Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/189

Rh The habit of treating their own religious differences with equanimity undoubtedly indisposes men to trouble themselves about the conversion of others, and leaves no room for the confusion of temporal with spiritual interests in dealing with heathen folk. No more suitable mental outfit could have been provided for Europeans in the religious climate of India; nor indeed could the charge of subordination to clerical influence, or of impolitic proselytism, ever have been brought home to the East India Company by their bitterest enemy. On the whole, therefore, the calm and open temper of the English mind at this period may be numbered among the moral conditions that were advantageous to the English East India Company in contending for superiority in India.

We have thus seen that, of the three collisions between the French and English upon Indian soil, both parties found themselves after the first, at the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, very much in the same condition as at the beginning of hostilities, with a slight advantage, if any, to the English. On the second occasion, when Dupleix launched his grand political schemes, the French closed the unofficial war in 1754 on terms at least equal; they probably had some local superiority of influence and position. The third war, which was international, finished in 1761 decisively and irremediably against them, as was proved twenty years afterwards. When the French made their last descent upon an India coast in 1781, the long odds were for the moment against England on the sea, for she was