Page:Sir Thomas Munro and the British Settlement of the Madras Presidency.djvu/53

 U^AR WITH TIPU 45

half the money, idly thrown away in sending a naval squadron and four additional regiments to this country, been employed in increasing the establishment of sepoys and cattle, we should then have had an army which, for its lightness and capacity for action^ would have broken the power of our formidable rival.

'Exclusive of the unwieldiness of our army, we shall commence the war under the disadvantage of a want of magazines, for we have none at present but at Madras. Since the conclusion of the late war, we have acted as if we had been to enjoy a perpetual peace. . ..

' It has long been admitted as an axiom in politics, by the directors of our affairs, both at home and in this country, that Tipii ought to be preserved as a barrier between us and the Marathas. This notion seems to have been at first adopted without much knowledge of the subject, and to have been followed without much consideration. It is to support a powerful and ambitious enemy, to defend us from a weak one. From the neighbourhood of the one, we have everything to apprehend ; from that of the other, nothing. This will be clearly understood by reflecting for a moment on the difi'erent constitutions of the two governments. The one, the most simple and despotic monarchy in the world, in which every department, civil and military, possesses the regu- larity and system communicated to it by the genius of Haidar. and in which all pretensions derived from high birth being discouraged, all independent chiefs