The Sun.
London, England, 1859-02-10 00:00:00

ARM Y.

Then look at the vastness of the work to be done.
There was Delhi to be retaken, the Punjab to be
held, 800 miles of turbulent frontier to be guarded;
there were the Affghan tribes to be kept at arm's
length ; then there were 15,000 Pandies to be de-
stroyed, coerced, or driven out, and 20,000 more to
be watched, guarded, or disarmed. For all this
terrible work at home—i.e., the Punjab—there
were a few. thousand Europeans. What else could
be done except enlist Punjabees r Then look at the
work there has been abroad—i.e. out of the Punjab.
Our Punjabees have been employed in the conquest,
occupation, or pacification of Oude, Behar, Rohil-
cund, Bundelcund, Hindostan, and Gwalior.
How was all this immense work to be done, ex-
cept with a large Puniabee army ? Where else were
troops to come from ? Not from Bombay, for its
army could not be trusted. (Scinde, however,
furnished two battalions.) Not from the disturbed
districts of Hindostan, Oude, Behar, &c., for the
people have been too much demoralised by the dis-
turbances' and have only furnished a few battalions.
Not from Bengal, for the people are effeminate. In
fact, whenever troops are wanted every one has
looked to the Punjabees as the trustworthy, the
martial people; and when they have been raised
and have pulled us through the scrape, every one
now decries and mistrusts them !
Notwithstanding the kind of cry that gets up, we
are always getting requisitions from other parts of
the Presidency for more Punjabees, despite Sir
John's oft repeated remonstrance that we have
already pat too many. At last, at Sir John's earnest
request, the Governor-General has notified in gene-
ral orders that no more men are to be enlisted in
the Punjab. But, despite the risk and hazard, it
is evident that at present we must retain this Pun-
jabee army. On the one hand, we must never let
native troops have a preponderance; on the other
hand, we cannot hold the country without a certain
proportion of them ; and so long as we are pretty
strong, we can always keep a party in the country
who will fight faithfully on our side.
In the meantime, as we must have them, we may
comfort ourselves with the reflection that they have
done nobly for us as yet—almost as well as if they
had been our own countrymen. Wherever English
troops have been, they have been also. In our ser-
vice they have marched all over the Presidency;
they have endured every kind of fatigue and hard-
ship; in devotion they have almost rivalled our
white men. They have been victorious over our
enemies of various kinds, and in various sorts of
warfare. Theyhave bled

and in ied by thousands
our cause. Many regiments
covered with decora-
tions have lost half their numbers during this war.
We have employed 85,000 or 90,000 of them; and
out of all these only a few rascals in two corps, on
a remote frontier, have given cause of trouble. It
would not be well, therefore, that their indignation
of their m
should be moved by ouringratitude and depreciation
erits.
The great thing, no doubt, is to keep their
numbers down to the very lowest figure compatible
with the efficiency of the public service. None can
be more alive to this than Sir John Lawrence. He
is constantly looking over returns of their numberS
—Clipping here, paring there, reducing everywhere.
Within the last two or three months the number of
Punjabee troops in the Punjab has been lessened
by several thousands. We have now about 36,000
Punjabee troops in the Punjab, from Delhi to
the Trans-Indus frontier. Before the mutinies, we
used to have within this area 41,000 Hindostanees
and 24,000 Punjabees—in all 65,000 men. We
have now 36,000 Punjabees, or little more than
half, in the place of 65,000. (It is true that we
have several thousands of Hindostanees still, but
they have to be guarded, and are really minus
quantities. If they were removed, no fresh
Punjabees would be employed in their place.) So•
you see how immensely we have economised in
respect of native troops in the Punjab.

11R. COBDEN ON PARLIAIIIENTABY
REFORJT.

Mr. Cobden in sending to the Ballot Society his
; annual subscription to their funds, accompanied it
with the following letter to Mr. E. C. Whitehurst,
the vice-chairman of the society :
" Midhurst, Feb. 7,
"My dear sir,--I enclose my subscription to the
Ballot Society. Don't for a moment suppose that
Mr. Bright would wish you to give up your dis-
tinct organisation. I'll venture to say when Mr.
Berkeley brings forward his motion he will have
no better advocate at his back than Mr. Bright. I
cannot be present at your ballot dinner, simply be-
cause I have laid down a rule, which for a season
will prevent me from attending any public demon-
stration. Had it not been for that resolution,
which I had formed before Mr. Bright took charge
of his Reform Bill, I should have been at his side
long ago ; for the programme he has put forth is
almost identically the same as that which I en-
dorsed in 1848, and which I supported in the house
when it was brought forward by our revered friend
Mr. Hume. Watching from my retirement Mr.
Bright's progress, I am struck with the similarity
of the ordeal he has gone through to that which I
underwent in the earliest stage of the League agi-
tation ;—the same misrepresentation of motives and
misstatement of his arguments, the same affected
horror of his designs on monarch, church, aristoc-
racy, and property which he now undergoes, I also
went through; and if he should persevere for a
few years until his plan in its main features be-
comes law, as it assuredly will do, then he will ex-
perience, as I did, the pleasanter side of the ordeal.
Then when everybody discovers that instead of all
the evils predicted, nothing but increased security,
contentment, and prosperity springs from his re-
forms, he will find nine-tenths of those who now
profess the greatest dread of him the most eager to
shake hands with him on the success of his mea-
sures. Nay, they will claim to have been always
with him on principle, only regretting that they
did not better understand each other at the outset.
This is the chequered fate of all the pioneers of
political progress, and our friend has had too much
experience in such matters to be either disappointed
or discouraged at what is now happening. It is
true that I am about to carry out the intention I
have some time entertained of paying a very short
visit to the United States. I hope to be able to
report to you that I have witnessed the operation
of the ballot in that country.—Believe me very
truly yours, " R. COBDEN.
"E. C. Whitehurst, Esq."

THE SIKH ELEMENT IN THE INDIAN

A letter from " Camp near Lahore," of Nov. 26,
says :—lt is now a month or so since I last wrote
to you. Since then the public anxiety about the
Punjab has apparently increased both at home and
in India. Out here it is commonly thought that
the Punjabee army is too strong for the Govern-
ment, and that our next struggle will be with them ;
and, in truth, although we are right as yet, there
is trouble looming in the distance—even if it be
distant. You will remember about that conspiracy
in two Punjabee corps at Dera Ismail Khan in
August last. It was necessary in consequence to
send a European column to that quarter, where
European troops had never been before. The time
when the column arrived at Dera Ismail Khan was
critical. If the Punjabee troops had, most of them,
a clear conscience, then they would not be sorry to
see the Europeans arrive ; the well-disposed ma-
jority would feel confidence, the evil-disposed
minority would be overawed. If, on the other hand,
they were, most of them, conscious of having in•
tended mutiny or brewed mischief, then they would
regard the arrivai of the Europeans as ominous ;
they would believe that the Government had found
them out, and was about to punish them. Such a
feeling might bring on an outbreak, and in that
case the European column, though the largest we
could spare, was not large enough to overpower
the Punjabees on the Dera Ismail Khan frontier.
The column, however, crossed the Indus and halted
at Dera Ismail Khan, without any excitement
among the Punjabees being produced. We may
therefore hope that the conspiracy was not exten-
sive, and that for the most part it was limited to
the comparatively small number against whom proof
is obtainable.
We received not unfrequent warnings from well-
informed and well-disposed natives that the Pun-
jabee troops are very numerous, and that the
national pride of the Sikh race is rising fast. Sur-
feited with the plunder and spoils of Hindostan,
the Sikhs are contented as yet. But they think
less of us and more of themselves than they did a
short time ago. The men on service continue to
write to their homes in the Punjab most satisfac-
tory letters, breathing a good spirit. But those
who return home from leave are said to be vain-
glorious of their own deeds, and declare that they
have reconquered India for the English.
Now I see that in some parts of India, and par-
ticularly in Bombay, people write and talk as if
this Punjabee army had been gratuitously created
—as if Sir John Lawrence, while saving the State
from one danger, unnecessarily exposed it to
another. It may therefore be as well that I ex-
plain one or two parts of this subject. In the first
place, Sir John Lawrence was obliged to raise
these troops. The emergency was extraordinary
in 1857. It might be objectionable to create
a fresh army when one had just mutinied ;
but we must have either done that or
perished. There was no other alternative—no
option whatever. At that time our few Europeans
were wasting away; native troops must be had as
auxiliaries, or else the British would be swept away.
Now that things are somewhat altered people forget
how terrible the emergency then was, and how in-
evitable was the necessity of raising a Punjabee
army.