Swansea and Glamorgan Herald, and South Wales Free Press. — 1857-11-25 (Swansea, West Glamorgan, Wales)

SWANSEA, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 25,1857.  MEAN AMIABILITY.  SOME of the French papers have been severely indignant in commenting upon the alleged absence of ordinary humanity which characterised the taking of Delhi by the English. Some of the English papers also, scrupulously merciful in sentiment, have administered from their chair of momls high-toned reproof to the army at Delhi and the people at home who justify and applaud its acts. A single passage in a private letter from India was made in France the text of much virtuous denunciation of our soldiers. In this letter it was stated that some forty or fitly residents of Delhi, who had concealed themselves, were discovered by the victorious soldiery and slain. The authenticity of the statement is denied, and even if true it might be open to a proper explanation. But we need not be careful to investigate the accuracy of an isolated story of this kind, before asking the cool-blooded apostles of , clemency who profess to be incited to such extreme indignation by the incident, whether the place and time of the fall of Delhi were appropriate for delicate consideration of justice in individual cases. The ordinary circumstances of war are fitted to evoke vindictive passion and ferocious energy. But here were exciting causes of tenfold more intensity than those which are in play where armies fight for some point of national honour, or about some territorial dispute. Our soldiers before Delhi were encountering beings whose crimes were far too lightly described by the term 'murder.' These ferocious Indian tigers had been guilty of the most horrible enormities. Apparently incited to action only by is devilish spirit that transcended all common idea of the depravity of human nature, they had committed the most frightful kinds of purposeless and profitless evil. Our Delhi army were in the midst of this savage brute race, their own lives in immediate jeopardy; they were excited almost to madness by whispered details of unpublished horrors; their own kinsfolk and friends were amongst the sufferers. It was not surprising and wrong, but natural and even suitable, that they should be animated by extraordinary feelings of anger and revenge. This powerful impulse, revenge, has produced more shocking results than any other human passion, and yet it is a feeling that in certain emergencies is necessary to justice. If our soldiers, in frantic exultation at victory over such a for as they were combatting, had been hurried by the desire for vengeance into the commission of excesses that must have called forth general reprobation and their own bitter regret afterwards, it need not have caused much wonder. The energy in resenting and punishing offence that is sometimes exhibited by a person of characteristic mildness and acute perceptiom of justice is something strange but natural. In the case of Delhi, had there been time for cool reasoning, there was small room for apprehending that the civilian residents would suffer more than their due by being classed with the Sepoys ; for the dusky fiends in human shape who had been guilty in net had been harboured there by their acquiescing and even as.sistin g countrymen. The collated accounts of the termination of the seige show that our soldiers, so far from having been impelled by justifiable indignation to remorseless and indiscriminate slaughter, conducted themselves with a moderation and clemency that deserve acknowledgment. It will always happen that a scene of judicial retribution will anew: some personally rummy ~rned lookers-on to pathetically angry remonstrance.