The heart of one man will beat faster—though perhaps against his will—to remember how a handful of his countrymen mastered and ruled so many millions by the sword, by diplomacy, above all by a stubborn tenacity of purpose. To another, the main matter for pride will be that so few among so many had so slight a need for force, that so often the district officer really was at heart what the villagers called him in their petitions, the father and mother of his people. To another again it will seem that the years of renunciation with which the story ends are the finest in the long record. For more than three centuries the effort was sustained. It was an effort in which two parts combined, as brain and muscle join in the sweep of a scythe. There was the will of the people of England expressed imperfectly by the Crown, by Parliament, by the Court of Directors of the East India Company;