which had reigned, every one of whom regarded the Mughal as
being only a temporary occupant of the supreme seat of power, to be
replaced, as fortune might direct, possibly by one of themselves,
possibly by a new invader. This conviction of the ephemeral character
of the actual rule was increased by the recollection of the ease with
which Humayun had been overthrown. Defeated at Kanauj, he had quitted
India leaving not a trace of the thirteen years of Mughal sway, not a
single root in the soil.

These were facts which Akbar had recognised. The problem, to his
mind, was how to act so as to efface from the minds of princes and
people these recollections; to conquer that he might unite; to
introduce, as he conquered, principles so acceptable to all classes,
to the prince as well as to the peasant, that they should combine to
regard him as the protecting father, the unit necessary to ward off
from them evil, the assurer to them of the exercise of their
immemorial rights and privileges, the assertor of the right of the
ablest, independently of his religion, or his caste, or his
nationality, to exercise command under {93} himself, the maintainer
of equal laws, equal justice, for all classes. Such became, as his
mind developed, the principles of Akbar. He has been accused, he was
accused in his life-time, by bigoted Muhammadan writers, of
arrogating to himself the attributes of the Almighty. This charge is
only true in the sense that, in an age and in a country in which
might had been synonymous with right, he did pose as the messenger
from Heaven, the representative on earth of the power of God, to
introduce union, toleration, justice, mercy, equal rights, amongst
the peoples of Hindustan.

His first aim was to bring all India under one sceptre, and to
accomplish this task in a great measure by enlisting in its favour
the several races which he desired to bring within the fold. I have
thought it advisable for the fuller comprehension of his system to
treat the subject in its two aspects, the physical and the moral.
This chapter, then, will chronicle the successive attempts to bring
under one government and one form of law the several states into
which India was then divided. The chapter that follows will deal more
particularly with the moral aspect of the question.

It would be tedious, in a work like this, to follow Akbar in all the
details of his conquests in India. It will suffice to record that,
during the first year o