All
administrations alike have been intensely ignorant of Indian politics; and
for the natural reason, that the business of home politics leaves them no
disposable energies for affairs so distant, and with which each man's
chance of any durable connection is so exceedingly small. What Lord
Mornington did was this: he looked our prospects in the face. Two great
enemies were then looming upon the horizon, both ignorant of our real
resources, and both deluded by our imperfect use of such resources, as,
even in a previous war, we had possessed. One of these enemies was Tippoo,
the Sultan of Mysore: him, by the crushing energy of his arrangements,
Lord Mornington was able utterly to destroy, and to distribute his
dominions with equity and moderation, yet so as to prevent any new
coalition arising in that quarter against the British power. There is a
portrait of Tippoo, of this very ger, in the second volume of Mr. Pearce's
work, which expresses sufficiently the unparalleled ferocity of his
nature; and it is guaranteed, by its origin, as authentic. Tippoo, from
the personal interest investing him, has more fixed the attention of
Europe than a much more formidable enemy: that enemy was the Mahratta
confederacy, chiefly existing in the persons of the Peishwah, of Scindia,
of Holkar, and the Rajah of Berar. Had these four princes been less
profoundly ignorant, had they been less inveterately treacherous, they
would have cost us the only dreadful struggle which in India we have
stood.
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