Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/241

OLIVE'S ALLIANCE WITH OUDH 201 ance, our conquest, and our possessions to Bengal, Bi- har, and Orissa. To go further is in my 'opinion a scheme so extravagantly ambitious and absurd, that no governor and council in their senses can adopt it, unless THE RESIDENCY AT LUCKNOW. the whole system of the Company's interest be first entirely new re-modelled." He therefore decided to maintain and strengthen Oudh as a friendly state inter- posed between Bengal and Northern India. And the barrier-treaty of August, 1765, framed upon this prin- ciple by Lord Clive, constituted the basis of British