omy which they could
exhibit.

We are anxious that the reader should go along with the short remainder of
this story, because it bears strongly upon the true moral of our Eastern
policy, of which, hereafter, we shall attempt to unfold the casuistry, in
a way that will be little agreeable to the calumniators of Clive and
Hastings. We do not intend that these men shall have it all their own way
in times to come. Our Eastern rulers have erred always, and erred deeply,
by doing too little rather than too much. They have been _too_
long-suffering; and have tolerated many nuisances, and many miscreants,
when their duty was--when their power was--to have destroyed them for ever.
And the capital fault of the East India Company--that greatest benefactor
for the East that ever yet has arisen--has been in not publishing to the
world the grounds and details of their policy. Let this one chapter in
that policy, this Kandyan chapter, proclaim how great must have been the
evils from which our "usurpations" (as they are called) have liberated the
earth. For let no man dwell on the rarity, or on the limited sphere, of
such atrocities, even in Eastern despotisms. If the act be rare, is not
the anxiety eternal? If the personal suffering be transitory, is not the
outrage upon human sensibilities, upon the majesty of human nature, upon
the possibilities of light, order, commerce, civilization, of a duration
and a compass to make the total difference between man viler than the
brutes, and man a little lower than the angels?

It happened that the first noble, or "Adikar," of the Kandyan king, being
charged with treason at this time, had fled to our protection. That was
enough. Vengeance on _him_, in his proper person, had become impossible:
and the following was the vicarious vengeance adopted by God's vicegerent
upon earth, whose pastime it had long been to study the ingenuities of
malice, and the possible refinements in the arts of tormenting. Here
follows the published report on this one case:--"The ferocious miscreant
determined to be fully revenged, and immediately sentenced the Adikar's
wife and children, together with his brother and the brother's wife, to
death after the following fashion. The children were ordered to be
decapitated before their mother's face, and their heads to be pounded in a
rice-mortar by their mother's hands; which, to save herself from a
diabolical torture and exposure," (concealments are here properly
prac