Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/242

202 foreign policy upon that frontier up to the end of the century.

It should be understood that the prime object of those who directed the affairs of the English in India at this critical epoch was to place a limit upon the expansion of the Company's possessions, to put a sharp curb upon schemes of conquest, and to avoid any connection with the native princes that might involve the British in foreign war. But this was not because, as some have thought, the Company did not see whither they were drifting; it was because the outcome and irresistible tendencies of their situation were so clearly foreseen. To those who surveyed the prospect now before the English, and who could perceive that all the scattered fragments of the Moghul Empire would be drawn by political gravitation toward any strong and coherent power, it was plain by this time that, if the Company were ready to drop commerce for conquest and to lay out another great dominion over the wide unoccupied spaces left by the subsidence of the Moghul Empire, the site lay open for the builder, the task of those who could do it.

In 1762, before the victory at Baxar, the Calcutta Council had sent home a project of despatching an army with the emperor to replace him on his throne at Delhi and to extend the political influence of the English throughout upper India. And after 1764, when the British success against the Vizir of Oudh carried the arms of England beyond Bengal, it was clearly seen by Clive that the next step forward would commit his