Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/303

Rh could not master the English fleet in the Bay of Bengal, there could be no doubt that the war had proved the strength of the English position in India and had tested the firmness of its foundation. Although the tidings of peace reached India in 1783, just in time to release the English army in South India from considerable difficulties, and though the French ships still outnumbered the English on the coast, yet Suffren, on receiving the despatches, exclaimed: "God be praised for the peace! for it was clear that in India, though we had the means to impose the law, all would have been lost."

With the termination of this war ended the only period, in the long contest between England and the native powers, during which the British position in India was seriously jeoparded for a time. That the English dominion emerged from this prolonged struggle uninjured, though not unshaken, is a result due to the political intrepidity of Warren Hastings. It seems unnecessary to continue here the discussions, which have now lasted more than a century, over the career of this remarkable Englishman. What chiefly concerns us to understand is that Hastings carried the government of India safely through one of the sharpest crises in England's national history, when her transmarine possessions were in great peril all over the world, because all the naval powers of Europe were banded against her.

When, in the course of the Seven Years' War, the successes of the British against the French in India and North America had freed England from her only