ABSTRACT
Peace was necessary, and it came; and the Indian Government settled down—by retrenchment, by pressure upon dependents as the Nawab of Oudh, and by the export of opium. It is hard to see how that judgment of his own people differs from his 1806 condemnation of the Marathas: 'To meet their ambition and enterprise with the language of peace, would be to preach to the roaring ocean to be still'. Charles Metcalfe's political instincts did not mislead him; and he could not refrain from repetition and underlining of the unethical nature of the aspect of the peace. Lord Cornwallis told Sir George Barlow that 'Lord Wellesley's neglect and contemptuous treatment of the Court of Directors' was 'exceedingly embarrassing to the King's Government'. Thegeneral conclusion of peace, and still more the terms on which the settlement of Northern India was made, were furiously denounced at the time; and British historians have never yet had a good word to say for them.
