This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1835 edition. Excerpt: ...weakened in effect and in opinion by the unavenged attack of such despicable antagonists; and that when the occasion should ripen, they might not be disinclined to revenge and retrieve their former defeats. But whatever might be the extent of immediate hostility to be encountered, or the chances of future danger to be calculated, the case was one which did not admit of doubt. The most beneficial acquisitions of territory would not have justified the incurring either the expense or the hazard of a war; but no hazard and no expense could be put in competition with the vindication of national honour, and the discharge of national duty. In the endeavour to render intelligible the origin and operations of the war, I fear I may have trespassed much too long with prefatory matter upon the patience of the House. But it will be felt that in offering these explanations, I have incidentally disposed of a question strictly military, which I have mentioned as sug ' gesting itself on the first view of Lord Hastings' undertaking--how it happened that preparations on so large a scale were necessary for the suppression of a horde of 30,000 horsemen? Banditti as they were, it will have been shown that they touched in near relation three powerful independent chiefs of India;--friendly indeed by the existing state of peaceful relations, but in character, and habit, and interest, our foes. It will have been shown, -that two of these three chiefs being members of the great Mahratta confederacy, it would not have become a prudent statesman to lay out of his contemplation the possibility, however remote--however in the name of good faith to be disbelieved and deprecated--that the nominal head and the other members of that confederacy, the Peishwah, the...