10

NATIVE INVALIDING RULES.

served out in the first instance, reeking with all kinds of abominable grease stuff that was supplied to the Arsenal by contractors, and very much to blame are Government and all the authorities whose duty it was to have had things better ordered. These cartridges are made the rallying-point on the part of the disaffected; but there must be other causes for the wide-spread feeling of disaffection existing in the minds of the Sepoys, but what these causes are no one has been able yet to ascertain from themselves, and we are left to our own surmises on the subject. To my mind, the one great cause of complaint is the difficulty there now is for a man, Native officer or Sepoy, getting on the Pension Establishment, and there is no chance whatever of his being granted a pension as long as he can put one foot before another; so a commanding officer of a regiment, do what he will, cannot get rid of useless, worn-out men, who are sent back to him by the invaliding committees to become a source of discontent in the corps. Norman,* our Assistant Adjutant-General, who is a very smart young officer, told me of an instance within his knowledge of every man who was sent before the invaliding committee of a certain regiment having been rejected, except one, and that poor fellow died before his papers could be made out for pension. At Bombay, where the Army has always been in a more contented state than here, the invaliding rules are quite different, and men are admitted to pensions there-if pronounced unfit by the regimental authoritieswho would be kept on the strength of the Army for years longer in Bengal. Another thing, I firmly believe, is that the Army is well aware of the secondary position their officers are made to hold, and of the little power they have and can exercise; and during the late régime, particularly of Lord Dalhousie, no pains were spared by him to show the paramount nature of his power at the expense of the military, and his Council, it strikes me, were walking much in the same direction. The well-being of the Army, in fact, and its officers, was a secondary consideration, and the Sepoys knew it; and the authority, particularly of commanding officers, has become much weakened in consequence. But I must quit the subjectthough I could write a great deal more about it. In the end I have no doubt things will terminate satisfactorily, but we may have one or two awkward incidents yet to dispose of.

* Now General Sir Henry W. Norman, G.C.B., G.C.M.G.