in 1853. Under the pressure of the Crimean war two regiments from India had been demanded, which provoked a vehement protest from the Governor-General. Despite this protest, two European regiments were transferred in 1854. They were never replaced; and when the mutiny broke out, another important fraction of the Huropean force was engaged in the Persian expedition.
One of Lord Dalhousie’s last acts in India had been to lay on his Council table a series of minutes, the general purport of which was a reduction of sepoy regiments, an Increase of Kuropean regiments, and of the Huropean Officers with native regiments.
The warning was unheeded. The subject dropped out of notice; and the outbreak of 1857 found the Government with an European force wholly inadequte to meet the barest requirements of the situation.
34. Ina lecture which General Lord Roberts recently gave at meetings of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Dundee, His Lordship stated that in his opinion the mutiny was mninly due to the following causes :—
(1.) “The preponderance of native compared with British troops in India, the numbers in 1857 being 230,000 of the former, against 34,000 of the latter.
(2.) ‘‘The doubt raised in the mind of the native soldiers as to the invincibility and relative superiority of their British comrades by events which occurred during the first Afghan war, terminating in the disastrous retreat from Kabul in the winter of 1841-42.
(3.) ‘The manner in which the sepoys had been pampered by their officers and the Civil Government, until they began to think that they were the masters rather than the servants of the ruling power.
(4.) “The excessive age of the general staff and regimental officers of the Indian army, due to their promotion under a strict system of seniority, without any age- limits for the several ranks.
(5.) ‘The want of “go” in the majority of the regiments owing to the system under which the more active and enterprising officers were taken away from their own corps for the more attractive and better paid duties appertaining to the irregular service and to Political and Civil employ.
(6.) ‘‘ The various annexations which had taken place during the second quarter of the present century, and measures of administrative reform, such as the introduction of railways, telegraphs, and other civilizing agencies, had produced a feeling of alarm and unrest in the ignorant native mind, and had thus prepared the way for the
