Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎460r] (44/238)

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Lord Canning and Lord MUner.
of evidence than regimental officers. His brother, the
judge of Futtehpore, who was killed bravely fighting on
the top of his Court-house, lived under the same religious
influences. He it was who set up at the entrance of that
station the four pillars of stone, engraved in Persian and
Hindee, with our Ten Commandments. I have only
instanced two of the many religious men of that time,
whose wisdom and bravery in the awful months of trial were
only equalled by the generous and merciful spirit they
displayed to the beaten enemy. Seldom in history do we
find such simple following of the Christian doctrine about
forgiveness. Others there were, like Colonel Neill, who
justified out of the Old Testament what Sir J. Kaye calls
“ the indiscriminate ferocity of military men.” Many of
these soldiers, however, were just and gentle ; unselfish, con
scientious leaders like Sir James Outram, who silenced afire-
eater with the remark that officers who boast most loudly
of bloodshed are often the least courageous in the battle.
The moral courage, born of religious conviction, appears as
constantly in the civil and military services of that time as
does their calm valour; the intense belief in the moral law,
in the profound gulf between right and wrong, pervades
the memoirs and private letters as well as the official
despatches sent to Lord Canning by his district officers.
Their high sense of duty enabled them to brave un
popularity in withstanding the outcries raised by fear and
revengeful passions.
Lord Canning’s enemies forgot the dangers he had to
meet when he assumed office at Calcutta in March, 1857—
I mean the want of discipline in the Bengal army and the
unrest in Oudh. To abate the first, he promptly asked for
more officers for each British and native regiment, but was
overruled. Lord Dalhousie had protested strongly, but
vainly, when two European regiments were, in 1854, taken
away to the Crimean War, urging that such withdrawals
loosened our hold on India; and certainly the repetition of
this policy, which has greatly weakened the British garrison
THIRD SERIES VOL. XIII.
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