concluding passages of the petition, 'that the only policy by which British rule and the lives, honour, and properties of your Majesty's Christian subjects in this country can in future be secured, is a policy of such vigorous repression and punishment as shall convince the native races of India — who can be influenced effectually by power and fear alone — of the hopelessness of insurrection against British rule, even when aided by every circumstance of treachery, surprise and cruelty.' The adoption of any milder policy would, the petitioners urged, be regarded as springing wholly from conscious weakness, would lead, at no distant date, to a recurrence of the same scenes, and so endanger the future tranquillity of British India.
Language such as this tells its own tale. It is the language of rage. There was much to excuse it. It would be well to bury it in oblivion, but that it is impossible, without recalling it, to understand the perils of the time and the inestimable service which Lord Canning rendered to his countrymen in the determined and courageous resistance which he offered to a mood which, if it had prevailed, would have gone far to make the ultimate pacification of the country impossible.
Less excuse can be offered for the political partisanship which made the allegations of the Calcutta petition the pretext for an attempt to exclude the Governor-General's name from the vote which, early in 1858, was carried through both Houses of Parliament,
