army

exception of a body-guard of horse. Scindia made his escape to Agra, while Sir Hugh Rose advanced upon Gwalior; the rebel in and near Gwalior was led by the ranee, dressed as a man, and fighting like one. Again and again she rallied her forces to the charge, and finally fell, mortally wounded, on the 17th of June. "The best man upon the side of the enemy," wrote Sir Hugh Rose, in a general order, " was the woman found. dead, the Ranee of Jhansi."

The last sighs of the dying rebellion now no longer lifted the inert mass upon which weighed the English rule in India. The revolt was crushed, and order re-established. The offenders had been punished, their accomplices terrified; and now the English government had time to express its approval of those princes and territories which had remained faithful, and to prepare their recompense. With less delay, the English, both people and government, had rendered homage to the brave men whose gallantry had saved the Indian Empire.

On the 20th of December, 1858, Sir Colin Campbell, recently made Lord Clyde, announced officially to the governor-general at Calcutta that the campaign was at an end, and that there was no longer even a vestige of rebellion in the province of Oudh, the last remnant of the mutineers and insurgents having been finally driven across the mountains which form the barrier between the kingdom of Nepaul and her Majesty's empire of Hindostan. On May 1st, 1859, there was public thanksgiving in all the churches of England for the pacification of India.

For more than two hundred and fifty years a commercial association under the name of the East India Company had exercised a control over the interior affairs as well as over the commerce of the peninsula of Hindostan. For more than a century the victories of Clive and the base negligence of the government of Louis XV. had secured to the English the empire of India, an empire which France had for a moment gallantly

disputed with her. Province after province had been annexed to the territory which bore the yoke of the East India Company; prince after prince of the native races had been dispossessed, imprisoned, or exiled; while, up to the day of the outbreak of the Indian mutiny, the great mass of the English people had remained absolutely ignorant of the events as well as of the interests that were rife in their vast Oriental possessions, visited only by men eager to make a fortune rapidly, or by soldiers ordered for duty there. In his brilliant essay upon the life of Lord Clive, Lord Macaulay complains loudly that, while every schoolboy knows the story of the Spanish conquests in America, the history of Montezuma, of Cortez, and of Pizarro, the majority of cultivated men in England are quite ignorant in respect to the conquests and growth of the English empire in India. Questions in Parliament relative to the government of this vast country were the affair of but a few persons, and seemed to excite no interest whatever in the public mind. As the lightning's flash suddenly tears the clouds which cover the sky, so the mutiny in India had torn the clouds of tradition, ignorance, and indifference. All England desired to know this country which she had

for the first time, learned to dread, the control of which, long negligently held, she had seen nearly slipping from her grasp. The first emotion was that of surprise, followed immediately by indignation and the desire of vengeance. When the mutiny had finally been extinguished, English statesmen began to ask themselves what had been the causes, whether these causes might not again recur, and whether the measures of repression employed had been in all cases just and moderate. In earlier times, when Lord Clive and Warren Hastings had ruled the Hindoos with despotic sway, the clear light of parliamentary investigation had been let in upon the darkness and intrigues of Oriental courts and upon all the procedures of the English ruler in his dealings with the native princes. With even stronger

reason in 1858 was the government of this ever-increasing empire destined to become the object of a discussion as searching as it was ardent and impassioned. The spontaneous act of Lord Ellenborough, one of the members of the Indian government, furnished the first and a very legitimate pretext for this discussion.

On the 3d of October, 1858, Lord Canning had issued a proclamation addressed to the chiefs of Oudh, announcing that, with the exception of the lands held by six loyal proprietors, all the territory of Oudh had become the property of the English crown, to be disposed of as might hereafter seem suitable. Their personal safety was promised to all who should immediately surrender to the chief commissioner, with the exception of those personally guilty of the murder of English subjects. Their hope for any favors and indulgences, hereafter to be shown them, would depend entirely upon the justice and the clemency of the English government.

The commissioner, Sir James Outram, at once protested against the wholesale confiscation ordered by Lord Canning, affirming that its effect would be disastrous since no doubt the land-owners would refuse to submit, and that it would be necessary to institute a guerilla warfare for their extirpation, in which thousands of Englishmen would be forced to sacrifice their lives. Lord Canning, however, persisted in his intentions. Naturally disposed to clemency, equable and moderate, as had been clearly shown in the early days of the mutiny, when the voices of all urged him to a severity which he was never willing to exercise, it was his design to use gently and generously the power he had arrogated to himself over the inhabitants of the revolted province. He judged, however, as Lord Durham had done years before in Canada, that a new life must begin in the relations between England and the province of Oudh, that the usual course of law was suspended by the fact of a