Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/444

 392 COMPLETION OF DOMINION was the river, and this arrangement preserved unbroken for nearly forty years the peace of the northern Anglo- Indian frontier. The Governor-Generalship of Lord William Ben- tinck has the distinctive characteristic of representing a period of brief and rare tranquillity in Anglo-Indian history; it was an era of liberal and civilizing adminis- tration, of quiet material progress, and of some impor- tant moral and educational reforms. Lord Amherst, whom Lord Bentinck succeeded, had just closed a costly and troublesome Burmese war; and with Lord Auck- land, who followed him, began the disastrous British campaigns in Afghanistan. Between Amherst and Auckland came an interval of calm rulership that was well employed in the work of domestic improvements and internal organization, favoured by the current of public opinion and political discussion in England. The liberal spirit which had accomplished the enfranchise- ment of Roman Catholics at home, and which was in- sisting on Parliamentary Reform, had to some extent influenced the views of Englishmen toward India. The expiration of the term of the East India Company's charter and the debate over its renewal had drawn attention to Indian affairs; and the act which was passed in 1833 to prolong the charter removed the last vestige of the Company's commercial monopoly, and finally completed the transformation of the old trading corporation into a special agency for the government of a vast Asiatic dependency. It was Lord William Bentinck who issued, a few