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24 placed within the Company's grasp the Himalayan provinces of Garhwál and Kumáun, and a long stretch of valuable forest at the foot of the Himálayas. Lord Hastings had put an end to the confederacy of the great Maráthá States, had dispersed the Pindárís, and had secured the peace of Central India. The Tenasserim Province, Arakan, and Assam had been acquired by the Company; Bhartpur, hitherto believed invincible, had fallen. The Sikh kingdom in the Punjab, the Amírs of Sind, and the Court of Oudh were in 1826 the chief representatives of native rule in Northern and Western India. Before Mr. Colvin died, he saw Lahore, Haidarábád in Sind, and Lucknow annexed, and the geographical limits of India coterminous with the India of the Company. The needle of apprehension was henceforth no more subject to disturbance from storms in the Peninsula, but continued steadily to point, as in Mr. Colvin's day it had for a time pointed, to the North-West frontier and to the regions beyond it.

While Mr. Colvin saw the close of this epoch of Indian history, he was himself identified with the era which succeeded it. We can see now that with the acquisition of Oudh, in 1856, the East India Company had done its work. The Company, and the great instrument which had served it, became thenceforth impediments to progress. The Indian Empire, once formed, with boundaries approximate to those of the great empires of Russia and China, could only be represented by the Crown. The old Sepoy army, with its numbers, its prejudices, the position which it occu-