Page:Mountstuart Elphinstone and the Making of South-western India.djvu/18

10 intrigues of the Peshwa, defeated him in battle, and annexed his dominions.

To him the Bombay Presidency owes both the enlargement of its territory and the organisation of its administrative system. Returning home after more than thirty years of uninterrupted labour, he passed his remaining days in retirement, venerated and consulted as the Nestor of the service. He died in 1859, having survived the Mutiny and the transfer of the government from the Company to the Crown. The name of Elphinstone, therefore, has been chosen to head the volume in the series of Rulers of India which will tell the story of the overthrow of Maráthá supremacy and the introduction of British rule into the Deccan. But the exigencies of biographical treatment must not be allowed to hide the fact that Elphinstone was merely one among a devoted band of Company's servants, who, at the beginning of the present century, carried into execution the policy designed by the master-mind of the Marquis Wellesley; just as, fifty years later, a similar group of illustrious men gathered round Dalhousie and drew their inspiration from his genius. Some of those of the elder generation—such as Barry Close, Webbe, Jenkins, and Adam—can scarcely be said to emerge from the mists that condemn to obscurity all but the most fortunate of Anglo-Indian worthies. Three, however, of Elphinstone's contemporaries stand conspicuous for work of the same kind as that accomplished by himself; nor has history been careful to discriminate