originally slaves. The Moghul raises them to dignity or degrades them to obscurity according to his own pleasure and caprice.'

Bernier goes on to show that the total insecurity of all private property, land revenue exactions, instability of government, the denial of justice, the tyranny and cupidity of the sovereign and his subordinates, 'a tyranny often so excessive as to deprive the peasant and artisan of the necessaries of life, that drives the cultivator of the soil from his wretched home,' and that was ruining agriculture-accounted abundantly for the rapid decadence of all Asiatic States1. 'It is owing,' he says, 'to this miserable system that most towns in Hindusthan are made up of earth, mud, and other wretched materials; that there is no city or town which, if it be not already ruined or deserted, does not bear evident marks of approaching decay.' He touches, in this manner, upon the symptoms, already perceptible to a close observer, of the empire's political and economical decline.

Soon after the date at which Bernier wrote, Aurangzeb entered upon the interminable wars in South India which gradually involved him in the misfortunes and difficulties that darkened the last years of his reign. He succeeded in upsetting the minor Mahomedan kingdoms which had been strong enough to hold down the Hindu population; but he had in fact weakened his empire by extending it; for the new southern provinces could not be effectively managed at a distance from the

1 'The country is ruined by the necessity of defraying the enormous charges required to maintain the splendour of a numerous court, and to pay a large army maintained for the purpose of keeping the people in subjection. No adequate idea can be conveyed of the sufferings of that people-Bernier.

central authority, and the Hindus were not only provoked by his fanaticism, but encouraged by his inability to control them. The Moghul government, moreover, had never paid much attention to its sea frontier, being quite unaccustomed to expect foreign enemies or intruders from any other quarter than the north-west, through the Afghan passes. The only naval force on the Indian coast belonged to the Síddhis, an independent Abyssinian colony, whose chiefs occasionally placed their fleet at the disposal of Aurangzeb for employment on the west side of the Indian peninsula.

To these causes and favouring circumstances, there- ▸ fore, to the incipient decline of the central sovereignty, to the relaxation of imperial authority on the outskirts of the dominion, and especially to the commotion caused by the spread of the Hindu rebellion under energetic Maratha leaders, we may attribute the facility with which the English made good their foothold on the shores of India toward the close of the seventeenth century.'

It is important, moreover, to remember that at the time when the mistakes and troubles of the Moghul empire were opening the gates of India to access from the sea, there set in an era of war in Europe which for many years disabled or diverted the resources of England's two maritime rivals, France and Holland. The reigns of the two autocratic monarchs who ruled France and India throughout the second half of the seventeenth century tally very nearly in point of time, for the dates of their respective accessions very nearly coincide; and they died early in the eighteenth century within a few years of each other. In the policy to which each of these celebrated rulers personally attached himself, and in its unfortunate consequences, there is also much more than a fanciful resemblance. The accession of

| both Aurangzeb and Louis XIV took place at a moment when the splendour and fame of their dynasties were in full lustre; they both inaugurated a career of conquest and unscrupulous attacks upon weaker neighbours that was at first triumphant; they both gradually undermined the prosperity of their kingdoms and the stability of their houses by wasteful and impolitic wars. Fanatic religious persecution of their own subjects, unwieldy centralization of all governmental authority by the levelling of local institutions, widespread corruption and a magnificent court under the influence of bigots, lackeys, and panders, were characteristics of the reign of the Bourbon as well as of the Moghul. And in each instance half a century's autocratic misrule, complicated by unfortunate foreign wars, sectarian revolts, and grinding fiscal oppression, brought great misery on the people, and fatally enervated the monarchy. Toward the end of the seventeenth century the clouds began to gather, and from the beginning of the eighteenth century the fortunes of both sovereigns were perceptibly on the wane. It so happened that the decline, or eclipse, of each power was eminently favourable to the rising / commercial ascendancy of the English nation. In 1691 King William formed the grand alliance of the Germanic States and of the maritime powers, England, Holland, and Spain, against France; whereby the preponderance of the French was checked, and their schemes of colonial and commercial expansion were thrown aside or trampled down in a great European war. For although the Peace of Ryswick suspended hostilities for a few years, it may be said that during the whole period from 1690 to 1713, the French monarchy was engaged in conflicts with all its European neighbours on a vast scale of ruinous expenditure.

The condition of the Moghul empire was even worse. We have seen that during the seventeenth century, so long as the Moghul empire retained its vigour, it was found impossible for any foreign adventurers to obtain more than a precarious footing, by sufferance, on the mainland of India. But when the eighteenth century opened, the disorder of the imperial government was manifestly culminating to a climax. The great age of Aurangzeb, the persistence and contagious spread of the Hindu revolt against his oppression; the certainty that his death would be the signal for civil war among his sons, and that the succession must abide the chance of battle; financial distress and the visible loosening of his administration everywhere-these were the ordinary symptoms of debility, decay, and approximate dissolution in an Oriental dynasty. In the north-west the Persians and the rebellious Afghan tribes had now wrested from Aurangzeb his border strongholds; his grasp on that all-important frontier had become insecure, and the high roads from central Asia were again open to invaders. In the south-west the Moghul, after putting down the kingdoms of Bijapur and Golkhonda, had been unable to reconstruct an administration strong enough to repress the turbulent elements that his impolitic demolitions had set free. The disbanded soldiery, the plundered peasants, the disaffected Hindu landholders, all rallied round the standard of the Maratha captains, who bribed or daunted the imperial officials, harried the districts, cut off the revenue, and defeated the Moghul forces in detail. All these internal troubles were evident symptoms of the empire's impending disruption, and the precursors of a great political change.

CHAPTER III

CONSOLIDATION OF THE ENGLISH EAST INDIA COMPANY

(1690-1702)

SECTION I. Condition and importance of the East Indian trade.

IN India the last years of the seventeenth century had been for the English East India Company a period of not untroubled transition from a purely commercial system toward a kind of elementary local self-government. The increasing weakness of the Moghul empire doubled the risks and uncertainty of their trade; producing constant alarms from the fighting that went on near their settlements, liability to plunder and incessant exactions, exposure to interference from interlopers, and danger of encroachment or attack from European rivals. They had now deliberately adopted the plan of endeavouring to rid themselves of dependence on the native authorities; and their agents were enjoined to spare no pains for improving their revenue. 'The increase of our revenue,' they wrote in 1690, 'is the subject of our care as much as our trade; t'is that must maintain our force when twenty accidents may interrupt our trade; t'is that must make us a nation in India ....... and upon this account it is that the wise Dutch, in all their general advices that we have seen, write ten paragraphs concerning their government, their civil and military policy, warfare, and the increase of their revenue,