THE STATION. 29
petticoats were designed to remind their wearers that they had been sent to India to exact vengeance for the murder of the English ladies.
The insolence and greed of the soldiers, their impatience of discipline, and their lust of power, were the effective causes of the outbreak. But the proximate cause was the fancied insult which had been offered to their national religion. Upon this most vexed question, a distinguished civil servant, who held high office in Calcutta during those eventful months, is wont to say that he could never trust the judgment of a man who maintains that the greased cartridges had little to do with the mutiny. There are a class of our countrymen who delight in stigmatizing the natives of India as hypocrites and infidels. These men affect to disbelieve in the sincerity of the religious professions of any Mussulman who cannot resist the temptation of iced champagne, or of any Hindoo who indulges himself in a quiet slice of the joint which has appeared at his master’s table. As if the men who are foremost to avenge the wrongs of their creed and to thrust it down the throats of their neighbours were always the most scrupulous in their obedience to its precepts. As if History was not full of covetous Fathers of the Church and polygamous Defenders of the Faith. Jehu was zealous to destroy the priests of the House of Baal, and to
