War, Sir Henry Hardinge was constantly confronted by Mr. Joseph Hume, the well-known Radical M.P. for Montrose, who examined and criticised the estimates for the army with special ability. In the year 1853, when a parliamentary committee was enquiring into the renewal of the East India Company's Charter, Mr. Hume cross-questioned him upon his distribution of patronage in India. Lord Hardinge, amongst other appointments referred to, replied that one of the best men he had brought to the front was a man of extreme democratic views. 'Ah!' said Joseph Hume, 'then you found out that an out-and-out Radical was not such a bad fellow after all[1].'
To Sir H. Hardinge is due also the humane prohibition against firing on mobs by the military. The instructions are now much more precise as to the circumstances under which the soldier is to supersede the magistrate. He was an advocate of corporal punishment in the army, as necessary for the preservation of discipline, whenever its abolition was proposed in Parliament. Of this he was so conscientiously convinced that one of the acts which marked his Indian administration was the restoration of flogging in the Native army, which had been abolished by Lord William Bentinck. This was looked upon as a very hazardous undertaking, but the result was so far satisfactory that corporal
- ↑ Being a member of that Committee, I heard Mr. Hume use these words.
