Page:Europe in China.djvu/228

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210
CHAPTER XIII.

deliberately living in seclusion among a few adoring parasites whose limited intellects were devoted to pander to the great man's vanity.' Exaggerative as this statement appears, the general verdict of the mercantile community on Sir H. Pottinger's regime certainly was, that the deserved fame of the Plenipotentiary had been seriously tarnished by the acts of the Governor.

Upon his return to England he was sworn in as a Member of the Privy Council and the House of Commons voted him a pension of £1,500 per annum. He did not immediately take up the Madras appointment but went first to the Cape Colony (1846 to 1847) as Governor, and then held the governorship and command-in-chief of Madras Presidency till 1854. Born in 1789, he died in 1856, but 67 years old, at Malta.