of less than a hundred killed and wounded. The battle of Plassy virtually gave the East India Company Bengal, Behar, and Orissa. Many other wars had to be waged, many battles won by skill and daring which equalled, if they did not surpass, Clive's exploits, before the English rule was so firmly established that it could give peace and security to its subjects. But those victories were facilitated by the profound impression produced on the native mind by Plassy. It was no unmeaning instinct which interpreted the famous prophecy about the Company's _raj_ lasting a hundred years only, to mean that it would be overthrown when a century had elapsed since the battle of Plassy. Twenty years later Hyder Ali, a Mahommedan adventurer who had usurped the throne of Mysore, made an attempt to oust the English from southern India. It was not until after a long and doubtful struggle that he was overcome: indeed he himself died before the conflict was over, and the comparative incompetence of his son contributed greatly to the triumph of the English. Decade by decade it became clearer that whether the East India Company liked it or not, English power must extend itself further and further, under penalty of perishing altogether. The original strictly commercial basis of the Company had not been forgotten, but new policy had been forced upon it, partly by the necessity of its position, partly by the intervention of Parliament. English officials in India no longer possessed the old opportunities for enriching themselves, which some of them had used with shameless rapacity, some with admirable disinterestedness. Good government, peace, security, were at any rate the avowed objects of the Indian administration, which had been more or less centralised ever since 1773 by the appointment of a governor-general. When in the first years of the nineteenth century one more native power attempted to expel the English, the supreme authority for this final conflict was in the hands of perhaps the ablest and most far-sighted statesman, whose name figures on the distinguished list of governors-general of India.