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power of the company. Madras as well as the Bengal with the rich cities Calcutta, Benares and Allahabad became British and by this the victims of systematic plundering, which brought fabulous riches to the Company and made Clive the wealthiest man of his time. Since he had, like Hawkins and Drake, amassed so great a wealth for his country, it was but natural that he was knighted, as had been those pirates. This, however, did not prevent certain members of the Parliament, who were indignant over his terrible acts and rapacity, from arraigning him as a criminal and demanding his punishment because he abused the power with which he was entrusted to "the evil example of the servants of the public, and to the dishonor and detriment of the State."
The Government, however, could not allow the condemnation of a man who so clearly personified its own principles. It could not be expected to brand itself with the mark of infamy.—Therefore, the House of Commons found it proper not to vote on the arraignment, but to substitute a decision instead: "that Lord Clive has rendered to his country great and valuable services." Clive shortly afterward ended a suicide. Of his successors Warren Hastings continued the methods used by Clive. Undermining one principality after another, he brought them to fall by his cunning or caused them by force to seek the "high protection of England." By allowing his officers to follow his example and to enrich themselves at every opportunity the Indian population was subjected to incessant oppression. Revolts were put down with such inhuman cruelty, that a number of English philanthropists in 1786, on account of "high crimes and misdemeanors" demanded the impeachment of Hastings. The proceedings lastet 8 years, but ended in the verdict, by the House of Lords, "not guilty."—
During the 19th century all principalities between the Indus and Brahmaputra were subjugated; in the West the frontiers were extended over Baloochistan as far as Persia, in the East over Burma and Siam, and in the North as far as Tibet. The famous painting by Vereschagin, showing captured Hindus tied to the mouths of cannons to be shot into a thousand atoms, gives an adequate idea of this phase of English pacification and her civilization.
Even to-day India is nothing to England but an object of regardless plundering. Once enormously wealthy, India is today a luckless land in which famines, sweeping away millions of people, return frequently, a land whose history is filled with English crimes, with blood and tears, a land whose inhabitants
