lay always, then as now, in the possibility of some foreign invasion by the army of some rival power led by a chief at the head of the fighting tribes of central Asia. But the Sikhs were making it impossible for any such Asiatic army to penetrate into the heart of the Punjab, without encountering the obstinate resistance of men united to defend their faith and their fatherland, in a spirit very unfamiliar to the quiescence of ordinary Hinduism. The kingdom founded by Ahmed Shah had extended, from its citadel in the Afghan mountains, on the west over Khorasan, and on the east over the upper Punjab. It had thus been built up by wresting one frontier province from Persia and the other from India, and as the Afghan ruler was cordially detested in both these countries, whenever he was engaged by invasion or revolt on one flank the opportunity was sure to be taken by his enemies on the other. Even Ahmed Shah failed to hold such a position without great exertions, and after his death it became quite untenable. Twenty years later Zemán Shah, a very able Afghan king, was obliged to retire from Lahore. This last abortive expedition closed the long series of irruptions by the Mahomedan conquerors, who had for seven hundred years swept down from the north upon the plains of India, and had founded dynasties which were only sustained by constant recruitment from their native countries beyond the mountains. Thenceforward the Sikhs were not only able to hold the line of the Indus river against fresh invaders; they also cut off the channels of supply between central Asia and the Mahomedan powers to the south of the Sutlej, who were moreover kept in constant alarm by this actively aggressive Hindu community on their northern frontier. The effect was to maintain among the fighting powers

L

in northern India an equilibrium that was of signal advantage to the English by preserving their northwest frontier unmolested during the last quarter of the eighteenth century, a critical period when they were fully occupied with Mysore and the western Marathas. The barrier of Oudh set up by Hastings, although it had been sufficiently effective against the predatory Maratha hordes, would have been of little use for withstanding the much heavier metal of attacks from central Asia. But the fierce enmity of the Sikhs kept out the foreign Mahomedan, and prevented the resuscitation of any fresh Islamite dynasty upon the ruins of the old empire at Delhi or Lahore. By the time that the Sikh power had become consolidated under Ranjit Singh, in the first years of the nineteenth century, the English had met and overcome their southern rivals, and could then turn their forces northward without fear of any serious diversion on their flanks or rear.

The position of the Sikhs on both sides of the Sutlej was also useful at this period in setting bounds to the encroachments of the Marathas, who were now again pushing northward under Sindia. This ambitious and able chief was endeavouring to carve out for himself an independent principality in the upper provinces. He had attached himself to one of the parties that were contending for the possession of imperial authority at Delhi, and had rewarded himself by marching up with a large army in 1785 to obtain his own nomination as Vicegerent of the empire. The emperor's eldest son had applied to the English for assistance; and Hastings had been much tempted, just before he quitted India, by the project of sending an expedition to Delhi for the purpose of setting up the Great Moghul again on his feet, and of making English influence paramount at his

capital. But the Company, though alarmed at this notable aggrandizement of the Marathas in a new quarter, could not yet venture to oppose Sindia's enterprise, and the project of reviving the moribund empire under European influence-which had passed across the vision of Dupleix, of Bussy, and of Clive-was once more reluctantly abandoned by Hastings as impracticable. Yet it was in fact only premature, for twenty years later the march to Delhi and the expulsion of the Marathas were actually accomplished under Lord Wellesley's orders. In the meantime Sindia, who after Hastings' departure occupied both Agra and Delhi, became so confident as to send to the English Government, in his Majesty's name, a requisition for tribute on account of their administration of the imperial province of Bengal.

The year 1786, therefore, when Lord Cornwallis reached India, found the English still confronting the Marathas in the west and north-west, and Tippu Sultan, the Mysore ruler, in the south, but with no other rivals of importance in the political or military field against them.

SECTION II. Indian Affairs before Parliament.

We have seen how from the time when the European nations first acquired valuable interests in India, the course of events in India has been gradually drawn more and more within European influences. The weaker Asiatic States have felt the attraction of the larger and more active political bodies; wars in the west have kindled wars in the east, and the clash of arms has reverberated from one to the other continent. The outcome of the contest was, as has been said, that England now held undisputed supremacy, as against other European nations, in India. Then, as the con

nexion between the British nation and its great dependency grew to be closer, as the points of contact multiplied, and the value of her magnificent acquisition became known to England, our clearer recognition of national rights and duties brought Indian affairs within the current of domestic politics. Not only foreign wars, but the struggle of Parliamentary parties at home had lately affected India. In 1780 Lord North moved in the House of Commons for an order that the three years' statutory notice of intention to dissolve their Charter should be given to the Company. The motion was carried against the strenuous opposition of Fox, who asked the minister whether he was not content with having lost America, and of Burke, who warned the House not to throw away the East after the West in another chase after revenue. Nevertheless, by 1783, when the period of notice was expiring, the point of view taken up by these great orators, who were then in office, had materially changed. The conclusion of peace in Europe and America (1783) had now given the English, after an interval of ten years, a second opportunity of looking into the condition and management of their distant possessions; the loss of the western colonies had sharpened their solicitude for the new dominion that had been gained in the East. There could now be no doubt that England had acquired a great Indian sovereignty; for although the wars and perpetual contests of the last seven years had for the time imperilled our position in the country, the general result was to prove its stability under severe pressure, and thus to confirm rather than impair our ascendancy. Warren Hastings, in reviewing the state of Bengal at the end of his Governor-Generalship, wrote that the late war had proved to all the leading

States of India 'that their combined strength and politics, assisted by our great enemy the French, have not been able to destroy the solid fabric of the English power in the East, nor even to deprive it of any portion of its territories.'

It was this conviction that the Company were now masters in India, that they had grown too powerful for a trading association-so powerful, indeed, as to have become an anomaly under the British constitution and even a danger to it-that gave weight and momentum to Burke's assault upon the whole system. In his speech upon Fox's East India Bill, which was to transfer the Company's authority to Parliamentary Commissioners, he enlarges upon the extent of the Company's territory and the immense range of their arbitrary despotism. 'With very few, and those inconsiderable, intervals, the British dominion, either in the Company's name or in the names of princes absolutely dependent on the Company, extends from the mountains that separate India from Tartary (the Himalayas) to Cape Comorin, that is, one and twenty degrees of latitude.... If I were to take the whole aggregate of our possessions there, I should compare it, as the nearest parallel I could find, to the empire of Germany. Our immediate possessions I shall compare with the Austrian dominions, and they would not suffer in the comparison. ... Through all that vast extent of country there is not a man who eats a mouthful of rice but by permission of the East India Company. There is great exaggeration in this description, and the German. parallel is substantially erroneous; nevertheless it is worth observing that more than a century ago, within twenty-five years after the battle of Plassey, the pre1 Speech on the East India Bill, December, 1783.