ment within the Company's borders. Development was checked, peace was precarious, and the stability of British authority was in imminent peril of being overturned and annihilated.
All this was changed by the Marquess of Hastings. The hostility of Nepál was overcome, and the northern frontier was secured. The Maráthá combination against British rule and the predatory system which threatened the Company's territories were annihilated. Central India was settled and pacified. In a word, the independent native states who conceived in 1813 that they could expel the English from India were defeated, and in 1823 every prince in that vast region up to the Sutlej was brought into subjection to the Government of Calcutta[1].
Wellesley had had a similar problem to face, and he originated a vigorous policy to solve it; he put his plans into execution, but he was not allowed to conclude them. Lord Hastings was theoretically opposed to this policy; yet he had hardly set foot in India, before he realised its importance and its absolute necessity, if the British nation were to continue its mission in the East.
'It was by preponderance of power/ he wrote to England in 1815, 'that those mines of wealth had been acquired for the Company's treasure, and by preponderance of power alone could they he retained. The supposition that the British power could discard the means of strength and yet enjoy the fruits of it, was one that would certainly be speedily
- ↑ Summary, &c, p. 35.
