Page:History of the French in India.djvu/61

 1IIS WISE POLICY. one of the rival nations of Europe. When a native chap. prince visited Pondichery, he was received as a friend ; t he was carefully waited upon ; he was pressed to stay. noQ. The idea of regarding the natives as enemies was never suffered by any chance to appear. Acknowledging them as the lords paramount of the country, the French professed to regard themselves as their best tenants, their firmest well-wishers. Pondichery rose, therefore, without exciting a single feeling of distrust. It was freely resorted to by the most powerful princes and nobles in its neighbourhood. The good offices of the French were not seldom employed to mediate in cases of dispute. Thus it happened that they gained not only toleration but friendship and esteem. They were the only European nation which the natives re- garded with real sympathy. Evidences of this regard were constantly given; that it was real, subsequent events fully proved. This cordial understanding with the children of the so il — the solid foundation upon which to build up a French India — was, with much more that we have described, the work of that Martin whom the latest- French account of French India dismisses in half a dozen lines. Was it his fault that his successors risked and lost that which he had secured with so much care, with so much energy, with so much prudence'? The most fervent admirers of Dupleix, the most determined defenders of Lally, the most prejudiced partisans of Bussy, cannot assert that. Was it not rather that the very facility of Martin's success opened out to the most ambitious of his successors that splendid vision of supreme domination which is especially alluring to those who feel within themselves the possession of great powers 1 To answer that question, we must turn, in an inquiring spirit, to their careers.
 * Inde, par M. X. Raymond.