nature of the test; but that, if this is attempted, the security of the country will be imminently endangered. These orders are to be enforced; and I tremble for the consequences."-Statement of Facts, pp. 53, 54.

The following letter from the Hon. Col. Stuart, commanding a king's regiment, was soon after received by Sir George Barlow:

"The late measures of Government, as carried into effect at the Presidency and Trichinopoly, have created a most violent ferment among the corps here. At those places where the European force was so far superior in number to the Native, the measure probably was executed without difficulty, but here, where there are seven battalions of sepoys, and a company and a half of artillery, to our one regiment, I found it totally imposible to carry the business to the same length, particularly as any tumult among our own corps would certainly bring the people of Travancore upon us.

"It is in vain, therefore, for me, with the small force I can depend upon, to attempt to stem the torrent here by any acts of violence.

"Most sincerely and anxiously do I wish that the present tumult may subside, without fatal consequences; which, if the present violent measures are continued, I much fear will not be the case. If blood is once spilt in the cause, there is no knowing where it may end; and the probable consequence will be that India will be lost for ever. So many officers of the army have gone to such lengths, that, unless a general amnesty is granted, tranquillity can never be restored.

"The Honourable the Governor in council will not, I trust, impute to me any other motives for having thus given my opinion. I am actuated solely by anxiety for the public good and the benefit of my country; and I think it my duty, holding the responsible situation I now do, to express my sentiments at so awful a period.

"Where there are any prospects of success, it might be right to persevere; but, where every day's experience proves that, the more coercive the measures adopted, the more violent are the consequences, a different and more conciliatory line of conduct ought to be adopted. I have the honour," &c.-Ibid. pp. 55, 56.

"A letter from Colonel Forbes, commanding in Malabar, states that, to prevent a revolt in the province, and the probable march of the Company's troops towards Seringapatam, he had accepted of a modification in the test, to be signed by the officers on their parole, to make no hostile movements until the pleasure of the Government was known.-Disapproved by Government, and ordered to enforce the former orders."—Ibid. p. 61.

It can scarcely be credited that, in spite of these repeated remonstrances from officers whose loyalty and whose knowledge of the subject could not be suspected, this test was ordered to be enforced, and the severest rebukes inflicted upon those who had presumed to doubt of its propriety or suspend its operation. Nor let any man say that the opinionative person who persevered in this measure saw more clearly and deeply into the consequence of his own measures than those who were about him; for unless Mr. Petrie has been guilty, and repeatedly guilty, of a most downright and wilful falsehood, Sir George Barlow had not the most distant conception, during all these measures, that the army would ever venture upon revolt.

"Government, or rather the head of the Government, was never correctly informed of the actual state of the army, or I think he would have acted otherwise; he was told, and he was willing to believe, that the discontents were confined to a small part of the troops; that a great majority disapproved of their proceedings, and were firmly and unalterably attached to Government."-Ibid. pp. 23, 24.

In a conversation which Mr. Petrie had with Sir George Barlow upon the subject of the army-and in the course of which he recommends to that gentleman more lenient measures, and warns him of the increasing disaffection of the troops he gives us the following account of Sir George Barlow's notions of the then state of the army :

"Sir G. Barlow assured me I was greatly misinformed; that he could rely upon his intelligence; and would produce to council the most satisfactory and unequivocal proofs of the fidelity of nine-tenths of the army; that the discontents were confined almost exclusively to the southern division of the army; that the troops composing the subsidiary force, those in the ceded districts, in the centre, and a part of the northern division, were all untainted by those principles which had misled the rest of the army."-Ibid. pp. 27, 28.

All those violent measures, then, the spirit and wisdom of which have been

so much extolled, were not measures of the consequences of which their author had the most distant suspicion. They were not the acts of a man who knew that he must unavoidably, in the discharge of his duty, irritate, but that he could ultimately overcome that irritation. They appear, on the contrary, to have proceeded from a most gross and scandalous ignorance of the opinions of the army. He expected passive submission, and met with universal revolt. So far, then, his want of intelligence and sagacity are unquestionably proved. He did not proceed with useful measures, and run the risk of a revolt for which he was fully prepared, but he carried these measures into execution firmly convinced that they would occasion no revolt at all.

The fatal nature of this mistake is best exemplified by the means recurred to for its correction. The grand expedient relied upon was to instigate the natives-men and officers-to disobey their European commanders; an expedient by which present safety was secured at the expense of every principle upon which the permanence of our Indian empire rests. There never was in the world a more singular spectacle than to see a few thousand Europeans governing so despotically fifty or sixty millions of people of different climate, religion, and habits, forming them into large and well-disciplined armies, and leading them out to the further subjugation of the native powers of India. But can any words be strong enough to paint the rashness of provoking a mutiny which could only be got under by teaching these armies to act against their European commanders, and to use their actual strength in overpowering their officers?-or is any man entitled to the praise of firmness and sagacity who gets rid of a present danger by encouraging a principle which renders that danger more frequent and more violent? We will venture to assert that a more unwise or a more unstatesmanlike action was never committed by any man in any country; and we are grievously mistaken if any length of time elapse before the evil consequences of it are felt and deplored by every man who deems the welfare of our Indian colonies of any importance to the prosperity of the mother-country. We cannot help contrasting the management of the discontents of the Madras army with the manner in which the same difficulty was got over with the army of Bengal. A little increase of attention and emolument to the head of that army, under the management of a man of rank and talents, dissipated appearances which the sceptered pomp of a merchant's clerk would have blown up into a rebellion in three weeks; and yet the Bengal army is at this moment in as good a state of discipline as the English fleet to which Lord Howe made such abject concessions, and in a state to be much more permanently depended upon than the army which has been so effectually ruined by the inconveniently great soul of the present Governor of Madras.

Sir George Barlow's agent, though faithful to his employment of calumniating those who were in any degree opposed to his principal, seldom loses sight of sound discretion, and confines his invectives to whole bodies of men, except where the dead are concerned. Against Colonel Capper, General Macdowall, and Mr. Roebuck, who are now no longer alive to answer for themselves, he is intrepidly severe; in all these instances he gives a full loose to his sense of duty, and inflicts upon them the severest chastisement. In his attack upon the civilians, he is particularly careful to keep to generals; and so rigidly does he adhere to this principle, that he does not support his assertion, that the civil service was disaffected as well as the military, by one single name, one single fact, or by any other means whatever, than his own affirmation of the fact. The truth is (as might be supposed to be the case from such sort of evidence) diametrically opposite. Nothing could be more exemplary, during the whole of the rebellion, than the conduct of the civil

servants; and though the courts of justice were interfered with-though the most respectable servants of the Company were punished for the verdicts they had given as jurymen-though many were dismissed for the slightest opposition to the pleasure of Government, even in the discharge of official duties, where remonstrance was absolutely necessary-though the greatest provocation was given, and the greatest opportunity afforded, to the civil servants for revoltthere is not a single instance in which the shadow of disaffection has been proved against any civil servant. This we say, from an accurate examination of all the papers which have been published on the subject; and we do not hesitate to affirm that there never was a more unjust, unfounded, and profligate charge made against any body of men; nor have we often witnessed a more complete scene of folly and violence than the conduct of the Madras Government to its civil servants, exhibited during the whole period of the mutiny.

Upon the whole, it appears to us that the Indian army was ultimately driven into revolt by the indiscretion and violence of the Madras Government; and that every evil which has happened might, with the greatest possible facility, have been avoided.

We have no sort of doubt that the Governor always meant well; but we are equally certain that he almost always acted ill; and where incapacity rises to a certain height, for all practical purposes the motive is of very little consequence. That the late General Macdowall was a weak man is unquestionable. He was also irritated (and not without reason) because he was deprived of a seat in council, which the commanders before him had commonly enjoyed. A little attention, however, on the part of the Government-the compliment of consulting him upon subjects connected with his profession-any of those little arts which are taught, not by a consummate political skill, but dictated by common good nature and by the habit of mingling with the world, would have produced the effects of conciliation, and employed the force of General Macdowall's authority in bringing the army into a better temper of mind. Instead of this, it appears to have been almost the object, and if not the object, certainly the practice, of the Madras Government to neglect and insult this officer. Changes of the greatest importance were made without his advice, and even without any communication with him; and it was too visible to those whom he was to command, that he himself possessed no sort of credit with his superiors. As to the tour which General Macdowall is supposed to have made for the purpose of spreading disaffection among the troops, and the part which he is represented by the agents to have taken in the quarrels of the civilians with the Government, we utterly discredit these imputations. They are unsupported by any kind of evidence; and we believe them to be mere inventions, circulated by the friends of the Madras Government. General Macdowall appears to us to have been a weak, pompous man; extremely out of humour; offended with the slights he had experienced; and whom any man of common address might have managed with the greatest ease: but we do not see, in any part of his conduct, the shadow of disloyalty and disaffection; and we are persuaded that the assertion would never have been made, if he himself had been alive to prove its injustice.

Besides the contemptuous treatment of General Macdowall, we have great doubts whether the Madras Government ought not to have suffered Colonel Munro to be put upon his trial; and to punish the officers who solicited that trial for the purgation of their own characters, appears to us (whatever the intention was) to have been an act of mere tyranny. We think, too, that General Macdowall was very hastily and unadvisedly removed from his situation; and upon the unjust treatment of Colonel Capper and Major Boles

there can scarcely be two opinions. In the progress of the mutiny, instead of discovering in the Madras Government any appearances of temper and wisdom, they appear to us to have been quite as much irritated and heated as the army, and to have been betrayed into excesses nearly as criminal, and infinitely more contemptible and puerile. The head of a great kingdom bickering with his officers about invitations to dinner-the Commander-in-chief of the forces negotiating that the dinner should be loyally eaten-the obstinate absurdity of the test-the total want of selection in the objects of punishment-and the wickedness, or the insanity, of teaching the sepoy to rise against his European officer-the contempt of the decision of juries in civil cases-and the punishment of the juries themselves; such a system of conduct as this would infallibly doom any individual to punishment, if it did not, fortunately for him, display precisely that contempt of men's feelings, and that passion for insulting multitudes, which is so congenial to our present Government at home, and which passes now so currently for wisdom and courage. By these means the liberties of great nations are frequently destroyed-and destroyed with impunity to the perpetrators of the crime. In distant colonies, however, governors who attempt the same system of tyranny are in no little danger from the indignation of their subjects; for though men will often yield up their happiness to kings who have been always kings, they are not inclined to show the same deference to men who have been merchants' clerks yesterday, and are kings to-day. From a danger of this kind the Governor of Madras appears to us to have very narrowly escaped. We sincerely hope that he is grateful for his good luck, and that he will now awake from his gorgeous dreams of mercantile monarchy to good nature, moderation, and common sense.

HINTS ON TOLERATION. (E. REVIEW, February, 1811). Hints on Toleration, in Five Essays, &c., suggested for the Consideration of Lord Viscount Sidmouth, and the Dissenters. By PHILAGATHARCHES. 8vo, pp. 367. London. 1810. IF a prudent man see a child playing with a porcelain cup of great value, he takes the vessel out of his hand, pats him on the head, tells him his mamma will be sorry if it is broken, and gently cheats him into the use of some less precious substitute. Why will Lord Sidmouth meddle with the Toleration Act, when there are so many other subjects in which his abilities might be so eminently useful-when inclosure bills are drawn up with such scandalous negligence-turnpike roads so shamefully neglected-and public conveyances, illegitimately loaded in the face of day, and in defiance of the wisest legislative provisions? We confess our trepidation at seeing the Toleration Act in the hands of Lord Sidmouth; and should be very glad if it were fairly back in the statute-book, and the sedulity of this well-meaning nobleman diverted

into another channel.

The alarm and suspicion of the Dissenters upon these measures are wise and rational. They are right to consider the Toleration Act as their palladium; and they may be certain that, in this country, there is always a strong party ready, not only to prevent the further extension of tolerant principles, but to abridge (if they dared) their present operation within the narrowest limits. Whoever makes this attempt will be sure to make it under professions of the most earnest regard for mildness and toleration, and with the strongest declarations of respect for King William, the Revolution, and the principles which seated the House of Brunswick on the throne of these realms ;-and then will follow the clause for whipping Dissenters, imprisoning preachers,

and subjecting them to rigid qualifications, &c. &c. &c. The infringement on the militia acts is a mere pretence. The real object is to diminish the number of Dissenters from the Church of England, by abridging the liberties and privileges they now possess. This is the project which we shall examine; for we sincerely believe it to be the project in agitation. The mode in which it is proposed to attack the Dissenters is, first, by exacting greater qualifications in their teachers; next, by preventing the interchange or itinerancy of preachers, and fixing them to one spot,

It can never, we presume, be intended to subject dissenting ministers to any kind of theological examination. A teacher examined in doctrinal opinions, by another teacher who differs from him, is so very absurd a project, that we entirely acquit Lord Sidmouth of any intention of this sort. We rather presume his Lordship to mean, that a man who professes to teach his fellowcreatures should at least have made some progress in human learning ;—that he should not be wholly without education;-that he should be able at least to read and write. If the test is of this very ordinary nature, it can scarcely exclude many teachers of religion; and it was hardly worth while, for the very insignificant diminution of numbers which this must occasion to the dissenting clergy, to have raised all the alarm which this attack upon the Toleration Act has occasioned.

But, without any reference to the magnitude of the effects, is the principle right? or, What is the meaning of religious toleration? That a man should hold, without pain or penalty, any religious opinions-and choose, for his instruction in the business of salvation, any guide whom he pleases--care being taken that the teacher and the doctrine injure neither the policy nor the morals of the country. We maintain that perfect religious toleration applies as much to the teacher, as the thing taught; and that it is quite as intolerant to make a man hear Thomas, who wants to hear John, as it would be to make a man profess Arminian, who wished to profess Calvinistical principles. What right has any Government to dictate to any man who shall guide him to heaven, any more than it has to persecute the religious tenets by which he hopes to arrive there? You believe that the heretic professes doctrines utterly incompatible with the true spirit of the Gospel ;-first you burnt him for this, then you whipt him,-then you fined him,-then you put him in prison. All this did no good ;-and, for these hundred years last past, you have left him alone. The heresy is now firmly protected by law ;-and you know it must be preached :-What matters it, then, who preaches it ?— If the evil must be communicated, the organ and instrument through which it is communicated cannot be of much consequence. It is true, this kind of persecution, against persons, has not been quite so much tried as the other against doctrines; but the folly and inexpediency of it rest precisely upon the same grounds.

Would it not be a singular thing, if the friends of the Church of England were to make the most strenuous efforts to render their enemies eloquent and learned?—and to found places of education for Dissenters? But, if their learning would not be a good, why is their ignorance an evil?-unless it be necessarily supposed that all increase of learning must bring men over to the Church of England; in which supposition, the Scottish and Catholic Universities, and the College at Hackney, would hardly acquiesce. Ignorance surely matures and quickens the progress of absurdity. Rational and learned Dissenters remain:-religious mobs, under some ignorant fanatic of the day, become foolish overmuch,-dissolve, and return to the Church. The Unitarian, who reads and writes, gets some sort of discipline, and returns no

more.

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