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 THE MARQUESS OF DALHOUSIE AND HIS WORK IN INDIA

CHAPTER I

THE ARGUMENT

The leading idea in these volumes is to present a series of historical retrospects rather than of personal biographies. Each little book takes some conspicuous epoch in the making of India, and, under the name of its principal personage, sets forth the problems which he had to encounter, the work which he achieved, and the influences which he left behind. Thus the rise and culmination of the Mughal Empire will be briefly sketched under the title of Akbar; its decay under that of Aurangzeb. The volume on Dupleix will sum up the struggle of the European nations for India, before the ascendency of the British. The present volume on Dalhousie exhibits the final developments of the East India Company's rule.

At the beginning of the century, the Marquess of Wellesley, a king of men, organised British India on the basis upon which it rested from 1798 to 1848. But during those fifty years, as we shall see,