Happily for the British officers in India, (I speak not paradoxically, but considerately,) no such calamity is probable. They are sure of being haunted by so many "compunctious visitings of nature," from the thoughts of their friends, of their Sovereign, of their beloved country, as to impair that criminal energy necessary for the success of desperate enterprizes. Theirs is not a country, or a state of manners, or a system of religion and morality, which trains men to revolutionary sternness and ferocity. Their failure was, and ever will be, certain. But such convulsions bring dreadful consequences:—the loss of that collective character which was the source of pride to each individual, long regret and remorse, their hearts taught to dread generous and social feeling; and the most distinguished of them, if not condemned to death, still more unhappily abandoned to a dishonourable life.
In their native land they will meet little or none of that sympathy which supports the sufferers for a general cause. Their discontent appears to spring only from the most ignoble sources. Those who have not visited India will not easily conceive that a pecuniary retrenchment is chiefly felt (which it really is) as a degradation, by an army already sufficiently excluded from the higher rewards of valour: first shut out from military honours, and then from that compensation for them which they had found in the prospect of returning home to the exercise of generous virtue. Last, and worst of all, they find that their more glaring and dangerous guilt has almost effaced the remembrance of that misconduct which produced it, and given popularity and character to those they deem their enemies.
To the British Governments of India these deplorable occurrences are not less fertile in instruction. They will learn, that to preserve the obedience of a military body, exiled almost for life in a distant dependency, to civil bodies who are the temporary delegates of a Commercial Company, is one of the most difficult problems of policy: that such obedience is not always to be preserved by a rigid adherence to official rules, nor restored by undistinguishing obstinacy clothed in the garb of firmness. They will be taught by high authority, "how much ought to be done to avert a contest in which concession does not find its place[30]."
They will feel, that the difficulty of their policy respecting the army will always be increased at moments when the necessities of the state require extensive retrenchments. A wise Government will prepare the way for such retrenchments, by evidently showing that they are necessary, and that they are equitably imposed on all classes: they will not disdain more particularly to satisfy those distinguished members of an army, whose influence over their brethren is a principle of natural discipline. They will redouble their vigilance to distribute military honours and rewards with the strictest equity; and they will be solicitous to display the appearance as well as the reality of kindness towards the individuals of a body who are about to suffer.
When the passions of the moment have subsided, no man will believe that a Governor, confessedly unpopular[31], introducing or maintaining systems of retrenchment, necessary indeed, but most severe, and without preparation, without public precaution or private conciliation, did not, by these circumstances, most materially contribute to the unhappy crisis which followed. The total omission of all those means which make reformation popular, or even tolerable, will assuredly be regarded as a great political offence. It will be considered as ridiculous to call for particular proof that a cold and unfeeling manner tended to make privations be felt as insults. No man of common sense will doubt that a popular Governor may reconcile men to retrenchments, which, under a Governor of an opposite character, may produce the most fatal effects. A recent example might be found at no great distance from Madras, (if any examples of what is so obvious were necessary,) of a Governor[32] who had imposed greater retrenchments than Sir George Barlow, and who, without any sacrifice of dignity, left his government, universally beloved. But it will not be doubted that the Government of Madras thus contributed their share towards maturing the discontents of the army previous to the orders of General McDowall. Still less can it be doubted, that by the suspension of Colonel Capper and Major Boles the spark was struck out which fell on the combustible materials.
In the circumstances of the case, and after the restoration of the surviving officer by his superiors, it is very mild language to call this suspension an act of very doubtful justice. And it is most certain, that an act of authority so harsh, and of such doubtful justice, against officers who had such a fair appearance of mere military obedience, and whose very fault, if they had one, must have sprung from a zeal for military privileges, was of a nature to vibrate through every nerve of an army. When the Government once did an act which made two officers of rank at least appear to suffer unjustly for the army, they entirely changed the character of the disputes. They drove the generosity, honour, and justice of the army into rebellion. They supplied the discontented with the colour of right, without which no leaders are ever able to seduce multitudes to resistance. They exalted pecuniary grievances into the feelings of generous sympathy and wounded honour. They made it be thought disgraceful to abstain from taking a part in a combination to prevent injustice. The moderate, the disinterested, the loyal, even the timid and circumspect, were forced into opposition,—by shame, by fear, by sympathy, by that tumultuous combination of causes, generous and mean, which recruit the ranks of insurgents, and change the murmurs of a few into the mutinous clamour of the many. Whatever the evil intentions of a few may be, it is always an act of real or supposed injustice which throws the multitude into the hands of the ill-affected leaders. Before the suspension there existed only discontents; after it, general disaffection, conspiracy, and sedition.
The necessity of vesting the power of dismissing or suspending officers in the Government will never be questioned by thinking men: but when it is considered, that the operation of the general orders of the 1st of May was, considering the rank and number of the suspended officers, not a much less exertion of authority than if his Majesty were to strike a tenth part of his general officers out of the list of the army, it will not be wondered that this example of the precarious and degraded tenure by which military rank was held, should have diffused universal dismay, and reinforced resentment by despair.
The dispassionate observer, after remarking with wonder that every expedient was omitted or rejected which could detach the misguided from the ill-affected, or open a creditable retreat for the penitent, will pause before the sword was drawn, to consider whether general submission would then have been too dearly purchased by an amnesty which should not have excluded from hope even the officers suspended on the 1st of May.