India is at present tranquil, and likely to remain so.  We have no native chiefs, or combination of native chiefs, to create uneasiness; and if we continue to satisfy the great body of the people that we are anxious, to the best of our ability, to promote their happiness and welfare, and are the most impartial arbitrators that they could have, we shall have nothing to fear.  The moment that this mass is impressed with the belief that we wish to govern India only for ourselves, or as the French govern Algiers, from that moment we must lose our vantage ground and decline.  We may war against the native chiefs of India, but we cannot war against the people—­we need not fear what may be called political dangers, but we must guard carefully against those of a social character which would unite against us the members of all classes and all creeds.

But I must no longer indulge in speculations of this sort, in which you can now feel little interest amidst the important changes which are now taking place in the institutions and relations of European nations.  With grateful recollections of kindness received, and great respect,
I remain,
Your Lordship’s obedient servant,
(Signed) W. H. SLEEMAN.

To the Right Hon.
the Earl of Ellenborough.

P.S.—­Since writing the above, I have received your Lordship’s letter of the 18th of January, and have been much gratified with the favourable opinion you entertain of the commandant and officers.  It is the best assurance I could have of my boy being safe.  Nothing could be more auspicious than the opening of the lad’s career, and I trust he will profit by the advantage.

__________________________

Lucknow, 18th March, 1851.

My Dear Sir Erskine,

I have read over with much interest the two small works you have done me the favour to send me, the one on Buddhism, and the other on Law Reform; but I have not ventured upon the Seventh Report of the Board of Education yet, because I have had a good deal to do and think about; and a good deal of it is in small print, very trying for my eyes, which are none of the strongest.  I shall, however, soon read it.

I concur in all your views about the necessity of throwing overboard the whole system of special pleading, and have been amused with Sir J. P. Grant’s horror of your proposed innovations.  It is not less than that which he expressed at the little Macaulay Code, intended to blow up the whole pyramid raised by “the wisdom of our ancestors,” in which so many illustrious characters he entombed.  He was, indeed, as you say, “a great laudator temporis acti;” but the number of those like him at all times in England and its distant possessions is fearful.  One likes to look to America in this as in all things tending to advancement; but there the “damned spot” stares us in the face, blights our hopes, and crushes our sympathies—­hideous slavery —­hideous alike in the recollection