The native powers of the latter, by engaging in alliance, and inviting to interference in internal politics, the subjects of one European state, leave to the other, who may be in rivalry or hostility with it, no option between certain ruin, and employing means of self-defence and retaliation. This truth was never more completely evinced than in 1744, when war was declared between France and England. On receipt of this intelligence, the forces under the control of the companies of the two nations on the coast of Coromandel, prepared to prosecute hostilities by land and sea, upon a scale which involved both in a scene of operations more suited to empires than to commercial factories. The results of these operations will appear wonderful to him who only considers the handful of troops which either party could bring into the field; but the improvements which, within the last two centuries, had taken place in Europe, gave its soldiers an incalculable advantage over those of Asia, before the latter were taught, by repeated defeats, to make war upon more equal terms with their European opponents. The superiority of a well-constructed machine over manual labour is not more extraordinary, than the advantages which discipline and the improvements in fire-arms and artillery afford to a regular body of troops over an irregular and badly armed force. No valour can equalise the combat, and the impressions produced by defeat are rendered tenfold greater by a comparison of numbers. The well-commanded, and well-trained battalion moves amidst ten thousand of its rabble opponents, like a giant with a thousand hands, which defend or strike, according to the dictates of one mind, and to whom an unconnected force, where every individual acts for himself, can offer neither injury nor resistance. It is to this fact far more than to the want of personal courage in the men, or pusillanimity in their leaders, that we must refer the astonishing success of small numbers of disciplined troops, in the early wars of India; and it was from observing this success that the rulers of the country so eagerly courted their aid.