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.
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