trial and execution. The court resolved death should be inflicted in this mode, as a last resort to strike terror into the other two Sepoy regiments, so as to restrain them from rising. And it certainly had that effect. From the hour of that execution till Delhi fell, not a single Sepoy hand was raised against an officer's life or the Government. They saw that the man at their head would not shrink from violating their prejudices, even as to their Shraad, if they committed mutiny and murder, and they would not face that danger. So the Punjab was kept quiet, and we at Nynee Tal, and they at Simla and Delhi, (including hundreds of ladies,) were saved, more probably by that act of stern discipline than by any other event during those seven months.
Every generous and candid heart will judge the General's action by his motive and the circumstances around him, as well as the minds on which he had to operate. He was far, as was his noble Governor, Sir John Lawrence, from any wish to perpetrate an undue severity or refinement of cruelty. He was in circumstances where he had reason to believe that this was the only way to arrest murder and mutiny, and save thousands of lives whose fate hung on the position of the Punjab and his measures to preserve it. This was equally the motive of the other General, who employed it as a measure of restraint as well as punishment. The act itself was analogous to the policy of Christian States one hundred years ago, in refusing what was called “The Benefit of Clergy” to certain notorious criminals. Lord Canning, the Governor-General, as soon as he heard of it, however, believing that it infringed too much upon the conscience of the Hindoos, forbade its repetition by any Commander, and it was therefore entirely abandoned. As a mode of punishment it was introduced into India by the French during their brief rule in the South. Wilkes's “History of the Mysore” relates its infliction, by Count Lally, in 1758, upon six Brahmins.
The consideration of Lord Canning, however, was not reciprocated by the Sepoy power itself, for in the hour of their opportunity they made no scruple whatever to employ this mode of execution upon other people. We have testimony that several of the Euro-
