d
amiable persons among these slave-holders. If our army, as at present
constituted, cannot do without the free use of the lash, let its
constitution be altered; for no nation with free institutions should
suffer its soldiers to be flogged. '_Laudabiliores tamen duces sunt,
quorum exercitum ad modestiam labor et usus instituit, quam illi,
quorum milites ad obedientiam suppliciorum formido compellit.'[36]

Though I reprobate that wanton severity of discipline in which the
substance is sacrificed to the form, in which unavoidable and trivial
offences are punished as deliberate and serious crimes, and the
spirit of the soldier is entirely disregarded, while the motion of
his limbs, cut of his whiskers, and the buttons of his coat are
scanned with microscopic eye, I must not be thought to advocate
idleness. If we find the sepoys of a native regiment, as we sometimes
do at a healthy and cheap station, become a little unruly like
schoolboys, and ask an old native officer the reason, he will
probably answer others as he has me by another question, '_Ghora ara
kyun? Pani sara kyun?' 'Why does the horse become vicious? Why does
the water become putrid?'-For want of exercise. Without proper
attention to this exercise no regiment is ever kept in order; nor has
any commanding officer ever the respect or the affection of his men
unless they see that he understands well all the duties which his
Government entrusts to him, and is resolved to have them performed in
all situations and under all circumstances. There are always some bad
characters in a regiment, to take advantage of any laxity of
discipline, and lead astray the younger soldiers, whose spirits have
been rendered exuberant by good health and good feeding; and there is
hardly any crime to which they will not try to excite these young
men, under an officer careless about the discipline of his regiment,
or disinclined, from a mistaken _esprit de corps_, or any other
cause, to have those crimes traced home to them and punished.[37]

There can be no question that a good tone of feeling between the
European officers and their men is essential to the well-being of our
native army; and I think I have found this tone somewhat impaired
whenever our native regiments are concentrated at large stations. In
such places the European society is commonly large and gay; and the
officers of our native regiments become too much occupied in its
pleasures and ceremonies to attend to their nati