August, and the
whole island was taken possession of in September, 1811. But at the
general peace which followed the great war the island of Java, with
its dependencies, was restored to the Dutch.

8. The Isle of France, otherwise called the Mauritius, which is still
British territory, was gallantly taken at the end of November, 1810,
by Commodore Rowley and Major-General Abercrombie. Full details of
the Java and Mauritius expeditions are given in Thornton's twenty-
second chapter. The brilliant operations in both localities deserve
more attention than they usually receive from students of Indian
history.

9. The funeral obsequies which are everywhere offered up to the manes
of parents by the surviving head of the family during the last
fifteen days of the month Kuar (September) were never considered as
acceptable from the hands of a soldier in our service who had been
tied up and flogged, whatever might have been the nature of the
offence for which he was punished; any head of a family so flogged
lost by that punishment the most important of his civil rights--that,
indeed, upon which all others hinged, for it is by presiding at the
funeral ceremonies that the head of the family secures and maintains
his recognition. [W. H. S.] I have invariably found that natives of
India, enjoying a good social position, who happen to be interested
in an offender, care nothing for the disgraceful nature of the
offender's crime, while they dread the disgrace of the punishment,
however just it may be.

10. The worst feature of this abolition measure is unquestionably the
odious distinction which it leaves in the punishments to which our
European and our native soldiers are liable, since the British
legislation does not consider that it can be safely abolished in the
British army. This odious distinction might be easily removed by an
enactment declaring that European soldiers in India should be liable
to corporal punishment for only two offences: first, mutiny, or gross
insubordination; second, plunder or violence while the regiment or
force to which the prisoner belongs is in the field or marching. The
same enactment might declare the soldiers of our native army liable
to the same punishments for the same offences. Such an enactment
would excite no discontent among our native soldiery; on the
contrary, it would be applauded as just and proper. [W. H. S.]
Subsequently, corporal punishment in the Indian or native army was
again legal