whims and caprices, and generally
too relaxed a state of discipline--these features it was of the
British bearing towards the native soldiery which too often, and
reasonably, provoked severe censures from the observing. The very
case[66] which I adduced some months back, where an intelligent
British officer, in the course of his evidence before some
court-martial, mentioned, in illustration of the decaying discipline,
that for some considerable space of time he had noticed a growing
disrespect on the part of the privates; in particular, that, on coming
into the cantonments of his own regiment, the men had ceased to rise
from their seats, and took no notice of his presence--this one
anecdote sufficiently exemplified the quality of the errors prevailing
in the deportment of our countrymen to their native soldiery; and that
it would be ludicrous to charge them with any harshness or severity of
manner. Such being too notoriously the case, whence could possibly
arise the bloody carnage by which, in almost every case, the sepoys
inaugurated, or tried to inaugurate, their emancipation from British
rule? Our continental neighbours at first grossly misinterpreted the
case; and more excusably than in many other misinterpretations.
Certainly it was unavoidable at first to read, in this frenzy of
bloodshed, the vindictive retaliations of men that had suffered
horrible and ineffable indignities at our hands. It was apparently the
old case of African slaves in some West Indian colony--St. Domingo,
for instance--breaking loose from the yoke, and murdering (often with
cruel torments) the whole households of their oppressors. But a month
dissipated these groundless commentaries. The most prejudiced
Frenchman could not fail to observe that no sepoy regiment ever
alluded to any rigour of treatment, or any haughtiness of demeanour.
His complaints centred in the one sole subject of religion; even as to
which he did not generally pretend to any certain knowledge, but
simply to a very strong belief or persuasion that we secretly
meditated, not that we openly avowed or deliberately pursued, a
purpose of coercing him into Christianity. This, were it even true,
though a false and most erroneous policy, could not be taxed with
ill-will. A man's own religion, if it is sincerely such, is that which
he profoundly believes to be the truth. Now, in seeking to inoculate
another with that which sincerely he believes to be eminently the
truth, though pr