apacity or tyranny, there was
time enough, even in the short life of man, to bring round the ill
effects of an abuse of power upon the power itself. If hoards were made
by violence and tyranny, they were still domestic hoards; and domestic
profusion, or the rapine of a more powerful and prodigal hand, restored
them to the people. With many disorders, and with few political checks
upon power, Nature had still fair play; the sources of acquisition were
not dried up; and therefore the trade, the manufactures, and the
commerce of the country flourished. Even avarice and usury itself
operated both for the preservation and the employment of national
wealth. The husbandman and manufacturer paid heavy interest, but then
they augmented the fund from whence they were again to borrow. Their
resources were dearly bought, but they were sure; and the general stock
of the community grew by the general effort.

But under the English government all this order is reversed. The Tartar
invasion was mischievous; but it is our protection that destroys India.
It was their enmity; but it is our friendship. Our conquest there, after
twenty years, is as crude as it was the first day. The natives scarcely
know what it is to see the gray head of an Englishman. Young men (boys
almost) govern there, without society and without sympathy with the
natives. They have no more social habits with the people than if they
still resided in England,--nor, indeed, any species of intercourse, but
that which is necessary to making a sudden fortune, with a view to a
remote settlement. Animated with all the avarice of age and all the
impetuosity of youth, they roll in one after another, wave after wave;
and there is nothing before the eyes of the natives but an endless,
hopeless prospect of new flights of birds of prey and passage, with
appetites continually renewing for a food that is continually wasting.
Every rupee of profit made by an Englishman is lost forever to India.
With us are no retributory superstitions, by which a foundation of
charity compensates, through ages, to the poor, for the rapine and
injustice of a day. With us no pride erects stately monuments which
repair the mischiefs which pride had produced, and which adorn a country
out of its own spoils. England has erected no churches, no
hospitals,[56] no palaces, no schools; England has built no bridges,
made no high-roads, cut no navigations, dug out no reservoirs. Every
other conqueror of every ot