can ever be; and thereby to impair the powers of that arm which they are so impatient to wield for their own aggrandizement, and to the prejudice of their neighbours; and to strengthen that of the paramount power by which the whole are kept in peace, harmony, and security.  We give to India what India never had before our rule, and never could have without it, the assurance that there will always be at the head of the Government a sensible ruler trained up to office in the best school in the world; and that the security of the rights, and the enforcement of the duties, presented or defined by law, will not depend upon the will or caprice of individuals in power.  These assurances the people in India now everywhere thoroughly understand and appreciate.  They see in the native states around them that the lucky accident of an able governor is too rare ever to be calculated upon; while all that the people have of property, office, or character, depends not only upon their governor, but upon every change that he may make in his ministers.

The government of the Muhammadans was always essentially military, and the aristocracy was always one of military office.  There was nothing else upon which an aristocracy could be formed.  All high civil offices were combined with the military commands.  The emperor was the great proprietor of all the lands, and collected and distributed their rents through his own servants.  Every Musalman with his Koran in his hand was his own priest and his own lawyer; and the people were nowhere represented in any municipal or legislative assembly—­there was no bar, bench, senate, corporation, art, science, or literature by which men could rise to eminence and power.  Capital had nowhere been concentrated upon great commercial or manufacturing establishments.  There were, in short, no great men but the military servants of Government; and all the servants of Government held their posts at the will and pleasure of their sovereign.[11]

If a man was appointed by the emperor to the command of five thousand, the whole of this five thousand depended entirely on his favour for their employment, and upon their employment for their subsistence, whether paid from the imperial treasury, or by an assignment of land in some distant province.[12] In our armies there is a regular gradation of rank; and every officer feels that he holds his commission by a tenure as high in origin, as secure in possession, and as independent in its exercise, as that of the general who commands; and the soldiers all know and feel that the places of those officers, who are killed or disabled in action, will be immediately filled by those next in rank, who are equally trained to command, and whose authority none will dispute.  In the Muhammadan armies there was no such gradation of rank.  Every man held his office at the will of the chief whom he followed, and he was every moment made to feel that all his hopes of advancement must depend upon his pleasure.