Page:History of the French in India.djvu/89

 DUPLEIX SENT TO INDIA. 67 to that system of universal corruption, which, during chap. the reign of Louis XV., consumed the very vitals of In ' France, ruled in her palaces, and tainted all her public 1725. offices. We need scarcely say, that we advert to Joseph Francis Dupleix. This illustrious statesman was born at Landrecies, in the province of Flanders, in 1697. His father was a wealthy farmer-general of taxes, and a Director of the Company of the Indies. The young Dupleix displayed, at a very early age, a strong passion for the exact sciences, and particularly for mathematics. To the mercantile life, to which his father had destined him, he showed a decided aversion. To cure him, therefore, of his speculative habit of thought, and to plunge him at once into practical life, the old farmer-general sent the thoughtful and retiring student, then just seventeen, to sea. The result corresponded entirely to his hopes. Dupleix returned from voyages in the Atlantic and Indian oceans, cured of his love of abstract sciences, anxious to mix with the world, eager to put in force theories he had formed on the subject of commercial enterprise. It was in the power of his father to comply at once with his wishes. Director of the Company of the Indies, and a man of no small importance in the direction, he was able to nominate his son, then only twenty-three, to the second position at Pondichery. This was the office of First Councillor and Military Commissioner of the Superior Council. Dupleix joined his appointments in 1720, and at once began to put in force the theories which had formed the subject of his speculations. He found the colonists absorbed by the contemplation and care of the trade between Europe and Pondichery. His idea was to develop and foster a coasting trade and inland traffic. He desired to open out large schemes of commercial exchange at the various towns on the coast, and with the large cities in the in- terior. It did not seem sufficient to him, that Pondi- f 2