by our progress had been so well satisfied of our decided superiority as to become patient wearers of the degraded trappings of state, could they have reconciled their proud followers to obedience and submission to those whom they deemed foreign upstarts, and whose power became every day more galling from the abuses committed by the meanest of the natives[206] of India employed in their service, or guarded by their protection? It is not meant, by these observations, to question the necessity which compelled our advance to power in Bengal. There was no alternative between its attainment and abandoning that country altogether; but while we do justice to ourselves, we should not be unjust to those who opposed us by intrigue or in battle. We should, at all events, judge them according to their habits, their knowledge, and the feelings and opinions of the community to which they belonged. Alarm for their lives, hatred and distrust of each other, or the lust of power, might make them confederate with us for the purpose of the moment. To this they might also be induced by that arrogant confidence, which is ever the concomitant of ignorance. They might hope to direct or command those with whom they had combined to destroy their enemies. But when this dream of self-delusion was dispelled, when they found that they themselves had been made the instruments of subverting the dominion of the race to which they belonged, and that their power was now controlled by the very persons by whom it had been so recently established,--it became natural for them, and for all whose fame and fortune were associated with them, to seek, through every means, emancipation from such humiliating thraldom. I have expressed my sentiments very strongly upon this subject, and may be condemned by those who, alike regardless of usage and of feeling, are guided in their judgment of every public and private act by partial principles, and by a local and limited scale of moral rectitude; but I shall appeal from such a decision to all who, true to the feelings and affections which are implanted in every breast, cherish attachment to their family, their tribe, and their country. I ask of these, what would have been their conduct, if placed in the depressed and degraded condition of Meer Jaffier, his kindred, his nobles, and their followers?