by the Governor-General, who was relieved in 1807 by Lord Minto, then President of the Board of Control and formerly a manager of the impeachment of Warren Hastings. Minto arrived in India firm on a policy of non-intervention, but felt himself compelled to aid the Raja of Berar against a turbulent robber chief and to insist on the limitation of Ranjit Singh's dominion to the west side of the Sutlej. Between that river and the north-west frontier the Sikh Maharaja was now supreme and his sovereignty there was acknowledged on the condition that he came no nearer British territory.

The mission which negotiated this settlement was designed also to bar the way against a possible Franco-Russian invasion. In 1807 Napoleon had concluded an alliance with the Tsar Alexander I, and still dreamt of an attack on India. His powers were then regarded as almost superhuman, and British missions were despatched to Afghanistan, Sind and Persia. Expeditions from India captured the Isles of France and Bourbon; the Spice Islands and Java were taken from the Dutch, who had become subject to Napoleon. The Cape of Good Hope had been wrested from them in 1806. In 1814 their eastern possessions were restored to them, but not the Cape.

In the year 1813 the Governor-General who was to make a final end of non-intervention arrived in India.

The Earl of Moira, later Marquis of Hastings, an experienced soldier and advanced in years, proved a clear-sighted and courageous ruler. The year of his arrival saw the renewal of the Company's charter for twenty years from April 1814, but the abolition of their monopoly of Indian trade, leaving them, however, the exclusive right to trade with China. When renewing the charter, Parliament required the Directors to spend annually at least £10,000 of Indian revenues on the revival and improvement of Indian literature and the introduction of “the sciences" among the people of British India. The clause which imposed this obligation was the first legislative admission of the right of State education to participate in Indian public revenues. There was then no State system of education in England, and efforts in the direction of public instruction in India made by Christian missionaries and by certain European officials and non-officials had failed either to arrest a general decline of Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian learning, caused by the wars and anarchy of a hundred years, or to foster adequately the indigenous schools in which the rudiments of reading, writing and arithmetic were imparted

to some sons of zamindars, shopkeepers and village accountants. Now, however, largely through the efforts of William Wilberforce, the new Charter Act presented two distinct propositions for the Company's consideration: (a) the revival and improvement of the ancient learning, and (b) the introduction and promotion of Western sciences. Lord Moira was deeply interested in these matters, but was quickly compelled to turn his attention to even more insistent needs.

The territories of the Company and its allies were increasingly threatened by the Maratha powers. From the chiefs of Rajputana came a loud complaint.

"Some power," they said, " had always existed to which peaceable States submitted, and in return obtained its protection against the invasion of upstart chiefs and the armies of lawless banditti; the British Government now occupied the place of the protecting power, and was the natural guardian of weak States which were continually exposed to the cruelties and oppression of robbers and plunderers owing to its refusal to protect them." Their enemies were not only the Marathas but also the Pindaris (crop-stealers), originally the campfollowers and banditti, who followed in the wake of Maratha armies, recruited their ranks from disbanded soldiery of varied races, and were rapidly increasing in numbers and truculence. Maintaining secret understandings with the chief Maratha powers, these freebooters from time to time raided the territories of the Company and its allies. Their chief leader, Chita, could muster 10,000 horsemen.

But pressing as these matters were, Lord Moira first carried through a war with the Gurkhas of Nipal, Hindu hill-tribes of Mongolian origin who reigned over the highlands and valleys of the southern slopes of the Himalayas. The war was provoked by Gurkha raids on British territory and ended in the Treaty of Sagauli (1816), whereby a long stretch of hill-territory was ceded to the British, and a British resident was received at the Gurkha capital Khatmandu. Ever since Nipal has been a trusty friend and has contributed some of the finest soldiers in the Indian army.

Then Lord Moira, who had become Marquis of Hastings, turned his eyes on the Pindaris, whose latest exploit had been an incursion into some districts of the Madras Presidency, where they had killed, plundered and tortured far and wide. He decided to deal once and for all with these ruffians and their sympathisers. Negotiating with the Maratha powers, he concluded alliances with the Muslim ruler of Bhopal and the

various Rajput States. Simultaneously he mobilised an army of 120,000 with 300 guns. He was his own Commander-inChief, and prepared wide and sweeping operations. Between September 1817 and January 1818 he constrained Sindia to sign a treaty engaging to assist the Company's forces against the Pindaris; he crushed Holkar's troops; he annihilated the organised Pindari bands and induced the remnants to settle down to a peaceful life. Within the same months the Peishwa, Baji Rao, who had for some time been preparing treachery, assembled a large force and attacked the British Resident Mountstuart Elphinstone and a small British contingent, but was beaten off with heavy losses and defeated in subsequent engagements. In June 1818 he surrendered, was deposed and sent off to live on a large pension at Bithur, a village on the bank of the Ganges above Cawnpur. His office was abolished and his dominions were annexed, with the exception of a small area round Satara which was made over to the latest descendant of Sivaji.

The Maratha Raja of Berar and Nagpur, who had also joined in the fray, was deposed and ceded considerable territory. Holkar was dealt with less severely.

The work of Wellesley was thus completed. The British Government was supreme in India outside the Punjab and Sind. Under the wise and considerate administration of Mountstuart Elphinstone the people of the Peishwa's dominions readily accepted the new dispensation. The surviving Maratha powers desisted from demands for blackmail and settled down within demarcated boundaries. The Rajput States were definitely saved. In all British territory annexed since the beginning of the century district administration was introduced and law and order were established. In the Madras Presidency Sir Thomas Munro, having no zamindars or middlemen to deal with, settled the land revenue with cultivators and occupiers. In the present Agra Province temporary settlements were made with resident proprietary communities. Cornwallis's permanent settlement with zamindars was not extended beyond its original limits.

In the time of Lord Amherst, the successor of Lord Hastings, military operations, originally purely defensive, were undertaken against the Burmese, who had committed various acts of aggression and were threatening Bengal. In 1825 they were driven from Assam and from hill-States on the north-eastern frontier of India; and in 1821 a force sailed for Rangoon, and, after various vicissitudes, brought the enemy to terms. By