clared his payment of exactions; his hereditary right; his readiness shewn on all occasions to aid and oblige; the force of treaties in his favour. It was in vain that he asked to what purpose should he give up one half of his dominions if he were not to have power over the other, when it was to secure this independent power that he gave up that half? What are all the arguments of right, justice, reason, or humanity, when Ahab wants the vineyard of Naboth, and the Jezebel of political and martial power tells him that she will give it him? The fate of Oude was predetermined, along with that of various other states, by the Governor-general, and it was decided as he determined it should be.
Before we close this chapter, we will give one instance of the manner in which the territories of those who held aloof, and did not covet the fatal friendship of the English were obtained, and the most striking of these are the dominions of Hyder Ali—the kingdom of Mysore.
Hyder was a soldier of fortune. He had risen by an active and enterprising disposition from the condition of a common soldier to the head of the state. The English considered him as an ambitious, able, and therefore very dangerous person in India. There can be no doubt that he considered them the same. He was an adventurer; so were they. He had acquired a great territory by means that would not bear the strictest scrutiny; so had they;—but there was this difference between them, Hyder acted according to the customs and maxims in which he had been educated, and which he saw universally practised by all the princes around him. He neither had the advan-
