oceeding by false methods, a man acts in a spirit of
benignity. So that, on all hands, the hellish fury of the sepoy was
felt to be unnatural, artificially assumed, and, by a reasonable
inference, was held to be a mask for something else that he wished to
conceal. But what? What was that something else which he wished to
conceal? The sepoy simulated, in order that he might dissimulate. He
pretended a wrong sustained, that he might call away attention from a
wrong which he designed. At this point I (and no doubt in company with
multitudes beside that had watched the case) became sensible of an
alien presence secretly intruding into this pretended quarrel of the
native soldier. It was no sepoy that was moving at the centre of this
feud: the objects towards which it ultimately tended were not such as
could by possibility interest the poor, miserable, idolatrous native.
What was _he_ to gain by the overthrow of the British Government? The
poor simpleton, who had been decoyed into this monstrous field of
strife, opened the game by renouncing all the vast advantages which he
and his children to the hundredth generation might draw from the
system of the Company, and entered upon a career towards distant
objects that for _him_ have absolutely no meaning or intelligible
existence. At this point it was that two enigmas, previously
insoluble, suddenly received the fullest explanation:--

1. What was the meaning of that hellish fury suddenly developed
towards officers with whom previously the sepoy had lived on terms of
reciprocal amity?

2. What cause had led to that incomprehensible enmity manifested, in
the process of these ferocious scenes, towards the wives and children
of the officers? Surely, if his wish were to eliminate their families
from the Indian territory, that purpose was sufficiently secured by
the massacre of him whose exertions obtained a livelihood for the rest
of the household.

[Footnote 66: This case was entirely misapprehended by a journalist
who happened to extract the passage. He understood me to mean that
this particular mode of disrespect to their British officers had
operated as a _cause_ of evil; whereas I alleged it simply as an
evidence and exponent of evil habits criminally tolerated amongst the
very lowest orders of our mercenary troops.]

It was tolerably certain that the widows and their children would not
remain much longer in the Indian territory, when it no longer offered
them an asylum or