ABSTRACT
Probably peace has never descended anywhere more gratefully than on the wasted regions of Central India. Rich and poor, princes and sepoys, fear the Koompanny Bahador, and the resident, as its representative. A 'realist', Elphinstone expressed himself not dissimilarly to Malcolm, when the disturbances were just over. Malcolm, at the close of the wars, remarked, 'Our present condition is one of apparent repose, but full of danger'. Bold in personal rectitude, and proud of superior light to other public servants, they forgot, in their conscientious hurry to give their Government the full benefit of their purity and wisdom, every principle by which a sensible man proceeding in such a great task should regulate his proceedings, and what with their simplifications and generalizations they have precipitated us into a fine mess. Malcolm himself preferred 'the cautious diffidence of knowledge' to the spirit of ruthless 'improvement' into the system of British courts and their organized manipulation of truth, which passed for law.
