to add six companies to the regiment to replace three ordered to China, failed totally. The corps is far below its proper strength, and in fact threaten to die out, though recruited now with pariahs of all kinds. Confined to Ceylon, it has no chance of ever seeing service; its officers, by some strange oversight, have never been required to learn the language of their men, so that they are entirely dependent on their sergeants, who are consequently nearly always young Cingalese Malays who have been taught English at missionary or government schools. The junior officers lead an idle sporting life scattered on detachment throughout the island, while the seniors take to themselves wives and coffee gardens, being secure from war's alarms, or even from a change of quarters for years at a time. The allowances are therefore more than equal to those of India, a Captain drawing £19 a month while playing at soldiers. Officers and men, under such circumstances, can never be considered efficient in the sense of being able to go anywhere and do anything, like a corps that may be this year at Peshawur and the next in Burmah, or even compared to a West India regiment which every now and again gets its rust taken off and very hard knocks with little reward for them, in storming the stockades of some refractory King of Bugaboo. The sooner the Ceylon Rifles are wiped out and replaced by a regiment of Her Majesty's Indian Army the better for the state, for the finances of the colony, and for their successors, who will enjoy a tour of duty in a most agreeable and healthy colony.

During the mutiny we heard a great deal said of encouraging our Eurasian descendants to raise their heads and show themselves worthy of the second place in their maternal country, but now that things have gone back so much to their former course, all the schemes for the advancement of their position and development of their hereditary paternal energy seem to be forgotten. Yet the deeds of the Bengal Yeomanry showed that many a dusky halfcaste had both ability and courage to reflect honour on the name he bore. It is strange that no member of this extraordinary corps has ever given to the press a record of the really valuable service it performed in the field. Composed as it was of men of various nations, colours and occupations, clerks, shopkeepers, sailors, lawyers, ruined officers, broken-down parsons, and adventurers of all kinds, many among them must have been well qualified to give an amusing sketch of the doings which caused the rebels who at first styled it contemptuously Keranee-ka-pult un or the Quilldriver's regiment to change the designation to that of Sheitan-kapultun or the Devil's Own. The Eurasian population has never found favour in the eyes of the Indian Government, and originating generally in the first generation illegitimately, the great bulk of half-caste children have had much to contend against, left too often to grow up in a bazaar under a mother deserted and friendless

whose example and precepts too often counteract any good influence that a missionary school might chance otherwise to exercise upon them. Such lads, if fortunate, may become clerks in offices, but excluded from the ranks of their father's service, their only military employments are as musicians to Native corps, or as members of the Native medical department, a body containing many men of excellent abilities, valuable and most useful public servants, but hitherto wretchedly paid and so unworthily treated, with prospects so miserable, that it is only surprising to find recruits to fill their ranks. Many of its members showed the greatest bravery during the mutiny, and one of them, a mere lad, was awarded the Victoria Cross for his gallantry in dressing the wounded under the heaviest of the fire at the assault of the Taku forts. Surely in the new order of things better prospects should be secured to this race, not only in the medical department but in the Native Army generally. Near akin to us in blood, bearing English names and professing the Christian faith, it should be the policy of our government to provide for their early education, and by extending to them a cordial recognition of their relationship to elevate them in their own and in the public estimation. Properly educated and treated they could be made a valuable body of public servants, whose fidelity could never be doubtful; at present disowned alike by both races they are either hopeless as hereditary Gibeonites, aspiring to nothing more than bodily comforts, or bitterly discontented with their position and prospects. Those who are desirous of seeing India colonized from this country should make the Eurasians their special protégés, as it is only by such representatives of England that their favourite idea can ever have a chance of being realised, and were Government to make such colonization an object of public policy, viewing each little dusky unit as a valuable contribution to a future settlement, and receiving it gladly to educate as such from a very early age in an industrial school, there would be a far fairer prospect of ultimate benefit to the state than from many more high sounding philanthropic importations from Utopia which enjoys its patronage.

The latest accounts from India tell us that the English portion of the Medical Department is about to have full justice done to it, and although nothing is said of their useful subordinates, without whom the duty could not be carried on, yet we cannot but think their long-deferred hopes are approaching realization. If they are disappointed at this juncture with such a Governor-General and such a Commander-in-Chief, they can hope for nothing hereafter. Sir Hugh Rose is indeed realizing the military Avatar so long prayed for. If his valuable life be spared for the ordinary term of office, he will have raised the most enduring monument to his memory in those admirable orders which are step by step

removing the grievances and miseries under which our soldiers have so long groaned, drank and died.

*

Many of the evils of their lot exposed in this Journal he has gone to the root of; among the very latest of his orders is one levelled at the infamous jobbery of contractors so recently pointed out in these pages. Let us hope that his spirit at least may influence the new organization of our Native troops, though we greatly fear that the supposed speciality required for forming an opinion on such matters may leave it altogether to those who have grown up from boyhood habituated to consider as beauties of their system, what we, on this side of the world, are rather disposed to regard as deformities if not absolute nuisances. C.

THE ARMSTRONG GUN.

THE Armstrong gun is very hardly used. After completion at the forge, after its delivery from the Factory, it has to pass through a fiery furnace seven times heated. Its fabric, its power, its structure and parts, its range, precision, and effect, are all put to the proof, and tested to the last degree. Nothing that engineering science can devise is spared in the ordeal. One might almost imagine, from the accounts of the experiments, that the gun was produced solely to see what power could be brought to burst it. The charges are gradually enlarged till they reach a foot from the mouth; the projectiles are increased to a fabulous weight; it is tried against every kind of target and material, and in competition with every kind of ordnance. All this is proper and judicious: it is no more than the case absolutely demands. A new system of artillery cannot be introduced without meeting a great amount of distrust, and it is well that the country and the army should not only find no room for such a feeling, but should have its assurance of efficiency made doubly sure. Nor are we disposed to say that a result so decisive is to follow immediately on the mere report of the authorities. We have heard of things called jobs, and though personal peculation is unknown among our public men, there are few names in England too high to be reached by imputation, in a matter involving the direction of patronage. Thus it is satisfactory that the inquisition on the Armstrong gun has not terminated at Woolwich or Shoeburyness. It is not too much to say that no invention has ever been more warmly discussed in the public journals, more closely scrutinised in Parliament, or more jealously regarded by both army and navy. For our own part, we have

* Vide U. S. M. October, 1861, p. 257.

watched the developement of the Armstrong system with unfailing attention, viewing it by the testimonies of its adversaries as well as its friends, and weighing its inventor by the statements of his rivals. These were not likely to overlook any, the smallest imperfection; in fact, they extend beyond the bounds of criticism. into misrepresentation and detraction. We may be glad that they are put forward up to a certain point, because however unjust to Sir William Amstrong-who we do not say is to be considered they enforce further investigation, or elicit a reply, and the result is an accession of public confidence. But here we reach a boundary. The reiteration, after they have been refuted, of such captious charges, as if they were something new, or to which no answer had been given, causes serious mischief. It is a comparatively minor objection that they sometimes impeach the honesty of the Government, that they charge a body of distinguished military officers with partiality and a serious dereliction of duty, and that they excite distrust of all official decisions. What we complain of is that they may shake the confidence of our soldiers and sailors in the heat of a battle. We have gone the whole length with those who claim the severest trial for the Armstrong gun, and the fullest investigation as to its alleged defects, but we must stop short when we attain results affording the assurance desired. How can we wish our soldiers to believe that the Armstrong gun, firing over their heads as they advance to the charge, will commit as much destruction in their ranks as the bullets of the enemy! What object is gained by telling our sailors that the gun they are levelling at a hostile ship will cost them an eye when it is fired? We have before us a pamphlet which is calculated to produce such impressions-for it bears the name of a naval officer who is widely known, and makes statements open to this construction. It is entitled "The Armstrong Gun: A Rejoinder to the Letter of Sir William Armstrong, 27th November, 1861, published in the Times: By Edward Pellew Halsted, Captain R.N." The most cursory perusal shows that the "rejoinder" is a mere repetition of the first indictment. The author complains that the Times did not give it insertion as it gave insertion to the letter of Sir William Armstrong, but he forgets that it was the publication of his strictures in the Times that elicited Sir William's reply. Published in any other way they would have attracted no attention; but their appearance in the columns of the leading journal, conjoined with the attitude our contemporary assumed, made it incumbent upon Sir William Armstrong to break silence. "We do not see how it can be denied," said the Times, on the 9th of October, "that the present dissentients have made out a case for inquiry, and that inquiry ought neither to be delayed nor stifled. It is of the utmost importance to us that we should know the whole truth

about the Armstrong gun, and this truth we shall never know until the gun has been subjected to every necessary test, without prejudice, favour, or reserve." The Minister for War has since declared that Sir William Armstrong himself claimed an inquiry, and this was neither "delayed nor stifled." The results were published by the Times, as well for the satisfaction of the public, as we presume, in justice to Sir William Armstrong, whom our contemporary's remarks had placed in a dubious position; and the Times could not have pursued the subject further without making itself a partisan. So much for the preamble of the pamphlet, which would have claimed no remark from us, if Captain Halsted had not taken the passage we have quoted from the Times for his motto, as if the inquiry, of which the results are universally known, had never been granted.

This is the spirit of the composition throughout. It is a piece of special pleading for the Whitworth gun, drawn up so like a counsel's brief, that, but for the name on the title page, it might be ascribed to a legal hand. We know how the counsel for a prosecution opens his address, when he has a lame case. He will not say a word to raise a prejudice against the unfortunate gun at the bar; he could wish that the jury might be able to reconcile it with their duty to pronounce the gun faultless, but the truth is, if facts go for anything, there never was a worse. For ourselves, we may affirm that we are just the tribunal to listen to such an appeal, for we have no bias for Armstrong over Whitworth or for Whitworth over Armstrong. All we want is the best gun. But here we are called up by statements involving considerations of another kind and of the gravest import. We are told that the Armstrong gun is backed up by reports of results "ordered" by the highest authorities, and the rational inference is that the Ordnance Select Committee, composed of distinguished scientific officers and entrusted with duties which are the very hinge of our military power, undertake this dirty work.

Captain Halsted really knows nothing about the body he thus impeaches. He says, "They were the very proof-masters who passed and recommended this very gun, even as they still energetically uphold it. They are virtually responsible for that extravagant outlay which has produced results I believe to be so unsatisfactory in quality." Now let us tell the gallant author that the proof-masters who passed and recommended the Armstrong gun, were the Rifled Cannon Committee; the functionaries who energetically uphold it, by fairly reporting the results of unintermitted experiments, are the Ordnance Select Committee, which comprises only one member of the board that proved and recommended the gun. This member is Sir William Wiseman, an officer of unimpeachable honour and high scientific attainments, such as no one has yet ascribed to Captain Halsted. Nor is it