'WHAT are the duties which the awful revolutions in Asia have now cast upon the British nation? and what is the order in which they should be discharged? Must we not, in the first instance, consult the welfare of the country for which we undertake to legislate? Are we not bound, above all other considerations, to provide for the moral improvement of the people and for their social happiness, for the security of their property and personal freedom, for the undisturbed enjoyment of the fruits of their industry, for the protection and extension of their agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, for the peace and good order of their Provinces and the impartial administration of their laws? These are duties which attach to Government in all its forms, the price and condition of obedience, sacred obligations from which no sovereign power can ever be released, due from all who exact allegiance to all who pay it. Next to these objects, but far below them in the scale of moral duty, is the attention which we must also pay to the interests of our Country.'-LORD GRENVILLE, 1813.

INTRODUCTION.

Regions Cæsar never knew
Thy posterity shall sway,
Where his eagles never flew-
None invincible as they.

Rise of English power in

IF THE English travellers', who, in the year 1583, DUCTION. proceeded by Tripoli and Aleppo to Babylon, and thence to Goa, the great Portuguese mart on the coast India. of Malabar, had been told, that the day would come when the land on which they trod would own fealty to a Sovereign of their own island, and thence receive its Government and its laws, they would doubtless have smiled at the absurdity of the prophecy.

And though we have lived to see it fulfilled, such an event might in those days have well seemed an idle dream. What had hitherto been unknown in the history of man has come to pass. A factory has grown into an Empire. The small band of Englishmen who, on their first arrival at Surat, or Fort St Thomè, or Chuttanuttee, made their humblest supplications2 at the feet of Rajahs and Omrahs, and begged but for a small space whereon to spread and store their wares; from pedlars have become traders, from traders legislators, from builders of factories erecters of forts: have con

1 See Mill's British India, I. 14, note.

p. 112.

Ludlow's British India,

Anderson's Colonial Church, I. 92, Ed. 2.

2 See Appendix A.

M. M. E.

1

DUCTION.

INTRO- quered states, annexed kingdoms, settled treaties, established Presidencies, and bit by bit, and story by story, have built up a huge Babel of Empire which towers proudly above the grandest dynasties of the past. And now, after a lapse of two centuries, the Queen of a little island in the Atlantic Ocean, scarcely more than known when the Christian Era began, reigns supreme over an Empire which stretches from the Himalayan mountains to Cape Comorin, and which contains 180 millions of human beings1.

Truly the first have become last, and the last first. Who could have predicted, when Roman legionaries kept in awe the tattooed inhabitants of Britain, and Druid rites defiled the shades of our forests, that these ungenial islanders would in the time to come rule over the Italy of the Eastern world, the goal of conquerors and settlers, the Emporium of the World's commerce in all times and in all ages? What human prescience could have foreseen that a Sceptre wielded successively by Alexander's Satraps, by Bactrian Kings, by IndoScythic conquerors, by Mahmoud of Ghuznee, by Timour the Tartar,' by Akbar, by Aurungzebe, would at

1 A recent Parliamentary paper, of which an extract is given in The Times of August 8, 1857, states as follows the area and population of India :

DUCTION.

last be grasped by men whose ancestors fought at INTROCressy and Agincourt, at Bannockburn and Naseby?

Providential

design.

But it has come to pass. And though to us has The result of not been revealed the secret reasons why the Sovereign Disposer of the destinies of nations has thus arrested the Westward march of history, and brought the influences of Northern culture and Northern manners into connection with the stunted civilization of the East, nevertheless none but the veriest trifler will believe it has been done with no object or design. Unless we read history to no purpose we must see, that for the highest and most beneficent reasons Providence 1appears to have intended the continual intermixture of mankind, and never leaves the human mind destitute of a principle to effect it.'

Now, since the day that HE, who sitteth at the right hand of God 'waiting till all things shall be subdued unto Him,' gave His parting charge to the eleven on Olivet, and, before He was received up out of their sight, bade them 'go forth into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature,' all nations calling themselves after His Name, have believed, with more or less earnestness, that higher duties were required of them, than the extension of commerce, and the conquest of kingdoms.

zations of

From the moment that the Reformation was esta- Early realiblished in this country, an anxiety for the spiritual this. welfare of its dependencies marked the proceedings of some of the most forward in promoting 'the new 1 See Burke's Works, VI. 226, Ed. 1852.