four hundred thousand trained men, with the best weapons of England in their hands.
The total of British troops in all India in 1856 was not much over forty thousand, and they were scattered on the frontier and in a few of the leading cities, seldom more than one regiment in a place, and sometimes only half a regiment.
By degrees the Sepoy army, especially that of Bengal, became what might be called “a close service,” a high caste Brahminical force, to whose notions constant concessions were made by the Government. They were a fine body of men, invincible to any thing in the East so long as they were led by their English officers, these officers and their ladies and children being afterward the first victims of the Rebellion. The Sepoys were utterly uneducated, as superstitious as they were ignorant, and entirely under the control of their Fakirs and Priests. This weak-minded and fanatical body of men had won for England her Oriental empire, and she chiefly relied on them for its defense and preservation. She could well do so, as long as they were faithful to her rule, but not a day longer. By degrees her policy changed, and, instead of maintaining a mixed army of all castes and creeds and nationalities, the “Bengal Army,” as it was called, grew more and more Brahminical, united, and fanatical.
It has been asked, Why did not England let India go when she threw off her allegiance, and free herself from the care and risk of governing a people who thus disdained her rule? Two answers may be given to this question. One would be the secular reason of men who valued India for what she was to England in the way of profit and power. Millions of British money were invested in the funds and reproductive works of India; then, there was the vast, increasing, and lucrative market for English goods, one item alone of which will express its importance. The clothing of the Hindoo is not very voluminous, yet, what a business was it for Lancashire to have the right to supply cotton cloth for one sixth of the human family! But, besides the merchant and the manufacturer, the politician, the military and the educated man had a deep
