Page:Lord Amherst and the British Advance Eastwards to Burma.djvu/210

an earl by the title of 'Earl Amherst of Arakan in the East Indies and Viscount Holmesdale in Kent.' All things went well with the man whom the king delighted to honour.

'May 30. Arrived this morning from Calcutta an extract of a letter from the High Court of Directors dated January 17, transmitting the following resolutions:—"Resolved, That the thanks of this Court he given to Lord Amherst, Governor-General, for his active, strenuous, and persevering exertions in conducting to a successful issue the late war with the Government of Ava, provoked by the unjust aggression of the enemy, prosecuted amid circumstances of very unusual difficulty, and terminated so as to uphold the character of the Company's Government, to maintain the British ascendant in India, and to impress the bordering States with just notions of the national power and resources." '

The Directors and the Court of Proprietors also voted thanks to Lord Amherst ' for his forbearance in not resorting to measures of coercion against the usurper of Bhartpur as long as hopes could reasonably be entertained of accomplishing by means of negotiation the restoration to power of the legitimate Rájá, and for his decision in the failure of negotiation to effect the reduction of that important fortress by force.'

There were only six dissentient voices to the vote of thanks in the Court of Proprietors—consisting of Mr. Hume and his friends. Mr. Hume made every opposition he could devise.

Virtue has triumphed; and the diary returns to