THE FALL OF TIPPU OF MYSOEE 311

tober, 1799, " for counteracting with equal promptitude and ability the dangerous intrigues and projects of the French, particularly by destroying their power and influence in the Deccan," whereby, said the resolution, " he has established on a basis of permanent security the tranquillity and prosperity of the British Empire in India.' 7 The imperial note here sounded probably for the first time in a public document contrasts re- markably with the hesitating, almost apologetic tone in which our position and the growth of our responsi- bilities had been discussed in Parliament twenty years earlier. It may truly be said that the stars in their courses fought against Tippu a fierce, fanatic, and ignorant Mohammedan, who was, nevertheless, sufficiently en- dowed with some of the sterner qualities required for Asiatic rulership to have made himself a name among the Indian princes of his time. But he had no political ability of the higher sort; still less had he any touch of that instinct which has occasionally warned the ablest and strongest Asiatic chiefs to avoid collision with Europeans. He was swept away by a flood that was overwhelming far greater states than Mysore, that had taken its rise in a distant part of the world, out of events beyond his comprehension and totally beyond his control, and that was now running full in the chan- nel which carried the English, by a natural determina- tion of converging consequences, to supreme ascendency in India. He had thrown in his lot with the French just at