PREFACE. THIS VOLUME, which contains Macaulay's Essay on Clive, is meant to be taken in conjunction with the one which is to follow, and which will contain the Essay on Warren Hastings. It is hoped that with the Introductions and Notes they will together form a tolerably adequate study of one of the most interesting periods in the history of India. Owing to the fact that the Essays were written for the pages of a popular Review,' it was perhaps inevitable that more than one portion of them should be sketched on lines at once too general and too popular to be of great use to a student, unless supplemented by a more particular account. The description of the decline of the Mogul power, for instance, is much too indefinite, and the references to the Mahrattas are even misleading. The reader not possessed of any knowledge of these subjects outside the Essays would be liable to form a wrong impression of the nature and causes of the Mogul decline; while he would be in danger of Edinburgh Review, January 1840 and October 1841, respectively. learning to regard the Mahrattas as a wandering body of marauding horse, instead of as forming a tolerably compact commonwealth, and as the really predominant power in India at the time of Clive's arrival; and, further, the omission from the narrative of the crushing defeat of the Mahrattas at Pânipat, in 1761, renders the progress of the English harder to understand than need be. I have, therefore, endeavoured to give in the Introduction a tolerably full and, I hope, clear account of the course of Mogul dominion, and of the rise and progress of Mahratta rule. I have added also, for the sake of completeness, a brief sketch of the rise of European power in India. Reference to any history of India within the reach of the ordinary student would have rendered most of my Introduction needless; but as yet none such exists. It is to be hoped that Mr. Sidney Owen's long promised history will some day fill the gap. The books which I have found of most direct help are-Dr. Pope's 'Text-book of Indian History,' an admirable storehouse of well-arranged facts; Murray's 'History of British India,' ably written, but somewhat antiquated; Mr. Sidney Owen's brilliant sketch of India on the eve of British Conquest,' and Elphinstone's scholarly 'History of India.' In the Notes, to avoid confusion, I have followed almost entirely Lord Macaulay's spelling. In the Introduction I have endeavoured to bring into use the |