man of great military experience and elevated moral
worth; a man who was intrusted with great power, even after his
misfortunes in America, and a man who richly deserved the confidence
reposed in him. Still, he was seldom fortunate. He made blunders in
India as well as in America. He did not fully understand the
institutions of India, or the genius of the people. He was soon called
to embark in the contests which divided the different native princes,
and with the usual result. The simple principle of English territorial
acquisition is, in defending the cause of the feebler party. The
stronger party was then conquered, and became a province of the East
India Company, while the weaker remained under English protection,
until, by oppression, injustice, and rapacity on the part of the
protectors, it was driven to rebellion, and then subdued.

When Lord Cornwallis was sent to India, in 1786, the East India
Company had obtained possession of Bengal, a part of Bahar, the
Benares district of Allahabad, part of Orissa, the Circars, Bombay,
and the Jaghire of the Carnatic--a district of one hundred miles along
the coast. The other great Indian powers, unconquered by the English,
were the Mahrattas, who occupied the centre of India, from Delhi to
the Krishna, and from the Bay of Bengal to the Arabian Sea; also,
Golconda, the western parts of the Carnatic, Mysore, Oude, and the
country of the Sikhs. Of the potentates who ruled over these extensive
provinces, the Sultan of Mysore, Tippoo Saib, was the most powerful,
although the Mahrattas country was the largest.

[Sidenote: War with Tippoo Saib.]

The hostility of Tippoo, who inherited his father's prejudices against
the English, excited the suspicions of Lord Cornwallis, and a
desperate war was the result, in which the sultan showed the most
daring courage. In 1792, the English general invested the formidable
fortress of Seringapatam, with sixteen thousand Europeans and thirty
thousand sepoys, and with the usual success. Tippoo, after the loss of
this strong fort, and of twenty-three thousand of his troops, made
peace with Lord Cornwallis, by the payment of four millions of pounds,
and the surrender of half his dominions. Lord Cornwallis, after the
close of this war, returned home, and was succeeded by Sir John Shore;
and he by Marquis Wellesley, (1798,) under whose administration the
war with Tippoo was renewed, in consequence of the intrigues of the
sultan with the French at