Observations on the Disturbances in the Madras Army in 1809

by John Malcolm

The impressions upon my mind at this moment will be still more forcibly shown by the following extract from a letter to the Marquis Wellesley, of the same date as that to Lord Minto, and upon the same subject:—

"Both Lord Minto and the Commander-in-Chief of India should come to Madras; or, at all events, Lord Minto. Whatever justice may be on the part of Sir George Barlow, it will be ten times more difficult for him to settle the question than any other; for the degree of personal dislike which all ranks and classes have of him, is not to be described. This may be, and I dare say is, very indefensible: but it exists, and cannot be changed; and the safety of the state should not be thrown into hazard, if that hazard can be avoided by the adoption of any measures that do not compromise its dignity, or permanently weaken its authority. I am quite satisfied of the purity and rectitude of Sir George Barlow's character. The public never had a more zealous or more laborious servant; he is devoted to his duty, and has no enjoyment beyond that of performing it; but his system is cold and inflexible, and proceeds in its course without the slightest attention to the feelings of those on whom it is to operate; and the present distracted state of affairs at Madras is, I fear, a comment, and a melancholy one, upon the result of such systems. All the reforms which Sir George Barlow thought it his duty to make, might have been made without giving rise to any serious discontent, if he had proceeded with that caution and that attention to the temper of the men which the situation in which he found the army required. They were in a state of great irritation when he arrived; and he was, from his reputation as a reformer and a retrencher, received with prejudices. The authority which should have controlled the army, acted a contrary part, and consequently made their ebullitions more to be dreaded. All these were subjects worthy of consideration; and relaxation from a severe system, till an insubordinate spirit was somewhat subdued, and the ruling authority fortified, would have not merely been warranted, but have been wise. At all events, the means of suppressing a disposition to violence should have been correctly calculated, before it was provoked to action. This, I fear, has not been the case; and it is most difficult to discover any means by which such a general spirit of discontent, as that which now exists, can be repressed. As it is unmixed with any thing like disaffection to the country, it will probably, if met with a firm and dignified spirit of conciliation, correct itself; and then every plan should be adopted that can prevent the recurrence of so dangerous an evil."

The following is the concluding paragraph of a long letter, dated the 16th of April 1809, which I wrote to Lord Wellington, on the same subject.

"I am yet very imperfectly informed of what has occurred. I shall soon know all. I proceed in a few days to Madras. Had I been there at an earlier stage of this affair, I might have done good; but that expectation is over: matters are too far gone; and there is too great irritation on the minds of all parties, to give hopes of reconciliation. You know Sir George Barlow: he is a highly respectable public servant. His principles of action are all right and correct; but his measures are often ill-timed, and consequently unfortunate. He generally leaves altogether out of the question, that which would engage the chief attention of an abler ruler,—men's minds: and though his cold system appears excellent in an abstract and general view, it often proves mischievous in its operation. He has another great fault, which looks so like an excellence at first glance, as to deceive most: he is perfectly inflexible with regard to every thing that he deems a principle or rule. Now this is good on most occasions, but on some it is the height of folly; for, in the endeavor to do a little good, are we justified in hazarding a world of mischief?"

Such were my sentiments, and such the view I took of the situation of affairs on the coast, before I left Bombay, from which I sailed on the 1st of May, and arrived at Madras on the 17th of that month. I was received by Sir George Barlow with even more than his usual kindness. He seemed to expect my personal efforts would aid greatly in allaying any little agitation that remained; for, at this moment, he was decidedly of opinion that the orders of the 1st of May had completely settled every thing that was serious, and that what appeared to remain, was merely the reaction of that seditious spirit which he had subdued. After a very few days' residence at Madras I became satisfied of the extent and danger of this error, and I laboured incessantly to convince Sir George Barlow that he was mistaken, and that a new, more extensive, and violent confederacy, than that which he had conquered, was in progress; the object of which was to obtain the repeal of the orders of the 1st of May. His unwillingness to believe this fact may be conceived, when I state, that he would not admit the conduct of the subsidiary force at Hyderabad, who, in a public address, disclaimed the compliment he had paid their fidelity, to be evidence of its truth.

I was not discouraged by that strong disinclination which I observed in Sir George Barlow to credit every information I gave him upon this subject, but continued to press upon him the urgency of the case, and to entreat him to adopt measures calculated to remedy so desperate and general an evil, before it had attained that maturity to which it was fast approaching. The great and generous object was, I said, to save, not to destroy, a body of brave and meritorious, though infatuated men, who were rushing upon their own ruin. They had (I not once, but a hundred times repeated to Sir George Barlow,) a more serious quarrel than that with Government, they had quarrelled with themselves; and, unless he could adopt some measure that would restore them to their own good opinion, every attempt to establish order and subordination would be vain, as they were goaded on to further guilt by a torturing sense of that into which they had already plunged. On being, at one of these conferences, desired by Sir George Barlow to suggest what I thought would promote this end, I proposed (if the expedient had his approbation,) to draw up an address to him from the Company's officers on direct opposite principles to those seditious papers that I knew were then in circulation; and to give, by this measure, a shape to that feeling which still existed in the army, but which was scattered, and, from having no union, was repressed by the combined action of the discontented and turbulent. This address was as follows:

"We, the undersigned officers of the Madras establishment, trust that the very extraordinary and unprecedented situation in which we are placed by some recent occurrences, will plead our excuse for an address which has no object but that of vindicating ourselves, as a body, from those serious imputations to which we conceive it possible we may become liable, from the nature of late proceedings in the army to which we belong; and to assert our devoted allegiance to our King, our unalterable attachment to our Country, and our consequent respect and submission to the laws and acts of that local Government under which we are placed, and whose commands it is our duty, under all circumstances, to obey, as those of a legitimate branch of the constitution of our country.

"It would be painful to retrace all those events which have led to the present unhappy state of feeling in the army, and have compelled Government to those measures which it has judged proper to adopt: we shall therefore content ourselves with expressing our conviction, that, however far they might have been carried by the warmth of the moment, none of our brother officers who were concerned in those proceedings which have been deemed so reprehensible by Government, ever harboured an idea in their minds that was irreconcileable to their allegiance as subjects, or their duty as soldiers. Government must be fully acquainted with the rise and progress of all the proceedings to which we allude, and can refer to its true cause any apparent excess, either in expression or act, that may have marked the conduct of any individuals: and it will, we are assured, separate actions which have their motive in generous and honourable though mistaken feeling, from any deliberate design of showing a spirit of contumely and insubordination to that authority which it is their duty to obey, and whose orders they could never dispute, without a total sacrifice of their characters as good soldiers and loyal subjects: and we feel perfectly satisfied there is not one officer in this army who would not sooner lose his life than forfeit his claim to such cherished distinctions.

"We cannot have a doubt but it must have been with extreme reluctance that Government has adopted the measures it has done, against those of our brother officers who have more particularly incurred its displeasure, from the forward share they took, or were supposed to take, in the proceedings which have met with its disapprobation: and though we never can presume to question in any shape the acts of that Government which it is our duty to obey, it is impossible for us to contemplate the present situation of those officers without sentiments of the deepest concern: and when we reflect on the general high reputation, and the well-merited distinction, which some of them have, by their valour and ability, obtained in the public service, we should be unjust to the characters of our superiors both in India and England, if we did not entertain a hope that their case would meet with a favourable and indulgent consideration. But we feel restrained from dwelling upon this subject, as we are aware its very mention might be deemed improper in an address, the great and sole object of which is to correct misapprehension, and to convey a solemn assurance of our continued and unalterable adherence to the same principles of loyalty and attachment to our King and Country, and of respect and obedience to the Government we serve, that have ever distinguished the army to which we belong."

The object of this address was to reconcile men to themselves; and it therefore ceded as much as was possible in its expression to the predominant feelings of the moment; but its principle was not to be mistaken: and the unqualified and decided declaration which it contained, of attachment and of implicit obedience to Government, must have had the certain effect of separating all those by whom this address was subscribed, from persons who cherished contrary sentiments. But the great object of this measure was to concentrate and embody the good feelings of the army; to hoist a standard to which men could repair, whose minds revolted at the proceedings then in progress, but who were deterred by shame, fear of reproach, and want of union, from expressing an open difference of opinion from the more violent. I was assured at the moment that I suggested this measure, of its partial success, and not without some hopes that it would be general; but I perfectly knew, that if the senior and more reflecting part of the officers of the army signed an address that pledged them to an active discharge of their duty to Government, all danger of the remainder having recourse to desperate extremes, was at an end; for the influence of the senior part of the army over the native troops was decided; and this open declaration would at once have drawn a line of separation betwixt the moderate and reasonable, and the turbulent, which would have deprived the leaders of the latter of their chief source of strength, which obviously lay in their being able to deceive the multitude they guided, by persuading them that the cause was general[40], and that many, whom prudence made reserved, would join them the moment they ventured on a bolder line of action.