s is implied in that attempt, but Indian princes and
rajahs, standing in the background, were the true originators of the
movement--finds an indirect justification of its own accuracy in the
natural solution which it furnishes to those infernal massacres, which
else, as they must remain for ever without a parallel, will also
remain for ever without an intelligible motive. These atrocities were
exacted from the sepoys by the conclave of princes as tests of their
sincerity. Such doubtless was the argument for this exaction, the
ostensible plea put forward to the miserable reptiles who were seduced
into this treason, by the promise no doubt of sharing in the fruits of
the new and mighty revolution. Such pleas were for the sepoy. But for
himself and his own secret benefit the princely seducer needed all
that he could obtain of such accursed acts, as the means sure and
sudden of making the separation between the soldier and the government
more and more irreparable.

So much for the massacre of his officers: but a different reason
availed for the more diabolical outrages upon women and their
children. The murder of the _men_ was extorted from the sepoy as a
kind of sacrifice. With _them_ the reptile had lived upon terms of
humanising intercourse; and, vile as he was, in many cases this must
have slowly ripened into some mode of regard and involuntary esteem;
so that, in murdering the man, oftentimes a sepoy was making a real
(if trifling) sacrifice. But for females he cared nothing at all. And
in my opinion they perished on a very different principle. The male
murders were levied as pledges for the benefit of the princes, and
very distinctly understood to be levied _against_ the wishes of the
sepoy. But in the female sacrifice all parties concurred--sepoy and
prince, tempted and tempter alike. I require you to murder this
officer, as a pledge of your real hostility (which else might be a
pure pretence) to the government. But the murder of the officer's wife
and child rested on a motive totally different--namely,
this:--Throughout Hindostan no feature in the moral aspects of the
British nature could have been so conspicuous or so impressive as the
tenacity of purpose, the persistency, and the dogged resolution never
to relax a grasp once taken. Consequently, had the _men_ of our
nation, and they separately from the women, scattered themselves here
and there over the land (as they have long done in China, for
instance), then,