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LETTERS TO LORD CANNING
169

to Bengal, "Perhaps there will be an order to join London to Bengal." The other day an Oudh Sepoy of the Bombay Cavalry at Nímach, being asked if he liked annexation, replied, "No: I used to be a great man when I went home, the best in my village rose as I approached: now, the lowest puff their pipes in my face." The General Service Enlistment Oath is most distasteful, keeps many out of the service, and frightens the old Sepoys, who imagine that the oaths of the young recruits affect the whole regiment. One of the best captains in the 13th Native Infantry (at this place) said to me last week he had clearly ascertained this fact. Mr. E. A. Reade, of the Sudder Board, who was for years Collector of Gorakpur, had "the general service order" given to him as a reason last year, when on his tour, by many Rájputs, for not entering the service. "The salt water," he told me was the universal answer. The new post office rules are bitter grievances; indeed the native community generally suffer by them, but the Sepoy, having here special privileges, feels the deprivation in addition to the general uncertainty as to letters, nay, rather the positive certainty of not getting them. There are many other points which might with great advantage be redressed, which, if your lordship will permit me, I will submit with extracts of some of the letters I have received from old regimental officers. In the words of one of them, "If the Sepoy is not speedily redressed, he will redress himself." I would rather say, unless some openings to rewards are offered to the military, as have been to the native civil servants, and unless certain matters are righted, we shall perpetually be subjected to our present condition of affairs. The Sepoy feels that we cannot do without him, and yet the highest reward a Sepoy can obtain, at fifty, sixty, and seventy years of age, is about one hundred pounds a year, without a prospect of a brighter career for his son. Surely this is