The Fall of the Moghul Empire of HindustanKeene, H. G. (Henry George)
History
The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan
Keene, H. G. (Henry George)
India -- History -- 18th century; Mogul Empire -- History
It has never been in the contemplation of this Government to
derive from the charge of supporting and protecting his Majesty,
the privilege of employing the royal prerogative, as an
instrument of establishing any control or ascendancy over the
states and chieftains of India, or of asserting on the part of
his Majesty any of the claims which, in his capacity of Emperor
of Hindustan, his Majesty may be considered to possess upon the
provinces originally composing the Moghul Empire. The benefits
which the Governor-General in Council expected to derive from
placing the King of Dehli and the royal family under the
protection of the British Government are to be traced in the
statements contained in our despatch to your honourable Committee
of the 18th of July, 1804, relative to the evils and
embarrassments to which the British power might have been exposed
by the prosecution of claims and pretensions on the part of the
Mahrattas, or of the French, in the name and under the authority
of his Majesty Shah Allum, if the person and family of that
unhappy monarch had continued under the custody and control of
those powers, and Especially of the French. With reference to
this subject, the Governor-General in Council has the honour to
refer your honourable Committee to the contents of the inclosure
of our despatch of the 13th of July, 1804, marked A, and to the
seventy-third paragraph of that despatch, in proof of the actual
existence of a project for the subversion of the British Empire
in India, founded principally upon the restoration of the
authority of the Emperor Shall Allum under the control and
direction of the agents of France. The difficulty of every
project of that nature has been considerably increased by the
events which have placed the throne of Dehli under the protection
of the Honourable Company. The Governor-General in Council
further contemplated the advantages of the reputation which the
British Government might be expected to derive from the
substitution of a system of lenient protection, accompanied by a
liberal provision for the ease, dignity, and comfort of the aged
monarch and his distressed family, in the room of that oppressive
control and the degraded condition of poverty, distress, and
insult, under which the unhappy representative of the house of
Timur and his numerous family had so long laboured.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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