History the Sikhs - From the Origin of the Nation to the Battles of the Sutlej #221557

The glory to England is indeed great of her Eastern Dominion,_and She may justly feel proud of the in creasing excellence oi her sway over subject nations; but this general expression of the sense and desire of the English people does not show that every proceed ing of her delegates is necessarily fitting and far-seeing. The wisdom of England is not to be measured by the views and acts of any one of her sons, but is rather to be deduced from the characters of many. In India it is to be gathered in part from the high, but not always scrupulous, qualities which distinguished Clive, Hast ings, and Wellesley, who acquired and secured the Empire; in part from the generous, but not always discerning, sympathies of Burke, Cornwallis, and Ben tinck, who gave to English rule the stamp of modera tion and humanity; and also in part from the ignorant well-meaning of the people at large, who justly depre cating ambition in the abstract vainly strive to check the progress of conquest before its necessary limits have been attained, and before the aspiring energies of the conquerors themselves have become exhausted. B-y conquest, I would be understood to imply the extension of supremacy, and not the extinction of dynasties, for such imperial form of domination should be the aim and Scope of English sway in the East. England should reign over kings rather than rule over subjects.