ood of its three chief cities. Of the conduct of the
affairs of such a body, still almost confined to commerce, the chief
share might not unreasonably be left to the merchants themselves,
subject to such supervision on the part of the government at home as was
implied in the very name of the department invested with that
supervision, the Board of Control, which, as Pitt explained the name,
was meant to show that it was not to be, like the measure proposed by
the Coalition Ministry, a board of political influence.[304] But the
case was wholly altered when British India reached from Point de Galle
to the Himalayas, and spread beyond the Ganges on the east, to beyond
the Indus on the west; when the policy adopted in India often influenced
our dealings with European states, and when the force required for the
protection of those vast interests exceeded the numbers of the royal
army. India, too, is a country the climate of which prevents our
countrymen from emigrating to it as settlers, as they do to Canada or
Australia, and where, consequently, the English residents are, and
always must be, a mere handful in comparison with the millions of
natives. In such a case their government must at all times rest mainly
on opinion, on the belief in the pre-eminent power of the ruler; and it
was obvious that that belief would be greatly fortified by the sovereign
of Britain becoming that ruler.[305] The great rajahs cordially
recognized the value of the transfer of power considered in this light,
and felt their own dignity enhanced by becoming the vassals of the
sovereign herself.

Turning to French affairs, a brilliant French writer has remarked, that
his countrymen are, of all peoples, the least suited to be conspirators,
since none of them can ever keep a secret. But it was the ill-fortune of
Louis Napoleon that he had provoked enmities, not only among his own
countrymen, but among the republican fanatics of other nations also, who
saw in his zeal for absolute authority the greatest obstacle to their
designs, which aimed at the overthrow of every established government on
the Continent, and shrunk from no crimes which they conceived to be
calculated to promote their object. To free themselves from such an
antagonist, the most wholesale murders seemed by no means too large a
price. And in the middle of January, as the Emperor and Empress were
going to the Opera, a prodigious explosion took place almost beneath the
wheels of their car