
ONE:The year 1818 did not close without one more brush of war. This was in India. There had not been much quiet, even after the destruction of Tippoo Sultan and the power of Mysore. When the Earl of Moira (afterwards Marquis of Hastings) succeeded, as Governor-General, to Earl Minto, in 1813, he found the country still disturbed in different directions, particularly on the north-west frontiers. The Burmese engaged his immediate attention, and then the Nepaulese, who were not quietened till after two campaigns. But there was a far more troublesome enemy than either of these in the field. These were the Pindarrees, a multitude of horsemen made up of the scum of Hindostanmen who had either lost caste, or never had anywho formed themselves into flying bands, and with the swiftness of the wind rushed down on the cultivated districts, and swept all before themcattle, sheep, money, jewels, everything that could be made prey of. The two most celebrated chiefs of the Pindarrees were Kureem and Cheetoo, but Cheetoo managed to put down Kureem, and became the one great and formidable head of these robbers. In 1811 he rode at the head of twenty-five thousand cavalry. In 1814, whilst our troops were engaged in Nepaul, the Pindarrees, under Cheetoo, crossed the Nerbudda, the Godavery, and advanced to the Kistnah, ravaging the whole of the Deccan and the neighbouring territories; and in spite of our forces under Major Frazer in one direction, and Colonel Doveton in another, they effected their retreat across the Nerbudda again, loaded with enormous booty. In 1816 they made a still more extensive incursion, ten thousand of them descending into the Madras Presidency as far as Guntoor, and though Colonel Doveton exerted himself to come up with them, it was in vain. In twelve days Cheetoo's marauders had plundered three hundred and ninety villages in the Company's territory, put to death one hundred and eighty-two people, wounded five hundred and five, and tortured in various ways three thousand six hundred.In the session of 1719 Stanhope and his colleagues tried to undo the arbitrary measures of 1711 and 1714the Occasional Conformity Bill and the Schism Bill. Stanhope would have made a strenuous effort to abolish not only these laws, but the Test Act itself; but Sunderland, though equally liberal, was more prudent, and showed that, to attempt too much was to ruin all; and when they came to introduce their greatly modified measurethat of annulling only some of the less prominent clauses of the Test Act under the name of a Bill for strengthening the Protestant interestthey found so much opposition that Sunderland's discernment was fully justified. Not only the two archbishops and some of the bishops opposed the measure, but the great Whigs, the Duke of Devonshire and Earl Cowper. Cowper, though he expressed himself willing to abolish the Schism Bill, stood stoutly for the Test and Corporation Acts as the very bulwarks of our constitution in Church and State; whilst the Earl of Islay declared even this moderate measure a violation of the union with Scotland. On the other hand, the Bishops Hoadley, Willis, Gibson, and Kennett supported the Bill, which, however, was not carried without considerable mutilation; and had Stanhope introduced such a measure as he proposed, including even considerable relief to Catholics, the whole would have been lost.

ONE:But far above all rose, at this period, the already popular romantic poet, Walter Scott. Before him, in Scotland, Henry Mackenzie had occupied for a long time the foreground as a writer of fiction, in "The Man of Feeling," "Julia de Roubign," etc., but in a very different class of invention. As Walter Scott (b. 1771; d. 1832) had opened up the romance of the Scottish Highlands in his poems, so he now burst forth, on the same ground, in historic romance, with a vigour, splendour, and wonderful fertility of imagination and resource of knowledge which far exceeded everything in the history of literature since the days of Shakespeare. We need not attempt to characterise the voluminous series of what are called the "Waverley Novels," which, in their ample range, occupied almost every country of Europe and every climate, from the bleak rocks of Orkney to the glowing plains of Syria and India; they are familiar to all readers, and closed this period with a splendour from the mingled blaze of invention, poetry, and science, which no succeeding age is likely to surpass.Far greater, however, as the wielder of human sympathies by the recital of wrongs and oppression, was William Godwin in his "Caleb Williams" and "St. Leon." "Caleb Williams" is a model for narrative: lively, clear, simple yet strong, moving in a rapid careerin fine contrast to the slow, wire-drawn progress of the later three-volume noveltill it winds up in an intensity of sensation. Then came Miss Burney, better known as Madame D'Arblay, with her "Evelina," "Cecilia," and "Camilla," returning again to the details of social life. Afterwards came Dr. John Moore with "Zeluco," etc.; Mrs. Inchbald with her charming "Simple Story;" Mrs. Opie with "The Father and Daughter" in 1801, followed by various other novels; and in the same year Miss Edgeworth commenced her splendid career with "Belinda," and in the next year "Castle Rackrent." To this period also belongs Lady Morgan with her "Wild Irish Girl," though she continued to live and write long after this reign.

ONE:During this periodfrom 1769 to 1772Warren Hastings had been second in the Council[322] at Madras; but in the latter year he was promoted to the head of the Council in Bengal. During this period, too, the British had been brought into hostilities with the Rajah of Tanjore. The history of these proceedings is amongst the very blackest of the innumerable black proceedings of the East India Company. The Rajah of Tanjore was in alliance with the Company. In 1762 they had guaranteed to him the security of his throne; but now their great ally, Mohammed Ali, the Nabob of the Carnatic, called to the English for help against the Rajah. The conduct of honourable men would have been to offer themselves as mediators, and so settle the business; but not by such means was the whole of India to be won from the native princes. The Rajah of the Carnatic offered to purchase the territory of Tanjore from the British for a large sum. The latter, however, had guaranteed the defence of these territories to the Rajah of Tanjore by express treaty. No matter, they closed the bargain with the Rajah of the Carnatic; they agreed to seize Tanjore, and make it over to Mohammed Ali. An army assembled at Trichinopoly on the 12th of September, 1771, invaded Tanjore, seized the Rajah and his family, and invested the whole of Tanjore in the name of the Nabob of the Carnatic.