have lost all hope, and the profligate and unprincipled Government have lost all fear.  The untoward war with Burmah prevents our present Governor-General from doing what he and I believe the Honourable Court both wish.  We certainly ought not any longer to incur the odium of supporting such a Government in its iniquities, pledged as we are by treaties to protect the people from them.  I do not apprehend any serious change in the constitution of the Court of Directors in the new charter.  No ministers would hazard such a change in the present state of Europe.  The Court is India’s only safeguard.  No foreign possession was ever so governed for itself as India has been, and this all foreigners with whom I have conversed, admit.  The Governor-General of the Netherlands India was with me lately on his way home.  He is a first-rate statesman, and he declared to me that he was impressed and delighted to see a country so governed, and apparently so sensible of the benefits conferred upon it by our paternal rule.  He will tell you the same thing if you ever meet him.  His name is Rochasson.  The people appreciate the value of the Court of Directors, and no act, as far as it is known to them, has tended more to strengthen their confidence in it than that which has brought retribution on the great sinner in Scinde, Allee Murad.  No punishment was ever more just or merited.  Scinde, however, is too remote for the people in general to feel much interest in its affairs or families.  Our weak points in the last Burmese war were:—­1.  The want of transport for troops and stores; 2.  The want of carriage by land, for arms and stores; 3.  Sickness.  All these things have been remedied, and the war, when begun in earnest, can last but a short time.  We know more of the country and shall avoid the sources of endemial disease; our steam provides for the rapid transport of troops and stores; and draft-cattle will be supplied from our own districts on the coast.  Where our Government has no representative as Resident or Consul, all Europeans should be told that they remain entirely on their own responsibility.  Unless this is done, the Governments must be eternally in collision.  If war be carried on in earnest, it must be one of annexation:  we must make use of persons whom we cannot abandon to the mercy of the Burmese Government.  We have nothing to fear from the people:  they have no religious feeling against us, being all Buddhists; and they have seen too much of the benefits conferred by us on the territories taken during the last war to have any dead of our dominion.  Lord Dalhousie has, I believe, been most anxious to avoid a war—­it has been forced upon him.

Believe me,
Yours very faithfully,
(Signed) W. H. SLEEMAN.

To Sir James W. Hogg,
Deputy Chairman,
India House.

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Lucknow, 6th April, 1842.

My Dear Mr. Halliday,