THE SEPOY REVOLT: ITS CAUSES AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. BY HENRY MEAD. LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 1857. 226. C. 49. The right of translation is reserved. PREFACE. IN the following pages I have condensed, to the best of my ability, the results of ten years' labour in the busy fields of Indian journalism. My opportunities of acquiring a knowledge of political and social affairs have been great; it is for the public to decide if I have made good use of them. Were my book to be written over again, I should like to deepen the colours in which some pictures of Indian life have been painted; but the experience which enables a man to write on the subject of Eastern government, tends to blunt his sympathies, and in some degree to injure his moral sense. Torture and lawlessness, and the perpetual suffering of millions, are so familiar to me, that I am conscious of not feeling as I ought to do when wrong is done to individuals and nations. The man who lives in the vicinity of the undertaker and boiler maker, is not likely to join in the agitation against barrel organs and street cries. There is a malady common to savages in certain parts of the world, which is termed "earth-hunger." It provokes an incessant craving for clay, a species of food which fails to satisfy the appetite, and which impairs the power of digestion. The East India Company have laboured under its influence for a century past; and as yet the disease shows no signs of abatement. The last mail informed us that 25,000 acres, in the districts recently assigned by the Nizam, had this season been thrown out of cultivation; and current advices express the satisfaction of the Indian Government at the prospect of new confiscations. In Madras, Bombay, and the Punjab, for every acre that is cultivated, at least three remain untilled; and still we continue to make nobles landless, and to increase the sum total of Asiatic misery. scorn and If Heaven had not a great work for us to do in the East, the cruelty, the oppression, and the measureless folly of our rule would before this have produced its natural fruits, and we should have been cast out from India, a example to the nations. We have been heavily punished, and there is yet a fearful blow to be endured; but after a while we shall comprehend the nature of our responsibilities, and try to fulfil them. England's difficulty is England's opportunity. If we are wise henceforth in dealing with India, the well of Cawnpore will so fertilise the land, that every corner of it will yield a crop of blessings. H. M. |