against the towns along the line of the Ganges and Jumna, were
unhappily disqualified for action, by the shallows and sand-banks on
those great rivers. But this apology does not stand good as regards
flotillas of gunboats or rafts with a very light draught of water;
still less as regards the seamen and marines.

I conclude with these notices--too painfully entitled to some
attention. Would to heaven they were _not_!

1. Calcutta itself is not by any means in a state of _security_,
either in the English sense of that word (namely, freedom from
danger), or in its old Latin sense of freedom from the _anxieties_ of
danger. All depends upon the prosperity of our affairs at Delhi,
Lucknow, Agra, Cawnpore, and Allahabad. The possibility of a
fanatical explosion, such as that which occurred recently at Patna,
shows the inefficiency of our precautions and pretended police. I
believe that the _native_ associations formed in Calcutta will be of
little use. Either the members will be sleeping at the moment of
outbreak, or will be separated from their arms. We are noble in our
carelessness; our enemy is base, but his baseness, always in alliance
with cunning and vigilance, tells cruelly against us.

2. It may be feared that the Governor-General has in the following
point lamentably neglected a great duty of his place. It must have
been remarked with astonishment, as a matter almost inexplicable, how
it has arisen that so many gallant men, at the head of every regiment,
should have suffered themselves to be slaughtered like sheep in a
butcher's shambles. Surely five-and-twenty or thirty men, in youthful
vigour, many of them capital shots, could easily have shot down 150 of
the cowardly sepoys. So much work they could have finished with their
revolvers. More than one amongst the ladies, in this hideous struggle,
have shot down their two brace of black scoundrels apiece. But the
officers, having the advantage of swords, would have accounted for a
few score more. Why, then, have they not done this?--an act of energy
so natural to our countrymen when thus roused to unforgiving
vengeance. Simply because they have held themselves most nobly, and in
defiance of their own individual interest, to be under engagements of
fidelity to the Company, and obligations of forbearance to the dogs
whom they commanded, up to the last moment of possible doubt. Now,
from these engagements of honour the Governor-General should, by one
universal act (app