Page:The Marquess of Dalhousie.djvu/18

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10
DALHOUSIE'S WORK IN INDIA

the old fabric gradually wore out and its props began to give way. In 1848 another strong ruler came out from England to India, and laid afresh the foundations of the British Power — the foundations which, notwithstanding striking changes in the political control and administration, subsist to this day. It is with the work of this second builder of the temple of British Rule in India that the following pages deal. Lord Dalhousie's administration is now sufficiently removed from us to permit of calm historical treatment. Yet its consequences have so directly produced the India of to-day, as to give to his measures an almost contemporary interest. When the master-hand was removed, those measures had their reaction in the Mutiny. But the Mutiny of 1857 passed away in its turn, and left the permanent results of Lord Dalhousie's administration to develope themselves. The present foreign policy of India, the present internal problems of India, the new Industrial Era in India, are alike legacies of his rule.

For Lord Dalhousie did three things in India. He extended its frontiers, so as to bring them into inevitable although indirect contact with a great European nation on the one side, and with an ancient Asiatic power on the other. He at the same time consolidated the East India Company's internal possessions and the intervening Feudatory States, into the true beginnings of a united