vernment to the army medical officers to make themselves thoroughly masters of the specialities of that branch of the medical art, and its practical application."

They propose that a special sanitary officer should be attached to the Quartermaster-General's department of every army in the field. As the watcher over all preventible causes of disease or death, the functions of such an officer will range beyond drainage and ventilation, and even the salubrity of the foods and liquors. As a brief summary of the elements of morbid evil permitted to operate upon our force in the Crimea, we shall take from the Report of M'Neill and Tulloch a paragraph, of which we have no doubt the terms were well weighed and carefully revised before the document was issued. Observing that the returns of sickness and mortality relate to matters beyond the region of their inquiry, they say, "But the mortality in the Crimea has been too remarkable not to excite a strong desire to ascertain, if possible, its causes. The medical evidence appears conclusive against attributing it to anything peculiarly unfavourable in the climate; and all the officers, of whatever rank or profession, whom we examined, referred to overwork, improper diet, exposure to cold and moisture, with deficient shelter, inadequate clothing, and defective boots, as the causes of disease. Some of the witnesses appeared to attribute greater influence to one of these causes, some to another; but there can be no doubt that the mortality was the effect, not of any one cause apart from the others, but of a combination of the whole."

Let us count one of these causes of mortality, the "overwork," among the sacrifices cheerfully and heroically made by the soldier: there was an end to be gained by it which neither quartermaster nor commissary could achieve. We had a wide-extended front and a thin line, and overwork must make up for the deficiency of numbers. But the other causes were deficiencies in things due to the soldier-due by our engagement with him to go where he went to fight our battles; and the bargain was not

We shall say no

kept with him. more on a matter which we thoroughly discussed while it was yet fresh.*

In conclusion, let us drop for the reader's consideration a few thoughts upon the question, whether it is decent and just, wise and generous, that our country should be given to the practice of maligning the mass of its soldiery as a kind of pariah class, when estimated with the rest of the citizens of the British empire. It is true that we uphold their fame in all comparison with foreign troops. They are the only men who will stand to be cut down at their post; they are the only troops who can be trusted in lines against columns, or who can be handled in small detachments close to a hostile army. Dupin criticises as a peculiar nationality the superb arrogance with which our statesmen and generals have ever spoken of auxiliaries and foreign mercenaries when engaged in the same operations with British troops, comparing their combination to the mixing of gold with the baser metals. Of late years the national boast has been better grounded than ever. Our standing and fame among the nations of the earth, though it may have many substantial foundations, has in late trials and difficulties been upheld chiefly by the soldier. And yet, at home among ourselves, he is still spoken of as the black sheep of our family. It was predicted that when the Russian war ceased, and a large portion of our army was disbanded, crime would immediately increase. It did not. In the interval between the two wars, the Russian and the Sepoy, the number of criminals continued steadily to decrease. However the survivors of that long stern conflict, in which the enemy was not the most formidable destroyer, bestowed themselves, it was not by becoming tenants of the jails. In one shape, however, their conduct taught an unpleasant lesson: the disbanded did not come forward on the new emergency, and raw recruits had to be sent to India. Hence the natural inference is, that our enlistments bring in high-spirited thoughtless youths, with little

writer of the present age, Dr Wade, in speaking of the British soldier in terms which are a heavy scandal to the country. In his History of the Middle and Working Classes he says: "The army is mostly filled from the same causes which fill the jails and houses of correction; it is not choice, but necessity, which compels men to enlist therein. Having lost their character, or contracted habits of idleness and improvidence which exclude them from the better paid walks of civil industry, they are constrained to devote themselves to the hardships and perils of military life." It might perhaps be hard to determine by rigid law that there is any sphere of usefulness from which the reformed offender should be excluded. But, far from making the army the general refuge for offenders, reformed or unreformed, we would hold that, next to the Church, it ought to be counted the last profession in which offenders stained by dishonesty or other degrading crimes can secure a welcome.

While the process of degradation was going on, the sagacious Defoe uttered in his own rough fashion some remarks, which came close to truth and soundness on the point. "Why," he says, "are jails rummaged for malefactors, and the Mint and prisons for debtors? The war is an employment of honour, and suffers some scandal in having men taken from the gallows, and immediately, from villains and housebreakers, made gentlemen soldiers. If men wanted employment, and consequently bread, this would never be. Any man would carry a musket rather than starve, and wear the Queen's cloth, or anybody's cloth, rather than go naked, and live in rags and want. It is plain the nation is full of people, and it is as plain our people have no particular aversion to the war, but they are not poor enough to go abroad. It is poverty makes men soldiers, and drives cowards into the armies: and the difficulty to get Englishmen to list is because they live in plenty and ease; and he that can earn 20s. a-week at an easy steady employment, must be drunk or mad when he lists for a

soldier, to be knocked o' the head for 3s. 6d. a-week.”*

This, as we say, comes close to the point. Frankly, we would have the entire condition of the common soldier uplifted in the social scale, by the expenditure necessary to produce that result. If we are told that this may cost the nation two or three millions, the answer is, that they would be well expended. Perhaps some one will say that the army is not a mercenary profession. This argument may be decorously employed by those who receive, but not by those who give. The parson and the surgeon of the parish are not perhaps mercenary, and yet if each have not a good house and clean linen, with the means of educating his family, the usefulness of his functions will be impaired, and the position of his children will sink in the scale of civilisation. It may be truly urged that our troops cost more by the head than any other troops in the world, but yet it is notorious that in scarcely any other country is the soldier so far below the level of the other citizen. Until he reaches a position corresponding to what he holds in other nations, we maintain that the expenditure assigned to him is insufficient. From the constitution and habits of this country-especially from our way of dealing with the army-money is the sole means by which the amendment can be accomplished. We have ceased to be in any way a feudal people-we buy all services in hard cash-and we must pay what they are worth, instead of attempting, through the flaunting recruiting-sergeant at the gin-house door, to obtain them by a combination of fraud and force.

It cannot be doubted that the many kind and judicious details of improvement suggested by the Sanitary Commissioners will materially improve the soldier's condition. They come in a shape that cannot be resisted. Their tenor forcibly reminds us of one whose latter days would have been gladdened had he lived to see the great object of his life placed in such a train for practical accomplishment. Many readers will anticipate the name of Dr Henry Marshall, Inspector of Mili

་

tary Hospitals, the author of the work to which we have occasionally referred, and of other works devoted to the grievances of the soldier, and their remedy. In the following brief emphatic remark in his Military Miscellany, the reader will recognise a grievance which has been lately thundered loudly in the British ear.

"With respect to the dinner, it may be observed, that in this country it is commonly excellent in quality and abundant in quantity; but it is unvarying the same kind of articles cooked in the same manner, from the 1st January to the 31st December.

Que le vent souffle au nord, ou qu'il

souffle au midi,

C'est toujours du bouilli, mais jamais du

roti.""

Whatever improvement may hereafter be attributable to the Report of the Army Sanitary Commission, we cannot help thinking that the future of the British soldier is not unlikely to be brightened by a historical episode, which about this time last year opened in darkness and calamity. Certainly no great theory seemed ever to be better founded-none ever bore

discussion and criticism better-than that which enjoined us to keep a large well-paid native army in our Indian possessions. The practical refutation of the theory has cost us dear. Henceforth, we apprehend, it will be found that a large British army will be our security there. It is a necessity of all arrangements for governing Eastern races, that those placed over them should enjoy the benefits of position; and the Company have been accustomed to consider this in the large incomes given to their officers, and even in the improved condition of the British soldier when serving them. still higher and better - ascertained The new force will probably obtain a position, and it would not surprise us to see the sons of yeomen and superior artisans finding in the ranks of the Indian army the sort of provision which the sons of our gentry have enjoyed in the higher branches of the Company's service. If this should be so, it is needless to say that the continuance of the soldier at home in his present sordidness, while is brother in the East lives like a gentleman, would prove an anomaly not to be tolerated.

LITTLE had occurred during the latter part of June to disturb the peace of the Punjab stations. At Lahore the native troops remained disarmed and passive, as also at Peshawur, where, however, a more rigid surveillance was necessary, and more than once the disarmed regiments had been detected secreting native weapons in their lines. The 21st Native Infantry continued to form an honourable exception to their Poorbeah brethren, retaining their good name and their arms throughout. At Nowshera the 10th Irregulars, whose very questionable conduct has been already spoken of, were, by a most admirably concerted arrival of Europeans and Moultanees, disarmed, unhorsed, ignominiously

turned out of the station, and sent across the Indus. The 58th Native Infantry at Rawul Pindee, the 14th Native Infantry at Jhelum, at Sealkote the 46th Native Infantry and a wing of the 9th Cavalry, the 59th Native Infantry at Umritsur, the 4th Native Infantry at Kangra and Noorpoor, and the 2d Irregular Cavalry at Goordaspore, were still armed, yet nearly all* had more or less given signs of a passive disaffection. It was generally felt that certainly in some, and probably in all of them, were smouldering the embers of mutiny, which any chance breath might fan into flame. And the month of July was to witness the outbreak of that long-suppressed spirit, in a degree even more blood

thirsty and disastrous than had marked the rising of the Jullundhur troops in the beginning of June, without the impunity, however-not to say success - with which those regiments had escaped under the very eyes of a strong European force. At the end of June, Sir John Lawrence and the military authorities at Rawul Pindee had received secret intimation that this spirit was attaining a dangerous height, especially among the 14th Native Infantry, of which regiment two companies were on detached duty at Rawul Pindee. This corps had throughout been regarded with anxious suspicion; from the very first they had indirectly avowed a mutinous tendency; and whenever their fidelity was challenged, their only reply was that they would do as the 39th did; and there was now every reason to believe that they were ripe for mutiny. To anticipate their designs, it was resolved to disarm them, and also the 58th Native Infantry, in whose stanchness, notwithstanding the asseverations and the tact of their commandant, Colonel Barstow, there had never been any very great confidence.

All the necessary arrangements were made for this step. On the morning of the 1st of July, three companies of her Majesty's 24th (260 strong), under Lieutenant-Colonel Ellice and five officers, with three Horse-Artillery guns under Captain Cookes and Lieutenant Lewes, and 150 of Captain Miller's Police Battalion, left Rawul Pindee, with sealed orders to proceed towards Jhelum. On the 3d the Moultanee Levies,* under Lieutenant Lind, numbering 460 cavalry and 250 infantry, who had come in from Peshawur the day before, were pushed on by forced marches to overtake Colonel Ellice's detachment.

The morning of the 7th July saw the whole remaining force at Rawul Pindee brigaded on the open ground to the west of the church, consisting of four companies of the 24th, the

three remaining guns of the Horse Artillery, with some of Captain Miller's Mounted Police, and the 58th Native Infantry, and the two companies of the 14th Native Infantry. The avowed object of this parade was to hear the reading of a general order; nor did even the officers of the native corps know that anything further was contemplated.

At the conclusion of the order, the Horse Artillery and the European Infantry were ordered to wheel round, and were thus brought facing the native regiments. No sooner did the Sepoys see the manœuvre than they suspected its object, and broke off in the direction of their own lines: their officers accompanied them, and manfully endeavoured to allay the panic, and to persuade their men to lay down their arms quietly. With the 58th Native Infantry the officers prevailed; and on arriving at the parade-ground, the Sepoys gave up their arms. Not so, however, with the two companies of the 14th Native Infantry: these had set the example in the flight; and many of them were now seen making for the city, musket in hand. Captain Miller's Mounted Police were quickly after them, and cut up several; the rest, who for a time got off were caught by the villagers, and their heads brought in next morning. The only European wounded was Captain Miller himself, who, in gallant pursuit of the fugitives, had his arm broken by a musket-shot. Thus ended the affair on the Rawul Pindee paradeground.t

A similar scene, but with very different results, was at the same time being enacted at Jhelum, it having been intended that the disarming should be simultaneous at both sta tions. On the morning of the 6th, Colonel Ellice's detachment, now strengthened by Lieutenant Lind's Moultanees, arrived at Deenah, one march from Jhelum. Here the sealed orders were opened, and it was found that the object of the expedition was to disarm the 14th Native Infantry.