Page:History of the French in India.djvu/84

 62 THE PEltPETUAL COMPANY OF THE INDIES. chap, over by the Governor. In their hands was the entire 11 administration. Justice was administered and the laws 1726. were enforced in the name of the King, but the Governor and the Councillors were the servants of the Company, liable to removal without any reference to the Sovereign or his Ministers. All the colonial offices, judicial and other, were in the gift of the Council, and to it were like- wise subject the subordinate chiefs of the other French comptoirs or settlements in India.* It is curious to read the account of the state observed by the Governor in those primitive days of Indian occupation. Attending upon him on great occasions, it is stated, are "twelve horse- guards clothed with scarlet laced with gold, and an officer, with the title of Captain, commands them. He has also a foot-guard of three hundred men, natives of the country, called peons, and when he appears in public, he is carried in a palanquin very richly adorned with gold fringe." Such, however, was in those early days the economy of the administration that, except on public or particular occasions, these guards were employed in the commer- cial service of the Company, and earned all the wages they received. At the time of the accession of M. Dumas, the native population is computed to have exceeded seventy thousand. All the institutions dependent on the action of the local Council received their full development during the incumbency of the successors of Martin, more especially of Lenoir. Theirs was indeed a system of peace. It would perhaps have been happy for the colony had it been able much longer to adhere to the policy of non- interference with native princes. But though its rulers were, for a long time, animated by the very best intentions, circumstances were ultimately too strong for them. But a few months before Lenoir assumed the Governorship for the second time, an event had Histoire des Indes Orieutales, par M. l'Abbe Guyon.