a war wantonly provoked by the Nawab Wazir, gave the province back to him. He opposed any extension beyond the Karamnassa. Lord Cornwallis wished to withdraw from the Malabar Coast, and to reduce Bombay to the status of a mere factory. In 1782 Lord Shelburne, Prime Minister, proposed to give up everything except Bombay and Bengal. 'The dread of territorial expansion was, in fact, the prevailing bugbear of the day' (Marshman, vol. i., p. 468). There have been some indications in late events that the dread has still an active influence on the India Office and the Cabinet.
Before passing from the past to the present and the future, I would note the importance of remembering that we never conquered India in the sense that Rome conquered Gaul or Great Britain. There was no nation to conquer. Nor did we, as some appear to think, uproot ancient dynasties, and ruthlessly destroy old historical monarchies. Passing over the time when the various East India Companies were occupied in rending each other or in the occasional peaceful rivalry of trade to the period when the English Company had come out victorious and began to expand, there was not a power or principality of any sort in the whole peninsula which had been fifty years in existence. I revert to this point with the object of making it clear why there was not and is not, and, I might venture to say, never can be, without cause given on our part by insane maladministration, any sort of general feeling against us such as exists in Finland or in Poland against Russia, or as there was in the Netherlands against Spain.
In considering how our policy should be framed in order to maintain our dominion, it is well to bear this in mind. We have not to fear or to conciliate a spirit of racial hostility to the British Government on the part of the peoples of India, and such a spirit could only be created by such acts of folly on our part as would unite against us the heterogeneous races, castes, and religions of the peninsula. At the same time it must be remembered that we are in India
