in extent of dominion, superior in revenue), to the elector of Bavaria.
The Polygars and the northern Zemindars, and other great chiefs, might
well class with the rest of the princes, dukes, counts, marquises, and
bishops, in the empire; all of whom I mention to honour, and surely
without disparagement to any or all of those most respectable princes
and grandees. All this vast mass, composed of so many orders and classes
of men, is again infinitely advocated by manners, by religion, by
hereditary employment, through all their possible combinations. This
renders the handling of India a matter in a high degree critical and
delicate. But oh! it has been handled rudely indeed. Even some of the
reformers seem to have forgot that they had anything to do but to
regulate the tenants of a manor, or the shopkeepers of the next county
town.

It is an empire of this extent, of this complicated nature, of this
dignity and importance, that I have compared to Germany, and the German
government; not for an exact resemblance, but as a sort of a middle
term, by which India might be approximated to our understandings, and if
possible to our feelings; in order to awaken something of sympathy for
the unfortunate natives, of which I am afraid we are not perfectly
susceptible, whilst we look at this very remote object through a false
and cloudy medium.


POLITICAL CHARITY.

Honest men will not forget either their merit or their sufferings. There
are men (and many, I trust, there are) who, out of love to their country
and their kind, would torture their invention to find excuses for the
mistakes of their brethren; and who, to stifle dissension, would