1830.] Affairs of British India. 69 



attendants to the teeth, entered the house of the vizier, whilst that 

 officer was at court, and possessed himself of his two infant sons, whom 

 he took into the garden, and threatened to put instantly to death if his 

 terms were not complied with. Those terms were, the restitution of the 

 girl who had fled from him, a sum of money equivalent to 5000, and a 

 guarantee of personal safety from the British resident. On no other con- 

 ditions would he spare the children's lives ; he set no value, he said, on 

 his own life when his honour was implicated, and the approach of any 

 person within a certain distance of the spot where he held the infants, 

 should be the signal for their immediate destruction. The vizier was 

 summoned ; but Esuf Khan would not trust his promises, unless they 

 were backed by the word of the British resident. The father was in 

 agony, for he knew the character of the man with whom he had to deal ; 

 Major Lockett, the resident's assistant, was sent for, and after a long ne- 

 gotiation, the vizier was obliged to submit to all the exactions. The 

 money was paid down, and the girl sent for. She entered in a state 

 approaching to distraction ; for no one doubted that Esuf Khan would 

 slay her on the spot. He smiled when she entered, declared that his 

 honour was satisfied, threw her a bag containing 1000 rupees, (100,) 

 and told her that she was at liberty to go where she chose. 



These anecdotes might be mated to any extent. Yet these are the 

 people who are to be governed upon "general principles/' either spun out 

 of theory, or at the best, deduced from observations and experiments upon 

 the motives of action which influence individuals or bodies of men, living 

 in a state of society so dissimilar as not to afford the slightest materials 

 for any sound analogical reasoning ! 



There is yetanother sophism, which, although flagrant enough to frighten 

 a schoolman, has been frequently resorted to, without any apparent sense 

 of shame, by some of the most eminent among the writers who have 

 girded themselves for battle, in the public cause, against the Hydra of 

 Leadenhall Street. They have found the rapid and uninterrupted rise 

 of our empire in the east, its enormous extent and vast wealth, its inter- 

 nal peace and prosperity, and its security from foreign aggression, 

 grievous lets and hindrances to the free currency of the flippant charges 

 of incompetence and mismanagement which they have brought against 

 the Company. Great as was their desire to vilify and blacken that body, 

 and to hold it up to contempt as well as execration, it was impossible to 

 conceal or deny, that, through the agency of its servants, it had done 

 mighty deeds ; and had given, in the course of a long career of war, 

 uniformly successful, and advantages acquired by conquest or negocia- 

 tion, invariably improved, the most unequivocal proofs of political wis- 

 don. " Little more than fifty years ago," says a cotemporary, " the East 

 India Company's territories were comprised within a few factories at 

 different points on the Asiatic coast, and the Indian subjects of the King 

 of England might possibly equal in numbers the population of Liver- 

 pool. Now, the East India Company are lords of a country, which 

 measures in extent of surface about ten times the surface of the British 

 Isles, and which contains a population equal to not less than six times 

 the population of England, Scotland, and Ireland." These territories 

 afford a revenue averaging from twenty to twenty-two millions of pounds 

 sterling per annum ; and their acquisition by an association of merchants 

 commenced at the very period when the government of the crown was 

 suffering the magnificent colonies of North America to slip from its 



