Every nation condemns conquest, and every nation with power to enter upon a career of conquest rushes eagerly upon it. The harshest condemnation that has visited England because of her Indian successes has proceeded from nations who have never been backward in seizing the lands of other nations. She has been stigmatized as a usurper, and as having destroyed the independence of Indian states. The facts do not warrant these charges. She has rarely had a contest with any power which was not as much an intruder in India as herself. The Moghul dynasty was as foreign to India as the East India Company, or the house of Hanover; and the viceroys sent to rule over its vast and populous provinces had the same bases of power as were possessed by Clive, and Hastings, and Wellesley, and Bentinck, and Ellenborough, and Dalhousie. The Moghuls obtained Indian dominion by conquests that were rendered easy by Indian troubles; and this is precisely the history of England's Oriental dominion. What difference there is, is favorable to England. The Moghuls were deliberate invaders of India; the founder of that dynasty being an adventurer who sought an empire sword in hand, and won it by violence which no man had provoked. Baber was to India what the Norman William was to England. He long contemplated the conquest of the country, showing a wolf-like perseverance in hunting down his prey. For two-and-twenty years he had his object in view, and invaded India five times before he obtained the throne of Delhi. The English were forced to assume the part of conquerors, and would gladly have remained traders. They did not commence their military career until the Moghul had become a mere shadow, and when that potentate was altogether unable to protect them against the tyrannical practices of his lieutenants. They had to choose between war and extermination, and they belonged to a race which never hesitates when forced to make such a choice. Their wars were waged with the Moghul's viceroys, who were aiming at the foundation of dynastic rule, each in his own government, or with other princes, who were equally usurpers with those viceroys, the Mahratta chiefs, for example, and Hyder Ali. One war led to another, in all of which the English were victorious, until their power extended itself over all India. In one hundred and six years--dating from the capture of Madras by the French in 1746, which event must be taken as the commencement of their military career in India, and closing with the annexation of Pegu, December 28, 1852,--they had completed their work. That, in the course of operations so mighty, and relating to the condition of so many millions of people, they were sometimes guilty of acts of singular injustice, is true, and might be inferred, if there were no facts upon which to base the charge. It is impossible that it should have been otherwise, considering the nature of man, and the character of many of the instruments by which great enterprises are accomplished.