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 and French did not cease till the very last peace. At every outbreak of war between these nations in Europe, the forts and factories and islands which had been again and again seized upon, and again and again restored by treaties of peace in India, became immediately the scene of fresh aggressions, bickerings, and enormities. The hate which burnt in Europe was felt hotly, even to that distance; and men of another climate, who had no real interest in the question, and to whom Europe was but the name of a distant region which had for generations sent out swarms of powerful oppressors, were called upon to spill their blood and waste their resources in these strange deeds of their tyrants. It is to be hoped that the bulk of this evil is now past. In the peninsula of India, to which I am intending in the following chapters to confine my attention, the French now retain only the factories of Chandernagore, Caricall, Mahee, and Pondicherry; the Portuguese Goa, Damaun, and Diu; the Dutch, Serampore and Tranquebar; while the English power had triumphed over the bulk of the continent—over the vast regions of Bengal, Madras, Bombay, the Deccan and the Carnatic—over a surface of upwards of five hundred thousand square miles, and a population of nearly a hundred millions of people! These states are either directly and avowedly in British possession, or are as entirely so under the name of allies. We may well, therefore, leave the history of the squabbles and contests of the European Christians with each other for this enormous power, disgraceful as that history is to the name of Christianity—to inquire how we, whose ascendency has so wonderfully prevailed there, have gained this dominion and how we have used it.