nine Minutes, setting forth the military changes that had become necessary for the safety of the territories which he was about to quit for ever.
These nine Minutes were, by his request, immediately forwarded to the Court of Directors. Yet, wrote Sir Charles Jackson in 1865, 'I cannot find that any further attention was paid to these Minutes, either at home or in India. Nothing more was heard of them until the year 1858. ... Even now it is impossible to state the full effect of these Minutes. For although the authorities at the India House, including Mr. Kaye himself, rendered me every assistance, two of them are not to be found; and I have been obliged to collect as much as possible of their effect (but whether or not the whole, I am unable to say,) from references to them in the other Minutes[1].'
Yet these nine Minutes, if they had been acted on, might have themselves sufficed to avert the Mutiny of 1857. The first Minute proposed to raise two new European Cavalry regiments for the Company's service in Bengal. It also proposed to disband four regular regiments of Native Cavalry — the very force which in 1857 proved so disloyal. By the second and third Minutes, the European Infantry would have been increased from its reduced strength, in 1854, of 31 battalions to 35 battalions,
- ↑ Space compels me to still further summarise Sir Charles Jackson's abstract of their contents.
