34 SIR THOMAS MUNRO
inhabitants. You and I may live to see the day when the fairest provinces of India (reversing Mr. Gibbon's boast) shall not be subject to a company of merchants of a remote island in the Northern Ocean ; but when, perhaps, those merchants and their country- men, being confined by the superior power of their rival to the narrow limits of their native isle, shall sink into the insignificance from which they were raised by the empire of the sea. With the freedom of our Government we may retain our orators, our poets, and historians, but our domestic transactions will afford few splendid materials for the exercise of genius or fancy, and with the loss of empire we must relinquish, however reluctantly, the idea so long and so fondly cherished by us all, of our holding the balance of power.
'In looking forward to the rising grandeur of France, I am not influenced by any groundless despondency, but I judge of the future from the past. And when I consider that after the Revolution she opposed for some time, successfully, the united naval powers of England and Holland ; that she did the same under Queen Anne, and under George II till 1759 5 ^^^ ^^^ notwithstanding the almost total annihilation of her marine in that war — in the East, in Europe, America, and the West Indies — she never shunned, and some- times sought our fleets^ and met us in this country (the East Indies), if not with superior force, at least with superior fortune, and perhaps bravery ; that she made all those exertions when she was left to the
