CHAPTER XVI.
THE ENGLISH IN INDIA — CONTINUED.
TREATMENT OF THE NATIVES.
Rich in the gems of India's gaudy zone,
And plunder, piled from kingdoms not their own,
Degenerate trade! thy minions could despise,
The heart-born anguish of a thousand cries;
Could lock, with impious hands their teeming store,
While famished nations died along the shore;
Could mock the groans of fellow-men; and bear
The curse of kingdoms peopled with despair;
Could stamp disgrace on man's polluted name,
And barter, with their gold, eternal shame.
Pleasures of Hope.
We have in some degree caught a glimpse of the subject of this chapter in the course of the last. The treatment of the native chiefs in our pursuit of territorial possession is in part the treatment of the natives, but it is unhappily a very small part. The scene of exaction, rapacity, and plunder which India became in our hands, and that upon the whole body of the population, forms one of the most disgraceful portions of human history; and while the temptations to it existed
