r to find out if they needed any {252} improvement.
But this was a mere piece of stage-play to amuse and to beguile the
stupidity and the bigotry of the Irish Parliament of those days. It
was not a stroke of policy which a man like Burke would have
condescended to or could have approved; but it must have greatly
delighted the cynical humor of such a man as Chesterfield. At all
events it is certain that during his administration Chesterfield
succeeded in winning the confidence and the admiration of the Catholics
of Ireland--that is to say, of five-sixths of the population of the
country. He was very soon recalled; perhaps the King did not quite
like his growing popularity in Ireland; and when he left Dublin he was
escorted to the ship's side by an enthusiastic concourse of people, who
pressed around him to the last and prayed of him to return soon to
Ireland. Chesterfield did not return to Ireland. He was made one of
the Secretaries of State, and the Dublin Castle administration went on
its old familiar way. But there is even still among the Irish people a
lingering tradition of the rule of Lord Chesterfield, and of the new
system which he tried for a while to establish in the government of
their island.

{253}

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

PRIMUS IN INDIS.

[Sidenote: 1743--Nucleus of the Anglo-Indian Empire]

Before the Jacobite rising had been put down, or the Pelhams absolutely
set up, England, without knowing it, had sent forth a new conqueror,
and might already have hailed the first promises of sway over one of
the most magnificent empires of the earth. The name of the new
conqueror was Robert Clive; the name of the magnificent empire was
India.

At that time the influence of England over India was small to
insignificance--a scrap of Bengal, the island and town of Bombay,
Madras, and a fort or two. The average Englishman's knowledge of India
was small even to non-existence. The few Englishmen who ever looked
with eyes of intelligent information upon that great tract of
territory, leaf-shaped, and labelled India on the maps, knew that the
English possessions therein were few and paltry. Three quite distinct
sections, called presidencies, each independent of the two others, and
all governed by a supreme authority whose offices were in Leadenhall
Street in London, represented the meagre nucleus of what was yet to be
the vast Anglo-Indian Empire. The first of these three presidencies
was the Bombay presi