ENGLAND'S HEROES

BY SIR WALTER SCOTT

To mute and to material things
New life revolving summer brings;
The genial call dead Nature hears,
And in her glory reappears.
But oh! my country's wintry state
What second spring shall renovate ?
What powerful call shall bid arise
The buried warlike and the wise;
The mind that thought for Britain's weal,
The hand that grasp'd the victor steel?
The vernal sun new life bestows

Even on the meanest flower that blows;
But vainly, vainly may he shine

Where glory weeps o'er NELSON'S shrine ;
And vainly pierce the solemn gloom,
That shrouds, O PITT, thy hallowed tomb!

Deep graved in every British heart,
O never let those names depart!
While faith and civil peace was dear,
Grace this cold marble with a tear.
He, who preserved them, PITT, lies here!
Nor yet suppress the generous sigh,
Because his rival slumbers nigh;
Nor be thy requiescat dumb,

Lest it be said o'er Fox's tomb.

Here, where the end of earthly things.

G

Lays heroes, patriots, bards, and kings;
.Where stiff the hand, and still the tongue,
Of those who fought, and spoke, and sung;
If ever from an English heart,

O, here let prejudice depart,

For ne'er held marble in its trust

Of two such wondrous men the dust.

With more than mortal powers endow'd,
How high they soar'd above the crowd!
Till through the British world were known
The names of Pitt and Fox alone.
Genius, and taste, and talent gone,

For ever tomb'd beneath the stone,
Where-taming thought to human pride!—
The mighty chiefs sleep side by side.
Speak not for those a separate doom,
Whom Fate made brothers in the tomb;
But search the land of living men,

Where wilt thou find their like again?

Marmion. 1808.

PART II

THE EAST INDIA COMPANY

BY EDMUND BURKE

THE East India Company had its origin about the latter end of the reign of Elizabeth, a period of projects, when all sorts of commercial adventures, companies, and monopolies were in fashion. At that time the Company was constituted with extensive powers for increasing the commerce and the honour of this country; because increasing its commerce, without increasing its honour and reputation, would have been thought at that time, and will be thought now, a bad bargain for the country. The powers of the Company were, under that charter, merely commercial. By degrees, as the theatre of operation was distant, as its intercourse was with many great, some barbarous, and all of them armed nations, nations in which not only the sovereign, but the subjects, were armed, it was found necessary to enlarge their powers. The first power they obtained was a power of naval discipline in their ships—a power which has been since dropped; the next was a power of law martial; the next was a power of civil, and, to a degree, of criminal jurisdiction, within their own factories, upon

their own people and their own servants; the next was (and here was a stride indeed) the power of peace and war. Those high and almost incommunicable prerogatives of sovereignty, which were hardly ever known before to be parted with to any subjects, and which in several States were not wholly intrusted to the prince or head of the commonwealth himself, were given to the East India Company. That Company acquired those powers about the end of the reign of Charles II., and they were afterwards more fully, as well as more legally given by Parliament after the Revolution. From this time the East India Company was no longer merely a mercantile company, formed for the extension of the British commerce; it more nearly resembled a delegation of the whole power and sovereignty of this kingdom sent into the East. From that time the Company ought to be considered as a subordinate sovereign power, that is, sovereign with regard to the objects that it touched; subordinate with regard to the power from whence its great trust was derived. The constitution of the Company began in commerce and ended in empire.

The Company had, in its early times, established factories in certain places, which factories by degrees grew to the name of Presidencies and Council, in proportion as the power and influence of the Company increased, and as the political began first to struggle with, and at length to predominate over the mercantile. In this form it continued till the year 1773, when the legislature broke in, for proper reasons urging them to it, upon that order of the service, and appointed to the superior department persons who had no title to that

place under the ordinary usage of the service.—Speech at the Trial of Warren Hastings. 1788.

CLIVE AT ARCOT

BY EARL STANHOPE

DURING the petty hostilities between the English and French traders in India-when the merchants' clerks were almost compelled in self-defence to turn soldiers— the name of Ensign or Lieutenant Clive is often, and always honourably mentioned; and during the intervals of these hostilities he returned to his ledgers and accounts. But on the emergency produced by the successes of Dupleix, the siege of Trichinopoly, and the departure of Major Lawrence, he accepted a captain's commission, and bade adieu to trade. With no military education, with so little military experience, this young man of twenty-five shone forth, not only, as might have been foreseen, a most courageous, but a most skilful and accomplished commander—a commander, as Lord Chatham once exclaimed, "whose resolution would charm the King of Prussia, and whose presence of mind has astonished the Indies." At this crisis he discerned that, although it was not possible to afford relief to Trichinopoly, a diversion might still be effected by a well-timed surprise of Arcot, thus compelling Chunda Sahib to send a large detachment from his army. The heads of the Presidency, on whom he strenuously urged his views, not only approved the design, but accepted