was projected. In the new province of the Punjab the great Governor-General seized the opportunity of providing a model for the enlightened government of a great eastern state on modern lines. Impatient with the existence of the many native states where his devouring energy was not free to work, Dalhousie announced the definite policy of seizing every legal opportunity to bring these states under the direct control of the central Government; and on various grounds-most notably by refusing to recognise the ancient and deeply-rooted Hindu custom of adoption—he annexed states whose total area amounted to 150,000 square miles.

But in all these activities, motived as they were by a genuine passion for good government, and a sincere zeal for the welfare of India, Dalhousie did not sufficiently count with the slowmoving conservatism of the Oriental mind; what is more serious, he forgot that sympathy and respect for Indian custom and opinion which had been one of the healthiest features of the previous age. The rapid series of social and economic changes which he hurried on produced a feeling of unrest, a readiness to believe that the British power intended and desired to undermine the most ancient and venerated customs of India. This feeling was greatly strengthened by his high-handed treatment of dependent states in his series of annexations. And it gave body and colour to the particular grievances and alarms of the Sepoy soldiery, by whose arms all this amazing series of victories had been won. So the vast upheaval of the Mutiny was in no small degree due to the over-eagerness of Dalhousie's reforming zeal. This tragic episode-for, despite its magnitude, it was no more than an episode, and in no serious degree deflected the course of development of the Empire was based upon misunderstandings and groundless fears. Had it succeeded, it would have plunged India back into the chaos from which the rise of the British power had rescued the country. But it taught some valuable lessons, and in particular the lesson that it is dangerous, and may be ruinous, to move too rapidly towards even the most laudable ends, especially in a country like India. Above all,

it inevitably brought to an end the régime of the Company. The Company's supremacy had long been nominal. But it was something gained that the real relations between the British people and the peoples of India were clearly defined.

With the abolition of the East India Company in 1858 our story comes to an end. It is the story essentially of the establishment of the British dominion over India, of the gradual development of a system of government which enabled that dominion to bring great boons to the Indian peoples, and of the emergence among the rulers of this Empire of new ideas, at once more modest and more noble, of the functions which they were called upon to perform. After 1858 the theme changes. The Empire is complete and scarcely grows; the main threads of interest are now to be found in the steady increase of Indian unity, the steady development of material resources, the steady adoption of modern conceptions and methods, enabling India to play her part among the great states of the world; and above all the gradual substitution for the idea of dominion of the idea of partnership in that great brotherhood of free civilised nations which make up the British Empire. The process is not complete, and will demand yet a long time. But the glorious partnership of India with the other nations of the British Empire in the War of Civilisation has assuredly marked a great step forward in that development.

CHAPTER I

PRELIMINARY

THE theme of this book is the growth and government of the British dominion in India under the direction of the East India Company, which became a territorial power, in an almost accidental way, in the middle of the eighteenth century. No attempt will therefore be made to illustrate the history of the East India Company during its purely commercial period, which occupied the century and a half from 1600. The three passages contained in the present chapter are meant only to afford some illustration of the conditions precedent to the main story, without some understanding of which that story must remain unintelligible.

The first excerpt is from the travels of Dr. Fryer, who went out to India as a surgeon in the service of the Company, and describes the organisation and working of a typical factory of the Company as it was in 1696. The most important point to be noted is the extremely small salaries paid to the servants of the Company. It is obvious that no one would spend the best years of his life so far from home for a salary of £10 or £20 per annum, under a bond for good behaviour of £500 or £1000. These salaries were little more than retaining fees, and from the first the Company's servants looked to make their income from private trade. The terms of their indentures, printed in a later chapter (No. 30), show that this system was fully recognised by the Company itself. It is best to think of the Company's affairs as being administered, not by salaried agents, but by groups of individual traders, who in return for

a small honorarium with board and lodging, and favourable conditions for their own business, undertook to see that the Company's ships were supplied with suitable goods. This system worked well enough while the Company was purely a trading body, under the effective control of the native governments. But it was utterly unsuitable for the management of territorial possessions, and the evils of the first period of the Company's rule in Bengal (see Chapters II. and III.) are mainly to be attributed to the tardiness with which the Company recognised this fact.

The second excerpt describes the defects of the native Indian government as seen by an Englishman who had an intimate knowledge of the country. Written in 1753, Orme's analysis of Indian government describes the condition of things existing on the eve of the establishment of the British dominion in Bengal. He treats India as a single vast Empire ruled by the Great Mogul at Delhi, the descendant of the house of Timur, which, since the time of the great Akbar in the sixteenth century, had exercised undisputed sway over northern India, and since the time of Aurangzib (1659-1707) had held a more or less nominal supremacy over the southern part of the country, the Deccan. But, when Orme wrote, the mighty Mogul Empire had already fallen into ruin. Its Nawabs, or deputies, had set up as independent princes. Adventurers (like Hyder Ali in Mysore a little later) were carving out principalities from the chaos. The fighting chiefs of the Mahratta race, who had been able, under Sivaji, to hold · their own among the fortresses of the western Ghats against even the great Aurangzib, had, during the half-century since Aurangzib's death, established their power over the greater part of western and central India; while their clouds of raiding horsemen were feared in every part of India, from Tanjore to Bengal and Delhi, and collected chauth or blackmail from nearly every ruling prince. The Mahrattas were Hindus in religion; and it seemed as if the supremacy of the Mahomedan conquerors, to which the mass of the Hindus had submitted since the eleventh century, and of which the Mogul Empire