1. We have already seen how Clive laid the foundations of British rule in India, how Warren Hastings tightened our hold on the country, and how the Marquess Wellesley reduced the native princes to a state of dependence, and made the British the real masters of India. To establish a firm and just rule, and to save India from anarchy and its people from oppression, were all that the early rulers of India could attempt. But with the appointment of Lord Bentinck as governor-general, in 1828, our rule began to have a higher aim, and that was to build British greatness upon Indian happiness. 2. Of his many services to India, two stand out conspicuously: one was the rooting out of the _Thugs_, who made the robbing and murdering of travellers a pious duty, thinking that such acts would win them the favour of the dread goddess Kali. An old French traveller speaks of them as "the cunningest robbers in the world, who use a certain slip, with a running noose, which they can cast so deftly about a man's neck, that they strangle him in a trice." No person whom they attacked ever escaped to tell the tale. They went in bands disguised as travellers or rich merchants, and always carried tools for digging the graves of their victims. After each successful attack, offerings were made in the temples of the goddess. Within six years nearly all the members of this strange profession were hanged or placed in safe custody for life. 3. A still greater service, perhaps, was the putting an end to the custom of _suttee_. When any Hindu died, his widow was expected, in some parts of India, to accompany him to the next world by throwing herself into his funeral pile, and perishing in the flames. So common was the practice that in a single year, in Bengal alone, seven hundred widows were burnt alive. To this day the country is, in certain districts, thickly dotted with little white pillars, each in memory of a _suttee_. Lord Bentinck made a proclamation declaring that henceforth all who took part in a _suttee_ would be held guilty of murder. 4. When Bentinck's seven years of office were over, a statue was erected to his memory with this inscription: To William Cavendish Bentinck, WHO INFUSED INTO ORIENTAL DESPOTISM THE SPIRIT OF BRITISH FREEDOM; WHO NEVER FORGOT THAT THE END OF GOVERNMENT IS THE HAPPINESS OF THE GOVERNED. 5. We pass on to the next great landmark in the story of British rule in India. This was the governor-generalship of the Earl of Dalhousie, who ruled India between 1848 and 1856. Though he added to the empire more territory than any other British ruler in India, before or since, he did it all for the good of India as well as for the greatness of Britain. Believing that rulers exist only for the good of the governed, he made it his great aim to do away with abuses, to redress wrongs, to deal even-handed justice all round, and to promote the happiness of the people under his care.