The wives and children of his brothers, who are absent on service, are confided to his care with the same confidence as to that of the father.  It is a rule to which I have through life found but few exceptions that those who are most disposed to resist constituted authority are those most disposed to abuse such authority when they get it.  The members of these families, disposed, as they always are, to pay deference to such authority, are scarcely ever found to abuse it when it devolves upon them; and the elder son, when he succeeds to the place of his father, loses none of the affectionate attachment of his younger brothers.

They never take their wives or children with them to their regiments, or to the places where their regiments are stationed.[27] They leave them with their fathers or elder brothers, and enjoy their society only when they return on furlough.  Three-fourths of their incomes are sent home to provide for their comfort and subsistence, and to embellish that home in which they hope to spend the winter of their days.  The knowledge that any neglect of the duty they owe their distant families will be immediately visited by the odium of their native officers and brother soldiers, and ultimately communicated to the heads of their families, acts as a salutary check on their conduct; and I believe that there is hardly a native regiment in the Bengal army in which the twenty drummers who are Christians, and have their families with the regiment, do not cause more trouble to the officers than the whole eight hundred sepoys.

To secure the fidelity of such men all that is necessary is to make them feel secure of three things—­their regular pay, at the handsome rate at which it has now been fixed; their retiring pensions upon the scale hitherto enjoyed; and promotion by seniority, like their European officers, unless they shall forfeit all claims to it by misconduct or neglect of duty.[28] People talk about a demoralized army, and discontented army!  No army in the world was certainly ever more moral or more contented than our native army; or more satisfied that their masters merit all their devotion and attachment; and I believe none was ever more devoted or attached to them.[29] I do not speak of the European officers of the native army.  They very generally believe that they have had just cause of complaint, and sufficient care has not always been taken to remove that impression.  In all the junior grades the Honourable Company’s officers have advantages over the Queen’s in India.  In the higher grades the Queen’s officers have advantages over those of the Honourable Company.  The reasons it does not behove me here to consider.[30]