that if Lord Canning, at this crisis, had been left to act upon his own instincts, or even if he had trusted to the experienced advice of the one capable counsellor at his elbow, Mr J. P. Grant, many of the mishaps which occurred during this month and the following would not have happened. But at this period he was under the influence of men whose knowledge of the country in which they had passed their lives was absolutely superficial. It was in deference to the advice of these men that, at a period when a plain and straightforward declaration, followed by plain and straightforward action, would have relieved the situation, he acted towards the sipáhís in a manner the reverse of both. Thus whilst he had three native regiments at Barrackpur, in dangerous proximity to Calcutta, he preferred to maintain troops to guard them rather than to disarm them. The case of Dánápur was even worse. The garrison of Dánápur, consisting of one English and three native regiments, was the guardian of the rich and populous province of Bihár. It was certain that, should the three native regiments break away, as their comrades in other places had broken away, a great danger would be constituted for Bihár itself, and possibly for Calcutta. Common sense urged that the first opportunity should be taken to disarm them. But common sense was a quality conspicuous by its absence among the Hallidays, the Beadons, and the Birches, who had the ear of Lord Canning. These men invented the policy of feigning confidence when confidence had been lost, and of declining to disarm men whom they knew to be rebels, lest they should instigate a premature rising. The terrible dangers which persistence in this policy — persistence in spite of warnings and remonstrances — led to will be recorded in subsequent chapters.
