public and solemn a manner, as that in which it is pronounced. It is not to be whispered away in a corner, and in the dark.

It is at best but a spurious sort of defence for the governor, if even it could be maintained, that insists, because the army was in a state of irritation and discontent, he should be at liberty to have recourse to the exercise of doubtful and dangerous powers; not to remove the irritation, but to increase clamour or complaint, by supplying fresh causes for it. If it was conceived to be an injustice, that the charges of some of the principal and distinguished officers of the army, received by the head of that body, should be dismissed without enquiry, is it wise, on the heels of this unprecedented proceeding, and in peaceful times, to counsel and to execute an act, apparently of still more flagrant injustice, in dismissing from the present exercise of their offices, two of the principal military servants of the state, without bearing them in explanation or defence?

Even at the moment, when the popular discontent must, from the more extensive use of the power of suspension, be considered as most rife; i. e. on the 1st of May, when so long a list of officers are put out of the service, and their offences persecuted afterwards with an austerity, never before heard of, even at this late date it is not pretended that any actual opposition had been demonstrated towards the government; or any thing had been further executed, or meditated, than the construction of one or two obnoxious papers; the most exceptionable of which had been at this day cancelled by the framers of it, either on their own conviction of its impropriety, or of the defeat of its object.

But the pains taken by Sir G. Barlow, and still more by lord Minte, to defend the proceedings of the government on their individual merits and grounds, without reference to the alleged diseased state of surrounding things, plainly evinces how little relame was placed at the time on this sweeping principle of defence.

If,

however, it could be competent to the government then as now to resort to it, as far as our humble abilities will permit us to judge, it would only have entailed on the government the necessity of a greater precaution to avoid all possible causes of augmenting the prevalent irritation.

It is not meant to be denied that the defence made for the government, as growing out of the alleged public discontent, goes farther than it has been at present stated by us. It is not only insinuated by the government to have been general and loud, but also to have been highly unreasonable. The laboured letter of lord Minto, on the 27th of May, written at the request of Sir G. Barlow, is particularly directed to the justification of all the foregoing severities of the inferior government, and not less to the demonstration of the unreasonableness of the pretensions and imagined complaints of the army. It is much to be lamented that his lordship was so easily, and, we will add, so unwisely drawn in, not only to pronounce on the merits of the separate acts of Sir G. Barlow, but to justify them in the heap, on the mere ex parte statements of the local governor; thereby not only countenancing by his approbation the primary causes of the evils, but pledging himself to all the consequences naturally resulting from the acts so absolutely approved. But this tacit pledge does not content the governor-general, and lest it might be possibly overlooked by him, who had solicited from the honeyed lips of the supreme power of India grateful incense of praise, his lord-hip is pleased to promise all the energy of the supreme government to strengthen the powers of the subordinate presidency.

the

This unqualified commission of the controuling authority of lord Minto, to the hands of Sir G. Barlow, is one of the most fatal circumstances that could have happened, not only for his lordship's character,but for the fame of Sir G. Barlow, and, what is still dearer, for the public interests entrusted to their guardianship. By this one rash act, the governor general deprived

arbitrary and most dangerous power of the government is applied to an appalling number, and is threatened by that sad example, which embraces a circle of officers in as high estimation as in the whole range of the Indian army, to be applied without abatement to every rank and every individual at will-What, it may be asked, up to this late period, is the unreasonable and excessive pretension of the army? -What does it ask beyond the boon of enjoying, not a military, but a natural right, included in, and inseparable from, the term of justice, to be heard, wherein it shall be supposed to offend, before it be condemned? Is this too much to be conceded, without a danger to the fabric of government?-Of what materials must the government be formed, that it cannot bear so rude and so mighty a shock? It would be amusing to observe the mock gravity, if the event had not been so dreadful, with which the government of Fort St. George, and of Fort William, speak of the impossibility of conciliation and concession. From their querulous note one might believe that some large and costly privilege, some exemption had been required by the army, against the general interest or safety of the state: when all, in truth, that is asked, is the enjoyment of a common right, that had been arbitrarily interrupted, and a freedom from the excess of punishment, without the form or the pretence of trial. These luxuries in the eastern world, but vital necessaries here, might surely have been continued to the military body, without any rational apprehension of shaking the government to its foundation.

The advocates of our Indian rulers may, in imitation of their patrons, enlarge on the impossibility of concession to an armed community; and when they have exhausted their arguments and their strength, a simple question may reduce their laboured enquiry to a very narrow compass. What concession was demanded more than what was tardily granted by the governments themselves? The idea

of all compromise with a military body is not, however, altogether so terrific and unstatesmanlike in our eyes, as the Indian governments would contend, or their abettors, would argue in their behalf. If this, at any time, be an available instrument in the hands of governors, it would seem to be at those seasons when the general body is capable of feeling the sacrifice of the government, for compromise always partakes of this character, to the public sentiment. It will be seen, then, that this should be offered, if at all, at the commencement of irritation, not at the consummation of it, when neither of the parties are in a fit disposition to make the wished-for condescension. What is the end of such a compromise, but the purchase of harmony, at a comparatively trivial price, when a contrary spirit might endanger or ruin the best interests? It is always a submission to a less evil, to avoid a larger one. Now, if this be an allowable policy at all, it must have a general, and not a partial, application, as it is founded on the common ground of human passion and feeling. It need not be asked, whether soldiers are less or more than men; that the principle which is applicable to every other order of mankind, can be supposed inapplicable to them? A degree of shame would attach to the very suggestion of such a question, if it had not been provoked by the arguments of the Indian governments, and their very powerful supporters. If it ever should be required of us to point to the fittest occasion for compromise, we should be induced to say, it would be exactly that wherein these eastern politicians would contend, that compromise will not admit of a place, or be considered as one of the elements of human intercourse; for if it be desirable at any time to call the principle into action, it must be then, surely, where the danger is most imminent, the most formidable in degree, and the least likely to be stayed by the ordinary means of reason, or persuasion. We might go even a little further, and declare, that no season of irritation, however advanced, is

too ripe for the admission of the principle of compromise; so that the par ty benefiting by it, shall be capable of estimating the value which it receives, and the other shall be sensible of what it gains in return. Here the sacrifice would have been little, indeed, at any time, on one part, while the security obtained on the other would be the most satisfactory and gratifying. What could be ceded on the one side, if a cession it could be deemed, would seem nothing more than the forbearance of the exercise of an imaginary right, scarcely ecdurable in the use; and which, if it had crept imperceptibly, or had been embodied, no matter how, with the legitimate powers of the government, a wise and politic governor would have been the first to renounce, when he perceived that it could not be exercised, without risking the public

peace.

But the governments abroad do not appear to have mistaken only the principle of concession, and the season, according to their own notions, when it should be consulted; but they actually have recourse to it, and extend it to a degree, to which it never could be expected by the army that they should carry it, even in the most agitated times. And while they are acting most largely on this scouted and inadmissible principle, it is whimsical to observe the pains that they take to hide their own conduct from themselves, and from those to whom a plain and open avowal, at first, of half the same degree of concession that is afterwards shyly and covertly granted, would have been greedily seized, and happily regarded, as a bounty rather than a due. During the whole process of the dispute between the government and the army, while Sir G.Barlow does not more vaunt of the determined tenor of his policy, than lord Minto express his admiration of the magnanimous, unvarying, and unremitting quality of it, the patient and dispassionate observer may behold in the public acts of the Madras government, the veriest measures of conces

sion, which it blushes and disdains to

own.

It has been again and again shewn that the first and last cause of the discontent, was the denial of military justice or enquiry, and the arbitrary disposal of the rights of civil and military officers, at the mere caprice of the governor. Now, the very man, who all along has laid claim to the extreme and unquestioned exercise of the power of suspension, on the most trifling occasions, and has put in jeopardy the dearest interests of the country, for maintaining this offensive and suspicious authority, does, unsolicited and unasked, in his manifesto of the 15th of August,* when the revolt is at its height, and when the seditious prac tices of the army are emblazoned and deprecated, make a willing surrender of his assumed power, and gives a general pledge to the parties involved in the mutiny, on the bare condition of their obedience, that though under the worst, and most flagrant circumstances of aggravated opposition to the government, they shall have the full benefit of a military trial. Nay, at this very juncture, and notwithstanding his previous conduct, he ventures, strange to relate, on the assertion "that he has never delighted in extremities, but has wished to observe the common course of justice." But to repeat his own words→ "it has been the earnest wish, and anxious desire of the governor in council to avoid measures of extremity, to re-establish order by the course of law; and to give up to military trial the authors of the present seditious proceedings." What has been the difference between the army and the governor? Has Sir G. Barlow received a new light on this fearful subject; or does he think that the known course of the law, from the condition into which parties have been driven by his extravagant usurpation, will enable him to execute a vengeance even more severe upon his victims, than his assumed authority would empower him to inflict? The renunciation of a single suspension, but a few weeks before, would

have done and prevented more, than the absolute abandonment of the practice.

But this is not the only sign of conciliation offered to the army, the only sacrifice of the government, to its own fears or desperate policy, that is discovered during the existence of the disaffection. The master-stroke of Sir G. Barlow's talent for government, so much applauded by the governor-general, and so admired by certain authorities at home, exhibits a concession, so ample and so dangerous in its present scope and future consequences, as to endanger the key-stone of military subordination and discipline. This extraordinary submission is made through the orders of the 26th July; by which two-thirds of the commissioned officers of the Madras army, having first their loyalty questioned without any apparent reason, are absolved for a time of their allegiance, and the entire duties of their offices, retaining the emoluments of them during the interval, because they do not feel disposed, as it is conceived, to render those services to the government, that are enjoined by the letter and spirit of their commissions. This is the first time, perhaps, that military duty has been treated by a legitimate government, as a matter of option in the party on whom such duty is imposed; or, that the obedience of the soldier has been rendered separable from his military engagement: the first time, it is presumed, when he has been left to chuse between grateful and displeasing services. When once such election is admitted, there is an end of all duty.

What is the mighty advantage, the proposed object, of such a policy? To relax the obligations of the greater part of the army for ever, in order to reduce a few refractory members of the profession, for the private ranks are excepted from the charge of revolt, to a temporary obedience. But the concession ends not here, it affects not only the leaders of the troops, but pervades the bodies under their command. The dependence of the sepoys on their officers, the grand link of the chain that has kept our armies together, and

has rendered them victorious and irresistible, is destroyed by the same means, that strike at the root of the duties of their superiors, levelling both together. They are to be delivered over, by this bold experiment, to new masters, to new habits and tempers, to complex and distracting duties, and if not to new obligations, to relations they cannot but imperfectly understand; and are afterwards, before they have time to digest all they have to learn, to be re-assigned to their old commanders, with as confused notions of their obedience, as of the authority intended to be set over them. By the ope ration of this complicated machinery, is it certain, whatever it may propose, that the government will gain all that their officers must lose, in the duty and respect of the Native soldiery? Such an expectation, it may be imagined, could not have entered even into the heads of those that could have conceived so mad a project.

The complete reduction of a branch of the army, whatever might be the crime attached to it, and, however occasioned, could not justify the means applied, which in reclaiming, if it should reclaim a part, would let loose the great body of the army, dissolving it from an obedient and passive organ, into a self-active and deliberative m munity.

All these decisive evils are encountered, rather than allow the appearance of concession in matters, most devoutly to be desired, though it is really and substantially shewn in others, and in a dangerous degree, where it is not expected; and where the effect looked for by the government is extremely problematical, or, if gained, must be followed by the most destructive consequences.

The test proposed to the officers, depended, after all, for effect, on their own fidelity, which is confided in, aud distrusted at the same instant. Suppose, which is not unnatural, that these off cers, like the government, had made the test an expedient of the day, and had signed it in a similar spirit; to what an extremity might that wretched device have exposed the government?