soon succeed his father. He was known to be inimical to the existence of European power, and he might one day take advantage of any admission of his hereditary title, to call the Mussulman Chiefs to arms. We should have difficulty in making out a good case, thought Lord Moira, consistently with our own theory; and the practical part of the business might be no less embarrassing. The hopes to which Shah Alum had for ten years clung, for ever passed away. His deliverance from the Mahrattas had been one of the excuses for the war of 1802; and that deliverance effected, he dreamt that he was free. Provinces might have been lost, and revenues lessened; the name of Delhi might have sunk in the estimation of the world, and the pomp of its Imperial parade might be impaired; but the throne of Akbar and of Aurungzebe remained; and he was its thirtythird occupant in the direct line of Kings. Faithless lieutenants might have forgotten to pay tribute; Chiefs whom he or his fathers had enfiefed might have abjured the ties of loyalty; but he was still the acknowledged and visible head of the Mussulmans in Southern Asia; and in the fluctuations of revolt and conquest, a day of restitution might come, when his descendants would reign again in splendour and in power. He had been held in captivity by Pagans, but Christians had delivered him; at least, they had gone to battle saying they would. Was he to believe them false? Had not his father given them, at the first, leave to live and trade in India; then grants of land and jurisdiction; afterwards the collectorate of three great provinces, and the lordship of many more? Had they not made solemn treaties with him, and ever until now recognised, with effusive protestations, his sovereign rank and dignity? And was not Mr Seaton their accredited Resident at his Court? How could he harbour a suspicion that all

this was to go for nothing? They had unlatched the door of his gilded and jewelled cage; but told him, at first gently, then peremptorily, that he must not come forth. They would keep the door for him, and see that neither Goorkha nor Mahratta should again venture near. Why not be content to eat and drink, and smoke and doze, and issue daily mandates to a multitudinous train, and pray at eventide towards Mecca, and teach his son the philosophy of fickle fortune? Rich farms and pleasure-grounds and groves and gardens lay around the city, carefully kept for his support in the seclusion of voluptuous ease-their produce and rental being expressly guaranteed by his English deliverers for that purpose. They were once his allies: were they not so still? and if so, why would not the Governor-General, when not a long way off, pay him a visit? None had ever questioned his title, and he no longer questioned English dominion wherever it had been gained by the sword. Delhi had been the capital of the Empire; the Empire was gone, but Delhi remained; and it took ten years to make the aged monarch understand that in future it was to be simply his prison.

The Resident, a man of susceptibility and gentleness, shrank from the performance of his duties as a keeper. He thought he could not study too much the feelings of a Prince so situated; that the most obsequious attentions did not compromise our dignity; and that by yielding in small things we could with a better grace oppose his will when necessary. Metcalfe thought otherwise. In his view the helpless captive was but a "poor puppet," whose illusions it was false kindness to prolong by a show of deference that was wholly insincere. It served but to keep awake ideas in his mind "which ought to be put to sleep for ever." When Metcalfe became Resident, he lost no time in realising his

theory of dis-illusion. The management of the lands round the city, and the direction of the police within it, as well as the administration of local justice, were successively assumed as part of the functions which the diplomatic representative of England, at what was still called the Court of Delhi, had to perform. In due time complaints arose of extravagance and waste, and the need of greater frugality in keeping up the pageant of superseded royalty. It took long to die; and those who witnessed its last agonies may have been tempted to regret that Metcalfe's summary way of deposition and dethronement was not taken.

To meet the military expenditure which four successive campaigns had entailed, the Governor-General was obliged to raise money on any terms that might be demanded from an insolvent treasury. He borrowed largely from the Vizier of Oude; and when other securities were not forthcoming, he sold him the provinces reft from the Goorkhas,the foolish Saadut Ali forgetting that he who gave for a valuable consideration could take away without one. Provinces and their inhabitants were treated as chattels by this chivalrous statesman of the superfine Court of the Regency, who, being a man of sentiment and honour, and not as other men, might do, in short, anything he pleased. It pleased him to sanction a near relative becoming a partner in the financial house of W. Palmer & Co. at Hyderabad, whose usurious dealings with the Nizam were of a nature to call forth the denunciation of the Court of Directors, as being utterly regardless of the limits of decorum. The newly-made Marquis defended Palmer & Co. as injured and insulted individuals, and challenged the investigation of accounts which had been framed upon figure-proof principles. The friends of the Viceroy relied upon his character as a man notoriously indifferent as to money to show that he could not have

been in any way to blame in the shameful business at Hyderabad. Had he not squandered his patrimony, nobody knew how, and then offered to govern India for the benefit of his creditors? Could anything be more gallant or unsordid? and was he not now "most noble?" The Nizam, it is true, was simply fleeced by a firm of whom the Viceroy's relative was one. But no one could believe that the Marquis knew anything of the transactions; and the tenderness of his domestic affections forbade him to think evil of his kinsfolk. So the Nizam was robbed; and Lord Hastings came home; and, that was all. Lord Amherst, who succeeded to the government in 1823, was not a fine gentleman of the George IV. school, but was only an honest man; and one of his first acts, therefore, was to lend the Nizam money to liquidate his debts to Palmer & Co., which he did upon condition that the Court of Hyderabad should have no more dealings with the firm, soon afterwards compelled thereby to suspend their commercial enterprises. The conqueror of the Goorkhas and the Mahrattas reappeared in London society as badly off as ever, and after having seized and occupied for a season the throne of Tamerlane, he was glad to take the Governorship of Malta as a sinecure pension for his closing days.

CHAPTER XXI.

LORD WILLIAM BENTINCK.

1824-1835.

"The man who does most honour perhaps to Europe in Asia, is he who governs it. Lord William Bentinck, on the throne of the Great Mogul, thinks and acts like a Pennsylvanian Quaker. You may easily imagine that there are people who talk of the dissolution of the Empire, when they see the temporary ruler of Asia riding on horseback, plainly dressed, without escort, or on his way to the country with his umbrella under his arm. Like Wasbington, he mixed in scenes of bloodshed and tumult; and like him, he preserved pure and unsullied that flower of humanity which the habits of a military life so often withers. He has issued from the ordeal of diplomacy with the upright mind and the simple and sincere language of a Franklin, convinced that there is no cleverness in appearing worse than one really is."

-JACQUEMONT.1

A WAR undertaken with inadequate preparations, to re

venge some affronts offered by the Burmese, lasted from 1823 to 1826, and was terminated then by a treaty, by which the King of Ava ceded eleven maritime provinces, and paid a crore of rupees. In England the war was highly unpopular, from the loss of life and treasure it entailed, and the unprofitable nature of the country sought to be partitioned. But Lord Amherst was made an Earl, millions were added to the consolidated debt, and the widows and orphans of the brave men who perished on the banks of the Irrawadi became permanently chargeable on the general estate of the Company.

1 "The Travels of a French Gentleman in India," vol. i. pp. 87, 88.