Mahdajee Sindiah died at Poonah in 1794, in the fifty-second year of his age; and, leaving no issue, bequeathed his extensive dominions to his nephew and adopted son, Dowlut Rao Sindiah. The prince at his accession found himself master of an army of seventy-five disciplined battalions, mostly commanded by French officers, and forming an effective force of 45,000 men, with 300 well-equipped guns, and a vast host of irregular cavalry, armed and appointed in the native fashion; and his territories included the so-deemed impregnable fortress of Gwalior, as well as Ahmednuggur, Aurungabad, Broach, and other strong places of minor note. His influence was paramount at the court of Poonah; and while by the possession of Cuttack, on the shores of the Bay of Bengal, he interrupted the communication by land between Calcutta and Madras, his frontier on the Nerbudda pressed, on the north, the then narrow limits of the Bombay presidency, which as surrounded on all other sides by the states of his Mahratta confederates. A prince holding this commanding position seemed qualified to become the arbiter of India; but Dowlut Rao, though deficient neither in military capacity nor talent for government, was only fourteen at the death of his predecessor; and his inexperience made him a tool in the hands of an unprincipled minister, Shirzee Rao Ghatka, who directed all his efforts to undermine, by force or intrigue, the ascendency of the upright and patriotic Nana Furnavees at Poonah. The young Peshwah, Madhoo Rao, had perished in 1795 by a fall from the roof of his palace; and the reign of his successor, Bajee Rao, was a constant scene of confusion and bloodshed; till, after the death of Nana in 1800, he fell completely under the control of Sindiah, who thus became the virtual head of the Mahratta confederacy. But in an attempt to crush the rising power of Jeswunt Rao Holkar, the united forces of Sirdiah and the Peshwah received a complete defeat near Poonah, in Oct. 1802;—and Bajee Rao, driven from his capital, sought shelter from the British, with whom he concluded, in December of the same year, the famous treaty of Bassein, by which he bound himself, as the price of his restoration to his dominions, to conform to the English political system, and admit a subsidiary force for the protection of his states.
These stipulations amounted, in fact, to the sacrifice of Mahratta independence; and the war, which from that moment became inevitable, broke out early in the following year. Sindiah, who had not been consulted on the treaty of Bassein, from the first refused to be bound by its conditions; and after some fruitless attempts at negotiation, took the field (July 1803) in conjunction with Rhagojee Bonsla, the Rajah of Berar, against the Peshwah and the English. The five months' campaign which followed, rivaled Napoleon's Prussian warfare of 1806, in the rapidity with which a great military power was struck down, by (in the words of Alison) "an uninterrupted series of victories, which conducted our eastern empire to the proud pre-eminence which it has ever since retained." Perron, who on the return of De Boigne in 1796 to Europe, had succeeded him in the government of Hindostan, and the command of Sindiah's regular troops in that quarter, was defeated by Lake at Allighur, (Aug. 29,) and soon after quitted India and returned to his native country; and a second decisive victory under the walls of Delhi, (Sept. 11,) opened the gates of the ancient Mogul capital to the British, and released the blind old emperor, Shah Alim, from the long thraldom in which he had been held by the French and Mahrattas. Agra, with all the arsenals and military stores, was taken Oct. 17; and the desperate conflict of Laswarree, (Nov. 1,) consummated the triumphs of Lake by the almost total annihilation of Sindiah's regulars—seventeen battalions of whom, with all their artillery, were either destroyed or taken on the field of battle. The whole of Sindiah's possessions in Hindostan thus fell into the power of the British—whose successes in the Dekkan were not less signal and rapid. On the 23d Sept., the combined army of 50,000 men, commanded in person by Sindiah and the Rajah of Berar, including 10,000 regular infantry and 30,000 horse, with upwards of 100 guns, was attacked at Assye by 4500 British and Sepoys under General Wellesley—and the glorious event of that marvellous action at once effectually broke the power of the confederates, and for ever established the fame of Wellington.[17] A last appeal to arms at Argaom, (Nov. 28,) was attended with no better fortune to the Mahrattas; and Sindiah and his ally were compelled to sue for peace, which was concluded with the latter on the 17th, and with the former on the 30th December. By this treaty the imperial cities of Delhi and Agra, with the protectorate of the Mogul emperor, and the whole of the Dooab, or territory between the Jumna and Ganges, were ceded to the British; who also acquired Cuttack on the eastern coast, and Broach on the western, with Aurungabad, Ahmednuggur, and extensive territories in the Dekkan. Sindiah, moreover, agreed to receive a British resident at his court—an office first filled by Major, afterwards Sir John Malcolm—and engaged to conform in his foreign policy to the views of the British government; ceding, at the same time, certain districts for the maintenance of a subsidiary force, which, however, was not to be encamped on his territories.
During the contest with Holkar and the Bhurtpore rajah in the following year, Sindiah showed strong symptoms of hostility to the British, and had even put his troops in motion with the view of relieving Bhurtpore; but the speedy termination of the war saved him from committing himself by any overt act; and a new treaty was signed, Nov. 1805, in confirmation of the former, with an express stipulation that the perfidious Ghatka should be excluded from his councils. He never afterwards broke with the British government; and though he was known to have maintained a correspondence with Nepaul during the war of 1815, he observed a prudent neutrality in the great Mahratta and Pindarree war of 1817-18, which terminated in the total overthrow of all the other Mahratta princes. This catastrophe left him the only sovereign in India possessed of any degree of substantial independence, and with a territory which, after all the cessions, was still of great extent, though much scattered and intersected by the possessions of Holkar and other rulers; so that, as Bishop Heber describes it in 1825, "not even Swabia or the Palatinate can offer a more checkered picture of interlaced sovereignties than Maywar and indeed all Malwa.... Scarcely any two villages belong to the sane sovereign." His frontier extended on the north to the Chumbul, and on the south reached Boorhanpoor and the Taptee, almost enveloping the remaining dominions of Holkar, and bordering westward on the Guikwar's country near Baroda.
The whole superficies comprehended, in a very irregular shape, about 40,000 square miles, with a revenue supposed to exceed £2,000,000; and the army kept on foot (independent of garrisons and the British contingent) amounted to 20,000 regular infantry, with from 15,000 to 20,000 horse, and a park of 300 guns. The maintenance of this large military establishment was a grievous burden to the country, and frequently involved him in great pecuniary embarrassment; but to the end of his life it continued to be his chief care. Gwalior, where the headquarters had been fixed since 1810, became the royal residence; and the bushkur, or camp, as it was called, gradually swelled into a great city. The condition of his states in the latter years of his reign, is thus characterized by the amiable prelate already quoted:—"Sindiah is himself a man by no means deficient in talents or good intentions, but his extensive and scattered territories have never been under any regular system of control; and his Mahratta nobles, though they too are described as a better race than the Rajpoots, are robbers almost by profession, and only suppose themselves to thrive when they are living at the expense of their neighbours. Still, from his well-disciplined army and numerous artillery, his government has a stability which secures peace, at least to the districts under his own eye; and as the Pindarrees feared to provoke him, and even professed to be his subjects, his country has retained its wealth and prosperity to a greater degree than most other parts of Central India."
Dowlut Rao died at Gwalior, March 21, 1827, leaving no male issue; and with him expired the direct line of Ranajee Sindiah: but he had previously empowered his widow, the Baiza Baee, (a daughter of the notorious Ghatka,) in conformity with a practice sanctioned by the Hindoo law, to adopt a son and successor for him, after his decease, from the other branches of the Sindiah family. Her choice fell on a youth eleven years of age, named Mookt Rao, then in a humble rank of life, who was eighth in descent from the grandfather of Ranajee; and he was accordingly installed, June 18, by the title of Jankojee Sindiah, in the presence of the British Resident and the chiefs of the army, espousing at the same time a granddaughter of his predecessor. The regency was left, in pursuance of the last injunctions of Dowlut Rao, in the hands of the Baiza Baee, whose administration was marked by much prudence and ability; but the young Maharajah speedily became so impatient of the state of tutelage in which he found himself retained, that Lord William Bentinck, then governor-general, found it expedient to visit Gwalior as a mediator, in December 1832, in order to reconcile him to the control of his benefactress, in whom the government for life was considered to have been vested by the will of her late husband.[18] The remonstrances of the governor-general produced, however, but little effect. On the 10th of July 1833, a revolt, fomented by the young prince, broke out among the soldiery, whose pay had imprudently been suffered to fall into arrear; and the Baiza Baee, after a fruitless attempt at resistance, was compelled to quit the Gwalior territory. The British authorities, though they had previously shown themselves favourable to her cause, declined any direct interference on her behalf; and after remaining for some time on the frontier with a body of troops which had continued faithful to her, in the hope of recovering her power by a counter-revolution, she eventually fixed her residence at Benares, leaving her ungrateful protégé in undisturbed possession of the government. This was administered in the manner which might have been expected from a youth suddenly raised from poverty to a throne, and destitute even of the modicum of education usually bestowed on Hindoos of rank. The revenues of the state were wasted by the Maharajah in low debauchery, while the administration was left almost wholly in the hands of his maternal uncle, who bore the title of Mama-Sahib; but his influence was far from adequate to repress the feuds of the refractory nobles, and the mutinies of the turbulent and ill-paid troops, who frequently made the capital a scene of violence and bloodshed. The relations with the cabinet of Calcutta continued, however, friendly; and Lord Auckland, when on his return on his famous tour to the Upper Provinces, paid a visit to Gwalior in January 1840, and was received with great pomp by the Maharajah. But the frame of Jankojee Sindiah was prematurely undermined by his excesses; and he died childless, February 7, 1843, not having completed his twenty-seventh year.
The ceremony of adopting a posthumous heir, which had taken place at the death of Dowlut Rao, was now repeated; and a boy nine years old, the nearest kinsman of the deceased sovereign, was placed on the musnud, under the name of Jeeahjee Rao Sindiah, by the Maha-rane Baee, or queen-dowager; who, though herself only twelve years of age, assumed the regency in conjunction with the Mama-Sahib. But little permanence could be expected in a state so constituted from the government of a child, and a man without adherents or influence, though they were recognized as regents by the British authorities:—and the catastrophe was hastened by an imprudent investigation, which the Mama-Sahib instituted, into the peculations of the Daola-Khasjee, the minister of the late Maharajah. The deficit is said to have amounted to not less than three crores of rupees, (L3,000,000,) which had probably been employed in corrupting the troops; and on the night of July 16, a general mutiny broke out. The Resident, finding all interference unavailing, quitted Gwalior with the Mama-Sahib, and repaired to Dholpoor near the frontier:—while the whole sovereign power was usurped by the Khasjee, who had succeeded in bringing over the young Baee to his interests, and who even sent troops and artillery to the banks of the Chumbul, to dispute, if necessary, the passage of the English. The cabinet of Calcutta now, however, considered, that the attitude of hostility which had been assumed, as well as the expulsion of a minister who was in some measure under British guarantee, justified a departure from the principle of non-intervention which had hitherto been invariably acted upon with regard to the internal affairs of the state of Gwalior. A considerable force, under the title of an army of exercise, was assembled at Agra, where the commander-in-chief, Sir Hugh Gough, arrived Oct. 21, and was joined, Dec. 11, by the governor-general himself, who appears to have regarded the settlement of the once-mighty realm of Sindiah as a "dignus vindice divo nodus" requiring his immediate presence. The Gwalior durbar, meanwhile, presented a scene of mingled tumult and panic—some of the officers having formed a party hostile to the usurping Khasjee, while the mutinous soldiery loudly clamored against submission; and letters were dispatched to the Rajpoot and Boondela chiefs, soliciting their aid to repel the threatened invasion of the Feringhis. At a council held Dec. 7, the most warlike sentiments prevailed; and some of the military leaders proposed that the British should be suffered to pass the Chumbul and besiege Gwalior, while the Mahrattas, getting round their rear, were to pour down on Agra and Delhi, and raise the Hindoo population! But the news of the governor-general's arrival struck them with consternation, and vakeels were sent to Agra, to learn on what terms a pacification might yet be effected. The envoys had an audience of the governor-general on the 13th; but the march of the troops had commenced the day before, and was not countermanded even on the surrender of the Khasjee, who was brought in chains to Dholpoor on the 17th—the military chiefs opposed to him having persuaded or compelled the Baee to give him up—and he was immediately sent off as a state-prisoner to Agra.
The army meanwhile, had entered the Gwalior territory, and a proclamation was issued, declaring that it appeared "not as an enemy, but as a friend to the Maharajah, bound by treaty to protect his highness's person, and to maintain his sovereign authority against all who are disobedient and disturbers of the peace." The insurgent chiefs, who appear to have confidently expected that the British would withdraw as soon as the Khasjee was given up, now made fresh attempts at negotiation; and matters were apparently so far arranged, that preparations were made for the reception of the Baee, in camp, on the 28th. But it was soon evident that these overtures had been made only for the sake of gaining time; and after a halt of five days, which had been actively employed by the Mahrattas, the troops resumed their advance upon Gwalior, accompanied by the governor-general in person. On the 29th of December, the two divisions under the commander-in-chief and General Grey, moving on separate lines of march, found the enemy drawn up in well-chosen positions at Maharajpoor and Punniar, and prepared to resist their progress. The British and Sepoy effective strength was about 14,000 men, with forty guns, and a small body of cavalry: the Mahratta infantry was nearly equal in number; but they had 3000 horse, and all the advantages of a strong position, on heights protected in front by difficult ravines, and defended by a hundred pieces of excellently served artillery. The conflict appears to have been the severest which had been seen in India since Laswarree and Assye. The Mahrattas, (as described in the official accounts of Sir Hugh Gough, who admits that he "had not done justice to the gallantry of his opponents,") after their intrenchments and batteries had been carried by the bayonet, with severe loss to the assailants, "received the shock without flinching; and fought, sword in hand, with the most determined courage." But they were at last driven from their ground, with great carnage, by the superior prowess of the Anglo-Indian troops, whose double victory was dearly purchased by the loss of more than 1000 killed and wounded, including an unusual proportion of officers. All resistance was now at an end: Gwalior, the Gibraltar of the East, was entered without opposition; and a treaty was concluded, Jan. 10, ratified by the governor-general and the restored regent, "for securing the future tranquillity of the common frontier of the two states, establishing the just authority of the Maharajah's government, and providing for the proper exercise of that authority during his highness's minority." The defeated army was to be in great part disbanded, and an additional contingent force levied, of seven regiments of infantry and two of cavalry, with twenty guns—a proportionate extent of territory, we presume, being ceded for its maintenance, as usual in such cases: exchanges were further made of certain frontier districts, for the mutual convenience of the two contracting powers; and last, not least, the expenses of the campaign were to be disbursed forthwith from the Gwalior treasury. Every thing being thus settled satisfactorily, at least to one party, the troops were to retire, without loss of time, within the British frontier, leaving the internal administration in the hands of the Mama-Sahib and the Baee; and the governor-general was to set out from Gwalior on the 17th of January, on his return to Calcutta. Thus the expedition, both in a diplomatic and military point of view, was crowned with complete success. We must now proceed to examine it in its political bearings.
The proclamation of British supremacy over India by the Marquis of Hastings, after the conclusion, in 1818, of the war with the Mahrattas and Pindarrees, amounted to an assumption on the part of the Company of the same position relative to the native powers, as had been held by the monarchs of the house of Timoor—who, from the conquest of Delhi by Baber, adopted the title of Padishah or emperor, as lords-paramount of India, and lost no opportunity of enforcing the imperial rights, thus asserted, against the other Hindoo and Moslem princes among whom the country was divided; till after a century and a half of incessant aggressive warfare, Aurungzeeb succeeded in uniting under his rule the whole of Hindostan and the Dekkan, from the Himalaya to Cape Comorin. Less than half that period sufficed for the establishment of the Anglo-Indian empire on a far firmer basis than that of the Moguls had ever attained; and if the same claim of indefeasible suzerainté, which was set forward by their Moslem predecessors, had been openly advanced and avowed as a principle, as it has long been acted upon de facto, it would have been at once far more candid, and far more intelligible to the natives, than the course which has been pursued, of grounding every aggression on some pretended infraction of a compulsory treaty. The recent case of Gwalior affords a strong illustration of the point which we are endeavouring to establish, as the relations of that state with the supreme government have hitherto been different from those of the Indian sovereignties in general.[19] While the other native princes (with the exception only of the Rajpoot chiefs of Bikaneer, Jesulmeer, &c., who lay beyond what might till lately be considered the British boundary) had surrendered the military possession of their territories, almost entirely, to subsidiary corps under the control of the Company, the dynasty of Sindiah alone (though British influence had been more sensibly exercised under the feeble rule of Jankojee than during the life of Dowlut Rao) still preserved its domestic independence almost untouched, and kept on foot a powerful army, besides the contingent[20] which it was bound by treaty to maintain—the only other mark of dependence being the obligation not to contract alliances hostile to British interests. If we are to regard the late transactions in this point of view, it will be difficult to justify the invasion of an independent and friendly state on no other ground than our disapprobation of a change of ministry, accompanied, though it may have been, with the tumult and violence which are the usual concomitants of an Asiatic revolution. But if the Company (as we conceive to be the practical aspect of the question) are held to be at the present day the recognized, as well as the de facto, representatives of the Mogul monarchs, there can be no doubt that, on the death of Jankojee Sindiah, his dominions might fairly have been annexed to the Anglo-Indian empire as a lapsed fief which had reverted to the suzerain by the failure of heirs—a rule which would have been equally applicable to the case of the rival Mahratta house of Holkar, the male line of which also became extinct last year, and was replaced on the musnud of Indore by a boy seven years old, a adopted son of Hurry Rao Holkar. From the death of Dowlut Rao Sindiah, indeed, the Gwalior state had presented a scene of anarchy and misgovernment, to which allusion is made in the proclamation of the governor-general;[21] and which, from the impunity it afforded to the remnant of the Pindarrees and other marauders, and the consequent insecurity of life and property both in the interior and on the frontier, was intolerable alike to its neighbours and to its own subjects. Under these circumstances, the acquiescence of the cabinet of Calcutta in a second adoption of a child, to fill the throne of a kingdom already brought to the verge of ruin by the vices and incapacity of the former occupant, can be regarded in no other light than as an injudicious stretch of forbearance, injurious to our own interests, and uncalled for by those of the state thus subjected to a continuance of misrule; and it is to be regretted, that our late victories have not been followed up by the formal occupation of the country, and the establishment of the order and strong government to which it has long been a stranger. No other result can be anticipated from the half measures which have been adopted, than the creation of a state of confusion and resistance to authority, similar to that which prevails in the distracted kingdom of Oude—ending inevitably, though perhaps at the expense of a fresh contest, in its incorporation with the dominions of the Company. Meanwhile, (as observed in the Times of March 8th,) "we have roused the passions of the Mahrattas against their sovereign and against ourselves; but we have not taken that opportunity which the moment of victory gave us, of effectuating a government essentially strong and beneficial to the governed. The time therefore, we may expect, will come, when a second interference will be demanded, both by the recollection of our present conquest and the incompleteness of its consequences; and we shall be doomed to find, that we have won two hard-fought battles merely to enforce the necessity of a third."
The late campaign, short as it has fortunately been, becomes important, if viewed with reference to a subject to which we have more than once before alluded,[22] but which cannot be too often or too prominently brought before the British public, who should never be suffered to lose sight of the great truth, that it is by our military power alone that we hold our Indian empire. It is evident from all the circumstances, not less than from the candid confession of Sir Hugh Gough himself, that the determined resistance opposed by the Gwalior troops, (whom of late years it has been the fashion in the Indian army to speak of as "Sindiah's rabble,") and the discipline and valour shown in the defence of their positions, were wholly unexpected by their assailants. But the prowess and unflinching resolution displayed at Maharajpoor and Punniar, under all the disadvantages of a desperate cause and inefficient commanders, were worthy of the troops of De Boigne and Perron in their best days, and amply prove that the Mahrattas of the present day have not degenerated from their fathers, whose conduct at Assye won the praise of the great Duke himself.[23] The defeat of British force in a pitched battle on the soil of India, would be a calamity of which no man could calculate the consequences; yet such a result would not have been impossible, if the contempt of our commanders for the enemy had brought them to the encounter with inadequate numbers; and the rulers of India have reason to congratulate themselves that this underrated force remained quiescent during our Affghan disasters, when intrigue and difficulties were at their height among both Hindoos and Moslems, and every disposable regiment was engaged beyond the Indus, in a warfare, of the speedy termination of which there then appeared little prospect; while the Moslems, both of the north and south, in Rohilcund and the Dekkan, were on the verge of insurrection, the Rajah of Sattarah, the representative of the former head of that great Mahratta confederacy, of which Sindiah was then the only member retaining any degree of independence, was busied in conspiracies, the absurdity of the proposed means for which was not[24] (as some of his advocates in England attempted to maintain) a proof of their non-existence. Had the old Mahratta spirit been then alive in the breast of the degenerate successor of Dowlut Rao, the appearance in the field of 20,000 troops with a considerable share of discipline, and a numerous and excellent artillery, might at once have given the signal, and formed a nucleus, for a rising which would have comprehended almost every man who could bear arms, and would have shaken to the centre, if not overthrown utterly, the mighty fabric of our Eastern empire. It is true that the indolent and sensual character of Jankojee Sindiah gave no grounds for apprehension at the time; and the period of danger has now passed away; nor is it probable that the Gwalior army, even if left at its present strength, can ever again be in a situation to give trouble to our government. But it is not less true, that when our difficulties were greatest, a disciplined force did exist, in a position the most central in India, which might have turned the quivering beam, if it had been thrown into the scale against us in the moment of extreme peril.[25]
It is, therefore, with far different feelings from those expressed by some of the newspaper scribes, both in India and England, that we heard the declaration ascribed to the present governor-general, on his arrival in India, "that the army should be his first care;"[26] and have witnessed the spirit in which it has since been acted upon. "India," again to quote his own words on a late public occasion, "was won by the sword;" yet the military spirit of the army, on which the preservation of our empire depends, had been damped, and its efficiency wofully impaired, by the injudicious reductions introduced by Lord William Bentinck and persevered in by his successor; and the reverses and losses of the Affghan war, following close in the train of these ill-advised measures, had produced a disaffection for the service, and deterioration in the morale of the sepoys, from which evil auguries were drawn by those best acquainted with the peculiar temperament of the native soldiery.[27] The efforts of Lord Ellenborough have been from the first directed to remove this unfavourable impression of neglect from the minds of the troops; and the heroism displayed by the sepoys under his own eye, in the late desperate encounters before Gwalior, must have brought home to his mind the gratifying conviction that his efforts had not been in vain. We noticed with satisfaction last year, the well-deserved honours and rewards distributed to the corps, by whose exploits the transient cloud thrown over our arms in Affghanistan had been cleared away; and the same course has been worthily followed up in the decorations cast from the captured Mahratta cannon, and conferred, without distinction of officers or men, British or Sepoys, on the victors of Maharajpoor and Punniar; as well as in the triumphal monuments to be erected by Bombay for the victories in Scinde, and at Calcutta for those before Gwalior. But while we render full justice to the valour, patience, and fidelity of the sepoy infantry, now deservedly rewarded by participation in those honours from which they have been too long excluded, the truth remains unchanged of that of which Lake, and many others since Lake of those who best knew India, have in vain striven to impress the conviction on the authorities at home—the paramount importance of a large intermixture of British troops. "I am convinced that, without King's troops, very little is to be expected ... there ought always to be at least one European battalion to four native ones: this I think necessary." And again, in his despatch to the Marquis Wellesley, the day after the arduous conflict at Laswarree—"The action of yesterday has convinced me how impossible it is to do any thing without British troops; and of them there ought to be a very great proportion." It is true that the regulation lately promulgated by the Duke of Wellington, that the heavy cavalry regiments shall in future take their turn of Indian service, will in some measure remedy the evil in that branch where it is most felt; and will at once increase their military strength in India, and diminish the length of absence of the different corps from Europe. The misconduct of the native regular cavalry, indeed, on more than one occasion during the late Affghan war, has shown that they are not much to be depended upon when resolutely encountered. They are ill at ease in the European saddles, and have no confidence in the regulation swords when opposed to the trenchant edge of the native tulwars; while, on the other hand, the laurels earned by Skinner's, Hearsay's, and other well-known corps of irregular horse, might almost have induced the military authorities in India to follow the example of the Mahrattas, who never attempted to extend to their cavalry the European discipline which they bestowed on their infantry. The sepoy infantry has ever been sans peur et sans reproche; yet, though some of the most distinguished regiments of the Bengal army were in the field before Gwalior, the honour of storming the death-dealing batteries of Maharajpoor, was reserved for the same gallant corps which led the way to victory under Clive at Plassey—her Majesty's 39th—and which has now once more proved its title to the proud motto emblazoned on its standards, Primus in Indis! The words of Lord Lake, (to refer to him once more,) in his account of the battle of Delhi, might have been adopted without variation by Lord Ellenborough in describing the late actions. "The sepoys have behaved excessively well; but from my observations on this day, as well as every other, it is impossible to do great things in a gallant and quick style without Europeans;" and we trust that, whenever the time shall arrive for the return of the present governor-general to Europe, he will not fail to avail himself of the weight which his personal experience will give him in the councils of the nation, to enforce the adoption of a measure which, sooner or later, will inevitably become one of absolute necessity.