1850.] The East India Company. 5 up, which resulted in a succession of bloody battles along the Sutlej, and the final subjugation of the Sikhs. This singular empire has thus ceased to have an independent political existence, and the Punjaub is now embraced within the ever-enlarging circle of British sovereignty. The particulars of this history are, however, so recent, and have attracted public attention to such an extent, that we shall not dwell on a story with which our readers are familiar. Instead of occupying their time with discussions respecting a single event in the history of the East, we shall endeavour to give a general view of the growth of the British empire in India, of the various causes which have opened the way to English conquests, and of the results of English supremacy. Almost within the memory of some now living, the world has witnessed the wonderful spectacle of a small company of British merchants-persons at home destitute of any special political weight or consideration effecting conquests, and establishing and ruling as sovereigns, on the other side of the globe, an empire with which nothing in history can be compared in extent or apparent stability, save the conquests of Alexander, or the empire of Rome. The East India Company was a joint-stock corporation for the purpose of carrying on trade with the East. Its affairs were managed in England by a body of direc tors, chosen by the proprietors. The interests of the company in India were under their control, and all officers, from the governor-general to the youngest writer, were appointed, and liable to be removed, by them. As a compensation for the hazards encountered, the company was invested with a monopoly of the Indian trade, and, to secure this monopoly, was also invested with sovereign power in India. No English ship, or English subject, could enter India except with its permission. It had authority to organize armies, to establish courts of justice, raise revenues, and exercise the power of life and death. It was almost independent of the British government till 1784, when, by Mr. Pitt's India Bill, a Board of Control was established. This board was to be appointed by and to belong to the British government. It was invested with authority to superintend and control the territorial and political affairs of the company, which was thus brought into immediate connection with the British crown, and its political operations subjected to the supervision and control of the British ministry. Various changes were made on granting the present charter, in 1833. Its commercial functions were brought to a close, and the Indian trade thrown open to all Englishmen. The English government received all its real and personal property, and assumed its debts, paying, in the mean time, ten and a half per cent. on its capital, which is redeemable by Parliament, after April, 1854, when the present charter expires. The home government still continues to be carried on, under the superintendence of the Board of Control, by twenty-four directors, elected by the proprietors. As a commercial body, the company has ceased to exist. Its nature being entirely changed, its functions are now purely political. It cannot trade, but takes an important part in the government of India. The stockholders of this company have never much exceeded two thousand; and the capital stock on which dividends have been paid, at the largest, has been but £6,000,000. It has been subject in England to the unwise management which must always attend a company whose stockholders and directors are constantly changing, and whose agents and field of operations are distant by half the circumference of the globe from the centre where measures originate; and, besides this, it has had to encounter the hostility of the whole commercial class in England, formerly shut out by its monopoly from the Indian trade, while in India it has contended for existence, on a hundred bloody battle-fields, with the Dutch and French and the native monarchies of the East. But, notwithstanding all obstacles, it has expelled the Dutch; it has annihilated the power of the French in India; it has subdued one native kingdom after another; its factories have grown into states, and these states into a vast and consolidated empire; it has maintained a standing army larger than that of any European power, except Russia, and varying, at different times, from 150,000 to 280,000 men; it has conducted sieges not less dreadful than those which drenched the cities of Spain in blood in the Peninsular war; it has stormed imperial cities and fortresses almost beyond number; so incessant have been its wars, that for a hundred years scarcely a day has passed 1850.] British Conquests in India. 7 in which the wild beasts of the jungles, or the alarmed inhabitants of the hills, have not fled before the thunder of English cannon; its bayonets have broken the power of the wild Mahratta cavalry, of the disciplined squadrons of Mysore, and of the fanatic courage of the Sikhs; it has subdued great and warlike kingdoms, and not only subdued them, but has deposed their sovereigns, appropriated their revenues, subverted institutions old as India itself, reconstructed its laws and jurisprudence, and over vast regions changed the very tenures by which the soil is held; its history is full of vast schemes,-to-day of conquest, to-morrow of social regeneration and improvement, -of skilful diplomacy, of heroic achievement, of desperate valor, making good all deficiencies of numbers and resources, and of names world-renowned in statesmanship and war and literature and religion. This company, in England, has been composed of merchants and others, who have lived quietly as good subjects and citizens, unknown and unheard of; yet they have appointed, and at their pleasure recalled, governors-general who have exercised in India a despotic authority over the fortunes of more than one hundred millions of people which the monarch of England dares not exercise in his island domain. Before its charter expired, in 1833, it had subdued nearly the whole peninsula, from Cape Comorin to the impassable snows of the Himalaya Mountains. And since then, the career of conquest has not paused. The cannon of England have burst open the mysterious gates of China; she is trying new experiments in civilization among the savages of Borneo; she has added the Punjaub to her empire, and a thousand miles west of the Indus, reversing the course of Alexander's conquests; penetrating among the wild and warlike tribes of Afghanistan, where he met the fiercest resistance, her unwearied battalions have reached the confines of Persia, and the echoes of her advancing drums have startled the sentinels who at night keep watch at the outposts of Russian power. whole number of English in India has never, at any one time, been 100,000, and yet they control the destinies of a country containing a population as great as that which, in the reign of Claudius, according to the estimate of Gibbon, was included in the Roman empire. The How, with such limited numbers and means, such stu pendous revolutions and conquests have been effected, and with what results to the conquerors and to the conquered, are questions of constantly increasing interest. Such an empire is not built up by accident. It is obvious that the English could never have extended their sovereignty over so vast a territory and so numerous a people, unless many favoring circumstances more powerful than either their arms or diplomacy had coöperated with them. These circumstances, which have opened the way to the advance of English power and contributed to its growth, are to be found, in great part, in the condition of India itself. Six years after Cromwell became Lord Protector of England, Aurungzebe, in 1659, ascended the throne of the Great Mogul. After a reign of forty years, he died, eight years before the commencement of the reign of George I. From a line of conquerors, he received the empire of India in its most flourishing state, and this empire he had the ability to enlarge and to rule. His sway extended over the whole Indian peninsula; he drew from its inhabitants an annual revenue of £32,000,000; and though his reign was disturbed by revolts and internal wars, no one of the principal European monarchies was less vexed by internal commotions during the same period. If China be excepted, it was the largest, richest, and apparently most powerful empire then in the world. This was the empire of the Great Mogul. During this period, the English monarchy was almost shut up within its narrow islands. Wasted by civil wars, its sovereigns deposed and reinstalled, revolution following revolution, England, Scotland, and Ireland contending, not to sustain, but to destroy each other, the population comparatively small, Britain was known in India only by a few merchants, humbling themselves before the native princes, and competing with the Dutch and French in their ef forts to secure possession of a slender traffic. Placed on the opposite sides of the globe, it seemed as if these two powers could never approach each other. Since then, that vast Indian empire has been dissolved, the descendant of Aurungzebe, stripped of all power, has been reduced to the condition of a pensioner on English bounty, while a company of British merchants has gained possession of the sceptre of the Great Mogul, and with a 1850.] Former Conquests of India. 9 firmer hand than his has ruled over a larger empire than that which acknowledgd his authority. No tale of Eastern magic describes a change so vast and incredible as this. It is manifest that no such revolutions could have been brought about, unless there had been in this Indian empire, notwithstanding its superficial appearance of strength, internal weakness, division, and all the elements of change. What, then, were the circumstances in Indian society and civilization which laid that country open to the aggression and growth of English power? The first cause is to be found in the character of the population. The inhabitants are a heterogeneous aggregation of different races and religions, shut up within the same boundaries, but never, like the Saxons and Normans in England, blended together. Since the earliest history, the Hindoos have formed the basis of the popu lation, but they were not apparently the original inhabitants. In the mountains and forests of Southern India, as if washed up thither by some vast inundation of conquest, tribes still remain alien from the Hindoo race in language, in religion, in manners, customs, and appearance. These are apparently the relics of the primeval race; while the Hindoos, like the Europeans in America, seem to have spread themselves over the peninsula, and to have been the conquerors and sometimes exterminators of the aborigines. But they, in turn, were conquered. The Mahometans, whose victorious cavalry, in a brief time after their prophet's death, had swum the Nile and the Niger and lighted their baleful watch-fires on all the hills of Spain, had advanced still more rapidly towards the East. Among the mountains of Afghanistan they established an empire which rivalled that of Bagdad. From Ghizni, its capital, proceeded the Mahometan conquerors of India. Their armies first crossed the Indus about the year 1000, and for four hundred years they were masters of Hindostan. Conquest opened the way, and multitudes of the Afghan tribes seized the opportunity to leave their poverty, their deserts, and their mountains, to settle in the mild and fertile valleys of the Hindoo. About 1400, there was another change. Tamerlane invaded India with the Mongols. He and his followers subverted the |