must be admitted that at times they had paid heavy salvage to the British for their rescue. In some of England's earlier transactions with them she had used the rough thoroughgoing methods of a stormy and dissolute period; and on emergencies their lands and revenues had been laid under severe contributions to her military expenditure. The time had now come when the British government, no longer driven to these summary expedients by the struggle for existence, but drawing from an ample and secure revenue, its own possessions, could regulate its dealings in civilized fashion by settled treaties, and could begin to adjust all its dealings with native states on the fair and equitable basis of their subordinate relationship.
So also England now had some leisure for looking into the condition of her domestic administration and bringing the great provinces which had been recently acquired into some kind of order. The investigation of land-tenures, the institution of an elementary police, the first serious attempts to check the brigandage prevailing in English districts, and the arrangement and supervision of the local courts of justice took substantial form at the beginning of the nineteenth century; the roots of that immense system of organized government which has since spread over all India were planted at this season of comparative tranquillity. The first five years of the nineteenth century were occupied with continuous wars, with great territorial changes, with the removal of landmarks, and with the rearrangement of rulerships. But from that time forward the country
