England'S Compensation

When England lost her thirteen American Colonies, and her millions of Yankee subjects, she leaped like a great lioness to the other side of the globe, and put the vast territory of India, with its countless races, under her dominion. India was England's compensation for her American Colonies.

An interesting parallelism can be drawn between the British in India the British in America. Vasco da Gama, sailing east in 1497, made known to the civilized world the East Indies. John and Sebastian Cabot, sent out on an exploring expedition by the English in 1497, may be called the true discoverers of North America. Therefore, in the same year--1497--a permanent sea route to India and to North America was discovered.

These important discoveries, by stimulating commercial enterprise, by bringing the East and the West into commercial contact, changed the whole course of human affairs. The Middle Ages ended and modern history began.

Another parallel between the British in India and the British in America may be drawn.

In 1600 Queen Elizabeth granted a charter to a company of English merchants, known thereafter as "The East India Company." Out of this East India Company has grown the British Empire of India.

Queen Elizabeth about the same time granted to Sir Walter Raleigh the right to colonize America. He named the oldest State of the United States for the Virgin Queen, Virginia. For James I., the successor of Queen Elizabeth, Jamestown, Virginia, was named. Thus we may connect the early English Colonies of America with the early colonies of the British Empire in India.

Parallel lines may be drawn still closer. In 1757-1758, French traders were trying to drive the English traders out of India; during the same eventful years the English colonists were trying to drive the French out of America.

While General Clive was marching north from Madras to avenge the Black Hole of Calcutta, Generals Armstrong, Forbes and Braddock, and the youthful Lieutenant-Colonel Washington, were marching north along the Monongahela river to drive the French from Fort Duquesne, at the headwaters of the Ohio river.

History has agreed to adopt the battle of Plassey, fought near Calcutta, June 23d, 1757, as the beginning of the British Empire of India. General--afterwards Lord--Clive, the hero of this battle, became the first English Governor of Bengal in 1758. In the same year, on Saturday, the 25th of November, 1758, George Washington, Lieutenant-Colonel of the English Army, marching upon the French Fort Duquesne, at eventide, pointed out to General Forbes and General Armstrong the meeting of the waters--the Allegheny and the Monongahela. It was General Armstrong's own hand that raised the British flag over the ruined bastions of Fort Duquesne. And (according to Bancroft) "as the banners of England floated over the waters, at the suggestion of General Forbes the place was with one voice called 'Pittsburgh.'" The name of that great city of Western Pennsylvania is the most enduring monument ever raised to "the Great Commoner," William Pitt. And, quoting George Bancroft again, "As long as the Monongahela and Allegheny shall flow to form the Ohio, as long as the English tongue shall be the language of freedom in the boundless valley which their waters traverse, his name shall stand inscribed upon 'the gateway of the West.'"