tober, 1799, "for counteracting with equal promptitude and ability the dangerous intrigues and projects of the French, particularly by destroying their power and influence in the Deccan," whereby, said the resolution, "he has established on a basis of permanent security the tranquillity and prosperity of the British Empire in India." The imperial note here sounded – probably for the first time in a public document – contrasts remarkably with the hesitating, almost apologetic tone in which our position and the growth of our responsibilities had been discussed in Parliament twenty years earlier.
It may truly be said that the stars in their courses fought against Tippu – a fierce, fanatic, and ignorant Mohammedan, who was, nevertheless, sufficiently endowed with some of the sterner qualities required for Asiatic rulership to have made himself a name among the Indian princes of his time. But he had no political ability of the higher sort; still less had he any touch of that instinct which has occasionally warned the ablest and strongest Asiatic chiefs to avoid collision with Europeans. He was swept away by a flood that was overwhelming far greater states than Mysore, that had taken its rise in a distant part of the world, out of events beyond his comprehension and totally beyond his control, and that was now running full in the channel which carried the English, by a natural determination of converging consequences, to supreme ascendency in India.
He had thrown in his lot with the French just at
