Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/52

24 close competition and incessant collision throughout this extensive line. But the quarrel at home between king and Parliament checked English enterprise at the fountainhead, for our government could lend only a weak and fluctuating support in disputes with foreign rivals; while Holland and even Portugal were actively backed by their respective governments, who gave the direct weight of national authority to all expeditions and annexations in the East.

THE HUGLI RIVER AT BARRACKPUR.

As the English Company was thus virtually in the position of a private association contending against two sovereign powers, it is not surprising that toward the end of the civil war they were in very low water, while the Dutch had gained superiority over the English on the Indian coasts, were cutting off their trade with the Spice Islands, and treating them with the greatest arrogance everywhere. The State Papers of this time record incessant complaints of the "intolerable inju-