That the long-existing discontent and growing disloyalty in our Native army might have been discovered sooner, and grappled with in a sufficiently prompt and determined manner to put a stop to the Mutiny, had the senior regimental and staff officers been younger, more energetic, and intelligent, is an opinion to which I have always been strongly inclined.  Their excessive age, due to a strict system of promotion by seniority which entailed the employment of Brigadiers of seventy, Colonels of sixty, and Captains of fifty, must necessarily have prevented them performing their military duties with the energy and activity which are more the attributes of younger men, and must have destroyed any enthusiasm about their regiments, in which there was so little hope of advancement or of individual merit being recognized.  Officers who displayed any remarkable ability were allowed to be taken away from their own corps for the more attractive and better-paid appointments appertaining to civil employ or the Irregular service.  It was, therefore, the object of every ambitious and capable young officer to secure one of these appointments, and escape as soon as possible from a service in which ability and professional zeal counted for nothing.[7]

So far as I understand the causes which led to the rebellion of 1857, I have now answered the question, ‘What brought about the Mutiny?’ The reply to the second question, ’Is there any chance of a similar rising occurring again?’ must be left to another chapter.

[Footnote 1:  In this matter it seems to me that Lord Dalhousie’s policy has been unfairly criticized.  The doctrine of lapse was no new-fangled theory of the Governor-General, but had been recognized and acted upon for many years by the Native dynasties which preceded the East India Company.  Under the Company’s rule the Court of Directors had investigated the subject, and in a series of despatches from 1834 to 1846 had laid down that, in certain cases, the selection and adoption of an heir by a Native Ruler was an incontestable right, subject only to the formal sanction of the suzerain Power, while in other cases such a procedure was optional, and could only be permitted as a special favour.  Lord Dalhousie concurred in the view that each case should be considered and decided on its merits.  His words were:  ’The Government is bound in duty, as well as in policy, to act on every such occasion with the purest integrity, and in the most scrupulous observance of good faith.  Where even a shadow of doubt can be shown, the claim should at once be abandoned.  But where the right to territory by lapse is clear, the Government is bound to take that which is justly and legally its due, and to extend to that territory the benefits of our sovereignty, present and prospective.’]

[Footnote 2:  In those days L120,000.]

[Footnote 3: 

    ’Benares,
    ’April 4, 1857.

    ’MON CHER AZIMULA KHAN,