King of Mysore to the greatest perfection in discipline, and to render it attached to his person, and subservient to his views, by a skillful mixture of severity and relaxation, toil and reward, danger and applause, which none but a master-hand like his was capable of exactly compounding.

The death of his sovereign the King of Mysore at length afforded him the opportunity to which he had so long, and with so prophetic an eye, looked forward-and gave him ample room for self gratulation on the score of his sagacity and prudence.

The heir in succession to the throne being then an infant, the politic Hyder, setting aside all claims of the kindred of the young prince, took upon himself the guardianship-under the title of Regent assumed the supreme authority-and, though too well aware of the inviolable attachment of the people to their lawful monarch to put him directly to death, usurped the throne, and consigned him to imprisonment in Seringapatam, the capital of the Mysorean dominions.

Having thus, by his talents, acquired the possession of the throne, he gave a large range to the sublimity of his views, and soon displayed the exhaustless resources of his mind in the new office of Governor and Legislator-forming such vast well-ordered military establishments, and such judicious and salutary civil institutions, as made him blaze forth at once the terror of his neigh bors, and rendered him, in the sequel, the most powerful and formidable potentate in the Hither Peninsula. In carrying on those, his deficiency in letters was supplied by his vigilance and sagacity, sharpened by suspicion three secretaries executed all his orders in separate apartments: and if, on comparison, they were found to differ, he who committed the error received sentence of death. His natural cruelty made him take the execution of their sentence upon himself not unfrequently: to slice off a head with his own hand, or see it done by others, was a luxurious recreation to the sanguinary Hyder.

The natural sagacity of this great man suggested, that in order to accomplish the extensive objects which his

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active and ambitious temper held up to his imagination, the introduction of the most perfect military discipline was above all other things necessary; and his judgment informed him that the European was the best. He therefore held out the most tempting allurements to military adventurers, and particularly to those, whether black or white, who had been trained in the service of the English East India company: he sent emissaries, for the purpose, to all parts of India, with instructions to offer great rewards; and carried this design so far, that whenever accident or war threw persons of that description into his hands, he never failed to detain them, and, if they refused to enter into his service, treat them with the most unpardonable rigor and barbarity; and by these means brought his army to a state of perfection till then unknown to a black power. He did not stop there, but determined to establish a navy-by large offers allured many ship-carpenters and artizans from Bombay-made no inconsiderable progress in constructing dock-yards, and had actually equipped some ships of the line, besides frigates, fitted to encounter European seas. Indeed, he seemed to have carried his views of conquest even to the Polar regions; for it is a fact, that he directed his people, in constructing those vessels, to fit them for encountering seas of ice, or, as he called it, the thick water.

To a man of such ardent ambition and deep penetration, the vast power which the English East India company had acquired, and were daily acquiring, in the East, could not fail to be an object of jealousy. He conceiv ed a deadly and implacable animosity to the British Nation, which influenced his whole succeeding life, ended only with his death, and was then transmitted to his son Tippoo Sahib, with the exaction of a solemn oath, ever to retain those sentiments.

A coincidence of circumstances, which has seldom occurred in the fortunes of men, tended, at a lucky crisis, to further the bold projects of Hyder; and neither fortune, though extremely propitious to him, nor his own unbounded talents and energetic spirit, favored the execution of them, more than the bungling politics, the ludicrous ambition, and the consequent unjustifiable proceeds,

ings, of one of our Presidencies in India-I mean Bombay. Fortunately, the wisdom and moderation of our East India councils at this day, vindicate the wounded character of the British nation, and justify me in the remarks I make.

An ambitious and profligate chief of the Marhatta Tribes-his name Raganaut Row-had been deposed by the wise men of his country, for having murdered his nephew, in order to usurp the throne of Setterah. He

fled to Bombay, and by specious promises and other means prevailed on that Presidency to afford him an asylum, and finally to take up arms in his defence, against the united Marhatta States, who at the very time were able to raise an army of three hundred thousand fighting men. Hostilities were first commenced by the English; and by them peace was first proposed. The treaty of Poonah was made, by which it was provided that Raganaut Row would quit Bombay; and by the English the provisions of that treaty was broken-for, in direct violation of it Raganaut was kept at Bombay. This breach of the treaty led to another; for this crafty and unprincipled chief made use of it with such address as to persuade that Presidency to attack the Marhattas again:—by magnifying the power of his party among his countrymen, he prevailed upon them once more to assert his rights; and the Presidency of Calcutta, I am afraid, were induced to join that of Bombay in the plan.

It happened unfortunately, that at this time the Presidency of Bombay was composed of persons the most unqualified, probably, that could be found in any community for offices of such importance. One, particularly, was allowed, by the almost unanimous consent of those who knew his private or public character, to be ignorant, not only of the first principles of government, but of the ordinary knowledge requisite for a gentleman; and for situations of moment he was peculiarly disqualified by a fondness for minutiæ, to which he paid more attention than to matters of greater consequence. A temper and intellect of this kind were rendered still more incapable of the enlarged views of any Representative of a great nation in a distant colony should possess, by a mercantile

education and habits, which narrowed even his circumscribed mind, and left him not a sentiment, not an idea, that was not merely commercial. The administration of such men was exactly what might have been expected; and, instead of asserting the dignity of Great Britain, or promoting the advantage of their employers-narrow policy, selfish views, and efforts arising from mistaken notions of conquest, made the whole tissue of their conduct in India.

Blinded by the plausible insinuations of Raganaut, and stimulated, as I have already observed, by a lust for conquest, which would have been unjustifiable even in an hereditary despot, but which were peculiarly vicious and ridiculous in a body of merchants who were themselves subjects, the East India company's servants again determined to support, by force of arms, that most atrocious murderer and with the contemptibly inadequate force of four thousand men, encumbered with an unwieldy train of baggage and servants for the accommodation of finikin voluptuous officers, and led by two doughty compting-house champions (Carnac and Mostyn), with colonel Egerton as military assistant rather than commander, they set out, to encounter the whole torrent of the Marhatta force, and conduct Raganaut to Poonah.

Had Raganaut advanced at the head of his own partizans only, the chiefs of the Marhatta Nation might possibly have taken different sides of the question, and left between them a breach for his arms or intrigues to make an entrance fatal to the general cause of the country: but the assaults of a foreign army-an army of interested peculating strangers, as the company's troops then were an army of avowed natural enemies, professing a different religion, entertaining different political principles, and formed by nature of a different complexionroused and united them in one common cause, and compressed discordant interests, which had been for time immemorial at irreconcilable variance, into one compact body of resistance, which, as it became more firm from the strokes of hostility, could not, in the nature of things, be subdued; in the same manner as the unjustiSable confederacy of kings against France lately united

all the conflicting parties of that country-converted twenty-seven millions of people, male and female, into one compact armed force-rendered them not only invin. cible at home, but terrible abroad-and finally, has enabled them to bestride, Colossus like, the universe.

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LETTER LVI.

THE

HE approach of the British troops with Raganaut caused great alarm at Poonah; and the ministers there sent to offer terms, which were contemptuously rejected. They then determined to save, by prowess, those rights which they could not preserve by justice or negociation-and took the field with such great force, that their menacing enemies found it expedient to consider of a retreat. The faithful Raganaut, finding his plans baffled, sent privately to Scindiah, the Marhatta chief, proposing to him to attack the English, and promising in that case to join him with his part of the army his perfidy, however, being discovered, the English commanders began to retreat, carrying him along with them. They were, however, surrounded, and reduced to make the most abject concessions offering a carteblanche to Scindiah as the price of a retreat: but that august chief nobly disdained to take advantage of their situation, and contented himself with terms which justice should have exacted from them, even if necessity had not compelled their acceptance. The restoration of Salsette, and of the other conquests made by the company's troops during the preceding hostilities, and the delivery of Raganaut's person into the hands of the Marhattas, were among the provisions. Raganaut was delivered up two hostages were taken for the remaining part of the treaty; and the harrassed remains of the English army were permitted to return to Bombay.

Raganaut having found means to escape, reached Surat; and the company's chiefs refused to comply with