fashion. We have divested ourselves of to take the place in other detached situations them for ever. of those who have been selected for the gov But is it only by ceasing to be English- ernment of our new acquisitions. Thus the men-by ceasing to be Christians, that we civil administration is strengthened, but the can win the confidence and affection of the strength of the army is sacrificed to it. natives? We believe that there are other Everybody admits that the experiment has and better ways, but scarcely as the pre- been in itself amply successful-so successful, sent military system of the country is main- that, whatever new provinces may be added tained. The men whose names are borne to our Indian empire, the old system of pure on the lists, as officers of our Sepoy regi- civilianism will never be resorted to again. ments, are far better specimens of English It was the growth, too, of the very best ingentlemen than their fathers and grandfa- tentions-of a laudable desire to govern in thers in the days of Wellesley and Cornwal- the most effectual and least expensive manlis. But modern improvement has here ner. They who had accused the East India again been fatal to the native army. It is Company of a desire to maintain their privinow of administrative progress that we are leged civil service at the highest possible speaking. There has been long an outcry numerical strength, and of being jealous in against the old exclusive civil service and the extreme of all interference with the exthe regulation system. All our more recent clusive rights of the dominant few, now saw acquisitions of territory, as the Punjab, Pegu, this aristocracy of caste broken down; and Nagpore, and Oude, have been administered were compelled to admit the sacrifice and to since their annexation, under the "non-regu- laud the disinterestedness of the reform. lation system," by a mixed commission, Almost contemporaneously with the excomposed of civil and military officers-the tension of the "non-regulation system," was latter generally predominating in respect of the extension of Public Works in India. numbers. These military administrators This, also, was a laudable movement. It is are commonly the picked men of the ser- not to be doubted that it was promoted, in vice. The are not the sons and nephews of no small degree, by a pressure from this directors, or young men of good connections country. The East India Company had at home, strongly recommended to the Gov-never been unmindful of the importance of ernor-General, but men of proved capacity great material works, remunerative and reand undoubted vigour, acquainted with the productive; but the pace at which they had native languages, with the country, and with proceeded had been too slow for home-bred the people, and full of activity of the best kind. politicians, and there was a clamour for These are the men who are most wanted greater speed. Large sums of money were with their regiments, but they are not suffer- devoted to roads, to canals, and other great ed to remain soldiers. The temptation to works of public utility. The department of accept any extra-regimental employment is public works became an important depart great. There is better pay, more credit, a ment of the State. Great numbers of offbetter prospect of gaining future distinction, cers were required to give effect to our meaand rising to eminence in the service. The sures. Young military men took_to_theallurement, therefore, is not resisted; and study of engineering, and came to England regiments, already denuded of their best offi- to work upon the railways. Any one with cers to supply the ordinary requirement of a little knowledge of practical science felt the staff, are still further stripped, and all the himself secure of obtaining an appointment remaining men of any mark and likelihood in the public works' department; so here carried off to administer new provinces, or was another mode of escape from that penal settlement the military cantonment. It was, doubtless, a movement in the right di rection; but, excellent as it was in itself, it biographer of Sir John Malcolm says of him:-"The struck another blow at the efficiency of our great secret of Malcolm's success was, that he was native army. More active enterprising neither too native nor too European. He understood young soldiers were carried away for detachthe native character, and he could sympathise with ed employment, and the residue became scantier, more dissatisfied, and more ineffi cient, until the attachment and confidence of the Sepoy towards his British officers became little more than things of the past; and this, perhaps, less because the number of officers left with a regiment was so small, than because the quality was so indifferent We have no doubt that a few good officers * It is very possible not to be too English, and yet at the same time, not to be too Oriental. The the feelings of the natives, but he never fell into na- government, that Malcolm achieved an amount of are better than many bad ones. We have regimental duty, in all its degrees, to the some tangible proof of this in the Company's utmost possible extent, until the zeal and Irregular regiments, which have mostly only the pride of the soldier are almost wholly three European officers, a commandant, a extinct. second in command, and an adjutant, and Much more might be said upon this subyet are always in an admirable state of effi-ject, but for the exigencies of time and space, ciency. These officers are picked officers; which forbid us to enlarge, as we desire, their appointments are staff appointments, upon the evils of excessive centralisation in hungered after like all others. A man in all the branches of the State. But enough, command of an Irregular corps is satisfied we think, has been advanced to indicatewith it; the officers beneath him aspire to firstly, what have been the predisposing nothing better than the command, in due causes of the disaffection of the native army course, of the regiment to which they have of India; and, secondly, what has prevented long been attached. The regiment is their that disaffection from being allayed before home, the soldiers are their comrades. They it had become dangerous-in a word, the are proud of their connection with the corps, and are eager to exalt it; whilst the officer with the Regular regiment sits loosely to his duty, and is continually longing to escape. It is of less importance that we should secure the services of good than of many officers with the Sepoy regiments. But it is impossible that any man should be a good regimental officer who looks upon himself merely as a bird of passage with his regiment-dislikes, and perhaps despises his duties, and is expending all his energies in efforts get himself transferred to the staff. active and the passive causes of the recent disastrous outbreak. In both cases, an undue zeal for precipitate reform has been at the bottom of the mischief. The wheels of progress would have rolled on surely and safely, without creating alarm or rousing national prejudices into violent action, and great moral and material improvements would have struck root in the soil, when the country was ready for them. But the pressure from without has given to these wheels of progress a forced and unnatural rapidity of rotation, and we have been roused to a The "Staff," indeed, has, for some years sense of our danger by seeing the State past, been gradually swallowing up the com- machine rushing down the hill to destrucmissioned ranks of the Indian army. The tion, beyond the power of human agency to intention of employing military officers in control its headlong course. The Governcivil offices was, we repeat, anexcellent one, ment of the East India Company has often and, so far as regards the administration of been called a "drag." It was a drag that the country, it has been eminently success- was much needed. But Parliament, the ful. But it has destroyed the military feel- Platform, and the Press, scouted the dicta ing and the military capacity of hundreds, that India was not yet ripe for this or that who might have become first-rate soldiers. measure, and that to reform effectually we We suspect that the number of officers who, must reform slowly, as the antiquated conif suddenly recalled to their regiments, servatism of the effete oligarchy of Leadenwould be quite incapable of putting a com- hall Street. The wisdom of the festina lente pany through their ordinary marching drill, doctrine was ignored. The prudence, which or through the manual and platoon exer- shook its head and whispered caution, was cise, is something really astounding. Even derided. There was not wanting, perhaps, commanding officers, after a long series of some just ground of complaint, that the years on the Staff, have been known to Government of the Company moved slowly enter again upon regimental duty, as ignor--that it carried the quieta non movere prinant of military details as a cadet fresh from ciple a little too far-and that it needed Harrow or Winchester. And we are afraid some external stimulus to keep it from fallthat there are not many who, after having ing in the rear of the general progress of discharged large civil and administrative the age. But it was very possible to fall functions, and been invested with weighty into an opposite extreme; and, by attemptresponsibilities, do not look upon regimental ing to sow broadcast reform and improveduty with something like contempt, espe- ment over the land, before the soil was cially under a system, the unhappy tendency of which is to transfer all real power from the regimental authorities to army headquarters, and to make the colonel of a regiment, who ought to be a very king over his own people, a mere degraded cypher-the shadow of a name. The tendency, indeed, of our entire system has been to degrade ready to receive them, to do more to retard the desired progress than by advancing, with painful effort, as though the tarda podagra were in every limb. We have said, and we cannot too emphatically repeat, that we are not to cease from doing good, because there may be temporal danger in the enlightenment of the people. But the highest wisdom has taught us prudence, and counselled us against pouring new wine into old bottles. They who have the most genuine-the most heart-felt desire to root out error from the land, ought to be the most eager to inculcate caution, lest all their efforts be defeated by bringing on a collision, and precipitating a crisis, which must prove fatal to the accomplishment of all their most cherished hopes. This is no mere speculation. The events which have recently occurred-which are now occurring-must necessarily check the course of progress of every kind. The saddest thing of all in connection with the great outbreak of 1857, is the heavy blow, and great discouragement given to the cause of national enlightenment. It will be long now before we cease to be timid and suspicious. The good work of half a century, indeed, has been undone in a few weeks. We believe that our hold of India is as firm as it has ever been. There may be outbreaks not yet reported; there may be more bloodshed, more terror; and there will be horrible retribution. But the English will be masters of the field, and remain rulers of India. The immediate remedy for the great disease is an overawing European force. Upon this point there are not two opinions. Brute force, however, is but a sorry cure for such an evil, and can hardly be a permanent one. India may be conquered again and again by European troops. But to conquer the country is one thing; to hold it is another. There are able men— powerful writers-who recommend that we should break up the Bengal army, and disarm the whole of India. It might be done, but it is not worth doing. Such an empire as we should then have, would not be a credit to us, and could not possibly be a profit. It could not last long, and would be a sorry spectacle whilst it lasted. Even if it did not come to a sudden and violent end, such an experiment must necessarily break down for want of money to maintain it. We must look for the remedy in some other quarter than a continued exhibition of brute force. We cannot carry on a war of extermination against a hundred and fifty millions of people-many of them brave and warlike, skilled in the use of arms-and if we could, what use to us would be a country which we cannot colonise? If we cannot re-establish our moral influence in India, and again place our confidence in a Sepoy army, we had better abandon altogether the experi ment of Indian government. When we speak of confidence, we do not mean blind confidence. We can no longer regard the fidelity of the native army as a matter of course-we can no longer go to sleep with our doors and windows open, whilst two hundred thousand of foreign bayonets are bristling around us. Doubtless there is much to be done; there is need of consummate wisdom and sagacity to turn what may at any time become a source of immediate danger into an element of continued safety. It is not so much that the Sepoy is not to be trusted, as that we have proved ourselves not worthy to be trusted with the use of so perilous an instrument. If a gun goes off unexpectedly in our hands, it is not the fault of the gun, but our own fault for improperly handling it. We believe that the Sepoy army may yet be all that it has once been to us, and much more. But we must look upon the management of these immense bodies of foreign troops as a science, and not leave things to take their course, as though the very name of a British officer were sufficient to keep these gigantic legions in control. Everybody agrees that the first thing to be done is to put down the rebellion. This can only be done by force. Having done this, we have to punish the guilty, and we have to reward the faithful. Reward must go side by side with punishment, or we shall only do half our work. Then we have to re-model our system, and to re-organise our establishments. To accomplish this successfully, we must have full information—we must look the matter boldly and honestly in the face; we must cast aside all prejudices, all foregone conclusions, cling to no ancient errors, and care for no vested rights. We shall find in our system and practice of government, when we come calmly to examine it, much that is good, much that is evil-but much more which, good in itself, has become evil by its excess, and has hurt where we meant to heal. So terrible a lesson cannot be thrown away upon the nation. In spite of the present darkness, it is yet permitted to us to hope that we shall yet derive strength from our present weakness; and that, when at last we lay down the reins of empire in the East, we shall do so of our own free will, not as the beaten enemies, but as the triumphant friends of the people, leaving them to the self-government for which we have fitted them by the precept and the example of a second century of beneficent rule. THE NORTH BRITISH REVIEW,. No. LIV. FOR NOVEMBER, 1857. ART. I.-1. History of Europe, from the Fall of Napoleon in 1815 to the Accession of Louis Napoleon in 1852. By Sir ARCHIBALD ALISON, Bart., D.C.L. 6 Vols. 1852-57. 2. History of Europe, from the Commencement of the French Revolution to the Restoration of the Bourbons in 1815. By Sir ARCHIBALD ALISON, Bart., D.C.L. 14 Vols. 1850. If the time shall ever arrive-and the contingency is not more improbable than a realization of many of the prophecies contained in these works-when every other contemporaneous record shall have perished, the histories of Sir Archibald Alison will be regarded as a colossal political pamphlet, written in an age of longeval patriarchs and in a land of polemical giants. The author who can devote twelve thousand pages to the perishable vindication of party" cries," will be assumed to have been of a people who yet enjoyed a life of primitive duration, and with whom everything but their reasoning was proportionate to their physical stature. We may question, however, the success of a monster pamphleteering, which is at once the jest of Liberal politicians, and which an eminent Conservative leader (with marked ingratitude) has characterized as a history of Europe written in twenty volumes, to prove that Providence was on the side of the Tories. Yet it must not be forgotten that Sir A. Alison's writings claims credit for the most startling revelations of modern research :-they have discovered that the Reform Act was produced by the contraction of the currency, and that the Roman Empire fell to destruction because it had no Corn Laws! There can be no doubt, that to write a history of the great drama of the last sixty or seventy years involves great difficulties, or, at least, that it calls for the exercise of extraordinary qualifications. This is even more true of the later than of the earlier of the two periods of which Sir Archibald has treated. In dealing indeed with bare facts, there exists, in the abstract, more information, in proportion to our proximity to the events that we record. But in questions involving the relations of cabinets, it often happens that this testimony is not available. For a narrative of battles, there are eyewitnesses among our contemporaries whose knowledge is more often freely imparted, and whose considerate statements rarely conflict with one another. But the very existence of these sources of direct and authentic knowledge renders it the more diflicult to rely upon the second or third hand statements which have meanwhile appeared, and have not yet been subjected to criticism and analysis. Their existence renders it especially perilous to allow our own ima gination to supply the particulars which our library does not yield. But, in passing from facts to opinions, and in dealing with the tendencies of events whose results are yet incompletely developed, the qualification required for a contemporary historian of Europe is yet more various and more rare. He requires a profound knowledge of the state of government and of the state of society-of the nature and working of laws and institutions, and of the bent and action of opinion-in every important commonwealth. above all things, a calm judgment, an entire absence of partisan bias, a total freedom from prepossessions, and a clearness of fore He requires, |