ral_, but little or no _literary_ education, the
native officers of our regiments never dream of aspiring to anything
more than is now held out to them, and the mass of the soldiers are
inspired with devotion to the service, and every feeling with which
we could wish to have them inspired, by the hope of becoming officers
in time, if they discharge their duties faithfully and zealously.
Deprive the mass of this hope, give the commissions to an _exclusive
class_ of natives, or to a favoured few, chosen often, if not
commonly, without reference to the feelings or qualifications we most
want in our native officers, and our native army will soon cease to
have the same feelings of devotion towards the Government, and of
attachment and respect towards their European officers that they now
have. The young, ambitions, and aspiring native officers will soon
try to teach the great mass that their interest and that of the
European officers and European Government are by no means one and the
same, as they have been hitherto led to suppose; and it is upon the
good feeling of this great mass that we have to depend for support.
To secure this good feeling, we can well afford to sacrifice a little
efficiency at the drill. It was unwise in one of the commanders-in-
chief to direct that no soldier in our Bengal native regiments should
be promoted unless he could read and write-it was to prohibit the
promotion of the best, and direct the promotion of the worst,
soldiers in the ranks. In India a military officer is rated as a
gentleman by his birth, that is _caste_, and by his deportment in all
his relations of life, not by his _knowledge of books_.

The Rajput, the Brahman, and the proud Pathan who attains a
commission, and deports himself like an officer, never thinks
himself, or is thought by others, deficient in anything that
constitutes the gentleman, because he happens not to be at the same
time a clerk. He has from his childhood been taught to consider the
quill and the sword as two distinct professions, both useful and
honourable when honourably pursued; and having chosen the sword, he
thinks he does quite enough in learning how to use and support it
through all grades, and ought not to be expected to encroach on the
profession of the penman. This is a tone of feeling which it is
clearly the interest of Government rather to foster than discourage,
and the order which militated so much against it has happily been
either rescinded o