uals, whose property has been destroyed)
will be found to have very seriously suffered.

The other head, which concerns the probable relation of this
astonishing revolt to the wisdom of our late Indian administration,
finds us, for the present, enveloped in a mystery the most
impenetrable that history, in any of its darkest chapters, has
offered. We have a war on foot with Southern China, or rather with
Canton; and what may be the Chinese object in that war, is hitherto an
impenetrable mystery. But darker and more unfathomable is the mystery
which invests the sepoy insurrection. Besides the notorious fact that
no grievances, the very slightest, have been alleged, it must also be
remembered that we first and solely made a provision for the invalided
and for the superannuated soldier--a thing unheard of throughout Asia.
And this golden reversion, the poor infatuated savages have _wilfully_
renounced! The sole _sure_ result, from this most suicidal of revolts,
is--that unpitied myriads of sepoys will be bayonetted, thousands will
be hanged, and nearly all will lose their pensions.

II.

PASSING NOTICES OF INDIAN AFFAIRS.

(_October, 1857._)

An English historian--one amongst many--of our British India, having
never happened to visit any part of that vast region, nor, indeed, any
part of the East, founded upon that accident a claim to a very
favourable distinction. It was, Mr. Mill argued, desirable--it was a
splendid advantage--NOT to have seen India. This advantage he singly,
amongst a crowd of coming rivals and precursors, might modestly plead;
and to that extent he pretended to a precedency amongst all his
competitors.

The whole claim, and the arguments which supported it, wore the aspect
of a paradox; and a paradox it certainly was--but not, therefore, a
falsehood. A paradox, as I have many times explained, or proposition
contradicting the _doxa_ or public opinion, not only may be true, but
often has been the leading truth in capital struggles of opinion. Not
only the true doctrine, but also, in some branches of science, the
very fundamental doctrine, that which at this day furnishes a
foundation to all the rest, originally came forward as a violent and
revolting, paradox.[62] It is possible enough, therefore, that the
Indian historiographer may have been right, and not merely speciously
ingenious. It is something of a parallel case, which we may all have
known through the candid admissions of the Duke