46 CAWNPORE.
coercing refractory Rajahs, or scouring the border at the head of five hundred wild Pathan horsemen. What wonder if, under these circumstances, men became sick at heart? Disgusted at their position, they no longer made the welfare and happiness of their soldiers an all-important object: and neglect often deepened into aversion and contempt. The cadets, as was only too natural, caught the prevailing tone. Young men fresh from home are so shocked at the apparent deficiency in the Hindoo character of manliness, honesty, and self-respect, the qualities, which Englishmen most regard, that, so to speak, their better impulses are apt to render them careless of the rights and sentiments of the native population. ‘‘ Do I not well to be insolent ?” is a question asked daily, in a more or less logical form, by the majority of our countrymen in India. It requires a larger stock of philosophy than generally falls to the share of a lad of nineteen in a new red coat, with his first month’s pay in the pocket, to realize the conviction that an imperial people, who undertake to govern others, must first govern themselves; and that it is the height of folly and cruelty to subjugate a hundred millions of men, and then abuse them because they are as God made them, and not as we would fain have them.
And so it came to pass that to be sent back to
