handful of Europeans at the Presidency represented in the eyes of the native potentates, and the masses of the people, the governing community, and it was plausibly urged that any hesitation on the part of those in authority to assert their title to implicit respect might fatally discredit the exotic administration.
In events of strictly political concern within the limits of India proper, the administration of Lord Amherst was destined to be comparatively sterile. Twenty years before, Lord Lake's campaigns had brought the North-Western Provinces under the Company's rule, and made its officers guardians of the Emperor at Delhi. To Lord Wellesley also we owe the districts which form the Madras Presidency. The main function of Lord Hastings was to reduce to impotence the powers which had long harassed and menaced us in the possession of these territories, but almost all the region which constitutes the Bombay Presidency was incorporated in the Company's dominions as the result of his great campaign against the Maráthás. When Lord Amherst took over charge they had been less than five years under British rule, and five years—even when an Elphinstone is in charge—is hardly long enough to clear away the debris of long confusion. The rest of India east of the Sutlej and the Indus valley was, if we except the territories of Nepál and Burma, &c., in a relation of subsidiary dependence. Throughout Rájputána, Málwá, Gujarát, Oudh, Bundelkhand,
