the whole of the Delhi garrison
to be well affected to the mutineers; an assumption altogether
unwarrantable on the _outside_ of Delhi during the 10th and 11th of
May.

Such were (1) the _motives_ of the commander at Meerut towards a noble
and energetic resolution; such were (2) his _means_.[64]

[Footnote 64: Mr. D. B. Jones comes forward to defend the commandant
of Meerut. How? The last sentence only of his letter has any sort of
reference to the public accusation; and this sentence replies, but not
with _any_ mode of argument (sound or unsound), to a charge perfectly
irrelevant, if it had ever existed--namely, an imaginary charge
against the little army assembled on May 10 at Meerut. The short and
summary answer is, that no such imaginary charge, pure and absolute
moonshine, was ever advanced against the gallant force at Meerut.

Secondly, if it had, such a charge could have no bearing whatever upon
that charge, loudly preferred against the commander of that district.

Thirdly, the charge has been (I presume) settled as regards its truth,
and any grounds of disputation, this way or that, by the
Governor-General. The newspapers have told us, and have not been
contradicted, that Lord Canning has dismissed this functionary for
'_supineness_.']

Thinking of that vile _lachete_, which surrendered, with a girl's
tameness, absolutely suffered to lapse, without effort, and as if a
bauble, this great arsenal and magazine into the hands of the
revolters, involuntarily we have regarded it all along as a deadly
misfortune; and, upon each periodic mail, the whole nation has
received the news of its non-capture as a capital disappointment.

But, on steadier consideration, apparently all this must be regarded
as a very great error. Not that it could be any error to have wished
for any course of events involving the safety of our poor slaughtered
compatriots. That event would have been cheap at _any_ price. But that
dismal catastrophe _having_ happened, to intercept that bitter wo
having been already ripened into an impossibility by the 11th and 12th
of May, seven-and-forty days before our thoughts at home began to
settle upon India, thenceforwards it became a very great advantage--a
supreme advantage--that Delhi should have been occupied by the
mutineers. Briefly, then, why?

First of all, because this movement shut up within one ring fence the
_elite_ of the rebels (according to some calculations, at least
three-and-twent