whatever danger might threaten us in 1857 the fear of Sepoys availing themselves of legal flaws in State documents was not worth one moment's attention.
Minor points were taken, in addition to these two, in a letter dated May 29. That letter, it may be hoped, was the work of subordinates. The tone is so recriminatory that, when the relative position of the two men at the moment is remembered, one is loth to believe that Lord Canning saw it. It was firstly objected in that letter that the Proclamation dealt with the military discipline of the Bengal Army. This was beyond the competence of the Lieutenant-Governor. The Governor-General should have been referred to before its issue. It was a strange moment in which to write of the military discipline of the Bengal Army. In a disciplinary sense the Bengal Army was already a thing of the past. There was a rabble at Delhi, and hurrying to Delhi, and a wavering remnant still in its cantonments. A few days later, on June 13, in the debate on what came to be known as the Gagging Act, Lord Canning himself spoke of 'the general disaffection of the Bengal Army in the North-West Provinces.' What remained of it, even in the end of May, was under no military discipline or restraint other than such as it chose to submit to. Mr. Colvin sought to detach any who might listen to him, from that disbanded and disordered host. He did not recall those whom he addressed to the ranks, but dismissed them to their homes. The measure adopted was not a disciplinary
