degree armed. Lord Pigot, then Governor of
Madras,--Lord Pigot, the preserver and the victim of the British
dominion in Asia,--detached such of the Company's force as could he
collected and spared, and such of his Majesty's ships as were on that
station, to the assistance of Calcutta. And--to hasten this history to
its conclusion--the daring and commanding genius of Clive, the patient
and firm ability of Watson, the treachery of Mir Jaffier, and the battle
of Plassey gave us at once the patronage of a kingdom and the command of
all its treasures. We negotiated with Mir Jaffier for the viceroyal
throne of his master. On that throne we seated him. And we obtained, on
our part, immense sums of money. We obtained a million sterling for the
Company, upwards of a million for individuals, in the whole a sum of
about two millions two hundred and thirty thousand pounds for various
purposes, from the prince whom we had set up. We obtained, too, the town
of Calcutta more completely than we had before possessed it, and the
twenty-four districts adjoining. This was the first small seminal
principle of the immense territorial acquisitions we have since made in
India.

Many circumstances of this acquisition I pass by. There is a sacred veil
to be drawn over the beginnings of all governments. Ours in India had an
origin like those which time has sanctified by obscurity. Time, in the
origin of most governments, has thrown this mysterious veil over them;
prudence and discretion make it necessary to throw something of the same
drapery over more recent foundations, in which otherwise the fortune,
the genius, the talents, and military virtue of this nation never shone
more conspicuously. But whatever necessity might hide or excuse or
palliate, in the acquisition of power, a wise nation, when it has once
made a revolution upon its own principles and for its own ends, rests
there. The first step to empire is revolution, by which power is
conferred; the next is good laws, good order, good institutions, to give
that power stability. I am sorry to say that the reverse of this policy
was the principle on which the gentlemen in India acted. It was such as
tended to make the new government as unstable as the old. By the vast
sums of money acquired by individuals upon this occasion, by the immense
sudden prodigies of fortune, it was discovered that a revolution in
Bengal was a mine much more easily worked and infinitely more productive
than the min