INDIA UNDER BRITISH RULE
by
J. TALBOYS WHEELER
INDIA UNDER BRITISH RULE
From the Foundation of the East India Company
by
J. TALBOYS WHEELER
Late Assistant-Secretary to the Government of India, Foreign Department, and Late Secretary to the Government of British Burma.
Author of "History of India from the Earliest Ages,"
Including the "Maha Bharata" and "Ramayana,"
"A Short History Of India,"
etc., etc.
London
Macmillan and Co.
The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved.
TO
SIR CHARLES TREVELYAN, BART.,
WHO OPENED
THE OLD MADRAS RECORDS TO THE AUTHOR
IN 1860,
This book is Dedicated.
PREFACE.
A hundred years ago, when the lively Miss Frances Burney was weeping over the wrongs of Warren Hastings, and the learned and portly Gibbon was still lamenting that he had not entered on an Indian career, there were people in the British Isles who knew something of Indian history.
They had picked up information respecting Indian affairs from the speeches of the grave Edmund Burke, the eloquent Charles James Fox, and the impassioned Richard Brinsley Sheridan. The facts may have come second hand, and been more or less distorted by the jealous and bitter fancies of Sir Philip Francis, the reputed author of the _Letters of
Junius_; but facts or fables, they served to enlighten the British public on the Indian questions of the day.
During the present century, the march …