Page:Final French Struggles in India and on the Indian Seas.djvu/25

INTRODUCTION. XVll I regard India as the brightest jewel in the diadem of the Queen of England. I believe that the natives of India are not solitary in deriving benefit from their connection with England ; that directly and indirectly England greatly gains by it. But upon this large question I shall not here enter. We are in India and we must stay there ; and that we are there for the benefit alike of the princes and the people is a fact which the wise and thoughtful Indian will be the first to admit. Many of them may perhaps have forgotten the days when their country was divided into armed camps, each led by a Pindari marauder or a Maratha freebooter ; when justice was openly bought, when no man could say in the day that his house would belong to him on the morrow, when human life was uncared for, and when readiness to commit the vilest crimes was a sure road to Court favour. But these are matters which it is well not to forget. Recalling them to the memory the thinldng reader will draw a contrast between that Maratha period of Indian history, peculiarly favourable to reckless and unprincipled adventurers. Native as well as European, and that which has succeeded it, when as a rule the buffalo is b