Ox the twenty-third of June, seventeen hundred and fifty seven, Robert Olive won the battle of Plassey. The forces under his command amounted to three thousand two hundred, not more than nine hundred of whom were Eutopeans, and his artillery consisted of eight' six. pounders and two howitzers. Suraja Dowlah brought against him fifty thou. sand foot, eighteen thousand horse, and fifty picoes of cannon. The victory was the first and perhaps the most astound. ing event in that long chapter of marvels, the English conquest of India. 'After such a triumph everything seemed possible to the audacious genius of the young commander. For we must remember that Clive was only thirty-two when he achieved this signal, and' many ways unprecedented, success. is not to be wondered at that all things seemed possible to a man who had struck so decisive a stroke; and, accord. ingly, the year after Plassey, Clive wrote to the Government and proposed to conquer China if Parliament would give him fifteen thousand men.
This fact, which has not, so far as we are aware, been laid much stress upon, appears to us worth recollecting, For, though we may nob go so far as Pitt, and describe Olive as "a heaven-born general," ho was undoubtedly a man of marvellous military genius; and if any Buropean could have conquered China, Clive would have been that man, He. would have found a ruler of mark upon the Dragon Throne... The great Keenlung's long reign of sixty years comprised the period of Olive's glorious career, and had the British Government listened to the proposition of the Indian general, the expedition would: have been undertaken against China at her best. Of course, she was not free from internal troubles. There were many and sanguinary ware going on upon the western frontiers, The Emperor was ruthless in the vengeance he took against all who opposed him, and we should have witnessed atrocities to prisoners, in Clive's China campaign, similar to those which had caused the terrible retribution of Plassey; but though the conquest might have cost more men and more money than Clive calculated would be necessary, it would have been certain to have been achieved in the end.
Would it have been for the good of the two nations, or would it have been good for England and bad for Chins, or vice verse? Men will be disposed to answer these questions in different ways, and their replies will be modified largely by the spirit prevalent at the time amongst those political writers who deal with political matters ina philosophical spirit. If the spirit of Mr. J. Stuart Mill is in the ascendant, the project will be denounced as profoundly immoral. No title of obloquy will be too bad for the man who hinted at an act of aggression ea monstrous and unjust. He will be branded as a des. parado, o filibuster, a ruffian worthy to
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.