72. Subdivisions of Lands--Want of Gradations of Rank--Taxes
The country between Delhi and Meerut is well cultivated and rich in the latent power of its soil; but there is here, as everywhere else in the Upper Provinces, a lamentable want of gradations in society, from the eternal subdivision of property in land, and the want of that concentration of capital in commerce and manufactures which characterizes European--or I may take a wider range, and say Christian societies.[1] Where, as in India, the landlords' share of the annual returns from the soil has been always taken by the Government as the most legitimate fund for the payment of its public establishments; and the estates of the farmers, and the holdings of the immediate cultivators of the soil, are liable to be subdivided in equal shares among the sons in every succeeding generation, the land can never aid much in giving to society that without which no society can possibly be well organized--a gradation of rank. Were the Government to alter the System, to give up all the rent of the lands, and thereby convert all the farmers into proprietors of their estates, the case would not be much altered, while the Hindoo and Muhammadan law of inheritance remained the same; for the eternal subdivision would still go on, and reduce all connected with the soil to one common level; and the people would be harassed with a multiplicity of taxes, from which they are now free, that would have to be imposed to supply the place of the rent given up. The agricultural capitalists who derived their incomes from the interest of money advanced to the farmers and cultivators for subsistence and the purchase of stock were commonly men of rank and influence in society; but they were never a numerous class.[2] The mass of the people in India are really not at present sensible that they pay any taxes at all. The only necessary of life, whose price is at all increased by taxes, is salt, and the consumer is hardly aware of this increase. The natives never eat salted meat; and though they require a great deal of salt, living, as they do, so much on vegetable food, still they purchase it in such small quantities from day to day as they require it, that they really never think of the tax that may have been paid upon it in its progress.[3]
To understand the nature of taxation in India, an Englishman should suppose that all the non-farming landholders of his native country had, a century or two ago, consented to resign their property into the hands of their sovereign, for the maintenance of his civil functionaries, army, navy, church, and public creditors, and then suddenly disappeared from the community, leaving to till the lands merely the farmers and cultivators; and that their forty millions of rent were just the sum that the Government now required to pay all these four great establishments.[4]
To understand the nature of the public debt of England a man has only to suppose one great national establishment, twice as large as those of the civil functionaries, the Army, Navy, and the Church together, and composed of members with fixed salaries, who purchased their commissions from the wisdom of our ancestors, with liberty to sell them to whom they please--who have no duty to perform for the public,[5] and have, like Adam and Eve, the privilege of going to 'seek their place of rest' in what part of the world they please--a privilege of which they will, of course, be found more and more anxious to avail themselves as taxation presses on the one side, and prohibition to the import of the necessaries of life diminishes the means of paying them on the other.
The repeal of the Corn Laws may give a new lift to England; it may greatly increase the foreign demand for the produce of its manufacturing industry; it may invite back a large portion of those who now spend their incomes in foreign countries, and prevent from going abroad to reside a vast number who would otherwise go. These laws must soon be repealed, or England must reduce one or other of its great establishments--the National Debt, the Church, the Army, or the Navy. The Corn Laws press upon England just in the same manner as the discovery of the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope pressed upon Venice and the other states whose welfare depended upon the transit of the produce of India by land. But the navigation of the Cape benefited all other European nations at the same time that it pressed upon these particular states, by giving them all the produce of India at cheaper rates than they would otherwise have got it, and by opening the markets of India to the produce of all other European nations. The Corn Laws benefit only one small section of the people of England, while they weigh, like an incubus, upon the vital energies of all the rest; and at the same time injure all other nations by preventing their getting the produce of manufacturing industry so cheap as they would otherwise get it. They have not, therefore, the merit of benefiting other nations, at the same time that they crush their own.[6]
For some twenty or thirty years of our rule, too many of the collectors of our land revenue in what we call the Western Provinces,[7] sought the 'bubble reputation' in an increase of assessment upon the lands of their district every five years when the settlement was renewed. The more the assessment was increased, the greater was the praise bestowed upon the collector by the revenue boards, or the revenue secretary to Government, in the name of the Governor-General of India.[8] These collectors found an easy mode of acquiring this reputation--they left the settlements to their native officers, and shut their ears to all complaints of grievances, till they had reduced all the landholders of their districts to one common level of beggary, without stock, character, or credit; and transferred a great portion of their estates to the native officers of their own courts through the medium of the auction sales that took place for the arrears, or pretended arrears, of revenue. A better feeling has for some years past prevailed, and collectors have sought their reputation in a real knowledge of their duties, and real good feeling towards the farmers and cultivators of their districts. For this better tone of feeling the Western Provinces are, I believe, chiefly indebted to Mr. R. M. Bird, of the Revenue Board, one of the most able public officers now in India. A settlement for twenty years is now in progress that will leave the farmers at least 35 per cent. upon the gross collections from the immediate cultivators of the soil; that is, the amount of the revenue demandable by Government from the estate will be that less than what the farmer will, and would, under any circumstances, levy from the cultivators in his detailed settlement.[9]
The farmer lets all the land of his estate out to cultivators, and takes in money this rate of profit for his expense, trouble, and risk; or he lets out to the cultivators enough to pay the Government demand, and tills the rest with his own stock, rent-free. When a division takes place between his sons, they either divide the estate, and become each responsible for his particular share, or they divide the profits, and remain collectively responsible to Government for the whole, leaving one member of the family registered as the lessee and responsible head.[10]
In the Ryotwâr System of Southern India, Government officers, removable at the pleasure of the Government collector, are substituted for these farmers, or more properly proprietors, of estates; and a System more prejudicial to the best interests of society could not well be devised by the ingenuity of man.[11] It has been supposed by some theorists, who are practically unacquainted with agriculture in this or any other country, that all who have any interest in land above the rank of cultivator or ploughman are mere drones, or useless consumers of that rent which, under judicious management, might be added to the revenues of Government--that all which they get might, and ought to be, either left with the cultivators or taken by the Government. At the head of these is the justly celebrated historian, Mr. Mill. But men who understand the subject practically know that the intermediate agency of a farmer, who has a permanent interest in the estate, or an interest for a long period, is a thousand times better both for the Government and the people than that of a Government officer of any description, much less that of one removable at the pleasure of the collector. Government can always get more revenue from a village under the management of the farmer; the character of the cultivators and village community generally is much better; the tillage is much better; and the produce, from more careful weeding and attention of all kinds, sells much better in the market. The better character of the cultivators enables them to get the loans they require to purchase stock, and to pay the Government demand on more moderate terms from the capitalists, who rely upon the farmer to aid in the recovery of their outlays, without reference to civil courts, which are ruinous media, as well in India as in other places. The farmer or landlord finds in the same manner that he can get much more from lands let out on lease to the cultivators or yeomen, who depend upon their own character, credit, and stock, than he can from similar lands cultivated with his own stock; and hired labourers can never be got to labour either so long or so well. The labour of the Indian cultivating lessee is always applied in the proper quantity, and at the proper time and place--that of the hired field-labourer hardly ever is. The skilful coachmaker always puts on the precise quantity of iron required to make his coach strong, because he knows where it is required; his coach is, at the same time, as light as it can be with safety. The unskilful workman either puts on too much, and makes his coach heavy; or he puts it in the wrong place, and leaves it weak.
If government extends the twenty years' settlement now in progress to fifty years or more, they will confer a great blessing upon the people[12] and they might, perhaps, do it on the condition that the incumbent consented to allow the lease to descend undivided to his heirs by the laws of primogeniture. To this condition all classes would readily agree, for I have heard Hindoo and Muhammadan landholders all equally lament the evil effects of the laws by which families are so quickly and inevitably broken up; and say that 'it is the duty of government to take advantage of their power as the great proprietor and leaser of all the lands to prevent the evil by declaring leases indivisible. 'There would then', they say, 'be always one head to assist in maintaining the widows and orphans of deceased members, in educating his brothers and nephews; and by his influence and respectability procuring employment for them.' In such men, with feelings of permanent interest in their estates, and in the stability of the government that secured them possession on such favourable terms, and with the means of educating their children, we should by and by find our best support, and society its best element. The law of primogeniture at present prevails only where it is most mischievous under our rule, among the feudal chiefs, whose ancestors rose to distinction and acquired their possessions by rapine in times of invasion and civil wars. This law among them tends to perpetuate the desire to maintain those military establishments by which the founders of their families arose, in the hope that the times of invasion and civil wars may return and open for them a similar field for exertion. It fosters a class of powerful men, essentially and irredeemably opposed in feeling, not only to our rule, but to settled government under any rule; and the sooner the Hindoo law of inheritance is allowed by the paramount power to take its course among these feudal chiefs, the better for society. There is always a strong tendency to it in the desire of the younger brothers to share in the loaves and fishes; and this tendency is checked only by the injudicious interposition of our authority.[13]
To give India the advantage of free institutions, or all the blessings of which she is capable under an enlightened paternal government, nothing is more essential than the supersession of this feudal aristocracy by one founded upon other bases, and, above all, upon that of the concentration of capital in commerce and manufactures. Nothing tends so much to prevent the accumulation and concentration of capital over India as this feudal aristocracy which tends everywhere to destroy that feeling of security without which men will nowhere accumulate and concentrate it. They do so, not only by the intrigues and combinations against the paramount power, which keep alive the dread of internal wars and foreign invasion, but by those gangs of robbers and murderers which they foster and locate upon their estates to prey upon the more favoured or better governed territories around them. From those gangs of freebooters who are to be found upon the estate of almost every native chief, no accumulation of movable property of any value is ever for a moment considered safe, and those who happen to have any such are always in dread of losing, not only their property, but their lives along with it, for these gangs, secure in the protection of such chief, are reckless in their attack, and kill all who happen to come in their way.[14]
Notes:
1. This phrase is meant to include America.
2. Money-lenders naturally have flourished daring the long period of internal peace since the Mutiny. They vary in wealth and position from the humblest 'gombeen man' to the millionaire banker. Many of these money-lenders are now among the largest owners of land in the country. Under native rule interests in land were generally too precarious to be saleable. The author did not foresee that the growth of private property in land would carry with it the right and desire of one party to sell and of another to buy, and would thus favour the growth of large estates, and, to a considerable extent, counteract the evils of subdivision. Of course, like everything else, the large estates have their evils too. Much nonsense is written about sales of land in India, as well as in Ireland. The two countries have more than the initial letter in common.
3. Theorists declare that it is right that the tax-payers should know what is taken from them, and that, therefore, direct taxes are best; but practical men who have to govern ignorant and suspicious races, resentful of direct taxation, know that indirect taxation is, for such people, the best.
4. This illustration would give a very false idea of modern Indian finance.
5. They have no duty to perform as creditors; but as citizens of an enlightened nation they no doubt perform many of them, very important ones. [W. H. S.] The author's whimsical comparison between stockholders and Adam and Eve, and his notion that the creditors of the nation may be regarded as officials without duties, only obscure a simple matter. The emigration of owners of Consols never assumed very alarming dimensions.
6. The Corn Laws were repealed in 1846, and the shilling duty which was then left was abolished in 1869. Considering that the author belonged to a land-owning family, his clear perception of the evils caused by the Corn Laws is remarkable.
7. By the 'Western Provinces' the author means the region called later the North-Western Provinces, and now known as the Agra Province in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, with the Delhi Territories, which latter are now partly under the Government of the Panjâb, and partly in the new small Province, or Chief Commissionership of Delhi.
8. At the time referred to, the provincial Government had not been constituted.
9. Fifty per cent. may be considered as the average rate left to the lessees or proprietors of estates under this new settlement; and, if they take on an average one-third of the gross produce, Government takes two-ninths. But we may rate the Government share of the produce actually taken at one-fifth as the maximum, and one-tenth as the minimum. [W. H. S.]
It is unfortunately true that in the short-term settlements made previous to 1833 many abuses of the kinds referred to in the text occurred. The traditions of the people and the old records attest numerous instances. The first serious attempt to reform the system of revenue settlements was made by Regulation VII of 1822, but, owing to an excessive elaboration of procedure, the attempt produced no appreciable results. Regulation IX of 1833 established a workable system, and provided for the appointment of Indian Deputy Collectors with adequate powers. The settlements of the North-Western Provinces made under this Regulation were, for the most part, reasonably fair, and were generally confirmed for a period of thirty years. Mr. Robert Mertins Bird, who entered the service in 1805, and died in 1853, took a leading part in this great reform. When the next settlements were made, between 1860 and 1880, the share of the profit rental claimed by the State was reduced from two-thirds to one-half. Full details will be found in the editor's Settlement Officer's Manual for the N. W. P. (Allahabad, 1882), or in Baden Powell's big book, Land Systems of British India (Clarendon Press, 1892).
10. Since 1833 the people whom the author calls 'farmers' have gradually become fall proprietors, subject to the Government lien on the land and its produce for the land revenue. For many years past the ancient custom of joint ownership and collective responsibility has been losing ground. Partitions are now continually demanded, and every year collective responsibility is becoming more unpopular and more difficult to enforce.
11. This judgement, I need hardly say, would not be accepted in Madras or Bombay. The issue raised is too large for discussion in footnotes.
12. The advantages of very long terms of settlements are obvious; the disadvantages, though equally real, are less obvious. Fluctuations in prices, and above all, in the price of silver, are among the many conditions which complicate the question. Except the Bengal landowners, most people now admit that the Permanent Settlement of Bengal in 1793 was a grievous mistake. It is also admitted that the mistake is irrevocable.
13. These two suggestions of the author that the law of primogeniture should be established to regulate the succession to ordinary estates, and that it should be abolished in the case of chieftainships, where it already prevails, are obviously open to criticism. It seems sufficient to say that both recommendations are, for many reasons, altogether impracticable. In passing, I may note that the term 'feudal' does not express with any approach to correctness the relation of the Native States to the Government of India.
14. The evils described in this paragraph, though diminished, have not disappeared. Nevertheless, no one would now seriously propose the deliberate supersession of the existing aristocracy by rich merchants and manufacturers. The proposal is too fanciful for discussion. During the long period of peace merchants and manufacturers have naturally risen to a position much more prominent than they occupied in the author's time.
73. Meerut--Anglo-Indian Society
Meerut is a large station for military and civil establishments; it is the residence of a civil commissioner, a judge, a magistrate, a collector of land revenue, and all their assistants and establishments. There are the Major-General commanding the division; the Brigadier commanding the station; four troops of horse and a company of foot artillery; one regiment of European cavalry, one of European infantry, one of native cavalry, and three of native infantry.[1] It is justly considered the healthiest station in India, for both Europeans and natives,[2] and I visited it in the latter end of the cold, which is the healthiest, season of the year; yet the European ladies were looking as if they had all come out of their graves, and talking of the necessity of going off to the mountains to renovate, as soon as the hot weather should set in. They had literally been fagging themselves to death with gaiety, at this the gayest and most delightful of all Indian stations, during the cold months when they ought to have been laying in a store of strength to carry them through the trying seasons of the hot winds and rains. Up every night and all night at balls and suppers, they could never go out to breathe the fresh air of the morning; and were looking wretchedly ill, while the European soldiers from the barracks seemed as fresh as if they had never left their native land. There is no doubt that sitting up late at night is extremely prejudicial to the health of Europeans in India.[3] I have never seen the European, male or female, that could stand it long, however temperate in habits; and an old friend of mine once told me that if he went to bed a little exhilarated every night at ten o'clock, and took his ride in the morning, he found himself much better than if he sat up till twelve or one o'clock without drinking, and lay abed in the mornings. Almost all the gay pleasures of India are enjoyed at night, and as ladies here, as everywhere else in Christian societies, are the life and soul of all good parties, as of all good novels, they often to oblige others sit up late, much against their own inclinations, and even their judgements, aware as they are that they are gradually sinking under the undue exertions.
When I first came to India there were a few ladies of the old school still much looked up to in Calcutta, and among the rest the grandmother of the Earl of Liverpool, the old Bêgam Johnstone, then between seventy and eighty years of age.[4] All these old ladies prided themselves upon keeping up old usages. They use to dine in the afternoon at four or five o'clock--take their airing after dinner in their carriages; and from the time they returned till ten at night their houses were lit up in their best style and thrown open for the reception of visitors. All who were on visiting terms came at this time, with any strangers whom they wished to introduce, and enjoyed each other's society; there were music and dancing for the young, and cards for the old, when the party assembled happened to be large enough; and a few who had been previously invited stayed supper. I often visited the old Bêgam Johnstone at this hour, and met at her house the first people in the country, for all people, including the Governor-General himself, delighted to honour this old lady, the widow of a Governor-General of India, and the mother-in-law of a Prime Minister of England.[5] She was at Murshîdâbâd when Sirâj-ud- daula marched from that place at the head of the army that took and plundered Calcutta, and caused so many Europeans to perish in the Black Hole; and she was herself saved from becoming a member of his seraglio, or perishing with the lest, by the circumstance of her being far gone in her pregnancy, which caused her to be made over to a Dutch factory.[6]
She had been a very beautiful woman, and had been several times married; the pictures of all her husbands being hung round her noble drawing-room in Calcutta, covered during the day with crimson cloth to save them from the dust, and uncovered at night only on particular occasions. One evening Mrs. Crommelin, a friend of mine, pointing to one of them, asked the old lady his name. 'Really, I cannot at this moment tell you, my dear; my memory is very bad,' (striking her forehead with her right hand, as she leaned with her left arm in Mrs. Crommelin's,) 'but I shall recollect in a few minutes.' The old lady's last husband was a clergyman, Mr. Johnstone, whom she found too gay, and persuaded to go home upon an annuity of eight hundred a year, which she settled upon him for life. The bulk of her fortune went to Lord Liverpool; the rest to her grandchildren, the Ricketts, Watts, and others.
Since those days the modes of intercourse in India have much altered. Society at all the stations beyond the three capitals of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, is confined almost exclusively to the members of the civil and military services, who seldom remain long at the same station--the military officers hardly ever more than three years, and the civil hardly ever so long. At disagreeable stations the civil servants seldom remain so many months. Every newcomer calls in the forenoon upon all that are at the station when he arrives, and they return his call at the same hour soon after. If he is a married man, the married men upon whom he has called take their wives to call upon his; and he takes his to return the call of theirs. These calls are all indispensable; and being made in the forenoon, become very disagreeable in the hot season; all complain of them, yet no one forgoes his claim upon them; and till the claim is fulfilled, people will not recognize each other as acquaintances.[7] Unmarried officers generally dine in the evening, because it is a more convenient hour for the mess; and married civil functionaries do the same, because it is more convenient for their office work. If you invite those who dine at that hour to spend the evening with you, you must invite them to dinner, even in the hot weather; and if they invite you, it is to dinner. This makes intercourse somewhat heavy at all times, but more especially so in the hot season, when a table covered with animal food is sickening to any person without a keen appetite, and stupefying to those who have it. No one thinks of inviting people to a dinner and ball--it would be vandalism; and when you invite them, as is always the case, to come after dinner, the ball never begins till late at night, and seldom ends till late in the morning. With all its disadvantages, however, I think dining in the evening much better for those who are in health, than dining in the afternoon, provided people can avoid the intermediate meal of tiffin. No person in India should eat animal food more than once a day; and people who dine in the evening generally eat less than they would if they dined in the afternoon. A light breakfast at nine; biscuit, or a slice of toast with a glass of water, or soda-water, at two o'clock, and dinner after the evening exercise, is the plan which I should recommend every European to adopt as the most agreeable.[8] When their digestive powers get out of order, people must do as the doctors tell them.
There is, I believe, no society in which there is more real urbanity of manners than in that of India--a more general disposition on the part of its different members to sacrifice their own comforts and conveniences to those of others, and to make those around them happy, without letting them see that it costs them an effort to do so.[9] There is assuredly no society where the members are more generally free from those corroding cares and anxieties which 'weigh upon the hearts' of men whose incomes are precarious, and position in the world uncertain. They receive their salaries on a certain day every month, whatever may be the state of the seasons or of trade; they pay no taxes; they rise in the several services by rotation;[10] religious feelings and opinions are by common consent left as a question between man and his Maker; no one ever thinks of questioning another about them, nor would he be tolerated if he did so. Most people take it for granted that those which they got from their parents were the right ones; and as such they cherish them. They remember with feelings of filial piety the prayers which they in their infancy offered to their Maker, while kneeling by the side of their mothers; and they continue to offer them up through life, with the same feelings and the same hopes.[11]
Differences of political opinion, which agitate society so much in England and other countries where every man believes that his own personal interests must always be more or less affected by the predominance of one party over another, are no doubt a source of much interest to people in India, but they scarcely ever excite any angry passions among them. The tempests by which the political atmosphere of the world is cleared and purged of all its morbid influences burst not upon us--we see them at a distance--we know that they are working for all mankind; and we feel for those who boldly expose themselves to their 'pitiless peltings' as men feel for the sailors whom they suppose to be exposed on the ocean to the storm, while they listen to it from their beds or winter firesides.[12] We discuss all political opinions, and all the great questions which they affect, with the calmness of philosophers; not without emotion certainly, but without passion; we have no share in returning members to parliament--we feel no dread of those injuries, indignities, and calumnies to which those who have are too often exposed; and we are free from the bitterness of feelings which always attend them.[13]
How exalted, how glorious, has been the destiny of England, to spread over so vast a portion of the globe her literature, her language, and her free institutions! How ought the sense of this high destiny to animate her sons in their efforts to perfect their institutions which they have formed by slow degrees from feudal barbarism; to make them in reality as perfect as they would have them appear to the world to be in theory, that rising nations may love and honour the source whence they derive theirs, and continue to look to it for improvement.
We return to the society of our wives and children after the labours of the day are over, with tempers unruffled by collision with political and religious antagonists, by unfavourable changes in the season and the markets, and the other circumstances which affect so much the incomes and prospects of our friends at home. We must look to them for the chief pleasures of our lives, and know that they must look to us for theirs; and if anything has crossed us we try to conceal it from them. There is in India a strong feeling of mutual dependence which prevents little domestic misunderstandings between man and wife from growing into quarrels so often as in other countries, where this is less prevalent. Men have not here their clubs, nor their wives their little coteries to fly to when disposed to make serious matters out of trifles, and both are in consequence much inclined to bear and forbear. There are, of course, on the other hand, evils in India that people have not to contend with at home; but, on the whole, those who are disposed to look on the fair, as well as on the dark side of all around them, can enjoy life in India very much, as long as they and those dear to them are free from physical pain.[14] We everywhere find too many disposed to look upon the dark side of all that is present, and the bright side of all that is distant in time and place--always miserable themselves, be they where they will, and making all around them miserable; this commonly arises from indigestion, and the habit of eating and drinking in a hot, as in a cold, climate; and giving their stomachs too much to do, as if they were the only parts of the human frame whose energies were unrelaxed by the temperature of tropical climates.
There is, however, one great defect in Anglo-Indian society; it is composed too exclusively of the servants of government, civil, military, and ecclesiastic, and wants much of the freshness, variety, and intelligence of cultivated societies otherwise constituted. In societies where capital is concentrated for employment in large agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing establishments, those who possess and employ it form a large portion of the middle and higher classes. They require the application of the higher branches of science to the efficient employment of their capital in almost every purpose to which it can be applied; and they require, at the same time, to show that they are not deficient in that conventional learning of the schools and drawing-rooms to which the circles they live and move in attach importance. In such societies we are, therefore, always coming in contact with men whose scientific knowledge is necessarily very precise, and at the same time very extensive, while their manners and conversation are of the highest polish. There is, perhaps, nothing which strikes a gentleman from India so much on his entering a society differently constituted, as the superior precision of men's information upon scientific subjects; and more especially upon that of the sciences more immediately applicable to the arts by which the physical enjoyments of men are produced, prepared, and distributed all over the world. Almost all men in India feel that too much of their time before they left England was devoted to the acquisition of the dead languages; and too little to the study of the elements of science. The time lost can never be regained--at least they think so, which is much the same thing. Had they been well grounded in the elements of physics, physiology, and chemistry before they left their native land, they would have gladly devoted their leisure to the improvement of their knowledge; but to go back to elements, where elements can be learnt only from books, is, unhappily, what so few can bring themselves to, that no man feels ashamed of acknowledging that he has never studied them at all till he returns to England, or enters a society differently constituted, and finds that he has lost the support of the great majority that always surrounded him in India.[15] It will, perhaps, be said that the members of the official aristocracy of all countries have more or less of the same defects, for certain it is that they everywhere attach paramount or undue importance to the conventional learning of the grammar-school and the drawing-room, and the ignorant and the indolent have everywhere the support of a great majority. Johnson has, however, observed:
'But the truth is that the knowledge of external nature and the sciences, which that knowledge requires or includes, are not the great or the frequent business of the human mind. Whether we provide for action or conversation, whether we wish to be useful or pleasing, the first requisite is the religious and moral knowledge of right and wrong; the next is an acquaintance with the history of mankind, and with those examples which may be said to embody truth, and prove by events the reasonableness of opinions.[16] Prudence and justice are virtues and excellences of all times, and of all places--we are perpetually moralists; but we are geometricians only by chance. Our intercourse with intellectual nature is necessary; our speculations upon matter are voluntary and at leisure. Physiological learning is of such rare emergence, that one may know another half his life, without being able to estimate his skill in hydrostatics or astromony; but his moral and prudential character immediately appears. Those authors, therefore, are to be read at schools that supply most axioms of prudence, most principles of moral truth, and most materials for conversation; and these purposes are best served by poets, orators, and historians' (Life of Milton).
Notes:
1. In India officers have much better opportunities in time of peace to learn how to handle troops than in England, from having them more concentrated in large stations, with fine open plains to exercise upon. During the whole of the cold season, from the beginning of November to the end of February, the troops are at large stations exercised in brigades, and the artillery, cavalry, and infantry together. [W. H. S.] The normal garrison of Meerut in recent years has consisted of one British cavalry regiment, one battalion of British infantry, one native cavalry regiment, and one battalion of native infantry, with two batteries of horse and two of field artillery. The cantonment was established in 1806, from which date the town grew rapidly in size and population. The civil staff has been largely increased since Sleeman's time by the addition of numerous officers belonging to irrigation and other departmental services which did not exist in his day. The offices of District Magistrate and Collector have been united as a single person for many years.
2. The cantonments suffered severely from typhoid fever for several years in the latter part of the nineteenth century.
3. Few Anglo-Indians will dispute the truth of this dictum.
4. The late Earl of Liverpool, then Mr. Jenkinson, married this old lady's daughter. He was always very attentive to her, and she used with feelings of great pride and pleasure to display the contents of the boxes of millinery which he used every year to send out to her. [W. H. 8.] The author came out to India in 1809. Mr. Charles Jenkinson was created Baron Hawkesbury in 1786, and Earl of Liverpool in 1796. His first wife, who died in 1770, was Amelia, daughter of Mr. William Watts, Governor of Fort William, and of the lady described by the author. Their only son succeeded to the earldom in 1808, and died in 1828. The peerage became extinct on the death of the third earl in 1851. (Burke's Peerage.) It was revived in 1905.
5. Lord Liverpool, the second earl, became Prime Minister in 1812, after the murder of Perceval. Mrs. Johnson (not Johnstone) was not 'the widow of a Governor-General of India'. Her history is told in detail on her tombstone in St. John's churchyard, Calcutta, and is summarized in Buckland, Dictionary of Indian Biography (1906). She was born in 1725, and died in 1812. She had four husbands, namely (l) Parry Purple Temple, whom she married when she was only thirteen years of age; (2) James Altham, who died of smallpox a few days after his marriage; (3) William Watts, Senior Member of Council, and for a short time Governor or President of Fort William in 1758; (4) in 1774 Rev. William Johnson, who became principal chaplain of Fort William in 1784, and left India in 1788. She was known as 'the old Begum ', and her epitaph asserts that she was when she died 'the oldest British resident in Bengal, universally beloved, respected, and revered'. Mr. A. L. Paul kindly communicated the full text of the inscription on her tomb, with some additional notes. The author met her in 1810, when she was about eighty-five years of age.
6. The tragedy of the Black Hole occurred in June, 1756.
7. Of late years the rigour of the custom exacting midday calls has been relaxed in some places.
8. Moat people would require some training before they could find this very abstemious regimen 'the most agreeable'.
9. It will, I hope, be admitted that this observation still holds good.
10. When the author wrote the rupee was worth more than two shillings, the members of the Indian services were few in number, and mostly well paid, while living was cheap. Now all is changed. The rupee has an artificial value of 1_s_. 4_d_., the members of the services are numerous and often ill paid, while living is dear. The sharp fall in the value of silver, and consequently in the gold equivalent of the rupee, began in 1874. 'Corroding cares and anxieties' are now the lot of most people who serve in India. They now have the privilege of paying taxes.
11. This perfect religious freedom, still generally characteristic of Anglo-Indian society, is one of its greatest charms; and the charms of the country do not increase.
12. The author probably had in his mind the famous lines of Lucretius:-
Suave, mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis, E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem; Non quia vexari quemquam 'st jucunda voluptas, Sed, quibus ipse malis careas, quia cernere suave 'st. (Book II, line 1.)
13. This delightful philosophic calm is no longer an Anglo-Indian possession; nor can the modern Indian official congratulate himself on his immunity from 'injuries, indignities, and calumnies'.
14. There are now clubs everywhere, and coteries are said to be not unknown. Few Anglo-Indians of the present day are able to share the author's cheery optimism.
15. In this matter also time has wrought great changes. The scientific branches of the Indian services, the medical, engineering, forestry, geological survey, and others, have greatly developed, and many officials, in India, whether of European or Indian race, now occupy high places in the world of science.
16. Compare Bolingbroke's observation, already quoted, that 'history is philosophy teaching by example'.
74. Pilgrims of India
There is nothing which strikes a European more in travelling over the great roads in India than the vast number of pilgrims of all kinds which he falls in with, particularly between the end of November [sic], when all the autumn harvest has been gathered, and the seed of the spring crops has been in the ground. They consist for the most part of persons, male and female, carrying Ganges water from the point at Hardwâr, where the sacred stream emerges from the hills, to the different temples in all parts of India, dedicated to the gods Vishnu and Siva. There the water is thrown upon the stones which represent the gods, and when it falls upon these stones it is called 'Chandamirt', or holy water, and is frequently collected and reserved to be drunk as a remedy 'for a mind diseased'[1]
This water is carried in small bottles, bearing the seals of the presiding priest at the holy place whence it was brought. The bottles are contained in covered baskets, fixed to the ends of a pole, which is carried across the shoulder. The people who carry it are of three kinds--those who carry it for themselves as a votive offering to some shrine; those who are hired for the purpose by others as salaried servants; and, thirdly, those who carry it for sale. In the interval between the sowing and reaping of the spring crops, that is, between November and March, a very large portion of the Hindoo landholders and cultivators of India devote their leisure to this pious duty. They take their baskets and poles with them from home, or purchase them on the road; and having poured their libations on the head of the god, and made him acquainted with their wants and wishes, return home. From November to March three-fourths of the number of these people one meets consist of this class. At other seasons more than three-fourths consist of the other two classes--of persons hired for the purpose as servants, and those who carry the water for sale.
One morning the old Jemadâr, the marriage of whose mango-grove with the jasmine I have already described,[2] brought his two sons and a nephew to pay their respects to me on their return to Jubbulpore from a pilgrimage to Jagannâth.[3] The sickness of the youngest, a nice boy of about six years of age, had caused this pilgrimage. The eldest son was about twenty years of age, and the nephew about eighteen.
After the usual compliments, I addressed the eldest son: 'And so your brother was really very ill when you set out?'
'Very ill, sir; hardly able to stand without assistance.'
'What was the matter with him?'
'It was what we call a drying-up, or withering of the System.'
'What were the symptoms?'
'Dysentery.'
'Good; and what cured him, as he now seems quite well?'
'Our mother and father vowed five pair of baskets of Ganges water to Gajâdhar, an incarnation of the god Siva, at the temple of Baijnâth, and a visit to the temple of Jagannâth.'
'And having fulfilled these vows, your brother recovered?'
'He had quite recovered, sir, before we had set out on our return from Jagannâth.'
'And who carried the baskets?'
'My mother, wife, cousin, myself, and little brother, all carried one pair each.'
'This little boy could not surely carry a pair of baskets all the way?'
'No, sir, we had a pair of small baskets made especially for him; and when within about three miles of the temple he got down from his little pony, took up his baskets, and carried them to the god. Up to within three miles of the temple the baskets were carried by a Brahman servant, whom we had taken with us to cook our food. We had with us another Brahman, to whom we had to pay only a trifle, as his principal wages were made up of fees from families in the town of Jubbulpore, who had made similar vows, and gave him so much a bottle for the water he carried in their several names to the god.'
'Did you give all your water to the Baijnâth temple, or carry some with you to Jagannâth?'
'No water is ever offered to Jagannâth, sir; he is an incarnation of Vishnu.'[4]
'And does Vishnu never drink?'
'He drinks, sir, no doubt; but he gets nothing but offerings of food and money.'
'From this to Bindâchal on the Ganges, two hundred and thirty miles; thence to Baijnâth, a hundred and fifty miles; and thence to Jagannâth, some four or five hundred miles more.'[5]
'And your mother and wife walked all the way with their baskets?'
'All the way, sir, except when either of them got sick, when she mounted the pony with my little brother till she felt well again.'
Here were four members of a respectable family walking a pilgrimage of between twelve and fourteen hundred miles, going and coming, and carrying burthens on their shoulders for the recovery of the poor sick boy; and millions of families are every year doing the same from all parts of India. The change of air, and exercise, cured the boy, and no doubt did them all a great deal of good; but no physician in the world but a religions one could have persuaded them to undertake such a journey for the same purpose.
The rest of the pilgrims we meet are for the most part of the two monastic orders of Gosâins, or the followers of Siva, and Bairâgîs, or followers of Vishnu, and Muhammadan Fakîrs. A Hindoo of any caste may become a member of these monastic orders. They are all disciples of the high priests of the temples of their respective gods; and in their name they wander all over India, visiting the celebrated temples which are dedicated to them. A part of the revenues of these temples is devoted to subsisting these disciples as they pass; and every one of them claims the right of a day's food and lodging, or more, according to the rules of the temple. They make collections along the roads; and when they return, commonly bring back some surplus as an offering to their apostle, the high priest who has adopted them. Almost every high priest has a good many such disciples, as they are not costly; and from their returning occasionally, and from the disciples of others passing, these high priests learn everything of importance that is going on over India, and are well acquainted with the state of feeling and opinion.
What these disciples get from secular people is given not only from feelings of charity and compassion, but as a religions or propitiatory offering: for they are all considered to be armed by their apostle with a vicarious power of blessing or cursing; and as being in themselves men of God whom it might be dangerous to displease. They never condescend to feign disease or misery in order to excite feelings of compassion, but demand what they want with a bold front, as holy men who have a right to share liberally in the superfluities which God has given to the rest of the Hindoo community. They are in general exceedingly intelligent men of the world, and very communicative. Among them will be found members of all classes of Hindoo society, and of the most wealthy and respectable families.[6] While I had charge of the Narsinghpur district in 1822 a Bairâgî, or follower of Vishnu, came and settled himself down on the border of a village near my residence. His mild and paternal deportment pleased all the little community so much that they carried him every day more food than he required. At last, the proprietor of the village, a very respectable old gentleman, to whom I was much attached, went out with all his family to ask a blessing of the holy man. As they sat down before him, the tears were seen stealing down his cheeks as he looked upon the old man's younger sons and daughters. At last, the old man's wife burst into tears, ran up, and fell upon the holy man's neck, exclaiming, 'My lost son, my lost son!' He was indeed her eldest son. He had disappeared suddenly twelve years before, became a disciple of the high priest of a distant temple, and visited almost every celebrated temple in India, from Kedârnâth in the eternal snows to Sîtâ Baldî Râmesar, opposite the island of Ceylon.[7] He remained with the family for nearly a year, delighting them and all the country around with his narratives. At last, he seemed to lose his spirits, his usual rest and appetite; and one night he again disappeared. He had been absent for some years when I last saw the family, and I know not whether he ever returned.
The real members of these monastic orders are not generally bad men; but there are a great many men of all kinds who put on their disguises, and under their cloak commit all kinds of atrocities.[8] The security and convenience which the real pilgrims enjoy upon our roads, and the entire freedom from all taxation, both upon these roads and at the different temples they visit, tend greatly to attach them to our rule, and through that attachment, a tone of good feeling towards it is generally disseminated over all India. They come from the native states, and become acquainted with the superior advantages the people under us enjoy, in the greater security of property, the greater freedom with which it is enjoyed and displayed; the greater exemption from taxation, and the odious right of search which it involves, the greater facilities for travelling in good roads and bridges; the greater respectability and integrity of public servants, arising from the greater security in their tenure of office and more adequate rate of avowed salaries; the entire freedom of the navigation of our great rivers, on which thousands and tens of thousands of laden vessels now pass from one end to the other without any one to question whence they come or whither they go. These are tangible proofs of good government, which all can appreciate; and as the European gentleman, in his rambles along the great roads, passes the lines of pilgrims with which the roads are crowded during the cold season, he is sure to hear himself hailed with grateful shouts, as one of those who secured for them and the people generally all the blessings they now enjoy.[9]
One day my sporting friend, the Râjâ of Maihar, told me that he had been purchasing some water from the Ganges at its source, to wash the image of Vishnu which stood in one of his temples.[10] I asked him whether he ever drank the water after the image had been washed in it. 'Yes,' said he, 'we all occasionally drink the "chandamirt".' 'And do you in the same manner drink the water in which the god Siva has been washed?' 'Never,' said the Râjâ. 'And why not?' 'Because his wife, Devî, one day in a domestic quarrel cursed him and said, "The water which falls from thy head shall no man henceforward drink." From that day', said the Râjâ, 'no man has ever drunk of the water that washes his image, lest Devî should punish him.' 'And how is it, then, Râjâ Sahib, that mankind continue to drink the water of the Ganges, which is supposed to flow from her husband Siva's top-knot?' 'Because', replied the Râjâ, 'this sacred river first flows from the right foot of the god Vishnu, and thence passes over the head of Siva. The three gods', continued the Râjâ, 'govern the world turn and turn about, twenty years at a time. While Vishnu reigns, all goes on well; rain descends in good season, the harvests are abundant, and the cattle thrive. When Brahma reigns, there is little falling off in these matters; but during the twenty years that Siva reigns, nothing goes on well--we are all at cross purposes, our crops fail, our cattle get the murrain, and mankind suffer from epidemic diseases.' The Râjâ was a follower of Vishnu, as may be guessed.
Notes:
1. Tavernier notes that Ganges water is often given at weddings, 'each guest receiving a cup or two, according to the liberality of the host'. 'There is sometimes', he says, '2,000 or 3,000 rupees' worth of it consumed at a wedding.' (Tavernier, Travels, ed. Ball, vol. ii, pp. 231, 254.)
2. Ante, Chapter 5, [3].
3. Jagannâth (corruptly Juggernaut, &c.), or Purî, on the coast of Orissa, probably is the most venerated shrine in India. The principal deity there worshipped is a form of Vishnu.
4. Water may not be offered to Jagannâth, but the facts stated in this chapter show that it is offered in other temples of Vishnu.
5. Bindâchal is in the Mirzâpur district of the United Provinces. Baijnâth is in the Santâl Parganas District of the Bhâgalpur Division in the province of Bihâr and Orissa. The group of temples at Deogarh dedicated to Siva is visited by pilgrims from all parts of India. The principal temple is called Baijnâth or Baidyanâth. Deogarh is a small town in the Santâl Parganas (I.G., 1908, s.v. Deogarh; A.S.R., vol. viii (1878), pp. 137-45, Pl. ix, x; vol. xix (1885), pp. 29-35 (crude notes), Pl. x, xi).
6. Pandit Sâligrâm, who was Postmaster-General of the North-Western Provinces some years ago, became one of these wandering friars, and other similar cases are recorded.
7. Seet Buldee Ramesur in original edition. The temple alluded to is that called Râmesvaram (Ramisseram) in the small island of Pâmban at the entrance of Palk's Passage in the Straits of Manaar, which is distinguished by its magnificent colonnade and corridors. (Fergusson, Hist. Ind. and Eastern Arch., vol. i, pp. 380-3, ed. 1910.) The island forms part of the so-called Adam's Bridge, a reef of comparatively recent formation, which almost joins Ceylon with the mainland. A railway now runs along the 'bridge', and the pilgrims have an easy task.
The Kedârnâth temple is in the Himalayan District of Garhwâl (United Provinces), at an elevation of nearly 12,000 feet.
8. The author's other works show that the Thugs frequently assumed the guise of ascetics, and much of the secret crime of India is known to be committed by men who adopt the garb of holiness. A man disguised as a fakîr is often sent on by dacoits (gang-robbers) as a spy and decoy. 'Three-fourths of these religions mendicants, whether Hindoos or Muhammadans, rob and steal, and a very great portion of them murder their victims before they rob them; but they have not any of them as a class been found to follow the trade of murder so exclusively as to be brought properly within the scope of our operations. . . . There is hardly any species of crime that is not throughout India perpetrated by men in the disguise of these religious mendicants; and almost all such mendicants are really men in disguise; for Hindoos of any caste can become Bairâgîs and Gosâins; and Muhammadans of any grade can become Fakîrs.' (A Report on the System of Megpunnaism, 1839, p. 11.) In the same little work the author advises the compulsory registration of 'every disciple belonging to every high priest, whether Hindoo or Muhammadan', and a stringent Vagrant Act. His suggestions have not been acted on.
9. This incident still happens occasionally.
10. For the Râjâ, see ante, chapter 20, [6].
75. The Bêgam Sumroo
On the 7th of February [1836] I went out to Sardhana and visited the church built and endowed by the late Bêgam Sombre, whose remains are now deposited in it.[1] It was designed by an Italian gentleman, M. Reglioni, and is a fine but not a striking building.[2] I met the bishop, Julius Caesar, an Italian from Milan, whom I had known a quarter of a century before, a happy and handsome young man--he is still handsome, though old; but very miserable because the Bêgam did not leave him so large a legacy as he expected. In the revenues of her church he had, she thought, quite enough to live upon; and she said that priests without wives or children to care about ought to be satisfied with this; and left him only a few thousand rupees. She made him the medium of conveying a donation to the See of Rome of one hundred and fifty thousand rupees,[3] and thereby procured for him the bishopric of Amartanta in the island of Cyprus; and got her grandson, Dyce Sombre, made a chevalier of the Order of Christ, and presented with a splint from the real cross, as a relic.
The Bêgam Sombre was by birth a Saiyadanî, or lineal descendant from Muhammad, the founder of the Musalmân faith; and she was united to Walter Reinhard, when very young, by all the forms considered necessary by persons of her persuasion when married to men of another.[4] Reinhard had been married to another woman of the Musalmân faith, who still lives at Sardhana,[5] but she had become insane, and has ever since remained so. By this first wife he had a son, who got from the Emperor the title of Zafar Yâb Khân, at the request of the Bêgam, his stepmother; but he was a man of weak intellect, and so little thought of that he was not recognized even as the nominal chief on the death of his father.
Walter Reinhard was a native of Salzburg. He enlisted as a private soldier in the French service, and came to India, where he entered the service of the East India Company, and rose to the rank of sergeant.[6] Reinhard got the sobriquet of Sombre from his comrades while in the French service from the sombre cast of his countenance and temper.[7] An Armenian, by name Gregory, of a Calcutta family, the virtual minister of Kâsim Alî Khân,[8] under the title of Gorgîn Khân,[9] took him into his service when the war was about to commence between his master and the English. Kâsim Alî was a native of Kâshmîr, and not naturally a bad man; but he was goaded to madness by the injuries and insults heaped upon him by the servants of the East India Company, who were not then paid, as at present, in adequate salaries, but in profits upon all kinds of monopolies; and they would not suffer the recognized sovereign of the country in which they traded to grant to his subjects the same exemption that they claimed for themselves exclusively; and a war was the consequence.[10]
Mr. Ellis, one of these civil servants and chief of the factory at Patna, whose opinions had more weight with the council in Calcutta than all the wisdom of such men as Vansittart and Warren Hastings, because they happened to be more consonant with the personal interests of the majority, precipitately brought on the war, and assumed the direction of all military operations, of which he knew nothing, and for which he seems to have been totally unfitted by the violence of his temper. All his enterprises failed--the city and factory were captured by the enemy, and the European inhabitants taken prisoners. The Nawâb, smarting under the reiterated wrongs he had received, and which he attributed mainly to the counsels of Mr. Ellis, no sooner found the chief within his grasp, than he determined to have him and all who were taken with him, save a Doctor Fullarton, to whom he owed some personal obligations, put to death. His own native officers were shocked at the proposal, and tried to dissuade him from the purpose, but he was resolved, and not finding among them any willing to carry it into execution he applied to Sumroo, who readily undertook and, with some of his myrmidons, performed the horrible duty in 1763.[11] At the suggestion of Gregory and Sombre, Kâsim Alî now attempted to take the small principality of Nepâl, as a kind of basis for his operations against the English. He had four hundred excellent rifles with flint locks and screwed barrels made at Monghyr (Mungêr) on the Ganges, so as to fit into small boxes. These boxes were sent up on the backs of four hundred brave volunteers for this forlorn hope. Gregory had got a passport for the boxes as rare merchandise for the palace of the prince at Kathmandû, in whose presence alone they were to be opened. On reaching the palace at night, these volunteers were to open their boxes, screw up the barrels, destroy all the inmates, and possess themselves of the palace, where it is supposed Kâsim Ali had already secured many friends. Twelve thousand soldiers had advanced to the foot of the hills near Betiyâ, to support the attack, and the volunteers were in the fort of Makwânpur, the only strong fort between the plain and the capital. They had been treated with great consideration by the garrison, and were to set out at daylight the next morning; but one of the attendants, who had been let into the secret, got drunk, and in a quarrel with one of the garrison, told him that he should see in a few days who would be master of that garrison. This led to suspicion; the boxes were broken open, the arms discovered, and the whole of the party, except three or four, were instantly put to death; the three or four who escaped gave intelligence to the army at Betiyâ, and the whole retreated upon Monghyr. But for this drunken man, Nepâl had perhaps been Kâsim Alî's.[12]
Kâsim Alî Khân was beaten in several actions by our gallant little band of troops under their able leader, Colonel Adams; and at last driven to seek shelter with the Nawâb Wazîr of Oudh, into whose service Sumroo afterwards entered. This chief being in his turn beaten, Sumroo went off and entered the service of the celebrated chief of Rohilkhand, Hâfiz Rahmat Khân. This he soon quitted from fear of the English. He raised two battalions in 1772, which he soon afterwards increased to four; and let out always to the highest bidder--first, to the Jât chiefs of Dîg, then to the chief of Jaipur, then to Najaf Khân, the prime minister, and then to the Marâthâs. His battalions were officered by Europeans, but Europeans of respectability were unwilling to take service under a man so precariously situated, however great their necessities; and he was obliged to content himself for the most part with the very dross of society--men who could neither read nor write, nor keep themselves sober. The consequence was that the battalions were often in a state of mutiny, committing every kind of outrage upon the persons of their officers, and at all times in a state of insubordination bordering on mutiny. These battalions seldom obtained their pay till they put their commandant into confinement, and made him dig up his hidden stores, if he had any, or borrow from bankers, if he had none. If the troops felt pressed for time, and their commander was of the necessary character, they put him astride upon a hot gun without his trousers. When our battalion had got its pay out of him in this manner, he was often handed over to another for the same purpose. The poor old Bêgam had been often subjected to the starving stage of this proceeding before she came under our protection; but had never, I believe, been grilled upon a gun. It was a rule, it was said, with Sombre, to enter the field of battle at the safest point, form line facing the enemy, fire a few rounds in the direction where they stood, without regard to the distance or effect, form square, and await the course of events. If victory declared for the enemy, he sold his unbroken force to him to great advantage; if for his friends, he assisted them in collecting the plunder, and securing all the advantages of the victory. To this prudent plan of action his corps afterwards steadily adhered; and they never took or lost a gun till they came in contact with our forces at Ajantâ and Assaye.[13]
Sombre died at Agra on the 4th of May, 1778, and his remains were at first buried in his garden. They were afterwards removed to the consecrated ground in the Agra churchyard by his widow the Bêgam,[14] who was baptized, at the age of forty,[15] by a Roman Catholic priest, under the name of Joanna,[16] on the 7th of May, 1781.
On the death of her husband she was requested to take command of the force by all the Europeans and natives that composed it, as the only possible mode of keeping them together, since the son was known to be altogether unfit. She consented, and was regularly installed in the charge by the Emperor Shâh Alam. Her chief officer was a Mr. Paoli, a German, who soon after took an active part in providing the poor imbecile old Emperor with a prime minister, and got himself assassinated on the restoration, a few weeks after, of his rival.[17] The troops continued in the same state of insubordination, and the Bêgam was anxious for an opportunity to show that she was determined to be obeyed.
While she was encamped with the army of the prime minister of the time at Mathurâ,[18] news was one day brought to her that two slave girls had set fire to her houses at Agra, in order that they might make off with their paramours, two soldiers of the guard she had left in charge. These houses had thatched roofs, and contained all her valuables, and the widows, wives, and children of her principal officers. The fire had been put out with much difficulty and great loss of property; and the two slave girls were soon after discovered in the bazaar at Agra, and brought out to the Bêgam's camp. She had the affair investigated in the usual summary form; and their guilt being proved to the satisfaction of all present, she had them flogged till they were senseless, and then thrown into a pit dug in front of her tent for the purpose, and buried alive. I had heard the story related in different ways, and I now took pains to ascertain the truth; and this short narrative may, I believe, be relied upon.[19]
An old Persian merchant, called the Agâ, still resided at Sardhana, to whom I knew that one of the slave girls belonged. I visited him, and he told me that his father had been on intimate terms with Sombre, and when he died his mother went to live with his widow, the Bêgam--that his slave girl was one of the two-that his mother at first protested against her being taken off to the camp, but became on inquiry satisfied of her guilt--and that the Bêgam's object was to make a strong impression upon the turbulent spirit of her troops by a severe example. 'In this object', said the old Agâ, 'she entirely succeeded; and for some years after her orders were implicitly obeyed; had she faltered on that occasion she must have lost the command--she would have lost that respect, without which it would have been impossible for her to retain it a month. I was then a boy; but I remember well that there were, besides my mother and sisters, many respectable females that would have rather perished in the flames than come out to expose themselves to the crowd that assembled to see the fires; and had the fires not been put out, a great many lives must have been lost; besides, there were many old people and young children who could not have escaped.' The old Agâ was going off to take up his quarters at Delhi when this conversation took place; and I am sure that he told me what he thought to be true. This narrative corresponded exactly with that of several other old men from whom I had heard the story. It should be recollected that among natives there is no particular mode of execution prescribed for those who are condemned to die; nor, in a camp like this, any court of justice save that of the commander in which they could be tried, and, supposing the guilt to have been established, as it is said to have been to the satisfaction of the Bêgam and the principal officers, who were all Europeans and Christians, perhaps the punishment was not much greater than the crime deserved and the occasion demanded. But it is possible that the slave girls may not have set fire to the buildings, but merely availed themselves of the occasion of the fire to run off; indeed, slave girls are under so little restraint in India, that it would be hardly worth while for them to burn down a house to get out. I am satisfied that the Bêgam believed them guilty, and that the punishment, horrible as it was, was merited. It certainly had the desired effect. My object has been to ascertain the truth in this case, and to state it, and not to eulogize or defend the old Bêgam.
After Paoli's death, the command of the troops under the Bêgam devolved successively upon Baours, Evans, Dudrenec, who, after a short time, all gave it up in disgust at the beastly habits of the European subalterns, and the overbearing insolence to which they and the want of regular pay gave rise among the soldiers. At last the command devolved upon Monsieur Le Vaisseau, a French gentleman of birth, education, gentlemanly deportment, and honourable feelings.[20] The battalions had been increased to six, with their due proportion of guns and cavalry; part resided at Sardhana, her capital, and part at Delhi, in attendance upon the Emperor. A very extraordinary man entered her service about the same time with Le Vaisseau, George Thomas, who, from a quartermaster on board a ship, raised himself to a principality in Northern India.[21] Thomas on one occasion raised his mistress in the esteem of the Emperor and the people by breaking through the old rule of central squares: gallantly leading on his troops, and rescuing his majesty from a perilous situation in one of his battles with a rebellious subject, Najaf Kulî Khân, where the Bêgam was present in her palankeen, and reaped all the laurels, being from that day called 'the most beloved daughter of the Emperor'.[22] As his best chance of securing his ascendancy against such a rival, Le Vaisseau proposed marriage to the Bêgam, and was accepted. She was married to Le Vaisseau by Father Gregoris, a Carmelite monk, in 1793, before Saleur and Bernier, two French officers of great merit. George Thomas left her service, in consequence, in 1793, and set up for himself; and was afterwards crushed by the united armies of the Sikhs and Marâthâs, commanded by European officers, after he had been recognized as a general officer by the Governor-General of India. George Thomas had latterly twelve small disciplined battalions officered by Europeans. He had good artillery, cast his own guns, and was the first person that applied iron calibres to brass cannon. He was unquestionably a man of very extraordinary military genius, and his ferocity and recklessness as to the means he used were quite in keeping with the times. His revenues were derived from the Sikh states which he had rendered tributary; and he would probably have been sovereign of them all in the room of Ranjit Singh, had not the jealousy of Perron and other French officers in the Marâthâ army interposed.[23]
The Bêgam tried in vain to persuade her husband to receive all the European officers of the corps at his table as gentlemen, urging that not only their domestic peace, but their safety among such a turbulent set, required that the character of these officers should be raised if possible, and their feelings conciliated. Nothing, he declared, should ever induce him to sit at table with men of such habits; and they at last determined that no man should command them who would not condescend to do so. Their insolence and that of the soldiers generally became at last unbearable, and the Bêgam determined to go off with her husband, and seek an asylum in the Honourable Company's territory with the little property she could command, of one hundred thousand rupees in money, and her jewels, amounting perhaps in value to one hundred thousand more. Le Vaisseau did not understand English; but with the aid of a grammar and a dictionary he was able to communicate her wishes to Colonel McGowan, who commanded at that time (1795) an advanced post of our army at Anûpshahr on the Ganges.[24] He proposed that the Colonel should receive them in his cantonments, and assist them in their journey thence to Farrukhâbâd, where they wished in future to reside, free from the cares and anxieties of such a charge. The Colonel had some scruples, under the impression that he might be censured for aiding in the flight of a public officer of the Emperor. He now addressed the Governor-General of India, Sir John Shore himself, April 1795,[25] who requested Major Palmer, our accredited agent with Sindhia, who was then encamped near Delhi, and holding the seals of prime minister of the empire, to interpose his good offices in favour of the Bêgam and her husband. Sindhia demanded twelve lâkhs of rupees as the price of the privilege she solicited to retire; and the Bêgam, in her turn, demanded over and above the privilege of resigning the command into his hands, the sum of four lâkhs of rupees as the price of the arms and accoutrements which had been provided at her own cost and that of her late husband. It was at last settled that she should resign the command, and set out secretly with her husband; and that Sindhia should confer the command of her troops upon one of his own officers, who would pay the son of Sombre two thousand rupees a month for life. Le Vaisseau was to be received into our territories, treated as a prisoner of war upon parole, and permitted to reside with his wife at the French settlement of Chandernagore. His last letter to Sir John Shore is dated the 30th April, 1795. His last letters describing this final arrangement are addressed to Mr. Even, a French merchant at Mirzapore, and a Mr. Bernier, both personal friends of his, and are dated 18th of May, 1795.[26]
The battalions on duty at Delhi got intimation of this correspondence, made the son of Sombre declare himself their legitimate chief, and march at their head to seize the Bêgam and her husband. Le Vaisseau heard of their approach, and urged the Bêgam to set out with him at midnight for Anûpshahr, declaring that he would rather destroy himself than submit to the personal indignities which he knew would be heaped upon him by the infuriated ruffians who were coming to seize them. The Bêgam consented, declaring that she would put an end to her life with her own hand should she be taken. She got into her palankeen with a dagger in her hand, and as he had seen her determined resolution and proud spirit before exerted on many trying occasions, he doubted not that she would do what she declared she would. He mounted his horse and rode by the side of her palankeen, with a pair of pistols in his holsters, and a good sword by his side. They had got as far as Kabrî, about three miles from Sardhana,[27] on the road to Meerut, when they found the battalions from Sardhana, who had got intimation of the flight, gaining fast upon the palankeen. Le Vaisseau asked the Bêgam whether she remained firm in her resolve to die rather than submit to the indignities that threatened them. 'Yes,' replied she, showing him the dagger firmly grasped in her right hand. He drew a pistol from his holster without saying anything, but urged on the bearers. He could have easily galloped off, and saved himself, but he would not quit his wife's side. At last the soldiers came up close behind them. The female attendants of the Bêgam began to scream; and looking in, Le Vaisseau saw the white cloth that covered the Bêgam's breast stained with blood. She had stabbed herself, but the dagger had struck against one of the bones of her chest, and she had not courage to repeat the blow. Her husband put his pistol to his temple and fired. The bail passed through his head, and he fell dead on the ground. One of the soldiers who saw him told me that he sprang at least a foot off the saddle into the air as the shot struck him. His body was treated with every kind of insult by the European officers and their men;[28] and the Bêgam was taken back into Sardhana, kept under a gun for seven days, deprived of all kinds of food, save what she got by stealth from her female servants, and subjected to all manner of insolent language.
At last the officers were advised by George Thomas, who had instigated them to this violence out of pique against the Bêgam for her preference of the Frenchman,[29] to set aside their puppet and reseat the Bêgam in the command, as the only chance of keeping the territory of Sardhana.[30] 'If', said he, 'the Bêgam should die under the torture of mind and body to which you are subjecting her, the minister will very soon resume the lands assigned for your payment, and disband a force so disorderly, and so little likely to be of any use to him or the Emperor.' A council of war was held--the Bêgam was taken out from under the gun, and reseated on the 'masnad'. A paper was drawn up by about thirty European officers, of whom only one, Monsieur Saleur, could sign his own name, swearing in the name of God and Jesus Christ,[31] that they would henceforward obey her with all their hearts and souls, and recognize no other person whomsoever as commander. They all affixed their seals to this covenant; but some of them, to show their superior learning, put their initials, or what they used as such, for some of these learned Thebans knew only two or three letters of the alphabet, which they put down, though they happened not to be their real initials. An officer on the part of Sindhia, who was to have commanded these troops, was present at this reinstallation of the Bêgam, and glad to take, as a compensation for his disappointment, the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand rupees, which the Bêgam contrived to borrow for him.
The body of poor Le Vaisseau was brought back to camp, and there lay several days unburied, and exposed to all kinds of indignities. The supposition that this was the result of a plan formed by the Bêgam to get rid of Le Vaisseau is, I believe, unfounded.[32] The Bêgam herself gave some colour of truth to the report by retaining the name of her first husband, Sombre, to the last, and never publicly or formally declaring her marriage with Le Vaisseau after his death. The troops in this mutiny pretended nothing more than a desire to vindicate the honour of their old commander Sombre, which had, they said, been compromised by the illicit intercourse between Le Vaisseau and his widow. She had not dared to declare the marriage to them lest they should mutiny on that ground, and deprive her of the command; and for the same reason she retained the name of Sombre after her restoration, and remained silent on the subject of her second marriage. The marriage was known only to a few European officers. Sir John Shore, Major Palmer, and the other gentlemen with whom Le Vaisseau corresponded. Some grave old native gentlemen who were long in her service have told me that they believed 'there really was too much of truth in the story which excited the troops to mutiny on that occasion--her too great intimacy with the gallant young Frenchman. God forgive them for saying so of a lady whose salt they had eaten for so many years'. Le Vaisseau made no mention of the marriage to Colonel McGowan; and from the manner in which he mentions it to Sir John Shore it is clear that he, or she, or both, were anxious to conceal it from the troops and from Sindhia before their departure. She stipulated in her will that her heir, Mr. Dyce, should take the name of Sombre, as if she wished to have the little episode of her second marriage forgotten.
After the death of Le Vaisseau, the command devolved on Monsieur Saleur, a Frenchman, the only respectable officer who signed the covenant; he had taken no active part in the mutiny; on the contrary, he had done all he could to prevent it; and he was at last, with George Thomas, the chief means of bringing his brother officers back to a sense of their duty. Another battalion was added to the four in 1787, and another raised in 1798 and 1802; five of the six marched under Colonel Saleur to the Deccan with Sindhia. They were in a state of mutiny the whole way, and utterly useless as auxiliaries, as Saleur himself declared in many of his letters written in French to his mistress the Bêgam. At the battle of Assaye, four of these battalions were left in charge of the Marâthâ camps. One was present in the action and lost its four guns. Soon after the return of these battalions, the Bêgam entered into an alliance with the British Government; the force then consisted of these six battalions, a party of artillery served chiefly by Europeans, and two hundred horse. She had a good arsenal well stored, a foundry for cannon, both within the walls of a small fortress, built near her dwelling at Sardhana. The whole cost her about four lâkhs of rupees a year; her civil establishments eighty thousand, and her household establishments and expenses about the same; total six lâkhs of rupees a year. The revenues of Sardhana, and the other lands assigned at different times for the payment of the force had been at no time more than sufficient to cover these expenses; but under the protection of our Government they improved with the extension of tillage, and the improvements of the surrounding markets for produce, and she was enabled to give largely to the support of charitable institutions, and to provide handsomely for the support of her family and pensioners after her death.'[33]
Sombre's son, Zafaryâb Khân, had a daughter who was married to Colonel Dyce, who had for some time the management of the Bêgam's affairs; but he lost her favour long before her death by his violent temper and overbearing manners, and was obliged to resign the management to his son, who, on the Bêgam's death, came in for the bulk of her fortune, or about sixty lâkhs of rupees. He has two sisters who were brought up by the Bêgam, one married to Captain Troup, an Englishman, and the other to Mr. Salaroli, an Italian, both very worthy men. Their wives have been handsomely provided for by the Bêgam, and by their brother, who trebled the fortunes left to them by the Bêgam.[34] She built an excellent church at Sardhana, and assigned the sum of 100,000 rupees as a fund to provide for its service and repairs; 50,000 rupees as another [fund] for the poor of the place; and 100,000 as a third, for a college in which Roman Catholic priests might be educated for the benefit of India generally. She sent to Rome 150,000 rupees to be employed as a charity fund at the discretion of the Pope; and to the Archbishop of Canterbury she sent 50,000 for the same purpose. She gave to the Bishop of Calcutta 100,000 rupees to provide teachers for the poor of the Protestant church in Calcutta. She sent to Calcutta for distribution to the poor, and for the liberation of deserving debtors, 50,000. To the Catholic missions at Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras she gave 100,000; and to that of Agra 50,000. She built a handsome chapel for the Roman Catholics at Meerut; and presented the fund for its support with a donation of 12,000; and she built a chapel for the Church Missionary at Meerut, the Reverend Mr. Richards, at a cost of 10,000, to meet the wants of the native Protestants.[35]
Among all who had opportunities of knowing her she bore the character of a kind-hearted, benevolent, and good woman; and I have conversed with men capable of judging, who had known her for more than fifty years. She had uncommon sagacity and a masculine resolution; and the Europeans and natives who were most intimate with her have told me that though a woman and of small stature, her 'ru'b' (dignity, or power of commanding personal respect) was greater than that of almost any person they had ever seen.[36] From the time she put herself under the protection of the British Government, in 1808, she by degrees adopted the European modes of social intercourse, appearing in public on an elephant, in a carriage, and occasionally on horseback with her hat and veil, and dining at table with gentlemen. She often entertained Governors-General and Commanders-in-Chief, with all their retinues, and sat with them and their staff at table, and for some years past kept an open house for the society of Meerut; but in no situation did she lose sight of her dignity. She retained to the last the grateful affections of the thousands who were supported by her bounty, while she never ceased to inspire the most profound respect in the minds of those who every day approached her, and were on the most unreserved terms of intimacy.[37]
Lord William Bentinck was an excellent judge of character; and the following letter will show how deeply his visit to that part of the country had impressed him with a sense of her extensive usefulness:
'To Her Highness the Begum Sumroo.
'My esteemed Friend,--I cannot leave India without expressing the sincere esteem I entertain for your highness's character. The benevolence of disposition and extensive charity which have endeared you to thousands, have excited in my mind sentiments of the warmest admiration; and I trust that you may yet be preserved for many years, the solace of the orphan and widow, and the sure resource of your numerous dependants. To-morrow morning I embark for England; and my prayers and best wishes attend you, and all others who, like you, exert themselves for the benefit of the people of India.
'I remain, 'With much consideration, 'Your sincere friend, (Signed) 'M. W. BENTINCK.[38]
'Calcutta, March 17th, 1835.'
Notes:
1. The reader will observe that the lady's name is spelt Sumroo in the heading and Sombre in the text. The form Samrû, or Shamrû, transliterates the Hindustâni spelling.
2. The author means General Regholini who was in the Bêgam's service at the time of her death. (N.W.P. Gazetteer, 1st ed., vol. iii, p. 295.) The church, or cathedral, was consecrated in 1822, and coat 400,000 rupees. A portrait of the General, from Sardhana, is now in the Indian Institute, Oxford, which also possesses a portrait of the Bishop.
The best account of Begum Sumroo is to be found in A Tour through the Upper Provinces of Hindustan, 1804-14, by A. D. = Ann Deane (1823). Walter Scott introduces more than one of the stories about the Begum into The Surgeon's Daughter (1827), e.g.: "But not to be interred alive under your seat, like the Circassian of whom you were jealous," said Middlemas, shuddering (vol. 48, Black's ed. of the novels, p. 382).
3. The Bêgam's benefactions are detailed post.
4. 'This remarkable woman was the daughter, by a concubine, of Asad Khân, a Musalmân of Arab decent settled in the town of Kutâna in the Meerut district. She was born about the year A.D. 1753 [see post.] On the death of her father, she and her mother became subject to ill- treatment from her half-brother, the legitimate heir, and they consequently removed to Delhi about 1760. There she entered the service of Sumru, and accompanied him through all his campaigns. Sumru, on retiring to Sardhana, found himself relieved of all the cares and troubles of war, and gave himself entirely up to a life of ease and pleasure, and so completely fell into the hands of the Bêgam that she had no difficulty in inducing him to exchange the title of mistress for that of wife.' (E. T. Atkinson in N.W.P. Gazetteer, 1st ed., vol. ii, p. 95. The authorities for the history of Bêgum Samrû are very conflicting. Atkinson has examined them critically, and his account probably is the best in existence.) An anonymous pamphlet published apparently at Sardhana and sent to the editor anonymously long ago, gives the name of the Bêgam's father as 'Lutf Ali Khan, a decayed nobleman of Arabian descent' living at Kotana. Some writers state that the Bêgam was a dancing girl, and was bought by Sumroo. Her name was Zêb-un-nissa.
5. This first wife died at Sardhana during the rainy season of 1838. She must have been above one hundred years of age; and a good many of the Europeans that he buried in the Sardhana cemetery had lived above a hundred years. [W. H. S.] She was a concubine, named Bahâ Bêgam. (N.W.P. Gazetteer, vol. iii, p. 96.)
6. His name is spelt Reinhard on his tombstone, as in the text. It is also spelt Renard. According to some authorities, his birthplace was Trèves, not Salzburg. He is said to have been a butcher by trade, and certainly deserted from both the French and the English services.
7. A more probable explanation is that the name is a corruption of an alias, Summers, assumed by the deserter.
8. Kâsim Alî Khân is generally referred to in the histories under the name of Mîr Kâsim (Meer Cossim). Mîr Jâfir was deposed in 1760, and his son-in-law Mîr Kâsim was placed on the throne of Bengal in his stead by the English. The history of Mîr Kâsim is told in detail by Thornton in his sixth chapter, and also by Mill.
9. Probably 'Gorgîn' is a corruption of 'Gregory'. This name may be a corruption of 'Georgian'.
10. Mill observes upon these transactions: 'The conduct of the Company's servants upon this occasion furnishes one of the most remarkable instances upon record of the power of self-interest to extinguish all sense of justice and even of shame. They had hitherto insisted, contrary to all right and all precedent, that the government of the country should exempt all their goods from duty; they now insisted that it should impose duties upon all other traders, and accused it as guilty of a breach of the peace towards the English nation, because it proposed to remit them.' [W. H. S.] The quotation is from Book iv, chapter 5 (5th ed., 1858, vol. iii, p. 237).
11. The 3rd of October was the day of slaughter at Patna. The Europeans at other places in Mîr Kâsim's power were also massacred; and the total number slain, men, women, and children, amounted to about two hundred. Sumroo personally butchered about one hundred and fifty at Patna.
12. Our troops, under Sir David Ochterlony, took the fort of Makwânpur in 1815, and might in five days have been before the defenceless capital; but they were here arrested by the romantic chivalry of the Marquis of Hastings. The country had been virtually conquered; the prince, by his base treachery towards us and outrages upon others, had justly forfeited his throne; but the Governor- General, by perhaps a misplaced lenity, left it to him without any other guarantee for his future good behaviour than the recollection that he had been soundly beaten. Unfortunately he left him at the same time a sufficient quantity of fertile land below the hills to maintain the same army with which he had fought us, with better knowledge how to employ them, to keep us out on a future occasion. Between the attempt of Kâsim Alî and our attack upon Nepâl, the Gôrkhâ masters of the country had, by a long series of successful aggressions upon their neighbours, rendered themselves in their own opinion and in that of their neighbours the beat soldiers of India. They have, of course, a very natural feeling of hatred against our government, which put a stop to the wild career of conquest, and wrested from their grasp all the property and all the pretty women from Kathmandû to Kashmîr. To these beautify regions they were what the invading Huns were in former days to Europe, absolute fiends. Had we even exacted a good road into their country with fortifications at the proper places, it might have checked the hopes of one day resuming the career of conquest that now keeps up the army and military spirit, to threaten us with a renewal of war whenever we are embarrassed on the plains. [W. H. S.]
The author's uneasiness concerning the attitude of Nepal was justified. During the Afghan troubles of 1838-43 the Nepalese Government was in constant communication with the enemies of the Indian Government. The late Maharâja Sir Jang Bahâdur obtained power in 1846, and, after his visit to England in 1850, decided to abide by the English alliance. He did valuable service in 1857 and 1858, and the two governments have ever since maintained an unbroken, though reserved, friendship. The Gôrkhâ regiments in the English service are recruited in Nepâl.
13. Aasaye (Assye, Asâi) is in the Nizâm's dominions. Here, on the 23rd of September, 1803, Sir Arthur Wellesley, afterwards Duke of Wellington, with less than 5,000 men, defeated the Marâthâ host of at least 32,000 men, including more than 10,000 under European leaders. Ajantâ, or Ajantâ Ghât, is in the same region. (Owen, Sel. from Wellington Despatches (1880), pp. 301-9.)
14. His tombstone bears a Portuguese inscription: 'Aqui iaz Walter Reinhard, morreo aos 4 de Mayo no anno de 1778.' (N.W.P. Gazetteer, vol. ii, p. 96.)
15. According to this statement she must have been born in or about 1741, not in 1753, as stated by Atkinson. If the earlier date were correct, she would have been ninety-five when she died in 1836. Higginbotham, referring to Bacon's work, says she died at the age of eighty-nine, which places her birth in 1747. According to Beale, she was aged eighty-eight lunar years when she died, on the 27th January, 1836, equivalent to about eighty-five solar years. This computation places her birth in A.D. 1751, which may be taken as the correct date. The date of her baptism is correctly stated in the text.
16. She added the name Nobilis, when she married Le Vaisseau. (N.W.P. Gazetteer, vol. ii, p. 106, note.)
17. The author spells the German's name Pauly; I have followed Atkinson's spelling. The man was assassinated in 1783.
18. This circumstance indicates that the execution of the slave girls took place in 1782. (See N.W.P. Gazetteer, vol. ii, p. 91.)
19. The darker aide of the Bêgam's character is shown by the story of the slave girl's murder. By some it is said that the girl's crime consisted in her having attracted the favourable notice of one of the Bêgam's husbands. Whatever may have been the offence, her barbarous mistress visited it by causing the girl to be buried alive. The time chosen for the execution was the evening, the place the tent of the Bêgam; who caused her bed to be arranged immediately over the grave, and occupied it until the morning, to prevent any attempt to rescue the miserable girl beneath. By acts like this the Bêgam inspired such terror that she was never afterwards troubled with domestic dissensions.' (N.W.P. Gazetteer, 1st ed., vol. ii, p. 110.) It will be observed that this version mentions only one girl. According to Higginbotham (Men whom India has Known, 2nd ed., s.v. 'Sumroo'), this execution took place on the evening of the day on which Le Vaisseau perished in 1795. (See post.) He adds that 'it is said that this act preyed upon her conscience in after life'. This account professes to be based on Bacon's First Impressions and Studies from Nature in Hindustan, which is said to be 'the most reliable, as the author saw the Bêgam, attended and conversed with her at one of her levées, and gained all his information at her Court'. But Bacon's account of the Bêgam's history, as quoted by Higginbotham, is full of gross errors; and Sir William Sleeman may be relied on as giving the most accurate obtainable version of the horrid story. He had the beat possible opportunities, as well as a desire, to ascertain the truth.
20. Atkinson (N.W.P. Gazetteer, vol. ii, p. 106) uses the spelling Le Vaisseau, which probably is correct, and observes that the name is also written Le Vassont. The author writes Le Vassoult; and Francklin (Military Memoirs of Mr. George Thomas, London, 8vo reprint (Stockdale), p. 55) spells the name phonetically as Levasso. 'On every occasion he was the declared and inveterate enemy of Mr. Thomas.'
21. Thomas was an Irishman, born in the county of Tipperary. 'From the best information we could procure, it appears that Mr. George Thomas first came to India in a British ship of war, in 1781-2. His situation in the fleet was humble, having served as a quarter-master, or, as is affirmed by some, in the capacity of a common sailor. . . . His first service was among the Polygars to the southward, where he resided a few years. But at length setting out overland, he spiritedly traversed the central part of the peninsula, and about the year 1787 arrived at Delhi. Here he received a commission in the service of the Bêgam Sumroo. . . . Soon after his arrival at Delhi, the Bêgam, with her usual judgement and discrimination of character, advanced him to a command in her army. From this period his military career in the north-west of India may be said to have commenced.' Owing to the rivalry of Le Vaisseau, Thomas 'quitted the Bêgam Sumroo, and about 1792 betook himself to the frontier station of the British army at the post of Anopshire (Anûpshâhr). . . . Here he waited several months. . . . In the beginning of the year 1793, Mr. Thomas, being at Anopshire, received letters from Appakandarow (Apakanda Râo), a Mahratta chief, conveying offers of service, and promises of a comfortable provision.' (Francklin, op. cit., p. 20.) The author states that Thomas left the Bêgam's service in 1793, after her marriage with Le Vaisseau in that year. Francklin (see also p. 55) was clearly under the impression that the marriage did not take place till after Thomas had thrown up his command under the Bêgam. He made peace with her in 1795. The capital of the principality which he carved out for himself in 1798 was at Hânsî, eighty-nine miles north- west of Delhi. He was driven out at the close of 1801, entered British territory in January 1802, and died on the 22nd of August in that year at Barhâmpur, being about forty-six years of age. A son of his was an officer in the Bêgam's service at the time of her death in 1836. A great-granddaughter of George Thomas was, in 1867, the wife of a writer on a humble salary in one of the Government offices at Agra. (Beale.)
22. This incident happened in 1788. (See N.W.P. Gazetteer, vol. ii, p. 99; I.G., 1908, vol. xii, p. 106.)
23. 'A more competent estimate may perhaps be formed of his abilities if we reflect on the nature and extent of one of his plans, which he detailed to the compiler of these memoirs during his residence at Benares. When fixed in his residence at Hânsî, he first conceived, and would, if unforeseen and untoward circumstances had not occurred, have executed the bold design of extending his conquests to the mouths of the Indus. This was to have been effected by a fleet of boats, constructed from timber procured in the forests near the city of Fîrôzpur, on the banks of the Satlaj river, proceeding down that river with his army, and settling the countries he might subdue on his route; a daring enterprise, and conceived in the true spirit of an ancient Roman. On the conclusion of this design it was his intention to turn his arms against the Panjâb, which he expected to reduce in a couple of years; and which, considering the wealth he would then have acquired, and the amazing resources he would have possessed, these successes combined would doubtless have contributed to establish his authority on a firm and solid basis.' He offered to conquer the Panjâb on behalf of the Government of India, for the welfare of his king and country. (Francklin, pp. 334-6.)
24. A small town in the Bulandshahr district of the North-Western Provinces, seventy-three miles south-east of Delhi. Its fort used to be considered strong and of strategical importance.
25. Afterwards Lord Teignmouth.
26. Major Bernier was killed at the storm of Hânsî in 1801. His tombstone at Barsi village was found ninety years later (Pioneer, Dec. 14, 1894). For epitaph of Joseph Even Bahâdur see N.I.N. & Qu., vol. i, note 265.
27. Francklin says that the troops overtook the fugitives 'at the village of Kerwah, in the begum's jaghire, four miles distant from her capital', (p. 58.)
28. 'For three days it lay exposed to the insults of the rabble, and was at length thrown into a ditch.' (Francklin, p. 60.)
29. According to George Thomas (whose version of the story is given by his biographer), the Bêgam, when the mutiny broke out, was actually preparing to attack Thomas. A German officer, known only as the Liègeois, strenuously dissuaded the Bêgam from the proposed hostilities, and was, in consequence, degraded by Le Vaisseau. The troop then mutinied, and swore allegiance to Zafar Yâb Khân. (Francklin, p. 37.)
30. Thomas says that the overtures came from the Bêgam. 'In a manner the most abject and desponding, she addressed Mr. Thomas . . . implored him to come to her assistance, and, finally, offered to pay any sum of money the Marâthâs should require, on condition they would reinstate her in the Jâgîr. On receipt of these letters, Mr. Thomas, by an offer of 120,000 rupees, prevailed on Bâpû Sindhia to make a movement towards Sardhana.' After negotiation, Thomas marched to Khataulî, and 'publicly gave out that unless the Bêgam was reinstated in her authority, those who resisted must expect no mercy; and to give additional weight to this declaration, he apprised them that he was acting under the orders of the Marâthâ chiefs.' After some difficulty, 'she was finally reinstated in the full authority of her Jâgîr'. This version of the affair, it will be noticed, does not quite agree with that given more briefly by the author.
31. The paper was written by a Muhammadan, and he would not write Christ the Son of God. It is written 'In the name of God, and his Majesty Christ'. The Muhammadans look upon Christ as the greatest of prophets before Muhammad; but the most binding article of their faith is this from the Korân, which they repeat every day: 'I believe in God, who was never begot, nor has ever begotten, nor will ever have an equal,'--alluding to the Christians' belief in the Trinity. [W. H. S.] For Mohammed's opinion of Jesus Christ see especially chapters 4 and 5 of the Korân.
32. To my mind the circumstances all tend to throw suspicion on the Bêgam. The author evidently was disposed to form the beat possible opinion of her character and acts.
33. After the Bêgam's death the revenue settlement of the estate was made by Mr. Plowden, who writes in his report, as quoted in N.W.P. Gazetteer, 1st ed., vol. iii, p. 432, 'The rule seems to have been fully recognized and acted up to by the Bêgam which declared that, according to Muhammadan law, "there shall be left for every man who cultivates his lands as much as he requires for his own support, till the next crop be reaped, and that of his family, and for seed. This much shall be left to him; what remains is land-tax, and shall go to the public treasury." For, considering her territory as a private estate and her subjects as serfs, she appropriated the whole produce of their labour, with the exception of what sufficed to keep body and soul together. It was by these means . . . that a factitious state of prosperity was induced and maintained, which, though it might, and I believe did, deceive the Bêgam's neighbours into an impression that her country was highly prosperous, could not delude the population into content and happiness. Above the surface and to the eye all was smiling and prosperous, but within was rottenness and misery. Under these circumstances the smallness of the above arrear is no proof of the fairness of the revenue. It rather shows that the collections were as much as the Bêgam's ingenuity could extract, and this balance being unrealizable, the demand was, by so much at least, too high.' The statistics alluded to are:
Average demand of the portions of the Bêgam's Rs. Territory in the Meerut district . . . . 5.86.650 Average collections . . . . . . 5.67.211 Balances . . . . . . . . 19.439
'Ruin was impending, when the Bêgam's death in January, 1836, and the consequent lapse of the estate to the British, induced the cultivators to return to their homes.'
Details of the Bêgam's military forces are given in N.W.P. Gazetteer, vol. iii, p. 295. For the last thirty years of her life the Bêgam had no need for the large force (3,371 officers and men, with 44 guns) which she maintained. In her excessive expenditure on a superfluous army, in her niggardly provision for civil administration, and in her merciless rack-renting, she followed the evil example of the ordinary native prince, and was superior only in the unusual ability with which she worked an unsound and oppressive System. She left £700,000. The population of Sardhana town has risen from 3,313 in 1881 to 9,242 in 1911.
34 Zafaryâb Khân died in 1802 or 1803. His son-in-law, Colonel Dyce, was employed in the Bêgam's service. 'The issue of this marriage was: (l) David Ochterlony Dyce Sombre, who married Mary Anne, daughter of Viscount St. Vincent, by whom he had no issue. He died in Paris in July, 1851. In August, 1867, his body was conveyed to Sardhana and buried in the cathedral. (2) A daughter, who married Captain Rose Troup. (3) A daughter, who married Paul Salaroli, now Marquis of Briona. The present owner of Sardhana is the Honourable Mary Anne Forester, the widow of David Ochterlony Dyce Sombre, and the successful claimant in the suit against Government which has recently been decided in her favour.' (N.W.P. Gazetteer, vol. iii (1875), p. 296.) This lady, in 1862, married George Cecil-Weld, third Baron Forester, who died without issue in 1886. (Burke's Peerage.) Lady Forester died on March 7, 1893.
35. In the original edition these statistics are given in words. Figures have been used in this edition as being more readily grasped. The amounts stated by the author are approximate round sums. More accurate details are given in N.W.P. Gazetteer, vol. iii (1875), p. 295. The Bêgam also subscribed liberally to Hindoo and Muhammadan institutions. Her contemporary, Colonel Skinner, was equally impartial, and is said to have built a mosque and a temple, as well as the church at Delhi.
The Cathedral at Sardhana was built in 1822. St. John's College is intended to train Indians as priests, There are, or were recently, about 250 native Christians at Sardhana, partly the descendants of the converts who followed their mistress in change of faith. 'The Roman Catholic priests work hard for their little colony, and are greatly revered and respected. At St. John's College some of the boys are instructed for the priesthood, and others taught to read and write the Nâgarî and Urdû characters. The instruction for the priesthood is peculiar. There are some twelve little native boys who can quote whole chapters of the Latin Bible, and nearly all the prayers of the Missal. Those who cannot sympathize with the system mast admire the patience and devotion of the Italian priests who have put themselves to the trouble of imparting such instruction. The majority of the Christian population here are cultivators and weavers, while many are the pensioned descendants of the European servants of Bêgam Sumru, and still bear the appellation of Sâhib and Mem Sâhib.' (N.W.P. Gazetteer, vol. iii (1875), pp. 273, 430.)
The Bêgam's palace, built in 1834, was chiefly remarkable for a collection of about twenty-five portraits of considerable interest. They comprised likenesses of Sir David Ochterlony, Dyce Sombre, Lord Combermere, and other notable personages. (Calcutta Review, vol. lxx, p. 460; quoted in North Indian N. & Q., vol. ii, p. 179.) The mansion and park were sold by auction in 1895. Some of the portraits are now in the Indian Institute, Oxford, some in the Indian Museum, Calcutta, and some in Government House, Allahabad. A long article by H. N. on Sardhana and its owners appeared in the Pioneer (Allahabad) on December 12,1894.
36. A miniature portrait of the Bêgam is given on the frontispiece to volume ii of the original edition. Francklin, describing the events of 1796, in his memoirs of George Thomas, first published in 1803, describes her personal appearance as follows: 'Begum Sumroo is about forty-five years of age, small in stature, but inclined to be plump. Her complexion is very fair, her eyes black, large and animated; her dress perfectly Hindustany, and of the most costly materials. She speaks the Persian and Hindustany languages with fluency, and in her conversation is engaging, sensible, and spirited.' (London ed., p. 92, note.) The liberal benefaction of her later years have secured her ecclesiastical approval, and I should not be surprised to hear of her beatification or canonization. Her earlier life certainly was not that of a saint.
37. In her younger days she strictly maintained Hindustani etiquette. 'It has been the constant and invariable usage of this lady to exact from her subjects and servants the most rigid attention to the customs of Hindoostan. She is never seen out of doors or in her public durbar unveiled.
'Her officers and others, who have business with her, present themselves opposite the place where she sits. The front of her apartment is furnished with chicques or Indian screens, these being let down from the roof. In this manner she gives audience and transacts business of all kinds. She frequently admits to her table the higher ranks of her European officers, but never admits the natives to come within the enclosure,' (Francklin, p, 92.)
38. The Governor-General's name was William Henry Cavendish-Bentinck, I do not understand the signature M. W. Bentinck, which may be a misprint. The eulogium seems odd to a reader who remembers that the recipient had been for fifteen years the mistress and wife of the Butcher of Patna. But when it was written, the memory of the massacre had been dimmed by the lapse of seventy-two years, and His Excellency may not have been well versed in the lady's history.
Perhaps the author was mistaken, and the letter was sent by Lady Bentinck, whose name was Mary.
Chapter 76
ON THE SPIRIT OF MILITARY DISCIPLINE IN THE NATIVE ARMY OF INDIA
Abolition of Corporal Punishment--Increase of Pay with Length of Service--Promotion by Seniority.
The following observations on a very important and interesting subject were not intended to form a portion of the present work.[1] They serve to illustrate, however, many passages in the foregoing chapters touching the character of the natives of India; and the Afghan war having occurred since they were written, I cannot deny myself the gratification of presenting them to the public, since the courage and fidelity, which it was my object to show the British Government had a right to expect from its native troops and might always rely upon in the hour of need, have been so nobly displayed.
I had one morning (November 14th, 1838) a visit from the senior native officer of my regiment, Shaikh Mahûb Alî, a very fine old gentleman, who had recently attained the rank of 'Sardâr Bahâdur', and been invested with the new Order of British India.[2] He entered the service at the age of fifteen, and had served fifty-three years with great credit to himself, and fought in many an honourable field. He had come over to Jubbulpore as president of a native general court-martial, and paid me several visits in company with another old officer of my regiment who was a member of the same court. The following is one of the many conversations I had with him, taken down as soon as he left me.
'What do you think, Sardâr Bahâdur, of the order prohibiting corporal punishment in the army; has it had a bad or a good effect?'
'It has had a very good effect.'
'What good has it produced?'
'It has reduced the number of courts martial to one-quarter of what they were before, and thereby lightened the duties of the officers; it has made the good men more careful, and the bad men more orderly than they used to be.'
'How has it produced this effect?'
'A bad man formerly went on recklessly from small offences to great ones in the hope of impunity; he knew that no regimental, cantonment, or brigade court martial could sentence him to be dismissed the service; and that they would not sentence him to be flogged, except for great crimes, because it involved at the same time dismissal from the service. If they sentenced him to be flogged, he still hoped that the punishment would be remitted. The general or officer confirming the sentence was generally unwilling to order it to be carried into effect, because the man must, after being flogged, be tumed out of the service, and the marks of the lash upon his back would prevent his getting service anywhere else. Now he knows that these courts can sentence him to be dismissed from the service--that he is liable to lose his bread for ordinary transgressions, and be sentenced to work on the roads for graver ones.[3] He is in consequence much more under restraint than he used to be.'
'And how has it tended to make the well-disposed more careful?'
'They were formerly liable to be led into errors by the example of the bad men, under the same hope of impunity; but they are now more on their guard. They have all relations among the native officers, who are continually impressing upon them the necessity of being on their guard, lest they be sent back upon their families--their mothers and fathers, wives and children, as beggars. To be dismissed from a service like that of the Company is a very great punishment; it subjects a man to the odium and indignation of all his family. When in the Company's service, his friends know that a soldier gets his pay regularly, and can afford to send home a very large portion of it. They expect that he will do so; he feels that they will listen to no excuse, and he contracts habits of sobriety and prudence. If a man gets into the service of a native chief, his friends know that his pay is precarious, and they continue to maintain his family for many years without receiving a remittance from him, in the hope that his circumstances may one day improve. He contracts bad habits, and is not ashamed to make his appearance among them, knowing that his excuses will be received as valid. If one of the Company's sepoys[4] were not to send home remittances for six months, some members of the family would be sent to know the reason why. If he could not explain, they would appeal to the native officers of the regiment, who would expostulate with him; and, if all failed, his wife and children would be tumed out of his father's house, unless they knew that he was gone to the wars; and he would be ashamed ever to show his face among them again.'
'And the gradual increase of pay with length of service has tended to increase the value of the service, has it not?'
'It has very much; there are in our regiment, out of eight hundred men, more than one hundred and fifty sepoys who get the increase of two rupees a month, and the same number that get the increase of one. This they feel as an immense addition to the former seven rupees a month.[5] A prudent sepoy lives upon two, or at the utmost three, rupees a month in seasons of moderate plenty, and sends all the rest to his family. A great number of the sepoys of our regiment live upon the increase of two rupees, and send all their former seven to their families. The dismissal of a man from such a service as this distresses, not only him, but all his relations in the higher grades, who know how much of the comfort and happiness of his family depend upon his remaining and advancing in it; and they all try to make their young friends behave as they ought to do.'
'Do you think that a great portion of the native officers of the army have the same feelings and opinions on the subject as you have?'
'They have all the same; there is not, I believe, one in a hundred that does not think as I do upon the subject. Flogging was an odious thing. A man was disgraced, not only before his regiment, but before the crowd that assembled to witness the punishment. Had he been suffered to remain in the regiment he could never have hoped to rise after having been flogged, or sentenced to be flogged; his hopes were all destroyed, and his spirit broken, and the order directing him to be dismissed was good; but, as I have said, he lost all hope of getting into any other service, and dared not show his face among his family at home.'
'You know who ordered the abolition of flogging?'
'Lord Bentinck.'[6]
'And you know that it was at his recommendation the Honourable Company gave the increase of pay with length of service?'
'We have heard so; and we feel towards him as we felt towards Lord Wellesley, Lord Hastings, and Lord Lake.'
'Do you think the army would serve again now with the same spirit as they served under Lord Lake?'
'The army would go to any part of the world to serve such masters--no army had ever masters that cared for them like ours. We never asked to have flogging abolished; nor did we ever ask to have an increase of pay with length of service; and yet both have been done for us by the Company Bahâdur.'
The old Sardâr Bahâdur came again to visit me on the 1st of December, with all the native officers who had come over from Sâgar to attend the court, seven in number. There were three very smart, sensible men among them; one of whom had been a volunteer at the capture of Java,[7] and the other[s] at that of the Isle of France.[8] They all told me that they considered the abolition of corporal punishment a great blessing to the native army. 'Some bad men who had already lost their character, and consequently all hope of promotion, might be in less dread than before; but they were very few, and their regiments would soon get rid of them under the new law that gave the power of dismissal to regimental courts martial.'
'But I find the European officers are almost all of opinion that the abolition of flogging has been, or will be, attended with bad consequences.'
'They, sir, apprehend that there will not be sufficient restraint upon the loose characters of the regiment; but now that the sepoys have got an increase of pay in proportion to length of service there will be no danger of that. Where can they ever hope to get such another service if they forfeit that of the Company? If the dread of losing such a service is not sufficient to keep the bad in order, that of being put to work upon the roads in irons will. The good can always be kept in order by lighter punishments, when they have so much at stake as the loss of such a service by frequent offences. Some gentlemen think that a soldier does not feel disgraced by being flogged, unless the offence for which he has been flogged is in itself disgraceful. There is no soldier, sir, that does not feel disgraced by being tied up to the halberts and flogged in the face of all his comrades and the crowd that may choose to come and look at him; the sepoys are all of the same respectable families as ourselves, and they all enter the service in the hope of rising in time to the same stations as ourselves, if they conduct themselves well; their families look forward with the same hope. A man who has been tied up and flogged knows the disgrace that it will bring upon his family, and will sometimes rather die than return to it; indeed, as head of a family he could not be received at home.[9] But men do not feel disgraced in being flogged with a rattan at drill. While at the drill they consider themselves, and are considered by us all, as in the relation of scholars to their schoolmasters. Doing away with the rattan at drill had a very bad effect. Young men were formerly, with the judicious use of the rattan, made fit to join the regiment at furthest in six months; but since the abolition of the rattan it takes twelve months to make them fit to be seen in the ranks. There was much virtue in the rattan, and it should never have been given up. We have all been flogged with the rattan at the drill, and never felt ourselves disgraced by it-we were shâgirds (scholars), and the drill-sergeant, who had the rattan, was our ustâd (schoolmaster); but when we left the drill, and took our station in the ranks as sepoys, the case was altered, and we should have felt disgraced by a flogging, whatever might have been the nature of the offence we committed. The drill will never get on so well as it used to do, unless the rattan be called into use again; but we apprehend no evil from the abolition of corporal punishment afterwards. People are apt to attribute to this abolition offences that have nothing to do with it; and for which ample punishments are still provided. If a man fires at his officer, people are apt to say it is because flogging has been done away with; but a man who deliberately fires at his officer is prepared to undergo worse punishment than flogging.[10]
'Do you not think that the increase of pay with length of service to the sepoys will have a good effect in tending to give to regiments more active and intelligent native officers? Old sepoys who are not so will now have less cause to complain if passed over, will they not?'
'If the sepoys thought that the increase of pay was given with this view, they would rather not have it at all. To pass over men merely because they happen to have grown old, we consider very cruel and unjust. They all enter the service young, and go on doing their duty till they become old, in the hope that they shall get promotion when it comes to their turn. If they are disappointed, and young men, or greater favourites with their European officers, are put over their heads, they become heart-broken. We all feel for them, and are always sorry to see an old soldier passed over, unless he has been guilty of any manifest crime, or neglect of duty. He has always some relations among the native officers who know his family, for we all try to get our relations into the same regiment with ourselves when they are eligible. They know what that family will suffer when they learn that he has no longer any hopes of rising in the service, and has become miserable. Supersessions create distress and bad feelings throughout a regiment, even when the best men are promoted, which cannot always be the case; for the greatest favourites are not always the best men. Many of our old European officers, like yourself, are absent on staff or civil employments; and the command of companies often devolves upon very young subalterns, who know little or nothing of the character of their men. They recommend those whom they have found most active and intelligent, and believe to be the best; but their opportunities of learning the characters of the men have been few. They have seen and observed the young, active, and forward; but they often know nothing of the steady, unobtrusive old soldier, who has done his duty ably in all situations, without placing himself prominently forward in any. The commanding officers seldom remain long with the same regiment, and, consequently, seldom know enough of the men to be able to judge of the justice of the selections for promotion. Where a man has been guilty of a crime, or neglected his duty, we feel no sympathy for him, and are not ashamed to tell him so, and put him down[11] when he complains.'
Here the old Sûbadâr, who had been at the taking of the Isle of France, mentioned that when he was senior Jemadâr of his regiment, and a vacancy had occurred to bring him in as Sûbadâr, he was sent for by his commanding officer, and told that, by orders from headquarters, he was to be passed over, on account of his advanced age, and supposed infirmity. 'I felt,' said the old man, 'as if I had been struck by lightning, and fell down dead. The colonel was a good man, and had seen much service. He had me taken into the open air; and when I recovered, he told me that he would write to the Commander-in-Chief, and represent my case. He did so, and I was promoted; and I have since done my duty as Sûbadâr for ten years.'[12]
The Sardâr Bahâdur told me that only two men in our regiment had been that year superseded, one for insolence, and the other for neglect of duty; and that officers and sepoys were all happy in consequence--the young, because they felt more secure of being promoted if they did their duty; and the old, because, they felt an interest in their young relations. 'In those regiments,' said he, 'where supersessions have been more numerous, old and young are dispirited and unhappy. They all feel that the good old rule of right (hakk), as long as a man does his duty well, can no longer be relied upon.'
When two companies of my regiment passed through Jubbulpore a few days after this conversation on their way from Sâgar to Seoni, I rode out a mile or two to meet them. They had not seen me for sixteen years, but almost all the native commissioned and non-commissioned officers were personally known to me. They were all very glad to see me, and I rode along with them to their place of encampment, where I had ready a feast of sweetmeats. They liked me as a young man, and are, I believe, proud of me as an old one. Old and young spoke with evident delight of the rigid adherence on the part of the present commanding officer, Colonel Presgrave, to the good old rule of 'hakk' (right) in the recent promotions to the vacancies occasioned by the annual transfer to the invalid establishment. We might, no doubt, have in every regiment a few smarter native officers by disregarding this rule than by adhering to it; but we should, in the diminution of the good feeling towards the European officers and the Government, lose a thousand times more than we gained. They now go on from youth to old age, from the drill to the retired pension, happy and satisfied that there is no service on earth so good for them.[13] With admirable moral, but little or no literary education, the native officers of our regiments never dream of aspiring to anything more than is now held out to them, and the mass of the soldiers are inspired with devotion to the service, and every feeling with which we could wish to have them inspired, by the hope of becoming officers in time, if they discharge their duties faithfully and zealously. Deprive the mass of this hope, give the commissions to an exclusive class of natives, or to a favoured few, chosen often, if not commonly, without reference to the feelings or qualifications we most want in our native officers, and our native army will soon cease to have the same feelings of devotion towards the Government, and of attachment and respect towards their European officers that they now have. The young, ambitions, and aspiring native officers will soon try to teach the great mass that their interest and that of the European officers and European Government are by no means one and the same, as they have been hitherto led to suppose; and it is upon the good feeling of this great mass that we have to depend for support. To secure this good feeling, we can well afford to sacrifice a little efficiency at the drill. It was unwise in one of the commanders-in- chief to direct that no soldier in our Bengal native regiments should be promoted unless he could read and write-it was to prohibit the promotion of the best, and direct the promotion of the worst, soldiers in the ranks. In India a military officer is rated as a gentleman by his birth, that is caste, and by his deportment in all his relations of life, not by his knowledge of books.
The Râjpût, the Brahman, and the proud Pathân who attains a commission, and deports himself like an officer, never thinks himself, or is thought by others, deficient in anything that constitutes the gentleman, because he happens not to be at the same time a clerk. He has from his childhood been taught to consider the quill and the sword as two distinct professions, both useful and honourable when honourably pursued; and having chosen the sword, he thinks he does quite enough in learning how to use and support it through all grades, and ought not to be expected to encroach on the profession of the penman. This is a tone of feeling which it is clearly the interest of Government rather to foster than discourage, and the order which militated so much against it has happily been either rescinded or disregarded.
Three-fourths of the recruits of our Bengal native infantry are drawn from the Râjpût peasantry of the kingdom of Oudh, on the left bank of the Ganges, where their affections have been linked to the soil for a long series of generations.[14] The good feelings of the families from which they are drawn continue through the whole period of their service to exercise a salutary influence over their conduct as men and as soldiers. Though they never take their families with them, they visit them on furlough every two or three years, and always return to them when the surgeon considers a change of air necessary to their recovery from sickness. Their family circles are always present to their imaginations; and the recollections of their last visit, the hopes of the next, and the assurance that their conduct as men and as soldiers in the interval will be reported to those circles by their many comrades, who are annually returning on furlough to the same parts of the country, tend to produce a general and uniform propriety of conduct, that is hardly to be found among the soldiers of any other army in the world, and which seems incomprehensible to those unacquainted with its source--veneration for parents cherished through life, and a never-impaired love of home, and of all the dear objects by which it is constituted.
Our Indian native army is perhaps the only entirely voluntary standing army that has been ever known, and it is, to all intents and purposes, entirely voluntary, and as such must be treated.[15] We can have no other native army in India, and without such an army we could not maintain our dominion a day. Our best officers have always understood this quite well; and they have never tried to flog and harass men out of all that we find good in them for our purposes. Any regiment in our service might lay down their arms and disperse to- morrow, without our having a chance of apprehending one deserter among them all.[16]
When Frederick the Great of Prussia reviewed his army of sixty thousand men in Pomerania, previous to his invasion of Silesia, he asked the Prince d'Anhalt, who accompanied him, what he most admired in the scene before him.
'Sire,' replied the prince, 'I admire at once the fine appearance of the men, and the regularity and perfection of their movements and evolutions.'
'For my part,' said Frederick, 'this is not what excites my astonishment, since with the advantage of money, time, and care, these are easily attained. It is that you and I, my dear cousin, should be in the midst of such an army as this in perfect safety. Here are sixty thousand men who are all irreconcilable enemies to both you and myself', not one among them that is not a man of more strength and better armed than either, yet they all tremble at our presence, while it would be folly on our part to tremble at theirs-- such is the wonderful effect of order, vigilance, and subordination.'
But a reasonable man might ask, what were the circumstances which enabled Frederick to keep in a state of order and subordination an army composed of soldiers who were 'irreconcilable enemies' of their Prince and of their officers? He could have told the Prince d'Anhalt, had he chose to do so; for Frederick was a man who thought deeply. The chief circumstance favourable to his ambition was the imbecility of the old French Government, then in its dotage, and unable to see that an army of involuntary soldiers was no longer compatible with the state of the nation. This Government had reduced its soldiers to a condition worse than that of the common labourers upon the roads, while it deprived them of all hope of rising, and all feeling of pride in the profession.[17] Desertion became easy from the extension of the French dominion and from the circumstance of so many belligerent powers around requiring good soldiers; and no odium attended desertion, where everything was done to degrade, and nothing to exalt the soldier in his own esteem and that of society.
Instead of following the course of events and rendering the condition of the soldier less odious by increasing his pay and hope of promotion, and diminishing the labour and disgrace to which he was liable, and thereby filling her regiments with voluntary soldiers when involuntary ones could no longer be obtained, the Government of France reduced the soldier's pay to one-half the rate of wages which a common labourer got on the roads, and put them under restraints and restrictions that made them feel every day, and every hour, that they were slaves. To prevent desertions by severe examples under this high-pressure System, they had recourse first to slitting the noses and cutting off the ears of deserters, and, lastly, to shooting them as fast as they could catch them.[18] But all was in vain; and Frederick of Prussia alone got fifty thousand of the finest soldiers in the world from the French regiments, who composed one-third of his army, and enabled him to keep all the rest in that state of discipline that improved so much its efficiency, in the same manner as the deserters from the Roman legions, which took place under similar circumstances, became the flower of the army of Mithridates.[19]
Frederick was in position and disposition a despot. His territories were small, while his ambition was boundless. He was unable to pay a large army the rate of wages necessary to secure the services of voluntary soldiers; and he availed himself of the happy imbecility of the French Government to form an army of involuntary ones. He got French soldiers at a cheap rate, because they dared not return to their native country, whence they were hunted down and shot like dogs, and these soldiers enabled him to retain his own subjects in his ranks upon the same terms. Had the French Government retraced its steps, improved the condition of its soldiers, and mitigated the punishment for desertion during the long war, Frederick's army would have fallen to pieces 'like the baseless fabric of a vision'.
'Parmi nous,' says Montesquieu, 'les désertions sont fréquentes parce que les soldats sont la plus vile partie de chaque nation, et qu'il n'y en a aucun qui aie, ou qui croie avoir un certain avantage sur les autres. Chez les Romains elles étaient plus rares--des soldats tirés du sein d'un peuple si fier, si orgueilleux, si sûr de commander aux autres, ne pouvaient guère penser â s' aviler jusqu'à cesser d'être Romains.'[20] But was it the poor soldiers who were to blame if they were 'vile', and had 'no advantage over others', or the Government that took them from the vilest classes, or made their condition when they got them worse than that of the lowest class in society? The Romans deserted under the same circumstances, and, as I have stated, formed the elite of the army of Mithridates and the other enemies of Rome; but they respected their military oath of allegiance long after perjury among senators had ceased to excite any odium, since as a fashionable or political vice it had become common.
Did not our day of retribution come, though in a milder shape, to teach us a great political and moral lesson, when so many of our brave sailors deserted our ships for those of America, in which they fought against us?[21] They deserted from our ships of war because they were there treated like dogs, or from our merchant ships because they were every hour liable to be seized like felons and put on board the former. When 'England expected every man to do his duty' at Trafalgar, had England done its duty to every man who was that day to fight for her? Is not the intellectual stock which the sailor acquires in scenes of peril 'upon the high and giddy mast' as much his property as that which others acquire in scenes of peace at schools and colleges? And have not our senators, morally and religiously, as much right to authorize their sovereign to seize clergymen, lawyers, and professors, for employment in his service, upon the wages of ordinary uninstructed labour, as they have to authorize him to seize able sailors to be so employed in her navy? A feeling more base than that which authorized the able seaman to be hunted down upon such conditions, torn from his wife and children, and put like Uriah in front of those battles upon which our welfare and honour depended, never disgraced any civilized nation with whose history we are acquainted.[22]
Sir Matthew Decker, in a passage quoted by Mr. McCulloch, says, 'The custom of impressment put a freeborn British sailor on the same footing as a Turkish slave. The Grand Seignior cannot do a more absolute act than to order a man to be dragged away from his family, and against his will run his head against the mouth of a cannon; and if such acts should be frequent in Turkey upon any one set of useful men, would it not drive them away to other countries, and thin their numbers yearly? And would not the remaining few double or triple their wages, which is the case with our sailors in time of war, to the great detriment of our commerce?' The Americans wisely relinquished the barbarous and unwise practice of their parent land, and, as McCulloch observes, 'While the wages of all labourers and artisans are uniformly higher in the United States than in England, those of sailors are generally lower,' as the natural consequence of manning their navy by means of voluntary enlistment alone. At the close of the last war, sixteen thousand British sailors were serving on board of American ships; and the wages of our seamen rose from forty or[23] fifty to a hundred or one hundred and twenty shillings a month, as the natural consequence of our continuing to resort to impressment after the Americans had given it up.[24]
Frederick's army consisted of about one hundred and fifty thousand men. Fifty thousand of these were French deserters, and a considerable portion of the remaining hundred thousand were deserters from the Austrian army, in which desertion was punished in the same manner with death. The dread of this punishment if they quitted his ranks, enabled him to keep up that state of discipline that improved so much the efficacy of his regiments, at the same time that it made every individual soldier his 'irreconcilable enemy'. Not relying entirely upon this dread on the part of deserters to quit his ranks under his high-pressure system of discipline, and afraid that the soldiers of his own soil might make off in spite of all their vigilance, he kept his regiments in garrison towns till called on actual service; and that they might not desert on their way from one garrison to another during relief, he never had them relieved at all. A trooper was flogged for falling from his horse, though he had broken a limb in his fall; it was difficult, he said, to distinguish an involuntary fault from one that originated in negligence, and to prevent a man hoping that his negligence would be forgiven, all blunders were punished, from whatever cause arising. No soldier was suffered to quit his garrison till led out to fight; and when a desertion took place, cannons were fired to announce it to the surrounding country. Great rewards were given for apprehending, and severe punishments inflicted for harbouring, the criminal; and he was soon hunted down, and brought back. A soldier was, therefore, always a prisoner and a slave.
Still, all this rigour of Prussian discipline, like that of our navy, was insufficient to extinguish that ambition which is inherent in our nature to obtain the esteem and applause of the circle in which we move; and the soldier discharged his duty in the hour of danger, in the hope of rendering his life more happy in the esteem of his officers and comrades. 'Every tolerably good soldier feels ', says Adam Smith, 'that he would become the scorn of his companions if he should be supposed capable of shrinking from danger, or of hesitating either to expose or to throw away his life, when the good of the service required it.' So thought the philosopher-King of Prussia, when he let his regiments out of garrison to go and face the enemy. The officers were always treated with as much lenity in the Prussian as any other service, because the king knew that the hope of promotion would always be sufficient to bind them to their duties; but the poor soldiers had no hope of this kind to animate them in their toils and their dangers.
We took our System of drill from Frederick of Prussia; and there is still many a martinet who would carry his high-pressure system of discipline into every other service over which he had any control, unable to appreciate the difference of circumstances under which they may happen to be raised and maintained.[25]
The sepoys of the Bengal army, the only part of our native army with which I am much acquainted, are educated as soldiers from their infancy--they are brought up in that feeling of entire deference for constituted authority which we require in soldiers, and which they never lose through life. They are taken from the agricultural classes of Indian society--almost all the sons of yeomen--cultivating proprietors of the soil, whose families have increased beyond their means of subsistence. One son is sent one after another to seek service in our regiments as necessity presses at home, from whatever cause--the increase of taxation, or the too great increase of numbers in families.[26] No men can have a higher sense of the duty they owe to the state that employs them, or whose 'salt they eat'; nor can any men set less value on life when the service of that state requires that it shall be risked or sacrificed. No persons are brought up with more deference for parents. In no family from which we drew our recruits is a son through infancy, boyhood, or youth, heard to utter a disrespectful word to his parents--such a word from a son to his parents would shock the feelings of the whole community in which the family resides, and the offending member would be visited with their highest indignation. When the father dies the eldest son takes his place, and receives the same marks of respect, the same entire confidence and deference as the father. If he be a soldier in a distant land, and can afford to do so, he resigns the service, and returns home to take his post as the head of the family. If he cannot afford to resign, if the family still want the aid of his regular monthly pay, he remains with his regiment, and denies himself many of the personal comforts he has hitherto enjoyed, that he may increase his contribution to the general stock.
The wives and children of his brothers, who are absent on service, are confided to his care with the same confidence as to that of the father. It is a rule to which I have through life found but few exceptions that those who are most disposed to resist constituted authority are those most disposed to abuse such authority when they get it. The members of these families, disposed, as they always are, to pay deference to such authority, are scarcely ever found to abuse it when it devolves upon them; and the elder son, when he succeeds to the place of his father, loses none of the affectionate attachment of his younger brothers.
They never take their wives or children with them to their regiments, or to the places where their regiments are stationed.[27] They leave them with their fathers or elder brothers, and enjoy their society only when they return on furlough. Three-fourths of their incomes are sent home to provide for their comfort and subsistence, and to embellish that home in which they hope to spend the winter of their days. The knowledge that any neglect of the duty they owe their distant families will be immediately visited by the odium of their native officers and brother soldiers, and ultimately communicated to the heads of their families, acts as a salutary check on their conduct; and I believe that there is hardly a native regiment in the Bengal army in which the twenty drummers who are Christians, and have their families with the regiment, do not cause more trouble to the officers than the whole eight hundred sepoys.
To secure the fidelity of such men all that is necessary is to make them feel secure of three things--their regular pay, at the handsome rate at which it has now been fixed; their retiring pensions upon the scale hitherto enjoyed; and promotion by seniority, like their European officers, unless they shall forfeit all claims to it by misconduct or neglect of duty.[28] People talk about a demoralized army, and discontented army! No army in the world was certainly ever more moral or more contented than our native army; or more satisfied that their masters merit all their devotion and attachment; and I believe none was ever more devoted or attached to them.[29] I do not speak of the European officers of the native army. They very generally believe that they have had just cause of complaint, and sufficient care has not always been taken to remove that impression. In all the junior grades the Honourable Company's officers have advantages over the Queen's in India. In the higher grades the Queen's officers have advantages over those of the Honourable Company. The reasons it does not behove me here to consider.[30]
In all armies composed of involuntary soldiers, that is, of soldiers who are anxious to quit the ranks and return to peaceful occupations, but cannot do so, much of the drill to which they are subjected is adopted merely with a view to keep them from pondering too much upon the miseries of their present condition, and from indulging in those licentious habits to which a strong sense of these miseries, and the recollection of the enjoyments of peaceful life which they have sacrificed, are too apt to drive them. No portion of this is necessary for the soldiers of our native army, who have no miseries to ponder over, or superior enjoyments in peaceful life to look back upon; and a very small quantity of drill is sufficient to make a regiment go through its evolutions well, because they have all a pride and pleasure in their duties, as long as they have a commanding officer who understands them. Clarke, in his Travels, speaking of the three thousand native infantry from India whom he saw paraded in Egypt under their gallant leader, Sir David Baird, says, 'Troops in such a state of military perfection, or better suited for active service, were never seen--not even on the famous parade of the chosen ten thousand belonging to Bonaparte's legions, which he was so vain of displaying before the present war in the front of the Tuileries at Paris. Not an unhealthy soldier was to be seen. The English, inured to the climate of India, considered that of Egypt as temperate in its effects, and the sipâhees seemed as fond of the Nile as the Ganges.'[31]
It would be much better to devise more innocent amusements to lighten the miseries of European soldiers in India than to be worrying them every hour, night and day, with duties which are in themselves considered to be of no importance whatever, and imposed merely with a view to prevent their having time to ponder on these miseries.[32] But all extra and useless duties to a soldier become odious, because they are always associated in his mind with the ideas of the odious and degrading punishment inflicted for the neglect of them. It is lamentable to think how much of misery is often wantonly inflicted upon the brave soldiers of our European regiments of India on the pretence of a desire to preserve order and discipline.[33]
Sportsmen know that if they train their horses beyond a certain point they 'train off'; that is, they lose the spirit and with it the condition they require to support them in their hour of trial. It is the same with soldiers; if drilled beyond a certain point, they 'drill off', and lose the spirit which they require to sustain them in active service, and before the enemy. An over-drilled regiment will seldom go through its evolutions well, even in ordinary review before its own general. If it has all the mechanism, it wants all the real spirit of military discipline--it becomes dogged, and is, in fact, a body with but a soul. The martinet, who is seldom a man of much intellect, is satisfied as long as the bodies of his men are drilled to his liking; his narrow mind comprehends only one of the principles which influence mankind--fear; and upon this he acts with all the pertinacity of a slave-driver. If he does not disgrace himself when he comes before the enemy, as he commonly does, by his own incapacity, his men will perhaps try to disgrace him, even at the sacrifice of what they hold dearer than their lives--their reputation. The real soldier, who is generally a man of more intellect, cares more about the feelings than the bodies of his men; he wants to command their affections as well as their limbs, and he inspires them with a feeling of enthusiasm that renders them insensible to all danger--such men were Lord Lake, and Generals Ochterlony, Malcolm, and Adams, and such are many others well known in India.
Under the martinet the soldiers will never do more than what a due regard for their own reputation demands from them before the enemy, and will sometimes do less. Under the real soldier, they will always do more than this; his reputation is dearer to them even than their own, and they will do more to sustain it. The army of the consul, Appius Claudius, exposed themselves to almost inevitable destruction before the enemy to disgrace him in the eyes of his country, and the few survivors were decimated on their return; he cared nothing for the spirit of his men. The army of his colleague, Quintius, on the contrary, though from the same people, and levied and led out at the same time, covered him with glory because they loved him.[34] We had an instance of this in the war with Nepâl in-1813, in which a king's regiment played the part of the army of Appius.[35] There were other martinets, king's and Company's, commanding divisions in that war, and they all signally failed; not, however, except in the above one instance, from backwardness on the part of their troops, but from utter incapacity when the hour of trial came. Those who succeeded were men always noted for caring something more about the hearts than the whiskers and buttons of their men. That the officer who delights in harassing his regiment in times of peace will fail with it in times of war and scenes of peril seems to me to be a rule almost as well established as that he, who in the junior ranks of the army delights most to kick against authority, is always found the most disposed to abuse it when he gets to the higher. In long intervals of peace, the only prominent military characters are commonly such martinets; and hence the failures so generally experienced in the beginning of a war after such an interval. Whitelocks are chosen for command, till Wolfes and Wellingtons find Chathams and Wellesleys to climb up by.
To govern those whose mental and physical energies we require for our subsistence and support by the lash alone is so easy, so simple a mode of bending them to our will, and making them act strictly and instantly in conformity to it, that it is not at all surprising to find so many of those who have been accustomed to it, and are not themselves liable to have the lash inflicted upon them, advocating its free use. In China the Emperor has his generals flogged, and finds the lash so efficacious in bending them to his will that nothing would persuade him that it could ever be safely dispensed with. In some parts of Germany they had the officers flogged, and princes and generals found this so very efficacious in making those act in conformity to their will that they found it difficult to believe that any army could be well managed without it. In other Christian armies the officers are exempted from the lash, but they use it freely upon all under them; and it would be exceedingly difficult to convince the greater part of these officers that the free use of the lash is not indispensably necessary, nay, that the men do not themselves like to be flogged, as eels like to be skinned, when they once get used to it. Ask the slave-holders of the southern states of America whether any society can be well constituted unless the greater part of those upon the sweat of whose brow the community depends for their subsistence are made by law liable to be bought, sold, and driven to their daily labour with the lash; they will one and all say No; and yet there are doubtless many very excellent and amiable persons among these slave-holders. If our army, as at present constituted, cannot do without the free use of the lash, let its constitution be altered; for no nation with free institutions should suffer its soldiers to be flogged. '_Laudabiliores tamen duces sunt, quorum exercitum ad modestiam labor et usus instituit, quam illi, quorum milites ad obedientiam suppliciorum formido compellit.'[36]
Though I reprobate that wanton severity of discipline in which the substance is sacrificed to the form, in which unavoidable and trivial offences are punished as deliberate and serious crimes, and the spirit of the soldier is entirely disregarded, while the motion of his limbs, cut of his whiskers, and the buttons of his coat are scanned with microscopic eye, I must not be thought to advocate idleness. If we find the sepoys of a native regiment, as we sometimes do at a healthy and cheap station, become a little unruly like schoolboys, and ask an old native officer the reason, he will probably answer others as he has me by another question, '_Ghora ârâ kyûn? Pânî sarâ kyûn?' 'Why does the horse become vicious? Why does the water become putrid?'-For want of exercise. Without proper attention to this exercise no regiment is ever kept in order; nor has any commanding officer ever the respect or the affection of his men unless they see that he understands well all the duties which his Government entrusts to him, and is resolved to have them performed in all situations and under all circumstances. There are always some bad characters in a regiment, to take advantage of any laxity of discipline, and lead astray the younger soldiers, whose spirits have been rendered exuberant by good health and good feeding; and there is hardly any crime to which they will not try to excite these young men, under an officer careless about the discipline of his regiment, or disinclined, from a mistaken esprit de corps, or any other cause, to have those crimes traced home to them and punished.[37]
There can be no question that a good tone of feeling between the European officers and their men is essential to the well-being of our native army; and I think I have found this tone somewhat impaired whenever our native regiments are concentrated at large stations. In such places the European society is commonly large and gay; and the officers of our native regiments become too much occupied in its pleasures and ceremonies to attend to their native officers or sepoys. In Europe there are separate classes of people who subsist by catering for the amusements of the higher classes of society, in theatres, operas, concerts, balls, &c., &c.; but in India this duty devolves entirely upon the young civil and military officers of the Government, and at large stations it really is a very laborious one, which often takes up the whole of a young man's time. The ladies must have amusement; and the officers must find it for them, because there are no other persons to undertake the arduous duty. The consequence is that they often become entirely alienated from their men, and betray signs of the greatest impatience while they listen to the necessary reports of their native officers, as they come on or go off duty.[38]
It is different when regiments are concentrated for active service. Nothing tends so much to improve the tone of feeling between the European officers and their men, and between European soldiers and sepoys, as the concentration of forces on actual service, where the same hopes animate, and the same dangers unite them in common bonds of sympathy and confidence. 'Utrique alteris freti, finitimos armis aut metu sub imperium cogere, nomen gloriamque sibi addidere.' After the campaigns under Lord Lake, a native regiment passing Dinapore, where the gallant King's 76th, with whom they had fought side by side, was cantoned, invited the soldiers to a grand entertainment provided for them by the sepoys. They consented to go on one condition--that the sepoys should see them all back safe before morning. Confiding in their sable friends, they all got gloriously drunk, but found themselves lying every man upon his proper cot in his own barracks in the morning. The sepoys had carried them all home upon their shoulders. Another native regiment, passing within a few miles of a hill on which they had buried one of their European officers after that war, solicited permission to go and make their 'salâm' to the tomb, and all went who were off duty.[39] The system which now keeps the greater part of our native infantry at small stations of single regiments in times of peace tends to preserve this good tone of feeling between officers and men, at the same time that it promotes the general welfare of the country by giving confidence everywhere to the peaceful and industrious classes.
I will not close this chapter without mentioning one thing which I have no doubt every Company's officer in India will concur with me in thinking desirable to improve the good feeling of the native soldiery--that is, an increase in the pay of the Jemadârs. They are commissioned officers, and seldom attain the rank in less than from twenty-five to thirty years;[40] and they have to provide themselves with clothes of the same costly description as those of the Sûbadâr; to be as well mounted, and in all respects to keep the same respectability of appearance, while their pay is only twenty-four rupees and a half a month; that is, ten rupees a month only more than they had been receiving in the grade of Havildârs, which is not sufficient to meet the additional expenses to which they become liable as commissioned officers. Their means of remittance to their families are rather diminished than increased by promotion, and but few of them can hope ever to reach the next grade of Sûbadâr. Our Government, which has of late been so liberal to its native civil officers, will, I hope, soon take into consideration the claims of this class, who are universally admitted to be the worst paid class of native public officers in India. Ten rupees a month addition to their pay would be of great importance; it would enable them to impart some of the advantages of promotion to their families, and improve the good feeling of the circles around them towards the Government they serve.[41]
Notes:
1. This chapter and the following one were printed as a separate tract at Calcutta in 1841 (see Bibliography). That small volume included an Introduction and two statistical tables which the author did not reprint. He has utilized extracts from the Introduction in various parts of the Rambles and Recollections. I am not sure that the tract was ever published, though it was printed; for the author says in his Introduction: 'They (scil. these two essays) may never be published; but I cannot deny myself the gratification of printing them.'
2. This order is confined to the Indian Army.
3. The punishment of working on the roads is long obsolete.
4. The author spells this word 'sipahee'. I have thought it better to use throughout the now familiar corruption.
5. The ordinary infantry pay was raised from seven to nine rupees in 1895.
6. General Orders by the Commander-in-Chief of the 5th of January, 1797, declare that no sepoy or trooper of our native army shall be dismissed from the service by the sentence of any but a general court martial. General Orders by the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Combermere, of the 19th of March, 1827, declare that his Excellency is of opinion that the quiet and orderly habits of the native soldiers are such that it can very seldom be necessary to have recourse to the punishment of flogging, which might be almost entirely abolished with great advantage to their character and feelings; and directs that no native soldier shall in future be sentenced to corporal punishment unless for the crime of stealing, marauding, or gross insubordination, where the individuals are deemed unworthy to continue in the ranks of the army. No such sentence by a regimental, detachment, or brigade court martial was to be carried into effect till confirmed by the general officer commanding the division. When flogged the soldier was invariably to be discharged from the service.
A circular letter from the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Combermere, on the 16th of June, 1827, directs that sentence to corporal punishment is not to be restricted to the three crimes of theft, marauding, or gross insubordination; but that it is not to be awarded except for very serious offences against discipline, or actions of a disgraceful or infamous nature, which show those who committed them to be unfit for the service; that the officer who assembles the court may remit the sentence of corporal punishment, and the dismissal involved in it; but cannot carry it into effect till confirmed by the officer commanding the division, except when an immediate example is indispensably necessary, as in the case of plundering and violence on the part of soldiers in the line of march. In all cases the soldier who has been flogged must be dismissed.
A circular letter by the Commander-in-Chief, Sir E. Barnes, 2nd of November, 1832, dispenses with the duty of submitting the sentence of regimental, detachment, and brigade courts martial for confirmation to the general officer commanding the division; and authorizes the officer who assembles the court to carry the sentence into effect without reference to higher authority; and to mitigate the punishment awarded, or remit it altogether; and to order the dismissal of the soldier who has been sentenced to corporal punishment, though he should remit the flogging, 'for it may happen that a soldier may be found guilty of an offence which renders it improper that he should remain any longer in the service, although the general conduct of the man has been such that an example is unnecessary; or he may have relations in the regiment of excellent character, upon whom some part of the disgrace would fall if he were flogged.' Still no court martial but a general one could sentence a soldier to be simply dismissed. To secure his dismissal they must first sentence him to be flogged.
On the 24th of February, 1835, the Governor-General of India in Council, Lord William Bentinck, directed that the practice of punishing soldiers of the native army by the cat-o'-nine-tails, or rattan, be discontinued at all the presidencies; and that henceforth it shall be competent to any regimental, detachment, or brigade court martial to sentence a soldier of the native army to dismissal from the service for any offence for which such soldier might now be punished by flogging, provided such sentence of dismissal shall not be carried into effect unless confirmed by the general or other officer commanding the division.'
For crimes involving higher penalties, soldiers were, as heretofore, committed for trial before general courts martial.
By Act 23 of 1839, passed by the Legislative Council of India on the 23rd of September, it is made competent for courts martial to sentence soldiers of the native army in the service of the East India Company to the punishment of dismissal, and to be imprisoned, with or without hard labour, for any period not exceeding two years, if the sentence be pronounced by a general court martial; and not exceeding one year, if by a garrison or line court martial; and not exceeding six months, if by a regimental or district court martial. Imprisonment for any period with hard labour, or for a term exceeding six months without hard labour, to involve dismissal. Act 2 of 1840 provides for such sentences of imprisonment being carried into execution by magistrates or other officers in charge of the gaols. [W. H. S.]
This last paragraph has been brought up from the end of the volume where it is printed in the original edition.
The army has been completely reorganized since the author's time, and the regulations have been much modified.
In October, 1833, Lord William Bentinck had assumed the command of the army, on the retirement of Sir Edward Barnes, and thus combined the offices of Governor-General and Commander-in-Chief, as the Marquis Cornwallis and the Marquis of Hastings had done before him.
7. Batavia was occupied by Sir Samuel Auchmuty in August, and the whole island was taken possession of in September, 1811. But at the general peace which followed the great war the island of Java, with its dependencies, was restored to the Dutch.
8. The Isle of France, otherwise called the Mauritius, which is still British territory, was gallantly taken at the end of November, 1810, by Commodore Rowley and Major-General Abercrombie. Full details of the Java and Mauritius expeditions are given in Thornton's twenty- second chapter. The brilliant operations in both localities deserve more attention than they usually receive from students of Indian history.
9. The funeral obsequies which are everywhere offered up to the manes of parents by the surviving head of the family during the last fifteen days of the month Kuâr (September) were never considered as acceptable from the hands of a soldier in our service who had been tied up and flogged, whatever might have been the nature of the offence for which he was punished; any head of a family so flogged lost by that punishment the most important of his civil rights--that, indeed, upon which all others hinged, for it is by presiding at the funeral ceremonies that the head of the family secures and maintains his recognition. [W. H. S.] I have invariably found that natives of India, enjoying a good social position, who happen to be interested in an offender, care nothing for the disgraceful nature of the offender's crime, while they dread the disgrace of the punishment, however just it may be.
10. The worst feature of this abolition measure is unquestionably the odious distinction which it leaves in the punishments to which our European and our native soldiers are liable, since the British legislation does not consider that it can be safely abolished in the British army. This odious distinction might be easily removed by an enactment declaring that European soldiers in India should be liable to corporal punishment for only two offences: first, mutiny, or gross insubordination; second, plunder or violence while the regiment or force to which the prisoner belongs is in the field or marching. The same enactment might declare the soldiers of our native army liable to the same punishments for the same offences. Such an enactment would excite no discontent among our native soldiery; on the contrary, it would be applauded as just and proper. [W. H. S.] Subsequently, corporal punishment in the Indian or native army was again legalized. The present law is thus stated by Sir Edwin Collen: 'A "summary court martial"... may pass any sentence allowed by the articles of war, except . . . and may carry it out at once. Corporal punishment not exceeding fifty lashes may be given for certain offences, but is rarely awarded, and the amount of military crime is, on the whole, very small in the native army. The native officers have power to inflict minor punishments' [_I.G. (1908), vol. iv, p. 370].
Flogging in the British army in time of peace was prohibited in April, 1868, by an amendment to the Mutiny Bill, and was completely abolished by the Army Discipline Act of 1881.
11. The author also gives the Hindustani word as 'kaelkur-hin', which seems to be intended for qâil kareñ, or in rustic form karahiñ, meaning 'confute'.
12. No wonder that the native army, pampered in this sentimental fashion, gradually became more and more inefficient, till it needed the fires of the Mutiny to purge away its humours. No army could be efficient when its subordinate officers on the active list were men of sixty or seventy years of age.
13. The sepoys were quite right; no other service in the world was managed on such principles. The illusion of the old Company's officers about the gratitude and affection of the men generally was rudely dispelled nineteen years after the conversations recorded in the text. But, even in 1857. a noble minority remained faithful and did devoted service.
14. The best troops now are the Sikhs, Gôrkhâs, and frontier Muhammadans. Oudh men still enlist in large numbers, but do not enjoy their old prestige. The army known to the author comprised no Sikhs, Gôrkhâs, or frontier Muhammadans. The recruitment of Gôrkhâs only began in 1838, and the other two classes of troops were obtained by the annexation of the Panjâb in 1849.
15. Enlistment in the native army is absolutely voluntary, and does not even require to be stimulated by a bounty. A subsequent passage shows that the author refuses to describe the British army as an 'entirety voluntary' one, because a soldier when once enlisted is bound to serve for a definite term; whereas the sepoy could resign when he chose.
16. Desertions are frequent among the regiments recruited on the Afghan frontier. These regiments did not exist in the author's day.
17. An ordinance issued in France so late as 1778 required that a man should produce proof of four quarterings of nobility before he could get a commission in the army. [W. H. S.]
18. 'Est et alia causa, cur attenuatae sint legiones,' says Vegetius. 'Magnus in illis labor est militandi, graviora arma, sera munera, severior disciplila. Quod vitantes plerique, in auxiliis festinant militiae sacramenta percipere, ubi et minor sudor, et maturiora sunt premia.' Lib._ II. cap. 3. [W. H. S.] Vegetius, according to Gibbon and his most recent editor (recensuit Carolus Lang. Editio altera. Lipsiae, Teubner, 1885), flourished during the reign of Valentinian III (A.D. 425-55). His 'Soldier's Pocket-book' is entitled 'Flavi Vegeti Renati Epitoma Rei Militaris'.
'Montesquieu thought that 'the Government had better have stuck to the old practice of slitting noses and cutting off ears, since the French soldiers, like the Roman dandies under Pompey, must necessarily have a greater dread of a disfigured face than of death. It did not occur to him that France could retain her soldiers by other and better motives. See Spirit of Laws, book vi, chap. 12. See Necker on the Finances, vol. ii, chap. 5; vol. iii, chap. 34. A day-labourer on the roads got fifteen sous a day; and a French soldier only six, at the very time that the mortality of an army of forty thousand men sent to the colonies was annually 13,333, or about one in three. In our native army the sepoy gets about double the wages of an ordinary day-labourer; and his duties, when well done, involve just enough of exercise to keep him in health. The casualties are perhaps about one in a hundred. [W. H. S.]
20. Just precisely what the French soldiers were after the revolution had purged France of all 'the perilous stuff that weighed upon the heart' of its people. Gibbon, in considering the chance of the civilized nations of Europe ever being again overrun by the barbarians from the North, as in the time of the Romans, says: 'If a savage conqueror should issue from the deserts of Tartary, he must repeatedly vanquish the robust peasantry of Russia, the numerous armies of Germany, the gallant nobles of France, and the intrepid free men of Britain.' Never was a more just, yet more unintended satire upon the state of a country. Russia was to depend upon her 'robust peasantry'; Germany upon her 'numerous armies'; England upon her 'intrepid free men'; and poor France upon her 'gallant nobles' alone; because, unhappily, no other part of her vast population was then ever thought of. When the hour of trial came, those pampered nobles who had no feeling in common with the people were shaken off' like dew-drops from the lion's mane'; and the hitherto spurned peasantry of France, under the guidance and auspices of men who understood and appreciated them, astonished the world with their powers. [W. H. S.]
21. The allusion is to the now half-forgotten war with the United States in the years 1812-14, during the course of which the English captured the city of Washington, and the Americans gained some unexpected naval victories.
22. The author has already denounced the practice of impressment, ante, chapter 26, note 27.
23. 'to' in the original edition.
24. See McCulloch, Pol. Econ., p. 235, 1st ed., Edinburgh, 1825. [W. H. S.]
25. Many German princes adopted the discipline of Frederick in their little petty states, without exactly knowing why or wherefore. The Prince of Darmstadt conceived a great passion for the military art; and when the weather would not permit him to worry his little army of five thousand men in the open air, he had them worried for his amusement under sheds. But he was soon obliged to build a wall round the town in which he drilled his soldiers for the sole purpose of preventing their running away--round this wall he had a regular chain of sentries to fire at the deserters. Mr. Moore thought that the discontent in this little band was greater than in the Prussian army, inasmuch as the soldiers saw no object but the prince's amusement. A fight, or the prospect of a fight, would have been a feast to them. [W. H. S.] It is hardly necessary to observe that the modern system of drill is widely different.
26. Speaking of the question whether recruits drawn from the country or the towns are best, Vegetius says: 'De qua parte numquam credo potuisse dubitari, aptiorem armis rusticam plebem, quae sub divo et in labore nutritur; solis patiens; umbrae negligens; balnearum nescia; delictarurum ignara; simplicis animi; parvo contenta; duratis ad omnem laborem membris; cui gestara ferrum, fossam ducere, onus ferre, consuetudo de rare est.' (De Re Militari, Lib. i, cap. 3.) [W. H. S.] The passage quoted is disfigured by many misprints in the original edition.
27. As the Madras sepoys do.
28. The writing of the bulk of this work was completed in 1839. These concluding supplementary chapters on the Bengal army seem to have been written a little later, perhaps in 1841, the year in which they were first printed. The publication of the complete work took place in 1844. The Mutiny broke out in 1857, and proved that the fidelity of the sepoys could not be so easily assured as the author supposed.
29. I believe the native army to be better now than it ever was-- better in its disposition and in its organization. The men have now a better feeling of assurance than they formerly had that all their rights will be secured to them by their European officers that all those officers are men of honour, though they have not all of them the same fellow feeling that their officers had with them in former days. This is because they have not the same opportunity of seeing their courage and fidelity tried in the same scenes of common danger. Go to Afghanistan and China, and you will find the feeling between officers and men as fine as ever it was in days of yore, whatever it may be at our large and gay stations, where they see so little of each other. [W. H. S.] The author's reputation for sagacity and discernment could not be made to rest upon the above remarks. His judgement was led astray by his lifelong association with and affection for the native troops. Lord William Bentinck took a far juster view of the situation, and understood far better the real nature of the ties which bind the native army to its masters. His admirable minute dated 13th March, 1835, published for the first time in Mr. D. Boulger's well-written little book (Lord William Bentinck, 'Rulers of India', pp. 177-201), is still worthy of study. As a corrective to the author's too effusive sentiment, some brief passages from the Governor-General's minute may be quoted. 'In considering the question of internal danger,' he observes, 'those officers most conversant with Indian affairs who were examined before the Parliamentary Committee apprehend no danger to our dominion as long as we are assured of the fidelity of our native troops. To this opinion I entirely subscribe. But others again view in the native army itself the source of our greatest peril. In all ages the military body has been often the prime cause, but generally the instrument, of all revolutions; and proverbial almost as is the fidelity of the native soldier to the chief whom he serves, more especially when he is justly and kindly treated, still we cannot be blind to the fact that many of those ties which bind other armies to their allegiance are totally wanting in this. Here is no patriotism, no community of feeling as to religion or birthplace, no influencing attachment from high considerations, or great honours and rewards. Our native army also is extremely ignorant, capable of the strongest religions excitement, and very sensitive to disrespect to their persona or infringement of their customs. . . . In the native army alone rests our internal danger, and this danger may involve our complete subversion. . . .
'All these facts and opinions seem to me to establish incontrovertibly that a large proportion of European troops is necessary for our security under all circumstances of peace and war. . . .
'I believe the sepoys have never been so good as they were in the earliest part of our career; none superior to those under De Boigne. . . I fearlessly pronounce the Indian army to be the least efficient and most expensive in the world.'
The events of 1857-9 proved the truth of Lord William Bentinck's wise words. The native army is no longer inefficient as a whole, though certain sections of it may still be so, but the less that is said about the supposed affection of mercenary troops for a foreign government, the better.
30. Of course, all the military forces, British and Indian, are now alike the King's. Each service has its own rules and regulations.
31. 'General Baird had started from Bombay in the end of December 1800, but only arrived at Kossir, on the coast of Upper Egypt, on the 8th of June. In nine days, with a force of 6,400 British and native troops, he traversed 140 miles of desert to the Nile, and reached Cairo on 10th August with hardly any loss. The united force then marched down on Alexandria, and on 31st August Menou capitulated, and the whole French army evacuated Egypt.' (Balfour, Cyclopaedia, 3rd ed., s.v. 'Egypt.') The Indian native army again did brilliant service in the Egyptian campaign of 1882.
32. Great progress has been made in the task of lightening the miseries of European soldiers in India by the provision of innocent amusements. Lord Roberts, during his long tenure of the office of Commander-in-Chief, pre-eminently showed himself to be the soldier's friend.
33. Their commanding officers say, as Pharaoh said to the Israelites, 'Let there be more work laid upon them, that they may labour therein, and not enter into vain discourses.' Life to such men becomes intolerable; and they either destroy themselves, or commit murder, that they may be taken to a distant court for trial. [W. H. S.] The quotation is from Exodus v. 9. The Authorized Version is, 'Let there be more work laid upon the men, that they may labour therein; and let them not regard vain words.'
34. See Livy, lib. ii, cap. 59. The infantry under Fabius had refused to conquer, that their general, whom they hated, might not triumph; but the whole army under Claudius, whom they had more cause to detest, not only refused to conquer, but determined to be conquered, that he might be involved in their disgrace. All the abilities of Lucullus, one of the ablest generals Rome ever had, were rendered almost useless by his disregard to the feelings of his soldiers. He could not perceive that the civil wars under Marius and Sylla had rendered a different treatment of Roman soldiers necessary to success in war. Pompey, his successor, a man of inferior military genius, succeeded much better because he had the sagacity to see that he now required not only the confidence but the affections of his soldiers. Caesar to abilities even greater than those of Lucullus united the conciliatory spirit of Pompey [W. H. S.]
35. This curious incident, which is not mentioned by Thornton in the detailed account of the Nepalese War given in his twenty-fourth chapter, may be the failure of the 53rd Regiment to support General Gllespie in the attack on Kalanga, in 1814, not 1815 (Mill, Bk. II, chap. 1; vol. viii, p. 19, ed. 1858). The war was notable for the number of blunders and failures which marked its earlier stages.
36. Vegetius, De Re Militari, Lib. iii, cap. 4, If corporal punishment be retained at all, it should be limited to the two offences I have already mentioned; [W. H. S.] namely, (l) mutiny or gross insubordination, (2) plunder or violence in the field or on the march. (Ante, chapter 76, note 6.)
37. Polybius says that 'as the human body is apt to get out of order under good feeding and little exercise, so are states and armies.' (Bk. II, chap. 6.)--Wherever food is cheap, and the air good, native regiments should be well exercised without being worried.
I must here take the liberty to give an extract from a letter from one of the best and most estimable officers now in the Bengal army: 'As connected with the discipline of the native army, I may here remark that I have for some years past observed on the part of many otherwise excellent commanding officers a great want of attention to the instruction of the young European officers on first joining their regiments. I have had ample opportunities of seeing the great value of a regular course of instruction drill for at least six months. When I joined my first regiment, which was about forty years ago, I had the good fortune to be under a commandant and adjutant who, happily for me and many others, attached great importance to this very necessary course of instruction, I then acquired a thorough knowledge of my duties, which led to my being appointed an adjutant very early in life. When I attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel I had, however, opportunities of observing how very much this essential duty had been neglected in certain regiments, and made it a rule in all that I commanded to keep all young officers on first joining at the instruction drill till thoroughly grounded in their duties. Since I ceased to command a regiment, I have taken advantage of every opportunity to express to those commanding officers with whom I have been in correspondence my conviction of the great advantages of this system to the rising generation. In going from one regiment to another I found many curious instances of ignorance on the part of young officers who had been many years with their corps. It was by no means an easy task to convince them that they really knew nothing, or at least had a great deal to learn; but when they were made sensible of it, they many of them turned out excellent officers, and now, I believe, bless the day they were first put under me.'
The advantages of the System here mentioned cannot be questioned; and it is much to be regretted that it is not strictly enforced in every regiment in the service. Young officers may find it irksome at first; but they soon become sensible of the advantages, and learn to applaud the commandant who has had the firmness to consult their permanent interests more than their present inclinations. [W. H. S.]
38. Among the many changes produced in India by the development of the railway system and by other causes one of the most striking is the abolition of small military stations. Almost all these have disappeared, and the troops are now massed in large cantonments, where they can be handled much more effectively than in out-stations. The discipline of small detached bodies of troops is generally liable to deterioration.
39. Many instances of semi-religious honour paid by natives to the tombs of Europeans have been noticed.
40. There are, I believe, many Jemadârs who still wear medals on their breasts for their service in the taking of Java and the Isle of France more than thirty years ago. Indeed, I suspect that some will be found who accompanied Sir David Baird to Egypt. [W. H. S.] Such old men must have been perfectly useless as officers. Sir David Baird' s operations took place in 1801.
41. The rate of pay of Jemadârs in the Bengal Native Infantry now is either forty or fifty rupees monthly. Half of the officers of this rank in each regiment receive the higher rate. The grievance complained of by the author has, therefore, been remedied. The pay of a Havîldâr is still, or was recently, fourteen rupees a month.
77. Invalid Establishment
I have said nothing in the foregoing chapter of the invalid establishment, which is probably the greatest of all bonds between the Government and its native army, and consequently the greatest element in the 'spirit of discipline'. Bonaparte, who was, perhaps, with all his faults, 'the greatest man that ever floated on the tide of time', said at Elba, 'There is not even a village that has not brought forth a general, a colonel, a captain, or a prefect, who has raised himself by his especial merit, and illustrated at once his family and his country.' Now we know that the families and the village communities in which our invalid pensioners reside never read newspapers,[1] and feel but little interest in the victories in which these pensioners may have shared. They feel that they have no share in the éclat or glory which attend them; but they everywhere admire and respect the government which cherishes its faithful old servants, and enables them to spend the 'winter of their days' in the bosoms of their families; and they spurn the man who has failed in his duty towards that government in the hour of need.
No sepoy taken from the Râjpût communities of Oudh or any other part of the country can hope to conceal from his family circle or village community any act of cowardice, or anything else which is considered disgraceful to a soldier, or to escape the odium which it merits in that circle and community.
In the year 1819 I was encamped near a village in marching through Oudh, when the landlord, a very cheerful old man, came up to me with his youngest son, a lad of eighteen years of age, and requested me to allow him (the son) to show me the best shooting grounds in the neighbourhood. I took my 'Joe Manton' and went out. The youth showed me some very good ground, and I found him an agreeable companion, and an excellent shot with his matchlock. On our return we found the old man waiting for us. He told me that he had four sons, all by God's blessing tall enough for the Company's service, in which one had attained the rank of 'havîldâr' (sergeant), and two were still sepoys. Their wives and children lived with him; and they sent home every month two-thirds of their pay, which enabled him to pay all the rent of the estate and appropriate the whole of the annual returns to the subsistence and comfort of the numerous family. He was, he said, now growing old, and wished his eldest son, the sergeant, to resign the service and come home to take upon him the management of the estate; that as soon as he could be prevailed upon to do so, his old wife would permit my sporting companion, her youngest son, to enlist, but not before.
I was on my way to visit Fyzabad, the old metropolis of Oudh,[2] and on returning a month afterwards in the latter end of January, I found that the wheat, which was all then in ear, had been destroyed by a severe frost. The old man wept bitterly, and he and his old wife yielded to the wishes of their youngest son to accompany me and enlist in my regiment, which was then stationed at Partâbgarh.[3]
We set out, but were overtaken at the third stage by the poor old man, who told me that his wife had not eaten or slept since the boy left her, and that he must go back and wait for the return of his eldest brother, or she certainly would not live. The lad obeyed the call of his parents, and I never saw or heard of the family again.
There is hardly a village in the kingdom of Oudh without families like this depending upon the good conduct and liberal pay of sepoys in our infantry regiments, and revering the name of the government they serve, or have served. Similar villages are to be found scattered over the provinces of Bihâr and Benares, the districts between the Ganges and Jumna, and other parts where Râjpûts and the other classes from which we draw our recruits have been long established as proprietors and cultivators of the soil.
These are the feelings on which the spirit of discipline in our native army chiefly depends, and which we shall, I hope, continue to cultivate, as we have always hitherto done, with care; and a commander must take a great deal of pains to make his men miserable, before he can render them, like the soldiers of Frederick, 'the irreconcilable enemies of their officers and their government'.
In the year 1817 I was encamped in a grove on the right bank of the Ganges below Monghyr,[4] when the Marquis of Hastings was proceeding up the river in his fleet, to put himself at the head of the grand division of the army then about to take the field against the Pindhârîs and their patrons, the Marâthâ, chiefs. Here I found an old native pensioner, above a hundred years of age. He had fought under Lord Clive at the battle of Plassey, A.D. 1757, and was still a very cheerful, talkative old gentleman, though he had long lost the use of his eyes. One of his sons, a grey-headed old man, and a Sûbadâr (captain) in a regiment of native infantry, had been at the taking of Java,[5] and was now come home on leave to visit his father. Other sons had risen to the rank of commissioned officers, and their families formed the aristocracy of the neighbourhood. In the evening, as the fleet approached, the old gentleman, dressed in his full uniform of former days as a commissioned officer, had himself taken out close to the bank of the river, that he might be once more during his life within sight of a British Commander-in-Chief, though he could no longer see one. There the old patriarch sat listening with intense delight to the remarks of the host of his descendants around him, as the Governor-General's magnificent fleet passed along,[6] every one fancying that he had caught a glimpse of the great man, and trying to describe him to the old gentleman, who in return told them (no doubt for the thousandth time) what sort of a person the great Lord Clive was. His son, the old Sûbadâr, now and then, with modest deference, venturing to imagine a resemblance between one or the other, and his beau idéal of a great man, Lord Lake. Few things in India have interested me more than scenes like these.
I have no means of ascertaining the number of military pensioners in England or in any other European nation, and cannot, therefore, state the proportion which they bear to the actual number of forces kept up. The military pensioners in our Bengal establishment on the 1st of May, 1841, were 22,381; and the family pensioners, or heirs of soldiers killed in action, 1,730; total 24,111, out of an army of 82,027 men. I question whether the number of retired soldiers maintained at the expense of government bears so large a proportion to the number actually serving in any other nation on earth.[7] Not one of the twenty-four thousand has been brought on, or retained upon, the list from political interest or court favour; every one receives his pension for long and faithful services, after he has been pronounced by a board of European surgeons as no longer fit for the active duties of his profession; or gets it for the death of a father, husband, or son, who has been killed in the service of government.
All are allowed to live with their families, and European officers are stationed at central points in the different parts of the country where they are most numerous to pay them their stipends every six months. These officers are at-- 1st, Barrackpore; 2nd, Dinapore; 3rd, Allahabad; 4th, Lucknow; 5th, Meerut. From these central points they move twice a year to the several other points within their respective circles of payment where the pensioners can most conveniently attend to receive their money on certain days, so that none of them have to go far, or to employ any expensive means to get it--it is, in fact, brought home as near as possible to their doors by a considerate and liberal government.[8]
Every soldier is entitled to a pension when pronounced by a board of surgeons as no longer fit for the active duties of his profession, after fifteen years' active service; but to be entitled to the pension of his rank in the army, he must have served in such rank for three years. Till he has done so he is entitled only to the pension of that immediately below it. A sepoy gets four rupees a month, that is, about one-fourth more than the ordinary wages of common uninstructed labour throughout the country.[9] But it will be better to give the rate of pay of the native officers and men of our native infantry and that of their retired pensions in one table.
TABLE OF THE RATE OF PAY AND RETIRED PENSIONS OF THE NATIVE OFFICERS AND SOLDIERS OF OUR NATIVE INFANTRY.
Rank Rate of Pay Rate of per Pension per Mensem. Mensem.
Rupees. Rupees.
A Sepoy, or private soldier. (Note.-- After sixteen years' service eight rupees a month, after twenty years he gets nine rupees a month) . . 7.0 4.0 A Nâik, or corporal . . . . 12.0 7.0 A Havîldâr, or sergeant . . . . 14.0 7.0 A Jemadâr, subaltern commissioned officer 24.8 13.0 Sûbadâr, or Captain . . . . 67.0 25.0 Sûbadâr Major . . . . . 92.0 0.0[a] A Sûbadâr, after forty years service . 0.0 50.0 A Sûbadâr Bahâdur of the Order of British India, First Class, two rupees a day extra; Second Class, one Rupee a day extra. This extra allowance they enjoy after they retire from the service during life.[b]
a. I presume this means that no special rate of pension was fixed for the rank of Sûbadâr Major.
b. The monthly rates of pay and pension now in force for native officers and men of the Bengal army are as follows:
Rank Pay. Pension.
Ordinary. Superior. Ordinary. Superior. Rs. Rs. Rs. Rs.
Sûbadâr 80 100[c] 30 50 Jemadâr 40 50[c] 15 25 Havîldâr 14 -- 7 12 Naick (nâik) 12 -- 7 12 Drummer or Bugler 7 -- 4 7 Sepoy 7 -- 4 7
c. Half of this rank in each regiment receive the higher rate of pay.
The circumstances which, in the estimation of the people, distinguish the British from all other rulers in India, and make it grow more and more upon their affections, are these: The security which public servants enjoy in the tenure of their office; the prospect they have of advancement by the gradation of rank; the regularity and liberal scale of their pay; and the provision for old age, when they have discharged the duties entrusted to them ably and faithfully.[l0] In a native state almost every public officer knows that he has no chance of retaining his office beyond the reign of the present minister or favourite; and that no present minister or favourite can calculate upon retaining his ascendancy over the mind of his chief for more than a few months or years. Under us they see secretaries to government, members of council, and Governors-General themselves going out and coming into office without causing any change in the position of their subordinates, or even the apprehension of any change, as long as they discharge their duties ably and faithfully.
In a native state the new minister or favourite brings with him a whole host of expectants who must be provided for as soon as he takes the helm; and if all the favourites of his predecessor do not voluntarily vacate their offices for them, he either turns them out without ceremony, or his favourites very soon concoct charges against them, which causes them to be tumed out in due form, and perhaps put into jail till they have 'paid the uttermost farthing'. Under us the Governors-General, members of council, the secretaries of state,[11] the members of the judicial and revenue boards, all come into office and take their seats unattended by a single expectant. No native officer of the revenue or judicial department, who is conscious of having done his duty ably and honestly, feels the slightest uneasiness at the change. The consequence is a degree of integrity in public officers never before known in India, and rarely to be found in any other country. In the province where I now write,[12] which consists of six districts, there are twenty-two native judicial officers, Munsifs, Sadr Amîns, and Principal Sadr Amîns;[13] and in the whole province I have never heard a suspicion breathed against one of them; nor do I believe that the integrity of one of them is at this time suspected. The only one suspected within the two and a half years that I have been in the province was, I grieve to say, a Christian; and he has been removed from office, to the great satisfaction of the people, and is never to be employed again.[14] The only department in which our native public servants do not enjoy the same advantages of security in the tenure of their office, prospect of rise in the gradation of rank, liberal scale of pay, and provision for old age, is the police; and it is admitted on all hands that there they are everywhere exceedingly corrupt. Not one of them, indeed, ever thinks it possible that he can be supposed honest; and those who really are so are looked upon as a kind of martyrs or penitents, who are determined by long suffering to atone for past crimes; and who, if they could not get into the police, would probably go long pilgrimages on all fours, or with unboiled peas in their shoes.[15]
He who can suppose that men so inadequately paid, who have no promotion to look forward to, and feel no security in their tenure of office, and consequently no hope of a provision for old age, will be zealous and honest in the discharge of their duties, must be very imperfectly acquainted with human nature--with the motives by which men are influenced all over the world. Indeed, no man does in reality suppose so; on the contrary, every man knows that the same motives actuate public servants in India as elsewhere. We have acted successfully upon this knowledge in all other branches of the public service, and shall, I trust, at no distant period act upon the same in that of the police; and then, and not till then, can it prove to the people what we must all wish it to be, a blessing.
The European magistrate of a district has, perhaps, a million of people to look after.[16] The native officers next under him are the Thânadârs of the different subdivisions of the district, containing each many towns and villages, with a population of perhaps one hundred thousand people. These officers have no grade to look forward to, and get a salary of twenty-five rupees a month each.[17]
They cannot possibly do their duties unless they keep each a couple of horses or ponies, with servants to attend to them; indeed, they are told so by every magistrate who cares about the peace of his district. The people, seeing how much we expect from the Thânadâr, and how little we give him, submit to his demands for contribution without a murmur, and consider almost any demand venial from a man so employed and paid. They are confounded at our inconsistency, and say, where they dare to speak their minds, 'We see you giving high salaries and high prospects of advancement to men who have nothing on earth to do but to collect your revenues and to decide our disputes about pounds, shillings, and pence, which we used to decide much better among ourselves when we had no other court but that of our elders to appeal to; while those who are to protect life and property, to keep peace over the land, and enable the industrious to work in security, maintain their families and pay the government revenue, are left without any prospect of rising, and almost without any pay at all.'
There is really nothing in our rule in India which strikes the people so much as this glaring inconsistency, the evil effects of which are so great and so manifest. The only way to remedy the evil is to give the police what the other branches of the public service already enjoy--a feeling of security in the tenure of office, a higher rate of salary, and, above all, a gradation of rank which shall afford a prospect of rising to those who discharge their duties ably and honestly. For this purpose all that is required is the interposition of an officer between the Thânadâr and the magistrate, in the same way as the Sadr Amîn is now interposed between the Munsif and the Judge.[18] On an average there are, perhaps, twelve Thânas, or police subdivisions, in each district, and one such officer to every four Thânas would be sufficient for all purposes. The Governor-General who shall confer this boon on the people of India will assuredly be hailed as one of their greatest benefactors.[19] I should, I believe, speak within bounds when I say that the Thânadârs throughout the country give at present more than all the money which they receive in avowed salaries from government as a share of indirect perquisites to the native officers of the magistrate's court, who have to send their reports to them, and communicate their orders, and prepare the cases of the prisoners they may send in for commitment to the Sessions courts.[20] The intermediate officers here proposed would obviate all this; they would be to the magistrate at once the tapis of Prince Husain and the telescope of Prince Ali--media that would enable them to be everywhere and see everything.
I may here seem to be 'travelling beyond the record', but it is not so. In treating on the spirit of military discipline in our native army I advocate, as much as in me lies, the great general principle upon which rests, I think, not only our power in India, but what is more, the justification of that power. It is our wish, as it is our interest, to give to the Hindoos and Muhammadans a liberal share in all the duties of administration, in all offices, civil and military, and to show the people in general the incalculable advantages of a strong and settled government, which can secure life, property, and character, and the free enjoyment of all their blessings throughout the land; and give to those who perform duties as public servants ably and honestly a sure prospect of rising by gradation, a feeling of security in their tenure of office, a liberal salary while they serve, and a respectable provision for old age.
It is by a steady adherence to these principles that the Indian Civil Service has been raised to its present high character for integrity and ability; and the native army made what it really is, faithful and devoted to its rulers, and ready to serve them in any quarter of the world.[21] I deprecate any innovation upon these principles in the branches of the public service to which they have already been applied with such eminent success; and I advocate their extension to all other branches as the surest means of making them what they ought and what we must all most fervently wish them to be.
The native officers of our judicial and revenue establishments, or of our native army, are everywhere a bond of union between the governing and the governed.[22] Discharging everywhere honestly and ably their duties to their employers, they tend everywhere to secure to them the respect and affection of the people. His Highness Muhammad S'aîd Khân, the reigning Nawâb of Râmpur, still talks with pride of the days when he was one of our Deputy Collectors in the adjoining district of Badâon, and of the useful knowledge he acquired in that office.[23] He has still one brother a Sadr Amîn in the district of Mainpurî, and another a Deputy Collector in the Hamîrpur District; and neither would resign his situation under the Honourable Company to take office in Râmpur at three times the rate of salary, when invited to do so on the accession of the eldest brother to the 'masnad'. What they now enjoy they owe to their own industry and integrity; and they are proud to serve a government which supplies them with so many motives for honest exertion, and leaves them nothing to fear, as long as they exert themselves honestly. To be in a situation which it is generally understood that none but honest and able men can fill[24] is of itself a source of pride, and the sons of native princes and men of rank, both Hindoo and Muhammadan, everywhere prefer taking office in our judicial and revenue establishments to serving under native rulers, where everything depends entirely upon the favour or frown of men in power, and ability, industry, and integrity can secure nothing.[25]
Notes:
1. This can no longer be safely assumed as true. Newspapers now penetrate to almost every village.
2. Fyzâbâd (Faizâbâd) was the capital for a short time of the Nawâb Wazîrs of Oudh. In 1775 Âsaf-ud-daula moved his court to Lucknow. The city of Ajodhya adjoining Fyzâbâd is of immense antiquity.
3. In. the south of Oudh. It is not now a military station.
4. Monghyr (Mungêr) is the chief town of the district of the same name, which lies to the east of Patna.
5. August, 1811.
6. Such a spectacle is no longer to be seen in India. Four or five inconspicuous railway carriages or motor-cars now take the place of the 'magnificent fleet'.
7. The percentage is 29 1/2.
8. All these arrangements have been changed. Military pensioners are now paid through the civil authorities of each district.
9. Wages are now generally higher.
10. This sentence might misled readers unacquainted with the details of Indian administration. Every official who satisfies the formal rules of the Accounts department gets his pension, as a matter of course, in accordance with those rules, whether his service has been able and faithful or not. The pension list is often the last refuge of incompetent and dishonest officials, to which they are gladly consigned by code-bound superiors, who cannot otherwise get rid of them. Nor am I certain that British rule 'grows more and more upon the affections' of those subject to it.
11. The author means secretaries to the Government of India or provincial governments.
12. The Sâgar and Nerbudda (Narbadâ) Territories, now included in the Central Provinces.
13. The designations Sadr Amîn and Principal Sadr Amîn have been superseded by the title of Subordinate Judge. The officers referred to have only civil jurisdiction, which does not include revenue and rent causes in the United Provinces.
14. Most experienced officers will, I think, agree with me that the author was exceptionally fortunate in his experience. So far as I can make out, the standard of integrity among the higher Indian officials has risen considerably during the last century, but is still a long way from the perfection indicated by the author's remarks.
15. These observations on the police are merely a repetition of the remarks in Chapter 69, which have been discussed in the notes to that chapter.
16. The districts in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh are usually much smaller than those in Bengal or Madras, but even in Northern India a district with only a million of inhabitants is considered to be rather a small one. Some districts have a population of more than three millions each.
17. All has been changed. Many comparatively well paid officials of Indian birth now intervene between the District Magistrate and the small people on twenty-five rupees a month. Sometimes the District Magistrate himself is an Indian.
18. The anthor's note to this passage repeats the quotation from Hobbes's Leviathan, Part II, sect. 30, which has been already cited in the text, chapter 69, following [12], and need not be repeated here. The note continues: 'Almost every Thânadâr in our dominions is a little Tarquin in his way, exciting the indignation of the people against his master. When we give him the proper incentives to good, we shall be able with better conscience to punish him severely for bad conduct. The interposition of the officers I propose between him and the magistrate will give him the required incentive to good conduct, at the same time that it will deprive him of all hope of concealing his "evil ways", should he continue in them.' [W. H. S.] He still manages to continue in his evil ways, and generally to conceal them.
19. This statement seems almost like sarcasm to a reader who knows what manner of men well-paid Inspectors of Police commonly are, and how they are regarded by the non-official population. They are not usually reverenced as 'protectors of the poor'.
20. The reader who is not practically acquainted with the work of administration in India will probably think that the magistrate who allows such intrigues to go on must be very careless and inefficient. But that thought, though very natural, would be unjust. The author was one of the best possible district magistrates, and yet was unable to suppress the evils which he describes, nor have the remedies which he advocated, and which have been adopted, proved effectual. The Thânadâr now has generally to pay the Inspector and the people in the District Superintendent's office, in addition to 'the native officers of the magistrate's court'.
21. We have already seen how mistaken the author was concerning the army.
22. This statement requires to be guarded by many qualifications. The author's following remarks only illustrate the well-known fact that in India official rank is ardently desired by the classes eligible for it, and carries with it great social advantages.
23. Râmpur is the small Rohilla state within the borders of the Bareilly District, United Provinces.
24. This description of the class of officials alluded to is somewhat idealized, though it applies to a considerable proportion of the class.
25. These propositions were, doubtless, literally correct in the author's time, but they are not at all fully applicable to the existing state of affairs.