valour, stand now branded, (and justly too) with the name and character of rebels; that those who have ever been forward to shed their best blood in the cause of their country, who boasted, as a proud distinction, the honour of bearing a commission in the Madras army, and stood foremost in subordination and willing obedience to the government, have recently entailed indelible disgrace on themselves, and reflected it on the corps, whose honour was entrusted to them, by the guilt of open resistance to the authority which, as soldiers and as subjects, they were bound to obey.

In contemplating events which have led to a result so extraordinary as the actual rebellion of a considerable portion of the Madras army, it is natural to seek for some cause, which has produced a subversion of all those honourable principles which had hitherto distinguished and characterized that branch of the Indian army; for gratuitous rebellion, without an object, or a cause, or an intelligible plan, is an idea which a reflecting mind does not readily admit. Yet this is the state of the case which our government has deemed it wise to publish to the world, and this is the doctrine, which whoever would be thought a dutiful subject is called on to profess to believe.

So long as an appeal was open to superior powers, legally constituted to controul the acts of the local government, no extent of grievance, real or imaginary, could justify, or even palliate, a crime so monstrous as rebellion: no acts, however oppressive, could give to a military man an excuse for disobedience or resistance. Those irritated and deluded men, who influenced the army to that unnecessary extremity, have incurred an extent of guilt which demands the extremity of legal punishment; they have forfeited their lives to the offended laws of that country, in whose defence they would, at the moment of their deepest guilt, have laid them down with pleasure; and their punishment, which every man who thinks as a soldier ought not only to anticipate but desire, will afford a dreadful warning to those who may, in future, be disposed to suffer private feelings, however cruelly excited, to supersede the obligations of public duty, or to subvert those principles of obedience which every soldier, on embracing the profession, especially binds himself to render to those whom the laws of his country have empowered to direct and regulate his public conduct. Such are the feelings of every reflecting mind; but he must be either more or less than man, who can separate these feelings from

those of genuine compassion for the fate awaiting many highly meritorious but mistaken men.: You will perceive, by the blotted paper before you, that a frigid sense of public duty has not extinguished feelings of another description in mourning over the fate of our old companions in arms. But if, "albeit unused to the melting mood," and with a mind unruffled by any secret self-reproach, such be the tendency of my: reflections, what must the feelings be of those whose measures have unnecessarily led to this

most horrible result?

I will endeavour to trace the progress of those unhappy events which appear to have led to this distressing conclusion.

At the departure of Sir John Craddock, the officers of the Madras army were certainly in a state of considerable discontent, but neither, disloyal nor seditious: their attachment to their country, and to the cause of public authority, was firm and unshaken, but they were disgusted with the effects of an alledged partiality to a favoured branch of the army, with the contempt too flimsily disguised, with which the Commanderin-Chief had always treated that, particularly, their own (exaggerated perhaps in repetition) : and, by some opinions he had given in a case of military-trial, which, although well merited.

by the individual, were offensive to the established opinions of the service at large, and indicated (perhaps the result of a phraseology not always intelligible) an assumption of powers very distinctly denied to him by the laws of his country. It is but justice to the character of that officer, to add, that he preserved to the situation which he held by an arrangement with the Governor, resulting from his decided conduct, that influence and patronage in military appointments, which a most injudicious order from the authorities in England, received in the year 1806, had taken from the Commander-inChief and vested in the Governor alone. This measure, however, which was suspended during the command of Sir John Craddock, took full effect on the succession of General Macdowall, while the exclusion of the Commander-in-Chief from council, by an arrangement equally absurd, completed the degradation of his of fice.

On the succession of General Macdowall to command, the frankness and apparent sincerity of his manner derived popularity from contrast with his predecessor; and he studiously encouraged this sentiment by the conduct which he imprudently, and perhaps improperly, adopted, from the moment he assumed the command

The exclusion from the rank and functions of counsellor, of an officer specially appointed to the command of the army, was an unusual measure, and was calculated to raise his personal resentment in the same degree that it lowered the importance of his station, not only by impairing his influence, and consequently his authority, with the army, but by degrading* his actual estimation in public opinion. To maintain that influence of which he was deprived by this change in the constitution of the army, he courted popularity with the officers at large; he lamented, without reserve, his inability to support their interests in council, or to oppose alterations injurious to their welfare; he commented on the degradation of the army in the person of their Commander-in-Chief; and assuming the character of their representative, induced them, without reflecting on the

* A striking instance of this proposition (which in England would not be well understood without an example) occurred immediately after the General's arrival at Madras. His Highness, the Nabob of the Carnatic, sent a complimentary message, desiring to receive a visit from the General, but the next day, (having learned the uncommon restriction on his situation and powers) sent another message, intimating his desire, that the visit might be postponed until the Commander-in-Chief had taken his seat in council.