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cavalry inflicts in its ferocious invasions, sucli evils, on an enormous 

 scale, as were inflicted by such heroes as Attila, Jengis, and Timur. 

 You have it from a great orator when Burke describes the invasion 

 of the plain of the Carnatic from the plateau of Mysore, about 

 ninety years ago. " When ai length," said the orator, •* Hyder 

 Ali found he had to do with men who would either sign no 

 convention, or whom no treaty and no signature could bind, and who 

 were the determined enemies of human intercourse itself, he decreed to 

 make the country possessed by these incorrigible and predestined 

 criminals a memorable example to mankind. He resolved, in the 

 gloomy recesses of a mind capacious of such things, to leave the whole 

 Carnatic an everlasting monument of vengeance and to put perpetual 

 desolation as a barrier between him and those against whom the faith 

 which holds the moral elements of the world together was no protection. 

 He became, at length, so confident of his force, so collected in his might, 

 that he made no secret whatever of his dreadful resolution. Having ter- 

 minated his disputes with every enemy and every rival who buried their 

 mutual animosities in their common detestation against the creditors of 

 the Nabob of Arcut, he drew from every quarter whatever a savage 

 ferocity could add to his new rudiments in the arts of destruction ; and 

 compounding all the materials of fury, havoc, and desolation into one 

 black cloud, he hung for a while on the declivities of the mountains. 

 Whilst the authors of all these evils were idly and stupidly gazing on 

 this menacing meteor, which blackened all their horizon, it suddenly 

 burst, and poured down the whole of its contents upon the plains of the 

 Carnatic. Then ensued a scene of woe, the like of which no age had 

 seen, no heart conceived, and which no tongue can adequately tell. All 

 the horrors of war before known or heard of were mercy to that new 

 havoc. A storm of universal fire blasted every field, consumed every 

 house, destroyed every temple. The miserable inhabitants, flying from 

 their flaming villages, in part were slaughtered ; others, without regard 

 to sex, to age, to the respect of rank, or sacredness of function, fathers 

 torn from children, husbands torn from wives, enveloped in a whirlwind 

 of cavalry and amidst the goading spears of drivers and the trampling of 

 pursuing horses, were swept into captivity in an unknown and hostile 

 land. Those who were enabled to evade the tempest fled to the walled 

 cities. But escaping from fire, sword, and exile, they fell into the jaws 

 of famine." 



That is a sample of the oration which Pitt and Dundas, issuing from 

 Downing street with more London particular Madeira than they could 



