The Sun.
London, England, 1858-11-08 00:00:00

clence, but it is iadividual and personal rather than
collective and national. With great attachment to
the externals they combine indifference to the spirit
of discipline. They were more anxious to look like
than to be soldiers, and, quiet and orderly as they
were in appearance, I am told that the' Sepoys in
reality were very great grumblers, readily discon-
tented, and very difficult to please. But so long as
they were 40 inches round the chest and 70 inches
in height, were well set up, looked well on parade,
were smart at drill, and were clean and neat on duty,
their officers opened their. eyes and shut -their
ears. There is an illustration of Lord Clyde's which
perhaps places their qualities as fighting soldiers on
too low a level, but which is characteristic and strik-
ing :—" Take a bamboo and throw it against a tree
—it will rebound and fall harmless to the ground.
Tip it with steel and it will pierce deep. The bamboo
is the Sepoy, the steel tip is the European soldier
and officer." We are growing crops of these
bamboos and have scarce enough steel to point them
all. Let us try to use them as policemen's batons,
instead of soldiers' spears. Let us, at all events,
endeavour to prevent the resuscitation of the vices
in the new corps which rendered the Sepoys
different from the rest of their countrymen,
and which gave them, as it were, a peculiar cha-
racter of their own. The Hindoo is easily satisfied;
the Sepoy is readily discontented. The Hindoo is
peaceable and humane ; the Sepoy has shown him-
self to be turbulent and cruel. Hew is the nature
of the man changed in our service ? There are
many people who will delight in proving that there
is no change at all, and that the natives of India
are all diabolical in thought, word, and deed, and,
oddly enough, these are mostly the men who have
come to India either to make their own fortunes, •
and who view mankind through the vistas of a
merchant's office or of a cotton-field, or to preach
the Gospel of Christ to the benighted heathen. If
these gentlemen be right, no attempt can be more
hopeless than that of civilising the natives, or of
converting them, and our efiorts are a huge mistake.
But for my part I doubt it much. In addition to
the many proofs of kindness, fidelity, and devotion
of natives to Europeans, in the midst of the excesses
and fanaticism and cruelty of the late rebellion, I
have the testimony of many great and good men
who know the faults and virtues of the natives well,
and I learn that the Hindoo has many noble quali-
ties mingled with the vices of our common nature.
The narrative of the escape of Mr. Dudman and his
family through Oude, which appeared lately in the
Delhi Gazette, abounds in most touching instances
of the delicacy, generosity, and humanity of the
peasantry of that unhappy province, at a most
trying period..
I am no admirer of the Hindoo civilization or of
the Mahomedan democracy, but I cannot be insen-
sible to the fact that there is an extremely ancient,
refined, and complicated civilization among the
Hindoos, and that there is a freedom and liberality
in the social system of the Mussulmans in all that
relates to the rights of the natural man which
serve as some counterpoise to their intolerant and
fanaticalreligions system. When we in England.
talk of the barbarous tribes of India, or write of
the barbarian empire of Hindostan, we are, to a
great extent, guilty of the same ignorance and
arrogance with which we justly taunt the
Chinese. The legal judicial, and landed systems
of India are exiremely ancient, and frequently
so good that we have been glad to adopt por-
tions of them. Their police is one of, if not the
oldest in the world. They have a written
literature, ioetry, history, and religion. They
are adepts in the fictile arts, in the manufac-
ture of beautiful fabrics, in plastic productions, in
the work of the loom, and, though I cannot join the
worshippers of their schools of music, painting, or
sculpture, I may admit their antiquity, and give an
ignorant adhesion to their merits. A Hindoo will
tell you caste is the very extreme result of high
civilisation, and if you argue with him he will
point to your bearer, or indulge in reflections on
some supposed wrongs of London chimney-sweepers
and coal-whippers.
It is urged against the Hindoo in the very words
of one of the most powerful and able journals in
India—one of the salt cakes that keeps so much
poor meat from putrefaction--that we may well look
with scorn on the race to which he belongs, because
it "dare not eat what it likes" without the permis-
sion of its priests, or marry without their " con-
sent." But are there no other races in the same
category? Nay, how many centuries have elapsed
since our forefathers were in similar thraldom ? The
races which discovered a new world and enriched the
old were under these very influences. But I am
satisfied, whenever there is sufficient cause for .it, all
such unnatural restrictions will be disregarded, and.
the Hindoo will:act in regard to them just as he
does now when he is called upon to overcome his
prejudices against a sea voyage for purposes of
profit or business. He sees our superiority in most
of the arts 'of life; and, even now, in spite of his
prejudices, he is anxious to know something °Rho
history, the language, and the faith of his masters.
I am obliged, unfortunately, to say "he" for "she"
—the great civiliser is at present out of our power.
The Indian wife and mother—Hindoo or Maho-
medan—who should be our best ally, is often our
greatest foe. The largestbenefit that could be con-
ferred on India would be done by him who should.
devise the means of availing themselves of that
gentle and all-powerful agency, and who could
enlist the sympathies of Englishwomen in India in
the cause of their own countrymen and in the cause
of our Imperial rule. This is a vital question, to
which I would respectfully invite the consideration
of all CI ristian philanthropists. If we must have
trmios of police and legions of Sepoys let us
endeas our to elevate the men to the rest of their
countrymen. The Brahmins were the most violent
and prejudiced and troublesome of Hindoos. They
were the favourite staple of our army. But just
consider the force of prejudice. Listen to the
voices of the Indian press. One gentleman writes :
" Our police force has its head-quarters at the
Dilaranake-Kotee, and every morning one may
witness the drilling of that force which, with the
aid of Europeans, is to hold Lucknow and Oude in
future. It is a pity that so many regiments of
this force are composed chiefly of miserable looking
low caste fellows, who will never be able to look
Jack Pandy in the face."
Another says---
"Pandy has gone wrong and deserves all that
he is getting ; but until he went mad in 1857, he
was a good orerly and after every Pandy who has
borne arms against the State has been hung, there
is no reason why other Pandies should not be en-
listed ; for myself, I would rather serve with them
than with the dirty, unworthy, ungentlemanly
(Pandy was a gentleman) set of strange bedfellows,
with whom misfortune has made us acquainted."
Now for another phase of opinion. A man of
inquiring mind, amid a long string of questions
addressed to an Agra paper, has the following :
"If there is any intention of raising a foreign
legion in the south of Europe for India, men of
warm latitudes are far more likely to be useful
soldiers than these snivelling blacks of India, with
their treachery and caste.
" I earnestly hope that there will now be no
more colonial regiments or artillery whatsoever ; for
to me it appers dreadful the thought of colonial,
service in a climate like India, surrounded by lying
Hindoos and Mahomedans ; and, though I believe
the Bengal Artillery to be the finest in the world,
still is it fair to expect regiments who never go
home to England to equal those who periodically
do so?"
" Snivelling blacks," " treachery, and caste,"
" lying Hindoos and Mahomedans, ' " low-caste
fellows," " Pandy was a gentleman," &c. Here is a
strange melange for you, and yet it is a fair repre-
sentation of what is called " Indian public opinion"
on this and many other questions. We may well
invoke the influence of the calmer and sounder sen-
timents which prevail at home, and feel thankful
for the opportunity of their legitimate exercise in
the great field which is about to be opened to the
ot
rice
g,
n our a settlements,
domestic
statesman and theattelimeogn,isoolafutrojrusf.
ourCi ur
revenueadin i administration
policy, will all require the application of fixed prin-
ciples and the scrutiny of our ablest men. In the
hills amid which I am now writing our policy has
been so diverse and fantastic as to have endangered
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We, therefore, religiously respected the Hindoo
rights of adoption, and in defect of heirs we sought
out distant relatives and placed them on the " gud-
dees" of those little principalities. Now, our policy
is a'tered—we desire the acquisition of territory in
the Hills. There is a daydream of colonisation and
tea planting in the minds of some of our people,
and we wish to " define our frontier," therefore,
the right of adoption is denied. We rigidly scru-
tinise the claims and the legitimacy of heirs, and
the natives, whose memories are long, look on and
wo a der.
There is among the Hindoos, as there is among all
nations which possess great antiquity and historic
families, a profound respect for old houses, and for
tne descendants of those who were coeval with the
early records of their race, no matter in what po-
sition fate may have placed them, or their own per-
sonal insignificance, or the worthlessn es of their
forefathers. Mea Beer Sein, who boasts that he is
sprung from " 40 generations of Ragpoots in the
Hills," is to his people an object of attachment,
ipsafitcto, to which the most philanthropic governor
of our race could never pretend. But when, in
addition to this, it is notorious to all his neighbours
that his father was one of our bulwarks against
Ru ijeet Singh, that he withstood the wiles and
force of that great chief, and persisted in his alli-
ance with the strangers, their sympathy with his