Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/420

370 wars and seizing territory, in order to protect herself and forestall the French. Then, before the last apprehensions of French rivalry had vanished, she had been confronted by the Marathas and the Mysore rulers, whose natural jealousy of her rising power was abetted by the French, and whose well-appointed armies directly threatened her position.

To meet this danger Lord Wellesley had organized subsidiary forces on a large scale, undertaking on the part of the British government the general defence of all states that submitted to England's political influence, and confining within fixed boundaries all those that held aloof. Lastly, when Mysore and the Maratha confederacy – the two powers that made head against the British – had been the one destroyed and the other disabled, England's ascendency so overshadowed all India that it was too late to descend from the height she had attained or to stand still abruptly on the road to universal dictatorship. She had now become a conquering power; she had assumed a continental sovereignty; and upon her the duty of providing the police of India had manifestly fallen. When the British attempted to disclaim this responsibility, no one else could undertake the business; and the smaller chiefships, who saw themselves spoiled and devoured, protested against a government that had pre-occupied the imperial place, but nevertheless evaded the imperial obligation.

In the meantime the condition of the whole central region was sinking from bad to worse. It has been