of their pestilent course than burning homesteads, bleeding, mangled bodies, and dying and dishonoured mothers, in the midst of their weeping and famished offspring? If the Indian Governments had never effected any other good than this, they would still leave behind them an imperishable monument of the beneficence of English rule.
It must, however, be admitted that the position of the Court of Directors is altogether false and anomalous; for it can no longer be called a company of traders, inasmuch as its commercial character has been abolished by Act of Parliament, and it raises armies, levies taxes, coins money, declares war, and pursues conquest. Nor can it, on the other hand, be said to be a government – at least, of any of the known and admitted forms; being neither an autocracy nor a monarchy, either limited or absolute, a republic or a pure democracy: nor is it a Council of Ten, a Conclave, or a Sanhedrim. It bears, perhaps, a greater resemblance to the Spanish Junta than to any other form of delegated authority, and the likeness is by no means flattering. The ideas conceived of it in the East are more ludicrous than just; and nothing can be more puzzling to the natives than a power which assumes unlimited authority over them, but is itself subject to the control of another with which they are apparently unconnected; but whether it be an old man, or an old woman, or a combination of the sexes, or a winged dragon, or simply the "twenty-four stools," is to this day a moot point from Adam's Peak to the Punjaub.[1]
But in our humble page we are not called upon either to censure or panegyrise the "Honourable Company Bahander;" and our narrow limits remind us, ere we have too long trespassed on the patience of our readers, of the subject we have chosen, con amore, to illustrate – the noble exploits of our Anglo-Indian Army.
- ↑ "The salary of a Director is only 300l. per annum, but the patronage of each averages from 13,000l. to 14,000l.; and 4000l. has often been spent in canvassing the constituency, which numbers about 2000." – India Reform Tract.
