Page:Final French Struggles in India and on the Indian Seas.djvu/21

Rh at Assaye, and at Argaum. There can be no question that in the last quarter of the last century there was in India scarcely any limit to the ambitious aspirations of an European adventurer who might possess even ordinary ability. When we see how men like Thomas and Perron, both originally common sailors, both devoid of abilities of the first-class, rose to the front rank; how one became the independent ruler of a principality, and the other governed, for Sindia, a portion of India comprehending roughly the country now known as the North-west Provinces; we gather an idea of the relative practical character of the European and the Asiatic at that epoch. But the sketches of the lives of these adventurers are not less interesting from another point of view. They give a remarkable insight into the mode of administration peculiar to the natives of Hindostan. Reading them, we can form some idea of the condition to which the whole of India would have been reduced, had Lake been beaten at Laswárí and Wellesley at Assaye. We can see how intrigue ruled supreme; how moral character went for nothing; how audacity, recklessness, corruption, always triumphed; how combined in one man, they were irresistible. The sense entertained by the