An anecdote will show the current feeling, as a straw how the wind blows.

On the gathering together of the force for our first great struggle in the Punjab, Major Broadfoot was the Political authority endeavouring to bring the Khalsa' to reason. He was a man of great

ability, and was justly lamented in the public notice of his death issued by the Governor-General.

'Them Politicals spoils all,' said one soldier to another, as they marched along towards the battle ground; we shall yet have all our trouble for nothing with their palavering.' To which his comrade replied, smacking his hand on the eighteenpounder they were escorting: 'Them's your Politicals; a fig for other sorts!' There is much of homely truth in this view of things. Force is the ultima ratio on which human empire is based; but it is moral as well as physical, and has to be wielded skilfully to be of use.

Owing to the large field for selection offered by the Military services of India, and the training so many undergo in the extra regimental duties on which they are employed, the Political Department

has been mainly recruited from the army, though the Civil services have also furnished brilliant names, such as Metcalfe and Elphinstone.

As regards their duties in maintaining peace and order, these are, unhappily for mankind, far less appreciated than those of war. It is easy to pick a quarrel and give plausible reasons for so doing; honours are then showered down on the successful parties, whilst men who have endeavoured to save bloodshed, and have succeeded, remain unknown. Valuable goods received and no questions asked, may be a maxim calculated to enrich a pawnbroker, but it is ill suited to a Christian Throne desirous of maintaining moral supremacy over its distant possessions. With the tendency in high places to reward strife and overlook the labours of peace, greater is the praise due to the large class that has done so much to secure the latter throughout the great continent of India. Had Sir A. Burnes's advice been listened to, there would have been no disastrous campaign in Afghanistan, though Sir John Keane might have missed a barony: had Sir James Outram not been summarily ejected, and the reins

given over to a clever soldier, no contest in Sind, though Sir Charles Napier would have been without his hundred thousand pounds and the army its rich prize-money. The first is not a case exactly in point, because happening in a foreign and independent country; the second is pre-eminently so, and might be borne out by many instances in other parts of India less known to fame. It is to the honour of the Indian Political service that, as a body, it has always advocated peace rather than war, and stood up for British good faith with allies and tributaries, as of more value than British aggrandisement. Yet no men have struck harder or more effectual blows when such became necessary and just.

State pageants and processions, durbars, nautches, fights of elephants and wild beasts, have been written of in abundance. But the daily work, the subtle intrigue, the wild superstitions to be dealt with, the indoor dress, as it were, of an Indian Political's life, are little known.

My original intention was to give in chronological order a series of historic pictures from a

journal kept during the greater part of half a century. But blindness and broken health have compelled me to pass over many years in silence, that before entire prostration, I might place on record facts connected with the great rising of 1857-58, because, strange to say, they have been denied both in Parliament and by the press, and as few of the official documents of the time have seen the light, are generally unknown.

The safety of our position in India is greatly lessened by this ignorance. We have been too apt to regard increase of territory as increase of power, and to study the wishes of the governing nation rather than the feelings of the governed. As long as kingdom after kingdom was added to the Empire, our laws imposed on the people, their religions discountenanced, and our manufactures permitted to drive theirs out of their own markets, all was thought to go swimmingly on. Nobody cared to ask what the natives thought about all this. It needed such an awakening as that of the years mentioned, to teach us a wiser policy. But if the British people are kept in ignorance of the

nature and extent of that crisis, the scare of what they do know will soon pass away, and the lesson have been taught in vain. Some who ought to know better, maintain that there was no rebellion at all, only a partial mutiny caused solely by the greased cartridge. Others that, besides the said mutiny, there were a few local insurrections, unconnected with it. On which plea the troops of Madras and Bombay not reporting to the Horse Guards Commander-in-Chief, were for several years refused the medals they had won and have since received. Some have gone so far as to assert that the chiefs and people were nearly everywhere on our side. There is danger of these opinions gaining ground, chiming in as they do with our selflove and our land hunger, unless those qualified by personal knowledge speak out.

We found by bitter experience that it would not do to govern distant populations against their will; and, having learnt that lesson, allow our

'The one in Bengal is alone recognised as such at the War Office, though he has, or at any rate had, no control over the Madras and Bombay Armies.