58 CAWNPORE.
who at length began to despair of prevailing upon the Calcutta authorities, determined to go to the fountain-head, and accordingly despatched an agent to London. For this purpose he selected his confidential man of business, Azimoolah Khan, a clever adventurer who began life as kitmutgar, or footman, in an Anglo-Indian family. In spite of his disadvantages, he acquired a thorough acquaintance with the English and French languages. He sub-
‘“‘adopted son was placed in the same predicament, being cut off “from both stocks. This was the great wrong which he suffered ; ‘which all India felt; which no man in England could comprehend ; ‘Cand which, from the incompatibility of ideas, no one belonging to “ the one country could render intelligible to the people of the other.
“« Had this happened under a Hindu government, the case would “have been provided for. In the event of succession by the prince, ‘* (for confiscation is wholly prohibited by their law,) he was bound to “‘ appoint the proper officer to perform in his name the Sraddha, and “could only hold the property on that condition. No doubt under ‘the Mussulman system, as it always conformed to existing usages, “provision had been made for similar contingencies; an eastern
- people could not be ignorant of usage, far less contemptuous of it;
“and though Islam has put an end to the ancestral oblation, the ‘€ professors of that creed retained its impress in all their ideas, and “in many of their customs.
“¢ T have not alluded to the merits of the case ; but how much is ‘the character of the penalty aggravated in the mind of the people ‘of India, who know, if we do not, what England owes to the act “of this prince, and what had been his devotion to her. What ‘worse fate can England’s foes experience? What is to be gained “by being her friend? That one Englishman may become surrep- “‘ titiously rich, the fountain of justice is polluted, and an empire ‘* endangered.”
