A History of the Mahrattas v2.c36.78

v2.c36.78

The Bombay Government were reduced to a situation of great distress; their measures had been obviously imprudent and impolitic, ill-concerted, and badly executed. Success, that grand apology for statesmen’s blunders, had not attended the schemes which they had been labouring to be permitted to attempt. From the time the Supreme Council exercised their first authority by a precipitate interference, the majority of the members of the Bombay Government endeavoured by argument and artifice to bring about their own designs, and instead of taking an enlarged and dignified view of the national interests and government in India, which would have been an honour to themselves and a reproach to their opponents, they lost the commanding ground on which they stood by following a course that brought about its own undoing. The character of their proceedings bears strong marks of personal interest and personal resentment.