professional reputation and national honour, and even with a strong general attachment to the name of their country, their recollections would be less alive to the paramount obligation of a complete and passive submissiveness to civil authority.

In effect, it does appear to us that the individuals in question, among the bravest, most skilful, and most honourable members of their profession, whom the world can produce, have yet never been able entirely to resist the influence of their situation in the respects described. The following historical sketch, though it refers to a period which some of the observations that we have offered will hardly embrace, may serve to throw light on the general subject under consideration.

'In Bombay, the Military rose upon the civil power, and assumed the government; which they held and retained in their own hands, for the space of about two years.*

A mutiny of the Officers took place in Bengal, in the year 1765; and which was only suppressed by the firmness of the great Lord Clive. 'In or about the year 1776, Major General Stuart, at the head of the Army, seized on the then Governor of Madras, Lord Pigot, confined his person, and subverted his Government.

In the year 1783, the Army of Madras compelled the Governor, Lord Macartney, to revoke his Orders, and re-establish some allowances which he had found it necessary to discontinue. Actual violence was not indeed resorted to; but the receipt of three Addresses on the same day, on the subject, from the three principal stations of the Army, convinced his Lordship of the necessity of giving up the point.

'At a more recent period in Bengal, in or about the year 1796, the countenance which the Army assumed must be fresh in the recollection of every one.'-Reply to Petrie, pp. 34, 35.

It appears farther, from the parliamentary papers before us, that, even at the commencement of the late mutiny, the notion of the rights of the army, and that of forming associations to plead those rights, were familiar to the Madras officers. In notions of this kind, the officers of the Indian army in general, seem to have been occasionally encouraged by the British Government; sometimes, too generously; at other times, very absurdly. Our readers will not condemn the severity of the latter term, when they are told, that persons avowedly acting in the capacity of delegates from the officers of the Indian army, have been admitted to a formal audience by His Majesty's ministers in England. On what principle men of the highest ability, politica knowledge, and patriotism,-for such those ministers were,-could consent thus to recognize in the army an independent and substantive power, we are at a loss to imagine.

* See Orine's Historical Fragments, for an account of this transactio.

VOL. V. NO. IX.

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less be reckoned the unfortunate difference between the government and the late Lieutenant-General Macdowall, the commander in chief of the Madras army. We are far from the uncharitableness of imputing to General Macdowall designs in the remotest degree inconsistent with a true allegiance to his country. But that he demeaned himself somewhat haughtily towards the local government under whose orders he was directly placed, and that his conduct was such as to aggravate the discontents of the army, will fully appear, and is, indeed, we believe, generally confessed. He had been appointed commander in chief on the unexpected recall of Sir John Cradock, in the latter part, if we are not much mistaken, of the year 1807. The command was, on this occasion, offered to him by the East India Directors, unaccompanied with the seat, which his predecessor had enjoyed, in the council of the government. The exclusion of the commander in chief from council, was, it seems, by no means unprecedented; and it could not, in this case, be understood as conveying a reflection on General Macdowall; for the order had been made generally, and comprised the presidency of Bombay no less than that of Madras. One thing, however, is manifest, that, if General Macdowall intended to resent and to complain of the offer, he ought not to have accepted it. He accepted it notwithstanding, and in the hope of inducing the Directors to restore to him what he called his right, made the presidency ring with complaints of the privation which he had suffered. His correspondence with the government, as the parliamentary papers shew, contained perpetual and very pointed allusions to the supposed indignity sustained by the army in his person. That he should have addressed the government on these topics seems scarcely justifiable; for the government neither had, nor could have had, any concern in the affair, General Macdowall having assumed the command of the army previously to the first arrival of Sir George Barlow at Madras. What, however, was far more culpable, this officer was in the habit of appealing on the subject, both publicly and privately, to the judgment and feelings of the officers of the army. The general orders in which he took leave of the army, assign as a cause of his resignation, that, in consequence of the exclusion from council, he found it impossible to exercise the functions of his station, as the representative of the army, with honor to the service, and credit to himself. That, in his private communications, he was wont to express the same feelings in a much more open and inflammatory manner, will be sufficiently evinced by a quotation from one of the pamphlets before us, which is avowedly hostile to the Madras government.

To maintain that influence of which he was deprived by this change

in the constitution of the army, (the exclusion from council,) he courted popularity with the officers at large; he lamented without reserve his inability to support their interests in council, to oppose alterations injurious to their welfare; he commented on the degradation of the army in the person of their commander in chief; and, assuming the character of their representative, induced them, without reflecting on the absolute absurdity of the term, to consider the alteration which had been made in the constitution of the local government as a real military grievance.'-Late Insurrection in India.

These candid admissions seem to establish too clearly the un happy instrumentality of General Macdowall in contributing to excite the mutiny; although nothing, we are firmly persuaded, was farther from the intention of that officer. It is alleged, indeed, that he had suffered various slights from the Madras government; that military appointments had been made, expeditions planned, and equipments prepared, without any previous reference to his judgment. The Madras government, in the strongest manner, and appealing to the public records in proof of their assertion, deny this charge; and, on the only specific complaint urged by General Macdowall himself, they furnish what appears a satisfactory explanation. Of the other and more vague allegations we are unable to form a definitive judgment: nor, perhaps, is it very necessary; for the evident uneasiness of temper which General Macdowall discovers throughout all his correspondence, on whatever subject, makes it probable that, under the impressions with which he received the command, he was not easily to be satisfied; while his inflammatory appeals to the army respecting those official disputes to which all governments are liable, persuade us, that, in times when any cause of apprehension existed with respect to the general dispositions of the army, the office of commander in chief could hardly have been placed in more dangerous hands.

In detailing, which we are now about to do, the transactions in which the mutiny immediately originated, we must go back to a period somewhat earlier than the nomination of General Macdowall. We shall continue the recital down to the point at which the disturbances finally terminated.

The wars in which the East India Company were a few years ago engaged, combined with the pressure to which their trade was subjected from the effects of the distracted state of Europe, greatly embarrassed their finances, and rendered indispensable a reduction of their expenditure. Peremptory and repeated orders to this effect were dispatched to the governments in India, and, in the year 1807, agreeably to those orders, Lord William Bentinck, then Governor of Madras, instituted a minute revision of the establishments of that presidency. On this occasion, the consideration

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consideration of the military charges devolved on Sir John Cradock, then commander in chief of the Madras army; and among the subjects which, in consequence, attracted the attention of that officer, was the eligibility of abolishing a certain monthly allowance, which it had been the practice to grant to the commanders of native corps for the provision of camp equipage, and which was thence commonly called the Tent-Contract. By the desire of the Commander in Chief, the Quarter Master General, Lieutenant Colonel Munro, prepared a detailed report on this point, in which he expressed an opinion strongly adverse to the continuance of the ✓ contract. This report Sir John Cradock highly approved, and transmitted it to the government, with the declaration that it conveyed the result of the joint reflection and experience of himself and the Quarter Master General on the subject. Lord William Bentinck also approved it, and Mr. Petrie, who, on the removal soon afterwards of his Lordship from the government, succeeded him provisionally, forwarded it to the supreme government in Bengal, with strong expressions of recommendation, in which he was unanimously supported by his council. In Bengal it received the sanction of the commander in chief and of the supreme government themselves, and directions were sent to Madras, that the measure should be carried into effect. Before these directions arrived, Sir George Barlow had taken his seat as the Governor of Madras; the duty, therefore, of acting on them fell to him; and he accordingly - abolished the tent-contract by a general order dated May 1808.

In the Report of Colonel Munro, it had been observed that an experience for six years of the system of the tent-contract, and an attentive examination of its effects, had suggested to the writer - various observations on the subject. Under this preamble, six objections to the system were stated; of which the third was, that it placed the interest and the duty of officers, in direct opposition to each other.' The contents of the Report coming to the knowledge of some of the officers commanding native - corps, they construed this objection, in connection with the preamble with which it was introduced, as conveying an insinuation unfavourable to the honour of the whole body. Various letters of complaint on the subject were addressed to General Macdowall, who had succeeded Sir John Cradock in the command of the coast-army; but that officer returned replies, purporting that the question of the tent-contract had been discussed before he came to the command, and the orders prepared without any reference to him, and recommending that the matter should be considered as now at rest. The officers, however, not thinking it proper to abide by this advice, prepared charges against Colonel Munro, for having made use of false and infamous insinuations,

injurious

injurious to their reputation, and demanded that he should be brought to a court-martial. These charges General Macdowall referred to the Judge Advocate General, who returned a detailed and learned opinion, pronouncing them to be illegal. The affair hung in suspense for upwards of two months; when General Macdowall, being then on the eve of his departure for England, unexpectedly placed Colonel Munro under arrest, with the declared intent of leaving him to be brought to trial on the charges preferred against him, by the succeeding Commander in Chief. This arrest took place on the 20th of January, 1809.

On the 23d of the same month, Colonel Munro addressed an appeal to the government, which, according to the rule prescribed for subordinate officers, he attempted to forward through the chan nel of the Commander in Chief. The Commander in Chief returned the address, with a strong reprehension of Colonel Munro, for having claimed the interference of the civil government in a case which, as General Macdowall affirmed, was purely military, Colonel Munro then sent the appeal directly to the Secretary of Government, inclosing his previous correspondence with the Com mander in Chief, and stating that he should have submitted to the rebuke of that officer, if he had not considered the question as involving the anthority of government who had sanctioned and adopted his report. It may be proper to mention, that Colonel Munro had, on the preceding day, sent to the government a letter containing a full account of the case; but that letter never having been acted upon, it is mentioned here, as in fact it seems to have been transmit, ted to England, only on account of the ability with which it treats the questions at issue.

By what means the report, which formed the foundation of this transaction, had fallen into the hands of the complaining officers, cannot be very distinctly ascertained. It had been entered, indeed, on the records of government; but those records, like the official papers of all cabinets, were, in their very nature, secret, till formally disclosed. By the government the obnoxious report was certainly never published, nor in any manner promulgated. It is said by the advocates of the government, that it transpired through the Adjutant General, an officer sufficiently conspicuous in the sequel of the business. From the pamphlets on the other side, it appears that the report had, in the course of business, come into the Adjutant General's office; and that he had objected to it on the very ground afterwards taken by the complaining officers; but they do not, so far as we have discovered, furnish the smallest explanation of the manner in which it obtained publicity.

On receiving the appeal of the Quarter Master General, the government consulted the Advocate General and the Judge Advo