Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎465v] (55/238)

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Lord Canning and Lord Milner.
Ellenborough, with good reason, asked the Lords to
imagine what effect the confiscation of their lands would
have on the disarmed Sepoys Term used in English to refer to an Indian infantryman. Carries some derogatory connotations as sometimes used as a means of othering and emphasising race, colour, origins, or rank. , twenty-one regiments of
infantry, six of cavalry, half of whom came from Oudh,
whom we had to watch with British troops, exactly as the
Boer prisoners in India are watched now. He said:
“They cannot have been engaged in the rebellion. They
have been almost maddened by the attacks made on them
in the course of the Mutiny, and which they have learned
from the newspapers. They have been threatened with
hanging, with being blown from guns, with transportation,
and they are now under a panic.” Besides, he added,
we had come to the end of our military resources, and a
loan of ^10,000,000 had caused financial difficulties. The
Duke of Newcastle, in support of the Minister, quoted the
opinion of Sir George Clerk, a distinguished Indian
Governor : “ If severity is persisted in, no amount of force
sent from this country will enable you permanently to retain
your authority in peace.” Sir Erskine Perry, an Indian
Chief Justice, urged that the Oudh people were under the
protection of international law and the rights of war. Sir
James Graham also cited Sir John Lawrence as in favour
of amnesty, along with Outram and General Mansfield,
chief of Lord Clyde’s staff. He relied, further, on Welling
ton s advice to Sir Charles Napier, the conqueror of Sind,
and quoted Machiavelli’s piece of statecraft, that it is
safer to kill the owner first, before you confiscate his pro
perty. He suspected that Canning, foolishly relying on
timid Civil Servants, had rejected the more prudent pro
posals of men like Clyde. John Bright began his speech
with the remark that we were all agreed with the Directors
of the East India Company that the people of Oudh were
enemies rather than rebels, and so were entitled to all the
rights of war , therefore, he said, “ I do not see how any
one, claiming to be an Englishman and a Christian, can by
any possibility escape condemning the policy of the pro
clamation.” These arguments were met with the fact that