but the poor soldiers had no hope of this kind to animate them in
their toils and their dangers.

We took our System of drill from Frederick of Prussia; and there is
still many a martinet who would carry his high-pressure system of
discipline into every other service over which he had any control,
unable to appreciate the difference of circumstances under which they
may happen to be raised and maintained.[25]

The sepoys of the Bengal army, the only part of our native army with
which I am much acquainted, are educated as soldiers from their
infancy--they are brought up in that feeling of entire deference for
constituted authority which we require in soldiers, and which they
never lose through life. They are taken from the agricultural classes
of Indian society--almost all the sons of yeomen--cultivating
proprietors of the soil, whose families have increased beyond their
means of subsistence. One son is sent one after another to seek
service in our regiments as necessity presses at home, from whatever
cause--the increase of taxation, or the too great increase of numbers
in families.[26] No men can have a higher sense of the duty they owe
to the state that employs them, or whose 'salt they eat'; nor can any
men set less value on life when the service of that state requires
that it shall be risked or sacrificed. No persons are brought up with
more deference for parents. In no family from which we drew our
recruits is a son through infancy, boyhood, or youth, heard to utter
a disrespectful word to his parents--such a word from a son to his
parents would shock the feelings of the whole community in which the
family resides, and the offending member would be visited with their
highest indignation. When the father dies the eldest son takes his
place, and receives the same marks of respect, the same entire
confidence and deference as the father. If he be a soldier in a
distant land, and can afford to do so, he resigns the service, and
returns home to take his post as the head of the family. If he cannot
afford to resign, if the family still want the aid of his regular
monthly pay, he remains with his regiment, and denies himself many of
the personal comforts he has hitherto enjoyed, that he may increase
his contribution to the general stock.

The wives and children of his brothers, who are absent on service,
are confided to his care with the same confidence as to that of the
father. It is a rule to which I have through life