and superstition. And thus the Government, instead of seeking to rest their power on the immoveable basis of public opinion, enlightened by knowledge and corrected by free discussion, seem to aim at nothing higher than to maintain a military despotism, which will tumble to pieces on the first concussion it receives.

In the view of your own late forcible expulsion from this country, it must afford you considerable satisfaction to reflect on the advantages that have already resulted from your labours. You have occasionally advanced sentiments which, if I properly understand them, I cannot approve; yet the general tendency of your writings I must consider as conducive in a very high degree to the spread of useful knowledge and true religion. The most valuable effect of your labours has been to excite a spirit of inquiry in India, to a greater extent than the labours of Missionaries have been able to effect for these twenty or thirty years. This is all that the friends of knowledge, virtue, and religion want. Let them be fairly exhibited, and their claims fully discussed, and ignorance, vice, and irreligion will gradually disappear. Inquiry and free discussion will most effectually undermine the whole fabric of superstition, while, at the same time, they will most effectually consolidate our power, by furnishing information to the legislation at home, aiding the Government in India, purifying the streams of justice, and confirming the attachment of our Native subjects.

A MISSIONARY.

REFORMS REQUIRED IN THE BENGAL ARMY.

To Lieutenant-Colonel Watson, Adjutant-General of the Bengal Army.

SIR, YOU have recently assumed the duties of Adjutant-General of the Bengal army, and the military part of the Bengal Presidency look up to you for a determined and much wanted improvement in the Native infantry branch, as well as to uphold the welfare and interests of the army you have the proud honour to repre sent, both with the Government and the Commander-in-Chief; and let us behold the worthy days of respectful manly uprightness, and independence of character, shine in your department.

It is vain and useless longer to deny that the service has not fallen in the estimation or value of the Natives. Most corps formerly had supernumeraries, without pay, at drill, wanting vacancies in the ranks! Now it is not so, is equally certain, and recruiting is difficult! One of the grand causes of this is the lamentable manner in which the sepoys have been overworked, from the want of a sufficient number of regiments of the line for the various increased duties, and the twelve new extra corps (six only officered, when you have captains of twenty-two and twenty-four years in the army,) will yet be insufficient to keep the corps somewhat together, and establish the new

system of field movements laid down for the army, and recover its late rescinded discipline and confidence. In time of peace, keep up your troops as in time of war, then take the advantage of re-establishing regimental and brigade systems, and a small code of regulations, burning your Green, Corroe, and Henley, and all other standing orders, which cry out shame in their present extended form, and are a cart-load for any staff when marching in the field.

Local corps are the entire ruin of the Bengal regular army, and until these are re-formed as regiments of the line, properly officered, and moved as other regiments from the garden of recruiting, no improvement can be anticipated, draining the European officers as you now do from the line to fill these; and, in like manner, as local corps are kept at the expense of the officers at large in the loss of promotion, consequently, competency to retire from the service, contentment will never exist in the feelings of your European officers. So truly are these the patronage of the Governor-General, that it is not surprising to find commanding officers (very generally) follow the example of this high authority, and aim in keeping the promotions of havildars and naicks in their exclusive gift, rendering the rules of the service and captains of companies little better than ciphers in the eyes of the men; so that the authority they should possess is nugatory. More attention should be paid in granting the indulgence of furlough to the sepoys-it keeps up the chain of connexion with the villagers, and most of the local and provincial corps are stationed in and about the neighbourhood of their homes, having constant communication with their families; whereas, in the line, it falls to the lot of an individual in about eight or nine years, and then the expedition with which he must travel to be at home two or three months out of five or six of leave, frequently sends him to hospital on his return to the corps, and perhaps costs him his life from over fatigue and badness of the season in which he is doomed to journey. The local and provincial corps are always in the cheapest part of the country, and you expose the regulars to the most expen sive of the provinces. Regiments should be always of sufficient strength to allow the indulgence of furlough from February to September of each year; it is now the third year since this favour of Government has ceased in consequence of the war, and it is likely to continue three years more with the present weak divisions employed in the enemy's country.

Are you aware that commanding officers refuse men their discharge after the expiration of enlisting engagement in the time of peace? An average exists of sixty men in each corps wishing to leave the service, and this is denied them year after year; some consequently desert, and you punish them if retaken on this crime. Is this the law of consistency? Is it a pledge of faith in the day of trial when you look for the conduct of the sepoys? Granting men discharges when solicited, in proper season, in cantonment, lessens the applications, and you would have hardly occasion for that thoughtless desertion order issued some time ago. You should have known the contempt in which

the sepoys and Natives hold your police; and in Oude, your grand recruiting depôt, you dare not enforce the order, from a fear of creating open rebellion throughout your dominions. It has, however, served to make desertion dreaded, which was before quite unheeded! Are you aware the Bengal sepoy is worse paid than the Madras and Bombay, and that the Bengal sepoy must have an increase of allowance after a certain term of service, or some like method, before your ranks in the army will be refilled by respectable sons of zemindars? As I have before observed, the service has been on the deeline for years. The Madras and Bombay armies have of late been well looked aftertheir wants respected; the Bengal army has been neglected, the minds of your European officers dissatisfied by the continual increase of local regiments on the Bengal side, blasting their present and future prosspects of rising to command till thirty-five or forty years' residence in the country; disgust has taken possession of their minds, and the esprit de corps has ceased to exist.

The Madras army, which recruits many men in the Bengal provinces, now have their ranks supplied from the very country where the Bengal army cannot procure men; this is the strongest proof of what I have before asserted, if such indeed were wanting. Endeavour then to make the employ worthy of consideration to the men you enlist for the protection of the colours of a corps. You must expect the retention of India will yearly become more difficult, and the next ten years will not pass so quietly as those gone by,-so on till dominion ceases!

It is much to be doubted how your enlisting men for general service will answer on the day of trial-the hour of embarkation; the old method is the best perhaps, followed by Lord Hastings for Ceylon volunteers. The system of the present day does not appear to fulfil the expectations; and "hanging in chains, and irons on the roads" has been given up with better judgment than that which instituted the punishment. Hereafter, you had better have recourse to a sixpounder at the moment, than disgust the army by proceedings which caused a general flight from the standard, when death would have been thought nothing of.

The muskets served out to the Native regiments are inferior to those supplied to his Majesty's troops at home; so are the accoutrements; and the pouches in use are of the worst description, arising from the wooden blocks; the coat of a sepoy has been a little improved by Sir Edward Paget, and the trousers, it is hoped, will fall under the eye of the new Commander-in-Chief; they are generally infamously cut, and, on the first wetting, the trousers become regular tight pantaloons. Great-coats should be supplied to the Indian army, European, and Native, by the state; then the blanket used by the latter in the cold season might be cast aside, and sentries thus would be more alert on their post, and have the advantage of hearing quickly, which the blanket rolled around their head and ears now prevent.

AN OFFICER ON FURLOUGH.

STATE OF FEELING IN THE BOMBAY ARMY.

To the Editor of the Oriental Herald.

SIR,-Numerous and well-founded are the complaints from every quarter of the great want of troops. At most stations of the Bombay army, one regiment is obliged to perform the duties of two or three, to the total destruction of all discipline, and disgust of the men, who are driven to desert in alarming numbers, from the total want of all consideration for their feelings or comforts. So short-sighted are our present rulers, that they do not see, or if they see, they do not heed, the fearful results likely to arise from the present mode of treating the Native troops. Formerly, the duty, though sufficiently hard, was nothing to the intolerable fatigue and mortification to which the sepoys are at present subjected; recruits were then to be found in abundance; to recruit within our own territories is now impossible; scarcely a decent man will enlist; the Government know it; and I venture to predict, that unless an immediate reform takes place, in a very few years we shall be without a Native army. There is no want of men; on the contrary, there are plenty; but the Native population have taken a general dislike to the service, which is daily spreading wider, owing to the accounts given by deserters of the hardships the men endure, and the disgusting duties they are called on to perform. At this, our principal station, three Native regiments are requisite to do the ordinary duty, without harassing the men-we have only got one! There is a battalion, it is true, but being lately embodied, and undisciplined, they cannot be brought on duty. The war with the Colapore Rajah has taken away the rest, and the European troops are only put on regimental duty. All this cannot be helped-Europeans ought not to mount guard in the heat of an Indian sun, and the public service must be performed; that which I do complain of is this, that not a civilian can stir, east, west, north or south, without a requisition being made for some unfortunate sepoy to inflate his pride and vanity, which, God knows, in many of them, does not require such incitements. Will it be believed, that with only 800 men to do the duties of 3000, two parties, EACH consisting of a Native officer, two havildars, and fifty rank and file, were marched near fifty miles from Poona the other day, as an escort merely!

The Government, indeed, ought not to be surprised at desertion and disaffection thinning the sepoy ranks, and feelings of dissatisfaction being entertained by the European officers. Yet, when abuses are occasionally brought to notice through the medium of your publication, out comes a thundering Government order, and we are threatened with deportation and dismissal if we even correspond with you! Yes, Sir, such are the terms and threats under which I now write to you! At the same time, as if in mockery, we are asked why we do not re

present our grievances to the proper authorities? Such drivelling is really contemptible; it is like asking a starving man in the desert why he does not eat?-we might as well talk to the winds as complain to the authorities. Whoever should have the temerity to do so, would instantly be set down for punishment. Why, if the writer of the article signed "A BOMBAY OFFICER," in the 18th Number of the Oriental Herald,' was known, although his letter is moderate, and he points at nothing but truths, he would instantly be deprived of his commission; and had he ventured to address Government in the same sensible style he did you, immediate banishment to the most unhealthy station in the army would have been the reward of his zeal. God help him if ever he is discovered-he is a marked man. If civilians cannot move without escorts, why not furnish them from the host of subadars, locals, &c. &c., who swallow up such an enormous portion of the revenue, and are absolutely useless? Indeed, the only way I have ever seen these gentry employed, and that has been pretty often, was running before collectors' palanquins, and mounting guard over their persons! By the by, I should beg pardon for saying they are useless,-they furnish patronage, and consequently are particularly useful. But why, I ask, should civilians, moving about within the British territories for their own pleasure, have any escort at all? It is what a soldier never requires, let his rank be what it will, and indeed he would not get it if he did. The sepoys have a particular aversion to these duties. I passed an escort of the description alluded to some time since, and many of the men came after me several miles, to the bungalow at which I put up, complaining that they had to mount sentry over cooks and mussauls, and that orders were given to them by servants and chobdars, which they were obliged to obey to avoid punishment. These men appeared keenly to feel the indignity they suffered, but I could give them no comfort. To bring this to the notice of Government here, would be worse than useless; it would infallibly ruin my prospects in the service; the Editors of the newspapers dare not publish this or any other statement pointing out the misconduct of those in power; my only hopes, therefore, are, that you will give it insertion in your unfettered publication, when I know it will reach the eye of authority here, and may perhaps induce some public-spirited individual at the India House to interest himself in causing an inquiry to be made into the manifold abuses of the Indian army.

In the Deccan, Dec. 1825.

ANOTHER BOMBAY OFFICER.