Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/447

Rh each other, so that what the positive law refuses to tolerate often becomes immoral, and what morality condemns the law has to denounce. It may be guessed that inhuman or scandalous rites are never really popular, while it is certain that whenever a civil ordinance takes its stand upon an indisputable ethical basis, religion has to give way. The crime was prevalent chiefly among the docile and habitually submissive races of Lower Bengal, and the Governor-General rightly inferred that its peremptory suppression, far from involving political danger, would be accepted as a welcome liberation.

Of Lord William Bentinck's foreign policy there is not much to be said. He was the first – indeed, he has been the last – Governor-General in whose time unbroken peace has been given to British India, if we exclude the despatch of troops to put down local insurrections in Mysore and in Coorg. In the management of some troublesome business with Haidarabad and the Rajput states he could rely on the skill and experience of Sir Charles Metcalfe; and he adjusted with success the much more important question of English diplomatic relations with Ranjit Singh, the ruler of the Panjab. But his commercial treaty with Ranjit Singh and his convention with the Amirs of Sind for opening the Indus River to British commerce were, in point of fact, the preliminary steps that led the British, a few years later, out upon the wide and perilous field of Afghan politics. The possibility of the overland invasion of India and the question of the