Page:Final French Struggles in India and on the Indian Seas.djvu/184

156 tend to confirm the conviction of the prescience and wisdom of Marquess Wellesley, to show very clearly the unsoundness of the timid policy by which he was so often overruled. The great Marquess not only urged an expedition in 1800; he fitted one out in 1801. This was diverted to Egypt. Shortly afterwards the Court of Directors, dreading the genius which would, if unfettered, have advanced the civilisation of India by twenty years, replaced him by a Governor-General who began by undoing the large work of unification which his predecessor had initiated. When Lord Cornwallis died, the Court of Directors, after vainly endeavouring to confer the Governor-Generalship on a narrow-minded reactionist — who, in the short term of his acting incumbency, confirmed and extended a system which left the states of Rájpútáná a prey to Maráthá freebooters, — imposed a policy upon Lord Minto which restricted his power for that kind of aggressive warfare which is so often the best and surest defence. It is a high testimony to Lord Minto's intellect that in the end he burst those trammels, and forced one portion, at least, of the policy of Marquess Wellesley on a peace-loving Court of Directors and a distrusting ministry.

It was Lord Minto then who, taking up the dropped thread of the policy of Marquess Wellesley, wrested the Isle of France from her parent country. For France indeed, even her name, the name she had borne for about a hundred years, perished on the 3rd December 1810. Called by her discoverers, the Portuguese, Cerné;