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gious duties, and that a still larger world, a national church regarded as portion would fall under the influence heretical by four-fifths of the nation of spiritual mountebanks, hungry for committed to its care, a church estagain, or drunk with fanaticism. While blished and maintained by the sword, he would with pleasure admit that all a church producing twice as many riots the qualities of Christian pastors are as conversions, a church which, though to be found in large measure within possessing great wealth and power, the existing body of Dissenting minis- and though long backed by persecuting ters, he would perhaps be inclined to laws, had, in the course of many gethink that the standard of intellectual nerations, been found unable to propa and moral character among that ex-gate its doctrines, and barely able to emplary class of men may have been maintain its ground, a church so odious, raised to its present high point and that fraud and violence, when used maintained there by the indirect influ- against its clear rights of property, ence of the Establishment. And he were generally regarded as fair play, a may be by no means satisfied that, if church, whose ministers were preaching the Church were at once swept away, to desolate walls, and with difficulty the place of our Sumners and Whate- obtaining their lawful subsistence by leys would be supplied by Doddridges the help of bayonets, such a church, on and Halls. He may think that the our principles, could not, we must own, advantages which we have described be defended. We should say that the are obtained, or might, if the existing state which allied itself with such a system were slightly modified, be ob-church postponed the primary end of tained, without any sacrifice of the government to the secondary: and that paramount objects which all govern- the consequences had been such as any ments ought to have chiefly in view. sagacious observer would have preNay, he may be of opinion that an in-dicted. Neither the primary nor the stitution, so deeply fixed in the hearts secondary end is attained. The temand minds of millions, could not be poral and spiritual interests of the subverted without loosening and shak- people suffer alike. The minds of men, ing all the foundations of civil society. instead of being drawn to the church, With at least equal ease he would find are alienated from the state. The mareasons for supporting the Church of gistrate, after sacrificing order, peace, Scotland. Nor would he be under the union, all the interests which it is necessity of resorting to any contract his first duty to protect, for the purpose to justify the connection of two reli- of promoting pure religion, is forced, gious establishments with one govern- after the experience of centuries, to He would think scruples on admit that he has really been promoting that head frivolous in any person who error. The sounder the doctrines of is zealous for a Church, of which both such a church, the more absurd and Dr. Herbert Marsh and Dr. Daniel noxious the superstition by which those Wilson have been bishops. Indeed he doctrines are opposed, the stronger are would gladly follow out his principles the arguments against the policy which much further. He would have been has deprived a good cause of its natural willing to vote in 1825 for Lord Fran- advantages. Those who preach to rulers cis Egerton's resolution, that it is ex- the duty of employing power to propapedient to give a public maintenance gate truth would do well to remember to the Catholic clergy of Ireland: and that falsehood, though no match for he would deeply regret that no such truth alone, has often been found more measure was adopted in 1829. than a match for truth and power together.

ment.

In this way, we conceive, a statesman might on our principles satisfy himself that it would be in the highest degree inexpedient to abolish the Church, either of England or of Scotland.

But if there were, in any part of the

A statesman, judging on our principles, would pronounce without hesitation that a church, such as we have last described, never ought to have been set up. Further than this we will

not venture to speak for him. He thunder and lightning of the skies. would doubtless remember that the The people of India, when we subdued world is full of institutions which, them, were ten times as numerous as though they never ought to have been set up, yet, having been set up, ought not to be rudely pulled down; and that it is often wise in practice to be content with the mitigation of an abuse which, looking at it in the abstract, we might feel impatient to destroy.

We have done; and nothing remains but that we part from Mr. Gladstone with the courtesy of antagonists who bear no malice. We dissent from his opinions, but we admire his talents; we respect his integrity and benevolence; and we hope that he will not suffer political avocations so entirely to engross him, as to leave him no leisure for literature and philosophy.

LORD CLIVE.

(JANUARY, 1840.)

The Life of Robert Lord Clive; collected from the Family Papers, communicated by the Earl of Powis. By MAJORGENERAL SIR JOHN MALCOLM, K.C.B. 3 vols. 8vo. London: 1836.

We have always thought it strange that, while the history of the Spanish empire in America is familiarly known to all the nations of Europe, the great actions of our countrymen in the East should, even among ourselves, excite little interest. Every schoolboy knows who imprisoned Montezuma, and who strangled Atahualpa. But we doubt whether one in ten, even among English gentlemen of highly cultivated minds, can tell who won the battle of Buxar, who perpetrated the massacre of Patna, whether Sujah Dowlah ruled in Oude or in Travancore, or whether Holkar was a Hindoo or a Mussulman. Yet the victories of Cortes were gained over savages who had no letters, who were ignorant of the use of metals, who had not broken in a single animal to labour, who wielded no better weapons than those which could be made out of sticks, fiints, and fish-bones, who regarded a horse-soldier as a monster, half man and half beast, who took a harquebusier for a sorcerer, able to scatter the

the Americans whom the Spaniards vanquished, and were at the same time quite as highly civilised as the victorious Spaniards. They had reared cities larger and fairer than Saragossa or Toledo, and buildings more beautiful and costly than the cathedral of Seville. They could show bankers richer than the richest firms of Barcelona or Cadiz, viceroys whose splendour far surpassed that of Ferdinand the Catholic, myriads of cavalry and long trains of artillery which would have astonished the Great Captain. It might have been expected, that every Englishman who takes any interest in any part of history would be curious to know how a handful of his countrymen, separated from their home by an immense ocean, subjugated, in the course of a few years, one of the greatest empires in the world. Yet, unless we greatly err, this subject is, to most readers, not only insipid, but positively distasteful.

Perhaps the fault lies partly with the historians. Mr. Mill's book, though it has undoubtedly great and rare merit, is not sufficiently animated and picturesque to attract those who read for amusement. Orme, inferior to no English historian in style and power of painting, is minute even to tediousness. In one volume he allots, on an average, a closely printed quarto page to the events of every forty-eight hours. The consequence is, that his narrative, though one of the most authentic and one of the most finely written in our language, has never been very popular, and is now scarcely ever read.

We fear that the volumes before us will not much attract those readers whom Orme and Mill have repelled. The materials placed at the disposal of Sir John Malcolm by the late Lord Powis were indeed of great value. But we cannot say that they have been very skilfully worked up. It would, however, be unjust to criticize with severity a work which, if the author had lived to complete and revise it, would probably have been improved by condensation and by a better arrangeK K

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affected his health and spirits. His duties were of a kind ill suited to his ardent and daring character. He pined for his home, and in his letters to his relations expressed his feelings in language softer and more pensive than we should have expected either from the waywardness of his boyhood, or from the inflexible sternness of his later years. "I have not enjoyed," says he, one happy day since I left my native country;" and again, "I must confess, at intervals, when I think of my dear native England, it affects me in a very particular manner. . . . . If I should be so far blest as to revisit again my own country, but more especially Manchester, the centre of all my wishes, all that I could hope or desire for would be presented before me in one view."

One solace he found of the most respectable kind. The Governor possessed a good library, and permitted Clive to have access to it. The young man devoted much of his leisure to reading, and acquired at this time almost all the knowledge of books that he ever possessed. As a boy he had been too idle, as a man he soon became too busy, for literary pursuits.

But neither climate nor poverty, neither study nor the sorrows of a home-sick exile, could tame the desperate audacity of his spirit. He behaved to his official superiors as he had behaved to his schoolmasters, and was several times in danger of losing his situation. Twice, while residing in the Writers' Buildings, he attempted to destroy himself; and twice the pistol which he snapped at his own head failed to go off. This circumstance, it is said, affected him as a similar escape affected Wallenstein. After satisfying himself that the pistol was really well loaded, he burst forth into an exclamation that surely he was reserved for something great.

bon took the opposite side. Though England was even then the first of maritime powers, she was not, as she has since become, more than a match on the sea for all the nations of the world together; and she found it difficult to maintain a contest against the united navies of France and Spain. In the eastern seas France obtained the ascendency. Labourdonnais, governor of Mauritius, a man of eminent talents and virtues, conducted an expedition to the continent of India in spite of the opposition of the British fleet, landed, assembled an army, appeared before Madras, and compelled the town and fort to capitulate. The keys were delivered up; the French colours were displayed on Fort St. George; and the contents of the Company's warehouses were seized as prize of war by the conquerors. It was stipulated by the capitulation that the English inhabitants should be prisoners of war on parole, and that the town should remain in the hands of the French till it should be ransomed. Labourdonnais pledged his honour that only a moderate ransom should be required.

But the success of Labourdonnais had awakened the jealousy of his countryman, Dupleix, governor of Pondicherry. Dupleix, moreover, had already begun to revolve gigantic schemes, with which the restoration of Madras to the English was by no means compatible. He declared that Labourdonnais had gone beyond his powers; that conquests made by the French arms on the continent of India were at the disposal of the governor of Pondicherry alone; and that Madras should be rased to the ground. Labourdonnais was compelled to yield. The anger which the breach of the capitulation excited among the English was increased by the ungenerous manner in which Dupleix treated the principal servants of the Company. The About this time an event which at Governor and several of the first genfirst seemed likely to destroy all his tlemen of Fort St. George were carhopes in life suddenly opened before ried under a guard to Pondicherry, and him a new path to eminence. Europe conducted through the town in a trihad been, during some years, distracted umphal procession under the eyes of by the war of the Austrian succession. fifty thousand spectators. It was with George the Second was the steady ally reason thought that this gross violation of Maria Theresa. The house of Bour-of public faith absolved the inhabitants

of Madras from the engagements into which they had entered with Labourdonnais. Clive fled from the town by night in the disguise of a Mussulman, and took refuge at Fort St. David, one of the small English settlements subordinate to Madras.

guls reared in the sixteenth century was long one of the most extensive and splendid in the world. In no European kingdom was so large a population subject to a single prince, or so large a revenue poured into the treasury. The beauty and magnificence of the buildings erected by the sovereigns of Hindostan amazed even travellers who had seen St. Peter's. The innumerable retinues and gorgeous decorations which

even eyes which were accustomed to the pomp of Versailles. Some of the great viceroys who held their posts by virtue of commissions from the Mogul ruled as many subjects as the King of France or the Emperor of Germany. Even the deputies of these deputies might well rank, as to extent of territory and amount of revenue, with the Grand Duke of Tuscany, or the Elector of Saxony.

The circumstances in which he was now placed naturally led him to adopt a profession better suited to his restless and intrepid spirit than the business of examining packages and casting ac- surrounded the throne of Delhi dazzled counts. He solicited and obtained an ensign's commission in the service of the Company, and at twenty-one entered on his military career. His personal courage, of which he had, while still a writer, given signal proof by a desperate duel with a military bully who was the terror of Fort St. David, speedily made him conspicuous even among hundreds of brave men. He soon began to show in his new calling other qualities which had not before There can be little doubt that this been discerned in him, judgment, saga- great empire, powerful and prosperous city, deference to legitimate authority. as it appears on a superficial view, was He distinguished himself highly in yet, even in its best days, far worse several operations against the French, governed than the worst governed parts and was particularly noticed by Major of Europe now are. The administraLawrence, who was then considered as tion was tainted with all the vices of the ablest British officer in India. Oriental despotism, and with all the Clive had been only a few months in vices inseparable from the domination the army when intelligence arrived that of race over race. The conflicting prepeace had been concluded between tensions of the princes of the royal Great Britain and France. Dupleix house produced a long series of crimes was in consequence compelled to restore and public disasters. Ambitious lieuMadras to the English Company; and tenants of the sovereign sometimes asthe young ensign was at liberty to re-pired to independence. Fierce tribes sume his former business. He did in- of Hindoos, impatient of a foreign yoke, deed return for a short time to his desk. frequently withheld tribute, repelled the He again quitted it in order to assist armies of the government from the Major Lawrence in some petty hostili- mountain fastnesses, and poured down ties with the natives, and then again in arms on the cultivated plains. returned to it. While he thus wavering spite, however, of much constant malbetween a military and a commercial administration, in spite of occasional life, events took place which decided convulsions which shook the whole his choice. The politics of India as- frame of society, this great monarchy, sumed a new aspect. There was peace be- on the whole, retained, during some tween the English and French Crowns; generations, an outward appearance but there arose between the English of unity. majesty, and energy. But, and French Companies trading to the throughout the long reign of AurungEast a war most eventful and impor-zebe, the state, nowithstanding all that tant, a war in which the prize was no- the vigour and policy of the prince thing less than the magnificent inheri- could effect, was hastening to dissotance of the house of Tamerlane. lution. After his death, which took

In

The empire which Baber and his Mo-place in the year 1707, the ruin was

fearfully rapid. Violent shocks from which passed on the Mogul empire without co-operated with an incurable during the forty years which followed decay which was fast proceeding within; the death of Aurungzebe. A succesand in a few years the empire had un- sion of nominal sovereigns, sunk in indergone utter decomposition. dolence and debauchery, sauntered The history of the successors of The-away life in secluded palaces, chewing odosius bears no small analogy to that bang, fondling concubines, and listenof the successors of Aurangzebe. But ing to buffoons. A succession of feperhaps the fall of the Carlovingians rocious invaders descended through furnishes the nearest parallel to the the western passes, to prey on the defall of the Moguls. Charlemagne was fenceless wealth of Hindostan. A scarcely interred when the imbecility Persian conqueror crossed the Indus, and the disputes of his descendants be- marched through the gates of Delhi, gan to bring contempt on themselves and bore away in triumph those treaand destruction on their subjects. The sures of which the magnificence had wide dominion of the Franks was se- astounded Roe and Bernier, the Peavered into a thousand pieces. Nothing cock Throne, on which the richest more than a nominal dignity was left jewels of Golconda had been disposed to the abject heirs of an illustrious name, by the most skilful hands of Europe, Charles the Bald, and Charles the Fat, and the inestimable Mountain of Light, and Charles the Simple. Fierce inva- which, after many strange vicissitudes, ders, differing from each other in race, lately shone in the bracelet of Runjeet language, and religion, flocked, as if by Sing, and is now destined to adorn the concert, from the farthest corners of the hideous idol of Orissa. The Afghan earth, to plunder provinces which the soon followed to complete the work of government could no longer defend. devastation which the Persian had beThe pirates of the Northern Sea ex-gun. The warlike tribes of Rajpootended their ravages from the Elbe to the Pyrenees, and at length fixed their seat in the rich valley of the Seine. The Hungarian, in whom the trembling monks fancied that they recognised the Gog or Magog of prophecy, carried back the plunder of the cities of Lombardy to the depths of the Pannonian forests. The Saracen ruled in Sicily, desolated the fertile plains of Campania, and spread terror even to the walls of Rome. In the midst of these sufferings, a great internal change passed upon the empire. The corruption of death began to ferment into new forms of life. While the great body, as a whole, was torpid and passive, every separate member began to feel with a sense and to move with an energy all its own. Just here, in the most barren and dreary tract of European history, all feudal privileges, all modern nobility, take their source. It is to this point, that we trace the power of those princes who, nominally vassals, but really independent, long governed, with the titles of dukes, marquesses, and counts, almost every part of the dominions which had obeyed Charlemagne.

Such or nearly such was the change

tana threw off the Mussulman yoke. A band of mercenary soldiers occupied Rohilcund. The Seiks ruled on the Indus. The Jauts spread dismay along the Jumna. The highlands which border on the western sea-coast of India poured forth a yet more formidable race, a race which was long the terror of every native power, and which, after many desperate and doubtful struggles, yielded only to the fortune and genius of England. It was under the reign of Aurungzebe that this wild clan of plunderers first descended from their mountains; and soon after his death, every corner of his wide empire learned to tremble at the mighty name of the Mahrattas. Many fertile viceroyalties were entirely subdued by them. Their dominions stretched across the peninsula from sea to sea. Mahratta captains reigned at Poonah, at Gualior, in Guzerat, in Berar, and in Tanjore. Nor did they, though they had become great sovereigns, therefore cease to be freebooters. They still retained the predatory habits of their forefathers. Every region which was not subject to their rule was wasted by their incur

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