this institution for a certain period after their arrival, instead of being employed in the unprofitable occupation of transcribing papers, and abandoned to the dictates of their own discretion, both with regard to their morals and requirements.

We feel that it would not only be impolitic, but highly immoral to suppose that Providence has admitted of the establishment of the British power over the finest provinces of India, with any other view than that of its being conducive to the happiness of the people, as well as to our national advantage.

(Wellesley Despatches, ii. 85.)

CHAPTER VII

THE DOWNFALL OF THE MAHRATTAS

Lord Minto and the Marquess of Hastings

1807-1823

THE advance made in the period of Wellesley had been much too rapid for the Directors and the home government. Wellesley's successors came out with strict injunctions to make no further acquisitions of territory, and to abstain from assuming new responsibilities in relation to native states. Far from pursuing the war with the Mahrattas, Sir George Barlow, who held office for a short time after Wellesley's recall, made haste to patch up a peace with Holkar, and even pledged the British Government not to make any treaties with states over which the Mahrattas had any claims. This included every state in India not already in alliance with the Company, but it especially referred to the small Rajput states of the north-west which had long groaned under the pressure of the Mahrattas, and were anxious to pass under the protection of the Company. All their overtures were firmly refused.

Lord Minto, who had been, as Sir Gilbert Elliot, one of Warren Hastings's prosecutors, went out to India in 1807 with the usual instructions. He managed to observe them fairly well, yet even Minto could not altogether abstain from war and from treaties with native states. He led an expedition to conquer Java from the Dutch, but Java was not in India. And when the Treaty of Tilsit, between Napoleon and Russia, gave rise to the fear of a Franco-Russian land attack upon India, he sent

three of the most brilliant men in the service of the Company as special envoys to Persia, to Afghanistan, and to the Sikh kingdom of Ranjit Singh in the Punjab, thus for the first time opening definite relations with these states, and extending the British influence far to the north-west (Nos. 89-91). But Minto's reign was on the whole placid and unperturbed. There was a rather alarming military mutiny at Vellore (Madras) in 1809, but it was rapidly quelled. There were disturbing movements of the Pindaris, organised bands of raiders who kept Central India in a perpetual unrest, and sometimes invaded the territories of the Nizam and other English allies (see No. 93). But the Pindaris were known to be under the protection of the great Mahratta princes, and friction with the Mahrattas must be avoided at all costs. The chief worry of these years was the propagandist fervour of English missionaries, whose activity was due to the Evangelical Revival at that time stirring England. It sometimes took rather offensive forms which were sternly discouraged; for it was the Company's principle that the most complete neutrality and protection must be maintained towards the various religions and customs of their empire (Nos. 87, 88).

This interval of quiescence was indeed all to the good. It gave time for the organisation of British government in the vast new provinces acquired by Wellesley. And in this sphere much admirable work was done. The Indian Civil Service has probably never produced a more able or statesmanlike group of men than those who served the Company during these years notably the great four-Mountstuart Elphinstone, John Malcolm, Charles Metcalfe, and Thomas Munro.

The work done by those men was so good that the legend of the iniquity of the Company's service vanished for ever; and when in 1812 a Select Committee of the House of Commons took the state of the Company's dominions into review on the renewal of its sovereignty for twenty years, its tone was very different from that of the Committees of 1772, 1782, or even 1792. There now appears (No. 92) the note of pride in the Indian government as a great achievement, not of Power, but

of Justice. Warren Hastings, passing the peaceful evening of his days at his modest country house in England, knew that it was he who had begun this wonderful work, and that it would have been impossible without him. England now knew this also. When the old man was called to give evidence before the House of Commons, now beginning to understand the problem of Indian government, the whole House rose and stood uncovered as he entered and again as he left a wonderful spontaneous tribute to the founder of just rule in India, which perhaps compensated for the bitter injustice of the impeachment.

The quiet period of Minto's rule was followed by another period of rapid extension of power under Lord Moira (later created Marquess of Hastings), 1814-1823. This able and self-confident man was a friend of Warren Hastings and had learnt much from him. But he had also been a severe critic of Wellesley's ambitious policy, and came out resolved to make no new conquests. Nevertheless he was forced into two wars. One was against the Gurkhas of Nepal, who had invaded the British territory lying below their mountain kingdom: it was a hard-fought fight, and its result was a definition of frontiers and a lasting friendship with this little state, which henceforth provided some of the best fighting material for the Company's arms. On this war we have not space for any descriptive excerpts. more important, of these struggles was the final Mahratta war, which ended in the destruction of the Mahratta confederacy, the annexation of nearly all the Peshwa's lands and many of those of the other princes, and the bringing of the remaining Mahratta rulers definitely under British suzerainty. It also led to the establishment of a protectorate over the little Rajput and other states of the North-West, and brought the boundary of the British Raj to the Sutlej and the Indus, leaving only the Punjab and Sindh outside the orbit of an empire which now, only sixty years after Plassey, extended uninterruptedly from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin. The causes of this decisive war were twofold. In the first place, the Pindaris, who were

The other, and

organised bands of plunderers numbering in all some 30,000, becoming, because of their long impunity, more and more insolent, began to commit outrages within the British territory (Nos. 94, 95). The description of the ravages of these miscreants gives some idea of the evils from which India was saved by British rule. The most rudimentary duty to the subjects of the Company required that they should be rooted out. But they had their centres in the heart of the Mahratta country, and were under the protection of the Mahratta princes, who counted upon being able to use their strength in war. In the second place, the Mahratta princes were secretly united in a plan, which only came to light gradually, for reviving their confederacy, disorganised by Wellesley, and for overthrowing the Company's power. The attack on the Pindaris precipitated their rising. Sindhia, indeed, promptly dealt with, remained unwillingly quiescent; but both the Peshwa and Bhonsla made treacherous attacks upon the British residents at their courts; and the forces of Holkar took the field to aid them. The course of these events is very clearly shown in the text, which consists partly of official documents (Nos. 96, 98-100) and partly of a series of excerpts from the GovernorGeneral's private diary (Nos. 94, 97). These documents make it absolutely clear that the war was not in any sense an aggressive war on the Company's side; and that the rearrangements and annexations by which it was concluded were quite necessary as a safeguard for future peace. The Peshwa disappeared as a ruling prince; and Elphinstone undertook the organisation of his territories as a British province. He retired with a handsome pension to Bithur, near Cawnpore, where his adopted son, Nana Sahib, was to play a terrible part in 1857. Holkar and Bhonsla were deprived of much of their territory, and both they and Sindhia were left in a position which made them incapable of again challenging the supremacy of the British power. Their vassal-princes made treaties of dependent alliance with the Company; and the establishment of the Company's paramount power throughout India was completed.