Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official Part 68

Frederick was in position and disposition a despot. His territories were small, while his ambition was boundless. He was unable to pay a large army the rate of wages necessary to secure the services of voluntary soldiers; and he availed himself of the happy imbecility of the French Government to form an army of involuntary ones. He got French soldiers at a cheap rate, because they dared not return to their native country, whence they were hunted down and shot like dogs, and these soldiers enabled him to retain his own subjects in his ranks upon the same terms. Had the French Government retraced its steps, improved the condition of its soldiers, and mitigated the punishment for desertion during the long war, Frederick's army would have fallen to pieces 'like the baseless fabric of a vision'.

'_Parmi nous,' says Montesquieu, 'les desertions sont frequentes parce que les soldats sont la plus vile partie de chaque nation, et qu'il n'y en a aucun qui aie, ou qui croie avoir un certain avantage sur les autres. Chez les Romains elles etaient plus rares--des soldats tires du sein d'un peuple si fier, si orgueilleux, si sur de commander aux autres, ne pouvaient guere penser a s' aviler jusqu'a cesser d'etre Romains_.'[20] But was it the poor soldiers who were to blame if they were 'vile', and had 'no advantage over others', or the Government that took them from the vilest cla.s.ses, or made their condition when they got them worse than that of the lowest cla.s.s in society? The Romans deserted under the same circ.u.mstances, and, as I have stated, formed the _elite_ of the army of Mithridates and the other enemies of Rome; but they respected their military oath of allegiance long after perjury among senators had ceased to excite any odium, since as a fashionable or political vice it had become common.

Did not our day of retribution come, though in a milder shape, to teach us a great political and moral lesson, when so many of our brave sailors deserted our ships for those of America, in which they fought against us?[21] They deserted from our ships of war because they were there treated like dogs, or from our merchant ships because they were every hour liable to be seized like felons and put on board the former. When 'England expected every man to do his duty' at Trafalgar, had England done its duty to every man who was that day to fight for her? Is not the intellectual stock which the sailor acquires in scenes of peril 'upon the high and giddy mast' as much his property as that which others acquire in scenes of peace at schools and colleges? And have not our senators, morally and religiously, as much right to authorize their sovereign to seize clergymen, lawyers, and professors, for employment in his service, upon the wages of ordinary uninstructed labour, as they have to authorize him to seize able sailors to be so employed in her navy? A feeling more base than that which authorized the able seaman to be hunted down upon such conditions, torn from his wife and children, and put like Uriah in front of those battles upon which our welfare and honour depended, never disgraced any civilized nation with whose history we are acquainted.[22]

Sir Matthew Decker, in a pa.s.sage quoted by Mr. McCulloch, says, 'The custom of impressment put a freeborn British sailor on the same footing as a Turkish slave. The Grand Seignior cannot do a more absolute act than to order a man to be dragged away from his family, and against his will run his head against the mouth of a cannon; and if such acts should be frequent in Turkey upon any one set of useful men, would it not drive them away to other countries, and thin their numbers yearly? And would not the remaining few double or triple their wages, which is the case with our sailors in time of war, to the great detriment of our commerce?' The Americans wisely relinquished the barbarous and unwise practice of their parent land, and, as McCulloch observes, 'While the wages of all labourers and artisans are uniformly higher in the United States than in England, those of sailors are generally lower,' as the natural consequence of manning their navy by means of voluntary enlistment alone. At the close of the last war, sixteen thousand British sailors were serving on board of American ships; and the wages of our seamen rose from forty or[23] fifty to a hundred or one hundred and twenty shillings a month, as the natural consequence of our continuing to resort to impressment after the Americans had given it up.[24]

Frederick's army consisted of about one hundred and fifty thousand men. Fifty thousand of these were French deserters, and a considerable portion of the remaining hundred thousand were deserters from the Austrian army, in which desertion was punished in the same manner with death. The dread of this punishment if they quitted his ranks, enabled him to keep up that state of discipline that improved so much the efficacy of his regiments, at the same time that it made every individual soldier his 'irreconcilable enemy'. Not relying entirely upon this dread on the part of deserters to quit his ranks under his high-pressure system of discipline, and afraid that the soldiers of his own soil might make off in spite of all their vigilance, he kept his regiments in garrison towns till called on actual service; and that they might not desert on their way from one garrison to another during relief, he never had them relieved at all.

A trooper was flogged for falling from his horse, though he had broken a limb in his fall; it was difficult, he said, to distinguish an involuntary fault from one that originated in negligence, and to prevent a man hoping that his negligence would be forgiven, all blunders were punished, from whatever cause arising. No soldier was suffered to quit his garrison till led out to fight; and when a desertion took place, cannons were fired to announce it to the surrounding country. Great rewards were given for apprehending, and severe punishments inflicted for harbouring, the criminal; and he was soon hunted down, and brought back. A soldier was, therefore, always a prisoner and a slave.

Still, all this rigour of Prussian discipline, like that of our navy, was insufficient to extinguish that ambition which is inherent in our nature to obtain the esteem and applause of the circle in which we move; and the soldier discharged his duty in the hour of danger, in the hope of rendering his life more happy in the esteem of his officers and comrades. 'Every tolerably good soldier feels ', says Adam Smith, 'that he would become the scorn of his companions if he should be supposed capable of shrinking from danger, or of hesitating either to expose or to throw away his life, when the good of the service required it.' So thought the philosopher-King of Prussia, when he let his regiments out of garrison to go and face the enemy.

The officers were always treated with as much lenity in the Prussian as any other service, because the king knew that the hope of promotion would always be sufficient to bind them to their duties; 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 circ.u.mstances 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 const.i.tuted authority which we require in soldiers, and which they never lose through life. They are taken from the agricultural cla.s.ses 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. .h.i.therto 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 found but few exceptions that those who are most disposed to resist const.i.tuted authority are those most disposed to abuse such authority when they get it. The members of these families, disposed, as they always are, to pay deference to such authority, are scarcely ever found to abuse it when it devolves upon them; and the elder son, when he succeeds to the place of his father, loses none of the affectionate attachment of his younger brothers.

They never take their wives or children with them to their regiments, or to the places where their regiments are stationed.[27]

They leave them with their fathers or elder brothers, and enjoy their society only when they return on furlough. Three-fourths of their incomes are sent home to provide for their comfort and subsistence, and to embellish that home in which they hope to spend the winter of their days. The knowledge that any neglect of the duty they owe their distant families will be immediately visited by the odium of their native officers and brother soldiers, and ultimately communicated to the heads of their families, acts as a salutary check on their conduct; and I believe that there is hardly a native regiment in the Bengal army in which the twenty drummers who are Christians, and have their families with the regiment, do not cause more trouble to the officers than the whole eight hundred sepoys.

To secure the fidelity of such men all that is necessary is to make them feel secure of three things--their regular pay, at the handsome rate at which it has now been fixed; their retiring pensions upon the scale hitherto enjoyed; and promotion by seniority, like their European officers, unless they shall forfeit all claims to it by misconduct or neglect of duty.[28] People talk about a demoralized army, and discontented army! No army in the world was certainly ever more moral or more contented than our native army; or more satisfied that their masters merit all their devotion and attachment; and I believe none was ever more devoted or attached to them.[29] I do not speak of the European officers of the native army. They very generally believe that they have had just cause of complaint, and sufficient care has not always been taken to remove that impression.

In all the junior grades the Honourable Company's officers have advantages over the Queen's in India. In the higher grades the Queen's officers have advantages over those of the Honourable Company. The reasons it does not behove me here to consider.[30]

In all armies composed of involuntary soldiers, that is, of soldiers who are anxious to quit the ranks and return to peaceful occupations, but cannot do so, much of the drill to which they are subjected is adopted merely with a view to keep them from pondering too much upon the miseries of their present condition, and from indulging in those licentious habits to which a strong sense of these miseries, and the recollection of the enjoyments of peaceful life which they have sacrificed, are too apt to drive them. No portion of this is necessary for the soldiers of our native army, who have no miseries to ponder over, or superior enjoyments in peaceful life to look back upon; and a very small quant.i.ty of drill is sufficient to make a regiment go through its evolutions well, because they have all a pride and pleasure in their duties, as long as they have a commanding officer who understands them. Clarke, in his _Travels_, speaking of the three thousand native infantry from India whom he saw paraded in Egypt under their gallant leader, Sir David Baird, says, 'Troops in such a state of military perfection, or better suited for active service, were never seen--not even on the famous parade of the chosen ten thousand belonging to Bonaparte's legions, which he was so vain of displaying before the present war in the front of the Tuileries at Paris. Not an unhealthy soldier was to be seen. The English, inured to the climate of India, considered that of Egypt as temperate in its effects, and the sipahees seemed as fond of the Nile as the Ganges.'[31]

It would be much better to devise more innocent amus.e.m.e.nts to lighten the miseries of European soldiers in India than to be worrying them every hour, night and day, with duties which are in themselves considered to be of no importance whatever, and imposed merely with a view to prevent their having time to ponder on these miseries.[32]

But all extra and useless duties to a soldier become odious, because they are always a.s.sociated in his mind with the ideas of the odious and degrading punishment inflicted for the neglect of them. It is lamentable to think how much of misery is often wantonly inflicted upon the brave soldiers of our European regiments of India on the pretence of a desire to preserve order and discipline.[33]

Sportsmen know that if they train their horses beyond a certain point they 'train off'; that is, they lose the spirit and with it the condition they require to support them in their hour of trial. It is the same with soldiers; if drilled beyond a certain point, they 'drill off', and lose the spirit which they require to sustain them in active service, and before the enemy. An over-drilled regiment will seldom go through its evolutions well, even in ordinary review before its own general. If it has all the mechanism, it wants all the real spirit of military discipline--it becomes dogged, and is, in fact, a body with but a soul. The martinet, who is seldom a man of much intellect, is satisfied as long as the bodies of his men are drilled to his liking; his narrow mind comprehends only one of the principles which influence mankind--fear; and upon this he acts with all the pertinacity of a slave-driver. If he does not disgrace himself when he comes before the enemy, as he commonly does, by his own incapacity, his men will perhaps try to disgrace him, even at the sacrifice of what they hold dearer than their lives--their reputation. The real soldier, who is generally a man of more intellect, cares more about the feelings than the bodies of his men; he wants to command their affections as well as their limbs, and he inspires them with a feeling of enthusiasm that renders them insensible to all danger--such men were Lord Lake, and Generals Ochterlony, Malcolm, and Adams, and such are many others well known in India.

Under the martinet the soldiers will never do more than what a due regard for their own reputation demands from them before the enemy, and will sometimes do less. Under the real soldier, they will always do more than this; his reputation is dearer to them even than their own, and they will do more to sustain it. The army of the consul, Appius Claudius, exposed themselves to almost inevitable destruction before the enemy to disgrace him in the eyes of his country, and the few survivors were decimated on their return; he cared nothing for the spirit of his men. The army of his colleague, Quintius, on the contrary, though from the same people, and levied and led out at the same time, covered him with glory because they loved him.[34] We had an instance of this in the war with Nepal in-1813, in which a king's regiment played the part of the army of Appius.[35] There were other martinets, king's and Company's, commanding divisions in that war, and they all signally failed; not, however, except in the above one instance, from backwardness on the part of their troops, but from utter incapacity when the hour of trial came. Those who succeeded were men always noted for caring something more about the hearts than the whiskers and b.u.t.tons of their men. That the officer who delights in hara.s.sing his regiment in times of peace will fail with it in times of war and scenes of peril seems to me to be a rule almost as well established as that he, who in the junior ranks of the army delights most to kick against authority, is always found the most disposed to abuse it when he gets to the higher. In long intervals of peace, the only prominent military characters are commonly such martinets; and hence the failures so generally experienced in the beginning of a war after such an interval. Whitelocks are chosen for command, till Wolfes and Wellingtons find Chathams and Wellesleys to climb up by.

To govern those whose mental and physical energies we require for our subsistence and support by the lash alone is so easy, so simple a mode of bending them to our will, and making them act strictly and instantly in conformity to it, that it is not at all surprising to find so many of those who have been accustomed to it, and are not themselves liable to have the lash inflicted upon them, advocating its free use. In China the Emperor has his generals flogged, and finds the lash so efficacious in bending them to his will that nothing would persuade him that it could ever be safely dispensed with. In some parts of Germany they had the officers flogged, and princes and generals found this so very efficacious in making those act in conformity to their will that they found it difficult to believe that any army could be well managed without it. In other Christian armies the officers are exempted from the lash, but they use it freely upon all under them; and it would be exceedingly difficult to convince the greater part of these officers that the free use of the lash is not indispensably necessary, nay, that the men do not themselves like to be flogged, as eels like to be skinned, when they once get used to it. Ask the slave-holders of the southern states of America whether any society can be well const.i.tuted unless the greater part of those upon the sweat of whose brow the community depends for their subsistence are made by law liable to be bought, sold, and driven to their daily labour with the lash; they will one and all say No; and yet there are doubtless many very excellent and amiable persons among these slave-holders. If our army, as at present const.i.tuted, cannot do without the free use of the lash, let its const.i.tution be altered; for no nation with free inst.i.tutions should suffer its soldiers to be flogged. '_Laudabiliores tamen duces sunt, quorum exercitum ad modestiam labor et usus inst.i.tuit, 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 b.u.t.tons 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 circ.u.mstances. 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 native officers or sepoys. In Europe there are separate cla.s.ses of people who subsist by catering for the amus.e.m.e.nts of the higher cla.s.ses of society, in theatres, operas, concerts, b.a.l.l.s, &c., &c.; but in India this duty devolves entirely upon the young civil and military officers of the Government, and at large stations it really is a very laborious one, which often takes up the whole of a young man's time. The ladies must have amus.e.m.e.nt; and the officers must find it for them, because there are no other persons to undertake the arduous duty. The consequence is that they often become entirely alienated from their men, and betray signs of the greatest impatience while they listen to the necessary reports of their native officers, as they come on or go off duty.[38]

It is different when regiments are concentrated for active service.

Nothing tends so much to improve the tone of feeling between the European officers and their men, and between European soldiers and sepoys, as the concentration of forces on actual service, where the same hopes animate, and the same dangers unite them in common bonds of sympathy and confidence. '_Utrique alteris freti, finitimos armis aut metu sub imperium cogere, nomen gloriamque sibi addidere_.' After the campaigns under Lord Lake, a native regiment pa.s.sing Dinapore, where the gallant King's 76th, with whom they had fought side by side, was cantoned, invited the soldiers to a grand entertainment provided for them by the sepoys. They consented to go on one condition--that the sepoys should see them all back safe before morning. Confiding in their sable friends, they all got gloriously drunk, but found themselves lying every man upon his proper cot in his own barracks in the morning. The sepoys had carried them all home upon their shoulders. Another native regiment, pa.s.sing within a few miles of a hill on which they had buried one of their European officers after that war, solicited permission to go and make their 'salam' to the tomb, and all went who were off duty.[39] The system which now keeps the greater part of our native infantry at small stations of single regiments in times of peace tends to preserve this good tone of feeling between officers and men, at the same time that it promotes the general welfare of the country by giving confidence everywhere to the peaceful and industrious cla.s.ses.

I will not close this chapter without mentioning one thing which I have no doubt every Company's officer in India will concur with me in thinking desirable to improve the good feeling of the native soldiery--that is, an increase in the pay of the Jemadars. They are commissioned officers, and seldom attain the rank in less than from twenty-five to thirty years;[40] and they have to provide themselves with clothes of the same costly description as those of the Subadar; to be as well mounted, and in all respects to keep the same respectability of appearance, while their pay is only twenty-four rupees and a half a month; that is, ten rupees a month only more than they had been receiving in the grade of Havildars, which is not sufficient to meet the additional expenses to which they become liable as commissioned officers. Their means of remittance to their families are rather diminished than increased by promotion, and but few of them can hope ever to reach the next grade of Subadar. Our Government, which has of late been so liberal to its native civil officers, will, I hope, soon take into consideration the claims of this cla.s.s, who are universally admitted to be the worst paid cla.s.s of native public officers in India. Ten rupees a month addition to their pay would be of great importance; it would enable them to impart some of the advantages of promotion to their families, and improve the good feeling of the circles around them towards the Government they serve.[41]

Notes:

1. This chapter and the following one were printed as a separate tract at Calcutta in 1841 (see Bibliography). That small volume included an Introduction and two statistical tables which the author did not reprint. He has utilized extracts from the Introduction in various parts of the _Rambles and Recollections_. I am not sure that the tract was ever published, though it was printed; for the author says in his Introduction: 'They (_scil._ these two essays) may never be published; but I cannot deny myself the gratification of printing them.'

2. This order is confined to the Indian Army.

3. The punishment of working on the roads is long obsolete.

4. The author spells this word 'sipahee'. I have thought it better to use throughout the now familiar corruption.

5. The ordinary infantry pay was raised from seven to nine rupees in 1895.

6. General Orders by the Commander-in-Chief of the 5th of January, 1797, declare that no sepoy or trooper of our native army shall be dismissed from the service by the sentence of any but a general court martial. General Orders by the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Combermere, of the 19th of March, 1827, declare that his Excellency is of opinion that the quiet and orderly habits of the native soldiers are such that it can very seldom be necessary to have recourse to the punishment of flogging, which might be almost entirely abolished with great advantage to their character and feelings; and directs that no native soldier shall in future be sentenced to corporal punishment unless for the crime of _stealing, marauding, or gross insubordination_, where the individuals are deemed unworthy to continue in the ranks of the army. No such sentence by a regimental, detachment, or brigade court martial was to be carried into effect till confirmed by the general officer commanding the division. When flogged the soldier was invariably to be discharged from the service.

A circular letter from the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Combermere, on the 16th of June, 1827, directs that sentence to corporal punishment is not to be restricted to the three crimes of _theft, marauding, or gross insubordination_; but that it is not to be awarded except for very serious offences against discipline, or actions of a disgraceful or infamous nature, which show those who committed them to be unfit for the service; that the officer who a.s.sembles the court may remit the sentence of corporal punishment, and the dismissal involved in it; but cannot carry it into effect till confirmed by the officer commanding the division, except when an immediate example is indispensably necessary, as in the case of plundering and violence on the part of soldiers in the line of march. In all cases the soldier who has been flogged must be dismissed.

A circular letter by the Commander-in-Chief, Sir E. Barnes, 2nd of November, 1832, dispenses with the duty of submitting the sentence of regimental, detachment, and brigade courts martial for confirmation to the general officer commanding the division; and authorizes the officer who a.s.sembles the court to carry the sentence into effect without reference to higher authority; and to mitigate the punishment awarded, or remit it altogether; and to order the dismissal of the soldier who has been sentenced to corporal punishment, though he should remit the flogging, 'for it may happen that a soldier may be found guilty of an offence which renders it improper that he should remain any longer in the service, although the general conduct of the man has been such that an example is unnecessary; or he may have relations in the regiment of excellent character, upon whom some part of the disgrace would fall if he were flogged.' Still no court martial but a general one could sentence a soldier to be simply dismissed. To secure his dismissal they must first sentence him to be flogged.

On the 24th of February, 1835, the Governor-General of India in Council, Lord William Bentinck, directed that the practice of punishing soldiers of the native army by the cat-o'-nine-tails, or rattan, be discontinued at all the presidencies; and that henceforth it shall be competent to any regimental, detachment, or brigade court martial to sentence a soldier of the native army to dismissal from the service for any offence for which such soldier might now be punished by flogging, provided such sentence of dismissal shall not be carried into effect unless confirmed by the general or other officer commanding the division.'

For crimes involving higher penalties, soldiers were, as heretofore, committed for trial before general courts martial.

By Act 23 of 1839, pa.s.sed by the Legislative Council of India on the 23rd of September, it is made competent for courts martial to sentence soldiers of the native army in the service of the East India Company to the punishment of dismissal, and to be imprisoned, with or without hard labour, for any period not exceeding two years, if the sentence be p.r.o.nounced by a general court martial; and not exceeding one year, if by a garrison or line court martial; and not exceeding six months, if by a regimental or district court martial.

Imprisonment for any period with hard labour, or for a term exceeding six months without hard labour, to involve dismissal. Act 2 of 1840 provides for such sentences of imprisonment being carried into execution by magistrates or other officers in charge of the gaols.

[W. H. S.]

This last paragraph has been brought up from the end of the volume where it is printed in the original edition.

The army has been completely reorganized since the author's time, and the regulations have been much modified.

In October, 1833, Lord William Bentinck had a.s.sumed the command of the army, on the retirement of Sir Edward Barnes, and thus combined the offices of Governor-General and Commander-in-Chief, as the Marquis Cornwallis and the Marquis of Hastings had done before him.

7. Batavia was occupied by Sir Samuel Auchmuty in 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 legalized. The present law is thus stated by Sir Edwin Collen: 'A "summary court martial"... may pa.s.s any sentence allowed by the articles of war, except . . . and may carry it out at once. Corporal punishment not exceeding fifty lashes may be given for certain offences, but is rarely awarded, and the amount of military crime is, on the whole, very small in the native army. The native officers have power to inflict minor punishments' [_I.G. (1908), vol. iv, p. 370].

Flogging in the British army in time of peace was prohibited in April, 1868, by an amendment to the Mutiny Bill, and was completely abolished by the Army Discipline Act of 1881.

11. The author also gives the Hindustani word as 'kaelkur-hin', which seems to be intended for _qail karen_, or in rustic form _karahin_, meaning 'confute'.

12. No wonder that the native army, pampered in this sentimental fashion, gradually became more and more inefficient, till it needed the fires of the Mutiny to purge away its humours. No army could be efficient when its subordinate officers on the active list were men of sixty or seventy years of age.

13. The sepoys were quite right; no other service in the world was managed on such principles. The illusion of the old Company's officers about the grat.i.tude and affection of the men generally was rudely dispelled nineteen years after the conversations recorded in the text. But, even in 1857. a n.o.ble minority remained faithful and did devoted service.

14. The best troops now are the Sikhs, Gorkhas, and frontier Muhammadans. Oudh men still enlist in large numbers, but do not enjoy their old prestige. The army known to the author comprised no Sikhs, Gorkhas, or frontier Muhammadans. The recruitment of Gorkhas only began in 1838, and the other two cla.s.ses of troops were obtained by the annexation of the Panjab in 1849.

15. Enlistment in the native army is absolutely voluntary, and does not even require to be stimulated by a bounty. A subsequent pa.s.sage shows that the author refuses to describe the British army as an 'entirety voluntary' one, because a soldier when once enlisted is bound to serve for a definite term; whereas the sepoy could resign when he chose.