bounds of native States, where English law cannot penetrate. Hundreds of them were ferreted out, and are now confined for life within the walls of safe jails. The Government presses upon the rulers of native States the necessity of imitating English example in this regard. But, while willing to follow the friendly advice of the paramount power, they have not yet the nerve and energy of the Anglo-Saxon, to accomplish its complete extirpation.
Even as late as the days of Bishop Heber (1825) the common people went to market armed with swords and shields and spears and matchlocks. Just as I have seen the plowman in Oude, at the time of the annexation, with his sword by his side and his friends within view—such was the public apprehension of the lawless and violent, by whom life and property might at any moment be assailed. What a change has the presence of the English magistrate made all over the land, within twenty-five years! Very justly does a native writer remark: “The trader and traveler now pass along the loneliest highway without losing a pin. If a corpse were now discovered in a well, or found by the side of a jungle, it would cause a general uproar in the community, and create a greater sensation than the irruption of a Mahratta horde. The wicked have been weaned from their life of rapine, and taught to subordinate themselves to the authorities of society and the State.”
Over and above all these elements of wrath and hatred might be enumerated the “Budmashes,” “Dacoits,” “Goojurs,” and criminal classes generally, with all the disaffected elements of every kind, who only needed the sanction of their Brahmins and Fakirs, and the leading of the Sepoys, to be ready for every evil work against law, reform, and government. The reader, from these conditions of society, can easily divine for himself the causes and motives of the great Sepoy Rebellion. He can see what classes, and how many, regarded it with terror and detestation, and what classes reveled in its developments, and by what purposes they were actuated.
Can any just and adequate interpretation be put upon this terrible conflict, that does not acknowledge that its life and soul was the
