stipulations were evaded by the local rulers; but it was not doubted that the profits under the new system would. soon pay for all. This did not turn out true, however. The commerce of the Company did not increase, even though the taste for tea became wonderfully developed in Europe. At any time within the following thirty years the commerce of the Company might be shown to have been nearly equalled by that of single firms in London. Yet were the English people regarded in India, not exactly as "a nation of shopkeepers," for the natives had been told that Europe did not contain more than ten thousand men altogether but as a sort of pedlar caste. The French had establishments, imitated from ours, as ours were from the Dutch-presidencies ruled by a governor, with the help of a council, composed of senior merchants, while the lower offices were filled by junior merchants, factors, and writers; and yet the French were regarded as a military people and admired accordingly, long before we were supposed to be anything but shopkeepers. The reason assigned for this contrasted estimate, is that the French were the first to discover the two great secrets of European strength in India: that European strength depended essentially on military prestige; and that the native soldier was susceptible of training in European discipline. While the few native soldiers, first retained at Bombay, and then at Madras, were still the disorderly ill-armed peons that they were when taken into pay, the French authorities were training and arming their native bands (as well as the blacks from Africa), and were not long in convincing their Mahratta neighbours that, however it might be with the English, there were other Europeans who were equal to war, and had a liking for it. The time was at hand for a change in Mogul and Mahratta public opinion in regard to the British. one at The French had two presidencies in the East the Isle of France and the other at Pondicherry. Their three factories in India were subject to the Pondicherry Government one on the Malabar and another on the Coromandel coast; and a third, Chandernagore, on the Hooghly, twenty-three miles above Calcutta. In 1732 commerce seemed to be under an evil star in that Bengal region. The English Government reduced their dividends that year, notwithstanding the splendid terms they had obtained from Delhi; and as for the French factory at Chandernagore, it was in a truly beggarly state. Commerce seemed to be extinct; there was not a vessel of any class at its wharf; and poverty and license divided the lives of the wretched inhabitants of the wooden huts which constituted the settlement. An able man arrived as manager, and stone dwellings rose up in the place of wooden huts, to the number of two thousand; and, instead of a dead stillness at the waterside, from twelve to fifteen vessels a day were coming and going. The hour and the man had arrived for the French; and the hour and the man were approaching for the English. While the great Dupleix was beginning his reforms there in the prime vigor of his years, a child in England was giving almost as much annoyance to his relations as he was hereafter to cause to Dupleix. The Spaniards say that "the thorn comes into the world point foremost." It was so in this case. The uncle of little Robert Clive, then in his seventh year, wrote a sad character of him. "Fighting, to which he is out of measure addicted," said his uncle, "gives his temper such a fierceness and imperiousness, that he flies out on every trifling occasion." At the same date, there was born in a poor parsonage in Worcestershire a forlorn infant, the son of a father married at sixteen, and soon after dead, and of a mother who died in a few days after the orphan's birth, leaving him to the care of a grandfather, sunk in trouble and poverty. No one living could then have divined what connection could exist among the des tinies of these three. Nor would it have been easier to guess seven years later. At that later date Dupleix had purchased no less than seventy vessels to carry his commodities to all parts of the known world, extinguishing in Bengal the English reputation for commercial ability, and bringing splendid returns to his own coffers. Robert Clive was then full of mischief. sitting on the spout at the top of the lofty steeple of Market Drayton Church, and levying a black-mail* of apples and halfpence, with his rabble rout of naughty boys at his heels, on the tradesmen who feared for their windows. As for little Warren, the orphan, then seven years old, he was lying beside the brook which flows through the lands of his ancestry, and, as he himself told afterwards, making up his mind to the personal ambition of his life to be, like his forefathers of several generations, Hastings of Daylesford. On these three the ambitious and unscrupulous French manager, already at his work, the turbulent English schoolboy, and the romantic child, dreaming under the great ancestral oaks, while living and learning among ploughboys—the destinies of British India were to hang. Through them we were to hold India as a territory, and by a military tenure; and to have a policy there, perhaps as important to the human race in the long run as that of the mother-country however much may be comprehended in that abstraction. Ibid. Black-mail, a kind of tax levied by banditti -in return for which the property of the payers was secured from pillage. CLIVE. [IT is now little more than a century since the English began to establish themselves in any force upon the peninsula of India; and we at present possess in that country a more extensive territory and a more numerous population than any European power can boast of. In no instance has the genius of the English and their courage shone forth more conspicuously than in their contest with the French for the empire of India. The numbers on both sides were always inconsiderable, but the two nations were fairly matched in the cabinet and in the field: the struggle was long and obstinate, and at the conclusion the French remained masters of a dismantled town, and the English of the grandest and most extensive colony that the world has ever seen. And this splendid acquisition is due to the genius and daring of a single man.] Times. CLIVE had been only a few months in the army, when intelligence arrived that peace had been concluded between Great Britain and France. Dupleix * was in consequence compelled to restore Madras to the English company, and the young ensign was at liberty to resume his former business. He did, indeed, return for a short time to his desk. He again quitted it in order to assist Major Lawrence in some petty hostilities with the natives, and then again returned to it. While he thus was wavering between a military and a commercial life, events took place which decided his choice. The politics of India assumed a new aspect. There was peace between the English and French crowns, but there arose between the English and French companies trading to the East a war most eventful and important, a war in which the price was nothing less than the magnificent inheritance of the house of Tamerlane. The empire which Baber and his Moguls reared in the sixteenth century was long one of the most extensive and splendid in the world. In no European kingdom was so * The French commandant previously alluded to. large a population subject to a single prince, or so large a revenue poured into the treasury. The beauty and magnificence of the buildings erected by the sovereigns of Hindostan amazed even travellers who had seen St. Peter's. The innumerable retinues and gorgeous decorations which surrounded the throne of Delhi, dazzled even eyes which were accustomed to the pomp of Versailles. Some of the great viceroys, who held their posts by virtue of commissions from the Mogul, ruled as many subjects as the King of France or the Emperor of Germany. Even the deputies of these deputies might well rank, as to extent of territory and amount of revenue, with the Grand-Duke of Tuscany or the Elector of Saxony. There can be little doubt that this great empire, powerful and prosperous as it appears on a superficial view, was yet, even in its best days, far worse governed than the worst governed parts of Europe now are. The administration was tainted with all the vices of Oriental despotism, and with all the vices inseparable from the domination of race over race. The conflicting pretences of the princes of the royal house produced a long series of crimes and public disasters. Ambitious lieutenants of the sovereign sometimes aspired to independence. Fierce tribes of Hindoos, impatient of a foreign yoke, frequently withheld tribute, repelled the armies of the Government from the mountain fastnesses, and poured down in arms on the cultivated plains. In spite, however, of much constant maladministration, in spite of occasional convulsions which shook the whole frame of society, this great monarchy on the whole retained, during some generations, an outward appearance of unity, majesty, and energy. But throughout the long reign of Aurungzebe, the state, notwithstanding all that the vigor and policy of the prince could effect, was hastening to dissolution. After his death, which took place in the year 1707, the ruin was fearfully rapid. Violent shocks from without co-operated with an incurable |