nation, as soon as the details reached Europe. This promise we now hasten to perform, with as much candour and fidelity as information necessarily collected from interested persons, still warm with the recollection of what they witnessed or suffered, will enable us to bring to the question.

There are various causes, most of them sufficiently obvious, which, in the present state of our government and policy in India, must prevent a cool and impartial narrative of any important transactions which occur there from reaching Europe. The state of the press, completely under the power and direction of government, either suppresses what is to its disadvantage, or renders its own statements liable to suspicion and disbelief. It is thus impossible to sift out the truth by the modes which are so easily practised in Great Britain, where each party is allowed to publish all he may think proper in defence of his own cause, or in refutation of the opinions and statements of his opponent. At first sight it might be imagined that this control, possessed and exercised over the press in India, would be favourable to the statements of government on any occasion of dispute or controversy; but it may well be doubted, whether the end in view is not in a great measure defeated by the adoption of the very means employed and expected to secure it. When it is known that fair play is not given to truth; that the press is open to one party and shut against the other; a suspicion naturally comes over the minds of Britons that justice and power are on different sides; and every statement which is given by the party to whom alone the press is open and unchecked, or rather under whose

control it is, is set down as of very questionable truth and authority: while on the other hand it is always conjectured, and indeed taken for granted, that the other party could have made out a much stronger and more favourable case, provided they had been permitted to speak as openly and fully as their opponents.

Whatever, therefore, may be the necessity or the policy in India of keeping the press under the control and management of government, it certainly does not serve their cause in any question that is agitated in Great Britain. This was abundantly proved by what occurred here relative to the disturbances in the Madras army. Although there was a strong prejudice existing against those who originated and spread those disturbances, from the conviction that a deliberating armed body is excessively dangerous, and can be excused under no pretext; and that when it proceeds from deliberation to actual resistance it cancels every thing that it before had in its favour; yet every reason that could be alleged in extenuation of the conduct of the Madras insurgents was eagerly brought forward, and as eagerly accepted; and those who began with condemning them in the most violent and unqualified terms, generally ended by remarking, that if ever mutiny were produced by mismanagement and the total absence of every thing conciliatory or politic, this had been so produced; and therefore, if ever mutiny were pardonable, this was so. But it is time to state the origin of these disturb

ances.

Dissatisfaction among the military in India first made its appearance among his majesty's troops; and was occasioned by those allow

ances

ances being diminished (which regiments that had served on the Bengal establishment enjoyed) when they were removed to Madras; although in this latter place the price of every necessary of life was more than double what it was at Bengal. A memorial signed by the officers of all the regiments in his majesty's service on the coast (with one exception) was drawn up, praying to be put on the same footing with the Bengal army, in respect of allowances. The company's officers, feeling themselves also aggrieved in an equal degree, joined in the petition. The memorial, however, was never presented. General Macdowall, at the request of sir George Barlow, exerted his influence to discountenance and suppress it.

The next cause of dissatisfaction and agitation sprung from a proposal made by the quarter-mastergeneral, which was adopted, and officially announced in the general orders of the 3d of May 1808 :— this measure was, that the supply and conveyance of camp equipage by officers commanding native corps should be abolished. This plan, which was now done away, was first suggested and carried into execution by lord Cornwallis in the year 1791. In that year the first attempt, by the army under the command of his lordship, was made against Seringapatam: it failed; and when his crippled forces were returning, exhausted and deprived of the usual means of supplying themselves with camp equipage, then lord Cornwallis called on the officers to do that which in this season of distress he found the resources of the public unequal to. At the termination of this war the allowance for camp equipage was taken away, but it

was renewed in the year 1799. At this period similar difficulties to those which had occurred to lord Cornwallis were experienced by the army under the command of general Hewitt: these difficulties were again speedily and effectually removed, by placing the supply and conveyance of camp equipage under the management of the officers of the respective regiments. The efficacy of this measure having thus been established, and the ancient plan having so often been found miserably defective and useless, it was determined in the year 1802 to adopt a permanent regulation to this effect. The advantage to the officers who were to be employed in providing and conveying the camp equipage could only be looked for in time of peace: in seasons of war the expense would overbalance, or at least equal, the allowance that was granted for this service; but in peace, the profits arising from the contract were expected and acknowledged to be considerable. To government the advantages were numerous: it not only insured them the speedy, regular, and complete equipment of the army on the most emergent occasion, and in times of the greatest importance and difficulty, but it relieved the public from all expense of quarters in garrison, as well as tents in the field, at a lower rate than had been paid under lord Cornwallis's calcu lations for providing and carrying camp equipage alone.

Relying on the implied if not express condition that this should be a permanent regulation, both in peace and in war, the officers commanding corps entered on the contract at the commencement of the Mahratta campaigns in the Decan, and incurred great and unprecedented expenses, in order that the army

might be properly and effectually provided-looking forward to the return of peace for reimbursement and remuneration. Between the years 1805 and 1808 it was determined to reduce the expenditure in India. There was certainly room and occasion for.it: but economy ought to have been introduced with caution and circumspection, lest it should defeat its object, or bring about a more serious evil than it was intended to remove. Among other objects of retrenchment, the tent-contracts, as they are termed, were thought of; and the quartermaster-general was directed to investigate the subject, and devise a change of system.

The quarter-master-general, colonel Munro, accordingly drew up a detailed report on the subject, in which, after stating that the cone tract is needlessly expensive, that it subjects the company to the same charges for troops in garrison as for those in the field, he proceeds to observe, "By granting the same allowances in peace and war, for the equipment of native troops, while the expenses incidental to that charge are unavoidably much greater in war than in peace, it places the interest and duty of officers commanding native corps in direct opposition to one another. It makes it their interest that their corps should not be in a state of efficiency fit for field service, and therefore furnishes strong induce. ments to neglect their most important duties."

This paragraph contains a most serious charge; and it certainly ought not to have been admitted into a report from such high authority without the most cool and cautious deliberation: and yet the report was drawn up and published in a hurried manner. The opinion

of the commander in chief, general Macdowall, was never asked on the subject; no witnesses were examined; no proof was brought that the tent-contract had those effects on the officers with which it was charged: but it was broadly and generally stated, that the observations contained in the report respecting it were suggested by an attentive examination of its operations during six years' experience of its practical effects. The report was solely the opinion of colonel Munro, the youngest staff-officer in the army: it was published in spite of the remonstrance of colonel Capper the adjutant-general, and before three days had been given him to substitute his own plan,' which sir George Barlow had promised to read before he officially sanctioned colonel Munro's report. According to the orders of the court of directors, and the usage of the service, every proposed change in the economy and management of the army was to be submitted to the military board, previous to its being laid before the government: this rule too was dispensed with; and indeed the "whole transaction appears to have been gone into with a disregard to the common professional feelings of an army, which is utterly inexplicable."

It has indeed been urged with a considerable degree of plausibility, that colonel Munro does not bring forward any charge in the objectionable passage, against the officers of the Madrass establishment: he only states his opinion and belief, that from the known principles of human nature, where such strong and constant temptations to abuse and dereliction of duty exist, as the tent-contract holds forth, that conduct must take place, which he has

described

described and urged as a reason for abolishing the system. But in the first place colonel Munro expressly says, that the objections he urges against the tent-contract arise from six years' experience of its practical effects. When therefore he alleges that "it makes it the interest of the officers that their corps should ,not be in a state of efficiency fit for the field service, and therefore furnishes strong inducements to neglect their most important duties;" he surely speaks from what he had witnessed during his six years experience. For in the second place, if, notwithstanding the strong inducements to neglect their most important duties which it furnishes, those duties had not, from his observation, been neglected during these six years of observation and experience, colonel Munro ought not to have alleged that the tentcontract had that tendency; or brought forward, at least by implication, a charge against the officers, of which so long a period had furnished him with no proofs.

The officers, naturally considering that the report affected their characters, individually requested the commander in chief to institute an inquiry into their conduct during their fulfilment of the tent-contract, expressly declaring at the time, that they considered themselves as having no right to judge of the expediency or inexpediency of its proposed abolition. All they sought was, that they might not suffer from the serious charge brought against them; and that their innocence might be established by the most open and the fullest evidence. The commander in chief objected to take cognizance of the business, "on any individual application." The officers were thus compelled either to sit down silent and con

tented under the charges brought against them, or to make their application in a body. Thus it appears that the commander in chief alone was to blame for the measure so much reprobated-of the aggrieved officers combining for the purpose of repelling the accusations contained in the report. On the 23d of August 1808, they drew up a formal charge against colonel Munro, of having falsely aspersed their character in his report; which charge they forwarded to the commander in chief. The latter consulted the judge-advocate,who gave it as his opinion, that the application ought to be rejected, and that a charge of conspiracy against the applicants should be preferred. The charges were then returned by the commander in chief, with the observations of the judge-advocate, to colonel Sentleger, the senior of the complaining officers. For two months after this period, general Macdowall appears to have been in a state of uncertainty, whether he would prefer the charges against colonel Munro, and bring him to a court martial upon them, or not. At last, perceiving that the discontents of the army increased, he determined in the affirmative. The officers in the mean time, uncertain whether any steps would be taken in consequence of the charges they had preferred against colonelMunro, adopted a milder expedient; they drew up a respectful memorial, on the subject of their complaint, to the directors of the East India company. This memorial was presented to the government in January 1809, through the commander in chief, for the purpose of being transmitted to England; but the government refused to transmit it, and returned it as unnecessary.

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