bald shape because 'the necessity of immediate increase is urgent, and I have no time to go into the complicated question of our military wants generally.' An influential party in England, however, deprecated any such addition in native regiments as tending to lead the officers to form a class apart, and to live a too completely European life, and so to lose touch of their troops.
Administrative changes, moreover, introduced with the object of improved discipline and efficiency, had lowered the status of the officers in native regiments, and had substituted for a small body of European officers, specially adapted to their work and closely associated with their men, the conventional staff of an English regiment. A system of appeal to Headquarters had grown up, which taught the Sepoy the dangerous lesson that his officer's decision was liable to be revised and set aside.
Altogether it may be said that many causes had tended to undermine the Sepoy's respect for authority, his loyalty to his officers, his sense of discipline, and to accustom him to the idea of carrying his own way against his superior. All these bad influences are more or less conjectural; but there was one evil, affecting the native soldiers before the Mutiny, which admitted of arithmetical demonstration. There were too many of them.
In 1838, when the Afghán War broke out, the native army was under 154,000 men. Lord Hardinge's preparations to meet the Sikhs had raised the numbers
