their own Military servants, whose needy circumstances (arising from his having lately to pay a large sum of money as damages in a crim. con. prosecution) rendered it eligible to him to receive a salary, as editor of a daily paper, in addition to that of Deputy Judge Advocate; though it would be impossible for him to do his duty honestly and fearlessly, in his editorial capacity, without risking the loss of his place and emoluments in his judicial character; a consideration which must deprive his testimony of all claim to weight or consideration,

The 26th, 47th, and 62d Regiments of Native troops, at Barrackpore, had been under marching orders for some weeks previous; but Monday, the 1st of November, was finally fixed for the 47th to proceed upon its route towards the eastern frontier. Discontent being well known to prevail among the Sepoys of these regiments, the experiment of making the 47th advance first, was, perhaps, made in the hope that, from its good character, it would set an example of obedience to the rest. On Sunday, the day before it was to have marched, a parade was directed in marching order, that the commanding officer might inspect the knapsacks, accoutrements, &c., and see that they were fit for service. On going to the parade it was officially reported to Lieutenant-Colonel Cartwright, that a great number of his men had positively refused to put on their knapsacks.

The lieutenant-colonel having gone along the companies, and expressed his high displeasure at their conduet, in about two hours af ter (says the account) a good number of the men had got their knapsacks on; implying that still many had not. The colonel then threw them into a square, and harangued them for a considerable time on the impropriety of their conduct; however, it appears, he was not able to convince them that their grievances did not require redress, as, at the conclusion of his harangue, they declared they would not march. A parade was again ordered for the following morning, Colonel Cartwright still hoping, it is said, that when the time for moving arrived, the troops would proceed quietly without urging their complaints further. Yet since one of these was their inability to procure draft cattle to transport their baggage, it might rather have been expected that this, on the arrival of the time for marching, would be an insuperable obstacle to their compliance. It has been stated that the sum offered at least by Government, to remove this acknowledged difficulty, had been tendered back as being inadequate.

General Dalzell had intimated his intention of being present at the parade ordered for Monday morning. When the hour arrived only between three and four hundred men were found assembled on the ground, (including commissioned and non-commissioned Native officers;) the body of the regiment adhering to the resolution before intimated, of not marching without a redress of grievances. On seeing this, the General rode up to the rest of the men and reproached them, it is said, in very bitter terms for their conduct; employing, according to report, expressions of abuse considered insufferably galling and degrading by natives of India, to which Sepoys, in particular, are not accustomed from their officers; and this so irritated some of the men, that they walked him off the parade at the point of bayonet, but without showing any inclination to injure a hair of his head. This incident, with every other part of their conduct, concurs with what is understood to have been the reso

lution of the Sepoys-(in thus seeking a redress of grievances)-to ab-> stain from any violence, particularly towards their European officers; but simply to refuse to march until their complaints were listened to by Government. It is stated that the main body of the regiment, which had refused to turn out on parade, made the part which had done so return to the lines, with the exception of the Native commissioned and noncommissioned officers, who were sent to Colonel Cartwright's house (says the Deputy Judge Advocate) "as a place of safety." By this expression it is plainly insinuated that they were in danger of their lives from the private men, and it is elsewhere stated, that there was no evidence of any one of them concurring with, or being at all concerned in the refractory proceedings of the Sepoys; yet we shall find that Government afterwards punished these very officers for conduct of which it is confessed they were not only innocent, but endangered their lives to prevent! Such manifest and glaring inconsistencies render the account of this affair, published by Government and its creatures, totally unworthy of credit, unless in so far as supported by other concurring testimony. Here it is to be remarked, before proceeding farther, that, on the foregoing circumstances, Government came to the decision, that the 47th Regiment should be sacrificed, unless it implicitly obeyed, without showing further reluctance, the order to march. From different individuals I have ascertained, that this resolution is known to have been taken on the day before it was carried into execution; consequently it can be justified or defended only on what has preceded, and not on any thing that follows this period.

Leaving the 47th in the meantime, I shall now notice the conduct of the other Native troops, on the evening of Monday, the same day of which I have been speaking. About eight or nine o'clock, a body of the 62d Regiment, amounting, as estimated, to the number of one hundred and fifty, went to the quarter guard, and taking the colours, removed them to the distance of a hundred yards. Two of their officers (Captain Ashe and Ensign Boyd) hastened to the spot, and the former expostulated with the men on their extraordinary conduct, and reminded them of their former good name. We are not informed of the precise nature of the language he employed towards the Sepoys; whether it was soothing and conciliatory, tending to make them more patient under their grievances, or, on the contrary, dictated by the lively emotions of displeasure he probably felt at this sudden breach of discipline, and of course reproachful and irritating. In forming a judgment on this point, we must be guided by a consideration of the circumstances of the case and the result. One Sepoy advised him to retire or his life would be endangered. Captain Ashe (says the Deputy Judge Advocate) “declared his resolution not to leave the colours." This indicates very plainly that he assumed the attitude of violence rather than of persuasion, and, if so, it was neither the wisest nor safest course. The circumstance which followed seems likewise to show that the advice of the Sepoy, above mentioned, was just, and, therefore, probably given with a sincere desire to save the life of his officer, who (he might naturally apprehend) would be apt, if he continued long, to provoke some of the more violent to do him an injury. This was evidently very liable to happen, from any sudden ebullition of passion or intemperance in either party; even in a single individual of the disorderly groupe; and we are accord

ingly told that one of the Sepoys then struck this officer twice, and, it is said, sought for a bayonet wherewith to assail him. But the man, guilty of this, was instantly laid hold of by his comrades, who protested that they would not suffer their officer to be touched; and entreated Captain Ashe to go away, saying, "they were mad, and knew not what they were about." This strongly corroborates the remark before made, that the discontented Sepoys had vowed to hold the persons of their officers sacred, and, in fact, to abstain from all violence-unless in so far as their remaining passive, and refusing to march until their grievances were listened to, was a violent remedy for their complaints. Notwithstanding this, it is not at all surprising that, in a large disorganised mass of some hundreds, an individual should be found desperate enough to make such a threat; but the conduct of the rest, in checking this single ruffian, evinces the more unequivocally that, as a body, they were actuated by a totally different spirit.

Having thus constrained these officers to leave them, they proceeded with the colours, and joined the 47th. In the meantime, the commanding officer, Major Roope, and the other officers of the 62d, had been exerting themselves to preserve order among the rest of the corps, according to the statement of the Deputy Judge Advocate; who thus insinuates, that they were with difficulty restrained from all joining the malcontents. About the same time, a party of the Sepoys of the 26th Regiment, about twenty or thirty in number, carried off one of their colours, and likewise joined the 47th, notwithstanding all the exertions of Lieutenant Colonel D'Aguilar to prevent them.

In the meantime, Government had been active in making such preparations as it thought necessary in this emergency. The King's 47th Regiment of European troops, which had set forward to act against the Burmese, and proceeded some distance up the river, but not so far as to be beyond reach, was hastily recalled, and reached Barrackpore ou Monday night, where things were in the state above described. The European Troops that could be spared from Fort William (where the Royals were), the Body Guard Cavalry troop from Calcutta, and the Artillery from Dum Dum, were also concentrated at Barrackpore.

There were, consequently, assembled here, on Tuesday morning, two European Regiments, the Royals and 47th, besides the Artillery from Dum Dum; three Native Regiments, the 16th, 61st, and 68th, (according to the sketch in my hands), with the Body Guard,-for the purpose of coercing one Regiment, the 47th, Native troops, and the two or three Companies from the 26th and 62d; which last two, being partly implicated and partly neutral, I leave out of the computation. Without being able to enter minutely into the numbers of each corps, it appears a fair conjecture, that the number of the refractory Sepoys was about one-sixth of the number of the troops who were brought against them.

The Commander in Chief having also arrived on the spot, "daylight" says the account, "alone was waited for, to put into execution those prompt and vigorous measures upon which his Excellency had already determined." The wished-for morning soon came that ushered in the memorable 2d of November-a day destined to be so fatally distinguished. And here let us pause for a moment on the brink of that gulph into which we are informed they were resolved to plunge; for although the deed is already written in the records of the past (which even

the gods cannot recal), the mind, in pursuing the retrospect, is fain to linger on the possibility of escaping the dismal catastrophe of men being massacred in cold blood. Would to God that the apologist of the Government had been able to assign some more satisfactory excuse for so horrid a proceeding! We are informed, that up to this period, the 47th Regiment, as a body, continued (with the exception of refusing to march, or put themselves in marching order) obedient and respectful to its officers, saluting them, as usual, when they passed, and attending to their orders. The removal of the colours, by some men of the other Regiments (26th and 62d), was confessedly a partial proceeding, by comparatively a small number. The grand question, therefore, is whether, even if it was determined to refuse all redress or indulgence, the punishment of a few of the most refractory, might not have brought the rest to entire order and submission. This remedy was adopted, with the completest success, by Sir Hector Munro, in 1784, when placed in circumstances infinitely more hazardous, with his troops mutinous in the face of a hostile force, and actually passing over in a body to the enemy. It is thus detailed by Mill (History of India, vol. 3. p. 311.)

In the month of May, Major, afterwards Sir Hector Munro, arrived from Bombay with a body of troops, partly King's and partly Company's; and hastened with them to Patna, to take the command of the army. He found the troops, Europeans as well as Sepoys, extremely mutinous, deserting to the enemy, threatening to carry off their officers, demanding higher pay, and a large donation, promised, as they affirmed, by the Nabob.7 The Major resolved to subdue this spirit by the severest measures. He had hardly arrived when a whole battalion of Sepoys, with their arms and accoutrements, went off to join the enemy. He immediately detached a body of troops on whom he thought he could depend, to pursue and bring them back. They overtook them in the night, when asleep, and made them prisoners. The Major, ready to receive them, with the troops under arms, ordered their officers to select fifty, whom they deemed the most depraved and mischievous, and of this fifty to select again twenty-four of the worst. He then ordered a field court-martial, composed of their own black officers, to be immediately held; and addressed the Court, impressing them with a sense of the destruction which impended over an army in which crimes like these were not effectually repressed. The prisoners were found guilty of mutiny and desertion, and sentenced to suffer death in any manner which the commander should direct. He ordered four of them to be imme diately tied to the guns, and blown away; when four grenadiers presented themselves, and begged, as they had always had the post of honour, that they should first be allowed to suffer. After the death of these four men, the European officers of the battalions of Sepoys, who were then in the field, came to inform the Major that the Sepoys would not suffer the execution of any more. He ordered the artillery officers to load the field-pieces with grape; and drew up the Europeans with the guns in their intervals. He then desired the officers to return to the heads of their battalions; after which he commanded the battalions to ground their arms, and assured them if a man attempted to move that he would give orders to fire. Sixteen more of the twenty-four men were then blown away; the remaining four were sent to another place of cantonment and executed in the same manner. Nothing is more singular, than that the same men, in whom it is endeavoured to raise to the highest pitch the contempt of death, and who may be depended upon for meeting it, without hesitation, at the hand of the enemy, should yet tremble, and be subdued, when threatened with it by their own officers.

When the sacrifice of twenty-four men was sufficient to suppress a mutiny of that very criminal description, could it be necessary to have

7 It appears by Munro's evidence (First Report, Committee, 1772) that such a promise was made to them, and through Major Adams.

1

recourse to the indiscriminate massacre of hundreds to curb mere mur murings about pay, unaccompanied by any such act of treachery? This is the great question to be solved-Was it requisite to have recourse to a general slaughter?

However this may be, the fact is, we are told, that Government had determined on strong measures. But before these could be carried into execution, it was necessary, it appears, that the dissatisfaction of the Sepoys should be made to assume a form of disobedience more tangible or technically criminal. Having surrounded them with the other Native and European troops already mentioned, the Adjutant General and Quarter Master General of the army, with the officer commanding the 47th Regiment, were sent to order them to lay down their arms, and to threaten them with immediate punishment in case of refusal. The poor deluded beings, relying on the mercy of the British Government, hesitated, we are told, pleading their oath not to yield, unless the grievances they complained of were redressed. The order to lay down their arms consequently threw them into a dilemma, as must have been anticipated: and the men, not knowing what would be the consequences of this act, hesitated between the dictates of passive obedience and their sense of wrong. But their subsequent conduct shows that this hesitation and non-compliance of the Sepoys was quite disconnected from any idea of resistance or using their arms offensively. Since, when fired upon, although they had muskets in their hands, ready loaded we are told, it does not appear that even one of them fired in retaliation. It is reported, that they were asked (whether at this conjuncture or previously I am unable to say) if they wished to make any communication to the Governor-General. They replied, that they had nothing whatever to say to that pice-changer' (Bunya); but they earnestly wished to make a representation to the "Burra General" (that is, the Commander-in-Chief). They were thereupon told that he would not listen to them while they continued in arms. According to report, ten minutes were allowed them to lay down their arms, which was certainly little enough time for the order to reach every individual of a mass of one thousand or twelve hundred men; but, according to the printed reports, which do not speak of even one minute's delay, the moment their refusal was intimated to the Commander-in-Chief, he ordered them to be cut down. Before such a desperate step was taken, I would rather that he had addressed them as the famous Roman General did the rebellious legions of Capua :"Whatever you do, I am resolved to behave as becomes me: if I draw my sword it shall not be till you have drawn yours. If blood must be shed, you shall begin the slaughter." This, however, was addressed to traitors, who, after the basest conduct, were perfidiously marching, in hostile array, against their country, which was happily saved by this mixture of firmness and humanity. Are these Pagan virtues extinct among Britons and Christians, that we should, without hesitation or reluctance, commence the work of slaughter, without the excuse that our victims had shed, or even wished to shed, a single drop of blood? That

8 Pysa, in Hindoostanee, is the term used for money generally: and pice or pysa, for the smallest description of copper coin, equal to a farthing. The term must have been used in allusion to the contemptible parsimony of certain measures, of which he was supposed to be the author.