Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/337

Rh title was derived only from recent occupation, and their possession was cemented by little or no national sympathies; so that, unless the conqueror thought fit to set up again the fallen ruler, the people merely underwent a change of masters.

The whole attempt of the native powers to imitate the military methods of Europe proved a delusion and a snare. It led them to suppose that they could put themselves on an equality with the English by a system that really placed them at a disadvantage, and to maintain, upon a false estimate of their strength, large military establishments under foreign officers, which it soon became the chief object of the English government to disband or destroy. Nothing was easier for the English, with their command of money and war material, than to increase their own disciplined army in India up to whatever point might be necessary for maintaining superiority. Nothing, on the other hand, was more difficult than for an Indian prince to repair his losses of cannon and trained soldiers.

Nor is it hard to understand how, in these conditions of military and political inequality, every successive campaign in India for the last hundred years has resulted in an increase of the English territory. In fact the whole country has thus passed gradually under the dominion of the government which excelled all the other leading states in the art of disciplined fighting, and whose stability did not in any event depend upon the life or luck of a single ruler or general or upon the issue of a single battle, because its resources were