empires are not to be measured after this fashion, or to be weighed in such nice balances.
It may even be questioned whether the result of the confused irregular struggle between the two Companies in the Indian peninsula told decisively one way or the other upon the final event. The Karnatic war, being unofficial, was necessarily inconclusive, for neither French nor English dared openly to strike home at each other's settlements; while even if this had been done indirectly through native auxiliaries, the home governments must have interfered earlier. The system of private or auxiliary war gave Dupleix the temporary advantage against the English that it was necessarily confined to the land, where he was the stronger; for as the two nations were at peace, their fleets could not take part in it. On the outbreak of national hostilities three years later, the naval strength of England came into play with decisive effect.
Dupleix was a man of original and energetic political instincts, and of an imperious and morally intrepid disposition, who embarked upon wide and somewhat audacious schemes of Oriental dominion and lost the stakes for which he played more through want of strength and continuous support than want of skill. He saw that so long as a European Company held its possessions or carried on trade at the pleasure of capricious and ephemeral Indian governments, the position was in the highest degree precarious. The right method, he argued, was to assert independence, to strike in for mastery, and to beat down any European rival who
