Government. A wise Government would have met these offers with sympathy. The Government of Calcutta met them with language which was tantamount to insult. Whilst the English merchants and traders were told that, if they wished to enrol themselves as special constables, they might apply to the Commissioner of Police, who, it transpired, had been instructed to furnish them with clubs, the French community received from the Home Secretary, Mr Cecil Beadon, a reply which betrayed either infatuation or a determined attempt to deceive: 'Everything is quiet within six hundred miles of the capital. The mischief caused by a passing and groundless panic has been already arrested; and there is every reason to hope that in the course of a few days tranquillity and confidence will be restored throughout the Presidency.' In point of fact, the mischief had not been arrested; everything was not quiet within 600 miles of the capital; and, far from there being reason to hope that in the course of a few days tranquillity and confidence would be restored throughout the Presidency, there was the absolute certainty that disorder and insurrection would enormously increase.
The reply of the Home Secretary, representing the views of the Government, was alike untrue and impolitic. At a critical moment it alienated the sympathies of the Europeans of Calcutta. And it speaks largely in favour of the patriotism and self-abnegation of the members of that community that, about three weeks later, when the boastings of the Home Secretary had vanished into thin air, and the Government saw almost as clearly as the community had seen, at the time of their first offer, the danger of the situation, they agreed to form volunteer corps of the three arms to aid the Government in their dire necessity.
