VI.] PHASES IN THE CONQUEST OF INDIA. 269
modem trade refer to the years after 1813, and especially
to those after 1833. In other words, so long as India was
in the hands of those whose object was trade, the trade
remained insignificant; the trade became great and at last
enormous, when India began to be governed for itself and
trade-considerations to be disregarded. This might seem
a paradox, did we not remember that in dismissing trade-
considerations we also destroyed a monopoly. But there
is nothing wonderful in the fact that an exclusive
Company, even when its first object is trade, carries on
trade languidly, nothing wonderful in a vast trade spring
ing up as soon as the shackles of monopoly were removed.
On the other hand we do not find that the increase of
trade corresponds at all to the augmentation of our terri
torial possessions in India.
There have been four great rulers in India to whom
the German title of Mehrer des Reichs or Increaser of the
Empire might be given. These are Lord Clive, the
founder, Lord Wellesley, Lord Hastings and Lord Dalhousie.
Roughly it may be said that the first established us along
the Eastern Coast from Calcutta to Madras ; the second
and third overthrew the Mahratta power and established
us as lords of the middle of the country and of the Western
side of the peninsula, and the fourth, besides consolidating
these conquests, gave us the northwest and carried our
frontier to the Indus. There were considerable intervals
between these conquests, and accordingly they fall into
separate groups. Thus there was a period of conquest
between 1748 and 1765, which we may label with the
name of Clive, a second period beginning in 1798, which
may be said to have lasted, though with a long pause, till
about 1820; this period may bear the names of Wellesley
and Lord Hastings; and a third period of war between