Dacoitee in Excelsis - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1857. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IX. THE CHARGES IN THE OUDE BLUE BOOK, AND TnEIR SEPARATE AND SUFFICIENT ANSWERS. The Marquis of Dalhousie's plea is contained in the Oude Blue Book, and we have referred to it already here and there; but it is now intended to consider it more closely and directly. Apart from the history we have just given of these later transactions, the Blue Book is an indictment against the King of Oude's Government, and is composed of all the imputations, past or present, vague or minute, real or rumoured, or even absolutely false, which the Company could collect by ransacking its archives or by stimulating the zeal of its officials to seek for elsewhere. Its statements are the answers to incessant inquiries prompted by a Government most powerful in respect of patronage, most rigorous in enforcing its policy, and in requiring devotion from its instruments, and whose wishes among the subject races it controls, and whose inventive powers exceed their veracity, are as influential and cogent as the fiat of Omnipotence. With such authority and such machinery as they are possessed of, it would be surprising, indeed, if the Company could not make out & prima facie case against any occupants of the Indian peninsula from Bombay to Calcutta, or from Oude to Cape Comorin. Let us consider, also, independently of official subordination, and of the eagerness to accomplish the wishes of so exigent a master, how wide are the interests invariably enlisted by any proposed annexation of a new territory. The popularity of such a measure, and the reasons which would be forthcoming to support and urge it on may be best understood by a reference to the field of patronage which it opens. The amplitude of this field, with its exuberant pastures, is partly indicated in the Oude Blue Bo...