The cormorant that lives in expectation Of a long wished-for dearth, and smiling grinds The faces of the poor; The grand encloser of the Commons for His private profit or delight; The usurer, Greedy at his own price to make a purchase, Taking advantage upon bond or mortgage From a prodigal-- These you may grind to powder. And now these are they who should be spared and shielded: The scholar, Whose wealth lies in their heads and not their pockets; Soldiers that have bled in their country's service; The rent-rack'd farmer, needy market-folk; The sweaty labourer, carriers that transport The goods of other men--are privileged; But above all let none presume to offer Violence to women, for our king hath sworn Who that way's a delinquent, without mercy Swings for it, by martial law. Here we have the pith and essence of Napier's government in Scinde, very simple, and probably containing more law-giving wisdom than half the black-lettered statutes made and provided since Massinger wrote them down two hundred and fifty years ago. For eighteen months longer--until September, 1847--Napier remained in Scinde, labouring to rule its people on the strictest lines of honest justice. Two more hot seasons scorched his now age-weakened frame, and again came terrible visitations of cholera and fever, to lay low many a gallant friend and make aching gaps in his own domestic circle; but these trials he accepted as a soldier accepts on the battle-field the bullets which whistle as they go,--for want of life. But there was one thing which he could not accept with the same courageous calmness: it was the systematic censure upon his actions, vilification of his motives, and abuse of himself, which deepened in intensity as the load of life grew heavier through age. When a traveller through tropical forests touches a hornets' nest the enraged insects rush out and sting him on the moment; but the hornets' nest which Napier had disturbed in India was not to be appeased by any sudden ebullition of its wrath. Much more slow and deadly was its method. He had dared to speak the honest truth that was in him about the greed and rapacity of London Directors, and the waste, the extravagance, and the luxury of their English servants in the East; he had committed that sin which power never pardons, the championing of the poor and oppressed against the rich and ruling ones of the earth. Now he had to pay the penalty, and from a thousand sources it was demanded at his hands. There was to be no mercy for this man who had not only dared to condemn the abuses of power, but had added the insult of smiting his opponents with the keen Damascus blade of his genius. To condemn plutocratic power has ever been bad enough, but to ridicule the truffle-fed and the truculent tyrant has been a thousand times worse.