his family gladly accepted a writership for him in the
service of the East India Company. He arrived at Madras
in 1743 ; but his first months in the East were uniformly
miserable. c I have not enjoyed/ he wrote, ' one happy day
since I left my native country. ... I must confess when
I think of my dear native England, it affects me in a very
particular manner ... if I should be so far blest as to revisit
again my own country, but more especially Manchester, the
centre of all my wishes, all that I could hope or desire for
would be presented before me in one view/

Nor was Olive reconciled to exile after the first attack of
home-sickness had spent its force. He had no friends, and
was too proud to make the first advances to anybody. The
few people he knew were card-room acquaintances, and with
them he was always quarrelling and duelling. Twicejhe tried
to shoot himself, and it was only when the pistol would not
fire that he threw it away, swearing that after all he was
reserved for something great.

But as a clerk in the Company's office at Madras he would
assuredly not have accomplished much. Had he been com-
pelled to remain a trader, he might have thrown up his berth
in disgust several times he nearly did so or committed

60 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

suicide; or he might, after some years of discontent and
chafing against routine, have settled down into the usual
type of eighteenth-century Anglo-Indian, occupied with petty
commercial details, and enriching himself privately in the
intervals of attending to the Company's business. Of the
two, the former seems the more likely.

But fortunately for Olive, his lot was cast in more stirring
times. Madras, the station at which he was employed, was
The capture * a ^? n ^7 Labourdonnais ; and he, with many
of Arcot, others of the colony, escaped to Fort St. David.
1751. rT almost come ; Clive asked

and obtained his commission as ensign in the army of the
Company. But the conclusion of peace found him back
at his desk; again he left it to assist in quelling some
native disturbances; again he returned to business. By
now, however, the French were extending their Empire
throughout India. The Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle only enlarged
the scope of their operations. Both the ambition of Dupleix
and the ability of Bussy were fully recognised at Madras ; but
timid counsels prevailed when measures of reprisal were sug-
gested. Hitherto the British had remained feebly on the
defensive, setting their native puppet against the French
native puppet, giving him honour as the French gave honour,
calling him monarch of Southern India as the French called
theirs also. But the man whom the British had chosen to
recognise as such had by now no authority beyond Trichin-
opoli, and it seemed improbable that he would possess even
that for long, whereas the French nominee was saluted every-
where else as rightful ruler.

Clive saw that a sudden and daring blow was necessary,
if his countrymen were not to lose all power in the East ; and,
as captain and commissary to the troops, he determined to
carry the war into the enemy's country by attacking Arcot.
At the head of 200 English and 300 natives, he marched
through wild storms to that fortress ; the garrison, taken by

THE EUROPEAN INVASION OF ASIA 61

surprise, evacuated it without a blow. This, however, was
little ; CKve knew that he would have to undergo a siege, as
soon as the news reached the French or Chunda Sahib, their
Indian ally.

Such preparations as were possible he made ; but an army
of 10,000 Indians, backed by 150 French, was soon upon him.
Arcot was in no good condition to resist. The walls were in
ruins, the ditches were dry, the ramparts too small to carry
guns, the battlements too low to protect the soldiers. Pro-
visions were scanty. Casualties had thinned the garrison ;
its total number was but 120 Europeans and 200 sepoys. Its
commander was only twenty-five years old, and he had had
no military education.

But dive, in the phrase of Pitt, was * a heaven-born general/
He was able to inspire confidence and unity among his men,
albeit they were of different races and creeds ; an anecdote
that has been preserved of the siege shows better than any
description of their hardships in what spirit they fought. The
sepoys came to Olive, not in order to complain of their scanty
rations, but to suggest that all the grain in the place should
be given to the Europeans, who required more nourishment
than Asiatics. The thin gruel, they said, which was strained
away from the rice, would be enough for themselves. Of
such stuff are victories fashioned.

The son of Chunda Sahib, who was conducting the attack,
learned that a body of Marathas, half-soldiers, half-robbers,
had been hired to march to the relief of Arcot. He negoti-
ated; he offered bribes, which were scornfully rejected;
he threatened to storm the fort, and to put every man
within it to the sword. Olive answered coolly that his
father was a usurper, that his army war, a rabble, and that
he had better think twice before he sent cowards to attack
a breach defended by English soldiers.

Stung to fury, the young Indian determined to storm the
fort. Elephants whose foreheads were, armed with iron plates

62 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

were put in the van ; and against a native army they might
have availed. But European musketry forced them back in
terror, and they trampled on the army behind. In spite of
this misfortune, valiant efforts were made to carry a breach
in the walls. But after three onslaughts, it was given up ; and
night fell, leaving the defenders anxiously expecting another
attack. Next morning, however, the assailants had decamped,
and the first great English victory in India was won.

The authorities at Madras were overjoyed, as well they
might be. Further successes followed ; the ' City of the
Victory of Dupleix 3 was rased to the ground, and the monu-
ment which commemorated those victories destroyed.

The spell of French success was thus broken ; and Dupleix,
though he struggled valiantly against misfortune, though he
was never greater than now, when he was playing a losing
game, was yet a beaten man from the day that Olive took
Arcot. That day sounded the knell of French Asiatic power :
it saw the beginning of the present British Empire of India.

The story of the decline of France is quickly told ; its
pathos will move men of every nation, as we follow to their
last sad end the lives of Labourdonnais, Dupleix, Bussy, and

The Ifepch East India Company longed above all things
for peace 2$ the East, not realising that peace could only
The Fau c<We when they or the English had been expelled :
ortotai h anoSLto the maintenance of peace all their ends
Power. werei directed. So anxiously did they desire
it, indeed, thatl they took counsel of their rivals in
London, the Engffish East India Company. The reply from
Leadenhall Street| na ^ally attributed all the evils of strife
to Dupleix. It sowars incredible, but this decided the French
on his recall. Qn 2no^ August 1754, the order to return arrived
at Pondicherri { ten\ vee ^ s later he sailed for Europe, being
followed sorrowfully ft the place of embarkation by the
whole French colony. \His fortune was gone, for the new

THE EUROPEAN INVASION OF ASIA 63

Governor of the French Indies dishonestly refused to recog-
nise the enormous sums owing to Dupleix by the Company.
Nor did he or his family ever receive any satisfaction from
his late employers in Europe. He was at first welcomed
cordially enough at Paris, since it was thought he might be
useful : but soon he was neglected, and allowed to languish
in great poverty ; and thus he lingered nine years until his
death in broken-hearted despair, his misery a standing re-
proach for all time to the ingratitude of the last corrupt period
of the French monarchy. The final words he wrote, com-
posed three days before he died on 10th November 1764, reflect
poignantly the bitterness of his spirit. ' I have sacrificed/ he
declared, e my youth, my fortune, my life, to enrich my nation
in Asia. Unfortunate friends, too weak relations, devoted all
their property to the success of my projects. They are now in
misery and want. I have submitted to all the judiciary forms.
I have demanded, as the last of the creditors, that which is
due to me. My services are treated as fables. My request
is denounced as ridiculous. I am used as the vilest of man-
kind. I am in the most deplorable indigence ; the little
property that remained to me has been seized. I am com-
pelled to ask for decrees for delay in order not to be cast into
prison/

The end of Labourdonnais was as tragic. Recalled after
his failure in India, he was thrown into the Bastille ; not
indeed for his failure, but rather because he had rendered
brilliant services to his country in Bourbon. He was even-
tually released ; but the cruel confinement had undermined
his health and broken his spirit, and he died shortly after-
wards, in 1753.

Bussy returned after some years to India; but, being
without support, he was naturally without success ; and he
too died with neither wealth nor reputation. Lally, the last
of the great Frenchmen in the East, who defended Pondi-
cherri in its declining years against the final assaults of the

64 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

English, was also condemned to death on his return home,
and executed in 1766.

There were no others, nor could there be. There is a limit
beyond which men cannot sacrifice themselves for their
country. That limit is evidently not reached when simple
ingratitude and neglect is the reward of their life-work, or
the Empire of England would not have been standing to-day ;
for few of those who built it have had their labours recog-
nised before their death, and not all have had them recog-
nised after. But when neglect passes into malignance, when
reproaches are added to ingratitude, when confiscation of
personal property, imprisonment, and execution are added
to these : then indeed is the nation that can so reward its
heroes in danger of losing all that they have gained for it. The
supply of empire-builders is not unlimited, and they cannot
be produced at will; when steps are designedly taken to
exterminate them, as was the case in France in the eighteenth
century, it may safely be predicted that neither they nor
the empire will long survive.

Pondicherri was taken from Prance on 1st January 1761 ;
and although it was restored at the Peace of Paris two years
later, it never rose again to the same height as under Dupleix.
The great Governor of the French in India had against him,
in the words of one of the national historians, c that crime
of genius which so many have expiated by misery, by exile,
and by death * ; and when it had thrown away its most
brilliant servant, the French East India Company could not
long continue to exist. It was dissolved in 1769. Through
ignorance and incapacity it had lost an empire.

But the path of Give after the victory of Arcot was far
Further from clear. The other English residents in
sufcesses India ' ^^ P^ed at his success, were unable
in southern to follow it up. Not until his old chief, Major
Illdia - Lawrence, arrived again from home was much
progress made, dive might have retained the command

THE EUKOPEAN INVASION OF ASIA 65

had he chosen; but with rare tacit and discretion, he
resigned it to the older officer. The two worked well together ;
each appreciated the other's abilities ; and one of the most
pleasing episodes in the life of Olive was the delicacy
with which, when flushed with triumph, and the directors of
the Company presented him with a sword set in diamonds,
he refused to accept it unless a similar compliment was paid
to his old commander.

Everywhere the two now conquered. The southern coasts
of India, from being practically a French possession, became
English. But Olive had by this time been nearly ten years
in the East ; and after one last victorious expedition against
two French forts, in which he commanded an army that he
had first had to train, an army composed of 500 raw sepoys and
200 recruits seized from the hells of London, an army which
ran away whenever a soldier was killed, and one of whose
number took refuge for hours at the bottom of a well when
a gun burst : after this exploit, his health compelled him to
return to England.

But with his departure from the scene of action things
soon relapsed into their former state. The merchants of
Madras were satisfied to be nothing more than merchants ;
the military went to sleep ; diplomatic relations with the
native courts were neglected altogether.

It was at Calcutta, however, that the next danger to the
East India Company arose. At that settlement it was
hardly yet worthy the name of town our merchants had
never intended to be anything but commercial men. Their
most warlike occupation had been to cut prices and to kill com-
petition. They had had no conflicts with natives or Europeans.
They had no reason to suspect any menace to their existence.
The neighbouring French settlement at Ghandanagore now
contained no restless Dupleix ; and experience showed that
such a man, had he existed, would have been recalled by
France before he could do much damage to her enemies. The

VOL. II. B

66 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

Dutch were settled further up the Hugli at Chinsurah. Be-
tween them and the English had been waged many a bitter
war for the right to trade ; but those days were past, and
both English and Dutch could hold their own at the peace-
ful business that now engrossed them. Nor did there appear
to be any ground for fearing native hostility. The tribute
agreed upon was paid punctually to the Nawab, and it formed
a not inconsiderable part of his revenue. He would not, it
seemed certain, be so foolish as to deprive himself of that.

But no Europeans save the French knew the workings of
the native mind ; and even the French would have been at
suraja iauli with Suraja Dowlah. Succeeding his grand-
Dowiah. father as Viceroy of Bengal .in 1756, at the age
of less than twenty years, he had hated the English from
the first. It is not apparent what, if any, ground he had
for his hatred ; possibly it was simply a general feeling against
all strangers of another race within his dominions, a pheno-
menon that has frequently been seen in others since his time.
Be that as it may, he hated the English ; and he was an
autocrat. No native dared oppose his desires ; no European
understood what those desires were. He wished to expel
the merchants of the East India Company ; and to do so a
quarrel was necessary. But pretexts for a rupture are never
difficult when the rupture itself is decided on : and in this
case one was found in the fact that, in expectation of another
war with France, the English settlements had been fortified
without special permission having been obtained from the
Nawab. In addition to this, a rich native, hearing that the
Nawab desired to plunder him, had taken refuge in Calcutta,
and was not given up when demanded.

The two pretexts sufficed. Suraja Dowlah marched with
a large army against Fort William, Calcutta. The Governor
fled. The military commander of the place followed a safe
example, and fled likewise. Those who were left in the fort
resisted feebly ; but in a short time it was taken, and the

THE EUROPEAN INVASION OF ASIA 67

Nawab summoned the English prisoners of war before him
in the chief hall of the East India Company's factory. He
spoke abusively of their insolence, and grumbled at the small
amount of treasure that was found. By a gracious after-
thought, however, he promised to spare the lives of his cap-
tives, and retired to rest.

It was the 20th June 1756, the night which is immortalised
in our history by the infamous memory of ' the Black Hole
of Calcutta/ There were 146 prisoners, and they THe Black
were in high spirits, for they had the word of a
prince that their lives would be spared. It is 1756.
true that Asiatic duplicity was a proverb, but nobody
could believe that in such a matter the Viceroy of Bengal
would deliver helpless prisoners to destruction. The captives
were in charge of the Nawab's guards, and these deter-
mined to secure them during the night in the garrison prison,
known by the awful name of the Black Hole.

It was only twenty feet square. Such ventilation as there
was came through small and obstructed air-holes. At anytime
it would have been an uncomfortable confinement for one
person. In any country it would have been unhealthy to
have shut up many persons there for a single night. But in
the middle of the summer, in a tropical country, to confine
146 persons, of various ages and of both sexes, in such a place,
was not merely to commit murder in cold blood, but to com-
mit it in as cruel a manner as was possible, and to the accom-
paniment of fiendish torture such as no mind not utterly
vicious could have suggested to itself.

The guards ordered the prisoners to enter ; and at first
the English laughed at the absurdity of the idea. But it
was soon found to be a command that was intended to be
obeyed. The prisoners expostulated and entreated. It was
without efiect ; the guards threatened to cut down all who
hesitated, and drove their captives into the cell. The door
was shut and locked.

68 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

Immediately the tightly-packed mass of humanity began
to struggle, to scream, to fight for air. Vain attempts were
made to burst the door, to bribe the gaolers. But it was as
impossible to move the one as the other. The soldiers answered
that nothing could be done without the Nawab's orders, that
he was asleep, that he would be angry if anybody woke him.

The terror of the prisoners increased. They trampled on
one another. They fought for places at the small gratings
which served for windows, through which a little air came,
and through which the guards with cruel mercy passed a
little water to their captives.

They raved, they prayed, they blasphemed. Some asked
the guards to fire among them, and so to end their sufferings.
But the spectacle was too amusing for the gaolers to bring
it unnecessarily to a close. They held lights to the bars of
the Black Hole, and laughed at the fearful struggle within. . . .

Towards morning it became almost calm. The shouting
gave way to low moans and gasps. From many there was
no more sound at all. As the day broke, the Nawab roused
himself, and gave orders that the door might be opened.

There were twenty-three survivors, of whom one was a
woman. Weak and staggering, they could not find a way
out among the corpses of their late companions. The soldiers
had to pile up the dead on either side before the living could
emerge. The corpses were already showing signs of decay ;
a pit was dug, and they were thrown in and covered up
without ceremony.

The survivors were brought before the Nawab. There
were some from whom nothing was to be got ; these were
allowed to depart without further injury. The woman was
placed in a harem. But those whom the Nawab thought
might have treasure concealed, the richer members of the
English settlement whom it might be worth his while to
plunder, were sent up country in irons, lodged in sheds, and
fed only with grain and water till they should confess. It

THE EUKOPEAN INVASION OF ASIA 69

was only the pleadings of Suraja Dowlah's womenfolk that
procured their release.

The native guards were neither punished nor reprimanded.
The Nawab was proud of his work and sent letters to the
nominal Emperor at Delhi vaunting his glorious victory, in
memory of which the name of Calcutta was to be changed
to Alinagur, the Port of God. There can be no doubt that
the whole massacre was directly ordered by him ; and the
wretched being, to whom cruelty for cruelty's sake was the
spice of life, thought he had done well in extirpating the
English from his dominions.

For a time there was no retribution ; news travelled slowly
in those days, and punitive expeditions were not easy to
organise. But the Nawab soon began to feel the want of
those whom he had expelled, for his revenues diminished
rapidly. He was considering whether his dignity would allow
the East India Company to return to its old station, when a
different aspect of the affair was brought to his notice.

The news of the massacre reached Madras in August 1756.
There was an instant cry for vengeance. It was no time
for weighing justice with even hand ; a deed so savage pro-
voked feelings as savage among the English.

Fortunately Clive had just returned from Europe, and
within forty-eight hours of the news of the Black Hole becom-
ing known it was determined that an expedition The
led by him should be sent against Suraja Dowlah. Beven ^.
In October it sailed ; in December it anchored in the Hugli.
The Nawab was at Murshidabad, more than a hundred miles
further up the river. "When he was told of the force that
was coming against him, he laughed in derision. His ignor-
ance was as great as his cruelty ; and he, who refused to
believe that there were ten thousand men in all Europe,
scouted the idea that an enemy should dare to invade his
dominions.

But Clive quickly recovered Calcutta, routed the garri-

70 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

sons near, and stormed and sacked the neighbouring towns.
The Nawab began to be perturbed; although he had an
enormous army, and the whole force of his opponents was
but 900 British infantry and 1500 sepoys, he offered to come
to terms. He was prepared to restore the factory, and to give
compensation for the injuries he had caused.

Negotiations were opened. It was proved a month or
two later that the British troops were able to defeat those
of Suraja Dowlah : but the agents of the East India Com-
pany, who had been expelled from Calcutta, were anxious
to start business operations there again ; and the news that
war had broken out once more between England and France
made the government of Madras anxious for the return of
their army. Clive had hitherto been a soldier pure and
simple ; from what has been said of him it may be imagined
that he had no talents as a diplomatist, and no inclination
towards that profession ; and he disliked the thought of treat-
ing with a murderer. But the reasons which induced him to
treat instead of to fight were cogent ; and his success was as
great as a statesman as it had been as a commander. In the
first instance he had little to do with the negotiations, which
were carried on between Watts, a servant of the Company,
and Omichund, a wealthy Bengali, the agent of the Nawab.

But Suraja Dowlah was as fickle as he was feeble. He
advanced to threaten Calcutta ; the moment he did so he
regretted the step, fell back, and consented to make peace
on whatever terms the English might lay down. Before
these terms could be put in writing he intrigued with the
French at Chandanagore, and invited them to drive the
English out of Bengal. His treachery was known both to
dive and Watson, the admiral accompanying the expedition ;
and they at once determined on a bold stroke. They stormed
and took Chandanagore, and all the property and persons of
the chief French establishment in Bengal fell into their hands.

The Nawab was helpless ; but he continued to vacillate.

THE EUKOPEAN INVASION OF ASIA 71

Again he sent an abject submission, and a large sum as
compensation. Immediately afterwards lie asked the French
leader, Bussy, to hasten from the Deccan to his protection.

His people were disgusted at his folly, and alarmed at
the danger to which it exposed them. A plot was hatched
to dethrone the miserable Viceroy of Bengal, and it was
communicated to the committee that was now directing
English affairs at Calcutta. It was neither accepted nor
rejected until Clive expressed his approval in vigorous terms ;
from that moment its execution was decided upon. Suraja
Dowlah was to be deposed, and Mir Jaffir, Commander-
General of the Bengali army, was to reign in his stead. In
return for the active assistance of the British, liberal com-
pensation and gifts were to be given to the Company and
its servants.

But Suraja Dowlah was suspicious. Clive, however, was
equal to the occasion. He wrote in affectionate terms to
the Nawab, calming his fears ; and by the same courier he
sent a letter telling* Mir Jaffir to fear nothing, assuring him
that he would march to his aid 'with five thousand men
who never turned their backs/ Omichund was also in the
plot, and was likewise to receive his reward. But he was
not satisfied, and he demanded 300,000 sterling as the price
of his fidelity. If it were not given, he declared that he
would betray the whole plot to his master that master
whom he had already betrayed.

Again Clive was equal to the occasion. The English
committee hesitated, but Clive determined to play off the
arts of the Bengali intriguer against himself. Omichund
would not be content unless an article guaranteeing the
enormous sum he had named was inserted in the treaty
between Mir Jaffir and the English; and he insisted on
seeing it with his own eyes. Two treaties were therefore
drawn up, one on white, the other on red paper. The
former was the genuine treaty, and mentioned nothing of

72 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

Omichund : the latter, which was a worthless document
only intended to deceive him, contained an article promising
the fulfilment of his demands. But Watson could not bring
himself to so degrading an action ; and once more the plot
was imperilled. Olive at once forged the admiral's name,
and Omichund was convinced. The conspiracy was put in
motion.

Into the right or wrong of Olive's action in this affair it
is scarcely necessary to enter. He was dealing with un-
scrupulous men, and he became unscrupulous himself. In
a country where deception was a commonplace of everyday
life, he deceived even Asiatics at their own game. His
dissimulation has been perhaps excessively blamed by those
critics who have never been themselves placed in a difficult
position, and who affect to judge all things by the canons of
morality which should prevail in Europe. To men who are
playing for a big stake allowances must be made, and the
standard of ordinary conduct has occasionally to be relaxed.
But for all that, and making every concession that it is just
and possible to make, the conduct of dive must be repro-
bated. To put the thing on its lowest ground, a few days
proved that the elaborate plot was uncalled for : everything
that was won in the year 1757 was won by honesty, afed it
would be difficult to find an example in any part of English
history where permanent success has attended deception.
The great strength of our position in dealing with other
nations is the fact that our word may be relied upon; a
promise is accepted because it is recognised that the per-
formance will follow in due course. Had the methods used
by Olive towards Omichund and Suraja Dowlah been gener-
ally imitated, our word would in time come to have had no
more weight than that of the Indian or Kafir with whom
we have treated. An imperial race can neither conquer nor
maintain its conquests by falsehood. To argue the question
in its ethical aspects is superfluous.

THE EUROPEAN INVASION OP ASIA 73

But Olive was now on the march. Suraja Dowlah lay
with Ms enormous army a few miles distant, and it was
time for Mir Jaffir to throw off the disguise of loyalty, and
to assist the English against the Nawab. He, however,
still hesitated ; at the last moment he sent evasive answers.

It was an hour of great peril for Olive and his army. The
force opposed to Mm was 40,000 infantry, armed with
musketry and artillery, and 15,000 cavaky from pjassey,
the hardier races of the North. Against these 1757 -,
Olive had hardly a thousand English troops and two thousand
sepoys. He did not indeed know the exact number of
the enemy; but he knew that the disparity was over-
whelming; that if he were defeated neither he nor any
of Ms men would ever return alive ; that they would be
exposed to the most Mdeous tortures the barbarian Nawab
could devise. That Ms personal courage failed is unlikely :
but a defeat meant not only Ms own destruction, but also
the final loss of the English settlements in Bengal, perhaps
in all India.

For the first and last time in Ms life, Olive shrank for a
while from responsibility. He called a council of war;
and the majority pronounced in favour of retreat, dive
declared Ms concurrence. Many years afterwards, he said
that he had never consulted but one council of war, and
that had he taken its advice the English would never have
been masters of Bengal.

Almost immediately after the discussion, Olive was him-
self again. He retired alone under the shade of some trees,
and rested there the space of one hour in deep thought.
When he returned to the camp he had determined to put
everything to the hazard; and orders were given that the
advance should be made early on the following day.

Next morning the river which lay between the British and
Suraja Dowlah was crossed, and a long day's march brought
the armies within a mile of each other.

74 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

Encamping in a grove of mango-trees near Plassey, Clive
could not sleep ; the horrible din of drums and cymbals
from the Nawab's camp was kept up the whole night ; and
the English general would have been more than human had
he not been anxious about the morrow, the day which was
to decide the fate of India.

Suraja Dowlah, we are told, was also oppressed by fears :
but they were of a different kind. He was distracted by
thoughts of the terrible retribution now being meted out to
him. Always weak and timorous, he dreaded the small
force of Clive far more than Clive dreaded his huge native
army ; always cruel, he now showed himself a .coward.
Distrusting every one who approached him, he was yet
afraid to be left alone ; fearing treachery among his officers,
he feared also to take any step to discover whether it existed.

As the day dawned on 23rd June 1757, one year and three
days after the massacre of Calcutta, the battle began. The
massed battalions of Bengal began to move towards the
grove where lay the English and their native allies. A
cannonade on both sides commenced the actual conflict ;
but the artillery of the Nawab did hardly any damage,
while our guns mowed his men down in quick succession.
Some of his chief officers fell, and disorder spread through
the ranks.

Suraja Dowlah was in a state of abject terror : and when
somebody, endowed with as little courage as himself, sug-
gested the expediency of a retreat, the advice was seized
with alacrity. The order was given; and it decided the
fate of the wretched prince. Clive snatched at the occasion,
and at once commanded an advance. The native army
now became a mob ; the few Frenchmen who valiantly stood
their ground were borne down by the weight of their flying
allies rather than by the British attack.

In an hour all was over. The great army of Bengal was
scattered to the four winds of heaven : 500 were

THE EUROPEAN INVASION OF ASIA 75

killed ; and the camp, guns, baggage, wagons, and general
paraphernalia of war had fallen into the hands of the English.
Our loss was only 22 Mlled and 50 wounded.

Such was the battle of Plassey, the second great event in
the British conquest of India. The first step had been the
capture of Arcot, which began the conquest of the South ;
the second gave England the extremely valuable province of
Bengal. The first broke the power of the French, for ever
as it proved, although it was not expected to do so at the
time ; the second laid the foundation of British supremacy
in the East.

But the full import of the victory was not yet realised.
It was evident indeed that it gave us Bengal, that the East
India Company was no longer in the position of a tenant
occupying lands and offices and transacting business from
those lands and offices, in precisely the same way that an
English merchant might do in London ; it was evident that
the Company was henceforth superior to the Nawab, and
not as hitherto the Nawab to the Company. It was seen
that the Nawab must become a puppet, to be set up or pulled
down according as he was obedient to his masters or not ;
but it was not seen, and in fact it could not yet be seen, that
the victory of Plassey opened up to England the whole
empire of India, and that all those vast territories which
had never seen a European, all those inland kingdoms
which had kept haughtily aloof from the foreign invaders,
would in time acknowledge the British power, and become
integral parts of the British dominions overseas.

The series of wars, in which Arcot and Plassey were the
first achievements, occupied more than a century, and are
not even now brought to a final conclusion ; but the East
India Company realised nothing of the future at the time,
and, so far as can be ascertained, dive did not himself see
very much further than his masters. The Company wished
to remain simple traders, and dive wished to consolidate

76 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS

what he had secured. The instinct of the English in India
was fundamentally opposed to the construction of magnificent
schemes such as animated the French; it is curious and
instructive that in the end the English accomplished far
more than Dupleix had ever dreamed of doing.

BOOK VII

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA :

1757-1828

CHAPTER I

OLIVE AND HIS POLICY: 1757-67 l

THE immediate results of Plassey were small, except in the
personal sense tliat the victory enriched the servants of the
East India Company in Bengal. Olive at once marched on
Murshidabad, which readily opened its gates to the conqueror.
There he took up his residence in a palace, whose garden was
so large that the whole of the five hundred troops which
accompanied Trim could encamp within it. Mir Jaffir was
instantly installed as Nawab.

The wretched Suraja Dowlah, a prey to his own terrors, had
escaped from the field of Plassey to Murshiddbad : but, fear-
ful of the vengeance of Give, he had already left his own
capital. Disguised in a mean dress, and taking with Tifm
only a favourite concubine and a eunuch, he let himself down
at night from a window in his palace, and embarked on the
river for Patna. He was recognised and forced to return.
Exposed to the insults of Mfr Jaflfr, he writhed before his late
minister in convulsions of fear, and implored with tears and

1 Authorities. Hunter, Orme, and Mill, Macaulay's Essays, and
Malcolm's Life, of Olive, as before. The pamphlets and records relating
to the East India Company. The violent prejudice of James Mill against
Olive renders him an unsafe guide except for the bare facts of Indian
history during this period, while Malcolm, on the contrary, is full of
undigested hero-worship.

77

78 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

lamentations the mercy to which he himself had always been
a stranger.

Mir Jaffir betrayed some indecision ; but his son would not
hear of clemency. Suraja Dowlah was taken to a secret
chamber and there assassinated.

Of this act the English were ignorant till afterwards : for
the time being the Company's servants were fully occupied
in filling their pockets. Eight hundred thousand pounds,
in coined silver, were sent down to Fort William. The whole
of the royal treasury was thrown open to dive ; he accepted
between two and three hundred thousand pounds for his
private purse. Even then considerable disappointment was
expressed that Murshidabdd did not furnish greater wealth :
but, in mitigation of the avaricious spirit thus displayed, it
must be remembered that the boundless wealth of the Orient
was still proverbial. Experience had not yet taught
Europeans to deduct the necessary discount from Eastern
hyperbole ; and, however great had been the booty, it
would certainly have fallen short of expectations.

Meanwhile, the news of the outbreak of the Seven Years*
War had been received in Madras ; and the British officials
there, dreading as before a French attack on the settlement,
sent a positive command to Give to return with the army.
He disobeyed the order, and kept the troops. Again, a
despatch arrived from London, in which the directors laid
down new rules for the Company's stations in Bengal. The
rules were unsuitable in any case ; they were drawn up before
the result of Plassey was known in Leadenhall Street, and
they made no mention of Give.

In these circumstances, it was obvious that they could not
be enforced : and the officials, who were designated in the
despatch as constituting the new authorities over the British
settlements in Bengal, felt justified in disregarding their
instructions. Much to their credit, they induced Give to
retain the command. He did so ; and the next despatch

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 79

from England expressed the high approval of the directors
at his success in Bengal, which was rewarded by his appoint-
ment as Governor of all their stations in that Presidency.

But the newly acquired British power in the East was still
menaced in various directions. The French, under Bussy, were
yet strong in the Deccan, and the Seven Years' j^e British
War was at its height. After guerilla combats become tfce
between France and England in the south of |^Jp^
India, where for some time the chief episodes Power in
were the plundering by both sides of defenceless a '
native villages, the French commander, Lally, arrived from
Europe with a force which, in the opinion of Olive, was
large enough to threaten all the English East India Com-
pany's possessions. He immediately took the offensive:
and his exploits, when joined with the brilliant achieve-
ments of Bussy in the Deccan, might reasonably have been
expected to win back the empire of Dupleix. Fort St.
David fell at once : but all the old faults of the French
East India Company were again displayed. No prepara-
tions for the campaign had been made at Pondicherri : ' I
found not/ said Lally, ' the resource of a hundred pence on
my arrival/ None of his countrymen would give him credit.
None of them showed any zeal for the national cause, and
dissensions and jealousies soon divided the garrison. Lally
attempted the capture of Madras, but with the English fleet
protecting that city his position became impossible. He
was forced to fall back, and his failure became a subject of
joy to his unpatriotic personal enemies at Pondicherri. His
dreams of restoring the French name in the East began to
fade : although he had written that ' It is the whole of British
India which now remains for us to attack/ it was soon evident
that the internal weakness of the French would prevent any-
thing but occasional sallies on his part.

Lally's prestige began to decline among the army, and
dangerous signs of mutiny appeared; he was finally de-

80 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

feated by Eyre Coote before Wandewash in 1760. Pondi-
clierri capitulated in the following January, and the last
stronghold of the French in India, the hill fortress of Gingi,
succumbed a few months later. ' That day/ says Orme,
* terminated the long hostility between the two rival European
powers in Coromandel, and left not a single ensign of the
French nation avowed by the authority of the government
in any part of India/

The Dutch Empire had already fallen. Letters had been
sent from Chinsurah, their station in Bengal, urging the
authorities at Batavia, the capital of the Dutch East Indies,
to fit out an expedition which might balance the power of the
English in India. The advice was attended to, and seven
Dutch vessels from Java arrived unexpectedly in the Hugli.
The force on board was greater than that at the disposal of
Olive, for he had sent the greater part of Ms troops to assist
in the struggle against the French. A serious difficulty
menaced him, for Holland was not at war with Britain :
and although the combatants of the East took little notice
of the treaties of the West, the British Government might
impeach him for an act of private hostilities against a friendly
nation. But Olive knew that the traitor Mir Jaffir was in
secret communication with the Dutch at Chinsurah ; and,
had he allowed the two to co-operate, the British power in
Bengal would have been gravely threatened. The latter
danger seemed greater than the former, and his decision
was quickly made. The Dutch attempted to pass up the
river; they were stopped by the English. A battle took
place on both land and water ; the Dutch were absolutely
defeated, their ships taken, and their army routed. Chin-
surah was besieged, but it could not hold out alone. The
heads of the station were forced to come to terms, and it
was agreed that Holland might retain the place, on condi-
tion that no fortifications were raised, and no troops save
the necessary police maintained. Disobedience was to be

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 81

punished by the instant expulsion of the Dutch from the
country.

The English East India Company had now no other rivals
in India. The name of Clive and his victories was enough to
prevent any native insurrection. An amusing but signifi-
cant anecdote that has been preserved well illustrates the
awe with which he was regarded. The Nawab Mir Jaffir had
occasion to reprimand one of his chiefs, who allowed his
followers to engage in a brawl with some of the Company's
sepoys. ' Are you yet to learn/ he said to the delinquent,
* who that Colonel Clive is, and in what station God has placed
him ? ' The answer was short and expressive. ' I affront
the Colonel ! ' said the chief. e I, who never get up in the
morning without making three low bows to his jackass ! '

A conspiracy of native chiefs against Mir Jaffir, who was
on all sides rightly regarded as a mere tool of the English, was
immediately suppressed ; and that contemptible prince in
gratitude granted Clive, as a personal present, the quit-rent
of the East India Company's lands in Bengal. Its value
was little less than thirty thousand pounds a year. CHive
was now one of the richest men in the world; and a few
months later he sailed for England, in the year 1760, to enjoy
the fruits of his wealth, and to receive the honours, rewards,
and adulation which there awaited him.

Few men had ever deserved better of their country. Since
his time there has been no lack of able soldiers and states-
men to defend and enlarge our Asiatic possessions : before
him there was not one who was capable of doing so. It was
he who discovered the talent that lay dormant in such men as
Coote and Hastings ; it was he who created the tradition of
British supremacy in the East : in a word, it was he, and he
alone, who laid the foundation of the British Indian Empire.

But the greatness of Clive cannot be appreciated at its
proper value till we have seen to what a depth of shame the
East India Company in India sank during his absence,

VOL. II. F

82 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

and the state of anarchy and robbery from which he
rescued it after his return. We have said that he created
Tne English. ^ e * ra( ^tion of British supremacy; and since
Tyranny, his time our power in the East has only once
1760-5. | )een ser i olis }y endangered. But he had created
no system of administration ; he left behind him no tradition
of government. It was still a recognised rule that the
Company was to get as much and to give as little as it could,
and its servants endeavoured not unsuccessfully to do like-
wise. The natives of India were notoriously evasive and
deceptive in their dealings with foreigners, and the Company
had too often followed their example. Clive himself had done
so on occasion ; and his acts, if not his words, proved that
he thought deceit no crime when practised towards a native
of India. The tradition of British supremacy in India was
indeed maintained during his absence : nothing could undo
that save the evacuation of our possessions there ; but there
was as yet no sense of responsibility towards our new
subjects, no feeling that the privileges of rule entailed duties
equally great towards those whom we governed.

Clive was not a particularly scrupulous man, and he would
scarcely have hesitated to take any step that, in his opinion,
advanced the interests of his employers : but at least he
embarked on no frauds or extortion to serve his personal
ends. He was not rapacious or avaricious, although he had
accepted gifts that strictly he should have refused; but
those who came after "him were to show to what tyranny
men can stoop when they are not restrained by any dread
of future retribution or any code of personal honour.

The English power in Bengal was supreme. In the south
of India it was less firmly rooted, but still no native would
have dared to question it. Certainly none of the peaceful
Bengalis would venture to rebel, and Bengal was now by far
the most important British possession in the East. The
Nawab Mir Jaffir was a puppet in our hands ; but soon after

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 83

the departure of Olive he displeased the governing Council
at Calcutta. He was deposed; and another puppet, Mir
Cossim, reigned in his stead. But the latter was not the
negligible quantity that his predecessor had been: and
therefore he too was deposed, and Mir Jaffir was again made
Nawab.

From each revolution the servants of the Company took
their profit. The treasury was in their hands, and they
helped themselves to the utmost. The people were ground
down by taxation ; and every few months a fresh turn was
given to the screw, as some new Englishman arrived at
Calcutta to make a fortune.

But these evils were the least that the wretched natives
had to bear. The private trade of the country was now
engrossed by the Company's servants : the profitable com-
merce in salt, tobacco, and the betel-nut was all seized by
them. They bought and sold at whatever prices seemed
best to them. They refused to pay the transport duties;
if a toll-collector complained, he was taken and imprisoned
in one of the Company's stations.

Vansittart, the Governor, was appealed to; but he was
too weak to end the abuse. He merely replied that he was
f unwilling to give up an advantage/ and he was unable to
make others give it up. Warren Hastings was the only
member of the Council who wished to stop the robbery;
but alone he was unable to do anything, and his colleagues
were all occupied in getting rich as quickly as they could.

Such tyranny as this had never been known in India.
Other governments had been rapacious, had robbed their
subjects, had tortured them, had put them to death. The
English repression was of a different character. It cared
nothing about the political complexion of the country. It
is not on record that a single act of torture was committed,
or that one man was executed unjustly. But for that very
reason the tyranny was the more terrible, for its sole object

84 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

was to extort every available rupee from the pockets of the
Bengalis, and to place them in the pockets of the Company's
servants. The rapacity was merciless, and it was unending ;
for so soon as one foreigner had accumulated a fortune, he
returned to England, and another took his place, whose
object in coming was the same. Complaint was useless, for
complaint could only be made to those who did the wrong.
Rebellion was impossible, for the lesson of Plassey was not
forgotten, and the Company's generals who still remained
in India were worthy successors of Clive.

The misery of the land is well summed up by the Musalman
historian of the times in his description of the English tyrants.
'It must be acknowledged/ he says, 'that this nation's
presence of mind, firmness of temper, and undaunted bravery
are past all question. They join the most resolute courage
to the most cautious prudence ; nor have they their equals
in the art of ranging themselves in battle array and fighting
in order. If to so many military qualifications they knew
how to join the arts of government; if they exerted as
much ingenuity and solicitude in relieving the people of God,
as they do in whatever concerns their military affairs, no
nation in the world would be preferable to them, or worthier
of command. But the people under their dominion groan
Everywhere, and are reduced to poverty and distress.
Gold, come to the assistance of thine afflicted servants, and
deliver them from the oppressions which they suffer/

Five * years the tyranny continued unchecked. But the
directors^ of the East India Company were already becoming
alarmed d^t the condition of their oriental possessions. A
conspiracy f* t Patna had necessitated the despatch of Hector
Munro fromA Bombay ; and a dangerous sepoy mutiny in
the ranks was** only quelled by his firmness. The war in the
Patna district * proved long and costly. 'The Company/
wrote one of the} directors, * was sinking under the burden,
and obliged to borrow great sums off their servants at eight

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 85

per cent, interest, and even with that assistance were unable
to carry on the war and their investment, but obliged to
send their ships half loaded to Europe/ Military authority
had become relaxed, and only terror now kept down the
insubordination of the sepoys. The Company was in
financial difficulties, yet its servants returned home
millionaires. *

The origin of the evil was well understood : and in a per-
emptory command, dated 8th February 1764, the directors
endeavoured to stop it. ' One grand source of the disputes,
misunderstandings, and difficulties/ said they, ' which have
occurred with the country government,, appears evidently
to have taken its rise from the unwarrantable and licentious
manner of carrying on the private trade by the Company's
servants ... to the prejudice of the Subah, both with
respect to his authority and the revenues justly due to him ;
the diverting and taking from his natural subjects the trade
in the inland parts of the country, to which neither we, nor
any persons whatsoever dependent upon us, nor under our
protection, have any manner of right. In order, therefore,
to remedy all these disorders, we do hereby positively order
and direct that, from the receipt of this letter a final and
effectual end be forthwith put to the inland trade/

But such measures were of no use while the salaries of the
Company's servants in the East remained inadequate. It
was not to be expected that men would exile The Return
themselves from home for several years to gain of euro,
the paltry remuneration which the directors thought suffi-
cient. It was absurd to suppose that they would give
up theii profits in trade, even though, that trade was
illegitimate, when those profits were the sole attraction
that brought them to India, and the sole reason that kept
them there. The directors* commands were contemptuously
disregarded, and the situation . became more and more
dangerous. At length the proper step was taken. In spite

86 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

of the opposition of enemies on the board of the Company
in London, it was recognised that Olive was the one man
who could cope with the problem; and he was appointed
Governor and Comm ander-in-Chief of the British possessions
in Bengal. After heated disputes and protracted negotiations
he sailed ; and in May 1765 he reached Calcutta.

The task before Mm was one of extraordinary difficulty.
He himself called it a cleansing of the Augean stable. ' What

do we hear of. what do we see/ he wrote. ' but
His Reforms. , ' . ' '

anarchy, confusion, and what is worse, an almost

general corruption/ To an intimate friend he expressed him-
self with a depth of feeling to which he seldom gave vent.
' Alas ! how is the English name sunk ! I could not avoid
paying the tribute of a few tears to the departed and lost
fame of the British nation irrecoverably so, I fear. How-
ever, I do declare, by that great Being who is the searcher
of all hearts, and to whom we must be accountable if there
be a hereafter, that I am come out with a mind superior to
all corruption, and that I am determined to destroy these
great and growing evils, or perish in the attempt/

Unfortunately the powers granted him were loosely and
jesuitieally worded, and were at once contested by the
Council at Calcutta. e I was determined, however/ he said
afterwards in his great speech in his own defence before
Parliament, *to put the most extensive construction upon
them, because I was determined to do my duty to my
country/

Olive had not been a week in India before he intimated
his intention of purifying the administration, and of finally
putting an effectual stop to the illegitimate private trade
which had been the source of most of the abuses. At the
first meeting of the Council he announced his decision.

One of its members, who had notoriously been to the fore
in acts of rapacity, made a show of opposition, dive
interrupted him, and haughtily demanded to know whether

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 87

lie disputed the authority of the new government. The
objector was cowed by the question, and denied any wish
to obstruct. The other members uttered not a syllable of
dissent.

Their opposition was none the less real, and dive knew
it. He was not blind to the difficulties and temptations
with which he would have to contend. Had he been
mercenary, had he been false to the trust imposed in "hi
by the directors, he might have . done anything he wished
for his personal aggrandisement. His wealth was akeady
great ; he might have now made himself by far the richest
man in the world. He might have connived at the private
trade and the other abuses he was sent out to uproot ; by
sharing the spoils with his old colleagues, he would have
made himself popular among them, and he could have
satisfied the directors at home with pretended reforms that
had no existence beyond the paper on which they were
written.

On the other hand, the policy which he had sketched out
as necessary to the welfare of both India and the East India
Company was certain to procure frim the undying hatred of
the English officials in the Orient. It was by no means so
certain that it would win the approval of the directors and
proprietors. To enforce it would mean hard work in the
teeth of the interested opposition of a gang of fortune-
hunters, and that without any pecuniary profit for himself.
Many another man would have grasped at the dishonest
opportunity : Clive did not.

The destinies of the English in India had once before
depended on his courage; they now depended on his
honesty and sense of public duty as well. He was not
avaricious. Indeed, he was able to declare later that he
left India a poorer man after his third visit than after his
second; and Clive was never afraid of opposition or un-
popularity. He carried out the civil measures of reform

88 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

that he had planned with the same iron will that he had
shown as a military commander.

The receiving of presents from the natives was straight-
way prohibited. No more of such forced benevolences
in the civil disgraced the British name in India. Private
service. trade was forbidden without any qualification.
The whole English settlement rose in rebellion at these acts.
Instead of quickly amassing riches and returning to Europe
within a year or two, the greedy adventurers of Calcutta
saw themselves condemned to half a lifetime of dreary routine
work for little pay, and the prospect of an eventual landing
at home almost as poor as when they embarked.

But Olive was undaunted. He declared that if he were
unable to find support in Bengal he would find it elsewhere.
His chief opponents were dismissed, and other less factious
assistants were obtained from Madras. By these stern
measures resistance was quelled.

But it was evident that unless the salaries of the Company's
servants were increased to a reasonable amount the old
abuses would spring up again ; or if that were avoided it
would only be because an incompetent class of men who
could get no better employment at home had accepted posts
in the service. Either alternative was bad; but the
directors were obstinate, and would not increase the salaries,
dive, therefore, took matters into his own hands.

A revised scale of remuneration was drawn up, which
provided an adequate salary to each grade of the service ;
and the monopoly of salt was appropriated to its payment.
James Mill, an historian whose invincible prejudice saw some-
thing to condemn in every deed of the British in India, was of
opinion that the act was a tyrannous usurpation of authority
on the part of dive ; and he believed that it would have no
effect in restraining the abuses of private trade, for what had
been in the power of the grasping before the arrival of the
soldier-statesman would again be in their power after his

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 89

departure. To the former objection, it is sufficient to answer
that the salt monopoly had been a source of Indian revenue
many generations before the eighteenth century ; its appro-
priation for the government service imposed no new hard-
ship on the natives. On the contrary, it alleviated their
burdens : for, in spite of the theoretic historian, the rapacity
of the East India Company's clerks was immediately checked.
In the success of the measure lies its justification.

The abuses of the civil administration were thus done away
with : those of the military still remained. In a double sense
their opposition was even more formidable than ^^3
that of the civilians. Theirs was the supreme Military
power in the country. They were old comrades eryice -
in arms of Give; They had been affected disadvantageous^
by the retrenchments ordered by the directors. And they
now rebelled under the stern reforming hand of the old
master whom they had loved and obeyed so well.

Two hundred British officers conspired against the govern-
ment, and determined to resign their commissions on the
same day. They acted in the belief that Give would quail
before an act which jeopardised the very existence of the
British Empire in Asia. But they little knew with whom
they had to deal. There were a few officers left on whom
Clive could rely ; he ordered up others from Madras ; he
gave comnrissions to mercantile agents, to anybody, in fact,
who would support him at such a crisis ; and the sepoys
remained true to one who in past years had often led them
to victory.

The mutineers were ordered to Calcutta : and they soon
discovered that they had mistaken their man. They implored
to be taken back into the service. But Clive was inexorable.
The ringleaders were cashiered; some of the juniors were
leniently treated ; but he was inflexible in his determination
to dismiss the chiefs who had deserted him.

While thus severe, however, Clive was not revengeful. It

90 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS

was suggested that one of the conspirators had planned his
assassination ; but he would not listen to the charge. * The
officers/ he said, 'are Englishmen, not assassins/ From
that time the military were obedient.

But these changes, great as they were, still left the
relations between the East India Company and the en-
in the Native felled and declining native governments of
Government. India untouched. Yet Olive knew that after
his return some ambitious or avaricious official could again
pull down the existing Nawab, and set up his own nominee
whenever he wished. The well-known series of events would
begin once more : the prince who wafc deposed would con-
spire against the English, and he who was elevated to the
throne would prove a traitor or a weakling, or both; a
massacre would take place, as it had at Patna in 1763 ; a
mutiny would break out, as in 1764 ; and the old vicious
circle of continuous repression would recommence.

It was therefore necessary to alter the whole position
which the East India Company held as masters of India.
But first it was necessary to decide what their future policy
was to be. Were they to extend their conquests indefinitely
through the peninsula, or to be content merely to conserve
what they had won ?

An ambitious dreamer of the magnificent type of Dupleix
would have taken the former course without hesitation.
Had Clive been cast in the same mould he would have done
so ; had he been only a lover of military glory, he would
probably have embarked on a vast series of conquests. But
he was a statesman as well as a soldier, an employee of a
commercial corporation as well as a ruler of kingdoms ; and
the day of the English dreamer in India was not yet.

He determined to cry a halt in the movement towards
expansion. On 30th September 1765 he wrote : ' My resolu-
tion was, and my hopes will always be, to confine our assist-
ance, our conquest, and our possessions, to Bengal, Bahar,

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 91

and Orissa : to go further is, in my opinion, a scheme so
extravagantly ambitious and absurd, that no Governor and
Council in their senses can ever adopt it, unless the whole
scheme of the Company's interest be first entirely new
modelled/ That he had the support of the directors in
making this decision the whole tenor of their despatches
shows. They had always protested against being made
oriental sovereigns against their will. They detested the
responsibilities that had been thrust upon them, possibly
with an uneasy foreconsciousness that it would eventually
bring about the interference of the British Parliament.
For a century and a half they had been a trading company,
and they still saw no reason why they should now change
their course. 1 They continued, in fact, to condemn the
policy of expansion for years after dive left India. In a
letter of 1768 they wrote : ' It is not for the Company to take
the part of umpires of Indostan. If it had not been for the
imprudent measures you have taken, the country powers
would have formed a balance of power among themselves.
We wish to see the Indian princes remain as a check upon
one another, without oux interfering/ In the following year
another reprimand was sent out : * It is with the utmost
anxiety and displeasure that we see the tenth article of the
treaty ... a measure so totally repugnant to our most
positive and repeated orders not to extend our possessions
beyond the Carnatic. . . . The rage for negotiations,
treaties, and alliances, has private advantage for its object
more than the public good/

Clive, therefore, in calling a halt, was aware that he would
win the approval of his employers: but this certainly

1 It may be noticed that they succeeded in remaining a trading com-
pany in China, without any territorial responsibility. But had the
Chinese Empire shown the same signs of disruption as the Indian, they
would probably have been forced to follow the same course there as in
India. Circumstances favoured a continuance of the more limited policy
in China, and opposed it in India ; unfortunately for the directors, how-
ever, India was more important commercially than China.

92 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

weighed less with Mm than the good of the British name in
India. The directors naturally approved his decision to
stop territorial expansion ; but they wished to go further,
and give up something even of what they had acquired.
On this point Olive was adamant. He wrote at once, * With
regard to the magnitude of our possessions be not staggered.
Assure yourself that the Company must either be what they
are or be annihilated/

The measures he took may be briefly stated. On his
arrival, he found the Nawab of Oudh threatening the British
The Dual possessions. The mere name of Olive was enough
system. JJQ ma ke the native prince sue for peace, and sub-
mit to pay one and a half minions sterling for the expenses
of the war. AHaMbdd and Korah were returned to their
original owner. In the provinces of Bengal, Bahar, Orissa,
and the Northern Circars was set up what became known
as the dual system : that is to say, the Mughal, titular sove-
reign of all India, was prevailed upon to issue a warrant,
by which the English were to collect the revenues of those
provinces, and to maintain the army. For this privilege the
Company paid six hundred thousand sterling to the Nawab at
Murshidabad, and half that sum to the Emperor at Delhi.
The criminal jurisdiction still remained in native hands.

When the miserable puppet who was installed as Nawab
at Murshidabad heard of the sum he was to receive his one
remark was, ' Thank God ! Now I can have as many dancing-
girls as I please ! ' His exclamation sufficiently charac-
terises the class of men to whom the government of India
had previously fallen. By the new arrangement, however,
the English were the real masters ; although by the fiction of
the dual grant, they were the servants both of the Nawab
and of the Mughal to whom they paid a subsidy.

dive had thought of openly claiming the complete rule
for the East India Company : but he hesitated", and finally
declined to do so, on the ground that it would be more easy

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 93

to conduct negotiations with the other European traders
in Asia through the medium of a native sovereign. The
experience of a few years proved him to be mistaken. The
dual system was cumbrous and unsatisfactory in working :
it lasted only a short time. By it the English possessed the
substance of power without the shadow ; the course of events
speedily made it necessary for them to possess both.

The next step forward, however, was left to another man.
Olive had done his work : and after eighteen months in the
East, his third and last visit to India came to an end in
January 1767. Broken in health, he returned to England,
there to spend those last few melancholy years which form
so pitiful a contrast to his brilliant career in India.

CHAPTER II

WAEEEN HASTINGS : 1767-85 l

THE first years after Olive had taken his final departure from
India were quiet and uneventful. The abuses he had put
down did not revive to any extent. The new system of
government introduced by him was on its trial.

Now, if at any time, the business of the East India Com-
pany should have been profitable ; the directors should have
been wealthy, the shareholders contented, and the staff well

1 Authorities. G-leig's Life for the personal history of Warren Hastings,
with his own numerous writings. Hunter for his administration, supple-
mented by the masterly State papers penned by Hastings himself during
his period of office. Mill is extremely prejudiced against Hastings;
Macaulay's brilliant essay must be corrected by G. W. Forrest, Selec-
tions from the State Papers of the Governors-General of India, which have
only recently been published. Macaulay's estimate of Impey must be
rejected after the defence of that judge in the Memoirs, by his son ; the
important Story ofNuncumar, by Sir James Stephen ; and Mr. Forrest's
examination of his Indian career. The parliamentary debates and
pamphlets published at this time in England, which are referred to at
greater length in the next chapter, throw useful sidelights on the period.
The pamphlets are often extremely acrimonious and contradictory ; see,
for example, The Origin and Authentic, Narrative of the Present Marratta

94 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

paid and prosperous. As a matter of fact, the Company had
seldom been in greater financial difficulties ; and the troubles
of the Board of Control were added to by the constant dis-
sensions within, and the continual discussions which took
place in public as to their methods of government, their policy
of management, their treatment of the staff, and their conduct
towards their Asiatic subjects.

England, in fact, was slowly beginning to realise that she
had undesignedly conquered an empire ; and her equanimity
was disturbed by the knowledge that it was an anomaly that
a trading corporation of London should be a sovereign power
in Asia. For the moment, however, the national conscience
was not seriously incomqaoded by the discovery.

But three years after Clive left India, an event took place
which neither the statesmanship nor the business instinct
The Famine of the East India Company could have foreseen
of 1770. or provided against. For the first time since they
had emerged from the humble position of mercantile ad-
venturers, one of those terrible famines which are the scourge
of Asia confronted them ; and the Bengal famine of 1770 was
peculiarly memorable for its severity.

Famines had indeed constantly visited India. There is
proof of their existence from the earliest times of which we
have record. Every few years one part or another of the
country had been devastated ; but their very number pre-
vented all but the most awful from being held in more than

War, and also the late Rohilla War, published in 1781, obviously in the
interest of Sir Philip Francis, and taking throughout the most unfavour-
able view of Hastings. There are others, by the Governor-General's
indiscreet friends, as partial to him as this is hostile. The political
history of the events leading up to the first Maratha War is somewhat
obscure, and the narrative rests on rather crumbling ground, in sharp
distinction to the military history of that war and the war with Mysore,
as also of the annals of Bengal and Madras, where no room for doubt can
arise. The reaction upon Indian policy of the critical situation of
European politics must be borne in mind throughout the whole period
when Hastings was Governor-General. Some interesting details of
Madras at this time will be found in Miss Bobbins' work, Our First
Ambassador to China.

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 95

local remembrance. Of the one that took place in 1630 a con-
temporary historian wrote : ' Life was offered for a loaf, but
none would buy ; rank was to be sold for a cake, but none
cared for it ; the ever bounteous hand was now stretched out
for food. For long dog's flesh was sold for goat's flesh, and
the pounded bones of the dead were mixed with flour and
sold ; men began to devour each other, and the flesh of a son
was preferred to his love/ The same scenes of horror pro-
bably occurred at each visitation ; but so far as can be known,
the famine of 1770 surpassed them all.

The story is appallingly simple. The head of each family
cultivated his own plot of ground : and when the rains failed
for a season, the rivers shrank to rivulets, the crops did not
appear, and the whole population of the Ganges valley was
soon starving. Men died helplessly by the roadside ; women
who had never before shown their faces in public came forth
into the streets, and threw themselves on the earth, with
loud lamentations imploring in vain a morsel of rice for their
little ones. The survivors were too weak to attend to the
dying or administer the last rites to the dead ; loathsome
birds of prey fed openly on the corpses that strewed the cities
and fields of the unhappy province of Bengal ; thousands of
those who perished were borne down by the Hugli past the
English settlement of Calcutta.

It is said that ten millions died in a few months : the popular
computation reckoned that six annas in the rupee, or six-
sixteenths of the whole population of Bengal, perished in the
famine.

It was rumoured that the servants of the East India Com-
pany snatched a wretched and inhuman profit by buying all
the available rice and grain of the country, and selling it at
many times its normal price to their starving subjects. The
allegation seems to have been unfounded ; for the honour
of the English name, we may hope that it was ; but it shows
the opinion held at home of the morality of the East India

96 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

Company's employees. Public feeling in England was now
thoroughly aroused, and sympathy with India was mingled
with horror at the acts of its masters, for which England was
indirectly answerable; and before the just indignation of
the country could die away under some more exciting party
political scare at Westminster, the first great parliamentary
measure of Indian administrative reform was accomplished.

The cost of government, and the decreasing profits on its
trade, had brought the Company into serious financial straits.
India and ^ e ^^ ^ Parliament passed in 1769, permitting
the British a renewal of the charter, contained more onerous
Parliament. p rov i s j 0ns ^] ian j^ previously been required of
the stockholders. Their property in India was granted
for five years more, on condition that they paid into
the English exchequer annually four hundred thousand
sterling. By a sliding scale, their dividend might rise from
ten to twelve and a half per cent. ; if it fell below that sum
their contribution to the exchequer was reduced ; if it should
be less than six per cent, no claim at all was to be made on
them. But this did not improve their affairs : and three
years later came the crisis. It was necessary to borrow from
the Bank of England to save the Company from bankruptcy ;
and the Bank was unwilling to lend all that was required.
Application was made to the British Government, and the
British Government turned a deaf ear to the directors.

It was now August 1772 ; and already in January of that
year the King's Speech at the opening of Parliament had
TneRegu- mentioned the affairs of India as a possible
latingAct, subject of legislation. On 30th March a Bill
1T73 * had been brought in for the better regulation of

the Indian service, and for improving the administration of
justice in the East. Keferred to a' Select Committee, it
was thrown out on second reading ; but Parliament again
met in November, much earlier than usual, in order to
consider the position of the East India ^Company.

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 97

The directors complained in vain of the interference; it
was proposed to lend them money to cany on the
business of the Company, and to allow them the profits
and ownership of their territorial possessions for the ensuing
six years that were unexpired of the term of their charter.
Loud protests were heard that this was confiscation of pro-
perty : but, on 3rd May 1773, the Government introduced an
almost revolutionary measure. Some small alterations were
to be made in the constitution of the Company at home, but
the main changes affected India.

A Governor-General was to be appointed at a salary of
25,000 yearly, assisted by four Councillors with 8000 each.
This was to apply to Bengal ; and the other presidencies were
to be subordinate to it. A Supreme Court of Judicature
was to be established at Calcutta, with a Chief-Justice at a
salary of 8000 and three judges at 6000. These were to
be appointed by the British Government ; the first Governor-
General and Councillors were to be nominated by Parliament
for the first five years ; after that the patronage returned
to the directors, but always subject to the approval of tie
Government; while everything in the Company's corre-
spondence relating to civil or military affairs, the government
of the country, or the administration of revenue, was to be
laid before the British Cabinet for approval. No person in
the service either of the king or the Company was to be
allowed to receive presents, and the Governor-General, the
Councillors, and the judges were to be excluded from all
commercial profits and pursuits.

The Company again protested bitterly at the subversion
of its chartered rights, and appeal was made to the City
of London, the stronghold of commercial corporations, for
aid in the struggle against a measure that was stigmatised
as legal robbery. It was said that no property was safe
when Parliament could thus despoil its owners ; that it
was manifestly unjust that the Company should be deprived

VOL. II. G

98 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS

of the choice of its servants, while it was compelled to pay
those appointed by others, and pay them, too, enormous
salaries out of profits none too large. It was hinted darkly
that what had happened to the East India Company might
be the fate of other City corporations, and that it behoved
all to stand together in defence of the first victim.

But the City took no action, although it must be admitted
that a plausible case was made out. The weak point in
the directors' argument was their ignoring the fact that it
was abnormal for a commercial company to rule an empire.
No other company was likely to find itself in such a position,
and London could not be very seriously alarmed at a law
that was evidently not really intended to confiscate property
at all, but was only introduced in obedience to the higher
principle that England as a whole was responsible for the
acts of her people throughout the world. The directors also
conveniently forgot that it was they who had first appealed
to the British Government for aid ; and that the administra-
tion of their Asiatic possessions had for years been a byword
and a reproach.

If a commercial crisis and a political scandal together
do not justify the interference of Parliament, then nothing
does. The Bill was passed.

The first Governor-General of British India was Warren
Hastings, a scholar and administrator, the strange romance
warren ^ w ^- ose career is in itself an epitome of Anglo-
Hastings, Indian history for many years. Born of the
1732-1818. | an( j k onoiara ki e k^ decayed family of the

Hastings of Daylesford, on 6th December 1732, it seemed
likely in early life that the natural bent of his talents would
make him a man of letters, perhaps a university professor.
A good athlete at Westminster School, he took even more
kindly to his book than to sport.

But the guardian in whose care the orphan had been
placed had planned a different career for his charge. It was

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IF INDIA 101

in his power to obtain for Hastings a writership in the East
India Company's service ; an, despite the remonstrances
of the latter's tutor, who offered to pay the expenses of his
most promising pupil at the university, young Hastings was
shipped off to the East in his eighteenth year.

It seemed that in all probability a life at the desk awaited
him, a life whose main incidents were the making out of
accounts, the posting of ledgers, and the correct filling-up
of bills of lading. Nothing more engrossing occupied the
average Anglo-Indian at that time, unless he engaged in the
illicit private trade that alone could make him independent.
To these unexciting pursuits was Hastings doomed; but
his was a different spirit from that of the majority of his
fellow clerks.

The taste for learning softened the fetters of commerce ;
the love of letters survived the cares of statesmanship and
the long wrangles at the Council Board. He was the first
Englishman in the East who took any interest in the
magnificent literature of India; the first who troubled to
gain anything beyond a perfunctory knowledge of the
languages of the country. Clive had conducted all his
affairs through an interpreter. The merchants of the
Company were satisfied if they could speak enough of the
vernacular to buy and sell advantageously. Hastings, on
the other hand, studied the tongue of the people among
whom he dwelt, and explored part, at least, of the sealed
book of Eastern thought. It was through his personal
exertions in later years that a few cultured Englishmen
began to realise that there were Asiatic as well as European
classics, and that a knowledge of the Sanscrit idiom might
be as useful as that of ancient Greece.

It is not difficult to see that a man whose tastes led him
to the then unprecedented course of learning what were
still considered barbarous languages, would be an adminis-
trator of fundamentally different type from the ordinary

98

THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

official : and whatever mistakes Hastings committed in the
course of his career, however harsh and unjust he may have
been at times to the land he ruled, there was always a world
of difference "between his policy and that of his predecessors.

His absorption in a dramatic series of political and diplo-
matic events has averted attention from his reforms in Bengal
and the other provinces under British rule ; the indignation
of England at the autocratic excesses which stain his name
is remembered, while much of his permanent work is for-
gotten, buried as it is in uninteresting State papers and dry
legal documents ; yet the administrative side of his career,
neglected by Ms enemies wten they impeached him,
neglected likewise by too many historians who seize only
on the picturesque and striking episodes of life, embodies,
in fact, by far the most valuable part of his work.

The first two years of his life in India were spent unevent-
fully in the East India Company's office at Calcutta. Clive
had despaired in a similar situation, and attempted to commit
suicide ; Hastings gave way to no such outburst of passion.
His whole character, indeed, was one of quiet calm depth
and strength. He had, at least in early years, the lack of
assertiveness that is natural to the student; thus we find
Clive, who soon noticed his ability, writing to him, * I thought
I discovered in you a diffidence in your own judgment, and
too great an easiness of disposition, which may subject you
insensibly to be led where you ought to guide/
;- Seldom was there a greater mistake. Under an unimposing
appearance, and with an apparent docility which may have led
him at first to acquiesce in acts of which he must have seen
the unwisdom, lay concealed an unconquerable will and a finn-
*ness of purpose not less inflexible than that of Eobert Lord
dive. And his later career was to show that he possessed to
the full the unscrupulousness inherent in great men when placed
in a position of supreme power, the contempt for anything
but the shortest cut to the required end, the necessary dis-

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 101

regard of the feelings and rights of opponents who do not
matter, the requisite foresight to circumvent in advance
those who may become dangerous.

Two incidents of his private life show the patient firmness
with which he pursued any object that lay near his heart.
As a boy, he had determined to win back the family estates
at Daylesford, which the improvidence of his ancestors had
lost. He has left an account of his childish thoughts in his
own graceful style. A stream ran beside his home : and
' to lie beside the margin of that stream/ he wrote, e and
muse was one of my favourite recreations ; and there, one
bright summer's day, when I was scarcely seven years old,
I well remember that I first formed the determination to
purchase back Daylesford. I was then quite dependent
upon those who were themselves scarcely raised above want ;
yet somehow or other the child's dream, as it did not appear
unreasonable at the moment, so in after years it never faded
away. God knows there were times in my career, when to
accomplish that or any other object of honourable ambition,
seemed to be impossible: but I have lived to accomplish
this/ At his desk in India he still held to the idea, and it
animated him throughout his whole career until he was
successful.

Again, on his second journey out to India, he fell in love.
The lady was already married to an ignoble German baron,
who consented to a divorce ; and Hastings waited patiently
during the years that elapsed before the tardy law courts of
Franconia pronounced the decree that freed her.

As a junior clerk Hastings was unassuming ; as Governor-
General of British India he indulged in no pomp or ceremony.
A description of him by a French observer marvels at Ids
lack of ostentation. He wore a plain suit of English broad-
cloth, without any of the customary ornament of lace and
embroidery. His whole retinue was a dozen horseguards.
His throne was a plain mahogany chair; and there were

102 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

plenty of similar thrones, said the amused Frenchman, in
the hall. His table was sometimes neglected, his diet was
sparing and always abstemious. His manners were far
distant from pride, but still more distant from familiarity.

Such was the man who, having made his way by gradual
steps from clerk to Councillor, became in 1772 Governor of
Bengal, and three years later the first Governor-General of
British India. It was not long before he inaugurated a new
policy of reform, and swept away that dual system which
Olive had introduced, and which it was now found impossible
to continue with any advantage.

All land in India had from time immemorial belonged to
the State : the ryot, or cultivator, paying for its use part
Revenue of the proceeds of his labour to the head of the
Reform. State. The collector of this revenue was the
zamindar : and it was his duty to receive the total revenue
of his district, and to pay it over to the central office of
revenue, deducting ten per cent, of the whole for his com-
mission or salary. An elaborate system of assessment had
been worked out : and even in the days when the Mughal
Empire was falling to pieces, the system was adhered to. It
must have been open to abuses at all times : the ryot was
often mulcted of more than his due, and in practice he was
powerless to resist. But during the days of anarchy that pre-
ceded the conquest by the British, the extortions of the
zamindari had become almost unbearable. If they allowed
the ryot to retain as much of the proceeds of his labour
as was necessary for a bare existence, and for the sowing of
his next year's crop, it was only because self-interest warned
the zamindar that he should not utterly exterminate the
person from whom he derived his wealth.

Nor did the system improve during the first years of the
British administration. Besides the zamindar, the greedy
officials of the East India Company had also to obtain their
pickings; and an additional burden thus fell on the ryot.

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 103

The reforms of Olive made little difference : for if the servants
of the Company were restrained, the proceeds now went
into the treasury of tlie Company itself. Even during the
terrible Bengal famine the revenue was pitilessly collected
with the utmost rigour; and the whole country still con-
tinued to groan under the double tyranny, a tyranny which
it was impossible to shake off, and useless to question.

It was this iniquitous state of things which Warren Hastings
set himself to abolish. In a report on the working of the
dual system he wrote, that, * The Nazims exacted what they
could from the zamindars and great farmers of the revenue,
whom they left at liberty to plunder all below ; reserving to
themselves the prerogative of plundering them in turn, when
they were supposed to enrich themselves with the spoil of
the country/ There was indeed habitual extortion and in-
justice, which had its natural effect on the ryots. When
there is tyranny above there will be concealment and evasion
below ; and the ryots, sure that they would be made to pay
more than the just amount, endeavoured by subterfuge to
pay less.

The adverse report of Hastings had immediate effect. The
directors decided to 6 take upon themselves by the agency
of their own servants the entire care and administration
of the revenue * ; and, accordingly, the exchequer was re-
moved to Calcutta, and European collectors were appointed
to superintend the revenue and preside in the courts.

Such was the beginning of the reform; and from that
time Hastings embarked on* a long series of administrative

o o

experiments. Lands were let out in farm on long leases, but
provision was made against the tyranny of the collectors ;
a native assistant was attached to every collector, to check
his actions : and no servant of a collector was permitted to
farm any part of the revenue. An old abuse, the receiving
of forced ' presents ' from the ryot, was stopped.
A still worse abuse than these remained : the ryot had been

104 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

preyed upon till he had been compelled to borrow money,
lest lie should be without the means for buying the seed for
his next year's crop. He could only borrow from the zamindar ;
and the latter imposed a rate of interest that even a mediaeval
Jew would have considered extortionate. Precautions were
taken to stop this exaction, which changed a free man into
a slave : but the cancer was too deeply rooted in Indian life
to be cut out at one operation. A later report from the
Council expressed regret that they had been unable alto-
gether to abolish the resort to usury : nor can their failure be
wondered at, when we remember that, despite the land banks
of modern India, that wretched parasite, the village money-
lender, still grows fat on the proceeds of other persons' industry.

From the land, Hastings turned his attention to the
legal system of Bengal. Here again all was chaos. In
Legal ^ e original courts of India, the discretion of the

Reform. judge was only bound by the Hindu scriptures
and the commentaries upon them, by the customs of the
country, and the interpretation put upon them by the
Brahmans. The decisions were therefore often arbitrary, the
interference of superiors frequent, and the whole procedure
illogical. The rich went free, the poor paid a double penalty.

But if the abuse was great while the power of the Mughal
Empire was yet untouched, it was ten times worse when each
petty province possessed its own ruler ; and it was aggra-
vated during the frrst few years of the English conquest. No
Englishman would submit himself to the control of the native
courts ; and since all power was in the hands of the English,
the inn-mediate effect was to reduce the always inadequate
laws to a nullity. <

No government worthy of the name could exist while this
state of affairs continued, and Hastings set to work to bring
at least some show of order into the Indian judicial system.
His main idea is summarised in a note dated 24th March 1774,
6 There can be but one government and one power in this

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 105

province/ Taking this as a guiding principle, a whole series
of alterations was made. A council of control was set up,
which had the right of revising the decisions of the lower
courts. Two subsidiary courts, civil and penal, were appointed
in each district. It was further ordained that a record of all
the proceedings was to be made and preserved in every court.
Exorbitant fines were prohibited. The judges had previ-
ously drawn their salaries in the shape of commission on all
property in litigation ; and this fruitful source of injustice
and bribery was now abolished. At the seat of government
there were established two supreme courts of appeal, which
had power to review the decisions of all the inferior tribunals.

But beneficent as these reforms were, they proved insuffi-
cient, and in some ways, not altogether satisfactory. The
lower courts were administered by natives: the superior
courts by Englishmen. But the natives did not understand
the principles of English law ; the English did not under-
stand the principles of native law. Again, perjury was
common in the courts of law to which English barristers
had been accustomed at home ; but it was not that gross and
detailed perjury which every witness swore on oath in an
Indian court. Again, English ignorance of the manners,
customs, ideas, and even the languages of India was pro-
found ; yet in no walk of life is a knowledge of these more
essential than in legal practice.

It took years of further experiments before a satisfactory
system was devised. The successor of Hastings found it neces-
sary to place all the administration in English hands. In the
nineteenth century a complete code was drawn up, and it has
frequently been revised. Even now, after the continued
improvements of over a hundred years, it is admitted that
justice often goes astray, so great is the difficulty of arriving
at a right decision when every hired witness perjures him-
self as few but Asiatics can ; and remembering these facts, we
shall find no great cause for surprise that the judicial system

106 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

set up by Warren Hastings did not give complete satisfac-
tion. But at least it was an enormous improvement on the
legal anarchy that had existed before his time; the real
matter for wonder is that it answered as well as it did.

Hastings, however, was no Sir Oracle : he was fully aware
of the imperfections in his work. At most it was done in
a tentative, experimental fashion ; it was always open to
revision and improvement. And during the whole thirteen
years of his administration he was forming and carrying out
fresh projects in the rural administration of the country.

How much more he would have done had his hands been free
it is impossible to conjecture : but his attention was con-
tinually called away from the work of reform by the general
affairs of his territories, the dissensions and enmity of his
Council, the insistent demand for money and more money
from the directors of the Company, and the external politics
of that part of India which was not yet under British rule.

So many were the demands upon his time, indeed, that
at the end of his first six months as Governor he wrote home,
in half -humorous despair : ' Here I am with arrears of months,
and some of years to bring up ; with the courts of justice to
set a-going ; with the official reformation to resume and
complete ; with the current trifles of the day, notes, letters,
personal applications ; every man's business of more con-
sequence than any other, and complainants from every
quarter of the province hallooing me by hundreds for justice
as often as I put my head out of window, or venture abroad/
. Changes in the administration such as those outlined above
transferred much power from native to English hands : but
THeDuai ** was ^ e abolition of the dual system of govern-
system ment that finally consolidated the dominion of
Atooiisned. ^ jj ag j^^ Company in Bengal. Here again
Hastings introduced the wise principle, the necessity of which
had now become evident, that one government should be
supreme throughout the province. By the terms of Olive's

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 107

arrangement, a large part of the revenue receipts were paid
back in bulk to the titular emperor at Delhi, and a yet larger
part to the titular native prince at Murshidabad, a wretched
creature whose whole attention and substance was given to
his dancing-girls and to sensual indulgence.

The first important step, the abolition of the dual govern-
ment, was comparatively easy. Nearly the whole internal
administration of Bengal had been delegated by the Company
to a Musalmdn of high rank, of great talents, and of few
scruples, one Muhammed Eeza Khan. The lucrative and
splendid office which he filled was the object of many men's
desire ; and no man desired it more than Nuncumar, a Hindu
of enormous wealth and commanding position, who had
played an important part in all the recent political changes
in Bengal.

The deceitful and intriguing character of Nuncumar was
well known to every Englishman in Asia ; but, although his
untrustworthiness was admittedly evident to the directors
of the East India Company, the words of the agents he
employed in Europe were accepted by them without reserve.
He induced them to believe that the dismissal of Muhammed
Keza Khan from his office would be to their advantage:
and accordingly Hastings received orders privately from
London to relieve Muhammed of his functions, to arrest
him, his family, and his followers, and to institute a strict
inquiry into the whole administration of Bengal.

Hastings obeyed at once. The house of the doomed
minister at Murshiddbad was surrounded at midnight by
sepoys ; he was awakened, and, with his suite, at once
brought down to Calcutta. Hastings' fellow-members of
the Council, who had only been in India a few days when
the arrest was made, were not informed until the deed was
done ; it is not probable that their objections would have
weighed with Jim in any case. The trial of Muhammed was
delayed on specious pretexts for many months, during which

108 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEBSEAS

time the dual system of government was abolished, the
internal administration of Bengal was transferred to English
servants of the Company, and the office of minister, which
Muhammed had held, and Nuncumar had coveted, was
abolished altogether.

The revolution being thus quickly completed, Hastings
proceeded to investigate the charges against Muhammed
Eeza Elian. A lengthy inquiry into his conduct took
place : he was finally pronounced innocent, and set at liberty.
Soon afterwards, the allowance made by agreement to the
Nawab of Bengal was reduced at a stroke from 320,000 a
year to half that sum. By a similar agreement, the Mughal
had also received a large annual sum from the Company
in token of his sovereignty, and the districts of Korah and
Allahabad had likewise been ceded to him. Hastings now
declared, what was in fact correct, that the sovereignty was
a fiction. It was, therefore, announced that, for the future,
no more tribute would be paid, and that the two provinces
would be reclaimed.

But these two provinces would have been unlikely to bring
in any profit to the Company, and they would have been
expensive to maintain withal. A convenient opportunity
presented itself : the ruler of Oudh was anxious to extend
his possessions ; a bargain was struck, and the districts of
Korah and AJlahabdd were disposed of to him for some half
a million sterling.

The revolution was therefore accomplished, not only
without a blow being struck, but in a manner that made it
immediately profitable to the East India Company. And it
was well for Warren Hastings that it was so, for the East
India Company was now again in financial straits.

The directors were sending urgent requests to the Governor-
General by every ship, requests that were in reality -commands ;
and he knew that, in their eyes, his success or failure as a
Governor largely depended on the number of thousands of

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 109

rupees he sent home. His masters instructed him, indeed,
to rule benevolently, to be a father to the people committed
to his care ; oppression should no longer sully their adminis-
tration, and tyranny was far from their thoughts ; but at
the end of every moral discourse came the inevitable demand
for money.

Writing from the Company's London office in Leadenhall
Street, without any personal acquaintance with the East,
the directors were probably unaware for they were passably
honest men of the inconsistence between their desire for
good government and better dividends. 1 Everybody in
England at that day thought of India as a country rolling in
wealth, and would have laughed to scorn any one who told
them the contrary. Yet the contrary would have been the
truth, in spite of the fortunes that had been brought home
by the Company's servants. But to the directors it seemed
an easy thing for their representative on the spot to send
over another half million or million sterling a year ; and
Hastings found it necessary to turn his attention to
economies in every direction.

The methods that he employed did not tend to elevate the
fame of Britain in the East ; nor did they leave the name
of Warren Hastings unsullied. We remember, it is true,
his excellent administration in Bengal, and the promptitude
with which he succoured Bombay and Madras in the hour
of disaster ; but we are likewise compelled to remember
the Eohilla War, and the extortionate tribute exacted from
Chait Sinh and the Begams of Oudh.

The Eohillas were a brave but fickle tribe of military
adventurers, full of the warlike fire and the predatory instincts
of the Afghan races, who had settled in the district called after

1 In 1766 the East India Company had unwisely raised its dividend
from six to ten per cent. The directors disliked the idea, but were over-
ruled by the General Court of Proprietors. The tJompany^was heavily
in debt at the time, and it was quite impossible to maintain so high a
figure in subsequent years.

110 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

tliem Eohilkhand. 1 When the Mughal Empire had been in
its vigour under the strong rule of Aurungzeb, their services
TheBofciua had been well rewarded; and they held their
War, 1774. territories as military fiefs of the supreme head
of India. In the anarchy that succeeded the death of that
great monarch, they became practically independent ; but
the Marathas had recently attacked them with success, and
the Prince of Oudh, whose country was now also threatened
by the Marathas, agreed to protect them against the common
foe.

A treaty was made; the Eohillas were protected. But
they refused to pay the tribute which they had promised in
the hour of danger ; and Suja Dowlah, the Prince of Oudh,
determined to take possession of their country.

Here, however, a difficulty presented itself. The Prince
of Oudh doubted the ability of his own troops to perform the
task ; and he suggested to Warren Hastings that the East
India Company should lend him a sufficient force to conquer
the Eohillas. The Governor-General demurred, although he
admitted that there were, powerful arguments in favour of
reducing the Eohillas ; but after a time he consented. For
forty lakhs of rupees, for four hundred thousand pounds
sterling, it was agreed that a division of the British Indian
army should undertake a campaign against the Eohillas.
It was further stipulated, with that careful precision which
distinguished every act of Warren Hastings, that the full
expenses of the campaign should be borne by Suja Dowlah.

The work was begun. The British army in Bengal con-
sisted of three brigades; one was sent to join the forces
of the Prince of Oudh. The Eohillas expostulated when
they realised the fate that awaited them, but in vain. They

1 Mr. G. W. Forrest's recently published Selections from the State Papers
of the Governors-General of India, are essential to an understanding of this
campaign, where too many people myself, I regret to admit, among
others have been misled by Macaulay's brilliant inaccuracies in the
celebrated, JSssay on Warren Hastings.

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 111

offered a large ransom. It was refused. They then deter-
mined to defend themselves to the last.

A terrible battle was fought. e They gave proof/ said the
English officer in command, e of a good share of military
knowledge ; and it is impossible to describe a more obstinate
firmness of resolution than they displayed/ The day seemed
doubtful, and the cowardly Suja Dowlah fled. But at
length the Eohilla army was broken by the valour and science
of the Europeans. The battle was lost, and with it the
country which the Rohillas had made their own.; for the
Prince of Oudh reappeared in the hour of victory, and his
followers at once began to plunder and pillage. The original
inhabitants of the country which the Rohillas had conquered
seem to have been left undisturbed ; but the homes of the
Rohillas were fired, and the men who were left alive fled with
their wives and children to the jungle, to the haunts of wild
beasts and venomous serpents.

In the plunder that followed the battle the British troops
took no part ; but, as they watched the excesses of their
native allies, they were heard to grumble that f we have had
all the fighting, and these rogues are to have all the profit/

Not all, however; for when the British troops returned
to Bengal, the treasury of the East India Company was
richer by forty lakhs of rupees. The treasury of the Company
was replenished, but the honour of the Company and of its
Governor was sullied; for the employment of the British
troops in the Rohilla campaign, which might have been
justified if not very cordially approved had no pecuniary
consideration been present in the background, became inde-
fensible when they were hired as mercenaries by an ally. 1

1 Putting aside the exaggerations of Burke and Macaulay, the crux of
the inquiry into the justice or injustice of the Rohilla War evidently lies
in the answer to the question, Would Hastings have allowed the British
troops to participate in the campaign without payment for their services ?
To that question there can be no precise answer ; but I do not think the
answer is doubtful. Hastings obviously disliked the transaction ; but,
apart from any political advantages, the money was a great considera

112 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

The treasury of the East India Company was replenished.
But only for a time ; in the later years of Hastings* adminis-
The conquest tration there were heavy war expenses to be met ;
of Benares. an( j k e a g a in cast about for a large and immediate
supply of money. The Chait Sinh episode and the plunder
of the Begams of Oudh was the result. Chait Sinh was
Eaja of Benares, the sacred city of the Hindus : and the
tract of country of which Benares was the capital had come
under the protection of the East India Company some years
before, when the misrule of the Nawab of Oudh had oppressed
all the neighbouring provinces. The Eaja was bound by
treaty to send an annual tribute to Calcutta ; but in 1778,
when Hastings again required money to meet the cost of the
war which had just broken out with France, an additional
sum of fifty thousand pounds was demanded from the subject
prince. It was paid. The same contribution was exacted
in the two subsequent years.

Now Benares was a rich and well-governed province, and
its Eajd a popular and able ruler. But the extraordinary
tribute seemed about to become permanent ; and it would
have been a considerable drain on the revenues of Chait Sinh.
He therefore offered secretly a large bribe to Hastings, in
hopes that the additional tribute would be excused. The
Governor-General after some hesitation accepted the money,
and paid it over to the Company ; but he still insisted on
both tiie regular contribution and the extraordinary sum.
Chait Sinh pleaded poverty ; and Hastings at once added a

tion. And the Select Committee reported 'that the terms proposed
appear highly advantageous to the Company, not only on account of the
sum which is ultimately stipulated as a consideration for this service, but
by immediately relieving them from the heavy expense of a large part of
their army. Provided, therefore, full assurance and security can be
obtained of the Vizier's intention and ability to make good the many
payments which will in this event be due to the Company : Resolved that
the Second Brigade now quartered at Dinapore he ordered to march on
the Vizier's requisition.' (Secret Select Committee's Proceedings, 26th
November 1773 ; quoted by G. W. Forrest.) The financial aspect of the
transaction was evidently uppermost in the minds of the Committee.

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 113

fine of ten thousand pounds for contumacy. The money
was paid. But still the Company's treasury was dry. Hastings
therefore picked a quarrel with the Baja, and insisted on half
a million sterling,

To secure prompt payment he came on a visit to Benares,
and was received by the subject prince with every mark of
reverence. Chait Sinh excused himself, and justly, from
giving way to the extortion ; Hastings at once placed him
under arrest.

But the British force which had accompanied the Governor-
General was small ; it was in a foreign province ; and the
inhabitants of that province were very different men from
the unwarlike Bengalis. An insurrection broke out; the
English and their sepoys were almost exterminated, and
Chait Sinh escaped.

Hastings was left in a position of grave peril, with less tJian
fifty men at his back ; the building in which they were en-
trenched was surrounded on all sides by the enemy ; and the
whole population of Benares had risen to defend its prince
against the tyrant.

Not for an instant, however, did the cool courage of Hast-
ings desert him. Messengers were sent to expedite the arrival
of the English troops from Bengal : in the meantime, the little
band at Benares kept up a stubborn defence. The British
army came up-country at forced marches to the aid of their
beloved Governor-General : the disorderly levies of the Rdj4
were easily defeated ; Chait Sinh fled in despair, and never
returned ; and the province of Benares was included in the
territories of the East India Company.

The conquest added an important country and another two
hundred thousand sterling annually to the British revenues.
But the immediate relief to the treasury was' T&eoudii
small, and the expenses of the war were growing Kiuid r -
ever greater. Hastings was forced to turn elsewhere for yet
further supplies. To a not very scrupulous and desperate

VOL. II. H

114 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS

man, aware of his own strength and the weakness of those
among whom he was placed, it was not difficult to find another
object of plunder.

There were two ancient ladies, the mother of the late and
the mother of the existing Nawab of Oudh, who were known
as the Begams or Princesses of Oudh. The revenue and the
administration of that country were in their hands, and they
were generally known to be enormously wealthy.

Here, then, was the opportunity : the pretext was soon
forthcoming. Hastings declared himself convinced that the
late disturbances in Benares had been fomented by them :
and they were condemned to pay the penalty of an enormous
fine. They protested ; but their protests were disregarded.
The princesses were confined to their rooms, and their food
was limited. Two eunuchs in their service were tortured.
Month after month the extortion was continued, until at last
even Hastings realised that there was no more to be obtained.
They were therefore restored to liberty ; but the treasury of
the Company had in the meantime been enriched by twelve
hundred thousand pounds.

It would be superfluous to comment on these proceedings,
save to remark that their only mitigation is that they did
not spring from private greed ; and that, had not the require-
ments of the East India Company necessitated money from
any and every available source, Hastings would certainly
never have stooped to such methods of obtaining it. -It is,
however, impossible to refrain from noticing that even in his
extortion he showed wisdom. Benares and Oudh were
plundered; but the Governor-General never touched his
own people in Bengal. He thought it better that the booty
should be obtained from strangers, rather than that the
province for which he was peculiarly responsible should
sufier ; and the result was that when, some years later, Burke
was thundering in Westminster Hall against his cruelty tc
the Indians, his humanity was a proverb among the Bengalis

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 115

and Hindu mothers sang their children to sleep with a lullaby
of the glorious deeds of the great and good Warren Hastings.

The difficulties, indeed, with which he had to contend in
Bengal were of a different character. The Eegulating Act,
passed by the British Parliament in 1773, had Dissensions
come into force. By it Hastings was appointed witnthe
first Governor-General of Bengal, with control Counca
over the other two presidencies ; and he was to be assisted
by four Councillors. Of these four, one was already in India,
and he generally supported his chief in the subsequent dis-
agreements.

The other three came direct from England : and with the
captious spirit that marked their whole subsequent bearing,
they had no sooner landed at Calcutta than they began to
complain. It seemed throughout that their main idea was to
harass and not to assist Hastings in the government of India.

A few months after their arrival he summed them up
tersely but accurately : e The General (Qavering) rummages
the consultations for disputable matter. Monson receives,
and I have been assured descends even to solicit, accusations.
Francis writes/ Led by the latter, who from the first was a
bitter and uncompromising opponent of Hastings, they had
the majority in the Council : and they straightway proceeded
to inquire into all, and to undo as much as possible, of the
administrative work which the Governor-General had accom-
plished in previous years. Hastings was powerless ; though
head of the Council, he was forced to submit to their demands.

Their deeds were of little advantage to the country. c The
effect of their reforms/ says Maeaulay, ' was that all protec-
tion to life and property was withdrawn, and that gangs of
robbers plundered and slaughtered with impunity in the very
suburbs of Calcutta/

The natives were quick to mark the changed position ; and
accusations against Hastings began to pour in from those
who hoped to curry favour with the new Council. They

116 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS

were all received with alacrity; whether believed or not,
the charges were acted upon. Hastings indignantly but
rightly refused to preside at a Council whose members pre-
sumed to sit in judgment upon him, and whose personal vin-
dictiveness was evident to all the other English residents in
the presidency ; and after a violent altercation, he left the
meeting.

The worst accusation against the Governor-General had
been brought by Nuncumar. The two men had never been
. friends, even in early days at Murshidabad ; and since Hastings
had used the Hindu as a tool in deposing Muhammed Keza
Khan and abolishing the dual government, Nuncumar had
hated the Governor of Bengal with the cunning patient hate
that can await the day of reckoning for years. With the
arrival of Six Philip Francis came at last the opportunity he
sought. He charged Hastings with putting offices up to
sale, with taking bribes and conniving at the escape of
criminals, and with other equally serious offences.

Francis eagerly accepted the accusations, which Nuncumar
professed himself ready to prove beyond the shadow of doubt ;
but when he was called upon to do so, he was unable to pro-
duce the evidence upon which his charges rested. The failure
of so vindictive an enemy to substantiate his accusations
against Hastings is a sufficient proof of the baselessness of
his charges.

But the end of Nuncumar's long career was now near at
hand. An old accusation of forgery was still hanging over
his head, for which he had been imprisoned for contempt of
court and released by Hastings some time before the Council
had arrived in India ; and the trial had stood over for the
consideration of the Supreme Court of Judicature in Bengal,
the new Judicial Court which had been set up by the Eegu-
lating Act of 1773.

The judges of that Court had now arrived in India ; and
Nuncumar was brought before them in due course. There

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 117

can be little doubt that Francis and liis supporters on the
Council would have prevented the trial of the enemy of
Hastings had it been within their power to do so ; but the
Eegulating Act had placed the administration of justice
beyond the control of the Council.

On the 8th June 1775 the trial of Nuncumar began before
Chief- Justice Impey, three other judges of the Supreme Court,
and a jury. The case had aroused enormous interest, and
the old Mayor's Court of Calcutta was crowded with spec-
tators ; for Nuncumar had been a leading man in Bengal
for many years past, and his recent accusations against the
Governor-General were known to the public.

The trial was prolonged for several days, for the case was
difficult and complicated. The evidence was intricate ; and
the fact that it was necessary to interpret it continually
delayed the proceedings. Many of the witnesses for the
defence were evidently perjuring themselves ; and the judges,
who were unaccustomed to the gross perjury that prevails
in the East, were compelled to examine them somewhat
closely.

But at length the case drew to a close. Chief- Justice Lnpey
began his charge to the jury, and he was about to direct them
to acquit the prisoner when Nuncumar demanded that one of
his witnesses should be recalled. The request was allowed ;
but the accused, who had wished to fortify his case by further
evidence, had unknowingly wrought his own ruin. The de-
meanour of the witness was suspicious; his evidence was
palpably false; and the case for the defence broke down
completely.

The jury, after proper direction, consulted together in
private ; Nuncumar was found guilty, and sentenced to deaiih.
The condemned criminal appealed with piteous entreaty to
Francis ; but Francis did not move a finger to succour the
man whose accusations he had been so ready to accept ; and
Nuncumar was executed.

118 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS

By the evidence of the case and the letter of the English
law, he was certainly guilty of the offence with which he was
charged. And the extreme sentence of the English law for
forgery at that time was death, although the capital penalty
was not always enforced even in England. But the English
law had only recently been introduced in India, and forgery
was considered a venial crime in the East.

These considerations might have been urged on behalf of
Nuncumar ; but they were not. For the interest which
Calcutta had taken in the case had little to do with the
abstract theory of law ; it had little to do even with the actual
guilt of Nuncumar. The popular interest was due to the fact
that Nuncumar and Hastings were deadly enemies, and that
Hastings stood alone in Bengal, while Nuncumar had the
support of the Council. The acquittal of Nuncumar would
therefore have been regarded as a convincing proof that the
Governor-General had lost his power in Bengal, and accusa-
tions against him would have been multiplied by the thou-
sand. The condemnation and execution of Nuncumar, on
the other hand, were at once taken as a signal victory of
Hastings over his powerful enemy.

The coincidence between the accusation which Nuncumar
had brought against Hastings, and the execution of Nuncumar
so shortly afterwards was at least suspicious ; and many of
the enemies of Hastings, in England as well as in Bengal,
believed that he had instigated the prosecution of Nuncumar
before the Supreme Court, and that he had influenced the sen-
tence which was passed upon the forger. But no satisfactory
evidence in support of that supposition has ever been dis-
covered ; and although determined attempts have been made
to manufacture the evidence that was not forthcoming, and
to blacken the character of Judge Impey in order to reflect
on Hastings, these attempts have all been shown to be
baseless.

But it Hastings was innocent of tampering with the course

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 119

of justice the execution of Nuncumar had served Mm in good
stead. From that day there were no more accusations, true
or false, brought against him before the Council.

And in time he was once more master of Bengal. One of
the members of the Council died ; and by his own vote, his
casting vote as Governor, and the vote of his old supporter
from the first, Hastings could now override the malice of his
opponents. Sir Philip Francis indeed continued to grumble,
to criticise, and to interfere ; but now that he was in a
minority, he was harmless.

One last quarrel there was. ' I do not/ said Hastings at
one of the meetings, ' trust to Mr. Francis' promises of candour,
convinced that he is incapable of it. I judge of his public
conduct by his private, which I have found to be void of truth
and honour/ The harsh words were thoroughly justified,
but a challenge naturally Mowed; and Hastings was im-
prudent enough to risk his life in a duel, in which, however,
Francis was wounded.

The latter recovered, and formal meetings continued at
the Council Board ; but Francis soon afterwards returned to
England, where, from his seat in the House of Commons, he
continued to declaim against Hastings and all his work in
India with unabated vigour and unceasing hate. When
tike Governor-General finally returned from Bengal, Francis
was one of the chief agitators for his impeachment ; but for
the remainder of the great administrator's career in the East,
the malice of his opponent touched him no more. 1

Thus victorious over his enemy on the Council, Hastings
disavowed the resignation that, in a moment of T&e imperial
despair, he had instructed his agent in London D *** er -
to hand to the East India Company ; and though he was

i Sir Philip Francis died, as he had lived, a disappointed and bitter
man It had been his ambition to be appointed Governor-General of
Indfc, and he continued for many years to hope that the post would be
offered to him ; but happily for the British Empire in India, his desire
was not gratified.

120 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS

censured both by his employers and by Parliament for his
arbitrary acts, neither the directors of the Company nor the
ministers of the Crown were prepared to dismiss him. The
dangers then threatening the Empire on all sides were far
too serious to allow of one of its foremost men being recalled
to answer for his crimes, however great those crimes were
believed to be.

The crisis was indeed a terrible one. The English colonies
in America were in revolt, and the British armies were not
victorious against them. France had been quick to seize the
opportunity, and had declared war against her neighbour.
Spain had followed France. Everywhere Britain seemed
about to lose those magnificent conquests which had been
made under the first Pitt ; everywhere, that is, but in India.
And even in India the situation was black enough. The
news of our defeats in the West might reach the East at any
time ; a native rebellion would follow as a matter of course.
There were already many indications of local unrest. The
French were known to have designs on India : and their
capacity as leaders of native levies and as rulers of other
races had already been well proved. So long as a states-
man of the capacity of Warren Hastings remained at the
head of affairs, there was a reasonable probability of safety
in the East : if he were removed, it was a matter of chance
whether a second dive would step into the breach. Hast-
ings, therefore, though censured by his employers for those
deeds which he would not have committed but for their
continual demands for money, and though blamed by Parlia-
ment for acts to which he was driven by those Councillors
whom Parliament itself had approved, was suffered to remain
Governor-General of India. His countrymen generously
refrained from putting Hastings on trial until after he had
saved the Empire for them.

Meanwhile, a complicated series of events had already
led up to the outbreak of the first important war since the

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 121

departure of dive from the East. The Marathas were the
great military confederation of the Hindus ; and since their
rise in the seventeenth century on the ruins of ^p^
the Mughal Empire, there were few parts of India Maratha
that had not felt their power. War '

About the year 1634 when the whole government of the
peninsula was in confusion, an adventurer had begun to play
a conspicuous part in the struggles of the Deccan. In his
own district he quickly became supreme. Native levies
formed his armies, and a primitive but terrible warfare was
waged. The neighbouring peasants, of whom his troops
mainly consisted, were called together at the slacker periods
of the agricultural year, and armed and mounted by him ;
and they swept down upon their enemies, who for the
purposes of plunder were anybody whose possessions were
great enough to be attractive. Part of the booty was made
over to the victorious peasant-soldiery, who returned well-
rewarded to their homes ; part remained to the leader of this
strange army, who retired to his strongholds in the TrilTa
until necessity or humour should prompt another raid.

Such was the beginning of the great Maratha confederation.
The system grew and flourished ; a number of kings or chiefs
arose in various parts of India, loosely allied in common
defence ; and later the general centre of the community was
established at Poona.

When tihte military head of the confederation sank, as did
the autocrat of every Asiatic monarchy after two or three
generations, into an effeminate and slothful fop, caring only
to live in luxury, to toy with dancing-girls and to chew
bhang, the nominal chieftainship was still vested in him;
but the real rulers of the Marathas from titiat time were the
Peshwas, whose position as mayors of the palace at Poona
was much the same as that of the masters of the French
Merovingians.

Towards the middle of the eighteenth century, however,

122 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

the strength of the Marathas declined somewhat, and they
could no longer continue altogether successfully their old
policy of balancing the power of the great potentates of
the north of India against the growing Musalman States
of the south in Haidarabad and Mysore. But they were
still a formidable foe. In the year 1742 they invaded and
plundered Bengal as far as Murshidabdd; and the terror
of the English residents of Calcutta lest their city also should
fall a prey to the robbers was shown by the great semicircular
moat which was hurriedly constructed, and which is still
known by the name of the e Maratha ditch/

But when Olive had consolidated the British power in
Bengal, the Marathas were no longer able to menace that
rich province ; in 1761 they were defeated in a great battle
by the Mohammedans ; and from that day they seemed
doomed to gradual decay and extinction, as numberless
other similar confederations had decayed and died out before
them.

In these circumstances, it is not surprising that the British
Council at Bombay, wishing with pardonable enthusiasm to
emulate the policy of expansion so successfully pursued by
Clive and Hastings in Bengal, should have decided to place
their own creature on the throne of Poona. The Treaty of
Surat was the consequence of a long continuance of diplomatic
intrigues between Bombay and Poona ; the aim of the
British was apparently achieved, and their nominee reigned
for a time over the Marathas.

But not for long was he suffered to remain in quiet posses-
sion. The military confederation of Western India was of
a different character from the supple and enfeebled Bengalis ;
and war soon broke out between the Marathas and the
British, which the Bombay presidency found itself ill-equipped
to wage successfully.

The Treaty of Surat had been disapproved by Warren
Hastings from the moment he heard of it ; he foresaw that

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 123

it would merely result in embittering the constant disputes
between the Marathas and the Government of Bombay into
war. And there were already rumours of French intrig-ies
with the Court of Poona, of French promises to assist the
Marathas against the English, of French schemes to set up
a second Empire in the East.

But when war broke out between the Marathas and Bombay,
England and France were still nominally at peace. The
situation was a delicate one; but Hastings immediately
sent the whole force of the Bengal army to the aid of
Bombay; and when shortly afterwards the news arrived
by letter from the British Consul at Cairo that the long-
expected war with France had broken out, the few remaining
French settlements in Bengal were seized, and instructions
were sent to Madras that Pondicherri should be occupied
at once. Military works were thrown up near Calcutta ;
arrangements were made for the defence of the river Hugli ;
nine new battalions of sepoys were raised, and a corps of
native artillery were formed of the Lascars from the Bay of
Bengal.

The practical genius of Hastings was shown by these steps :
and, so far as Bengal was concerned, he could now await
the war with calmness, unless a large French force should
arrive and join itself with the Marathas, and possibly also
with the two great Mohammedan powers of the south,
Haidardbad and Mysore a somewhat unlikely contingency.

But in Bombay the position was more difficult. The
British army that was stationed in that presidency had been
surrounded by the Marathas, and forced to agree to a
humiliating convention at Wargaum ; and the troops which
had been sent from Bengal had to undertake a long and
perilous journey through the peninsula from coast to coast
before they could be of assistance.

But Goddard, who was in charge of the latter contingent,
succeeded in forcing his way across India, and, in addition,

THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

seized the great province of Guzerat almost without striking
a blow. Captain Popham, too, attempted and achieved a
feat which even the daring Sir Eyre Goote stigmatised as
* absolute madness ' ; he attacked by storm, and captured,
the rock-fortress of Gwalior, which had been called the key
of India.

The effect of these victories, and especially of this last
brilliant exploit, on the natives, must have been great ; and
Hastings began to question whether it would not be advis-
able to crush the whole dangerous Maratha confederation in
one struggle, and to bring all the States loosely allied under
that name to acknowledge the paramount British authority,
before permitting peace to be made. Gwalior was already
in English hands ; but the capital of Poona was still the seat
of the Peshwas ; and the other three centres of Maratha
power, Indore, Baroda, and Nagpur, were as yet untouched.

It would have been a happy tTiing for British India had
the Governor-General been able to carry out his idea; of over-
throwing the Maratha States ; for they remained a menace
for many years afterwards, and were only conquered eventu-
ally after two long and arduous wars in the next century.
But after the first onslaught, the British found themselves
opposed with a resolution which, if it did not result in their
defeat, at least checked their advance : and for long the
contest remained undecided.

Eventually the first Maratha War was concluded tamely
in the year 1782 by the Treaty of Salbai. The British
dominions were enlarged by the retention of Salsette, with
Elephanta and two other small islands ; but except for these
wretched acquisitions poor reward for three years' fighting
the status quo was restored. The conflict, profitless at
best, had made considerable demands on the British Indian
revenues, which Warren Hastings found it difficult to
replenish : he had long been sick of a war which was not of
Ms mating, and which he had disapproved from the first ;

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 125

and when the new and terrible name of Haidar All of Mysore
began to be heard from end to end of India as that of the
most formidable native foe^the English had ever had to
encounter in the peninsula, he hastened to make peace with
the Marathas on the best terms he could.

To Hastings, indeed, was unjustly given the blame of the
war having occurred at all. ' The Maratha War has been,
and is yet, called mine, God knows why/ he complained in
1780 ; * I was forced into it. It began with the acts of others
unknown to me. Perhaps the war with Haidar may be,
in like manner, called my war/ 1

The Government of Bombay had been too forward in trying
to extend its possessions ; the Government of Madras had
pursued a policy the exact reverse. The result T&e First
was the same in both cases, a prolonged and profit- Mysore war.
less war ; but as the penalties of daring are commonly less
than those of timidity, so was the war with the Marathas
insignificant in comparison to that with Mysore. The Govern-
ment of Madras had been for years notorious for its feeble

1 The policy of Hastings was essentially pacific ; it cannot be better
defined than in his own words : ' The land required years of quiet to
restore its population and culture ; and all my acts were acts of peace.
I was busied in raising a great and weighty fabric, of which all the parts
were yet loose, and destitute of the superior weight which was to give
them their support, and, if I may so express myself, their collateral
strength. A tempest or an earthquake could not be more fatal to a
builder whose walls were uncovered, and his unfinished columns trembling
in the breeze, than the ravages or terrors of war to me and all my
hopes. ... I should have sought no accession of territory. I should
have rejected the offer of any position which would have enlarged our line
of defence, without a more than proportionate augmentation of defensive
strength and revenue. I should have encouraged, but not solicited, new
alliances. . . . These I should have observed as my religion. . . . But
though I profess the doctrine of peace, I by no means pretend to have
followed it with so implicit a devotion as to make sacrifices to it. I have
never yielded a substantial right which I could assert, or submitted to
a wrong which I could repel with a moral assurance of success . . . and
I can allude to instances in which I should have deemed it criminal not
to have hazarded both the public safety and my own, in a crisis of
uncommon and adequate emergency, or in an occasion of dangerous
example.' The singularly graceful literary style in which Hastings wrote
justified his old master at Westminster School, who had wished him to
devote his life to letters.

126 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS

and irresolute character. When Dupleix was dreaming of a
French Asiatic Empire at Pondicherri, the English at Madras
saw nothing beyond their ledgers. Olive saved them on that
occasion ; and when, a few years later, peril again threatened
them, they could do nothing for themselves, but insisted on
his immediate return from Bengal to succour them. They
were for ever sending plaintive accounts of their troubles to
London. In 1770 they wrote to the directors that e to give
you a clear representation of the dangers and embarrass-
ments through which we have been struggling ... is a task
beyond our abilities/ The next year it was ' with infinite
concern the Committee observed that notwithstanding their
repeated and earnest representations to the Court of Directors
... we still find ourselves not only without orders, but without
the least intimation of their opinion thereon/ They could do
nothing without extraneous advice ; and when by chance they
made a move alone, they blundered. In the uncertain state
of India in the eighteenth century, a crisis was certain sooner
or later to confront every European settlement ; but when-
ever one confronted Madras, the English Council there invari-
ably proved themselves incompetent to deal with it.

It was through their egregious folly that war was pro-
voked with Haidar Ali, Sultan of Mysore; and it was on
their culpably defenceless presidency that there descended,
in Burke's magnificent phrase, ' the black cloud that hung
for a while on the declivities of the mountains, the menacing
meteor which blackened all the horizon until it suddenly
burst, and poured down the whole of its contents upon the
plains of the Karnatic/

Some thirty years previously, when the fall of the Mughal
Empire had given India over to anarchy, a Musalm&n

adventurer had begun to distinguish himself in
Haidar AIL , * i -n--

the wars of the South. His ancestry was mean ;

his grandfather had been a wandering dervish, his father a
petty revenue officer. He himself had received no educa-

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 127

tion ; lie could not even read the alphabet. But as a soldier
of fortune he made his way rapidly ; as a general, none could
equal him. In the then condition of India, it was no great
step from head of an army to ruler of a province, and from
that again to autocrat of a kingdom ; and Haidar AJi, after
having passed through these preliminary grades, in course of
time became Sultan of Mysore.

What he had been ambitious enough to obtain he was
clever enough to keep. A crowd of lesser men continued to
struggle among themselves for other parts of India ; but few
were able to touch Mysore while Haidar ruled it. He oppressed
his people : but no minor parasites were allowed to fatten at
their expense ; and on the whole he ruled firmly and well, and
was looked up to by his subjects with respect, perhaps with
affection.

It was this man whom the Government of Madras pro-
voked to war. He had already fought not unsuccessfully
with the English; but some years previously, whien the
Marathas had invaded his dominions, he had sought an alliance
with Madras ; and his overtures had been rejected. A little
later, he had again opened negotiations for the same purpose ;
and again he had been repulsed.

From that time, the Sultan of Mysore had looked to the
French for aid. Intercourse became friendly between Haidar
and the authorities at Pondicherri. French adventurers
trained and led his troops ; the arms and military stores of
Mysore were supplied by France. When war broke out
between England and France, the feeble French settlement at
Pondicherri was reduced at once ; and Haidar, as a matter
of appearance, congratulated the British on their success.
But he took care at the same time to declare that he would
be offended if Mahe, the remaining French settlement on the
opposite coast, was captured; and he threatened that, if it
were, he would invade the Karnatic.

His words were disregarded, and Mahe was taken by the

128 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OYEKSEAS

British. Burning with resentment, and with a keen memorj
of the continued refusal of the Madras Council to ally
themselves with him, and with a yet keener recollection
of agreements which they had broken, Haidar prepared foi
revenge.

He was now an old man ; but there was no sign of age in
his movements. He first made peace with his perpetual
enemies, the Marathas. AIL alliance was concluded with his
neighbour, the Nizam of Haidarabad. The two most power-
ful Musalman powers of Southern India thus united, Haidar
prepared for the attack. The army of Mysore had been
steadily enlarged during the past two years, and it was now
ready for immediate service. The military stores which he
had obtained from France were requisitioned.

Part of the army was moved to the border of Mysore, where
it looked down over the wild descent which led into the flat
Karnatic beneath ; and the road to one of the principal passes
was already being cleared.

All these preparations were known to the English at Madras ;
of many they had been aware for some time. Yet nothing
was done to protect the important British interests in the
Karnatic. * What can we do ? * asked the Governor of the
presidency feebly, * we have no money, but we mean to
assemble an army/

The next day the news arrived that Porto Novo and the
district within fifty miles of Madras had been plundered ;
that Haidar's army was a hundred thousand strong ; that
a corps of Frenchmen were among his auxiliaries.

And wherever the army of Haidar went, it brought ruin and
destruction. The houses were fired, the crops destroyed ;
the people fled to the mountains and the forests. The whole.
of the Karnatic seemed about to be destroyed.

Nor was- this all. A few days later Madras itself was
threatened ; and many of the English merchants took refuge
in Fort St. George, for the country around was in the hands

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 129

of Haidar, and the sight of the burning villages in the vicinity
inspired awful forebodings as to the fate of the capital.

Suddenly, however, Haidar determined to capture Arcot
before attempting Madras ; and he immediately attacked
and took that fortress. Meanwhile the presidential govern-
ment was in a miserable condition. They had no money,
and the neighbouring princes pleaded poverty when a loan
was desired. An army indeed there was ; but the British
officers were ignorant of Haidar's movements, while every
act of theirs was conveyed to him at once by the natives.
The troops were in two detachments; each was attacked
separately by Haidar : both were defeated. One was
destroyed ; the other fled.

Nothing now lay between Madras and destruction. The
English who were there were not the men to rise superior to
their difficulties, and to organise victory out of defeat. With
the exception of a few forts, which still offered resistance,
the whole south of India was in the hands of Haidar Ali.

No help could be expected from England, for England was
herself in sore straits ; and, in any case, any help that might
have been sent from Europe .would have arrived too late. In
Warren Hastings' emphatic expression, t the Company's exist-
ence . . . vibrated to the edge of perdition, and it has at all
times been suspended by a thread so fine that the touch of
chance might break, or the breath of opinion dissolve it :
and instantaneous will be its fall whenever it shall happen/
And it was Hastings, in fact, who again saved the Company
at this crisis.

A swift ship carried the news of the Mysore outbreak from
Madras to Calcutta; and within twenty-four hours the
Governor-General of Bengal had thought out a complete
new plan of policy, adapted to the altered condition of affairs.
Every nerve must be strained to preserve the Elarnatic for
the empire. The Maratha War had been important ; it was
now only a secondary consideration. Fifteen lakhs of rupees,

VOL. u. i

130 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

and all the available troops of Bengal, were sent to Madras ;
some difficulty only occurring with the sepoys, whose religion
did not permit them to travel by sea. Sir Philip Francis,
indeed, raised objections in the Council Eoom : he would have
sent only half the money, and no military aid at all. But
the day when he could seriously embarrass Hastings was
over ; and his suggestions, which if carried out would in-
evitably have lost the Karnatie, were disregarded. But this
was not all. The Governor of Fort St. George was evidently
utterly incompetent; and Hastings, by a bold exercise of
power, determined to suspend him. Sir Eyre Coote was
despatched to take charge of all the operations against Haidar
Ali.

Coote was now past his prime, and his constitution was
undermined by disease ; but he had still much of the great
ability which he had shown at Wandewash. He reached
Madras on 5th November 1780 ; and so little time had been
lost by Hastings in organising relief that the French fleet
which it had been feared would intercept the British trans-
ports had not yet arrived/

On 17th January 1781 Coote marched northwards, hoping
to draw Haidar in pursuit. He succeeded ; but Haidar, with
considerable cunning, drew the English general further inland
by threatening Cuddalur, and then swung round and inter-
posed his army between Coote and the British base of action
at Madras.

Coote retreated to Porto Novo, near the coast ; but his
position was now precarious in the extreme. His whole
army was only six thousand sepoys and two thousand English,
while Haidar was forty thousand strong. If Coote were
defeated, the loss of Madras was certain ; and even Hastings
could not improvise another army to reconquer the Karnatic.

In these 'circumstances, the Sultan of Mysore expected an
easy victory ; and Coote determined to give battle. Indeed,
he could do nothing else ; and one who had been present as

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 131

a young man at Plassey would not fear to fight against odds,
even though the army he had now to encounter was led by a
very different man from the supine Nawab of Murshid&bad.
On 1st July 1781 the great battle of Porto Novo took place,
and Haidar Ali was utterly defeated.

Coote followed up his successes by further attacks on the
remnants of Mysorean power in the Karnatic; until, com-
pletely worn out, his health gave way, and he was forced to
return to Calcutta. Even then he still wished to serve his
country ; and at the earliest possible moment, long indeed
before he was fit for work, he went back again to Madras.

But although Coote was no more than fifty-seven years of
age, the brave man's body was exhausted by his long and
arduous life in the field ; and in 1783, two days after his
arrival at the southern capital, he died. Sir Eyre Coote
was not, and would never have thought of placing himself,
in the same rank held by men like Clive ; but in the annals
of our Indian Empire the victor of Wandewash and Porto
Novo holds no inconspicuous place, as the military saviour
on two distinct occasions of British power in the south.

In the meantime, Lord Macartney, the new Governor of
Madras, had arrived ; and overtures for peace were made to
Haidar Ali. They were rejected ; and in the words of the
Sultan's reply we can see much of the reason for his bitter,
but not unfounded, enmity against the British. f The governors
and sirdars who enter into treaties return after one or two
years to Europe/ he wrote ; e and their acts and deeds
become of no effect ; fresh governors and sirdars introduce
new considerations. Prior to your coming, when the Governor
and Council of Madras had departed from their treaty of
alliance and friendship, I sent to confer with them, and to
ask the reason for such a breach of faith. The answer given
was, that they who made those conditions had gone to Europe.
You write that you have come with the sanction of the King
and the Company to settle all matters, which gives me great

132 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

happiness. You, sir, are a man of wisdom, and comprehend
all things. Whatever you may judge proper and best, that
you will do. You mention that troops have arrived, and
are daily arriving from Europe. Of this I have no doubt ;
I depend on the favour of God for my successes/ The in-
competence of the Madras administration, the lack of con-
tinuity in their policy, the absence indeed of any real policy
at all, the wretched nature of the excuses put forward for
breaking their word, could not have been more forcibly
exposed.

Nothing could bring Haidar Ali to trust in their professions
again, for he had no reason to do so ; and he continued the
war, albeit without much success, till his death in 1782.
Even then it did not end ; Tipu, his son and heir, who had
already helped his father against the English, continued the
contest, assisted by fresh supplies from France. In the follow-
ing year, however, peace was concluded between France and
England, and Tipu was forced from now to depend upon his
own resources ;, and the first Mysore War quickly drew to a
close in 1784, a mutual restitution of all conquests being the
basis of peace.

The long administration of Hastings was likewise drawing
to a close ; and the last few months during which he Held
Retirement ffi ce were quiet an <l uneventful, in strange con-
of Hastmgs, trast to the turmoil of the previous twelve years.
1785. There was peace in India ; there was peace in

Europe. Haidar Ali was dead ; and there was no reason to
fear any further attacks from the French. The opposition
that now confronted Hastings in the Council at Calcutta was
weak and ineffectual.

At length, in the spring of 1785, he sailed from India, to
the accompaniment of many marks of genuine sorrow from
both the natives and the English : expecting to receive at
home the honours and rewards he had earned by such splendid
services, and to retire at last to that ancestral estate at

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 133

Daylesford, of whose acquisition lie had dreamed since his
childhood.

Daylgsford indeed he acquired; but instead of being
honoured, he was reviled by bis countrymen. The burning
words he addressed to Parliament when summoned
to defend his actions and his policy in the East
are eloquent of the bitterness which his reception caused
him. ' I enlarged/ he said, * and gave shape and consistency
to the dominion you held there ; I preserved it ; I sent forth
its armies with an effectual but economical hand, through
unknown and hostile regions, to the support of your other
possessions ; to the retrieval of one from degradation and
dishonour, and of the other from loss and subjection. I
maintained the wars which were of your formation, or
that of others, not of mine. ... I gave you all : and you
have rewarded me with confiscation, disgrace, and a life of
impeachment/

CHAPTER HI

PARLIAMENT AND THE EAST INDIA COMPANY: 1772-98 l

WE have already seen that Parliament had, at various times,
intervened in the affairs of the East India Company. On
a strict interpretation of the letter of the law, the House of
Commons had perhaps no constitutional right to touch on
matters of this nature. The associations of adventurers
received their charters from the Crown alone. Their business
lay in foreign lands, and all foreign questions were, in a
peculiar degree, the prerogative of the Crown. Neither the
Ttidors nor the Stuarts recognised the right of Parliament
to intervene between the Crown and those to whom it had

1 Authorities. As before, with the additional parliamentary records
of the time. Especially important are the biographies of Olive, Hastings,
Cornwallis, and the British statesmen of the period. The pamphlets on
Indian affairs are again useful. Hunter and Mill for India itself.

134 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

granted charters : nevertheless, as a matter of policy, or
convenience, or sometimes under protest, they allowed it.

On its side Parliament had no doubt of its right of inter-
ference. A charter to trade conferred a monopoly of trade
in a particular district : and the right of the Crown to grant
monopolies was one on which the Commons kept a jealous
eye. A charter to colonise presupposed the right of the
Crown to govern the colony founded, with or without repre-
sentative institutions ; in nearly every case it stipulated that
the Crown should receive certain definite or indefinite sums
in return for the privilege and protection, nominal or real,
which went with the charter. The extension of the British
dominions overseas to any large extent would therefore have
enriched the Crown considerably, and might conceivably have
rendered it independent of the home Parliament : hence the
interest with which the Commons followed the question of
charters and monopolies.

But after the execution of Charles I. all the functions of
the Crown devolved on Parliament ; and at the restoration of
the monarchy it was impossible for things to revert to their
previous position. From that time, therefore, the right of
Parliament to intervene in the affairs of the chartered and
proprietary companies was unquestioned ; even more evident
was its right to revise the charters by which the Crown granted
privileges, and to determine for how long a period those
privileges should be renewed.

For a century little more was aimed at. The imperial
policy of Cromwell had thrown the glamour of imperialism
over many of the acts of his Parliaments : but the reaction
came immediately after his death. From that time the
debates on the renewal of charters turned mainly on the
amount that could be obtained from the trading companies
for the relief of home taxation ; a sort of income-tax levied
in advance on speculative profits, that frequently it is difficult
to distinguish from political blackmail.

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 135

A change of view is first noticeable in the time of the
elder Pitt. The Empire of India was now falling into the
hands of England, or rather into the hands of a trading
company that was bound to use its position primarily for
the purpose of paying dividends. It was a situation un-
paralleled in the history of the world ; although endowed
with the privileges of rule, the East India Company did not
recognise the responsibilities ; nor did Parliament for some
time consider it necessary to take any steps to reform the
government of India.

Gradually, however, the feeling grew stronger that some
more efficacious system of control was necessary; and, as
might be expected, Pitt, the great imperial statesman of the
age, was the first to discuss the matter. In 1760 he already
thought the government of India ' the greatest of all objects,
according to my view of great/ He meditated deeply over
the problem, which seemed to resolve itself into the question,
whether conquests never contemplated by a charter should
be deemed an essential part of that charter.

Unfortunately, the mysterious illness which for a time
clouded his intellect prevented him from taking any action ;
but when the renewal of the Company's charter was again
debated in 1773, he at once showed his interest. In the
letter on the subject that has been preserved, he puts his
view of the case clearly : ' I always conceived that there is
in substantial justice a mixed right to the territorial revenues
between the State and the Company as joint captors ; the
State equitably entitled to the larger share as largest con-
tributor in the acquisition. . . . Nor can the Company's
share, when ascertained, be considered as private property :
but in trust for the public purpose of the defence of India and
the extension of trade ; never in any case to be portioned
out in dividends to the extinction of trade/ At this time
Burke also showed his interest in oriental matters, and we
have already seen that an Act to regulate affairs in India

136 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

passed through Parliament in spite of the protests of the
directors of the Company.

But the great storm was still to come, a storm in com-
parison to which the outcry that took place over the mis-
government which Olive was sent out to check was merely a
passing thundercloud on a summer day.

During the debates on the India BUI the name of Olive had
often been called in question, and the part he had taken in
Parliament *^ e government of India was referred to cen-
and dive, seriously by many members. On him was visited
1773 ' all the wrath which had gradually been accumu-

lating against the whole body of Anglo-Indians for several
years. The nabobs, as the latter were commonly called in
England, were for many reasons a most unpopular class of
men. 1 They did not generally come of high family, yet
their wealth enabled them to outshine the heads of old county
houses. That wealth could buy them everything save breed-
ing and respect ; and they attempted to cover the deficiency,
after the manner of the upstart all the world over, by insolence.
Accustomed to command in India, they assumed an over-
bearing tone at home. Their demeanour naturally roused
the furious resentment of all those particles of society which
they had displaced ; the aspiring snob and the lofty patrician
were for once allied in detesting a common foe. And these
critics were joined by a type of man whom modern England
to her cost knows too well : we may be sure that, among the
enemies of the nabobs, there were not lacking those who are
meanly envious of the more conspicuous or more fortunate in
life than themselves, and whose sole delight seems to be to

1 As were also their sons at Oxford University, as is pointed out in
Godley's Oxford in the Eighteenth Century. Many writers have ascribed
the corruption of eighteenth-century England to the evil influence of the
wealthy Anglo-Indians; but it must be remembered that the nabobs
were after afl a limited class, and that the manufacturers at home were
making money at least as rapidly at this time. And it is not invariably
true that wealth is put to bad uses, even by those who have amassed it
more quickly than their less fortunate or more honest neighbours.

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 137

traduce and to besmirch those of their countrymen who have
performed great public services overseas.

It began to be whispered that the enormous wealth of the
Anglo-Indians had been obtained by extortion and tyranny
of the most cruel kind : and the nabobs at once found enrolled
among their opponents such men as the orator Burke, whose
pure soul was filled with a passion for justice to the weak,
and the poet Cowper, whose terrible indictment of the iniquity
of the English in India seems directly inspired by that divine
teacher who bade men be merciful to the poor and helpless.

The storm centred on Olive : for he was the chief of all the
nabobs. And to the revilements of his countrymen at home
he found were now added the curses of those whom he had
balked of making a fortune in India. His good and his evil
acts alike told against him.

Every item of his conduct was investigated by Parliament
with malignant care : ' I am sure/ Olive once exclaimed, ' if
I had any sore places about me, they would have been found ;
they have probed me to the bottom ; no lenient plasters have
been applied to heal, no, they were all of the blister kind/
After the trial he said bitterly, and with truth, that he had
been examined like a common sheep-stealer ; but a sense of
compassion for his wrongs had already turned feeling in his
favour. When the direct vote of censure was moved in the
House, the previous question was put and carried ; and while
his excesses were not glossed over, it was resolved unani-
mously ' that Eobert Lord Olive did at the same time render
great and meritorious services to his country/

The verdict was a just one : but it brought no peace to
dive. He rusted in inactivity ; he, whose whole manhood
had been passed in conflict, could not exist in Beat&of
luxurious idleness. The strange melancholy of dive, 1774.
his youth again began to prey upon him : and a few months
later he died by his own hand, having only just entered his
fiftieth year. The ignorant and the superstitious at once

138 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

seized on the event as a sign that the Devil had come by his
own ; and there were even some good men who so far forgot
their religion as to suggest that the just retribution of God
had overtaken the oppressor.

The war of pamphlets attacking and defending the East
India Company went on unceasingly. The rising newspaper

Indian con P ress ^ *k e ^ a 7 j ^ 6 ^ *& ^ e debate. The evil
troversy, genius of Sir Philip Francis returned from Asia to
1781 ' add acrimony to the controversy. Statesmen were

meanwhile occupied in devising schemes of better government
for the Indian possessions of Britain. The mantle of Pitt fell
on his son. The loss of the American colonies made men fear
the loss of the Indian Empire ; and the news of the growing
power of Haidar Ali gave countenance to the fear. But
until the charter of the Company was near expiry, nothing
could be done ; and Warren Hastings was still ruling firmly
and wisely in the East

At length, in 1780, negotiations were begun between the
directors and the imperial treasury for a renewal of the
monopoly. There were many difficulties to be encountered ;
and the two old questions still remained. To whom did the
territory in the East belong, and what amount should the
Company pay for its exclusive commercial privileges ?

A compromise was effected, however, and the charter was
renewed for a time ; but, while everything appeared to be
going smoothly, various complaints arrived from the British
in India as to the powers possessed by the Supreme Court
of Judicature. In deference to these, two committees were
appointed, which afterwards investigated the whole state of
oriental afiairs; and of those committees the most conspicuous
and the most laborious member was Edmund Burke.

Legislation again became inevitable. Feeling raged high.
Dundas, one of the most implacable enemies of Warren
Hastings, demanded his recall ; and by his words recommend-
ing the appointment of Cornwallis as Governor-General, he

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 139

insinuated a gross slander on the existing holder of that
office. c Here/ said Dundas of his nominee, * is no broken
fortune to be mended; no beggarly jnushroom kindred to
be provided for ; no crew of hungry followers gaping to be
gorged ! '

But the Bill which he put forward was rightly looked upon
as too extreme, and the Ministry itself took the Indian problem
in hand. Fox introduced a Bill, which was unacceptable to
all but his own party followers ; and good in many points
though it was, it was considered solely from the party point
of view, which was then an even greater curse than now in
British politics.

The only voice which raised the debates to a higher level
was that of Burke; and his magnificent eloquence, which
even in the cold silence of -print can still stir the The idealism
blood more than a century afterwards, was then of Burke,
employed in the first of those splendid efforts on behalf of
our Indian fellow-subjects which are perhaps his most endur-
ing title to fame. His speech was, he said, * The fruit of much
meditation, the result of the observation of near twenty years.
. . . This business cannot be indifferent to our fame. It
will turn out matter of great disgrace or great glory to the
whole British nation. I am therefore a little concerned to
perceive the spirit and temper in which the debate has been
all along pursued. It is not right, it is not worthy of us, to
depreciate the value, to degrade the majesty, of this grave
deliberation of policy and empire. If we are not able to
devise some means of governing India well, which will not
of necessity become the means of governing Great Britain
ill, a ground is laid for their eternal separation/ A lengthy
indictment of the East India Company followed. ' We have
sold/ said Burke, ' the blood of millions of men for the base
consideration of money. Through all that vast extent of
country there is not a man who eats a mouthful of rice but
by permission of the East India Company ; yet there is not

140 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS

a single prince, state, or potentate, great or small, with whom
they have come in contact, whom they have not sold. There
is not a single treaty they have ever made which they have
not broken. Every rupee of profit made by an Englishman
is lost for ever to India. England has erected no churches,
no hospitals, no palaces, no schools ; England has built no
bridges, made no high roads, cut no navigations, dug out
no reservoirs. Every other conqueror has left some monu-
ment behind him ; were we to be driven out of India this
day, nothing would remain to tell that it had been possessed
during the inglorious period of our dominion by anything
better than the urang-utang or the tiger. . . . There is not
left one man of property and substance, not one landholder,
not one banker, not one merchant, nor one even of those who
usually perish last, the utiimum moriens in a ruined state,
not one farmer of revenue/

The speech was disfigured by many gross exaggerations :
the Company's rule was at least an improvement on those
degenerate successors of the Mughal who had given India
over to anarchy ; and Burke made no mention whatever of
the administrative reforms of Hastings. 1

But in the main the charges were true ; and the import-
ance of Burke's speech is that it laid down for the first time,
as an undeniable proposition, the principle that it was a
national duty to see that the natives of our oriental depend-
ency were not oppressed by their conquerors. If the East
India Company, in short, was responsible for India, England
was responsible for the East India Company.
In this speech, too, may be found the first outline of that

1 This speech, indeed, showed Burke at his best ; at his worst he was
merely an abusive fanatic. As Mr. Sichel points out in his brilliant
Life of Sheridan, Burke was rebuked by Pitt in 1784 for calling Warren
Hastings * Haman Dowlah,' and there are other instances of his passionate
and rhetorical distortions in his dealings with Indian politics. To the
end of his life he refused to see anything but evil in the character of the
great Governor-General. But this was not the only case in which Burke
showed that the faculty of calm and impartial judgment was utterly alien
to his nature.

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 141

policy of social and industrial improvement in the East which
has been the glory of our dominion there during the nine-
teenth century. The world, ? as Burke said at another time,
e saw one of the races of the North-West cast into the heart
of Asia new manners, new doctrines, new institutions * ; and
though England had as yet done little to justify her conquests,
the beginnings of better things were at hand.

The Bill introduced by Fox was rejected, not so much by
the opinion of Parliament, as by the direct influence of the
king ; and William Pitt the younger, the new The
Prime Minister, brought forward a somewhat Bms
similar measure. It was founded more on compromise than
the scheme of Fox, who had not understood the strength of
the East India Company, and the influence its directors
possessed in Parliament : but its principle was much the
same. All commercial business was to be carried on as before
by the Company, whose chartered rights were thus untouched ;
but the whole conduct of political matters was placed under
a Board of Control, which was formed of members selected
from the Privy Council of Great Britain. The iBoard had
power to approve or annul the acts of the Company, and the
President of the Board became practically a new Secretary
of State in Parliament for the Indian Department.

In this way the government of India fell to the British
Parliament; the commerce of India was preserved to its
original owners. So great was the power of Pitt as Premier
that the Bill passed without serious opposition; and the
system of double government thus instituted lasted, with
one important change, until after the Mutiny of 1857.

It was anomalous, but on the whole it answered well ; and
the seventy-three years during which it continued form the
second great division of British Indian polity. In the first,
the Company had been supreme. In the second, the Com-
pany and the Crown had joint control. In the third, the
Company ceased to exist, and the Crown alone was responsible.

142 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

During the course of tie protracted debates on Indian
affairs many of the acts of Warren Hastings had been severely
Trial condemned by enemies both public and private,
of Hastings, His conduct had been censured by a vote of the
1788-95. House of Commons. Dundas had attacked him
with the virulence of which he was a master. Francis had
done all in his power to pay back old scores. Burke had
declaimed in tones of thunder against the tyranny and extor-
tion of the Governor-General. But imperial affairs were too
critical to permit of the recall of Hastings at that moment.
At length, however, in 1785 he returned.

It cannot be denied there was a strong, and to some extent
a well-founded feeling of indignation against him. But he
had also a great body of fervent admirers. The general
public, who had no particular reason for taking sides on
Indian questions, seem to have recognised that he had com-
mitted many wrongs ; but against this they set off, and with
justice, the fact that he had upheld the English name in the
East during a time of storm and stress.

In all probability no steps to impeach hi would have been
taken, had not his agent in Parliament, the inept Major Scott,
challenged Burke to bring forward a motion of censure that
had already been threatened. Thus attacked, Burke had
no option but to justify himself. He replied, and founded
his indictment chiefly on the Rohilla War, the Chait Sinh
affair, and the ill-treatment of the Begams of Oudh ; actions
which he characterised, with even more than his customary
vehemence of language, as ' the damned and damnable pro-
ceedings of a judge in hell/ On the first charge Hastings
was absolved by the House of Commons, chiefly on the ground
that his conduct therein had already been censured ; but he
was impeached on the others.

The trial began early in the next year, 1788. Against
Hastings were ranged the greatest orators of the age ; Burke,
Sheridan, and Fox vied with each other in depicting the

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 143

enormities of which the great Governor-General had been
guilty. But they knew little of legal procedure ; and their
speeches, which were full of the splendid rhetoric of which
each of those great speakers were masters, were equally full
of the most reckless exaggerations.

The lawyers, and perhaps the balance of the arguments,
were on the side of Warren Hastings ; but what was even
more on his side was the extraordinary duration of the trial.
The hearing of the charges against hirn extended over seven
years ; and even then it was only by the prosecutors with-
drawing many of the counts that the end was reached. The
public interest had been enormous at the beginning of the
proceedings ; but long before the trial had run half its course
the world was weary of it. 1 Sympathy began to be given
to Hastings, for justice seemed to degenerate into persecu-
tion, as the dilatory proceedings dragged on indefinitely.
At last, in 1795, the decision was pronounced. Acquittal
on all the charges was a foregone conclusion.

There must have been many at the trial who drew a parallel
between dive and Hastings. Both had gone out as lads
to India, in much the same circumstances. Both had been
in the same employment, and had risen from the lowest to
the highest positions. Both held a position of immense
power, and served their country well. Both committed great
faults, and both had their conduct tried by enemies on their
return. Both were honourably acquitted.

But there the resemblance ends. Olive was wayward and
passionate, and a prey to suicidal mania. Hastings was
calm and thoughtful, and able to keep steadily in the same
path for many years together. At his acquittal he was
already older than Olive had been at his death ; yet Hastings

1 And so apparently was one of the prosecutors. Mr. Sichel relates
that : * Even at the end of 1788, so wearied was Sheridan of the impetuous
tempers of Burke that he told the Duchess of Devonshire in jest how
much he wished that Warren Hastings would run away, and Burke
after him.'

144 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

lived in tranquillity another twenty-tliree years, on those
historic lands of his ancestors at Daylesford which he had
so long coveted, where he indulged the quiet pursuits of an
English country gentleman, and endeavoured, not very
successfully, to cultivate at home some of the products native
to the tropical regions of the earth.

The likeness and the contrast between the work of the two
men in India is striking. The career of Clive may be com-
pared to the course of a mountain torrent, which carries all
before it in one impetuous rush ; that of Hastings to the
steadily flowing river of the lowlands, less picturesque perhaps,
but with far more real power and force : and as the torrent
is the beginning of the river, so were the conquests of Clive
the foundation of the administrative and general policy of
Hastings. The one was the complement of the other ; alone
neither would have been permanent.

With the close of the great trial the interest that had been
excited in Indian affairs throughout England died away, as
cornwauis, tih.e storm of the French Revolution and the
1786-93. Napoleonic wars distracted the attention of
Europe. Asiatic affairs, in fact, remained a thing apart from
the general politics of the western world ; and only those
who were directly concerned with the East knew much of
the advance of our empire there. But, despite the terrible
burden of the contest with France, there was no cessation
for any length of time of the efforts to consolidate and extend
the English power in India.

The immediate successor of Warren Hastings in India was
Macpherson, a man who had risen from the humble position
^oi purser on a mercantile vessel to be adviser to the Nawab
oixArcot, and eventually a senior Member of Council. His
ruleVas merely intermediate, and was marked by no events
of any importance.

He was followed, in September 1786, by Lord Cornwallis,
a statesman who proved himself worthy to rank among the

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 145

greatest of those whom England has given to India. As
commander of the British troops in America during the
Imperial Civil War a year or two before, he had been unsuc-
cessful ; as Governor-General of India, however, he more
than retrieved the reputation which he lost in the capitula-
tion at Yorktown. 1

At first, indeed, he was unwilling to accept the post offered
to him. He saw the virulent attacks that were being made
on Warren Hastings ; he had himself not been held free from
blame by popular opinion for the crowning disaster of the
American War ; and he shrank, as many a sensitive man
would have shrunk in a similar position, from the possibility
of a second failure and its inevitable consequences.

He was in no mood, he said, to risk being * disgraced to
all eternity" in attempting ineffectually c to fight nabob
princes, his own Council, and the supreme Government, what-
ever it may be ' ; and he refused the post. It was some
time before the entreaties of the English Ministers prevailed :
but at length, e much against his will and with grief of heart/
as he confessed, he" accepted the supreme control of Indian
affairs and sailed for the East.

His arrival found Bengal in a disturbed and restless state.
Macpherson had already described the time as e a season of
peculiar difficulty, when the close of a ruinous unrest in
war, and the relaxed habits of the service, had fc"Ha.
left all the armies in arrear, and the presidencies in disorder/
According to the much overdrawn accounts that had been
sent home, the public distress had never been so pressing as
at that moment ; and certainly Macpherson himself did
nothing to relieve it. Indeed, even his short period of rule
had been far from satisfactory. Many of the old abuses had
begun to appear again ; and his successor took occasion to
remark, in an early despatch, that the British name in India

1 For the campaigns of Cornwallis in America, see vol. iii. bk. ix.
chap. iii.

VOL. II. K

146 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

had now * no authority, and the grossest frauds were daily
committed before their faces ; their whole conduct, and all
their pretensions to economy, except in the reduction of
salaries, were a scene of delusion/

When Cornwallis landed, therefore, in a country to whose
problems he was altogether a stranger, it was not to take up
the reins of a settled government ; and his hands were still
further tied by the instructions he had received before leaving
England.

The parliamentary Board of Control and the directors of
the East India Company had both assumed that the collec-
THe Bengal tion and the amount of the revenue were the most
Revenue. important questions in Indian administration. In
a sense perhaps they were right, looking at India from the
point of view that was held by everybody at that day except
Edmund Burke ; and most certainly they did not err in dis-
covering that the revenue stood on a very unsatisfactory
footing. AH. over the country payments were in arrears ;
in some parts they were as much as four years behind ;
in many others the sums collected had fallen short of
expectations.

It had therefore been determined to place the Indian revenue
on a permanent basis. The first assessment was to be con-
fined to a period of ten years ; but after that time a lasting
settlement was to be arrived at. With the duty of intro-
ducing this new system was Cornwallis charged ; and he was
to be guided, not by ' abstract theories drawn from other
countries, or applicable to a different state of things, but a
consideration of the existing manners and usages of the people/

It was easy to give directions from London ; but the new
Governor-General had not been long in Calcutta before he
found it impossible to carry them out. It had been taken
for granted that the English in India were already in posses-
sion of sufficient information as to the economic condition of
the provinces they ruled, to fix the assessment almost inxme-

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 147

diately at an equitable rate. So far, however, was tliis from
being tlie case, that nobody could say definitely whether the
country could pay more, or whether it was already taxed too
highly. All that was certainly known were the amounts
that had previously been collected.

In this difficulty Cornwallis took the only course that was
fair both to the people and their rulers ; but it was a course
upon which a lesser man would have refused to embark. He
disregarded the orders he had received, and sent home a
despatch giving his reasons for doing so. Annual settle-
ments of the revenue were introduced for the time being;
in the meantime all the information that could be gathered
as to the resources of India was obtained and placed before
him.

The result was seen in the despatch sent home by Corn-
wallis on 2nd August 1789. After three years of exhaustive
investigation, he was now ready with a scheme
for the permanent settlement of the Bengal
revenue. The assessment of the country was 1789.
fixed in perpetuity. It was still left in the hands of the zamin-
dari, or collectors, to receive the revenue from the ryots, or
cultivators, as before, and to pay it over to the Government ;
but the rights of the former were elevated into something
very near those of a landlord, while the latter became in effect
little more than tenants. Cornwallis appears to have had
in mind, as was inevitable in a man of aristocratic upbring-
ing, the system of land tenure prevailing in England : but
great as this fault was and we shall see in a subsequent
chapter that his scheme eventually failed the permanent
settlement was at least a step forward from the old hap-
hazard method of revenue collection. It introduced, what
had hitherto always been lacking, an element of certainty in
Indian finance ; it standardised a principle, where before was
merely chance, and very often extortion.

Further than this, it paved the way for another urgent

148 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

reform. The functions of collector of revenue and president
of the local courts of law had previously pertained to the same
official : and the effect of this was to unite the advocate and
the judge in one person. A more direct incentive to tyranny
can hardly be conceived; and although Cornwallis in his
original instructions was commanded to preserve the system,
he abolished it after a lengthy trial had convinced him of its
injustice. -The complete criminal jurisdiction was given to
Europeans, and the collector of revenue had from this time
no connection with either judicature or police.

But in spite of the care which had been taken in the com-
pilation of the revenue statistics, they proved very faulty in
the actual work of administration. Under the new scheme,
whatever advantages the Government and the collectors of
revenue derived from it, the cultivators suffered. Within
twenty years the position of the latter was described as
desperate, and it was seen that the permanent settlement
would have to be revised throughout. Unfortunately this was
deferred from year to year, and the rights of the cultivators
were not secured to them until after the Mutiny in 1859.

Whether Cornwallis would have discovered and remedied
the defects of his own system, had the opportunity been vouch-
ee Second safed ^ m ' remains a question. But he, like
Mjsore War, Warren Hastings, was interrupted in his schemes
1791-2. re f orm by a ca jj arms ^ Haidar Ali was dead ;
Tipd, his son, reigned in his stead. And Tipd was still burn-
ing with resentment at the defeats that had been inflicted
on his father, and the heavy losses which the late war had
brought on the kingdom of Mysore. In his way he governed
well, and his people were prosperous and contented during
at least the earlier part of his reign, thus famishing a humili-
ating contrast to the misery of the neighbouring British pro-
vince of the Karnatic. But Tipu was above all else ambitious
to extend his territory, and to exterminate the alien rulers
of India.

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 149

To accomplish the latter end, he was quite prepared to see
other aliens in their place. He invited the terrible Afghans
to descend from their fastnesses upon the north, and to co-
operate with him in driving out the English ; and though his
project fortunately came to nothing, he remained hopeful
till the last that the French would yet appear in India as
conquerors, and assist him against those enemies with whom
his father had grappled in vain, and with whom the major
part of his own life was to be spent in warring.

For some years after the close of the first Mysore War, in
1784, there seemed no likelihood, however, that the treaty
between Tipti and the English would be broken. The Sultan
was indeed a turbulent neighbour, who was continually inter-
fering in the affairs of the smaller states of Southern India,
over which the English claimed a certain amount of control :
but the opinion generally prevailed that he would do nothing
actively hostile without French aid ; and that aid he could
not hope to obtain, since France and England were at peace.

But in the very year, 1790, in which Cornwallis expressed
this opinion, and even suggested to Tipd that commissioners
should be appointed on either side to settle all questions in
dispute, the latter attacked Travancore, a state under British
protection, without previous provocation.

The Governor-General at once made known his intention
of exacting full reparation for the outrage ; and treaties of
offensive alliance were concluded by hi with Haidarabad
and those recent foes of the British, the Maratha princes.

Tipu, alarmed by tihte formidable enemies his wanton deed
.had provoked, attempted to excuse the invasion of Travan-
core as an unauthorised irruption of his army, and suggested
that the English should appoint one or two trusty persons
to negotiate. But Cornwallis was not to be deceived. It
would have compromised the dignity of the British name to
have sent ambassadors to Tipti ; it was his place to send them
to us.

150 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

But although the Sultan of Mysore subsequently offered
to do so, in order to e remove the dust by which the upright
mind of the General had been obscured s ; and although the
ever-pacific presidency of Madras believed that he e had no
intention to break with the Company/ Cornwallis saw more
clearly that to delay the war would merely give Tipu the
opportunity of strengthening his army, without lessening
his enmity. 1 Madras was severely censured by the Governor-
General for disobeying his command to prepare for war :
and in the following year, 1791, Cornwallis himself took the
field, with a display of pomp and power, designed to impress
the natives, such as neither Clive nor Coote had ever been
able to show.

Tipu had appealed to France for aid, and even waited at
Pondicherri for the troops which he imagined must eventually
come. But his request and his presents had both been laughed
at in the court of Louis XVL ; and the Sultan of Mysore turned
back disappointed to his own dominions to fight his battle
alone.

His early operations against the British were, however,
successful. The Madras army, which had marched against
him, did nothing; and the activity of the Governor of Bombay,
General Abercromby, who conquered the Malabar coast with
ease, did not compensate for the failure of the former.

At length Cornwallis took the supreme direction of the

1 I have an uneasy feeling that if the ghost of the unfortunate Tipti
were suddenly to confront me at my desk, he might be able to prove that
this war was fastened on him against his will by Cornwallis. The Sultan
of Mysore certainly did his best to conciliate the Governor-General when
he saw that matters were serious ; and it is at least possible that Corn-
wallis seized a favourable opportunity to injure one whom he knew would
never be a friend of the British, but whom it did not suit at the moment
to become a declared enemy. But this question, like many other dis-
puted points in history, can never be definitely settled ; for nearly all
our evidence comes from the victors, and the only decisive testimony
would be the conscience of the defeated Sultan. It is a legal maxim that
one cannot libel the dead a maxim that seems invented for the express
benefit of historians but if one could call up spirits from the vasty deep,
and examine them as to their actions when they were alive, a good deal
that is now accepted as the truth would have to be thrown overboard.

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 151

war. He arrived without opposition at Bangalore, aided less
by his own qualities as a commander than by Tipu's remiss-
ness as a foe ; for the latter had suddenly bethought him-
self of his seraglio in that city, and returned with all speed
to rescue his womenfolk.

The Sultan had thereby made a bad blunder, and Bangalore
was soon in the hands of the British troops. But from that
moment the fortune of the campaign was reversed. Corn-
wallis failed to effect a junction with the army of Haidarabad ;
and although Tipu declined a proffered battle, and the
British general prepared for the siege of Seringapatam, the
capital of Mysore, he was suddenly checked.

There was an utter failure of the British equipment, due
to lack of foresight ; the cattle and provisions were lost, and
the invading army was compelled to retreat in serious danger.
It fell in with the Marathas, but for the time these allies were
of little use, requiring a loan before they would consent to
fight : and at length Cornwallis was forced to open negotia-
tions with Tipu.

But the Sultan, though willing enough to treat, was now
flushed with victory, and suggested that the British army
should return to its own territory before he could think of
peace. The assumption of superiority was repudiated by
Cornwallis ; and, fresh supplies having arrived, the combined
armies of titie British and Marathas marched on Seringapatam,

The district between Bangalore and the capital of Mysore
was of an extraordinarily difficult nature for an army to
traverse. The country was one of hills and precipices. A
dense jungle stretched the whole way, which was aggravated
by the artificial thickets of bamboos that had been planted
in various places. At intervals there were forts, which were
manned by the Sultan's most devoted servants. *I have
eaten Tipti's salt for twenty years/ cried the captain of one
of these when summoned to surrender, e and will not give
up my post till you first take Seringapatam/

152 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS

Almost every fort had to be bombarded until a breach was
made in its walls, and then taken by assault ; at least one
stronghold resisted three days' continual cannonade. And
when one fort was stormed and captured, a path had to be
cut in the jungle, over rocks and through the undergrowth,
before the heavy artillery could be dragged forward another
mile or two towards the next. The labour was immense ;
but, by the beginning of February 1792, the British lines of
communication were perfect, and Cornwallis appeared before
Seringapatam.

The capital of Mysore, in which Tipu had entrenched him-
self, lies on a large island in the middle of a river. A network
of bamboo and a prickly hedge formed a useful rampart
against attack, even after the river had been crossed ; and
there was, in addition, a strong fortress to which the defenders
could withdraw if closely pressed.

Tipu possessed some five thousand cavalry and between
forty and fifty thousand infantry ; and though his personal
operations against the English had hitherto been generally
feeble, he did not believe that they would be able to capture
Seringapatam. It was his aim to weary them with a long
and fruitless siege, until the coming of the monsoon should
force them to withdraw : and since this stratagem had been
successfully employed by his father in an earlier campaign
some years before, Tipu, whose qualities as a military
commander were certainly less brilliant than those of Haidar
Ali, thought he could not do better than imitate a plan whose
value had already been proved.

But Cornwallis was not deterred by the formidable appear-
ance of Seringapatam. He made a sudden and daring attack
on the night of 6th February ; and although the native allies
of the British were aghast at the boldness of the plan, and
though Tipu's troops fought with great bravery, they could
not resist the onslaught. By four o'clock the next after-
noon the city was captured, and siege was then immedi-

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 153

ately laid to the fortress. A firm resistance was still made
by the Sultan ; but it was hopeless to attempt to hold out,
and, on the 24th, peace was concluded.

The Mysorean soldiery continued to fire for a time, in order
to appear to be the last to give up the fight ; but this piece
of barbarian bravado was of no effect. Cornwallis could
despise such empty bombast, and he issued an order to his
men to show moderation in the hour of victory, and to e refrain
from the use of any kind of insulting expression towards an
enemy now subdued and humbled/

The command was obeyed ; but it was more difficult to
draw up a treaty which, while satisfying the Marathas and
the Nizam of EaidardMd, should secure to the British the
just fruits of victory, and yet leave Tipu a reasonable amount
of territory as Sultan of Mysore.

There was no intention of deposing him, for, once his power
was checked, and he was forced to acknowledge the might
of the ruling race, Cornwallis thought Tipu would be a useful
factor in preserving that balance of power among the native
states which was still the basis of the East India Company's
policy. The events of the next few years proved that nothing
could quell Tipu's enmity but death ; but at the time the
treaty of 1792 seemed sufficiently drastic to prevent him
from causing further trouble.

He was forced to cede half his territories among the allies, to
give up two of his eldest sons to the British as hostages, and
to pay the enormous indemnity of three crores and thirty lakhs
of rupees. The British share of the dominions thus acquired
was the province of Mysore on the Karnatic frontier, the
district surrounding Dindigul, and the Malabar coast.

A year after the close of the second Mysore War Corn-
wallis returned to England, and was succeeded SirJo3m
as Governor-General by Sir John Shore, who had snore,
been instrumental in drawing up the greater
part of the permanent settlement of Bengal. A high-

154 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

minded and blameless statesman, Shore's attention was
directed mainly to the internal administration of the British
Indian provinces. He seldom interfered in the affairs of
the independent states ; and the five years of his rule being
generally quiet and uneventful, he was able to continue
undisturbed the work of reform which he had initiated
under the guidance of Cornwallis.

When Shore retired in 1798, a little more than a quarter of
a century had elapsed since the Regulating Act had been
Tne Results passed, and more than ten years since the govern-
mentary nient of India had been divided between the East
Government. India Company and the British Parliament. It
was therefore by that time possible to see in some degree how
the new system of divided ministerial and corporative control
would work. That there had been some disadvantages in
the dual authority was but natural. Cornwallis found him-
self hampered at times by the restrictions which had been
placed on the contraction of alliances and the signature of
treaties with the native powers ; and it would have been a
serious difficulty had he not cut the Gordian knot by occa-
sionally disregarding the law on this point. In the troubled
years which were to come, when Wellesley was at the head
of affairs, it was often impossible to wait for the decision of
the British Cabinet Ministers on every question of internal
Indian politics, especially since neither the Parliamentary
Secretary of State for India nor the directors of the East India
Company in London could be so well informed of the neces-
sities of the situation as the man on the spot ; and, in addition,
the time required for communicating between London and
Calcutta was so long that the position might have altered
entirely before the decision of the authorities in London could
have reached the Governor-General in Calcutta. Wellesley,
therefore, in this matter followed the action of Cornwallis.

Another disadvantage was the infusion of British party
politics into the discussion of Indian affairs in Parliament ;

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 155

but tliis was not a new evil. Tlie examination of Olive and
the impeacliinent of Warren Hastings tad both been dictated
at least as much by the claims of party as by consideration
for the welfare of the people of India. The discussions and
voting on the India Bills had been exclusively on party lines.
And during the second Mysore War, Fox had found it con-
sistent with patriotism to indulge in an attack of wild rhetoric
on Cornwallis for his alliance with the Marathas and the Nizam
of Haidarabad ; it was, said Fox, a plundering confederacy
for the purpose of extirpating a lawful prince, the expedient
of a wicked government in a barbarous age ; the progress of
civilisation had rendered men ashamed of such alliances in
Europe, but Britain still resorted to them in Asia. His oratory,
however, fell on deaf ears ; the war was popular in England,
and the Government carried the day against the opposition. 1
While these drawbacks to the new system were obvious,
they were held in check by the general good sense of the
nation, and, in part, by the indifference it was about to show
towards Indian affairs ; and they were more than offset by
the advantages which parliamentary control had brought.
The reforms of Cornwallis and Shore, though far from perfect,
were at least steps towards better things ; and it may be
doubted whether they would have been introduced had
British India remained solely under Company rule. Warren
Hastings was as anxious to improve the administration of
Bengal as Cornwallis ; but he was prevented by the insistent

1 That party spirit should run high within the walls of the House of
Commons when Indian affairs were discussed will not appear wonderful
to those who remember the political factions of the times; but it is
curious to find that the people outside, who condemned Fox's India Bill,
shouted ' No Grand Mogul, no India tyrant ! ' at the offending Whigs.
They may not have understood exactly who the Grand Mogul was, or
where he reigned ; but most intelligent men had a roughly accurate idea
of recent events in India. And although one of the characters in She
Stoops to Conquer remarks that *I no more trouble my head about
Heyder Ally or Ally Cawn than about Ally Croaker,' the politics and
finances of the East India Company, both in Leadenhall Street and in
India, were one of the recognised topics of general conversation in Eng-
land, as any of the memoirs of the later eighteenth century will attest.

156 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

demand of the Company's directors for money, while Corn-
wallis was, to a certain extent, able to disregard their wishes.
Again, the directors would have objected, and, in fact, they
did object, to the policy of expansion which was about to
be initiated by Wellesley ; under parliamentary control, how-
ever, their complaints were useless.

CHAPTER IV

THE FORWARD POLICY: 1798-18051

THE first thirteen years after the return of Warren Hastings
to England were, in a military sense, generally uneventful.
The next seven were filled with continual wars. The whole
period of twenty years may be summed up as that in
which the two distinct types of policy which have since
characterised the British dominion in Asia first became
strongly marked. Both have been rightly called the forward

1 Authorities. Mill and Hunter. The former's History of British
India closes with the year ISOo. In spite of its cold, unsympathetic tone,
and its prejudice against the East India Company and British policy in
India, it is a valuable work. But it is a thousand pities that Hunter did
not live to complete his great history, which would have superseded all
others. The original authorities for this period are the indispensable
despatches of Wellesley and Wellington, and the technical military works
in which the history of the wars is told. Napoleon's scheme of striking at
India through Egypt is thoroughly investigated by Thiers ; the import-
ance of the idea, and its effect in shaping our Asiatic policy, has perhaps
hardly been sufficiently remarked by English historians. The Indian tracts
and pamphlets that were published in England become from now for
some time of small value : the trial of Warren Hastings had exhausted
popular interest at home ; there were no obvious reasons for attacking the
Company on political grounds any more, since Parliament had practically
taken over the administration ; and, above all, while England was occu-
pied with a life and death struggle in Europe, she could pay little atten-
tion to Asia. In consequence, we find that the discussion of Indian
affairs began to be the province of experts, and from .about this time
Eastern problems were generally lifted above the sphere of party. The
publications of the nineteenth century dealing with India were generally
utilitarian and technical, and although they were controversial, they were
so in quite a different sense from those of the eighteenth.

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 157

policy by those responsible for them. Each has been neces-
sary at various times, and it says much for the credit of our
Indian administration that the men in authority have gene-
rally chosen the path of conquest or the path of peace correctly,
as the occasion of their age demanded.

The forward policy, from the military standpoint, has con-
sisted in the extension of the British power in India by
war and conquest. That policy has enlarged our frontiers
till they have reached the Himalayas in the north and have
stretched to the coast all round the vast peninsula. It has
been the source of a thousand brilliant exploits by our armies ;
it has brought fame and reputation to many a rising soldier.
And sometimes, but not often, it has been checked by a
terrible disaster.

The forward policy of the civilian service has had no such
picturesque adjuncts to its fame. It has been concerned
with the details of administrative work, with the reform of
Indian law, with the settlement of the land system. It has
had to inaugurate a general scheme of education, to stop
popular abuses that had the custom of centuries of ignorance
at their back. It has had to foresee* the wants of modern
India by encouraging industry, by constructing irrigation
works, canals, and railways, by enlarging the forest area
of the country. And before it could do this it had first to
create itself, and to evolve that tradition of unobtrusive,
self-sacrificing, and often inadequately paid labour which
has made the British Indian Civil Service without a parallel
in the world, but which has allowed so few of its members
to found a name for themselves.

By a combination of the two policies the British have
governed India. Our presence in Asia rests in the last resort
upon the sword ; the justification of our presence there is
the civil administration. To depend upon force alone would
be to own ourselves without an ideal of government save that
of force ; to depend upon civilian rule alone would be to trust

158 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

to a belief in human gratitude tliat would show ourselves
deluded by the mere foolishness of doctrinaires run mad.

It was the military policy which inevitably came first, with
the victories of dive. But he, the first of our generals in
India, was forced also to undertake civil administration. As
we have seen, his system failed ; and the reforms of Warren
Hastings and British statesmen at home succeeded to his
efforts. But the attention of Hastings was distracted by
external politics and the finances of the East India Company.
The critical situation in Europe and the Imperial Civil War
in America prevented the British Parliament from giving
much time to oriental affairs. To Hastings, .however, suc-
ceeded Cornwallis, the first English nobleman who was
appointed Governor of India; and under the seven years
of his rule the civil policy of reform was carried far. If com-
mercial profit was still the basis of British rule in India, it
was no longer the sole object. If an active Governor-General,
or in later times an enterprising Viceroy, could vary the
administration to suit his own views, he was no longer an
autocrat in the sense that the two great men to whom we
owe the solid foundation of our oriental empire had been.

British India had grown beyond the strength of one ruler.
The machine of the Indian imperial system had begun ; and
that system, as nearly impersonal as any human institution
can be, although it had not reached the automatic accuracy
of the years after the Mutiny, was already rendering India
independent of changes in the governing staff, from highest
to lowest official. 1

1 Compare the important speech in which Lord Morley, then Mr. John
Morley, introduced the Indian Budget in the House of Commons on 6th
June 1907. *For the last few years, J he said, *the doctrine of adminis-
trative efficiency has been pressed too hard. The wheels of the huge
machine have been driven too fast. Our administration would be a great
deal more popular if it was a trifle less efficient, a trifle more elastic. . . .
There are highly experienced gentlemen who say that a little of the loose-
ness of earlier days is better fitted, than the regular system of latter days,
to keep and win personal influence, and that we are in danger of creating
a pure bureaucracy. Honourable, faithful, and industrious, the servants

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 159

But Cornwallis had been forced to leave the reform of the
Indian land and judicial system by the irruption of Tipu in
the south ; and the last period of his governor- The
ship was dedicated to arms. The five years of in India,
Sir John Shore's administration were uneventful ; 1T 8 "
but at their close the necessity for action was imperative.
The situation was again somewhat similar to what it had
been in Olive's day. To have risked a few years of uncertain
peace for a possible increase of trade would have meant that
the British would, sooner or later, have been driven from
India.

For the power of France had again grown in Asia. Expelled
a second time from the petty remains of their possessions in
India during the Imperial Civil War, the French had still not
given up the hope of ultimate victory. The vast schemes
of Dupleix were again being considered by Buonaparte ; and
Buonaparte was about to entrench himself in Egypt, the
while he fixed his eyes longingly on India. One campaign
by that mighty genius of war would perhaps have brought
both the British and the natives of India to his feet.

Nor was the way unprepared. The French still possessed
Mauritius and Bourbon, both convenient supply stations on
the maritime road to Asia. French regiments formed the
bodyguard of the Nizam of Haidarabad ; and they were in
reality his masters. The soldiers of Sindhia, the military
head of the Maratha confederacy, were led by French adven-
turers. The Sultan of Mysore was still coquetting with
France ; he carried on a correspondence with the Directorate
at Paris, and imitated in passable fashion the jargon of liberty
that was talked under the First Republic. A tree of freedom

of the State in India are and will be, but if the present system is per-
sisted in, there is a risk of its becoming rather mechanical, perhaps I
might even say rather soulless. . . . All evidence tends to show that we
are making administration less personal. 9 My own words in the text
were written some two years before this speech was delivered ; had the
position been reversed, I should have been tempted to rob the most
literary of our orators of these graceful but weighty sentences.

160 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

was planted in Ms dominions ; lie, an Asiatic despot, enrolled
himself in a French club as Citizen Tipu. And British rule
had not yet proved such an unmixed blessing that India
would not have contemplated a change of masters without
excessive regret. Certainly none but ourselves would have
struck a blow in our defence.

All this was known to the younger Pitt. He knew, too,
that the best protection of British interests in the Orient lay
weUesiey, i* 1 a series of brilliant conquests ; and he deter-
1798-1305. mined to strike at once. He selected his man
with the unerring sagacity which seems to have been heredi-
tary in his family ; and Eichard Colley, Baron Wellesley,
became Governor-General of India in 1798. The son of an
Irish nobleman, he had already held various official positions
at home ; but he was marked out for a larger sphere than
England offered. ' You are dying of the cramp/ Addington
had once observed to him, when no opening appeared for his
abilities in Europe : but Pitt had singled him out for pro-
motion ; and on the retirement of Sir John Shore, Wellesley
sailed for Calcutta.

Of cold but determined temperament, neither persuasion
nor abuse could change him from any course that he thought
desirable. Somewhat lacking in human affection, he seems
to have given all the love of which he was capable to the place
where he had been educated ; and as Olive's thoughts in his
years of exile had turned to Manchester, as Hastings had
longed for Daylesford, so did Wellesley, when Governor-General
of British India, ever dream of his old school on the banks of
the Thames. So strong, indeed, was the sentiment which he
felt for it, that even sixty years of strenuous life in Asia and
in England could not abate his affection ; and at his death,
in 1842, he directed that he should be buried in the same Eton
College chapel in which he had worshipped as a schoolboy.

He came out to India with the settled design of pursuing
the forward policy. He did not believe in the system of non-

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 161

intervention which had been followed by Cornwallis and
Shore ; in common with Pitt, he was convinced that it was
necessary to make the native rulers throughout
the whole peninsula dependent on, and subor-
dinate to, the British. The history of the ensuing Policy,
seven years shows how thoroughly that policy was carried
out ; and a sentence in one of his later despatches proves with
what contempt he looked upon the remonstrances of the
directors of the East India Company, when they complained,
as they continually did, that commerce was no longer the
paramount interest of the English in the East. c No addi-
tional outrage/ he wrote, * which can issue from the most
loathsome den of the India House will accelerate my depar-
ture when the public safety shall appear to require my aid/

His first proposals for expansion were opposed at Calcutta,
Madras, and London. Although the directors of the Com-
pany had received the news of the French invasion of Egypt,
they still clung to the hope of peace. They wrote urging
' the utmost discretion, that we may not be involved in war
in India without the most inevitable necessity/ It is easy to
conceive that, according to them, the necessity would never
have arisen until their Asiatic territories had been lost. 1

The English colony at Madras, as usual, protested against
movement of any sort ; and the merchants of Calcutta de-
clared that ' we never before were so powerful and unassail-
able/ Wellesley, however, was resolute. * Not discouraged
by these suggestions and representations/ he wrote, e I insisted
on the immediate execution of my orders ' : and those orders
were for the assembly of the army. His first step was to
induce the Nizam of Haidarabad to disband his French
regiments ; and when British troops were substituted for
them as the bodyguard of the ruler of the Deccan, there was

1 A parallel case may be found in the reluctance of the Butch West
India Company to recognise that its American colonies were threatened
by the English. See vol. i. bk. iii. chap. iii.

VOL. II. L

162 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEPtSEAS

no difficulty in concluding a treaty of alliance with him. The
potential enmity of the most powerful Mohammedan State
of Southern India being thus averted, Wellesley turned his
attention to Mysore.

The campaign of Cornwallis had seriously diminished the
power of Tipu. But the same cause had increased his enmity ;
The Tuird an< * ^ere * s somefihiiig pathetic in his belief that
Mysore war, the aid of God and the assistance of the French
1799 ' would in the end deliver him from the English

conquerors. His reliance on the former stood him in ill stead,
for it led "him again to trust in the strength of the fortress of
Seringapatam ; his appeals to the latter for troops and money
were the direct cause of Wellesley's immediate intervention.
The Governor-General would have been satisfied had Tipti
promised to permit a permanent British resident at his
capital, and to dismiss every Frenchman from his service
and dominions ; but when a demand to that effect was made,
the Sultan of Mysore returned no answer. And therefore,
c under all the circumstances/ said Wellesley, * an immediate
attack upon Tipu, for the purpose of frustrating the execution
of his unprovoked and unwarrantable projects of ambition
and revenge, appeared to me to be demanded by the soundest
maxims both of justice and policy/

The British army marched from Madras ; Tipu became
alarmed, and he complained, apparently not unreasonably,
that since he had broken no treaty, there was no justice in
the invasion.

Such arguments had no weight with Wellesley. It was
enough for him that the French were in Egypt, and that Tipu
would have welcomed them in India. The British army
pressed forward ; and, aided by the troops from Haidardbad,
it was more than thirty thousand strong. On the other side,
Mysore was threatened by the regiments of the Bombay
presidency.

Tipti attacked both in turn, but ineffectively ; and, having

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 163

failed, he shut himself up in Seringapatam. Again his capital
was surrounded by the British ; again it was stormed ; again
it was taken.

But Tipu had fallen in the defence, and when search was
made for him, only his body was found, still warm, hidden
among a pile of dead. The princes of the Sultan's family
were generously treated by the victors, but they were not
restored to the throne. The danger from the dynasty of
Haidar Ali had been too great to risk the chance of another
conflict : and the close of the third Mysore War ended for
ever the political importance of that State.

The fall of Seringapatam brought with it the utter collapse
of the government of Mysore; the whole country passed
into British hands, and the younger brother of Wellesley,
the future Duke of Wellington, was left there to restore order.
At first, indeed, everything was in confusion. We had found
to our cost that the people were generally loyal to Tipu in
the provinces that had been ceded to England after the war
of 1792 ; in the interior of Mysore they were still more devoted
to their late master. And in the out-lying districts there
were small chiefs who had held semi-independent sway, even
in the days of Haidar's greatness ; these, too, were not dis-
posed to welcome the iron hand of European dominion. Each
was ready to conspire with his neighbours or with the people ;
each had to be separately subdued.

It is indeed in a strange character that we see Wellington
during his two years as administrator of Mysore. The re-
organisation of the government was in itself a ^en^oa
difficult process. He was perplexed by the in Mysore,
rumours of plots, the gossip of the bazaars, and 1799 " 1801 -
the utterly untrustworthy character of the information volun-
teered by the natives ; he was harassed by the disputes in
Ids own army, and the continual problem of provisioning so
large a force ; and it was no easy matter to restore confidence
among the people. For some time they disliked selling their

164 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

produce ; only when they found they were paid punctually
and honestly did disaffection diminish. Other dangers were
the tigers which roamed through the land, hardly checked in
the anarchy that prevailed after the fall of Seringapatam,
and the bands of plunderers who ravaged the countryside
and, at times, the city itself. For such pests, Wellington's
plan was simple : the former were shot, the latter hanged ;
and after a few months there was comparative security.

He now turned his attention to the improvement of the
lines of communication within the state : roads were con-
structed through the jungle, and the possibility of a surprise
attack was thus lessened. Each province was visited in turn,
and its administration reorganised; questions of revenue
had to be inquired into, and the policy of imposing taxation
on such articles as tobacco and the betel-nut considered.
Finally, the future defence of Mysore had to be decided ; and
Wellington arranged that the State should be patrolled regu-
larly by squadrons of soldiers, preferring this system to keep-
ing garrisons in fortresses in various places, where, as he
observed, they would have never been able to put down a
rebellion, for they could not venture to leave their own
base.

Mysore was thus finally subjugated by the British : but
its ultimate destiny was a matter for serious debate. To
have annexed it openly would have excited the jealousy of
both the Marathas and the Nizam of the Deccan ; and though
the latter was hardly in a position to become a dangerous
foe, the shadows of approaching war with the former were
akeady looming over British India.

On the other hand, to have given the Marathas, as our allies
for tike moment, too extensive a territory, would have enlarged
their power, and made them a still more formidable foe in
the future ; this question, however, was settled by their rejec-
tion of the share that was offered them. Wellesley accord-
ingly resolved to set up on the throne a Eaja of the older

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 165

family whom Haidar Ali had deposed: but, "recollecting
the inconveniences and embarrassments tinder the double
government, in Oudh, the Karnatic, and Tanjore, I resolved/
he said, c to reserve to the Company the most extensive and
indisputable powers/ Even then the advisers of the Governor-
General made immediate protests at his action; it was
objected, and with reason, that ' a child dragged forth from
oblivion, to be placed on a throne on which his ancestors for
three generations had not sat for more than half a century/
would be laughed at by the Mysoreans, and of little use to
the British. The Governor-General, however, adhered to his
resolution, and the historic rulers of Mysore were restored.

But Mysore still acknowledged the absolute suzerainty of
the East India Company : and the whole of India south of
Haidarabad and the Maratha dominions was now under
British control. The first step in consolidating our oriental
possessions was thus complete; the question of reforming
the administration and bettering the condition of the people
was left to other hands.

Wellington, indeed, was able to say of Mysore before he
left it in 1801 that ' the country was becoming a garden * ;
but the older territories of the East India Com- ^ BeT y iDi
pany in the south remained in a deplorable state, soutnern
The Karnatic had been poverty-stricken for years. India '
In 1790 the Nawab of Arcot had complained that he was
6 compelled to draw the very blood of his ryots to pay his
present heavy instalment to the Company 9 ; and although
Cornwallis had shortly afterwards annexed his dominions,
assuring Parliament and the Company's directors that * the
strongest considerations of humanity, justice, and public
necessity ' had impelled him to this step, there had been no
apparent improvement. 1

1 When Lord Minto arrived in the south of India a few years later, the
poverty of the place at once moved his pity. * Thousands of country
people,' he wrote, c have swarmed into Madras in quest of bread, thou-
sands are employed on public works, to thousands who can't work rice is

166 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

And the forward policy which Wellesley had initiated of
set purpose did not allow him to pause in the work of con-
quest. Even before Mysore was thoroughly subdued, he
was preparing to reduce the Marathas; and Wellington
left Seringapatam only to march against Poona.

The Maratha confederation had not altered its character
in the twenty years which had elapsed since the treaty between
them and the British in 1782, but the power of the Peshwa
had declined until he was absolutely under the control of
the turbulent chiefs who owed him nominal allegiance. Those
. chiefs had continued to be a disturbing element in India.
They had made predatory raids on their neighbours. The
Mughal, the titular Emperor who still reigned at Delhi, was
in the power of one. Another had encouraged Tipu in his
anti-British sentiments. A third had endeavoured to induce
the Nizam of Haidarabad to repudiate the treaty he had con-
cluded with Wellesley. All, it is true, professed themselves
willing and anxious to maintain good relations with the East
India Company. But this was not enough for the Governor-
General, for he saw that their acts belied their words.

A great part of the south of India was now British.
Haidarabad was under British protection ; for by the treaty
The Treaty * 1800 the Nizam had agreed to admit no other
with Haidar- Europeans save the British in his dominions, to
' ' have a certain number of British troops per-
manently stationed in Haidarabad for the protection of that
country, to set aside the revenue of certain districts to pay
for their upkeep, and to submit all disputes that might arise
with neighbouring states to British arbitration. It is obvious
that this reduced the Nizam from the rank of a sovereign
power practically to a vassal ; and it was this system which
Wellesley endeavoured to introduce with the Marathas. Were

distributed gratis daily. It is common to see famished wretches expire
after the first mouthful of food, which their stomachs could no longer
receive in safety. '

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 167

lie to succeed in Ms design, and to bring to a successful con-
clusion the far less difficult negotiations of the same character
that were going on with the ruler of Oudh, it would mean that
almost the whole of India, with the exception of parts of
Rajputana, the Punjab, and Kashmir, would be consolidated
under British authority.

The grand ideal of Pitt would then be accomplished. Every
native state in the peninsula would be subordinate to the
British ; no other European nation could attempt THe Principle
to obtain a footing there ; no native ruler would pl^^^tcy
be able to indulge in war with his rivals ; and the i* ladia.
Governor-General, appointed in London by Parliament and
the East India Company, would be supreme from the Ganges
to Cape Comorin. In the words of one of Wellesley^s
despatches, "Every principle of true policy demands that
no effort should be omitted by the British Government to
establish a permanent foundation of general tranquillity in
India, by securing to every state the free enjoyment of its just
rights and independence, and by frustrating every project
calculated to disturb the possessions, or to violate the rights,
of the established powers of Hindustan and the Deccan/

It is easy to stigmatise the forward policy of Wellesley as
animated by the mere lust of power and conquest, as spring-
ing solely from fear of the French, as aiming simply at
the conversion of India into a huge monopoly for Britain. 1
Potent as these reasons undoubtedly were, they were not all.

It is true that the commercial instinct had much to do with
the forward policy ; there are few things with which it has
not. It is likewise true that jealousy of the intrusion of other
European nations was a strong motive power : but this was
not unreasonable, seeing how considerably French influence

1 No doubt whatever exists as to the reality of Napoleon's designs on
India. General Decaen was sent out from France, and he was to be
* quietly reinforced by troops in French pay sent out by every French,
Spanish, or Butch ship going to India, so as to avoid attracting notice, 5
until the time came for action.

168 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

had grown a second time in the East. It is equally true that
Wellesle/s despatches to England always emphasised the
civilising effect of British interference, and showed things
rather in the light in which the English people wished to see
them than as they actually were. But it must be remem-
bered that the same applied, in slightly different fashion, to
Cornwallis ; and as those despatches had to be presented to
Parliament, the apparently incurable hypocrisy and the un-
limited faculty for complacent self-deception, which seems
to have become engrained in the British character since the
puritan era, forced the Governors-General, if not to disavow
their purpose of expanding the empire, at least to cloak it
under the decent obscurity of disinterested humanitarianism.

But although Wellesley did not yet grasp, as in fact, nobody
could yet grasp, the complete ideal of the British Empire in
India, at any rate he saw further than his predecessors :
the doctrine of the Pax Britannica was already an accepted
political fact when it was laid down that the veto of the
Governor-General must stop native wars.

'An intimate alliance, founded upon principles which
should render the British influence and military force the
Negotiations main support * of the Marathas was what Wellesley
Marathas desired ; and he did not cease to press it earnestly
1801-s. on the Peshwa, But that dignitary, although
he continued to reside at Poona, no longer possessed any
authority; he was threatened by Sindhia, the most power-
ful of the Maratha chiefs, and his adhesion to Wellesley's
proposals would have been of little advantage to him. He
would merely have exchanged one master for another, and
the authority of the foreigner would have been more galling
and less easy to throw off than that of Sindhia. He refused
the proffered treaty ; and Wellesley, in tones of angry dis-
appointment, complained that 'he deliberately preferred a
situation of degradation and danger, with nominal independ-
ence, to a more intimate connection/

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 169

Thenceforward thePeshw& temporised, while still endeavour-
ing to draw Ms neighbour at Haidarabad from his depend-
ence, Wellesley grew suspicious, and the British agent at
the court of Sindhia was now instructed to press the advan-
tages of alliance in that quarter. Again there was failure :
Sindhia was willing enough to preserve friendship, but he
wished for no closer relationship.

But a new chief had now appeared among the Marathas,
one Holkar ; and when he defeated Sindhia in a great battle
on 25th October 1802, the Peshwa fled from Poona, T116 ^^
and took refuge among the British. In this crisis, of Bassein,
he demanded to be placed in safety at Bombay : 1802p
and shortly after his arrival there, the now helpless Peshw
agreed to Wellesley's original proposals, and the Treaty of
Bassein was concluded on 31st December. That treaty was
the foundation of all our subsequent dealings with the
Marathas ; but in itself it was of little effect. Sindhia would
have nothing to do with it ; Holkar laughed it to scorn ; the
smaller chiefs of the confederation became restless.

In face of their hostility, the treaty must either have re-
mained a dead letter or be enforced by arms ; and if the
former were permitted, the Marathas would still have been
a danger to the East India Company, and all thought of the
' complete consolidation of British India/ for which Wellesley
was avowedly working, must have been given up.

In the reports which he sent home, the Governor-General
invariably spoke of war as improbable ; he protested that
if the Peshwa, and consequently the Treaty of Bassein, were
not desired by the Marathas, he would instantly relinquish
every attempt upon them; even as late as June 1803 he
still held out hopes of a peaceful outcome when writing to
London.

Seven months before that date the armies had been ready ;
three months before that date they had started. Fearing
that Poona might be burnt down in the absence of the Peshwa,

170 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

Wellington hurried by forced marches through a wild and
difficult mountainous country, at the last, indeed, accom-
plishing sisty miles in thirty-two hours ; and he occupied
the Maratha capital without opposition. An ultimatum was
sent to Sindhia, but he still temporised : ' After my inter-
view with the Eaja (of Berar) you shall be informed/ he sent
word, c whether it will be peace or war/ The message was
taken as an insult ; and although negotiations still continued,
war was thenceforward inevitable.

The main plan of operations was clearly sketched out
by Wellesley. Politically, he hoped to destroy the power
The second ^ *^ e Marathas over the Mughal at Delhi, and
Maratha to bring hiTn under British protection ; and, in

ar, 1803. addition, he expected to expand his general scheme
of tributary alliances. In order to accomplish this, it was
necessary, from a military point of view, to conquer all those
dominions between the Jumna and the Ganges which acknow-
ledged Sindhia ; to root out the French force by which that
district was protected ; and to extend the East India Com-
pany's jurisdiction to the Jumna, including Delhi and Agra
and a chain of forts in that region. Further, the conquest
of Bundelkhand was contemplated.

The first campaign began when General Lake, 1 in command
of an army, left Cawnpur on 7th August. After storming the
Maratha fortress of AJigur, the French troops were defeated
and forced to retire from the service of Sindhia. Delhi was
reached, and entered in triumph on 16th September.

In a vivid despatch, Wellesley described the meeting of the
British general and the Mughal. c The crowd in the city was
extraordinary; and it was with some difficulty that the
cavalcade could make its way to the palace. The courts of

1 A valuable biography of this brave General, of whom it was once
said that * he could think more clearly under the roar of battle than in

Imperial
London in 1808, at the age of sixty-four.

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 171

the palace were full of people, anxious to witness the deliver-
ance of their sovereign from a state of degradation and bondage.
At length the Commander-in-Chief was ushered into the royal
presence, and found the unfortunate and venerable Emperor,
oppressed by the accumulated calamities of old age, degraded
authority, extreme poverty, and loss of sight; seated under a
small tattered canopy, the remnant of his royal state, with
every external appearance of the misery of his condition/ The
hyperbolical language of the native writers assures us that
the Mughal at once recovered his sight from excess of joy at
his deliverance ; and certainly his position as the nominal
chief in a confederation of native princes, all of whom were
under British authority, would be better than as a fallen
monarch under the absolute control of Sindhia. In neither
case would he be possessed of any real power ; but at least
the British would not continually outrage his dignity.

Two centuries had passed since the first English ambassador
had attended at the Court of the Mughal, and had been
astounded at its magnificence and wealth ; and that same
ambassador had exhorted his countrymen to have nothing
to do with thoughts of Asiatic conquest, but to confine them-
selves to trade. What would have been his incredulity had
it been predicted that within a few generations the British
would have spread themselves through all India, and would
one day rescue the Emperor of the whole peninsula from the
degrading bondage to which he had sunk in the hands of a half-
savage 'usurper.

Lake, however, had little time for ceremony, and still less
for melancholy reflections on the decay of human greatness ;
within a few days he pressed on to Agra. That important
city taken, he went in pursuit of the remains of Sindhia's
northern army. At the severe battle of Laswari, the enemy
were destroyed or dispersed ; and a brilliant campaign thus
came to an end after three months of unvarying success.

Meanwhile Wellington had been as active in the south of

172 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OYEESEAS

the Maratha dominions as Lake in the north. Leaving ids
camp on 8th August 1803, he had marched against the allied
forces of Sindhia and the Eaja of Berar. The important
fortress of Ahmednagar captured, he followed the two princes
into the territories of Haidarabad, whither they had gone to
attack the Mzam.

Coming up with them at the village of Assaye, Wellington
decided on battle, though his army was many times out-
Assaye, numbered by theirs. The fight was long, severe,
1803. an( j a t fjjgfc indecisive ; but after heavy losses

had been inflicted on the British, the natives fled, leaving
behind an enormous number of dead, besides ninety-eight
cannon and seven standards.

Sindhia now made overtures for peace, and applied for an
armistice : but as nothing was heard from the Eaja of Berar,
it was refused ; and the decisive victory of Argaum a little
later still further weakened the Maratha forces.

About the same time the Madras army overran and con-
quered Bundelkhand, while Guzerat fell before the troops of
the Bombay presidency. Protracted resistance was now
hopeless : the Marathas were on the verge of ruin ; and on
30th November, the day after the battle of Argaum, a con-
ference was requested. It was granted : but the first meet-
ings resulted in nothing save tedious recriminations. Both
Wellingtonand his enemies looked on the other as the aggressor,
and it was some time before the representative of the Marathas
admitted that, however the war might have begun, his master
was anxious to end it.

At length, a treaty was concluded with the Eaja of Berar, on
condition that he resigned a great part of his territory ; he was
unwilling to do so, but Wellington threatened to pursue Mm to
his capital at Nagptir if he would not agree to the terms offered.

The whole British army was now free to overwhelm Sindhia ;
and he, too, quickly sent an emissary to negotiate. Again
began the interminable disputes as to who was the aggressor,

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 173

which were only cut short by Wellington's brutally direct
remark that, whoever had started the war, Sindhia had lost
it. The long conferences lasted nearly three weeks, Sindhia
disputing vainly over each piece of territory that he was
required to relinquish. In the end, the treaty was concluded
on 29th December 1803 ; and Sindhia gave up all the country
between the Jumna and the Ganges, as well as the districts
of Jaipur, Jodipur, and Gohud, the fort and territory of
Baroak, Ahmednagar, and other places ; he abandoned all
claims on the British Government, and agreed that all the
minor princes of the Maratha states should be dependent on
the East India Company. TTn willingly he was forced to enter
into the general system of alliances, the English binding
themselves at the same time not to interfere between him
and his subjects. No French, or indeed any Europeans or
even Americans were to be allowed in his dominions without
the consent of the Company ; and he was bound to consult
with them on all his relations with his neighbours.

The second Maratha War thus ended, as it appeared, in the
complete subjection of those states. The western side of
India was therefore added to the enormous con- Tte AT1T1ATa
federation which Wellesley was building up : the tionof cmdfc,
south was already British ; there yet remained 1801 '
the north. And here too the Governor-General had accom-
plished much, even during the time that the Mysore and
Maratha Wars were in progress. The conquest of Delhi and
Agra belongs to the latter struggle ; in Oudh there is a more
intricate series of events to unravel. That kingdom had
for many years paid tribute to the East India Company.
Lying on the frontiers of Bengal, it had been more or less
subject to British influence since the victories of Clive and
the administration of Hastings had consolidated British power
in that district.

But the rulers of Oudh had still preserved tibe functions of
royalty at Lucknow ; and when Wellesley arrived in India,

174 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

they controlled their own army and levied their own taxes.
The country was large ; the people were industrious ; the
soil was fertile.

But during the last few years a terrible change had come
over the land. The new ruler was far more ostentatious
Misgovern- than his predecessor, and his resources were
mSery'of squandered on external display. Oudh, from
oudji. being one of the richest of the Indian provinces, *

became one of the poorest. When Cornwallis visited it, he
was shocked by its desolate appearance ; on all sides were
signs of a disordered government and a poverty-stricken people.
A great part of the blame, it is true, must be imputed to the
East India Company : for it was from Oudh that Warren
Hastings had extorted some of the heaviest subsidies. But
considerable reparation was made when Cornwallis reduced
the amount of the annual contributions ; and still the state
of the country did not improve. Rather did it continue to
deteriorate : when Cornwallis left India, in 1793, he placed it
on record that e The evils which prevailed . . . had increased ;
the finances had fallen into a worse state by an enormous
accumulated debt; the same oppressions continued to be
exercised . . . towards the ryots ; and not only the subjects
and merchants of Oudh, but those residing under the Com-
pany's protection, suffered many exactions/ And that
Governor-General attributed the whole source of the evil to
e the connivance and irregularities of the administration of
Lucknow/

Sir John Shore, the successor of Cornwallis, took the same
view, and again recommended reform and economy. Were
nothing done, it was evident that the kingdom and all within
it must soon be ruined, and, in consequence, the contribution
annually paid to the East India Company must lapse.

It seemed, indeed, that the financial system was past
restoration, tf The discharge of one debt was effected, not
from the revenue, but by contracting another at an increasing

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 175

interest/ In spite of Shore's policy of non-intervention, lie
was forced to interfere in the affairs of Oudh, to such a crisis
had matters now come: and, in March 1797, he visited
Lucknow with the purpose of restoring some semblance of
order. The unfortunate Governor immediately found him-
self involved in a maze of court intrigue and scandal ; the
legitimacy of the reigning prince was impugned, and Shore
confessed that he was utterly confused by the conflict of
testimony as to the bastardy of the man with whom he had
come to remonstrate. Eventually he determined on his
deposition.

But matters had not improved when Wellesley arrived;
and it was impossible for one who intended to consolidate
India to leave this plague-spot of misgovernment on the very
border of Bengal. Accordingly he pressed a treaty on the
Prince of Oudh ; but it was a different treaty from that which
he invited the other native rulers to sign. It provided for
the abdication of the prince, and it did not provide for a
successor : the native troops were to be disbanded, since
they were c useless, if not dangerous ' ; English soldiers were
to be substituted for them; and a general reform of the
administration was outlined.

Objection was naturally taken, but Wellesley stood form.
He and his ancestors had held Oudh for seven hundred years,
said the vizir ; why then should he now be deposed ? His
soldiers were capable of the defence of the country ; why then
should they now be disbanded ?

For answer Wellesley sent a British regiment. The vizir
complained, equivocated, delayed, and employed the usual
devices of the weak when struggling against the strong ; but
his troops were dismissed, and their arrears of pay settled in
full by the East India Company to avoid any disorder.

Still the vizir complained, and the misery of the kingdom
continued ; the revenue was, as usual, collected in advance
from^the wretched ryots, and the insecurity of their tenure

176 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

was as fatal to the welfare of the country as ever. At length
it became impossible to haggle over terms any longer ; and
on 10th November 1801 the treaty was signed.

The abdication of the prince was not insisted on, and he
became a puppet in the hands of the English. But the
whole administration of Oudh from that day passed to the
East India Company ; and Wellesley anticipated a speedy
return of order, industry, and prosperity. It did not occur
during his period of office : but at least one more step was
taken in the consolidation of the British Indian Empire.

Wellesley had hoped that the trouble with the Marathas
was finally at an end ; instead, it was only beginning. In
British Mis- S P^ ^ *^ e ^ rea ^ es which bound them, all the
fortunes, chiefs were restless. Sindhia was crushed, but
1803-5. on jy. or a ^ me ^ Bundelkhand was ripe for

revolt. Bharatpur was a hotbed of intrigue. And there yet
remained Holkar. The most powerful of all the Maratha
chiefe since the victory which had driven the Peshwa from
Poona, he had taken no part in the late war. But while
he professed his friendship for the East India Company,
there were few princes with whom he had not conspired
secretly against the English. When peace was concluded
with Sindhia, Holkar too was offered the treaty which Welles-
ley wished to mate with every native ruler.

He replied amicably, but deceit was in his heart. Inter-
cepted letters proved his intrigues ; and he was warned. His
army menaced the British provinces ; and he was asked to
withdraw it. In reply, he made impossible demands on
Wellesley, and threatened Wellington that our 'countries
should be overrun, plundered, and burnt; we should not
have leisure to breathe for a moment, and calamities would
fall on thousands of human beings in continued war by the
attacks of Ms army, which overwhelmed like the waves of the
sea/

Such preposterous language could not be allowed for a

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 177

moment, and Wellington prepared for war. But fortune
seemed now to have deserted the British arms. Holkar,
indeed, was forced to retreat, but he was not defeated. It
was almost impossible for Wellington to advance through
the Deccan, for that district was suffering from a scarcity that
might have been called a famine.

Elsewhere, it is true, one or two successes stood out isolated
in the general failure of the British arms. Indore was cap-
tured ; and when Holkar surprised Delhi, that city, which
had hitherto always capitulated at the first approach of an
enemy, was gallantly defended. The garrison was so small
that nobody dared undress, or go off duty. For nine days
the troops had no rest, and the men were kept awake and in
good humour by gifts of sweetmeats. At length, after a suc-
cessful sortie by the British, Holkar retired baffled ; and soon
afterwards, his southern possessions were conquered, and he
himself was defeated under the walls of Dig.

But these small victories could not be set off against our
misfortunes in Bundelkhand and elsewhere. The British
army was almost overwhelmed by the rains ; General Monson,
who was in command, was obliged to spike his guns and leave
the country as best he could ; and this was but the prelude
to a long and disastrous retreat through Central India.

In Bharatpur it was the same. The Raja of that country
was allied with the British by treaty ; but he was more than
disposed to join with Holkar. Wellesley remonstrated in
lofty tones : ' The just principles of policy, as well as the
characteristic lenity and mercy, of the British Government,
required that a due indulgence should be manifested towards
the imbecility, ignorance, and indolence of the native chiefs,
who had been drawn into these acts by the depravity and
artifices of their servants and adherents/ But his words
were of no effect : the Raja disregarded the treaty ; and an
army was sent against him. The strength of the fortress of
Bharatpur defied all our efforts ; after repeated assaults, and

VOL. ii. M:

178 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS

heavy loss, it was found impossible to capture it. Meanwhile
there were continual disputes with Sindhia, and no advan-
tage was gained against Holkar : eventually the two chiefs
joined forces. The whole Maratha trouble seemed about to
begin again.

But the expenses of the war were enormous. The directors
of the East India Company had long chafed under the forward

now a W e to ^ 6 ^at it was

Becaii of

wenesley, not merely costly, but that it also led to nothing ;

isos. ^j. Olir con q ues S were no permanent, and that

they were unprofitable even if they were permanent. They
could point to the miserable poverty of the Madras presidency ;
to the wretched state of Oudh ; to the anarchy of the Maratha
territories. All these troubles could, with some plausibility,
be ascribed to Wellesley ; and the expenditure they involved
was undeniable. The directors of the Company omitted
to remark that under his rule the menace of a French con-
quest of India had been dissipated.

The British Government became alarmed. It was the
darkest hour of the struggle with Napoleon. The French
His Policy armies were at Boulogne, menacing England
Abandoned. evei y <j ay . Europe lay at the feet of the
triumphant dictator; and Trafalgar was not yet won.
It was no time to conquer India when England herself
might fall. Accordingly the Ministry yielded to the repre-
sentations of the East India Company. Wellesley was re-
called ; and in his place Cornwallis was sent out for a second
term of office, now in extreme old age, feeble, and lying almost
at death's door. There was a sudden and complete reversal
of policy : the new Governor-General was charged to make
peace with the Marathas on almost any terms ; and an era of
severe economy set in.

So ended Wellesley's Governor-Generalship in defeat and
apparent failure. The expansion he had planned was dis-
approved. The system of alliances with the natives, so

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 179

elaborately constructed, collapsed like a house of cards.
The British put aside their dream of empire in India, and
once more became commercial.

But the reaction lasted for a few years only. The main
features of Wellesley's policy were amply justified long before
his death. He had seen that there would be no Bnt . eveatu .
peace for India until the Marathas were crushed ; ally Tindi-
and crushed they were, after a long and severe ea "
struggle fifteen years later. He had declared that every
native ruler must be brought to depend on the sovereign
British power ; and the next fifty years saw the gradual
accomplishment of his idea. He perceived that the whole
of India must be protected against the savage tribes of the
north by a large army, and a consolidated system of defence :
the general experience of the nineteenth century proved the
truth of his words, and it is still the standard doctrine of
the present day.

CHAPTER V
THE LAST MARATHA WAR: 1805-28 l

WHEN Lord Wellesley, the fourth Governor-General of British
India, arrived at Calcutta in the year 1798, the fate of the
great oriental peninsula was still undecided. India as a
whole might have fallen either to the English, the French,
or the Marathas ; or it might have been split up once more into
small provinces under separate Hindu and Musalman rulers,
after a more or less prolonged period of anarchy and civil
war. But when Wellesley left the East seven years later,

1 Authorities. Mill's History of India, which stops at 1805, is con-
tinned by H. H. Wilson as far as 1835. Wilson is more impartial and
interesting than Hill ; but then he had been in India, and Mill had not.
In addition, Minto's Life and Letters should be consulted for the term of
his Governor-Generalship. For the whole period, Hunter is an indis-
pensable guide ; Malleson's Native States of India is also useful.

180 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

only the English and the Marathas counted as factors in the
struggle for the empire of India; and between these two
the English held an enormous permanent advantage,
although at the time the Marathas were apparently
victorious. Wellesley could therefore justly claim that he
had * finally placed the British power in India in a command-
ing position/

But with that curious alternation of advance and retreat
which appears in every phase of our politics, the time had come
Abandon- when the forward military policy of Britain in Asia
VM** was to be abandoned. Its expense had frightened
Policy. the directors of the East India Company, and
had made even the imperial authorities uneasy. Cornwallis
was hurriedly sent out to patch up a general peace, and to
economise in every department of the State ; while Wellesley
on his return to England had to run the gauntlet of abuse, and
to be the butt of that uninformed and prejudiced criticism
which it is the eternal privilege of the stay-at-home to direct
at those who have acted instead of merely talking. A vain
attempt was made to impeach him in the House of Commons.
One Member of Parliament arraigned his conduct in Oudh,
* by which the Nawab in defiance of justice had been degraded
and disgraced in the eyes of the world/ Other charges
were added, consonant with a recent motion by Sir Philip
Francis, whose inexhaustible venom was directed at one
Governor-General after another, that ' to pursue schemes of
conquest and aggrandisement in India is repugnant to the
wish, the honour, and the policy of this country/

But the agitation against Wellesley fell flat. Fox frankly
avowed that since the trial of Warren Hastings he would
have no more to do with Indian impeachments ; even the
seconder of fc the motion declared that he was ashamed of it ;
and the member who had originally brought it forward was
rejected by his constituents at the next election. An inter-
mittent controversy on the subject was, it is true, maintained

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 181

for some years, but the feeble attempts to disgrace Wellesley
all failed; and the East India Company, which had been
hostile to him, on his return as one who had wasted its sub-
stance, came in time to recognise his great services before his
death.

Wellington's recent conquests in India, indeed, had aroused
comparatively little attention at home, for the terrific struggle
with Napoleon in Europe overshadowed the remoter politics
of Asia ; and British Indian problems were already far too
intricate to be anything but the occupation of specialists.
Wisely recognising the necessary limitations of their know-
ledge, English politicians from this time generally left Indian
affairs alone. There was some temporary excitement when
the renewal of the East India Company's charter was debated
in the first Eeformed Parliament of 1833, and a fundamental
change was made in the character of that powerful corporation ; *
the terrible disaster of 1841 in Afghanistan, and the Mutiny
of 1857, made not England alone, but all Europe, shudder ;
but apart from these events, which in the popular estimation
stood out incorrectly as almost the sole features worthy of
remembrance in a crowded century, the British people as a
whole were content to remain in ignorance of their Indian
possessions.

When Cornwallis arrived a second time in the East,
a dying man, to change the whole forward policy of
Wellesley for one of retrenchment and peace, his report on the
condition of India was extremely pessimistic. According to

1 I append the names and dates of some of the ephemeral tracts and
pamphlets published regarding India at this time The, Present State and
Future Prospects of the Free Trade and Colonisation of India, 1829 ; Aye
or No on the India Question : A Few Words to the Reformed Parliament,
1833 both treating of the renewal of the Company's charter ; Seasons for
the Establishment of a New Bank in India, 1836 ; The Export of Coolies
and other Labourers to Mauritius, 1842 ; Reasons for Railways in Madras
and Bombay, 1847 ; Is India to have Railways ? 1S53. To these may be
added the general series known as India Reform Tracts, representing the
advanced radical opinion of mid- Victorian times. The numerous works
of the Evangelical school must be studied for the project of introducing
Christianity in India, which engaged much attention at this time.

182 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

the new Governor-General, ' the most brilKant success could
afford no solid benefit * ; the state of the finances was * most
discouraging * ; the alliance with the Peshwa was e an in-
tolerable burden ' ; it was * with great regret * that he saw
the treaty with Haidarabad ; and he finally declared, in a
phrase that can only be read with amazement, that "not
the least unfortunate consequences of ... our alliances
has been the gradually increasing ascendency of the British
influence and authority/

But Gornwallis belonged to a school of Anglo-Indian states-
men whose day was over ; and although he and his successor
wished to stop the expansion of the empire, they were only
able to delay it for a few years. An ignominious agreement
was at once arranged with the Marathas, to the utter disgust
of many of the officers and civilians who had served under
Wellesley, and who foresaw that a final struggle with that
confederation was inevitable ; and Sir George Barlow, who
succeeded automatically to the Governor-Generalship on the
death of Cornwallis, was prepared to go even further in his
desire for economy.

Much of the land in dispute with Sindhia was now re-
stored ; all of Holkar's territories were given back. Bundelk-
hand alone was retained, but it was not thoroughly subdued ;
and the Rajas of Rajputana, whom Britain had sworn to
protect from the Marathas, were abandoned. In these
measures Barlow was supported by the directors of the East
India Company, and by the Council at Calcutta, which
declared that. * a certain extent of dominion, local power,
and revenue would be cheaply sacrificed for tranquillity and
security within a more contracted circle ' ; they believed,
too, that nothing could now be f apprehended from the further
depredations of banditti/ and they vainly hoped that these
concessions would be accepted as a sign of magnanimity.

Barlow was one of those men of hard, cold character who
can only see a short way ahead, but who follow that way with

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 183

undeviating purpose. His inflexible and unsympathetic
manner soon became unpopular in the East, and his policy
was disliked by the Cabinet at home ; but for some time the
members of the British Government could not agree as to the
appointment of a successor. At length the choice fell on
Lord Minto, who served, as he himself said, as a sort of peace-
offering between the opponents. His reputation in England
was that of an able man of moderate opinions ; to Anglo-
Indians, however, he was something of an unknown quantity.
Proud of being numbered ' among those whom Burke loved
best and most trusted/ he had been one of the managers at
the trial of Warren Hastings, and might therefore have been
expected to favour the extreme exponents of the doctrine of
British non-intervention in the affairs of the independent
native Indian states ; but, on the other hand, he had come
much under the influence of the younger Pitt, who had been
directly responsible for the appointment of Wellesley.

His actions showed Minto to be a firm yet cautious ruler.
Of strong common sense, and gifted with a playful, sunny
disposition even his official correspondence is occasionally
relieved by a witty remark 3 the six years of his governorship
mark an intermediate period between the conquests of
Wellesley and the long series of wars under his successors,
Hastings and Amherst.

Among the instructions which Minto had received from the
East India Company, particular stress had been laid upon
the policy of non-intervention, which the directors consist-
ently favoured ; and the Governor-General honourably en-
deavoured to obey orders without weakening the prestige of
the British in Asia. But those who have entered on the path
of empire cannot draw back unless they resign their calling

1 The mass of routine work was already so great as to occupy prac-
tically the whole time of the Governor-General. Minto laughingly
alludes in his correspondence to his strong tendency to go to sleep when
the monotony was more than usually tiresome; but 'if the sovereign
nods,' he added, * the empire must fall to pieces. 5

184 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

altogether ; and it is significant of the onward march of those
forces which no ruler and no policy can neglect or oppose
with impunity, that under the pacific rule of Minto the in-
fluence of Britain began to penetrate among states that lay
far beyond the frontier fixed by Wellesley, while the first signs
of our expansion appeared in lands which even Wellington
would have regarded it as madness to invade.

Once more it was the fear of French rivaky that urged the
British forward. The French had indeed lost everything in
Diplomatic ^n^ 8 " ^ u * Napoleon, who was then at the
Missions zenith of his fame, still possessed dreams of
under Minto. ^gj a ^j[ c conquest; and France yet possessed im-
portant island stations on the high seas that might have been
used as dangerous bases for an attack on the eastern con-
tinent. Under Minto, therefore, the Moluccas, Bourbon,
Mauritius, and Java were all seized by Britain ; 1 and French
power in the Indian Ocean existed no more until the con-
quest of Madagascar was accomplished nearly a century later.

But it was hardly by sea that a descent on India was now
feared. France had recently concluded an alliance with
Russia ; both were endeavouring to extend their influence
in Persia and Afghanistan in order, as was supposed, that
their combined forces might make an attack on India over-
land. Hie two powers had as yet made no progress towards
an amicable understanding with the wild Afghan tribes ; but
in the enfeebled and corrupt Court of Persia their influence
was soon supreme. Magnificent embassies and numerous
military retinues were sent thither ; French political agents
seemed suddenly to swarm all over Asia, and some even
appeared to tempt the Indian princes from their alliance with
England. It was rumoured that Napoleon had planned a
descent on Persia through Turkey and Asia Minor; and,
though the plan of campaign which was attributed to him

1 For the history of these islands under British rule, see book viii.
chap. iv. and voL iv. -*

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 185

now appears fantastically impossible, the man at whose feet
the whole of Europe then lay seemed able at that time to
accomplish anything to which he set his hand.

At any rate, Minto wisely determined to leave nothing to
chance, and he prepared to improve the defences of India ;
at the same time remarking that, in the event of actual
invasion, it was better to meet the enemy in Persia than
in British territory. In addition, he decided to send embassies
to Persia and Afghanistan, in order to counteract the designs
of the French in those countries. These measures, it is true,
involved heavy expenditure, and some departure from the
policy of non-intervention ; but the East India Company
perceptibly relaxed its attitude of strict economy when the
justice of Minto's representations was realised.

There was nothing novel in the appearance of a British
embassy at an Asiatic court. For many years every visit
by an agent of the Company to the courts of India had been
regarded as an opening up of fresh relations with foreign
powers. An official ambassador from England had already
appeared in China. And commercial relations with Persia
were not new, while Wellesley had sent an ambassador to
that country in 1800.

But the two British agents who visited Persia while Minto
was Governor-General of India were both unsuccessful in
their missions. The first foiled because of the overbearing
tone in which he insisted on the instant dismissal of the French
members of the royal circle. The second certainly concluded
a treaty with the Shah, but this proved mejely a negative
advantage; for the only important clause of that treaty
qompelled Britain to furnish military aid in the event of
Persia being at wa.r with a foreign power ; and when Persia
became involved in a ruinous struggle with Russia in 1826,
we refused to fulfil our promise.

But by the time the two ambassadors had returned from
Persia, the menace from Napoleon was less urgent. Spain

186 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEBSEAS

was now opposing a brave resistance to Ms invasion of the
south of Europe, and before Minto left India the great army
of the French Emperor had fallen a victim to the snows of
Eussia.

More important in their ultimate results were the other
diplomatic missions organised by Minto. For the first time
in the history of India a British embassy crossed the Indus,
and pressed on to Peshwar, where the chief of the Afghans
was interviewed ; while a second embassy visited the head
of the Sikhs at Lahore. Thus was the scope of Indian policy
widened, and the circle of British diplomatic influence en-
larged ; and although no immediate territorial aggrandise-
ment was obtained, the temptation already existed when the
magnificence of the Punjab became known. And there were
also solid reasons to be urged for obtaining a securer frontier
against the Afghans, while military ambition could dwell on
the chances of glory and promotion in a campaign beyond the
Indus. Another thirty years, and British armies had been
seen both in Kabul and the Punjab.

But Minto was far from such thoughts of expansion. With
the limitations that had been imposed upon him, it was
enough if he could keep the British possessions intact, and
preserve order therein. Bundelkhand had not been thoroughly
reduced during Wellesley's term of office, and Minto was
forced to undertake a number of punitive military opera-
tions before peace could be restored in that country. The
affairs of the Madras presidency likewise required attention ;
there was continued disaffection in the local army; and
Barlow, who was now Governor of the South, had made
himself generally unpopular there, as he had in Bengal, by
his passion for economy, that least appreciated of all the
unattractive virtues, both in public and domestic life.

Another matter that called for stern measures was the in-
creasing depredations of the dacoits. Those robber gangs
had of late imposed a terrorist system on many parts of India.

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 187

e If a family was half murdered, and half tortured, the tor-
tured survivors could not be prevailed upon to appear against
the criminals. Men have been found with the limbs and
half the flesh of their bodies consumed by slow fire, who per-
sisted in saying that they had fallen into their own fire. . . .
They knew, if they spoke, they would either themselves or
the remaining members of their families, be despatched the
same evening/ Such are Minto's own words ; and although
he was unable to suppress the dacoits altogether, much was
done to reduce their evil power.

Thus in keeping order on the frontiers and inland, in re-
buking the pretensions of foreign potentates, native rajas,
or predatory chiefs, the busy seven years of Minto's rule in
India drew to a close ; and the directors of the East India
Company received the news of his intention to retire almost
at the same time that they demanded his resignation. A
home-loving man, the Governor-General had for months
counted the very days till he should return to Scotland and
his family; but, hurrying northwards immediately on his
arrival in England, he was taken suddenly ill and died on
the road. Long afterwards, the letters he had written from
Calcutta to his wife at Minto, fondly anticipating many years
of quiet happiness together in the decline of their lives, were
found tied up in black string, and endorsed in her hand-
writing, c Poor Fools/ The earthly hope was turned to dust
in the very moment of its fulfilment.

The Marquis of Hastings, who followed Minto as Governor-
General in 1813, had been a man of no great distinction in
England ; x the gossips said, indeed, that he owed jgarq.^ of
his appointment mainly to his friendship with Hastings,
the Prince Regent. But, as often happens among 1813 '
men of aristocratic family in whom the tradition of govern-
ment is hereditary, he rose to the occasion ; and the long

1 He had, however, taken part in the Imperial Civil War as a young
man, and General Burgoyne declared that he 'behaved to a charm.'

188 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

period of ten years during which he was the supreme governor
of British India marked a still further advance of the British
power in Asia. If the forward policy was not again initiated
of set purpose, it was at any rate followed in fact. The
British had conquered half India, and the directors of the
East India Company would have been well satisfied to have
kept their dominions, without either expansion or contrac-
tion. But the last eight years had clearly proved that it was
impossible to stand still. Cornwallis had urgently desired
peace ; he had been obliged to give up territory to obtain it.
Barlow had done the same ; but his concessions had been
derided as weakness by the natives, and every little prince
and chief had assumed a tone of supercilious condescension
in dealing with the exalted heads of the British Government
in India. Even when the passion for economy was at its
height, Barlow had been compelled to send punitive expedi-
tions to restore order in various places. Minto likewise was
no lover of war, and he had no wish to incur increased re-
sponsibilities, although he would not have shirked them had
they become necessary. And they did in fact become neces-
sary ; for he was obliged to keep old foes in check, to open up
relations with new states, which were also potential enemies,
to conquer islands in the Indian Ocean, to extirpate pirates
in the Persian Gulf, and to offer to protect China against the
French.

Peace remained indeed the ideal for British India. But
there could be no real peace until India was altogether British ;
for every hungry band of frontier robbers, every petty raja
who remained unsubdued in the interior, could descend on
the fertile and industrious British provinces to plunder and
ravage at will. One such raid would disturb the sense of
security ; a succession would destroy all feeling of imperial
protection.

A typical instance of the frontier dangers to which India
was exposed was provided by the Nepal War, which occupied

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 189

*

the first two years of Hastings' governorship. 1 The king-
dom of Nepal lies on the long slope between the Himalayas
and the River Ganges. Its northern boundaries T&e Nepal
are lost in the eternal snows where mountain lies Wax > 1814 - 5 -
heaped upon mountain in stupendous confusion; its southern
limit was claimed as including part at least of the great
agricultural district that leads down to the sacred river.
The original population of mixed Tibetan cast had been
subject for generations to the warlike tribes of Gurkhas ;
and that fiery race had frequently descended on Bengal to
plunder the weaker Hindus. Their ravages had not ceased
when Bengal passed under the rule of the East India Com-
pany; and although they were often divided by internal
feuds, the Gurkhas were yet strong enough to conquer their
neighbours.

Treaties were made with Nepal by the British in 1791 and
1801 ; both were broken by the warriors of the north.
Wellesley would have attacked them, but was prevented by
his recall. Barlow, utterly misunderstanding their predatory
character, proposed mutual concessions as a basis for the
delimitation of the frontier. Long negotiations were entered
into, but the raids continued ; for the Gurkhas treated the
mild suggestions of the English Governor as a confession of
impotence, and plundered while they parleyed. Minto sent
a force to defend the frontier in 1809, and to expel the
intruders ; but he found it impossible to defend a frontier
seven hundred miles long.

Hastings took a more effective course. By decisive action
he gave the Nepalis the alternative of peace or war ; and
when they returned an evasive answer he at once proclaimed
war, on 1st November 1814.

In the Nepal capital of Khatmandu, there were two opinions
as to the wisdom of fighting. Those who knew the most of
the previous deeds of the English in India, declared that

1 Wright's History of Nepal contains a good account of this campaign.

190 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS

m

whereas the Gurkhas had formerly only chased deer, they
must now prepare to fight with tigers ; but these were opposed
by the party which had heard of our failure to storm the
great fortress of Bharatpur. If, it was said, the English could
not overcome the puny works of man, how then should
they be able to conquer the Nepalis, who dwelt in the very
fastnesses of God ?

The latter view prevailed. There could hardly be a more
convincing illustration of the loss of prestige which even one
isolated check to European arms occasions in the mind of
Asiatics.

The failure of Minto to protect the British frontier from
Gurkha raids decided Hastings against a merely defensive
war ; and the great army of 30,000 men which he gathered
together was instructed to separate into four divisions, and
to march directly against the capital of Nepal. But the
country was excessively difficult. The long ascent to the
mountains was impossible in the rainy season, and unhealthy
during the other months of the year ; communication with
the base was necessarily insecure ; it was, moreover, doubtful
whether sufficient supplies for so large a force could be obtained
from a generally poor soil. The whole of Nepal was rugged
and mountainous; the passes were dangerous, and dotted
with forts ; blinding snowstorms at times swept over the
land. And the Gurkhas were a brave, impetuous, and clever
foe, who well understood how to use the advantages which
nature had given them.

Small headway was made at first, for the British com-
manders, with the belief in sheer courage and a disregard for
scientific warfare that is typically British, attacked the Gurkha
forts with men and not with cannon, only to be driven back
with terrible loss. ' The results of the first campaign/ says
the military historian of the war, ' must have confounded the
calculations of the noble Marquis and every one else. That
portion of the army with which it was meant to make an

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 191

impression on the enemy in the seat of his power remained
inactive, while the skirmishers on the left flank, which could
have been only intended to produce a diversion, succeeded
to an extent that shook the Gurkha on his throne/

A definite treaty was drawn up on 28th November 1815 :
but the Eaja refused to sign it, and a further expedition was
sent against him. This time he gave way, ceding the frontier
provinces of Kamaon and Gerwhal, and permitting a British
agent to reside in his capital.

By the previous treaty of 1801 a British Eesidency was
also to have been established in Nepal. But the minister
whom Wellesley had appointed to that post had found every
obstacle placed in his way even before he reached the capital ;
and when he at last arrived at Khatmandu, a short stay con-
vinced frrm that nothing could be done with a people 6 among
whom no engagements, however solemnly contracted, were
considered binding when deviation from them 5 seemed to
promise a temporary advantage. The new ambassador was
less openly obstructed ; but he soon discovered that the spot
assigned for his residence was a barren piece of land, water-
less and very unhealthy, and supposed to be the abode of
demons. Science, however, circumvented the superstitious
intentions of the Nepalis ; and in a few years cultivation had
made the grounds of the British Eesidency one of the best
wooded and most beautiful spots in the whole valley.

Thus ended the first of the series of wars in which the defence
of the enormous extent of the northern frontier of India was
'to engage the British. But the Nepalis, although defeated,
were in no mood for tame submission. The Eaj applied
to China, of which empire he was nominally a fief, for aid in
revenging the invasion of his territories. 1 He received the

1 He had already applied for Chinese aid in 1814, concluding his appeal
with the words, 'Consider if you abandon your dependents that the
English will soon he masters of Lhasa' (Boulger's History of China.).
Ninety years elapsed before the British expedition to Tibet proved that
there was some truth in his forecast

192 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

cold reply that lie had only himself to blame for the punish-
ment that had been inflicted on fa". Not discouraged by
the rebuff, he began to intrigue with the native princes of
India, attempting to detach from the British those who had
signed treaties of alliance with the Governor-General, and to
provoke to open war against us those who had not yet come
under our influence. His plots were discovered before they
could do harm, and as he was unwilling himself to venture
on another war, there was no further trouble with Nepal for
many years.

But the treaty with Nepal was hardly concluded before it
became necessary to check an enemy in India itself. The
TfceTiird $&& an( ^ ^ as * round in the struggle with the
Marat&a Marathas was now to be fought. Ten years had
war, 1817. p rove( j ^ e uselessness of the concessions of Corn-
wallis and the rigid economy of Barlow; the pacification
they had planned had brought only an increase of disorder in
Central and Western India. The older chiefs of the Marathas
had indeed been almost crushed by Wellesley, and they
never thoroughly recovered from his attack. Holkar was
for a time intoxicated and insane; Sindhia was reduced
to beg for a pension from his late foes ; the Raja of Berar
had to implore British assistance in securing his dominions ;
and the Gaekwar of Baroda convinced even Barlow that his
country was in so desperate a condition that it would have
been ruined had not the Governor-General sanctioned a
departure in this case from the strict policy of non-
intervention.

But though the Maratha princes were thus impotent, the
hereditary fighting instinct of their tribes remained. The
neighbouring countries were again plundered and pillaged ; and
while the British had sworn to protect Rajputana from the
fury of the Marathas, the several states which are included
under that collective name were abandoned to the tender
mercies of freebooters whose fighting qualities had been im-

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 193

proved by a long war, but who still remained at bottom mere
looters.

Against such men the Rajputs were powerless. The Peshwa
would not interfere. And when Holkar amd Sindhia began
once more to recover a little of their old authority, the profits
of such marauding expeditions were far too valuable to be
lightly foregone. They detested the British. They were
constantly plotting against us; and by carrying fire and
sword unopposed into the territories of those allies who should
have been, but were not, protected by us, they considerably
reduced both ' the prestige and the actual power of the
English in India.

They were joined, too, by other independent gangs of
robbers, the Hndaris : men who attacked helpless villages,
but ran away at the first sight of a soldier ; fighting, when
fighting was absolutely necessary, on horseback and armed
with rude pikes, swords, clubs and sticks, and occasionally
with matchlocks. Whole communities went in constant
fear of these wretches, for the tortures they inflicted were of
a ghastly character. They would enclose a man's head in a
bag of ashes and dust, beating his face until he was suffocated ;
a more refined cruelty was to use hot ashes and powdered
chillies. At other times their captives were pinioned, and
either boiling oil was sprinkled over them, or straw was tied
round their bodies and fired ; while infants were tossed on
the sword, and their mothers violated even while bemoaning
the fate of husband or child.

The doctrine of non-intervention might be, and was, in
fact, pressed far ; but no man born in a civilised country
could see such deeds occur and not abandon all his theories
until these savage practices had been put down with a firm
hand. Minto had defended the British possessions in India
as best he could, consistently with the instructions he had
received from London, although he realised that his action
was at the utmost only palliative ; Hastings was forced to

VOL. II. N

194 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

sterner action. The ravages of the Marathas and the Pin-
daris both increased during the Nepal War ; and, the British
troops being occupied far away on a dangerous campaign,
thek demands became higher and more insolent in tone, it
being even threatened at one time that they would wreak
thek wrath on Calcutta.

At the close of the year 1815 they plundered three hundred
villages, and wounded, tortured, and murdered four thousand
persons of both sexes, and of all ages ; and as thek descents
were made without warning and thek subsequent departure
was as rapid, it was seldom that punishment could overtake
them. It is true that it was difficult for Hastings to make a
move. No help could be expected from our quondam allies
of Rajputana, for they were in a state of absolute incapacity.
The Raja of Jodhpur pretended idiocy, and resigned his
throne to a dissolute prince who was eventually assassinated.
The Raja of Udaipur was robbed of his possessions by
military adventurers. The Raja of Jaipur was a slave to a
Mohammedan dancing-gkl.

And while Hastings was thus driven to rely solely on the
British power, his superiors in London still clung fast to the
fatal idea of non-intervention. On 28th September 1815, the
Secret Committee of the East India Company had sent him
word that ' the system which was consolidated at the close
of the last Maratha War should be maintained with as little
change as could be avoided * ; while Canning warned him.
that the British Government was 'unwilling to incur the
risk of a general war for the uncertain purpose of extirpating
the Pindaris/ and advocated the * judicious management of
our existing relations ' for a solution of every difficulty. Once
again was shown the impossibility of a Council in London
appreciating accurately the situation in a country thousands
of miles away with which its members were not personally
acquainted : the advices sent out by the Secretaryof State were
a mere bundle of useless words, while Hastings was faced by

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 195

concrete facts. Had the Council been able to override the
Governor-General on this matter, there is no question that
the British power in India would have declined rapidly, as
the knowledge of its inability to put down disorder reached
every petty raja who subsisted by preying on his richer
neighbours.

But Hastings was not the man to let official instructions
stand in his way when necessity dictated a different course. A
large army was assembled, and in April 1817 members of the
Pindaris and many other insurgents were caught and defeated.
The most important of these gangs were broken up during
the next few months, and the scattered remnants fled to
hiding in the hills. Meanwhile the Treaty of Bassein was
annulled, and the Peshwa was coerced into accepting a new
treaty called of Poona, on 15th June 1817, by which, instead of
himself maintaining troops to protect the Haratha countries,
he was forced to pay the British for their protection by the
cession of various provinces ; and, in addition, he was
compelled to give up various fortresses and to agree never
again to interfere in the external political relations of his
state. The latter provision was hardly worth the paper on
which it was written : but the Peshwa assented reluctantly
and witji many protests.

At the same time alliances were concluded with other more
friendly rulers, which were useful in that they permitted the
Bengal regiments to march through their countries without
hindrance ; and, on 14th September 1817, Hastings assumed
command of the great army of 113,000 troops and 300 cannon
which was finally to subdue the Marathas. Delayed awhile
by the monsoon, which rendered the rivers too swollen to
cross and the roads impracticable for marching, and hindered
later by an outbreak of spasmodic cholera which killed hundreds
of men and laid Hastings himself low, the opportunity was
used by the Peshwa to attempt to bribe our subsidiary forces
into treachery ; and on the departure of Mountstuart Elphin-

196 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

stone, our envoy at Poona, the British Kesidency was burnt
down. But the duplicity of the Peshwa was discovered, as
was also that of Sindhia, whose letters of intrigue to the Eaja
of Nepal were intercepted ; and when it was found that other
Maratha chiefs, including the Eaja of Nagpur, had thrown
in their lot with their nominal ruler, it became evident that
the whole Maratha confederacy would take up arms against the
British.

The campaign which followed is among the most brilliant
in our military history. The resources of the Marathas were
not indeed large, either in the number of their men or in the
amount of available munitions of war. The British were
incomparably superior in both ; and we had the further" im-
measurable advantage that a large part of our army con-
sisted of Europeans, while our native regiments were led by
European officers. But the Marathas were operating in their
own country, and they were assisted by their own people.
The leaders had in their retinue a considerable number of
Arab mercenaries, who fought desperately on every occasion.
And they had in their power the small British settlement at
each court, and the few British traders in each district, whose
situation at this time became extremely dangerous. In the
case of Nagptir, for instance, it was only a sudden sally, con-
trary to orders on the part of Captain Fitzgerald, which broke
up the Maratha force that was about to attack the British
Eesidency ; even then it was not until a branch of the main
army was sent that there was any real security.

But one by one the chiefs were defeated : the Peshwa was
chased relentlessly as he fled from place to place, tracked all
over the country by the dead and dying cattle he left on the
road ; and at length he was forced to surrender, protesting
that he had never intended to fight. He was given a liberal
pension, but deprived of all his powers ; and with his capture
the main issue of the war was brought to a successful end.

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 197

were still far from being accomplished. He had determined
that this time nothing short of complete and absolute conquest
was of any avail ; there were to be no concessions to soothe
wounded vanity, no paper treaties to be broken as soon as
he had returned to Calcutta, no unconquered district which
might serve as a centre for future rebellion when the army
was withdrawn. The remains of the Kndaris were pursued
to their obscure haunts,- and captured ; it was found that
their great fear was lest they should be sent as prisoners to
Europe, by which place they understood Calcutta. And the
last leaders of the Marathas were pursued to those savage
districts where, bereft of their following, they had taken refuge
in the wild jungle-covered hills, among those dense unBfealthy
thickets in which the still uncivilised aboriginal inhabitants
of India lurked hopelessly, and obtained a miserable subsist-
ence by living on roots and herbs. There the Maratha chiefs
had made common cause with the savages, and given them
licence to plunder their late dominions. Had these not been
suppressed, they would have become a permanent danger;
but, in 1819, a concerted attack was made on the hills, and the
last hiding-places of our conquered foes were destroyed.

In these stern punitive measures, which lasted for months
after the regular fighting was finished, there was no question
of generosity to a fallen enemy. It was the pacification of
Western India that Hastings was striving for, and it was that
which he accomplished. In subsequent years, there were occa-
sional sporadic raids by those few Endaris whose retreats
had remained hidden from the eyes of the keenest of scouts ;
but their name had ceased to inspire terror. The greater
part of the Maratha territories was annexed to British
India ; but some few provinces were given back to Holkar
and Sindhia. Those chiefs had now, however, hardly even
the shadow of their former power ; and their intrigues were
thenceforward as harmless as their animosity.

The whole fabric of the Maratha .confederacy had now

198 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS

utterly collapsed. But settlement after a war of such magni-
tude was a matter of some difficulty, for it affected far more
than the conquered country, large as it was. So great a
change in the political map of India touched the neighbour-
ing states of Eajputana and Haidarabad as directly as
the proper territories of the East India Company.

But Hastings proved a great statesman as well as an able
soldier. Some fifty thousand square miles of country were
brought under British rule, and four million subjects were
thereby added to the British Empire. A detailed plan was
laid down for the administration of this great expanse of
territory. The people were to be protected from that foul
parasfte, the revenue farmer. No new taxes were to be im-
posed; neither were any old ones to be abolished, unless
they were obviously unjust ; but the existing taxes were to
be levied according to the actual cultivation of the land, and
not at the caprice of a zamindar. Further, no legal innova-
tions were to be introduced : natives were to continue to
administer the civil law, while the criminal law passed to
British judges.

Elsewhere in the conquered countries, when annexation
was considered inadvisable, the territory was either ceded to
the Gaekwar of Baroda or the Nizam of Haidarabad, in
exchange for other of their provinces which gave cohesion
to the British possessions ; or it was restored to the
original native sovereigns, and a diplomatic agent established
at each of their courts. Treaties of alliance were signed with all
of the Maratha chiefs whom Hastings still permitted to rule ;
and the princes of Eajputana likewise sought his friendship.

In every case, the substance of the agreement was the same.
The native promised his allegiance, and military service when
required ; the British guaranteed the integrity of his dominions,
and at the same time stipulated that we should refrain from
intervention in the internal affairs of such states.

In the main the agreements were faithfully kept on both

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 199

sides. It was, however, impossible in practice for the British
agent at a native court to abstain from intervention in the
not infrequent case of the raja being hopelessly incompetent ;
still less could he maintain a neutral attitude when, as often
happened, his advice was directly asked. In this respect the
British did not adhere strictly to the treaties ; the general
good of the state was of more importance than the personal
interest of its ruler and a pedantic observance of the letter
of the agreement. As regards the native princes themselves,
no power on earth, and no oath, however solemn, would have
restrained some of them from the pleasantly dangerous game
of intrigue ; but there were many others who were glad of
the British protection and the consequent security of their
dominions, and who therefore abode honourably by the treaty
and became loyal fiefs of the empire.

The great menace to the peace of India being thus averted
by the destruction of the Maratha power, Hastings was free
to turn his attention to the administration of the British
provinces. Legal reform and the establishment of an educa-
tional system occupied much of his time during his last years
in India. But he had now exceeded the average length of
office of a Governor-General ; and he had good reason to
believe that the directors of the East India Company did not
approve of his vigorous policy, triumphantly successful
though it had been.

He was indeed thanked by his employers for his services,
and his proflered resignation was refused. But in common
decency they could not avoid the former tribute ; as regards
the latter, it is sufficient to say that they began to look out
for a successor, and that their decision eventually fell on
George Canning.

It may be doubted whether the choice was a wise one.
Canning was a brilliant orator ; but oratory in the House of
Commons is no qualification for a Governor-General of India.
His talents, great as they were in his own sphere of parlia-

200 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS

mentary life, were by no means necessarily suited to the
control of an oriental state ; and this Canning himself seems
to have recognised. The directors were probably influenced
in their selection by the fact that he had discouraged the
forward policy of Hastings, and his acceptance of the post
would therefore have seemed to promise them some years of
peaceful and profitable commerce, undisturbed by the alarms
and expenses of punitive expeditions, and the enlargement
of their akeady large dominions. But the chances of home
politics determined Canning to remain in England ; and when
the Marquis of Hastings sailed from Calcutta, on 1st January
1823, it was to Lord Amherst that the reins of government
were offered.

The new ruler arrived in August of the same year ; and
he had hardly called his first Council when war again broke
Amfcerst, out. This time, however, the conflict was not
1823. J-Q Ju^a p ro per; Burma and Assam were the

countries affected, and the sustained Trnlif.fl.ry operations
which ensued were the cause of much surprise and regret to
Amherst, who had hoped that the campaigns of Hastings had
secured a long period of peace to India. 1 And even when
the Burmese war was drawing to a close, the effect it had had
in disturbing the great settlement of India that was made
by Hastings, forced Amherst to engage in another punitive
campaign against an old enemy in the middle of the peninsula.
It is a truism that the least check to a European army in
Asia at once fosters a whole crop of native intrigue and sedi-
tion. In the Burmese War, indeed, the British had suffered
no disaster. But the struggle was unusually lengthy ; and
to those who wished to believe that the British had suffered
defeat, it was not difficult to misinterpret the prolonged
absence of our troops on the trawadi Eiver.

Forthwith an extraordinary change came over the attitude
of our native allies. Every item of news that could by any

1 For the history of this war, see vol. viii.

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 201

possibility be construed as a reverse was eagerly seized upon
and exaggerated. A general rumour spread from court to
court that we should have to retire from Central India owing
to the drain on our resources. Metcalfe, a member of the
Supreme Council of Calcutta, stated that ' the Burmese War
produced an extraordinary sensation all over India, amount-
ing to an expectation of our immediate downfall/

Nor was the disaffection merely passive. The great and
growing . confederacy of the Sikhs, whose dominions in the
Punjab now adjoined the British provinces, assumed an over-
bearing tone. The last of the Pindari and Maratha outlaws
ventured forth from their obscure hiding-places, scenting in
the presumed weakness of the dominant power an opportunity
for renewed plunder. And in the states administered under
British supervision there was general discontent.

This latter sentiment was not, indeed, without foundation.
It is true that our protection had benefited the inhabitants.
Even the miserable country of Oudh was less miserable than
before ; for it was reported that a body of irregular horse
marching through that land in 1824 could find 13.0 spot on
which to encamp without injuring the crops ; while in the
following year travellers and officers alike called it a perfect
garden. Everywhere agriculture had improved. But both
our rule and our protection had brought disadvantages and
abuses in their train. If there was now more land under
cultivation, there was more grain produced than before ; and
the price of grain had naturally fallen as the supply increased.
Some grumbling ensued thereon ; a worse consequence was
that the revenue system, which had been specially safeguarded
to prevent tyranny, was inelastic in its operation, and a
further unforeseen cause had made it oppressive.

The assessment was properly calculated on the price of
grain. But it had been calculated when that price was
inflated by the presence of a large military force ; as soon
as the army was withdrawn the price sank ; and while there

202 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

was less demand, there was a larger supply. From a double
reason the price therefore fell ; but the assessment remained
the same.

And to these grounds for discontent there was added
another more potent, because more permanent factor. The
British had given peace, security, and the beginnings of com-
parative prosperity to India. But for that very reason, para-
doxical as it may appear at first sight, there was dissatis-
faction. A not inconsiderable number of roving marauders
found their occupation gone; and the paths of peaceful
industry were utterly distasteful to them. The native princes
found their treasury better supplied ; but in the opinion of
many this did not compensate for the loss of liberty and the
delights of waging private war against their neighbours.
And the subjects of those princes, who in truth were as yet
the least important consideration, forgot, as it is natural to
forget, the woes of the past in the woes of the present. They
knew that taxation was oppressive ; they did not remember
that it had been extortionate. They knew that the price of
grain had fallen, and that they had suffered because it had
fallen ; they forgot that previously they had often seen the
whole of their crops carried off without hope of payment or
redress. They remembered the few virtues of the older
system, and forgot its vices ; they saw distinctly the vices
of the new system, and were oblivious of its virtues.

Matters came to a crisis when a dispute as to the succes-
sion of the throne at Bharatpur called for British interven-
T3leStormof tion. At first Amherst hesitated; but Comber-
Bhaxatpur, more, an officer who had served against Napoleon
1826 ' in Spain, undertook to reduce that celebrated

fortress. It was a dangerous moment for the English. They
had already failed once before Bharatpur ; and their failure
had not been forgotten by the natives. If they failed again
they would immediately have to face tihe probability, indeed,
almost the certainty, that every subsidiary state from one

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE IN INDIA 203

end of India to the other would repudiate its alliance, and
engage in open rebellion ; and it was known that the neigh-
bouring Rajput and Maratha princes were secretly encourag-
ing the usurping Eaja of Bharatpur.

The fortress was a formidable one, perhaps the most formid-
able of any in India. Its defences covered five miles ; it was
protected by thick and lofty walls of dried clay which rose
from the edge of a broad and deep ditch ; it was flanked by
thirty-five tower-bastions, and strengthened by the outworks
of nine gateways. High above the walls towered the bastions
of the citadel, commanding the town of Bharatpur, the outer
ramparts, and the surrounding plain ; and the citadel itself
was defended by a ditch fifty yards broad, fifty-nine feet deep,
and filled with water.

A regular siege was impossible ; Bharatpur could only be
captured by storm. For two whole months it was bombarded
without tangible results ; but at length the walls began to
crumble beneath the heavy fire of the British guns. Even
then they seemed hardly less steep and inaccessible than before.
But meanwhile the trenches of the attacking army had been
advanced ; several mines had been sprung ; and the explosion
of an enormous charge of ten thousand pounds of gunpowder
in the chief mine, on 18th January 1826, shook the citadel to
its foundation and effected a practicable breach.

The British immediately stormed the place. They were
opposed at the point of the bayonet, and the "R&ffis troops
fought with magnificent bravery, disputing every foot of
the advance. If the casualty list is correct, it conveys an
idea of their devotion ; for no fewer than 8000 of the enemy
were killed and 6000 wounded. The British loss was 600.

On the following day the legitimate Edjd of Bharatpur was
restored to the throne of his ancestors ; and the fortress was
dismantled. Its capture at once put an end to the incipient
conspiracies of which the native courts had been full ; for
the fall of Bharatpur made it evident to the meanest intelli-

204 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

gence that the Burmese War had not weakened the power of
the British in India,

The moral effect was deep and lasting. Now at length pro-
found peace reigned throughout India ; nor could any cloud
Peace and of future war be discerned on the clear horizon.
Reform. ^or twelve years the hand of the conqueror was
utterly stayed, while the conquered abode in subjection ; the
age of pacific reform, for which every Anglo-Indian statesman
had longed, but hitherto longed in vain, had come.

And with the coming of that age a new era opened out for
British India; an era which, though chequered by many
great and terrible wars, though marked by a large extension
of the already large territories of England in the East, was
essentially one of peaceful development and ordered change.

The first period of British rule in India, which was a suc-
cession of almost unbroken conquests, was practically at an
end when the victories of Hastings and Amherst were com-
pleted by the storm of Bharatpur.

The second period, which began with the administration
of Bentinck in 1828, was not the less glorious or daring because
the British now attempted to substitute moral for military
conquest, because they endeavoured to impose the philo-
sophic ideas, the culture, and the principles of modern Europe
on the ancient and alien civilisations of India, and thus to
transplant the restless soul of the West into the tranquil
body of the East.

The third period began when the first unexpected results
of that courageous experiment were visible in the early years
of the twentieth century.

BOOK VIII

THE END OF THE WOBLD-STRUGGLE :
1789-1815

CHAPTER I
THE UNITED KINGDOM

WHILE Britain was conquering an empire in India, she was
losing another empire in America. While she was subdu-
ing an alien race in the Orient, her own children JJ**^*
were repudiating her dominion in the Occident ; America,
and at the very moment when soldiers and states- wre.
men were advancing her flag in the tropics of Asia, the same
flag was being torn down and trampled underfoot by the
descendants of Englishmen on the other side of the world
in the Imperial Civil War. But the western colonies had
hardly been lost when the inexhaustible vitality of Britain
was shown in the acquisition of fresh territories for the settle-
ment of her people in Australia and South Africa ; and the
nation which was believed to be ruined by the disasters of the
American War rose to a greater height than ever during
the terrific contest with Napoleon in every quarter of the
globe.

That contest was waged for the mastery of Europe and the
outer world ; and it ended, as the previous contest of the
Seven Years' War had ended, in the triumph of me Revom-
Britain as the leading maritime and colonising toaaryAse.
power of the earth. The age during which this struggle took

206 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

place was one in which commerce increased enormously,
under the natural stimulus of mechanical inventions and
improvements ; even the wars produced their eflect,
as they forced up both prices and production. Science and
discovery likewise made notable advances; but the real
characteristic which distinguished this period from its pre-
decessors in history was the revolutionary spirit that stamped
its mark on every phase of life. Everywhere throughout
the West men destroyed and reconstructed their ideas and
their political theories with equal zeal ; everywhere they
threw off the allegiance which their fathers had owed to
governments that no longer satisfied their views ; authority
was disregarded in the pursuit of freedom, and the new
doctrine of the Eights of Man displaced the old doctrine
of the Divine Right of Bangs.

The American colonies of Britain led the way of revolu-
tion, in a rebellion against the tyranny of a government whose
most arbitrary acts would never have provoked a murmur
in any other country except England. The monarchs of
France and Spain, unwilling to lose the opportunity of striking
a blow against their old enemy Britain, assisted the Americans
to obtain political independence ; and within a few years
the lesson of the American revolution had recoiled unex-
pectedly on their own heads. The King of France was
deposed and executed during a revolution which surpassed
the American rebellion in as great a degree as the power and -
population of France surpassed the power and population
of British America. And the King of Spain, who had en-
couraged the colonies of another nation to rebel, saw his own
colonies in South America throw off their allegiance to Spain
one by one, in pursuit of the same independent and republican
ideal that had animated the citizens of Boston and
Connecticut.

The revolt of British America split an empire in twain and
founded a new nation on the ruins of a civil war. The revolt

THE END OP THE WORLD-STRUGGLE 207

of Latin America likewise split an empire ; but the Spanish
colonies were possessed of none of the genius for political
organisation which distinguished the founders of the northern
republic, and the divided states of Spanish South America
remain an unhappy example of the fate that would have
overtaken the United States without the binding mortar
of a Federal Constitution whose every word was respected
by men to whom constitutional government was almost a
religion.

The revolutionary impulse of France owed something to
the teaching of English political philosophers, and some-
thing also to the example of the English rebels in America.
But neither England nor America had ever known the evils to
which France had been subject ; and neither England nor
America followed the path of revolt with such zealous fervour
of destruction and reconstruction as the French.

The autocratic centralising policy that was introduced in
France under Louis XL had been rudely interrupted by the
Renascence and the Reformation ; but it was me Frencn
continued by Richelieu and carried to its logical Revolution,
conclusion by Mazarin and Louis xiv. For a time it seemed
supremely successful, as France rose to the position of the
leading military power in Europe, and became in some sense
the leading power of the outer world as well. In England,
on the contrary, a political freedom had been attained that
was always unknown in France; the great civil struggles
between the Stuarts and the nobility and people reduced
the weight of the British Crown, while the monarchs of
France were concentrating the whole rule of their kingdom
in their own hands. And the cold, hard, unsesthetic puri-
tanism that now counted for much in the political and social
life of England, and at times even turned the scales in the
decision of public affairs, had no part nor lot in the growth
of the French intellect. The puritan of England was self-
assertive in the presence of an earthly autocrat, where the

208 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

Frenchman as yet was mute ; lie was self-repressive before
the authority of heavenly commands, where the Frenchman
was reaching forward to throw off reverence to Bible, Church,
and religion altogether.

But when Louis xiv. died in 1715 a gradual change came
ovBr the haughty nation that had despised its island neigh-
bours across the Channel. The great monarch left an im-
poverished kingdom and a hungry peasantry as a monument of
his fifty years' reign. The name of France, which had been
revered throughout Europe as that of the leader of civilisa-
tion and culture, the centre of the arts, the seat of elegance,
the chosen home of the muses, was indeed still so revered ;
but it was coupled with denunciations of the cruelty and
faithlessness that had desolated the Palatinate, seized Strass-
burg in a time of profound peace, sown discord among the
princes of the German Empire, unblushingly broken the most
solemn treaties, revoked the edicts of religious toleration,
and driven forth the Huguenots to starve or beg in foreign
lands.

It was at such a time that some young Frenchmen came
to England, and quickly drank in the spirit of liberty and
free inquiry that was instinct in the nation. Despite the
late struggle with the Stuarts, the country was prosperous.
Despite the laws against the Nonconformists, toleration in
religious matters was general. The press was seldom shackled.
The most daring treatise on politics, on theology, on philosophy,
might be published without fear. In France an unfortunate
author was thrown into the Bastille, and his work seized as
treasonable or heretical if it displeased the officials of the
State or Church ; in England the worst punishment that could
befall the most wretched scribbler was to starve in Grub
Street, or to achieve immortality in the biting couplets of the
Dunciad. Corrupt and factious as was the public life of the
age, it was at least better than the deathlike silence that
reigned across the Channel ; and the English constitutional

THE END OF THE WORLD-STBUGGLE 209

system moved the admiration of every French writer from
Voltaire and Montesquieu to Benjamin Constant.

The new philosophers of France quickly assimilated the
works of Bacon, Hobbes, Newton, and Locke, and inter-
preted them to their countrymen, and thence to the world
at large. But at first even the bolder thinkers only attacked
the Church in France. The monarchy remained untouched.
Opinion, therefore, to that extent became free. Philo-
sophical and scientific discussions were soon the fashion in
Paris. Every aristocrat had a smile for the man of letters ;
every great lady's drawing-room was filled with a coterie of
brilliant writers, this with his sarcasm on the theologians,
that with his epigram on the Pope. The highborn laughed
and applauded ; their own order was not yet menaced.

But from the abuse of power by the priests to the abuse of
power by the patricians was but a step. The first genera-
tion that struck at the clergy was succeeded by a second
that struck at the crown ; and the hour was favourable to
an attack on the monarchy. France had been humbled at
home and abroad. Her debts, her poverty, and her ambition
had increased. The rule which Louis xiv. had always exercised
with a certain magnificence was resigned by his grandson to a
favourite mistress. A vague but deep discontent sprang up
among the common people. They had long borne, with a
patience not at all in accordance with our engrained ideas
of the Gallic character, extortion, exaction, and oppression.
Their scanty earnings had been heavily taxed by the King,
the nobles, and the priests. Their sons had been sent to
fight in Flanders, in Germany, in Spain, in America. At
the least sign of a popular movement the leaders were flung
into prison. Under the insidious principle of autocratic
centralisation a centralisation at once mean and extra-
vagant, rotten and splendid a brave high-spirited nation
was being drained of its vitality, and sapped of its strength.

But revolt came before it was too late. Travellers and

VOL. n. o

210 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

students alike had for many years noticed the tendency to
rise against oppression. Chesterfield wrote in 1753 : ' All
the symptoms I have ever met with in history previous to
great changes and revolutions in government now exist, and
daily increase 'in France/ Gibbon elucidated a point of
Roman history from the disturbances he saw around him.
What was visible to the stranger within the gates should not
have been hidden from the French Government. But that
Government was moribund. It could neither go honestly
forward on the road of conciliation, nor courageously back-
ward to the time-honoured repression. Like the lukewarm
church cursed by the prophet of the Apocalypse, it was neither
hot nor cold ; and its fate was the same.

Unfortunately the wilder and more terrifying symptoms
that not only the nineteenth century but our own times have
known too well found also their chief inspiration, if not alto-
gether their origin, in the French Revolution. While the
fair hopes of freedom dawned in the movement that took
for its motto Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity ; while the
generous sentiment of friendship with other nations broke out
in the declaration that 'all peoples are our allies '; the baser
sort saw their opportunity in the carnage, the terror, the con-
fiscation. Organised anarchy raised her poisonous head. If
the true reformers founded their resistance on the wishes of
the people, the scum realised their profit in the rule of the mob.
The vengeance that wreaks itself on any victim, disdaining
justice and despising mercy, set its hideous example in the
fanaticism of those who brought about the Reign of Terror ;
and the terror did not cease until it had sent over two thousand
victims to the guillotine. But with the excesses of that dread
tribunal, which slaughtered innocent victims at the rate of
fifty or a hundred in a day by a process of judicial murder,
France purged itself of the Revolution. It was the blood-
thirstiness of men like Robespierre and Fouquier-Tinville
that hurried on the reaction ; but the real origin of the

THE END OF THE WORLD-STEUGGLE 211

*

Terrorists must be sought in the previous century of
misrule.

The spirit of revolt that overturned the traditions of cen-
turies in Prance was also manifesting itself in Britain, "but
in a far more orderly manner. The constitution its Effect
was not abolished ; the throne was strong enough on Britain -
to survive the temporary insanity of its occupant ; the Church
passed unmenaced through a period of inaction. But many
of the ancient shibboleths were cast away, as the rising-
industrialism of the time forced the community into fresh
methods of life ; and if the problems that were thus solved
were succeeded immediately by others as grave, there was at
least no unwillingness to tackle them as soon as they were
perceived.

In literature the new school that was inspired by the French
Kevolution, which later gave birth to the LaMsts, was energetic
in its desire to shake off the fetters of rule and precedent that
had bound the writers of the early eighteenth century. But
the impulse lay in the time, and not in the men alone ; for
while Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Shelley were fired by the
doctrines of freedom, Cowper in his quiet retreat at Olney had
already felt the need before them ; and Byron, disdainful as
he always professed himself of those who had cast off the
authority of Pope, was perhaps the most profoundly affected
by, and the most brilliant member of, the new school.

In abstract thought, the scientific spirit which is the
true basis of rationalism, and which, although somewhat
strangely changed during the process, had itself furnished
the motive power from which the whole movement of
revolt was originally generated, was influenced in turn as the
second renascence reacted on it and brought it new force.
The real thinkers of the age were not the professed authors
but the philosophers, using the word in its widest sense.
Jortin and Warburton had already traversed the usually
barren fields of controversy with success, and examined with

212 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS

healthy scepticism the legends and miracles of the mediaeval
church. Gibbon pushed their conclusions further, and con-
trived by bitter sneer and unfair innuendo to poison the
wound he inflicted on the faithful. Hume carried the battle
directly into the citadel of religion with his masterly essays
against miracles ; while Paine, an unworthy camp-follower,
travestied the higher arguments of the revolutionary school
in books and pamphlets more fitted for the low taste of the
general public.

But theology, was receding more and more into the back-
ground, as the way of thought that had been inaugurated
by Bacon began to be commonly accepted. The inductive
school, which admitted nothing save what rested on the firm
foundation of proven fact, was triumphant in England ; and
its work was brilliantly seconded by the deductive or theoretic
school in Scotland. The two systems were the complement
of each other : in the eyes of the practical English, there were
few facts in the universe that did not need investigation, and
their cause to be proved ; in the eyes of the metaphysical
Scots, few of those theories that had hitherto been accepted
without hesitation by mankind were worthy of credence before
full inquiry. And if there was at the time no man whose
life marked a new epoch in scientific achievement, it is be-
cause every one who was engaged in such work was better
pleased to advance a few steps securely in the road of know-
ledge, than to construct a vast and splendid edifice, in which
perhaps his followers would find the foundation lacking. . . .

The reforming movement quickly made itself felt in politics
and in the social life of the community. There were many
attempts to purify and raise the tone of both the one and the
other. While the synthetic movement continued which
was still forcing small isolated communities to amalgamate
into larger homogeneous bodies, there was evolved a new
sense of responsibility in government, hitherto conspicuously
absent, and a spirit, closely allied to the latter if not at

THE END OF THE WORLD-STRUGGLE 213

times absolutely identical, which we may call for want of a
better name, the New Humanity.

The political life of the earlier eighteenth century had been
corrupt and factious to a degree. National interests were
lost sight of when those of party came in the way ; and party
influences claimed every man of mark throughout the kingdom.
It was the overpowering genius of the elder Pitt, here as in so
many other directions, that showed the way to improvement.
His Coalition Government broke down a few of the party
barriers ; and if matters again reverted to their former state,
it was at any rate shown that a great national crisis and a
great national leader could temporarily override all opposition.

Parliament, too, had degenerated into a mere body of place-
men, elected by a small caucus from districts that had fre-
quently become of little account, owing to the migration of
population : the House of Commons was thoroughly unrepre-
sentative, and its members voted obediently for the wire-
puller who could give the highest bribe. It should have been
the pulse of the people : it was, in fact, out of sympathy with
their feelings, and selfishly bent on gaining its own ends.
Again it was Pitt who saw the need of reform in the electoral
system. He sketched out a project which should again bring
Parliament into touch with national life ; and although
his schemes miscarried owing to the force of outside
events, and the combined opposition of every vested interest,
and every simple reactionary or mere sentimental admirer of
the past, the seed he had let fall was not thrown away. It
germinated and grew in strength, resulting eventually in the
Reform Bill of 1832, and the farther extensions of the fran-
chise which have taken place since then. Burke, too, by his
measure cutting down the public pension list, by reducing the
secret service money, and by checking financial extravagance
in the administration, not only reduced the burden of taxa-
tion, but lessened the opportunities for political corruption a
more important point.

214 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

The next generation went further still. The younger Pitt
brought to an end the anomalous and unjust minority Parlia-
ment that had sat at Dublin, and by the act of 1801 Ireland
was joined to Great Britain : it was his wish, also, to sweep
away the laws against those who did not profess the tenets of
the Church of England. In this he was unsuccessful, since the
thought was too advanced for the age ; but although defeated
for the moment, the idea was never abandoned, and another
few years saw the abolition of all but a few of the religious tests
as a qualification for public life.

These reforms at home have little to do with the British
colonies, save in so far as any improvement at the heart of the
imperial empire must of necessity circulate after a time
Responsi- through each of the other members ; but of vital
bDi1?3r * importance to the dependencies was the move-
ment that brought out a sense of responsibility for the
possessions overseas, a movement that grew later into a new
feeling of brotherhood with those inhabiting them.

There could, indeed, be little enthusiasm about the colonies
for many years after the Imperial Civil War. The old English
settlements across the Atlantic had revolted. Canada was
looked upon as a half-frozen province of indefinite extent,
that had been saved from the wreck of the rebellion by a
curious freak of fate. Australia was believed to be a dismal
and half-desert island, which providence had judiciously
placed on the other side of the world in order that British
Criminals, when transported thither, should find no possible
nians f returning. Cape Colony was considered a valueless
possession.

But v he position with regard to India was very different.
The asto'pnding conquests of a few years had left the British
practically\naasters of the whole country. Every feeling of
curiosity ha$ been roused by the reports of its wealth and
magnificence J every noble sentiment had been roused by the
helpless condition of its inhabitants, who were too often a

THE END OF THE WORLD-STKUGGLE 215

prey to the rapacity of the East India Company and its
officials ; every instinct of justice had been roused by the
feeling that a commercial corporation, whose first thought
must necessarily be its own profit and the earning of divi-
dends for its own stockholders, ought not to be finally answer-
able for the government, as well as the trade, of the huge
possession that had unexpectedly fallen into its hands.

There are few finer passages in our history than the gradual
awakening to a realisation of the responsibility that seemed
to be placed upon the English people by God Himself as the
duty of the strong towards the weak, the healthy towards the
sick ; a responsibility that was soon seen to apply equally to
the care of the other alien peoples within the empire, to the
wretched African slave of the West Indies, to the aboriginal
American whom our advance in Canada drove ever further
westwards, to the native Australian who dies so quickly
before the white man, to the native South African whose
increase is quicker than our own.

It is this feeling which we call the New Humanity. Its
workings were to be seen also in England, in attempts to
elevate the condition of the lowest classes, by giving the
children some instruction in the Sunday or Ragged Schools
then recently founded ; in an improvement some years later
of the legal system, partly by abolishing tho, old prisons with
their filthy arrangements and herding together of all degrees
of criminals, partly by reduction of some of those barbarously
severe sentences which disgraced the English law; partly
in the eventual introduction of new and still tentative methods
of punishment devised to do away with the old penal arrange-
ments which neither reformed nor deterred. 1

1 Another aspect of the increasing humanitarian sentiment of the age
is too often passed over in silence ; I refer to its care for the lower animals,
and to the attempts that were now made to suppress cruelty in sport and
in the treatment of beasts of burden. In the year 1822, ' The first law
ever enacted in any country for the interest of the brute creation ' I
quote Sir Herbert Maxwell was passed through Parliament by Richard
Martin, the member for Galway, who was the leading spirit in the

216 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

It was fitting that the first voice of the New Humanity
should be that of the melancholy recluse, whose clouded.
The Poet of ^^PPJ existence, albeit passed amid the peace-
time New ful lanes and gardens of Bedfordshire, made him
Humanity, sympathise with the lot of the helpless and
oppressed in every quarter of the globe. Years before Burke
thundered against Warren Hastings in Westminster HaU,
years before Wilberforce introduced his proposals for the
emancipation of the slaves, the poet Cowper, far apart from
the strife and the turmoil in which men of iron were ruthlessly
building up the great empire overseas, had condemned in
his verse the excesses of those victors who filled India with
terror, and the cruelties of those masters who saw in the
African negro merely a cheap and continuously reproductive
source of labour :

{ Hast thou, though suckled at fair freedom's breast,
Exported slavery to the conquered East ?
Pulled down the tyrants India served with dread,
And raised thyself, a greater, in their stead?
Gone thither armed and hungry, returned full,
Fed from the richest veins of the Mogul,
A despot big with power obtained by wealth,
And that obtained by rapine and by stealth 1

formation of the beneficent Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Animals. The name of this excellent man deserves to be better
remembered than it is.

It is significant of the tendency of public opinion that Coleridge's lines
on the subject are dated in the year 1797 :

'He prayeth well, who loveth. well

Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best, who loveth best

All things both great and small ;

For the dear God who loveth us,

He made and loveth all.'

I may be mistaken ; but I have always thought that the growth of this
sentiment in the Victorian age is a more conclusive proof of the real
progress of civilisation than many of its vaunted achievements in utili-
tarian invention. And the English nation, which is sometimes believed
by envious foreigners to count wife-beating among its cheaper and more
popular domestic amusements, may perhaps take a little credit to itself
for the lead it has given the world in the suppression of wanton cruelty
to animals.

THE END OF THE WORLD-STRUGGLE 217

With Asiatic vices stored thy mind,

But left their virtues and thine own behind ;

And having trucked thy soul, brought home the fee,

To tempt the poor to sell himself to thee 1 '

In such lofty tones of reproach did he repudiate the mis-
deeds of the East India Company and its agents. Equally
emphatic was he as regards slavery :

{ I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep,
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth,
That sinews bought and sold have ever earned. . . .
We have no slaves at home. Why then abroad ? . . .
Slaves cannot breathe in England ; if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free,
They touch our country, and their shackles fall.

. . . Spread it then,
And let it circulate through every vein
Of all your empire ; that where Britain's power
Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy, too/

Throughout all Ms work the same voice of humanity
rises ; whether regretting the tyranny of the strong over the
weak, or protesting against the 'detested sport that owes
its pleasure to another's pain/ At times lie exaggerates,
as when he merely echoes the vulgar clamour which pictured
dive with e overgorged and bloated purse/ or believes that
Britisli extortion in the East had made ' our arch of empire
a mutilated structure soon to fall * ; or again, in saying that,
' doing good, disinterested good, is not our trade ' ; but in
spite of all the excesses and the abuses he condemns, he still
has faith in Ms country, and ' her magnificent and awful cause/

Cowper was the perfect type and symbol of the New
Humanity, alike in its excellences and its defects. A text
might be found in Ms poems for all the causes it ^^j^g
championed in its earlier days. That stern moral and Defects
indignation, that desire to redress abuses and to
wipe out foul stains, whatever and wherever they
may be, wMch has given the New Humanity its most splendid

218 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

victories, were possessed in no small measure by the man
who was too timorous to read aloud in public. That fellow-
feeling with the downtrodden, that sympathy with the
afflicted and the poor, that charity for the suffering, which
has made the New Humanity a power of such incalculable
good to England and the world, were all possessed by the man
who petted a hare for years and wrote an elegy on its death.

But the spirit of exaggeration which we have noticed in
Cowper was unfortunately also destined to be typical of the New
Humanity. Belying on the heart at least as much as on the
head, to it belonged all the defects that spring from exuberant
but ill-balanced sympathy. If any cause it attacked was bad,
therefore all those connected, however remotely, with that
cause, and however much above reproach their character
might be in other respects, were also bad. To a passion
for doing good, it touted a passion for vilifying its opponents.
Ever ready to check evil, it saw evil everywhere. It magnified
small abuses and the petty follies of mankind into mountains,
and cried to have them removed. It attacked with intemperate
vehemence ; and although its victories were not counted to
England for righteousness, its foolishness was readily and
not unjustly reckoned abroad as a national characteristic.
That more or less unconscious hypocrisy, which has fre-
quently made us a laughing-stock among other nations, and
which sprang originally from puritanism, drew fresh strength
from the New Humanity. The ineffable outpourings of
pseudo-progressives and self-styled reformers ; the dogmatic
intemperance of temperance societies ; the petty obsessions
of the minor religious sects ; the cherished inanities of the
over-righteous everywhere : all alike are manifestations of
the New Humanity run to seed. 1

These are the smaller evils; others greater have come

1 The scepticism which Mr. Samuel Weller, Senior, expressed regard-
ing the precise value to the negroes of flannel waistcoats and moral
pocket handkerchiefs, might be extended to a number of other more or
less philanthropic enterprises without doing harm.

THE END OF THE WORLD-STRUGGLE 219

from the very warmth of that feeling for the less advanced
races which has given the cause itself its highest triumphs.
While sympathising nobly with those who were oppressed
by civilised man ; while assuming, without hope of reward,
and indeed with great prospect of misconstruction being
put on their aims, the task of protecting the undeveloped
man against the developed : there was too much of a tendency
to forget that an irremovable chasm of thousands of years
separated the two. The less informed exponents of the New
Humanity indulged glibly in cheap vapoiuings about the
equality and the relationship of all mankind, and they did
considerable harm by their failure to perceive that the problem
raised altogether deeper issues than could be covered by the
mere unproved assertion.

Frequently it was ignorance, occasionally lack of common
sense, and at times a curious anti-national bias, that caused
them to err. If it was a matter of Indian government they
were considering, they saw no distinction between the demon-
worshipping Dravidian, the high-caste Hindu, and the war-
like Sikh ; all were alike * fellow-men/ and all should have a
vote ; if they were not immediately fitted for it, they must
be educated up to it. It was not realised that such educa-
tion was a matter not of generations, but of centuries ; and it
was not foreseen that the sole outcome of a parliament com-
posed of such various groups, none of whom had previously
shown the faintest desire for representative institutions,
would be general anarchy.

The same thing occurred in South Africa. Some of those
who were loudest in their desire to f elevate our negro
brethren/ included under that term as equals the brave
Zulu and the stunted Hottentot, the Kafir and the Matabele ;
none of whom" in fact are negroes at all, and each of whom
differ from each other at least as much as the Saxon from the
Slav. That did not matter to the enthusiast; they were
freed from slavery; they must have the franchise. The

220 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS

same quack medicine was expected to cure them all of a
disease of which none were conscious.

These, and other excrescences of the New Humanity, have
done it harm in the eyes of moderate and unprejudiced men.
Yet it would be absurdly unjust to set off the occasional
follies of a school of thought against the solid services it has
rendered. The New Humanity, in fact, runs through all our
recent history as a purifying, elevating influence. Had it
not been for its working, we should indeed have avoided
some mistakes in general polity ; but we should never have
created the Indian imperial system, and we should never
have abolished slavery. The two achievements, the former
practical and constructive, the latter idealist and rightly
destructive, were more than sufficient to outweigh the errors
of a century of faddists.

For the first time since her connection with Asia, England
as a whole began to take an interest in Indian affairs, when
Reform in the news of dive's and Hastings' victories reached
India " home. Commerce had brought the East nearer

to England. 1 In a higher sense, too, the connection between

1 The course of trade by way of the Cape is referred to in Tristram
Shandy, and it is suggested that Indian doctrines, which began to be
discussed in Europe at this period, also came by the same route. An
allusion to the East was no longer pedantic in a novel. Fielding speaks
of c the Bannians in India, who dedicate their whole lives to the preserva-
tion and protection of certain animals,' and compares them sarcastically
with English game-preservers. Miss Burney makes her Captain vow to
Evelina that he would sooner go into the Black Hole of Calcutta than
accompany a party to Ranelagh. The 'Club' often debated the affairs
of Asia ; and Johnson, who could see nothing but savages and scoundrels
in America, recovered his sanity when other parts of the world were
mentioned. An anecdote of fortune hunters in the East Indies was told
among them with immense gusto in 1776 ; the custom of going there to
make wealth was alluded to again in 1778, and was no doubt a frequent
subject of jest. Johnson, as became one of the old Tories, defended the
system of caste; he had once met Warren Hastings, and wrote two
letters to him ; a discussion on his policy is preserved in Boswell's Life.
No play of the period was complete without the figure of the wicked
Englishman who extorted untold wealth from trembling natives, and
returned home to be tortured by a bad conscience and an equally bad
liver for the rest of his days.

THE END OF THE WORLD-STRUGGLE 221

Orient and Occident appealed to idealists such as Burke, who
saw * one of the races of the North- West cast into the heart
of Asia new manners, new doctrines, new institutions/

But as the political power of the East India Company
increased, it became evident to the deeper thinkers of the
age, that a body of commercial men could not be permitted
to continue the government of subject nations under the same
conditions that had been sufficient when they were solely a
trading corporation. If the great successes won by Olive
and Hastings filled people with pride, the means by which
they had been won were condemned.

In the splendid simile of Burke, the British Parliament
claimed ' an imperial character in which as from the throne
of heaven she superintends all the several inferior legislatures,
and guides and controls them all, without annihilating any/
As regards America, the Stamp Act and the Imperial Civil
War showed how much his boast was worth. If the orator's
magnificent phrase were not ever to remain unmeaning rhetoric,
the opportunity to fulfil it came when India passed into English
hands.

That opportunity was not neglected ; but the reasons which
induced Parliament to intervene in the government of India
were typical of the spirit that animated the New Humanity.
The factions and dissensions among the directors of the East
India Company were of little importance to any one save the
shareholders ; and the latter were quite capable of looking
after themselves. Neither was it the fact that the Company
required a loan from the State which brought about the change,
although that of itself gave Parliament the right to a voice
in Indian affairs. It was the knowledge that much of the
wealth brought home had neither been made in trade, nor
fairly derived from revenue, that first roused general dis-
approval ; and when part of the wretched story of rapacity
leaked out, and to it was added the appalling accounts of the
Bengal famine, together with the suspicion that the Com-

222 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS

pany's servants not only did nothing to check it, but actually
made money out of the miseries of those who had become
their subjects : the combined effect of these abuses forced
Parliament to take part in the government of India.

The horrible accounts that reached England were in many
cases overdrawn, and no justification was discovered for the
belief that the Company had profited by the famine : but the
New Humanity, with that tendency to exaggeration which
we have remarked, was not too careful in the instances of
abuse it quoted. But a storm of indignation was aroused
by facts which could not be denied; and measures were
quickly taken to relieve the Company of part of that responsi-
bility of which it had shown itself unworthy, and which it
was indeed impossible for it to exercise with impartiality and
due regard both for its own interests and those of the natives
of India.

Not until after the Mutiny of 1857 did England take over
the entire direction of Indian government ; but from the first
Eegulating Act of 1773 it was recognised as a principle that
the ultimate* responsibility for the great dependency lay
with the nation, and not with the Company.

Had it not been so, it may safely be said that we should not
have possessed India to-day. The strength of the Company
unsparingly exercised, the tyranny of the West unsparingly
imposed on the East, might have preserved it for a few years.
Men like Clive and Hastings might have found successors,
brilliant, unscrupulous, and daring as they. But had the
East India Company been allowed to continue as an oriental
autocrat, no Bentinck would have adorned the splendid list
of Governors-General ; no Canning would have balanced with
even justice the scales between East and West after the great
outbreak of 1857 ; none of that broad policy of social and
industrial improvement throughout India, in which are
blended with careful hand the complex, contrasted civilisa-
tions of Orient and Occident, would have been inaugurated:

THE END OF THE WOKLD-STKUGGLE 223

for no private trading company could or would have under-
taken it.

Sooner or later, the English East India Company must have
been driven from India : and the history of our connection
with Asia, instead of being a source of legitimate pride to
every Englishman, would have been a shame, a reproach,
and a stain ; for it would have told of opportunities missed
such as have presented themselves to few other nations, of a
sordid incapacity to rise above the level of business, to grasp
anything but the immediate profits of trade ; it would have
shown that, though possessed of the strength of arm to conquer,
we had not the strength of character to rule ; and the tears
of the ruined provinces of the East, mingled with the curses
of our own revolted colonies in the West, would have been a
sign and a warning for ever that the terrible but just vengeance
of God and of man had at length overwhelmed those who,
being free themselves, could yet rivet the chains of slavery
on others, and dare to order their goings on the earth with
no thought save for the amount of profit they could extort
from the forced labour of nations weaker than their own.

From such a peril the New Humanity saved us, as it awak-
ened a sense of responsibility for the welfare of those who had
been brought under our rule. That magnificent ideal of empire
was gradually evolved, which postulates that every citizen
stands free among his fellows, and equal before the law,
without distinction of race or creed, of wealth or title ; and
it is as a living symbol of that ideal that the British Empire
exists to-day. It is not, indeed, yet fully realised in practice.
But in the first half of the eighteenth century it was not
realised at all ; we have already seen in a previous chapter
that England was unconscious of being a world-power, at
the very time when her victories had made her the leader of
the outer world. Slowly with the disaster that overtook
them in the West our people realised their responsibilities ;
and from that time they have never turned back, even though

224 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

they have occasionally groaned under the burden, even though
there have been days when it has seemed too heavy to be borne.

About the same time that the responsibility of England for
the government of India was brought home to her, the full
slave Emaa- iniquity of the traffic in African slaves was revealed
cipation. to a few men, who, to their honour and our own,
would not rest until negro emancipation was an accomplished
fact. 1

The chief author of the agitation for abolishing slavery was
William Wilberforce. Others had expressed their opinion as
Wilfcerforee * *^ e ev ^ Brought by the traffic in slaves before
and tfce Irim 3 and, indeed, he never claimed to be the first
Evangelicals. ^ ^ ^jxJiiaonists. We have seen that Cowper
protested in verse against the wrong, and Burke was con-
vinced as early as 1780. But Wilberforce was undoubtedly
the real working head of the cause, and his life sums up in
essentials the whole philanthropic movement of the time.
From his published writings it is evident how entirely that
movement originated in religious conviction, and was the
work of the celebrated Evangelical school of which he was a
leading member.

That school it is easy enough to criticise in a depreciatory
fashion. Many of its leading spirits were prosy and pompous,
and overgiven to congratulating the Almighty that he had
created them so good, after the manner amusingly satirised
by Thackeray. They were narrow and dogmatic, inheriting
in this much of the old puritan tradition. They were afraid
of the lighter side of life, fearing the influence of the devil
in the most innocent diversions. Wilberforce himself was
no exception, as his correspondence shows. He abominated
* the playhouse ' as * directly contrary to the laws of God ' ;
he considered concerts and balls as e vanities 9 ; he gave up
singing as a dangerous accomplishment. Pew examples

1 For a full account of the abolition of the slave trade and the emanci-
pation of the slaves, see the fourth volume of this work.

THE END OF THE WORIJD-STRUGGLE 225

could show better the completeness with which the Evangeli-
cals were imbued with the unaesthetic tastes of the puritans.
He held to the full those strict views as to the observance of
Sunday which have done so much to make the day of rest a
day of listless idleness, or even worse, in Britain : he was
horrified by the easier Catholic doctrine that recreation
might be indulged in after the morning devotions were con-
cluded. He even reproached himself that he was ' not half
strict enough/ when one of his friends doubted. The most
trivial incident of life he turned to some moral purpose, and
his intimate correspondence was full of precepts.- 'Many
would call this a sermon rather than a letter/ he once wrote :
and the remark was true of almost all his epistles.

With the narrowness of puritanism, the Evangelical had
also the unctuous phraseology of the Methodist. Such
remarks as c piety is a lovely spectacle in youth ' were frequent
among them : the whole world was summed up in like fashion.
Even Bowdler, self-appointed cleanser of the Augean stables
of English literature, was ' very pleasing and pious ' ; the man
whose expurgations of Shakespeare now savour both of
absurdity and artistic sacrilege was a shining light among
the earlier Evangelicals.

The school hated Catholicism with undying hate. The most
deliberately offensive epithets were chosen to describe the
oldest form of Christianity. At their^headquarters in Clap-
ham the air was thick with denunciations of the 'scarlet
woman ' ; the Pope was identified with anti-Christ, until
the rising star of Napoleon caused a heresy among the com-
mentators, by making it possible for a parallel to be drawn
between the Blench Emperor and the awful scourge of the
Apocalypse. Those who consider that Thackeray exagger-
ated, when he drew Mrs. Newcome's anger at young Tom's
desire to marry a ' papist/ have only to turn to Wilberforce's
correspondence to see that the novelist has, if anything,
undercoloured the picture. Although aware that Catholi-

VOL. II. P

226 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

cism was the established creed of Haiti, the apostle of emanci-
pation would not recognise it even as a corrupt form of his
own religion, for he desired to seize ' the inconceivably
important opportunity of sowing Christianity ' there. This
he proceeded to do by sending out to the negroes 'great
varieties of excellent little works/ As they were written in
English, a language the natives could not understand, they
probably fell on even more stony ground than the majority
of tracts, a form of propaganda peculiarly affected by the
Evangelicals.

The shortcomings of the school are thus patent : they
must not blind us to its excellences. Those who composed
it were honest and God-fearing men, anxious to do the right,
and, as such, zealously striving to propagate their own form
of religion through the world. Wilberforce was working for
the establishment of Christianity in Australia in 1786, almost
before there were any settlers there ; he was interested in
the missions of Bengal ; he wished to * convert, civilise,
instruct, and attach ' the Irish ; he encouraged the project
of founding a library in Nova Scotia, in order to minimise
the evil results of * French philosophy ' in that country ; he
gave advice to the rulers of Haiti relative to religion and
Sunday observance which fills many pages of his voluminous
correspondence.

It must be confessed that little success attended many of
these efforts. The peculiarly drab garments in which Evan-
gelical Christianity was clothed were not calculated to make
it attractive to everybody; and the way in which it dis-
countenanced amusements and encouraged an unnatural
solemnity would alone have caused its eventual rejection.
But in endeavouring to convert all mankind, the Evangelicals
were but obeying, according to their lights, the command
of their divine master. Many of the great missionary
societies were founded by them at this time ; indeed, philan-
thropic societies of all kinds began to flourish, from the

THE END OF THE WOKLD-STRUGGLE 227

British and Foreign Bible Society, to those for the improve-
ment of prison discipline, the reformation of juvenile offenders
and public morality, the diffusion of information on capital
punishment, and a hundred others.

The abolition of slavery was thus not by any means the
sole object of Wilberforce's life : but from about the year
1786, when a correspondent mentions e the humane subject
that lately interested you/ until his final success, it occupied
more and more of his time. Young and earnest, a gentleman
of fortune with all the brilliant society of the metropolis -open
to him, he turned away from the career that most men in his
position would have chosen, in order to work for others. He
was only twenty-eight years of age when he broached the
subject of slave emancipation to his friend, William Pitt
the younger. ' At length I well remember/ he wrote many
. years later, ' after a conversation in the open air at the root
of an old tree at Holwood, just above the steep ascent into
the vale of Keston, I resolved to give notice on a fit occasion
in the House of Commons to bring the subject forward/

From the day on which he stood by that spot, itself one
of the most perfect examples of the peaceful English country-
side, an organised agitation was carried on throughout the
kingdom. The entry 'slave business* continually recurs
in his diary. There are few of his letters but have some
reference to it.

The task before him was an arduous one, since he proposed
to destroy a powerful and wealthy commercial interest, and
very quickly he and his Mends 'began to perceive more
difficulties in the way than he had hoped there would be/
But for forty-five years there was no slackening : and in
the next century, when the flood-gates of reform were opened,
during the great peace, the Bill for the emancipation of the
slaves was at last passed through Parliament in 1833.
Wilberforce only lived to hear that it had been read a second
time, but by then its passage was assured ; and he died

228 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

blessing God that the labours of his life had been crowned
with victory.

Thus was the doctrine of British responsibility for the
non-British races within the empire extended from those
who lived in India only to those who lived in every part of
our territories. From that time the people of Great Britain
haf e been directly responsible for the welfare of all the non-
British inhabitants in every colony that has not itself received
responsible government; in the latter the responsibility
has naturally been delegated to the colonists themselves.

Unfortunately it cannot be said that success in this con-
nection has always been marked ; neither can it be claimed
that all the colonies have seen their responsibility in the same
light, nor that the intervention of the mother country has
always been inspired by wisdom, a divergence of view
caused by the varying status of the aboriginal races and the
extent of their power, as shown by the differences in the
amount of their vitality and productiveness.

Such were the first, and among the greatest, victories of
the New Humanity. But as we look back over the nineteenth
century, we can perceive its influence working in almost
every direction ; and it would be difficult to discover any
movement, even at the present day, whose origin cannot be
traced, directly or indirectly, to the thought of the period
between the end of the Seven Years' War and the close of
the struggle with Napoleon. All those attempts to alleviate
the burden of life for the weak, to make it higher and ampler
for the strong ; to redress, as was the splendid task of the
fabled knights-errant of chivalry, the wrongs of those afflicted
by the hand of man; to succour those who have been hit by
the pitiless economic forces of the age ; all the endeavours
to obtain more equal opportunities for those whom the
accident of birth has disqualified or the general course of
events has handicapped ; all tihe philanthropic work of the
last century, and the semi-socialistic experiments that are

THE END OF THE WORLD-STRUGGLE 229

warmly debated among us to-day : all alike spring from that
New Humanity whose workings were first visible in the
indignation of Cowper and Burke at the crimes committed
by their countrymen in the Orient.

CHAPTER II

THE EUROPEAN WAR : 1793-1814

ON a fair day in summer, when the air is joyous with the
laugh of children, the song of birds, the hum of insects on their
various errands, when the sweet-scented hay lies new mown
but yet ungathered on the fields, and the standing crops
wave bearded in a sea of green that shows some touch of
ripening gold ; on such a day the skies will sometimes darken
suddenly as a storm swells up against the breeze. Silent
are the children and the birds as the tempest gathers force
and beats upon their hasty refuge ; the new mown ungathered
hay is ruined by a flood of rain ; the sturdy stems of wheat
and barley are dashed confusedly to earth, carrying in
their fall the truant scarlet poppy that has grown with them
in happier hours. The sun may shine again upon the
morrow ; but the widowed fields must wait the wooing of
another summer ere they bear.

The familiar catastrophes of nature are sometimes paralleled
in history ; and such a parallel occurred in Europe towards
the close of the eighteenth century. An assured and
permanent period of peace seemed to have dawned upon an
unquiet world at the beginning of the French Revolution.
A more friendly sentiment prevailed between France
and England at that time than had been known since the
opening of the Hundred Years' War. The patriots of Paris
intertwined the -flags of France, Britain, and America, and
paraded the thoroughfares crying, * Vivent les trois peuples

230 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

libres ! ' Moderate men looked for the end of their country's
travails neither in the despotism of the monarchy nor in the
anarchism of the Mountain, but in a constitution modelled
on that of England.

And across the Channel these feelings of amity were heartily
reciprocated. The growing influence of the New Humanity
was entirely opposed to war ; nor was there any ground for
a war between two nations which had but recently settled
their quarrels in a comprehensive treaty of peace. Both
political parties in Britain were united in wishing for good
relations with France, if they were united in nothing else.
' To suppose any nation can be unalterably the enemy of
another is weak and childish/ cried the younger Pitt when
he was taunted with forgetting the traditional policy of
England in opposing her continental neighbour. He argued
great things from the popular risings that heralded the
French Revolution ; he refused to countenance the schemes
of invasion that were being concocted between the royalist
refugees of the French aristocracy and the rulers of Austria
and Prussia. And when he found that the leaders of the
revolutionary party in Paris were anxious for a better under-
standing with England, he gave still warmer welcome to a
change which, whatever its excesses, seemed about to end
the jealousy and strife that had existed between the two
nations for seven hundred years. ' The French Government/
he declared in Parliament, ( is bent on cultivating the most
unbounded friendship with Great Britain/

Unhappily the tree of mutual goodwill thus so fairly
planted and so carefully watered, bore none save the bitterest
fruit. The old distrust of France again broke out in England
as the Revolution descended into terrorism amd massacre ;
the old distrust of England again sprang up in France as the
suspicion grew that the British Government were engaging
in an intrigue to destroy the Republic. In a wild passion
of rhetorical invective, Edmund Burke deplored the loss of

THE END OF THE WOELD-STEUGGLE 231

continuity, of gradual social evolution in France, ' without
which/ he declared, 'men would become like flies in a*
summer ' ; and he saluted the leaders of the Eevolution as
' the ablest architects of ruin who have hitherto existed in
the world. In a short space of time they have pulled to the
ground their army, their navy, their commerce, their arts,
and their manufactures/ In equally wild words French
demagogues declared that Pitt's gold and Pitt's diplomacy
were preparing a general attack on the Eepublic.

The suspicions on either side were indeed unfounded.
But they were none the less sufficient to destroy the transient
feelings of amity between France and England. The clouds
had gathered for the coming storm ; yet none realised how
terrible and how prolonged would be the tempest which
succeeded the fickle calm.

Pitt still strove for peace, while the two nations stood
angrily fronting each other ; but when France turned on the
world at large, confident in the belief that the ^e out-
whole world was ready to crush her new-found break of
liberties, the diplomacy of Pitt was helpless. War > 1793 -
The French Eepublic declared war in February 1793 ; Britain
followed suit with a similar declaration in the following
month. The fair hopes of the brotherhood of man died out
as the cannon rumbled again across Europe.

But fortune seemed to have turned from France. Her
armies were unpaid, unfed, unclothed. At home, all was
chaos. The civil servants had received no salary for months.
The revenue was uncertain. The paper currency was dis-
credited. The Directorate had become ridiculous. The whole
machinery of the Eepublic had broken down in its eighth
year of existence. The people were dangerously agitated;
and it w#s likely to go ill with any one who attempted to
control them. The last agonised cry of Danton from prison
was still a warning to the surviving statesmen of the Eevolu-
tion: 'They are all brothers of Cain. ... 0, it were

232 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEBSEAS

better to be a poor fisherman than to meddle with the govern-
ing of men/

Other nations now anticipated, with some appearance of
probability, the dissolution of France. But they had for-
gotten the phoenix-like power of rising from their own dead
ashes which the French had shown in the past ; they had
forgotten, as Burke had also forgotten, that those who destroy
can sometimes rebuild the fallen fabric better than before.

In this desperate crisis, Napoleon Buonaparte became First
Consul of the Eepublic on 25th December 1799, and within a few
Napoleon weeks the whole complexion of events had changed.
Buonaparte, The strong hand of a master was at once evident
1799 " in home and foreign affairs. A proclamation was

immediately issued declaring the reign of disorder at an end :
' The Eevolution is finished/ The truth of the bald state-
ment was witnessed by a series of drastic changes. A new
constitution was adopted. The internal administration
was revised. The horrible festival of the execution of the
king, which had shocked anany even of those who were not
royalists, was abolished. Every citizen was free to quit or
return to the Eepublic at his will.

With an amnesty for the past, the future immediately
brightened. The funds rose steadily from twelve to forty
francs, and at times touched still higher. The State began
to pay its creditors in money. A National Bank was founded.
The great roads, that had fallen into decay during the troubles
of the last ten years, were repaired. The brigands that
infested the country were repressed. Systems of canalisa-
tion, the last works begun under the old administration,
were completed. The first efforts towards a codification
of the laws were made. New schools, the germs of the
present day lycees, were instituted. Peace was made with
the Church.

Confidence was restored in the army when the French
troops under Buonaparte were again successful in Italy,

THE END OF THE WORLD-STKUGGLE 233

Germany, and Austria. Their victories culminated at
Hohenlinden, which laid Vienna open to the republican army.
Austria was forced to consent to peace, and the Treaty of
Luneville left the First Consul free to turn his attention to
England.

He had already made an offer of peace, which Pitt had
sternly refused. But Pitt was now no longer in office, and
in his place was Addington, a man of very different ^ Peace
calibre. Through the defeat of Austria, England of Amiens,
had lost her chief ally. France had dictated her 1802 *
own terms to Europe. Her troops were drawn up threaten-
ingly as if to cross the Channel. Popular anxiety was rife
at the prospect of invasion, and it was deepened by discon-
tent and the scarcity of food.

As the war stood, indeed, the gains of England had been
great. She had seized every foreign colony that her navy
could reach. Her commerce had risen by leaps and bounds.
Her imports in 1781 had been over twelve millions sterling ;
in 1799 they were nearly thirty millions sterling. Her
exports had been even more progressive. In 1781 the total
had been seven and a half millions ; in 1799 it was nearly
thirty-four millions.

But the, enormous gains were balanced by the drain of the
war. The best seamen of the country were impressed for the
naval service. The subsidies to foreign powers were endless.
The increased taxation and the national debt weighed
heavily. Much even of the commercial gain was the result
of unhealthy stimulation and the necessity for war material.
On every hand was heard the cry for peace, and the most
level-headed men in the country felt it better to secure a
settlement while the advantages were still on the British
side, rather than push France to extremities and run the risk
of losing all that eight years* strife had brought.

Pourparlers were accordingly opened, and the negotiations
ended in the signature at Amiens, on 25th March 1802, of a

234 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS

treaty which brought the conclusion of the maritime war.
By its terms England kept India, Ceylon, and Trinidad. She
restored the Cape of Good Hope, Demerara, Barbice, Esse-
quibo, and Surinam to Holland : Martinique and Guadeloupe
to France : Minorca to Spain. She was to evacuate Malta
under a guarantee of its neutrality by the powers. Porto-
Ferraio and Elba were restored to France, and the latter was
to evacuate Egypt.

The news of the conclusion of peace was the signal for
outbursts of enthusiasm in both countries. The French
were welcomed in London. Crowds of English gentlemen
travelled at once to Paris to see the new France of the Kevolu-
tion. Fox was received by Buonaparte in friendly and almost
affectionate intercourse.

In England the trading classes now looked forward to a
reduction of taxation and an unbounded extension of wealth.
And statesmen were again ready to take up the schemes of
reform that had perforce fallen through at the outbreak of
hostilities.

Across the Channel, in the midst of the rejoicings at the
peace, the settlement of France at home, and the extension of
her power abroad, there was no thought save one of gratitude
to the First Consul, who in two years had -rescued the State
from bankruptcy and defeat. The future seemed serene;
only one solitary philosopher, remembering a parallel from
the ancient world that fitted too well, remarked : ' This young
man begins like Caesar : I fear he also will end like him. . . /

But the peace of Amiens was but a truce, and a truce that
was kept for a few months only. At first, indeed, the settle-
The ment seemed lasting. Buonaparte turned from

Napoleonic war to cral administration, with the determina-

p e * tion to complete the restoration of order at home.
His enmity to England had apparently disappeared. Once he
even went so far as to express the hope of a cordial alliance
between France, mistress of the land, and England, mistress

THE END OF THE WORLD-STRUGGLE 235

of the sea. But the overbearing temper of the First Consul,
now Consul for life, and the natural distrust of Tn'm in
England, soon shattered the peace. The Cabinet in London
refused to give up Malta until the promised guarantee that it
should be left neutral was secured. The well-founded sus-
picion that further plans were forming for the reduction of
Egypt and Syria seemed to be confirmed by a report pub-
lished in the official organ of the Republic, the Moniteur.
Still other schemes had been conceived for the extension of
French power in India. On the continent, the new govern-
ments that had been set up in Piedmont, Switzerland, and
Holland became mere tools of Napoleon.

When the English ministers protested, they were answered
insultingly with a demand for the expulsion of the French
refugees in London, the suppression of the newspapers which
criticised Napoleon, and the immediate evacuation of Malta.
The British ambassador at Paris was obliged to intimate
that language which might be used to a small power could
not be addressed to the United Kingdom, that the right of
refuge on British shores was inviolable, that the freedom
of the press was a constitutional maxim, and that Malta was
only held until proper securities for its independence were
received.

But remonstrance of any sort merely exasperated Napoleon.
His tone became still more warlike. ' In less than two years/
he had said to his companions after the battle of Marengo in
1800, tf I have conquered Cairo, Milan, Paris ; and if I died
to-morrow I should not have half a page to myself in a
universal history/ Since the peace, however, he had seemed
to put away the ambition to go down to posterity as a great
conqueror. But now his temper changed. He was heard
to utter that after all his destiny was war. To the British
representative he declared, ' If you wish for war, you have
only to say it we will make it until one or other nation is
ruined." In an address to the Legislative Assembly, he

236 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

taunted England with being unable to wage a contest alone
with France. In a general reception of the diplomatic corps,
he exclaimed twice to our ambassador, c You wish for war ?
You wish for war ? *

With such provocations from France, with a proud and
bellicose temper in England, a rupture became inevitable.
The war Preparations were hurriedly made on both sides,
Renewed, and, in May 1803, hostilities commenced with a
1803 ' declaration of war by the British Cabinet. The

first step taken by Napoleon was to plan a gigantic invasion
of England. 'We are going/ wrote the First Consul, 'to
avenge six centuries of insults and shame ; England -is ours
... let us be masters of the Channel for six hours, and we
are masters of the world/

But after waiting over two years, it was found impossible
to cross the Straits of Dover. Disappointed in the hope of
immediate success against England, and stung to the quick
by the European coalition which now threatened him in the
rear, Napoleon swung round his forces to execute vengeance
on the continental powers.

Everything was in his favour. He was as uncontrolled at
home as any of the Bourbons had been. He was absolute
master of a rejuvenated nation that had always been cele-
brated for military prowess, but was now doubly anxious to
excel. He had already brought the talisman of victory to
the army, and the army and he were unequalled in the world.
He had been proclaimed Emperor of the French, and his
imagination was busy with the still greater title of Emperor
of the West. He hoped to restore, perhaps to increase, the
dominions of Charlemagne. In one respect indeed he had
already surpassed the great monarch of the Middle Ages : for
whereas Charlemagne had gone to Koine to be crowned by
the Pope, the Pope came to Paris to crown Napoleon.

On -the other hand, the enemies of France were faced by all
the difficulties inseparable from a coalition. Divided counsels,

THE END OF THE WORLD-STRUGGLE 237

divided commands, and petty jealousies were visible every-
where. Their military reputation was not unsullied. The
Austrians had already been defeated. The Prussian The French
army had declined from the days of the great Europe,** f
Frederick. The undisciplined Russians were in 1303-12.
no condition to resist the flower of the Gallic troops. Sweden
was isolated ; the monarchy there had sunk far from its
greatness of the seventeenth century, and Napoleon had
himself taunted its ambassador with representing a third-
rate State. Italy, Holland, Belgium, and Switzerland were
absolutely under the control of France.

All went well for Napoleon. The victory of Austerlitz
shattered the alliance of Russia and Austria. A year later,
Prussia was overthrown at Jena. At Freidland, Russia was
forced to sue for peace. A great battle at Wagram opened
Vienna to the Grand Army of France. Berlin was entered
in triumph, and the king of Prussia became an exile at Koenigs-
berg. Spain was invaded, and a relative of Buonaparte was
set up as monarch at Madrid.

The whole continent was now humbled beneath Napoleon.
But success only inspired the Emperor to vaster projects.
He saw himself a greater dictator than Caesar or Alexander
had been. He was to be the autocrat who hushed the strife
of warring nations into uniform peace. He was to be the
human god that crushed the petty kings whose day was past.
The continent at last united into the single imperial system
he was planning, his hands would be free to turn against the
arch-enemy, England. The French troops once in London,
he would be master of land and sea. The British colonies
and India would fall into his grasp ; and Napoleon would
be in fact, as he was already in contemplation, the ruler of
the world.

The arrogance of the conqueror, an arrogance caused and
justified by his own overpowering greatness, by his stupen-
dous success, and by the comparative pettiness of his foes,

238 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

whose ancient kingdoms crumbled like paper at the first
touch of his hand, appears often in his despatches, and in
the epigrammatic sentences he threw out in camp. After
Jena, for instance, ' All this has been child's play. . . . Enough
of this ; I am now going to treat my enemies so that I shall
finish with them all/ When he saw the corruption of
Turkey, ' We must have done with an empire that can last
no longer ; we must hinder its fragments from contributing
to augment the dominion of England/ When the danger of
invading Spain was pointed out, ' I shall find in Spain the
Pillars of Hercules ; I shall not find there the limits of
my power/ And when his ministers remonstrated after the
battle of Wagram, ' There can only be serious events in the
theatre where I am operating, and there I am present to
dominate all/

After what manner the conqueror would have used his
power we can only speculate. In some respects he was as
great a civil administrator as a soldier ; his work as First
Consul of France showed him possessed of a genius for prac-
tical reforms, and his gift for organisation was superb.

But the day of universal empire, as of pure militarism,
had gone by in Europe, if indeed it ever existed. There was
no foundation for the conquests of Napoleon; he had no
political principles to guide him after a victory had been
won. He seized any alliance that presented itself, even on
the field of battle with a conquered foe. He made treaties
successively with Austria, Prussia, and Eussia ; within a
few months all were broken. The very members of his own
family that he raised to vacant thrones neglected his interests.
If he made war with his genius, says the great French historian
of the times, he made politics with his passions ; and the
remark is the key to the weakness of his empire.

As a statesman, the name of Napoleon was great before
the rapture of the Peace of Amiens ; but from that time not
one of his creations endured. The kingdoms that he over-

THE END OP THE WORLD-STRUGGLE 239

turned were soon restored and continue intact to this day ;
his two finest projects, the restoration of Poland and the
establishment of a republic in Italy, both died with him.

The disastrous retreat of the Emperor and the Grand Army
of France from Moscow in 1812 was the beginning of the end.
All Europe rose against the oppressor; and ^epan^
although Napoleon maintained a splendid struggle Napoleon,
of despair, France was invaded by the allies. The 1814 *
indignities that had been cast on Vienna and Berlin were
avenged when the foreign armies entered Paris. The Emperor
consented to abdicate, for his position was now hopeless, and
France herself turned against the man whom she had lately
adored. The country resounded with curses on the e Ogre
of Corsica * ; there were cries of ' A bas le tyran ! A mort le
tyran ! ' And men who but a few months before had not
dared a whisper against Napoleon now criticised his govern-
ment, his ambition, even his military capacity. His statue
in Paris was taken down. In one place, he was obliged to
change into foreign uniform to protect himself from the mob.

At length he arrived at Elba, the one spot of all his con-
quered realms that now remained to him. ' A new Sancho,
I shall think only of the happiness of my island/ he laughed
sarcastically ; and there, separated from wife and child, from
generals and army, from empire and provinces, and the pomp
and panoply of power, he was to remain a space, until the
lust of dominion drew Mm forth to play one last desperate
game with fate.

CHAPTER III
ENGLAND TRIUMPHANT AT SEA : 1793-1815

IF Napoleon won victory after victory on land, he could not
gain success for France at sea. The fleet of Britain still
dominated the ocean ; and instead of a monument at Paris

240 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

commemorating the last and greatest triumph of the Emperor,
we find to-day only a column which calls to mind the fact
that the army at Boulogne menaced England, and did no
more. The medal that Napoleon caused to be prepared in
advance, inscribed e struck at London/ to signalise his entry
into the enemy's capital, now appeals only to the curiosity
of the antiquary. The British Navy alone stood between
the British Empire and destruction; but it was equal to
the task.

It was, indeed, by no accident that the navy was efficient.
However blind the nation had been to its opportunities in the
THe Na^y colonies, it never failed to appreciate the import-
and the ance of sea-power. The victory over the Armada
Nation. entered deep into the heart of the people ; it was
recognised with thankfulness as a divine providence, but none
the less was it recognised how manifestly the tactics of Howard
and Drake had seconded the will of heaven. The lesson that
the safety of the country centred in the fleet was never for-
gotten. It was enforced again and again by the most different
writers and the most varying schools of thought.

Bacon found that ' he that commands the sea is at great
liberty, and may take as much and as little of the war as he
will, whereas those that be strongest by land are many times
nevertheless in great straits/ Waller sang that his country-
men were e lords of the world's great waste, the ocean/ and
again that c others may use the ocean as their road, only the
English make it their abode/ When he celebrated the wars
of the Commonwealth, he cried, ' Men that fight so, deserve
to rule the sea/ Pepys heard * with great pleasure of the
superiority of the English fleet of his time, over that of the
previous century. To Dryden the fleet was * mistress of the
seas/ the ' ancient lord ' of the ocean ; the proper care of the
nation was ' new ships to build, and battered to repair/ Even
Pope found that realms were * commanded by our oaks/
And Thomson, in 1739, wrote the national anthem, the

THE END OF THE WOKLD-STEUGGLE 241

proudest expression of sea-power, in which he exulted that
' Britannia rules the waves ! '

The one subject on which men of every party were united
was the necessity of a strong navy for England ; and it would
be difficult to say how great an effect this united attitude has
had upon the foundation of the empire. The fleet on its
side was worthy of the trust reposed in it, and the enthusiasm
inspired by it. Seldom was it worsted by an enemy. The
unconquerable breed of sailors by whom it was manned were
perhaps no more courageous than the enemies with whom
they fought ; but the recklessness with which the British
seamen entered the fight, the doggedness with which they
pursued it, the thorough mastery of their ships and of naval
tactics, in which they were unequalled, nearly always gave
them the victory.

They were at home on the water ; they loved their home
and the country they served, and detested the foe and all his
doings, with a childlike innocence curiously in contrast with
their rugged strength of character and profound knowledge
of their profession. e Hate a Frenchman as you would the
devil/ was Nelson's advice to those under him ; they pro-
bably obeyed without difficulty. Even the unwilling con-
scripts caught the infection of duty.

The fleet had done worthy service during the earlier wars
of the eighteenth century. And in the final great struggle
against France, when Britain could do little at Trafalgar,
first on land but subsidise other nations, it was 1805 -
on the water that her great victories were won. At the out-
break of hostilities, the English fleet which was watching
Toulon was driven away ; but the next year the French were
defeated by Howe off Brest. Three years later Jervis damaged
the Spaniards in the battle of Cape St. Vincent, while the
Dutch were almost annihilated at Camperdown. Nelson's
victory of the Nile crushed the French schemes for the reduc-
tion of Egypt, and the capture of Malta deprived them of

VOL. n. Q

242 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS

their base. Meanwhile, the severe manner in which Britain
had acted towards the vessels of non-combatant nations, in-
sisting on the right of search and the confiscation of goods
carried in neutral bottoms when destined for the enemy, had
brought about a renewal of the .coalition of 1780, the Armed
Neutrality of the North. Kussia, Sweden, Denmark, and
Prussia banded themselves together, encouraged by Napoleon,
to refuse British ships entry to their ports. The coalition
hoped to close the continent to British trade, in revenge for
the violation of neutral flags ; and that measure, had it been
successful, would almost have ruined England. But the
Armed Neutrality was broken in the decisive battle of
Copenhagen; and four years later, after unceasing watch-
fulness over Napoleon's camp at Boulogne, the crowning
victory of Nelson at Trafalgar destroyed the French and
Spanish fleets.

How deeply the news of this disaster to his arms disquieted
Napoleon is shown by his wish to diminish its import. He
ordered the newspapers to speak of it as a calamity caused
rather by the tempest than by the British ; but he thought
no more of invading England till the whole continent should
lie at his feet.

The invasion and occupation of England by the Grand Army
were now no longer possible ; the victory of Nelson at Trafalgar
meant, indeed, although the fact was not fully realised at the
time, that for the remainder of the war the command of the
sea by Britain was to be undisputed, and that the only danger
to her coasts was that a sudden raid or descent of the enemy
might damage some unprotected spot in the absence of the
fleet.

It meant, too, that India was safe from aggression ; that
South Africa remained in British hands ; that the infant
settlement in Australia could no longer be menaced by a
French descent on the Antipodes ; that the West Indian
islands were secure. And it meant that the little outposts

THE END OF THE WORLD-STKUGGLE 243

of empire, those small red spots that dot the maps of the
two hemispheres, and preserve the ocean road of Britain to
the remotest of her possessions, were henceforth safe from
molestation.

And in time it was discovered that the last victory of Nelson
meant more even than this ; for the destruction of the French
and Spanish fleets in Trafalgar Bay gave Britain the undis-
puted supremacy of the outer world during the whole of the
nineteenth century.

CHAPTEE IV

THE OCEAN HIGHWAY OF BRITAIN

THE great wars raged in all the earth ; and the struggle for
empire, which began with the attack of England and Holland
on the Latin monopoly of the newly-discovered outer world
in the sixteenth century, drew to a close when the two great
Latin powers of France and Spain were defeated at Trafalgar.
America and Africa had been involved in these strifes and
rivalries of Europe, but the most bitter contest was that for
the possession of India ; and as the influence of one European
nation after another rose and fell in the Orient, the importance
of the great ocean highway to the East, whose whole length
every vessel must make ere it drops anchor before Calicut or
Malabar, forced attention to the isles and islets with which
that highway is strewn from the Azores to Ceylon. Some
were scarce more than rocks, hardly large enough to supply
a base from which pirates could raid an honest trader ; others,
such as Mauritius, extensive, fertile, and beautiful, were
worth possessing for their own wealth and charm ; and one,
Madagascar, was almost an empire in itself.

The conflict grew and widened, and then narrowed again,
as the dominance of Southern Asia passed definitely into

244 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

British hands ; but the surging tides of conquest are recorded
indelibly in the maps and annals of the Indian Ocean. Arab
and Malay names mingle curiously with those commemorating
Portuguese explorers, Dutch merchant captains, French
adventurers, and English traders- A small archipelago
recalls Vasco de Gama, the first great Latin traveller to
cross those waters ; Mauritius claims its name from the Dutch
statesman, Maurice of Nassau; the Seychelles are called
after a captain in the French East India service, and almost
every island in that group is, named from an eighteenth-
century Frenchman. The .'Keeling Islands preserve the
memory of an English navigator, and many another coral
island or isolated rock owes its title on the chart to the fancy
or the humour of our old seamen.

The older or South African road to India has been displaced,
but not abandoned, in favour of the Suez Canal ; and along
both routes Britain has come to possess the chief strategic
points, to guard that vast highway the length of which her
ships, the spermatozoa of empire, beat daily to and fro in
active, restless search for the most distant of our far depend-
encies in the utmost waters of the earth. The gates of the
world are in the hands of the mighty from age to age ; the
nation that holds the solitary rocks and islands of mid-ocean
holds sway also in remote continents and among strange
peoples.

But the keys of the Indian Ocean only passed from France
to Britain when the sea-power of Britain towered above that
The Failure of a11 otlxer countries in the Napoleonic wars;
in Mada- and the largest and most valuable of all the islands
eascar. commanding those tropical waters fell definitely
and finally to France after a struggle lasting over two
centuries. The French won Madagascar by their pertinacity ;
the British lost it for lack of any definite aim. 1

1 Authorities. For Madagascar, Lyons M'Leod's Madagascar ; Elite's
Visits to Madagascar, which must be used with caution, since he was a

THE END OF THE WOBLD-STKUGGLE 245

That great East African island, of whose existence medi-
aeval and even ancient Europe had perhaps heard some vague
uncertain rumours, was discovered by the Portuguese navi-
gator, Fernan Suarez, in 1506. At first nothing more was
known of Madagascar than that e the inhabitants were very
numerous, of simple manners, and had not up to that time
heard of the religion of Christ * ; and the Portuguese did
little more than establish a temporary station on the coast,
and send an expedition into the interior to search for silver.

For nearly a century afterwards Madagascar was aban-
doned by Europe, until French and English travellers appeared
almost simultaneously on the island. The French East India
Company sent a vessel thither in 1642 ; two years later an
English settlement seems to have been established at St.
Augustine's Bay. 1 But civil strife at home often checks
expansion overseas; the place was neglected during the
struggle between king and parliament in England, and
Madagascar was soon abandoned by the British. The French
stayed on ; and from that time they never entirely gave up
the hope of conquering the island.

But they had many vicissitudes to face ; and internal
quarrels, that recurrent plague of French colonies, broke out
here as in India and Canada. The Governor of Fort Dauphin,
as the Gallic station was named, was a Huguenot, his associ-
ates were Catholics ; and religious passions ran high. The

participator in the events he narrates, and had good reason for not always
revealing all his own acts ; Keller's Madagascar is by far the best work on
the subject, if not always full enough in detail. Mauritius may be studied
in Grant's History j in an interesting, but not always accurate, series of
articles in Eraser's Magazine, 1879 ; in J. F. Anderson's Histoire de
Protestantisme a rile Maurice, Paris, 1903, invaluable for its special
subject. Stirling's Cursory Notes on the Isle of France are of little value ;
useful sidelights are thrown by Boyle's Far Away, and Bishop Yincent
Ryan's Journals. The latter deals also with the Seychelles and other
oceanic islands.

1 There was at one time an idea that Prince Rupert should engage in
the conquest of Madagascar ; a poem on the subject was dedicated to him
and published in 1638. But that impetuous leader found other employ-
ment in the outbreak of the Civil War in England shortly afterwards.

246 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

Governor, who had married a native of Madagascar, was
charged with squandering the general funds of the station
for the amusement of his lady ; and whether true or not, the
accusation served its purpose. The unlucky ruler was over-
powered and imprisoned by his subordinates.

In the end he regained his authority, and expelled his
captors, who migrated with some Malagasy women to the
island of Bourbon ; from which place the children of these
hardy exiles spread to Mauritius, the Seychelles, and the
Amirantes, establishing new French colonies of dubious
character wherever they went. Freebooting became their
profitable trade, and for long piracy was as rife in East Indian
as in West Indian seas.

But meantime other troubles had overtaken the French
in Madagascar. Some of the natives had been sold as slaves
to the Dutch ; and for this act, which savoured of treachery,
the French paid dear. The aborigines lost faith in Europeans,
and thenceforward there was continual war on the island.
Three times was Fort Dauphin reduced to ashes ;* in 1672
the place was abandoned.

Another century passed; but although the eastern seas
were filled with the strife of French and English, neither
disturbed the repose of Madagascar. Not until 1774 were
the old French claims revived, when a settlement was estab-
lished at Antongil Bay by the Hungarian adventurer Ben-
yowski. This extraordinary man 1 gained the complete
confidence of the Malagasies, who elected hi their king ;
he constructed roads, canals, and forts in the island ; but his
success proved more dangerous than failure might have
been. The Governor of the neighbouring French colony of

1 Benyowski had fought for the Poles against Russia, had been taken
prisoner and sent to Kamchatka. His life there was a romance; the
Governor's daughter loved him, he accepted and perhaps returned her
devotion. At any rate, she helped him to escape; and after a series
of exploits, which certainly lose nothing in his narration, he reached
Madagascar.

THE END OP THE WOELD-STEUGGLE 247

Mauritius was envious, and intrigued against him; and
Benyowski, tired of Gallic inconsistency, offered the island
to other powers, among them being Austria and Britain.
Neither accepted ; and thus Britain lost her second oppor-
tunity in Madagascar. Benyowski was murdered in 1786
by the French ; and for some years forward that nation
only maintained a few stations on the eastern coast of the
island, all of which were captured in 1811 by the British.

Both Mauritius and Bourbon had akeady fallen to England ;
and since British influence was now paramount in the Indian
Ocean, it seemed probable that Madagascar would likewise
fall into our hands. Nor was the desire to subdue the place
lacking. Governor Farquhar of Mauritius claimed the
larger island under the terms of the Treaty of Paris ; and
when the claim, as absurd as it was impudent, was repudiated
by the French and withdrawn by the British, he took the
better method of opening amicable relations with the Malagasy
tribes themselves.

In 1817 the British agent in Antananarivo took the oath
of blood with the king of the Hovas. In all things the two
were to be as brothers ; the slave trade was abolished in the
same year, the British paying 2000 annually as compensation
to the native monarch ; 1 and the British Government under-
took the education of twenty Hova youths, ten in London
and ten in Mauritius. British missionaries now began the
great work of converting the Malagasies to Christianity :
the Gospel was preached, the Bible was translated; the
people were taught to read and write, to engage in regular
industry, and to follow commercial pursuits. The Hova
army was reorganised and trained by British officers ; in
1825 Fort Dauphin was captured, and French power in
Madagascar seemed finally at an end.

1 The Acting-Governor of Mauritius, in Farquhar's absence, repudiated
the agreement, to the disgust of the Hovas. The difficulty^was soon
removed on Farquhar's return ; but for some time the expression * False
as the English ' was proverbial in Madagascar.

248 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

But British influence was as yet purely superficial. The
death of King Eadama in 1828 brought a violent reaction
against foreign ideas, and under his successor, Queen Eana-
valona, the missionaries and traders were expelled. The
spread of Christianity was ascribed to sorcery, and Eana-
valona declared that she would put an end to that creed if
it cost the life of every convert in Madagascar. A reign of
terror set in, and some of the Malagasies admitted that their
profession of Christianity was due to political or personal
rather than religious motives. 'We were doing work for
government service under the white people/ said one re-
luctant or fearful convert, ' and they would not have liked
us if we had not gone* to hear the missionaries; others
among the young men suggested that ' to look for pretty
women was our end in going ; for there were assembled the
cleanly and handsome/ And there is no reason to doubt
that the native beauties willingly adopted that portion of
the religious creed of England which makes the church a
convenient centre for the exhibition of millinery at the stated
times of public worship.

In 1861, however, the pagan queen died, and the British
quickly regained their influence. Two years later a revolu-
tion took place, in which the rebels demanded that the Hova
king should break with the French, who had been favoured
by Eanavalona; and when he refused he was strangled.
In this affair English intrigues played a not very creditable
part ; but the British profited by the crime. Trade with
Madagascar increased, and the Hova kingdom was soon
described as practically a colony of the London Missionary
Society. The French again lost ground year after year,
and the last vestige of their influence seemed to have de-
parted now that their settlements were reduced to a few
insignificant places on the coast.

But the British did not take advantage of the discomfiture
of their rivals. The Imperial Government of the day had no

THE END OP THE WORLD-STRUGGLE 249

desire to enlarge its oversea possessions. There was no
popular demand for the conquest of Madagascar. The British
settlers in the island, too, seemed satisfied with the position
as it stood, apparently not realising that if they did not annex
Madagascar, another European nation would do so. And as
France gradually recovered from her defeat by Germany
in 1871, she revived her old claims ; from the year 1883 her
influence on the island grew steadily ; and the studied policy
of the British, who had elevated the Hovas from the position
of the leading tribe into that of rulers of Madagascar, now
aided the French, for it was easier to crush one centralised
enemy than many small foes. The island was proclaimed
a French protectorate : Antananarivo was taken in 1895 ;
two years later Madagascar was declared a French colony,
and, on 27th February 1897, the native queen was deposed. 1

The chief prize of the Indian seas was thus lost to Britain ;
and the French intention of converting Diego Suarez, a haven
in the north of Madagascar, into a naval stronghold, caused
some little uneasiness in England. But of the smaller and
less valuable islands in these waters, many already acknow-
ledged the Union Jack; and the highway of empire had
been strengthened by the acquisition of such places as
Mauritius, the Seychelles, and the coral archipelagoes which
lie scattered between Africa and Asia.

The three islands of Mauritius, Bourbon or Reunion, and
Rodriguez, often called collectively the Mascarenes, from
the Portuguese traveller, Pedro de Mascarenhas, Mauritius,
who discovered them in 1513, were the chief 181 -
centres of French power in the Eastern seas throughout the
whole of the eighteenth century.

Mauritius had been occupied by the Dutch in 1598, on their
first engaging in the Indian trade ; but when their power

1 Considerable jealousy was shown in England at the time. The
French conquest was a brilliant piece of work ; but in 1895 Punch pub-
lished an unworthy cartoon, representing a French soldier dying, and
rejoicing in his last moments that his death would annoy the English.

250 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS

began to decline, they abandoned the island in 1715, having
founded the town of Grand Port, now known as Mahebourg.
A few Dutch names still linger in the island as relics of the
past ; but Mauritius was occupied almost at once by the
French, and for nearly a century the He de France, as it was
called affectionately by the settlers, was an object of peculiar
care.

There was no lack of colonists for a land so fertile ; and,
more fortunate than the ill-fated colony of Louisiana in
America, which was founded about the same time, both the
planters and their wives were of good character. Orphan
girls were sent out from Paris to Mauritius ; and in a healthy
climate, with an easy, happy life, the fecundity of the race
was found to increase, 1 while the beauty both of the women
and of their children was admitted by all. Many fortunes
were made by sugar cultivation ; 2 there was no lack of labour
from the neighbouring African tribes ; and under the wise
rule of Labourdonnais and others, the place prospered greatly.
The city of Port Louis was founded in 1735 by Labourdonnais,
who introduced cotton and indigo, built hospitals, and con-
structed an aqueduct ; while in 1768 the celebrated Botanical
Gardens at Pamplemousses the scene of the pathetic tragedy
of Paul et Virginiewere established.

Bourbon and Eodriguez were hardly less happy than
Mauritius. Unlike the French colonies in the West Indies,
all three weathered the French Eevolution without mishap ;
but during the Napoleonic wars, and as a consequence of
the predominance of British sea-power throughout the
world, they were lost to their motherland. On 6th July
1810, twenty British vessels appeared off Bourbon, and

1 It will be remembered that in less propitious circumstances the
fecundity of the French declined in Quebec at this period. See vol. i.
book iv. chap. iv.

2 If a Ifrench planter were so unfortunate as to fail, he generally
emigrated to Madagascar, where he cast about for a Malagasy woman
with property, married her, and settled down as well as he might
on the proceeds.

THE END OF THE WOELD-STEUGGLE 251

four days later the island capitulated before an overwhelming
force of five thousand men. A few months later, on 6th
December, Mauritius was likewise captured ; and Eodriguez
fell with its larger fellows. Bourbon was restored to France
in 1815, and renamed Eeunion in memory of the event;
but Mauritius and Eodriguez remain British possessions to
this day.

Mauritius, however, was not altogether fortunate in its
new masters. The island had been much to France ; it was
little to Britain. And its prosperity gradually declined, as
several causes united to lessen its former wealth and
importance. The abolition of slavery in 1835 checked the
sugar plantations, and the emancipated negroes became
the owners of small holdings in preference to working on the
plantations ; and though Indian kulis were introduced and
found satisfactory, 1 the closely cultivated soil presently
began to suffer from exhaustion, and the plants from
parasites. The competition of the sugar-beet now injured
the growers of the sugar-cane ; 2 while the opening of the
Suez Canal and the introduction of the steamboat diverted
much profitable shipping which had hitherto used the
island as a port of call. Mauritius could no longer be justly
called the Star and Key of the Indian Seas, as its Latin
motto implied, when the main bulk of shipping passed it by.

Sanitation was neglected, and the island, formerly noted
for its salubrity, became a centre of disease. Port Louis in
particular was dirty, 3 and subject to malaria ; cholera broke
out from time to time and slew thousands. On such occa-

1 By 1863 two-thirds of the population were Indian kulis.

2 The striking analogy between the history of Mauritius and the West
Indies is obviously due to similarities of climate, soil, products, and
population. The Suez Canal, however, harmed Mauritius by displacing
it from its position on a main trade route ; the Panama Canal will give
the West Indies the advantage.

3 Only one-fourth of the excreta of the 78,000 inhabitants of Port
Louis is removed ; the remainder is left to be absorbed by the earth, or
is carried into the open drains and ditches of the town.' Extract from
an Official Report.

252 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

sions.the timid took to religion and the careless took to
drink ; but the real cause of the evil was for long not attended
to.

The French population remained true at heart to the
country of its origin ; French customs have been pre-
served to this day; a French patois is still spoken, 1 and
French laws mix incongruously with English in the adminis-
tration of justice. The descendants of the older settlers,
the aristocracy of the place, likewise remained true to the
Roman form of Christianity, which their ancestors had
professed in France; but protestant missionaries from
England were quickly in the field. Mauritius was made an
episcopal see of the Church of England, with ecclesiastical
authority over the other British possessions in the Indian
Ocean; and Vincent Ryan, the first bishop, preached
strenuously and with, some apparent success to the kuli
immigrants from India and Africa. His converts were
many; even his cathedral was a converted powder-
magazine.

But despite the good bishop's toil, the field was too great
and too uncultivated for any real impression to be made for
many years. A traveller discovered a Christian Hindu who
still sacrificed to Vishnu, excusing himself with the remark
that ' the Blessed Virgin is good, but Vishnu is good too ;
if I could please the Virgin and Vishnu too, I should have a
double chance of getting through safely/ And the African
converts believed that the new religion was rather a talisman
against the evils of this world than a passport to the glories
of another. In their view, Christianity was desirable
because, when ' cholera come to Indian boy, he no die ;
come to African, he die. Indian boy baptized, African no
baptized/ It was a fact that the Africans had not been

1 The greater part of Mauritian literature is printed in French ; but
in the present century a change in favour of English has become
noticeable.

THE END OF THE WORLD-STKUGGLE 253

baptized, since it was doubted whether they understood
the meaning of the new doctrines; it was a coincidence
favourable to superstition that they died more rapidly of
the cholera than the Asiatics.

The creeds of the world might dispute their efficacy in
Mauritius ; but whatever ground the island afforded for
the efforts of the religious, its material prosperity continued
to decline from year to year. At the beginning of the
twentieth century a melancholy picture might have been
drawn of a once flourishing colony steadily sinking deeper into
the mire of poverty ; pauperism had increased until it became
a serious economic problem, the taxation for the relief of
distress was so heavy that it aggravated the evil it was
intended to abate ; unemployment and disease were constant
factors in Mauritius, and the conclusion became inevitable
that it was overpopulated. 1 The total number of its inhabi-
tants in 1908 was 376,635, and there was some tendency to
desert an island which had apparently seen its best days.

Poor as it is, Mauritius has its share of authority. The
island of Eodriguez is administered by a magistrate under
the control of the Mauritian Government; and Dependencies
the Chagos Islands, an extensive archipelago of of Mauritius,
coral formation, are likewise ruled from Port Louis. The
largest of this latter group of one hundred and fifty islands
is Diego Garcia, which has a good harbour. It was used as
a refuge for lepers in the eighteenth century, when it was
under the control of France ; a hundred years later, a
temporary coaling-station was established there, and it
became a port of call for Australian steamers.

The total population of the Chagos Islands is rather over
a thousand, of which Diego Garcia contains about half:
the Galagas and Cargados group, which are known as * oil
islands/ from their produce of cocoanut oil, are not regularly
inhabited.

1 See particularly the Official Report on Mauritius for 1908.

254: THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

More fortunate of recent years than Mauritius, the

Seychelles archipelago, a series of some eighty granitic islands

and islets, were originally discovered but not

and Depend- peopled by the Portuguese. They were annexed

encies, 1794. ^ m2 by F rance ; an d the first Gallic colony

was founded in 1768 at Mahe, the largest of the group, which
took its name from Mahe Labourdonnais, the great bene-
factor of Mauritius, and in some ways the greatest man who
has ruled in the Indian Ocean. From time to time other
French planters followed the example of the pioneer settlers
from the Mascarenes ; but the Seychelles were seized by a
Captain Newcome for the British on 17th May 1794. So little
difference did the change of allegiance make in the circum-
stances of the colony, however, that the last French Governor
retained his position for some years as British agent ; and
indeed the strife of rival European nationalities was hardly
noticed in these remote islands. French manners and
customs persisted under British rule in the Seychelles, as
they had done in Mauritius, from which dependency those
islands were administered until 1888.

Prosperity declined for a time when slavery was abolished
in 1834; but of late years there has been a considerable
revival ; coffee, sugar, and spices still being grown, and both
rubber and vanilla yielding valuable crojfe. The inhabitants,
who are more French than English, are both healthy and
prolific ; the death-rate in 1906 was but 16.48, and the
birth-rate 31.01 per thousand.

The Amirantes, the home of the gigantic land-tortoise, are
a group of some one hundred and fifty islets and rocks to
the east of the Seychelles. Discovered in 1502 by the
Portuguese, they are named after the great Admiral Vasco
de Gama ; their geographical position necessarily links them
politically with the Seychelles.

The island of Aldabra, which with Cosmoledo, Assumption,
and Astove, lies between the Seychelles and Comoro, is

THE END OF THE WORLD-STRUGGLE 255

under the administration of the Seychelles. Its annals
may be expressed in the terms of the yearly catch of turtles
and fish, a form of history which can be left without regret
to local talent.

Other dependencies of the Seychelles are the Alphonse,
Bijoutier, St. Fra^ois, and St. Pierre islands. They are
little more than oceanic rocks ; and as their names imply,
they originally belonged to France. It is a matter of the
smallest importance to what nation they adhere ; they have
no settled population.

The Providence and Farquhar rocks may also be included
in this list. The latter is called after the energetic British
Governor of Mauritius ; the former probably owes its name
to a sailor who escaped shipwreck there. Both are rather
dangers to navigation than advantages to empire.

All these islands possessed a certain importance in the
eighteenth century ; all were on or near the great highway
to India, and all derived some advantages from T j ieMe<i i -
their geographical position. Each was in some terranean
sort a tavern of the eastern seas, where honest Hasllwa y-
traders or pirates refreshed themselves during the toils of
a long voyage ; and each prospered better in the days of
sailing ships and leisured travel than when quick steamers
rendered intermediate ports of call useless.

But there was another reason for the diminishing value of
these small tropical islands of the eastern tropics. The con-
struction of the Suez Canal in the year 1869 by the French
engineer, De Lesseps, if it did not reduce or change the pre-
dominance of British power in the East, at least worked a
profound alteration in the relative value of the line of com-
munications by which that power was guarded. 1 The centre
of gravity shifted ; and the main ocean highway of empire,

1 The work was begun in 1860, after several years spent in surveying
and planning. The first steamer passed through on 28th September 1869,
with Be Lesseps on board.

256 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

instead of stretching as before from Plymouth to the Cape of
Good Hope and from the Cape onwards towards India, now
ran through the Mediterranean, the Eed Sea, and along the
southern shores of Asia.

The canal was at first indeed strongly opposed by the British,
partly because it was a French scheme, and one that originated
in modern times with Napoleon ; but mainly because it was
feared that it would damage the supremacy of England as the
distributing centre of Indian goods in Europe. Yet even
before the canal was constructed, England was making more
use of the Suez route to the East every year. In 1837 the
overland oriental mail route through Egypt was instituted ;
twenty years later a railway was constructed from Cairo
through the desert, and steamers transhipped their passengers
at Suez. After a while the canal proved more advan-
tageous to Britain, as the leading maritime power of the world,
than to any other country, for it shortened the passage to
India from 11,379 to 7,268 miles, and in time brought Bombay
within a fortnight's distance of London. And finally the
far-seeing Disraeli took advantage of the practical bankruptcy
of the Egyptian Khedive to purchase in 1875 for the British
Government 176,602 shares in the Suez Canal Corporation
for 3,976,582. The purchase was criticised by political
opponents at home ; but it was triumphantly justified by
time. It gave the leading control of the canal to the British,
and proved an investment of continually increasing value.

The Mediterranean Sea was no longer an inland lake when
the Suez Canal connected it with an arm of the Indian Ocean ;
it became the second stage on the new oriental highway.
And by good fortune rather than through any prevision of
the future, England had already acquired certain stations
in the Mediterranean at various times, some of which had
indeed proved useless and were lost or abandoned after a few
years ; but others were permanently valuable in the highest
degree.

THE END OF THE WORLD-STEUGGLE 257

The history of British policy in the Mediterranean furnishes
some curious instances of vacillation and mistaken judgment ;
it affords others of absolute and admitted failure. But in
any critical examination of that policy it must be remem-
bered that the objects of our statesmen in those closed waters
have varied from century to century, as the importance of
the Mediterranean has itself varied from time to time in high
politics or in commerce. In the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries the sole object of the British in the Mediterranean
was trade ; their one unfortunate acquisition was held with
the idea that it might prove of commercial value. That
idea was erroneous, and Tangier was given up after a few
years ; and the acquisitions of the next century, in Minorca,
Gibraltar, and Corsica were made for strategic and diplomatic
rather than mercantile purposes. The large British trade
with the Levant was carried on independently of these pos-
sessions ; the subsequent occupation of Malta was similarly
due to politics and not to trade. In the middle of the nine-
teenth century, however, the political importance of the
Mediterranean was enormously increased by the construc-
tion of the Suez Canal: Gibraltar and Malta became of
vastly greater value than they had ever been before ; and when
Britain, in addition to holding those places, occupied Cyprus
in 1878, and supported her presence by a large naval fleet
and a garrison, she obtained a strong if not an unchallenged
position in the waters which divide Europe from Africa.

Our first possession in those parts was purely commercial.
English traders had built up a considerable traffic under
Elizabeth and her successors with the ports of Tangier,
the Mediterranean; but the earliest territorial 1662-84.
acquisition of Britain brought nothing save disappointment
and loss. On the marriage of Charles n. to Catherine of
Braganza, the city of Tangier was ceded to England by
Portugal as part of her marriage dowry; and high hopes
were entertained that it would be of use in extending the

VOL. II. K

258 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

Morocco trade, and perhaps eventually form the nucleus of
a large territorial settlement.

The illusion was quickly dispelled. When the English
garrison arrived on 29th January 1662, it found Tangier ' very
little better than a ruin of walls ' ; 1 and it was discovered
that in evacuating the place the Portuguese had carried ofl
everything they could, even to ( the very floors, the windows,
and the doors/ And almost immediately after its occupa-
tion Tangier was besieged by the Moors, whose assaults were
continual.

The place proved a very uncomfortable heritage. It is
true that one of the Governors of Tangier was sanguine
enough to expect that by ' the indefatigable pains and labour
of our sojers and the extraordinary diligence of our officers '
we should ' put a pair of spectacles on (the Moorish chief)
Gayland's nose it would trouble him so as to oblige him at
last to a peace/ But the British were badly worsted by the
Moors in 1664, and other sieges followed in quick succession.
The Dutch, too, blockaded Tangier by sea, and the expense
of maintaining the garrison was heavy.

A great mole was built to form a harbour, at the enormous
outlay for that time of 265,108, 14s. 8fd., according to the
official account ; and many fortifications were necessary to pro-
tect Tangier by land. Had the place proved of any commercial
value, it might have been worth keeping. But although it
was proclaimed a free port, it was too insecurely held for trade
to be carried on ; there were ' nothing but Moors and the four
elements to be seen/ instead of merchants and cargoes, and
in the opinion of the outspoken Pepys, the only use of Tangier
was ' as a job to do a kindness to some lord/

Parliament now grew suspicious, fearing that the unfor-
tunate settlement was being used as a nursery * for papists '

1 Although in that very year a too optimistic official, one John Creed,
wrote to Pepys, 'Blessed be God, the affaire of Tangier is in the best
posture you can expect. 9 Hist. MSS. Comm., HodgTsin M8S., 1897.

THE END OF THE WORLD-STRUGGLE 259

and c desperate popish officers/ There was probably no truth
in this conjecture, which would hardly have been made had
not the anti-papal agitation of Titus Gates driven England
to frenzy at this time. But it was soon decided to abandon
a useless and costly possession. On 13th October 1683 the
proclamation of withdrawal was read to the garrison in Tangier,
and orders were given for the great mole and the fortifications
to be demolished. By March 1684 the place was deserted.

This first possession of Britain on the north-west coast of
Africa was likewise the last. For the next twenty years we
remained without any foothold on the Mediterranean ; but
our fleets were constantly employed in those waters, and the
necessity of establishing a port of call soon became evident.
But of the two places that were occupied for this reason, the
splendour of the one was not realised ; the conquest of the
other was not permanent.

Gibraltar fell to Britain in 1704 ; Minorca in 1708. The
importance of the latter was well understood in the War of
the Spanish Succession ; and the British Cabinet Minorca,
instructed General Stanhope to attempt its capture. 1708 - 82 -
* I still insist/ wrote the Lord Treasurer, e that we cannot
winter a squadron in the Mediterranean without having Port
Mahon or Toulon/ Marlborough's opinion as the first soldier
of the age was of more weight ; and he also held the same
language in private letters. The British force landed on
14th September 1708, and a fortnight later Minorca surren-
dered. Stanhope reported his success to London, giving it
as his e humble opinion that England ought never to part
with this island : which will give the law to the Mediterranean
both in time of war and peace. ... I cannot but hope that
we shall think of preserving Port Mahon, and indeed the whole
of the island/ After some months of negotiation with the
Austrian Court his wish was realised ; it was secured -under
certain conditions, and at the Treaty of Utrecht ceded
absolutely.

260 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS

During the next forty years of peace, Minorca remained
quietly in British, possession, a thorn in the side of France
and Spain. As a purely military station, its history offers
nothing of interest. Its importance seems to have been
exaggerated by the statesmen of the age, as that of Gibraltar
was depreciated ; but under Walpole and his successors the
garrison was neglected, and the Governor apparently spent
most of his time in England. In these circumstances, when
the Seven Tears' War broke out in 1756, the French antici-
pated and found an easy conquest. The deputy-governor
was disabled by old age and infirmities, and had to issue
most of his orders from a sick-bed ; the chief engineer was
in the same predicament ; all the colonels were absent. The
total garrison was 2800 men, but the fleet that was sent to
assist in the defence was under the command of Admiral
Byng. After an indecisive action, he returned to Gibraltar,
and Minorca fell. The grief and rage at home were intense,
but nothing could be done. However, at the Peace of Paris
in 1763, it was exchanged for Belleisle.

Still it was an object of envy by France. When war
again began, it was immediately attacked in 1781, and
after a prolonged and gallant defence surrendered the next
year. Thus was Port Mahon, c the finest port in the Medi-
terranean/ finally lost ; for at the Peace of Versailles it was
not restored. Geographically and nationally it belonged to
Spain : and we can see it now under the red and yellow
flag without the least regret. The subsequent acquisition
of Malta more than compensated for its loss.

With Gibraltar the case was different. The Pillars of
Hercules, the old boundary of the world, fell in 1704 to the
Gibraltar, squadron with which Sir George Eooke had un-
1704 - successfully attacked Barcelona. The Spaniards

tad left less than a hundred soldiers in the garrison, and
had neglected to fortify it. Eighteen hundred men under
the Prince of Darmstadt were landed on the sandy stretch

THE END OF THE WORLD-STRUGGLE 261

which connects Gibraltar with the mainland. They might
have experienced considerable resistance ; but the sentinels
had gone to church instead of on duty. While they were
praying for the destruction of the heretics, the heretics
themselves scaled and stormed the Rock; and the too
fervent piety of the Spaniards was only rewarded by a forced
capitulation. Against the wishes of the Prince, Rooke
hoisted the English flag, which, through the vicissitudes
of more than two centuries, has never been hauled down.

Keenly as the French felt the loss of Calais, keenly as we
should have felt the loss of Dover, Spain felt the loss of
Gibraltar more keenly still. Part of the sacred land, whose
proud boast was that it contained no unbeliever, was in
the hands of the infidels. The same infidels, an upstart
race from the north, had scattered the invincible Armada.
The same infidels had attacked Spain east and west, north
and south, at home and abroad, in port and on the high
seas. The insult was one to be wiped out by blood alone.

The fortress was attacked next year by land and water ;
but it had other defenders then, whose religious festivals did
not disorganise defence ; and after an ineffectual siege, the
Rock was left to its conquerors. In 1727 another attempt
was made. The Count of Las Torres bragged that in six
weeks he would plant his flag there, and drive the heretics
into the sea. But by now Gibraltar was well fortified : six
warships were in attendance; it could not be blockaded,
and fresh provisions arrived constantly from Tangier and
Tetuan. After four months, the second siege was relin-
quished. *

The third, final, and most important investment began in
1779. The blockade lasted for more than three years. The
attack was conducted by the allied armies and fleets of
France and Spain. At one time 33,000 men and 170 heavy
pieces of artillery were in use against it. In one period ;of
six weeks, over 56,000 shot and 20,000 shells were fired

262 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS

upon it. Floating batteries were used in the bombard-
ment. Princes of tlie royal house of France joined the

The garrison were reduced to eat thistles, dandelions,
and wild leeks. The Governor lived entirely on vegetables.
Scurvy broke out. But still the defenders held out, at one
time making a successful sortie, at another receiving relief
from the English fleet, at another silencing a bombardment
with a counter-demonstration. At length, in February 1783,
the news of the Treaty of Versailles arrived, and the siege
was perforce at an end.

From that day Gibraltar has never been menaced. By
common consent it has been left to its masters, the key of
the Mediterranean, the first gate on the British highway to
the East. "Were this a military history, an account of the
fortifications that honeycomb the majestic pile, a description
of the cairn on that frown over the stormy Straits, would be
in place. But except in a technical work, such details have
no interest ; and we may confine ourselves to noticing the
varying political and military importance of Gibraltar.

The Ne Plus UUra of Charles v., the Mountain and the
Key as its own emblem declares, was at first better appre-
ciated in Spain than in England. On the opposite side of
the Straits were the Mohammedan powers that threatened
the most Catholic country in Europe. Against these
Gibraltar was a perpetual bulwark. To England, on the
other hand, it had at the time no such value. Minorca was
considered a jewel of the finst water, Gibraltar an expensive
dependency. In 1718 Stanhope thought of yielding it.
' Gibraltar is of no great importance/ he wrote ; and again
in 1720 he suggested that in the event of Spain offering an
equivalent advantage the loss of the fortress would not be
regrettable. Florida or the eastern part of Hispaniola were
spoken of as exchanges. The whole question was referred
by both sides to the Congress of Cambray in the same year.

THE END OF THE WOELD-STEUGGLE 263

Even Pitt in 1757 offered the Court of Madrid that if they
would assist England to recover Minorca from France and
take part in the war as allies, he would yield Gibraltar.
Fortunately nothing came of these overtures.

But it must not be too hastily assumed that the English
statesmen of that day were ill-advised in their efEorts to get
rid of the Eock. It was kept up at considerable expense
at a time when expenditure was constantly increasing. The
Mediterranean had declined in importance till it had become
little more than a lake. England had no great interests
there. Nobody could foresee that the main route to the East
Indies a hundred years later would lie by way of Gibraltar
and Suez. Even so, the Orient of the eighteenth century
had not the same meaning for Britain that it has now.
Eobert Walpole was far from the days of Disraeli and
declarations that England was an Asiatic power.

At the present time everything is different. Our interests
in the East have grown until it is of the first importance to
secure the line of communication. Those travellers who
pass Gibraltar now on their way to Australia, or India and
the Far East, recognise how vital to the empire is the one
British possession on the European mainland; and how
correct is the view which regards it as the first link in that
great chain of imperial defence which is stretched the whole
length of the ocean highway.

The second is Malta. Captured in 1800 without a thought
of its ultimate use, it was taken from Napoleon by a com-
bined army of Maltese, Neapolitans, and English. o
Held by Britain temporarily after the peace of
1802, it was to be given up as soon as a guarantee was forth-
coming from France that Napoleon would not again seize it.
Meanwhile war broke out, and at the general peace of 1815
it was ceded absolutely to England.

Malta with its two dependent islands was not, and has
not been, an easy place to govern. To us its chief, indeed

264 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

its only use, was as a fortress in the central Mediterranean.
From that point of view it was of tremendous importance,
which has increased since the cutting of the Suez Canal : but
in a military establishment civilians are unnecessary, and there
happened to be a large population already in Malta, with
patriotic traditions and remembrances of its own. We
started, indeed, with public opinion in our favour, after the
usurpation by Napoleon had put an end to the historic
order of knights associated with the island for centuries ;
a monument erected voluntarily by the Maltese attests the
welcome they gave us.

But a mixed race is always difficult to rule ; and the Maltese
are mixed as are few other people in the world. Composed
of ItaEans and Sicilians, with a strong addition of Arabic,
a touch of the Greek, possibly a trace of the Egyptian and
northern African nations, with a Spanish strain and perhaps
a very slight French tinge, the Maltese are the outcome of
the continual intermarriage of every race surrounding the
Mediterranean. The British tendency in governing the
place was naturally to emphasise the Trn1it.fl.ry element;
and it was therefore not long before serious discontent
appeared. A series of reforms carried out through a number
of years alleviated the situation. The censorship of the
press was abolished in 1836 : the beginnings of repre-
sentative government were granted in 1849, and it was
agreed that the native laws should be administered by
native judges.

Other measures followed ; but within the last few years
there has been more than one agitation. That these
have been well founded seems to be indicated by the fact
that the British Government has generally given way. Malta
is now of considerable commercial importance, and its harbour
of Valetta is not only the headquarters of the British navy
in the Mediterranean, but likewise a port of call for trading
ships.

THE END OF THE WOKLD-STRUGGLE 265

The two neighbouring islands of Gozo and Comino are
also British territory, under the same rule as Malta : that
is to say,, a crown colony, administered by the General in
command of the garrison, assisted by an executive council
and a council of government.

The almost forgotten British occupation of the Ionian
Islands possesses a peculiar interest, in that it furnishes one
of the exceedingly rare instances in which we The Ionian
have given up a place at the wish of the inhabitants Isles 1814 - 64 -
without any other reason than the expression of that wish.
Taken over as a protectorate in 1814, this group of islands
was administered by England for exactly half a century.
They were well governed, and their prosperity increased
almost every year. But when we first occupied the Ionian
Isles, Greece was still a province of Turkey ; within a few
years afterwards that country had recovered its historic
freedom. The noble desire for national unity was fermenting
in the popular mind; and the Ionian islanders naturally
desired to share the fortunes of their mother country rather
than continue under foreign rule. W. E. Gladstone went
out as commissioner to investigate the situation, and as a
result of his recommendations the islands were ceded freely
to the kingdom of Greece in 1864. The decision excited
some criticism, but there can be little doubt that it was
justified in every way,

Two other islands in the Mediterranean were the occasion
of British intervention or occupation during the long wars,
An attempt was made to assuage the troubles Corsica, 1794.
of Sicily in 1812 by granting its people a consti- SicU ^ 1812 -
tution under the protection of England ; but that inestim-
able boon was received with profound indifference, and both
the constitution and the protection of England were with-
drawn when experience showed that neither was appreciated.
The Sicilians had indeed suffered many things under many
rulers ; but Britain was the wrong doctor to cure the chronic

266 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

political maladies of that island, and the prescription which
she administered proved the wrong remedy.

Our experience in Corsica was equally unfortunate. In
the stormy eighteenth-century politics of that island, one
party declared for England and another for France; and
when the former faction gained the upper hand, George ni.
was acknowledged as king on 17th June 1794. The place was
ruled for a time by the first Earl of Minto, who in later years
became Governor-General of India ; but the partisans of
France made headway, and the ungrateful islanders, who
were as remiss as the Sicilians in their appreciation of the
blessings of the constitution which was given them, revolted
and declared in favour of the Gallic Eepublic. The British
shortly afterwards abandoned the island, and the Corsicans
appear to have watched their departure with easy equanimity.

Of more significance than these petty episodes was the

British occupation of Cyprus ; * but that occupation, while

not without interest in the annals of the ocean

Cyprus, 1878. ,. , < -n - , -i, i ,

highway of Britain, was but an incident, a recent
and relatively unimportant incident, in the long and varied
history of the island. Originally a Greek colony, Cyprus has

1 For Cyprus, the Yearly Handbook of Cyprus; Cyprus as I saw It in
1879, by Sir S. Baker ; Stewart, My Experience of the Island of Cyprus ;
Fyler's Development of Cyprus, a very useful work ; and George Chacalli,
Cyprus Under British JRule (printed at JSTicosia), expressing the extreme
Cypriot view.

For the other possessions, Captain Hunter's Account of the British
Settlement of Aden, a standard work ; for Perim, The British Outpost of
Perim, in the Records of the Bombay Government, No. 149. There is an
article on Socotra in the Nineteenth Century, June 1897, by Theodore
Bent.; see also the Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier, by H. J.
Coleridge, S.J., and a pamphlet by Phil Robinson, dated 1878. The
smaller islands are mentioned in the Colonial Office List and the valuable
yearly Official Reports. For the Maldives, see a paper by H. C. Bell,
written for the Indian Government in 1881, and the Voyage of Francis
Pyrard 9 published by the Hakluyt Society ; for the Andaman Islands,
Lieutenant C. H. Turner's Notes on the Andaman Islands (Rangun,
1897), and Colonel R. C. Temple on the Penal System, in the Journal
of the Society of Arts, 24th February 1899. For the Keeling Islands,
Keller's book on the Islands of the Indian Ocean, and Darwin's Voyage
. Beagle.

THE END OF THE WORLD-STRUGGLE 267

passed from age to age to one nationality after another, its
strategic position always rendering it valuable to the state
that holds the command of the eastern Mediterranean. It
was a province of the Roman and Byzantine Empires;
it was held by Crusaders and Knights Templars as a
vantage ground from which to conquer Jerusalem; by
Venetians and Genoese as a base for trade ; and finally
it fell to the Turks when the Ottoman Empire was founded.

The first appearance of the English in Cyprus as a sove-
reign power was a matter of a few days only. In the year
1191 the island was seized by Richard I., as compensation
for an injury to that impetuous prince ; and there he married
his consort Berengaria. But the crusades claimed him in
Palestine ; and, wearied of a possession that was both use-
less and embarrassing, he parted with Cyprus to the
Templars.

After many vicissitudes and misfortunes, the island again
passed to Britain in virtue of a convention with Turkey in
1878. It was to be occupied and administered by the British
so long as Russia maintained her conquests in Armenia
conquests that are now apparently permanent. But Cyprus
nominally remained a Turkish possession, and a yearly tribute
was to be paid by the island to the Ottoman Empire.

On 12th July 1878, the British flag was hoisted on the ram-
parts of the c'apital city of Nicosia, amid manifestations of
joy from the Greek population ; and many hopes were formed,
both by the British from their new territory, and by the
Cypriots from their new masters. Something of the halo of
romance, with which the poets of Greece had surrounded
the island, still lingered before English eyes; the land of
flowers, the chosen abode of the goddess of love, might yet
prove an acquisition of good omen to the great modern empire
of Britain.

But misfortunes dogged Cyprus almost from the first. The
British control over Egypt soon rendered the island of small

268 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

importance. The yearly tribute of 81,752, which was pay-
able to Turkey, was a heavy tax which Cyprus could not
always meet. The British Treasury had often to come to
its aid ; and in twenty years more than half a million sterling
was contributed from this source. And the uncertainty of
the tenure by which the island was held made capitalists
hesitate before embarking money on schemes for its develop-
ment. It was rumoured that Cyprus was to be given back
to Turkey ; an agitation sprang up among the Cypriot Greeks
for its cession to Greece, and some persons in England favoured
the idea. 1 It was, indeed, emphatically stated by succes-
sive British Governments that there was no intention whatever
of abandoning the island ; but one of the many disadvan-
tages of the fluctuating foreign policy of the time lay in the
fact that a new administration was not bound by the declara-
tions of its predecessors. The uncertainty continued, and
the island languished.

Nevertheless, although Chamberlain admitted when
Colonial Secretary that England had not done all she might
for Cyprus, 2 many real improvements, were in fact effected.
The island suffered alternately from floods and droughts ;
and in 1897 it was decided to spend 60,000 on irrigation and
reservoirs. Plagues of locusts infested the land, and often
destroyed every scrap of vegetation and even human life, 3
and drastic steps were taken to stamp out the pest. A locust
tax was imposed, and rewards were offered for the destruc-
tion of the insects ; in 1881 over 1300 tons of eggs were
destroyed, and two years later the almost incredible number

1 A meeting was held at the St. James's Hall in London in 1897 in
support of the cession of Cyprus to Greece.

But in the parliamentary debate on 8th August 1898, he stated that
c he would not ask the House to be liberal to Cyprus if he thought it were
not a good investment.* A few years later, however, the London Globe
still spoke of Cyprus as a derelict dependency.

3 A fifteenth-century priest was suffocated by the very locusts he was
cursing. I leave it to the learned in such matters to determine whether
the potency of the curses, or the orthodoxy of the locusts was at fault.

THE END OF THE WORLD-STEUGGLE 269

of 200,000 million live locusts were captured. In due course
these measures proved effectual.

All the roads of the colony as well as the railways were
of British construction. No printing press had existed in
1878 ; within thirty years one Turkish and ten Greek news-
papers were published. The few schools were enlarged and
improved ; and at the beginning of the twentieth century
there were 392 Christian and 160 Moslem primary schools
in the island. And the old corrupt law courts were reformed,
and some measure of self-government introduced. But
many of the Greeks of the islands were and are discontented,
even with the improved condition of the administration ;
and the British in like manner have been somewhat dis-
appointed with their limited success.

If the growing British control over Egypt was a misfortune
to Cyprus, our dominance of the north-east African coast
strengthened the ocean highway of empire ; and The Bed
the southern entrance of the Eed Sea was akeady Sea -
secured by the possession of a second Gibraltar. The great
Portuguese conqueror, Albuquerque, declared that four places
were essential to the nation which held dominion in the Orfent,
Aden, Ormuz, Diu, and Goa. The first of these which
the Portuguese themselves held but for four years, from 1547
to 1551 though situated at the far end of a vast desert
peninsula, though arid and indeed almost rainless, had neces-
sarily been an important centre of commerce since traffic first
existed between Europe and Asia. To Aden came vessels
from Suez, from the East African coast, from Persia, India,
and, according to HaHuyt, even from China. Aden was
known, at least by name, to the Greeks, perhaps also to the
Jews ; a vague but not impossible tradition declares that it
was once occupied by the Eomans. It was visited by Marco
Polo ; and it had been admired by the Bolognese traveller,
Ludovico di Yarthema, who declared it ' the strongest city
that was ever seen on level ground/ But Aden lost its old

270 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

importance when Indo-European trade deserted it for the
new South African route, and by the end of the eighteenth
century the place was in a half-ruined condition.

But the English had akeady had dealings with the sultans

who controlled Aden. One of the first voyages of the East

India Company, in 1609, was to Aden ; in 1618

en> ' a trading station was established at Mocha. But
no political influence was secured, or even perhaps desired,
in Arabia, until the year 1802 when, under Wellesley's energetic
rule in India, a treaty was made with the Sultan of Aden.
A coaling depot was projected there in 1827, but the idea
was abandoned; eleven years later, however, when some
shipwrecked British sailors were insulted and outraged by
the Sultan, he was forced to sell his territory in compensa-
tion to the English. The wretched chief wished to retain
his authority over his old subjects after the cession ; but this
was refused, and Aden was occupied by the British on 16th
January 1839.

The place was declared a free port in 1850, and its trade
quickly revived, both on that account and by reason of the
opening of the Suez Canal. The population, which had been
but 6000 in 1839, rose steadily until in 1901 it was 43,974 ;
and fresh territory became necessary to provide for the motley
Adenese population of Arabs, SomaKs, and Jews. In 1868,
Little Aden, the western arm of the harbour, was purchased
with the island of Sirah ; fourteen years later an inland tract
of country was bought, which gave water and salt pits to the
place ; and in 1888 a third extension was made. By this
time the original small protectorate was enlarged to sixty-
six square miles ; and the old town, which had been confined
to the crater of an extinct volcano, had become a coaling
station, a garrison, and a fortress of first-rate importance.

British Somaliland, which lies on the African coast over
against Aden, on the other side of the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb,
those sorrowful waters which the Arabs know as the Gate of

THE END OF> THE WORLD-STRUGGLE 271

Tears, belongs to the history of the British in Africa rather
than the annals of the ocean highway beside which it lies ;
but the dependencies of Perim, Socotra, and the petty Kuria
Maria Islands all owe such importance as they may possess
to their position on the direct road to the Orient.

The small isle of Perim, at the entrance of the Red Sea, is
a bare dry rock some five miles square, on whose low hills
grows a species of coarse grass which affords sustenance only
to a few miserable goats. But strategically the place is im-
portant, and for that reason it was occupied by the British
during a few months in 1799, while Napoleon was threaten-
ing India from Egypt. Abandoned shortly afterwards, it
was again taken in 1857.

A lighthouse was erected, and in time Perim became a
cable station and coaling depot. It now possesses a fortress,
and is garrisoned by a small company of Indian infantry.
But life on so confined and bare a spot, where all supplies
must be imported, and water is only obtainable from con-
densers, is extremely tedious ; and the troops are, if possible,
relieved every few months.

Perim is governed from Aden; the next landmarks on
the ocean highway, Socotra and its dependencies of Abdal
Kute and Bromers, are administered from Bombay.

The island of Socotra, which was known to the Greeks as
Dioscorides the legend of an ancient Greek colony there
survived for centuries among Arab geographers socotra,
was imagined by them to be an island abode of 1886 -
bliss. A very different account was given by St. Francis
Xavier, the great evangelist who visited Socotra in 1542,
thirty-six years after its discovery by Tristan da Cunha.
* A wild country/ he wrote, e with no produce, no corn, no
rice, no millet, no wine, no fruit; in short, altogether sterile
and arid, except that it has plenty of dates, and also
abounds in cattle. The island is exposed to great heat
from the sun; the people are Christians in name rather

272 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS

than in reality, wonderfully ignorant and rude ; they can-
not read or write/ The description was not inaccurate;
but the Nestorian Christianity of the inhabitants, a mixed
breed of Arabs, Somalis, and a few Europeans, gave
way later before Islam or paganism. Socotra became a
favourite station of corsairs and pirates ; and, to check their
depredations, British Indian troops occupied the place for
a few months in 1835, but eventually withdrew. In 1876,
however, the Sultan of Eishn, the owner of the island, agreed
not to permit any foreign power to interfere in the affairs
of the island ; ten years later it was placed under British
protection.

The Kuria Maria Islets, which lie off the south coast of
Arabia, were discovered in 1503 by the Portuguese. Sterile
and bare as the neighbouring mainland, their sole product
is guano ; but they were ceded to Britain in 1854 by the
Sultan of Muscat for the purpose of landing the Red Sea cable.
They still remain integral but insignificant portions of the
empire.

The long chain of coral islands known as the Maldives,
where endless palms fringe endless lagoons, has passed
Maldives, from one European nation to another as political
etc., 1795. power waxed or waned in the Orient. Successively
Portuguese, French, and Dutch possessions, they fell with
Ceylon to the British in 1795. But the principle of non-
intervention in the local affairs of the archipelago has been
adopted. A petty sultan still reigns over twelve thousand
petty isles, and Male remains the seat of government ; an
annual tribute is paid to the authorities in Ceylon ; and that
country furnishes a market for the products of the Maldives. .
The natives of the islands, who are followers of Islam, are
celebrated for the kindness with which they succour the
shipwrecked strangers who are cast upon their dangerous
coasts from time to time.

The Laccadive Isles differ from the Maldives, to the north

THE END OF THE WOELD-STRUGGLE 273

of which they lie, in being less productive. The religion
and character of the natives is similar, but they are governed
from Madras.

On the other side of India lie the Andaman Isles, to which
are attached Cocos. Consisting of four large and many
smaller volcanic groups, their total area is some 2700 square
miles, most of which is mountainous and covered with dense
tropical vegetation. Hot, damp, and malarious, the
Andamans have the reputation of being extraordinarily
unhealthy; but the death-rate of the Indians transported
thither is not more than 30'7 per thousand, while the con-
dition of the British troops is better than at Rangun.

The islands were taken in 1789 by the East India Company,
and a settlement was established at Port Blair, then called
Port Cornwallis. Three, years later this was abandoned as
too unhealthy ; but in 1849 a Captain Shaw attempted to
foun<J a colony on Great Coco. Again the climate proved
deadly ; a third of his people died ; those who survived
suffered terrible hardships. In 1857, however, the Andamans
were occupied by the Indian Government as a penal station ;
Indian natives convicted of grave crimes, and sentenced to
long terms of imprisonment, were sent thither; and the
place has ever since been used for that purpose. Some ten
thousand convicts are detained there, guarded by British and
natives troops and police. The discipline is severe and
possibly reformative ; after some years the offender is per-
mitted a modified freedom, and is henceforth known as a
e self-supporter * ; should he not abuse his privileges, he is
allowed in his declining years to return to his own country. 1

The more southerly Nicobar Islands, which are divided into
two groups, the Great and Little, are administered by the
Chief Commissioner of the Andamans.

1 The Andaman aborigines, an inoffensive but suspicious people, have
the distinction of being probably the most intensely black race in the
world. (Portman.)

VOL. XL S

274 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

The group of islets known as Keeling, which lie in the
Indian Ocean south of Sumatra, and whose whole surface is

Keeling but e ^* m ^ es sc l uare ' were discovered, accord-
islands, ing to Purchas, by the English mariner William
1823 ' Keeling, on his way home from the Moluccas in

1609. Though fertile and healthy, they remained unpeopled
until 1823, when an Englishman of dubious or eccentric
character named Hare settled on one of the group with
a few Malay slaves, who formed the harem and the court
of this imitation oriental despot. Hare's project failed ; but
the old Scottish family of Clunies-Eoss occupied another
of the Keeling Isles about this time ; and since then, despite
the terrific tropical storms which often threaten to swallow
these petty intruders on the vast expanse of waters, the
lonely group has never been uninhabited.

In view of their comparative proximity to the Dutch
colony of Sumatra, the Dutch at one time advanced a
tentative claim to their possession; but the islands were
formally annexed by Britain in 1856. The Eoss family,
however, continues to hold patriarchal sway in local affairs ;
and neither police nor soldiers are required to maintain their
authority. Crime is rare, and money does not exist in this
primitive but happy community ; the only currency that is
known are the sheepskin notes issued by the Bosses. 1

By far the most noteworthy event in the insignificant
Keeling annals was the visit of Charles Darwin in 1836. He
found the islands * not very prosperous, and with rather a
desolate aspect, no gardens to show signs of care and culti-
vation/ But these typical lagoon atolls furnished him with
much valuable scientific information, which bore fruit in
his work, Geological Observations on Coral Reefs.

An attempt was made to colonise Christmas Island, which

1 An obituary notice of George Clunies-Eoss, and a good account of
the colonisation of these islands, appeared in the London Times on 8th
July 1910.

THE END OF THE WORLD-STRUGGLE 275

was first visited by Dampier two centuries before, from the
Keelings. It was eventually occupied by the British in
1888 ; twelve miles long and five broad, it is thickly wooded,
and possesses valuable deposits of phosphate of lime.

Such are the various stations which mark the ocean high-
way to the East, from Gibraltar to India and Australia. Indi-
vidually they are often insignificant, perhaps even worthless ;
collectively they form an important and valuable chain.

But the great wars which saw the acquisition of these
landmarks on the ocean road as well as the greater provinces
of empire, saw also the capture of other more isolated spots,
whose history has little connection with that of Britain or any
of her colonies.

Such, for example, was the barren rock of Heligoland,
or Holy Island : three-quarters of a mile in extent, but
gradually giving way before the action of the Helgoland,
waves, and with a population of two thousand isoT-so.
fishermen. At present a summer resort of German tourists,
it belonged to Denmark till 1807, and was used both before
and from that time, when it fell into the hands of England,
as a base for smuggling. At the peace of 1815 it was secured
to Britain; but its history is almost a blank. The old
Frisian constitution to which its inhabitants had been accus-
tomed was preserved till 1864, when another of British origin
took its place. Four years later this was withdrawn, and all
authority was vested in the Governor. Nothing more of
interest marked the eighty-three years during which it
was part of the British Empire, and it was exchanged with
Germany in 1890 for some concessions in Africa. From the
English point of view, Heligoland was useless in peace, and
dangerous in war ; from the German, its acquisition seemed
at the time a satisfactory step forward in the linking-up of
the great modern Teutonic Empire, which had been so long
divided into petty conflicting 'states, but which from the
day of Rossbach has been steadily marching forward to a

276 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

federation of all the German settlements in Europe, and
which in our time lacks only the Austrian provinces and
the Baltic colonies in Eussia to mark the completion of the
pan-German imperial dream of which Kchte was the first
and the most eloquent exponent.

Another island acquired in the Napoleonic wars was
Ascension, a volcanic rock thirty-four miles square in the
Ascension, South Atlantic Ocean, which had been discovered
1815. ^ the Portuguese in 1501. At first "named

Conception from being found on Lady Day, it was later
called Ascension by a second visitor who arrived at the
island on that festival in 1503, Nominally a possession of
Portugal, it was a convenient place at which passing ships
could leave any malefactors they might have on board ; but
no real colony could be established where only ferns and
grasses grew. In the eighteenth century turtle fishing was
carried on there, and it was occupied by the British in 1815.
A settlement was made at the one place which afforded
anchorage, and the little town which rose here was officially
named Georgetown in 1830. Since then it has been used as
an admiralty station, and Darwin compared it to * a huge
ship kept in first-rate order/ On a small scale, the same
policy which has been so successful in the greater colonies was
followed at Ascension ; roads were made, plants and shrubs
were introduced, and the none too abundant supply of water
collected and preserved. At Georgetown, a church, a
hospital, and barracks now exist: and the population
numbers some 160 settlers and a garrison. If it cannot be
said that the island is of much value to the empire, at least
it might be a source of danger in foreign hands.

We next come to almost the most insignificant inhabited
spot in the whole British Empire Tristan da Cunha, in
Tristan da comparison with which Ascension seems a powerful
crania, isie. s t a te. The first European to see this island of
sixteen square miles, whose sole products were stunted trees,

THE END OF THE WORLD-STKUGGLE 277

brushwood, ferns, and coarse grass, was Albuquerque ; and
to him, wearied by a long sea voyage, it appeared a * land
very extensive and very beautiful/ That he was mistaken
may be shown from the fact that, although Dutch and
French vessels called there from time to time, and the English
East India Company thought of using it as a port of call
for their vessels, the earliest settlers were three Americans
in 1810. Annexed by England in 1816, a garrison was kept
there for a few months only ; but when this was withdrawn,
a corporal, his wife, two children, and two other single men
remained. Such was the beginning of the colony, which
was increased later by some stray arrivals.

Its petty annals have not been without vicissitudes. Many
of the younger men have emigrated .to South Africa, or taken
to the sea ; and owing to this cause the population has fluctu-
ated from 109 in 1880, to 52 in 1893 ; ten years later it had
again risen to 75. All live in one township, which is called
Edinburgh, on account of a visit paid by the Duke of that
name in 1857 : and a hard, perhaps inadequate, livelihood
is gained by breeding cattle, sheep, and donkeys. But in
spite of the rough conditions which surround their existence
the inhabitants have on several occasions refused the offer
of the Imperial Government to transport them elsewhere.

The system of rule is patriarchal, and Tristan da Cunha
is directly under the control of England ; periodical visits
are made by vessels of the navy. These, with the calls of
occasional whaling ships, are the only means of communica-
tion with the outside world. The two neighbouring islands,
named Nightingale and Inaccessible, are uninhabited. 1

More important in point of size and population are the
Falkland Islands. Discovered on 14th August 1592 by John
Davis, called Hawkins' Maiden Land by Hawkins two years

1 The fullest account of life on this island is contained in a diary of
Three Years in Tristan da Gunha, published in 1910 by Mrs. K. M.
Barrow.

278 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

later in honour of himself and Queen Elizabeth, they were
given their present name in 1670 : but nobody thought
Falkland ^ a set *l eniei i* there until Anson, in the
islands, account of his voyage round the world, published
1765 ' in 1748, remarked on the convenience of possess-

ing a station and port of call in the southern Atlantic. The
project was abandoned on the urgent representations of
Spain ; and the French, with some of their people who had
left Canada after the British conquest, founded the first
Falkland colony in 1764. They were soon expelled by the
Spaniards ; but the English arrived the next year. After
five years they also were driven out : and it was through
this high-handed action on the part of Spain that war was
threatened from London. In the end the British Government
backed down ; and the whole affair would have long been
forgotten, were it not that Samuel Johnson wrote a pamphlet
in their defence, while Junius attacked them.

The islands caused yet another international dispute
before they came finally into British hands. In 1820 they
were taken by the republic of Buenos Ayres ; but eleven
years afterwards the settlement was destroyed by the United
States as a measure of reprisal for some wrong done. In
1832 they were again taken by England, and used by the
Admiralty, although there was some intention of converting
them eventually into a penal settlement, in accordance with
the settled policy then pursued at Downing Street, which
held that the first use to which every new colony should be
put was as a dumping ground for convicts. From this fate
they were saved ; in 1843 a civil government was instituted ;
and since then the Falkland Isles have been a crown colony,
with a Governor, and Executive and Legislative Councils :
surely a sufficient apparatus of rule for a country whose capital
of Stanley has only some nine hundred inhabitants, and
whose population altogether numbers little more than two
thousand. In 1851 the Falkland Islands Company was

THE END OF THE WOKLD-STKUGGLE 279

formed, in whose hands nearly all the trade of the place has
been concentrated ; the chief settlers are Scotsmen, who by
continuous hard work make a living in islands described by
Darwin as c undulating with a desolate and wretched aspect/
and by another visitor in the Challenger as f a treeless expanse
of moorland and bog and bare and barren rock/

Nearly all the British colonies, however small, reproduce
in essentials the constitution of the mother country; in
many cases they furnish a microcosm of the Soutll
empire by administering protectorates of their own. Georgia,
The Australian Commonwealth is responsible for 1776 *
various groups in the Pacific; New Zealand possesses a
whole cluster of islands ; Tristan da Cunha guards its
two neighbours ; and the Governor of the Falkland Islands
is in like manner Governor of South Georgia, an uninhabited
tract of land in the Antarctic. First seen by the French
voyager La Eoche in 1675, it was visited a century later
by Captain Cook, whose account of it was graphic but un-
inviting: "The wild rocks raised their lofty summits till
they were lost in the clouds, and the valleys lay covered with
everlasting snow. Not a tree was to be seen, nor a shrub
even big enough to make a toothpick/

Of equal importance is another derelict of empire, Gough
Island, which was probably discovered by the Spaniard Diego
Alvarez, but visited by Captain Gough in 1731, ^ug^
and claimed by him for England. Still considered island,
as a British possession, it is enough to say that
no ship ever touches there, and that nobody has ever lived,
or seems likely to live on its desolate shores.

280 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

CHAPTER V

THE FINAL BECKONING : 1815

WITH the escape of Napoleon from Elba in 1815 began the
last act in the great world-drama which gave to France the
Waterloo, troubled possession of Europe for a decade, and
IBIS. to Britain the undisputed possession of the outer

world for a century. Napoleon reckoned, and he reckoned
justly, on the respect and admiration, if not love, which
Prance bore him. He knew that the king who had been
set up in his place was but a puppet of the diplomats. He
knew that the army his army was discontented and
mutinous. He believed that they longed again for the
victories to which he had led them; that they preferred
even defeat under him to peace under a Bourbon. And in
France, the army often decides for the nation. Napoleon
landed in Provence and marched without opposition to
Paris. Louis xvm. fled at once, and Europe prepared to
renew the conflict.

But the close of the career that had electrified the world
was at hand. The revived empire lasted for a hundred
days : and then in the carnage of Waterloo it went down
for ever. The man who had risen from a humble family in
Corsica to be the master of a continent fell before the coalition
his vast schemes had raised.

The place destined for Napoleon's last years in captivity
was one of the most lonely islands of the world one of
st. Helena, those barren rocks that a visitor from another
1651 - planet might think even our combative humanity

would have left in peace. But small, barren, and unattractive
as it was, St. Helena already had its history as the outpost
of rival empires. Discovered on 21st May 1502 by the
Portuguese, it had been used by them as a port of call on the

THE END OF THE WORLD-STRUGGLE 281

way from the Indies. For many years they were the only
visitors, but when the English traffic to the Orient began
to grow it was seized by our East India Company in 1651.
James Fort, or Jamestown as it has since been called, was
erected there, being named in honour of the Duke of York.
In 1665, and again in 1673, the Dutch took St. Helena, but
in each case they were driven out after a few months, and
from that time our possession of it has been undisturbed.

With the cessation of attacks by foreign traders its history
ceased to present anything of interest. There were the usual
quarrels between the governor and the chaplain, the usual
semi-mutinies among the garrison, which invariably appear
in colonies where space is limited and time hangs heavy.
The population consisted of employees of the East India
Company, casual settlers, and negro slaves : in 1723 St.
Helena contained 500 whites and 610 blacks, a number which
increased steadily but not rapidly, and generally in the
same proportion of colour. In subsequent generations the
prevalent custom of intermarriage produced a mixed class
of people, who remain in the island to this day.

It was to this lonely spot which, in Darwin's words, rises
abruptly "like a huge black castle from the ocean/ that
Napoleon was banished, to eat^out his heart in captivity,
vexed by the unworthy spite of his jailor, Sir Hudson Lowe.
' G'est un sot personnage que celui d'un roi exile et vagabond/
he had written to his brother in the days when Europe lay
at his feet : and now that in less than twenty years his
ambition had carried him from simple republican general to
Emperor of the West, conqueror of Egypt and Palestine,
victor in Rome, Vienna, Berlin, Madrid, Moscow, Amsterdam,
Brussels, and down again to querulous captive of his inveterate
enemy, he could meditate on an epigram he had applied to
another, but which in the end applied only to himself.

For nearly six years he lived in St. Helena, surrounded by

282 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS

a few faithful friends, reading and studying the military history
of the past, or dictating records of his own campaigns ; the
latter almost the only pleasure now left him. ' They are of
granite ; envy cannot bite at them/ he exclaimed once when
speaking of the judgment which posterity would pass on his
achievements on European battlefields.

On 5th May 1821, Napoleon died of cancer in the stomach.
BGs remains were interred at St. Helena ; but in 1840 they
were brought to Paris, where they rest fittingly to this day,
among the other great heroes of France.
With the death of its illustrious captive the prosperity of
St. Helena seemed to vanish, as if in revenge for the harsh-
ness with which he had been treated. In 1834 the island was
ceded by the East India Company to the nation, when it
became a crown colony. But it had only been useful as a
station for sailing vessels, and with the introduction of steam
longer journeys could be made without putting into port; and
after the Suez Canal was opened it soon lay altogether out
of the beaten track. Still maintained as a naval and till
recently as a military station, it possesses a certain strategic
importance : as a commercial settlement its use is practically
negligible.

The battle of Waterloo decided something greater than the
fall of Napoleon. It was the end of the world-struggle. The
The End of ^ 3CS *' hft ter contest between the great powers of
t&e world- Europe for the control of the outer world ended
struggle. Definitely with the capture of the French Emperor.
It had begun with the discovery of America and the new
route to the Indies.

For a century Spain and Portugal had been supreme.
Then the rebellion of the Netherlands, the defeat of the
Armada, and the insults to the Spanish and Portuguese flags
on the high seas marked the decay of the empires that had
aspired to universal dominion.

THE END OF THE 'WORLD-STRUGGLE 283

In their place, and on the ruins of their power, rose four
great nations, France, England, Holland, and Sweden, to
dispute the prize. The latter, as the head of a great Scandi-
navian federation, seemed at one time about to take a great
part in developing the extra-European lands. But her material
resources were small, and they were wasted on the brilliant
but useless exploits of her royal family in Germany and
Russia. The union of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway was
never thoroughly accomplished, and the possibility of a new
Sweden overseas vanished under the stern competition of
the three remaining powers.

Of those three, Holland was for a time the most successful.
The sailors who manned her ships, the citizens who directed
her commerce, the settlers who founded New Amsterdam in
one hemisphere and Batavia in the other, procured her a
magnificent range of territory.

But the great trading empire of Holland was only too
literally a house built on the sand. The dominions at home
were small. They were constantly threatened by the full
force of the North Sea, which had already destroyed half of
them. Not less dangerous was the enmity of human rivals.
England was frequently at war with Holland, and a large
part of the Dutch colonies soon acknowledged the British flag.
France was likewise covetous of the goodly heritage on her
northern frontier. Louis xiv. laid rough hands on the Nether-
lands, but was beaten back. Under Napoleon, however,
Holland was reduced, in fact if not in name, to a mere
province of the French Empire. At his fall, the independence
of the country was restored and guaranteed, and many of
the oversea possessions were given back. The kingdom is
to-day positively greater than ever, but relatively it has
declined, and its share in the world-struggle was merely
passive after the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.

There remained two great nations to dispute the universe

284: THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS

in the eighteenth century. The contest, indeed, between
France and England was not new. For the last four cen-
turies of the Middle Ages they had been rivals. It was France
that sustained the shock when the Plantagenets endeavoured
to found a continental empire. It was the French who finally
drove the English off the European mainland, and thus
shattered the illusion that misled all our rulers from William
the Conqueror to Queen Mary.

But the contest for Europe was hardly at an end, when the
two nations were pitted against each other overseas. French
and English fishermen were already ill-disguised enemies off
the coast of Newfoundland. A few years later French and
English merchants were bidding against each other in the
marts of Bengal ; French and English politicians were nego-
tiating against each other in the courts of Indian princes. In
Africa, the little settlements of either nation were deadly
rivals. In America, the colonists of Canada and New England
were jealous of each other's success.

The Seven Years* War brought the quarrel to a head.
Everywhere outside Europe, England was victorious. The
French were driven from Asia and America. The colonies that
remained to them were small, but valuable. Again they
attempted to build up an empire overseas. Again the
Napoleonic wars gave England her opportunity. Again
the French colonies fell into the hands of England, along
with many of the Dutch. And at the Congress of Vienna
in 1814 the greater part of all these territories were finally
made over to Britain.

From that tame the lead of Britain in colonising has never
been questioned. France has created another colonial empire,
greater and more prosperous than the first ; Germany and
Italy have entered the competition for overseas territory ;
Eussia has extended her sway in marvellous fashion over the
barbaric regions of Central Asia. But in mere size the British

THE END OF THE WOBLD-STKUGGLE 285

Empire is by far the largest. Its territories are indisputably
the most fertile. Its system of government, whether demo-
cratic or despotic, is the best yet obtained, although evidently
not the best obtainable. Since the fall of Napoleon the
British have been engaged in great and terrible wars in all
parts of the world, but the general ideal of the empire has
happily been peace : and it may be said that, while England
would neither have acquired nor kept her empire had she
feared the appeal to the sword, she would also have been
unable to develop it, in so far as it has been developed, had
it not been that her first wish was for peace.

The history of the British Empire, so far as we have
followed it at present, has been mainly one of conflict, from
the day that Drake ventured into the charmed circle of the
Indies, till the day that Nelson drove the French out of
Egypt and off the high seas. But we have still to follow
the progress of our people during the century that has elapsed
from the end of the world-struggle to our own time : and
the latter period is far more absorbing and of far more
importance, for it tells of the foundation of British institutions
and the growth of the British race in all parts of the earth ;
it speaks of the energy that has gone to create great states
and splendid civilisations where previously the wallaby and
the dingo, the tiger, the leopard, or the bison have roamed
unchecked ; it proves that, in contact with native races, we
have endeavoured to deal uprightly and wisely, in spite of
the temptations to which we have too frequently succumbed ;
and it shows that, wherever our people may be, in the middle
of Asia, in the deserts of Africa, or in the yet waste up-
country of Australia, they have still remained true to the old
British stock whose proud boast it has ever been that they
possess liberty with order, and a high standard of duty with
the courage to do it. God in his mercy grant that the future
which stretches before us may be as glorious as the past ;

286 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS

that we may neither be blind to our opportunities nor unjust
to others in laying hold of them ; and that when the hour
of danger comes, as assuredly it will, we may not be found
lacking in the will and the power to stand firm in defence of
our own.

END OF VOLUME THE SECOND

Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty
at the Edinburgh University Press

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