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cases were rare in which the districts ceded for the maintenance of the subsidiary force yielded within the year the sum that was needed for their food and pay. This was exactly what was anticipated, the opening of a running account of deficiencies, arrears, balances cleared off from time to time by new concessions, and complaints of remissness, neglect, and evasion, all which, in the nature of things, became inevitable. Arriving at ultimate supremacy, the means taken were by the subject race called perfidiously wicked, by the conquering race profoundly wise. The historian will probably compare them to the chronic injection of poison into the veins which allays fever and spasmodic pain, and produces a sensation of relief and quiet at the risk, and, when prolonged, with the certainty, of causing paralysis and death.

Lord Wellesley applied the power gained by the destruction of Tippoo, and the partition of Mysore, to lay the foundations of that edifice of empire which, in the space of sixty years, was so rapidly piled in Asia. Clive had made treaties for a subsidiary force at Moorshedabad and Delhi, Hastings at Benares and in the Deccan. But neither of them had ever been in a position to attempt the application of the system on a wider scale, still less to couple with it covenants and conditions which permanently bound the Company to protect, at any cost or sacrifice, their native allies from all enemies whatsoever, and virtually constituted the Company, in return, suzerain over them. every case, the daring ambition of the Governor-General sought to obtain concessions of territory in lieu of money for the payment of the subsidiary force to be permanently kept by the protected State. He compelled the Vizier of Oude to subscribe a treaty ceding large portions of his

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dominions to pay for British troops to be maintained in those provinces he still governed. This was in 1801. He proceeded to carry the system further, and thereby to enthral those States of Central India which, since the days of Sivaji, had successfully defied their more civilised and luxurious neighbours.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE MAHRATTAS.

1802-1805.

"From factories to forts, from forts to fortifications, from fortifications to garrisons, from garrisons to armies, and from armies to conquests, the gradations were natural, and the result inevitable; where we could not find a danger, we were determined to find a quarrel.”

-PHILIP FRANCIS.1

AT the beginning of 1802, Lord Wellesley tendered his

resignation. His services had not been estimated by the Directors as his staff at Fort William and the Cabinet of Mr Addington thought they deserved. He aspired to the proconsular fame, both of conqueror and reformer; and Leadenhall Street was in no humour to acknowledge or encourage him in either capacity. When the bills came in of the Mysore War, they took away the very breath of financial prudence, and the diplomatic engagements subsequently formed with a view to territorial aggrandisement in Tanjore, Surat, and Oude, only lengthened the perspective of indefinite liability, and deepened the jungle of costly entanglement in various directions. Nor did Lord Wellesley's exercise of patronage, or his projects of reconstituting the Civil Service on a high educational basis, commend him any better to his frugal masters. Without consulting them, he had planned and published an elaborate and ex1 Speech on Indian Affairs, 1787.

pensive design for the foundation of a college of governing functionaries at Calcutta, in which every cadet sent out from England should pass at least two years in acquiring a knowledge of Oriental tongues, habits, traditions, beliefs, and chronicles. The scheme was on a splendid scale, but it pointed specially and specifically to the creation of a school for the constant supply of political Sappers and Miners, whose every boyish hope and adolescent thought should be concentrated upon the extension and consolidation of the empire. The Directors loathed the very notion, and sickened at the pecuniary prospects it involved. Point de zéle was their invariable admonition to young men suspected of possessing dangerous ability. They wanted larger returns, not a greater number of rebel subjects; higher dividends, not more dominions. They thought of Lord Wellesley as a restless Satrap, whose vanity was like to ruin them; and he thought of himself as a sovereign in all but the name, of whom an ungrateful world was not worthy. The projected college was peremptorily forbidden, and instead of it, an institution of another kind was decided on. They grumbled at his choice of soldiers for political appointments, as indicating a settled purpose of encroachment and aggression. They would have him cancel Colonel Kirkpatrick's nomination as Secretary in the political department; they desired him to recall Colonel Scott from the Residency at Lucknow; and they forwarded to him a minute, which roundly declared the extra allowances to Colonel Wellesley, who had been appointed to the command in the Carnatic, as a job. This was the crowning affront, which he would not endure. He told them that he felt intensely disgusted at the notion that he could be capable of yielding, or his brother of receiving, any emolument or advantage that was not fairly due. If they believed such a rebuke to be

deserved, the offenders should at once be recalled, either one or both. For himself, he was weary of such treatment, and he begged that they would seek a successor, who should relieve him at furthest in the course of the autumn from a charge he no longer wished to retain. He was not, however, taken at his word. Lord Castlereagh became President of the Board of Control; and sympathising with him in most of his designs and aspirations, accorded him more effective support. Meanwhile new vistas of aggrandisement opened in a quarter where he had not ventured to anticipate them; and, in the hope of fresh acquisitions, he resolved to remain another year in India. in India. In December 1802, he wrote to the Directors that a crisis was imminent, fraught with consequences of the greatest importance.

In 1801 the Mahratta chiefs were quarrelling among themselves. Scindia, the greatest in territorial strength, and Holkar, the most restless and warlike in spirit, distrustful of each other, alternately menaced the Peishwa, of whose traditional pre-eminence both were jealous, and whose enfeebled authority they sought to overthrow. Lord Wellesley, bent on turning their enmities to account, and bringing them all into gradual dependence upon English aid, negotiated separately with each in turn, and, by the adroit use of subtlety and daring, he succeeded ere long in drawing or driving them all into a state of dependency. His instructions to Colonel Close recite how "the Peishwa in 1798 preferred danger and independence to a more intimate connection with the British power, which could not secure. him the protection of our arms without at the same time establishing our ascendency in the Mahratta empire;" how the Peishwa had reluctantly been forced into the war against Tippoo; how, when it was over, a proposition for a subsidiary force was made to him, which he refused; how

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