expense of every principle upon which the permanence of our Indian empire rests. There never was in the world a more singular spectacle than to see a few thousand Europeans governing so despotically fifty or sixty millions of people, of different climate, religion, and habits-forming them into large and well-disciplined armies and leading them out to the further subjugation of the native powers of India. But can any words be strong enough to paint the rashness of provoking a mutiny, which could only be got under by teaching these armies to act against their European commanders, and to use their actual strength in overpowering their officers?—or, is any man entitled to the praise of firmness and sagacity, who gets rid of a present danger by encouraging a principle which renders that danger more frequent and more violent. We will venture to assert, that a more unwise or a more unstatesmanlike action was never committed by any man in any country; and we are grievously mistaken, if any length of time elapse before the evil consequences of it are felt and deplored by every man who deems the welfare of our Indian colonies of any importance to the prosperity of the mother-country. We cannot help contrasting the management of the discontents of the Madras army, with the manner in which the same difficulty was got over with the army of Bengal. A little increase of attention and emolument to the head of that army, under the management of a man of rank and talents, dissipated appearances which the sceptered pomp of a merchant's clerk would have blown up into a rebellion in three weeks; and yet the Bengal army is at this moment in as good a state of discipline, as the English fleet to which Lord Howe made such abject concessions-and in a state to be much more permanently depended upon than the army which has been so effectually ruined by the inconveniently great soul of the present Governor of Madras.

Sir George Barlow's agent, though faithful to his employment of calumniating those who were in any

degree opposed to his principal, seldom loses sight of sound discretion, and confines his invectives to whole bodies of men except where the dead are concerned. Against Colonel Capper, General Macdowall, and Mr. Roebuck, who are now no longer alive to answer for themselves, he is intrepidly severe; in all these instances he gives a full loose to his sense of duty, and inflicts upon them the severest chastisement. In his attack upon the civilians, he is particularly careful to keep to generals; and so rigidly does he adhere to this principle, that he does not support his assertion, that the civil service was disaffected as well as the military, by one single name, one single fact, or by any other means whatever, than his own affirmation of the fact. The truth (as might be supposed to be the case from such sort of evidence) is diametrically opposite. Nothing could be more exemplary, during the whole of the rebellion, than the conduct of the civil servants; and though the courts of justice were interfered with though the most respectable servants of the Company were punished for the verdicts they had given as jurymen-though many were dismissed for the slightest opposition to the pleasure of Government, even in the discharge of official duties, where remonstrance was absolutely necessary- though the greatest provocation was given, and the greatest opportunity afforded, to the civil servants for revoltthere is not a single instance in which the shadow of disaffection has been proved against any civil servant. This we say, from an accurate examination of all the papers which have been published on the subject; and we do not hesitate to affirm, that there never was a more unjust, unfounded, and profligate charge made against any body of men; nor have we often witnessed a more complete scene of folly and violence, than the conduct of the Madras Government to its civil servants, exhibited during the whole period of the mutiny.

Upon the whole, it appears to us, that the Indian army was ultimately driven into revolt by the indiscretion and violence of the Madras Government; and that every evil

which has happened might, with the greatest possible facility, have been avoided.

We have no sort of doubt that the Governor always meant well; but, we are equally certain that he almost always acted ill; and where incapacity rises to a certain height, for all practical purposes the motive is of very little consequence. That the late General Macdowall was a weak man, is unquestionable. He was also irritated (and not without reason), because he was deprived of a seat in council, which the commanders before him had commonly enjoyed. A little attention, however, on the part of the Government - the compliment of consulting him upon subjects connected with his profession - any of those little arts which are taught, not by a consummate political skill, but dictated by common good nature, and by the habit of mingling with the world, would have produced the effects of conciliation, and employed the force of General Macdowall's authority in bringing the army into a better temper of mind. Instead of this, it appears to have been almost the object, and if not the object, certainly the practice, of the Madras Government to neglect and insult this officer. Changes of the greatest importance were made without his advice, and even without any communication with him; and it was too visible to those whom he was to command, that he himself possessed no sort of credit with his superiors. As to the tour which General Macdowall is supposed to have made for the purpose of spreading disaffection among the troops, and the part which he is represented by the agents to have taken in the quarrels of the civilians with the Government, we utterly discredit these imputations. They are unsupported by any kind of evidence; and we believe them to be mere inventions, circulated by the friends of the Madras Government. General Macdowall appears to us to have been a weak, pompous man; extremely out of humour; offended with the slights he had experienced; and whom any man of common address might have managed with the greatest ease but we do not see, in any part of his conduct, the

shadow of disloyalty and disaffection; and we are persuaded that the assertion would never have been made, if he himself had been alive to prove its injustice.

Besides the contemptuous treatment of General Macdowall, we have great doubts whether the Madras Government ought not to have suffered Colonel Munro to be put upon his trial; and to punish the officers who solicited that trial for the purgation of their own characters, appears to us (whatever the intention was) to have been an act of mere tyranny. We think, too, that General Macdowall was very hastily and unadvisedly removed from his situation; and upon the unjust treatment of Colonel Capper and Major Boles there can scarcely be two opinions. In the progress of the mutiny, instead of discovering in the Madras Government any appearances of temper and wisdom, they appear to us to have been quite as much irritated and heated as the army, and to have been betrayed into excesses nearly as criminal, and infinitely more contemptible and puerile. The head of a great kingdom bickering with his officers about invitations to dinner-the Commander-in-chief of the forces negotiating that the dinner should be loyally eaten the obstinate absurdity of the test- - the total want of selection in the objects of punishment - and the wickedness, or the insanity, of teaching the sepoy to rise against his European officer - the contempt of the decision of juries in civil cases-and the punishment of the juries themselves; such a system of conduct as this would infallibly doom any individual to punishment, if it did not, fortunately for him, display precisely that contempt of men's feelings, and that passion for insulting multitudes, which is so congenial to our present Government at home, and which passes now so currently for wisdom and courage. By these means, the liberties of great nations are frequently destroyed-and destroyed with impunity to the perpetrators of the crime. In distant colonies, however, governors who attempt the same system of tyranny are in no little danger from the indignation of their subjects; for though men will often

yield up their happiness to kings who have been always kings, they are not inclined to show the same deference to men who have been merchants' clerks yesterday, and are kings to-day. From a danger of this kind, the Governor of Madras appears to us to have very narrowly escaped. We sincerely hope that he is grateful for his good luck; and that he will now awake from his gorgeous dreams of mercantile monarchy, to good nature, moderation, and common sense.