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STATE OF EUROPEAN SOLDIERS IN INDIA.
Bombay, 14th April 1853.
Sin—It is generally understood just now that a considerable portion of he Majesty's troops now in India, at present amounting to close on thirty thou- sand men, will be withdrawn, to strengthen the army at home without in- creasing the total muster-roll, and that ten or fifteen thousand of those now employed and paid for by the Government of India will be immediately available for service in and chargeable on the treasury of England. Accord- ing to the act of Parliament, the number of Queen's troops to be employed in the East is limited to twenty thousand, unless a greater number be re- quired by the East India Company. As the East India Company simply means the Chairman of the Board of Control, who acts without consulting the Directors, it was a few years since found an easy mode of reducing the estimates without reducing the army, to send double the number of men to India which the law permitted or the service of the state required ; placing the charges of these to the account of the revenues of India, in place of the treasury of England. The charge of five Dragoon regiments in India amounts to 188,6511. ; that of twenty-four Infantry regiments to 771,1484 ; the two to close on a million sterling. The East India Company have of their own twelve thousand European troops, besides two hundred and fifty thousand Sepoys or irregulars ; the total military charges of the state being be- tween eleven and twelve millions annually. The Bengal Army alone consists of 161,592 men, including 23,247 Europeans ; and it costs half as much again as i that of France when it mustered four hundred thousand. It is at present said
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to intended to add ten additional European regiments to those the East India Company already possess ; and this, including pensions and other mat- ters with which as regards the Royal Army the Government of India are not concerned, will cost some half million sterling annually. When soldiers are enlisted either for the Queen's or Company's service, Government are bound to convey them free of charge to their homes, when they retire either through sickness or the expiry of the period of their engagement; but they are not bound to convey them anywhere else than to their homes. Of late, how- ever, soldiers claiming their discharge in London, and desiring to proceed to Australia as their future home have been allowed the passage-money they might have claimed had they wished to proceed to England. The Enlistment Act provides, that when men claim their discharge with the view of remaining in India, they shall not be at the time, or at any future period, entitled to claim a passage-money home; and this provision was probably made at a time when it was considered desirable for European sol- diers to remain and colonize in the country. Within these few weeks this re- gulation has very liberally been relaxed, and European soldiers of the Com- pany's service discharged in India are now allowed their passage-money should they desire to proceed to Australia. Royal regiments are sent home after a limited period of service in the East, and all those belonging to them have the hope of revisiting their native country. The Europeans in the Company's service may be retired as sick, unfits, or discharged meu,—as a body they remain perpetually in the country. The number of Englishwomen allowed them in coming out is very small, and soon dies out. They have no means while here of marrying with their countrywomen : they commonly ally themselves to native girle, or half-castes ; and having become in all respects, save that of abstinence from liquor, Indianized in their habits, when the time of claiming their discharge arrives they almost always remain as pen- sioners in India ; and a more deplorable picture than the Ein-opean pensioner community exhibits cannot be conceived. The whole of the men with- out almost an exception are inveterate idlers ; nine-tenths of them are ha- bitual drunkards; and at the age of betwixt forty and forty-five they quit the service, and settle down into a life of useless degrading debauchery, till climate and intemperance hasten them to a premature grave. The Spectator has always taken a deep interest in Colonial affairs ; and it appears to me, that were the army organized as it ought to be our Colo- nial population might receive a vast number of invaluable recruits from the sick, or unfits, or discharged men from the body of sixty thousand Euro- peans who in India become prematurely old, but might have their energies reawakened, or lives preserved, and their useful qualities brought into opera. tion, in Australia, while the pensions allowed them would add to the capital of the colony, and afford an income just sufficient to maintain them even in idleness, but not so much so as to secure those comforts a moderate amount of industry in addition might command. It has always appeared to me to be one of the most important considerations in our military economy, that we should see, in the first place, to make our men as efficient and exemplary as possible while they remain in the army ; and looking beyond this, so to deal with them that they should be returned, when their term of service ex- pires, to the condition of private citizens, with as many of the aptitudes as possible for the position they have resumed,—provided "always that the ar- rangements by which this is brought about in no way impair their value as soldiers while employed as such. It surely is not an essential part of the military system of any country, that the men taken from the ordinary walks of private life should in the course of four or five years' service be transformed into idle, drunken, worth- less debauchees, fit for nothing but food for gunpowder, the nuisance and disgrace of society to which they may be restored : or if it be so, it is the strongest argument that can be employed against standing armies altogether. In India such is unquestionably the fact, in reference to the training and condition of the men ; but such is assuredly not necessarily so, were our system changed. In all armies save that of England, industry amongst the men is encouraged and drunkenness discouraged ; with us it is the opposite in both points. The historians of the Peninsular war are continually contrasting the smartness and tidiness with which the French contrived to but or intrench themselves compared with the slovenliness with which we set about both operations. In the most tremendous ware in which we were ever engaged, those of 1845-46, and of 1848-49, the chief difficulty we had to contend with was the extraordinary dexterity and skill with which the Sikhs intrenehed themselves—what had been a flying camp at sunset was a fortification at dawn. Whoever has seen
a body of French soldiers in prison is amazed at the alacrity with which all betake themselves to some occupation. English soldiers, so plsoed, mope, and gloom, get sick, and die of sheer ennui. In December last a ship was
advertised to sail from Bombay for Australia ; and about eighty men from her Majesty's Tenth Hussars, the Eighth, Sixty-fourtrhaSsezenty7sixth,
Eighty-third, and Eighty-sixth Regiments, who had pu their dis- charges, or obtained them free having served their time, came to Bombay with their wives and families, a hundred and twenty souls in all, to proceed to the Diggins. They had scarcely arrived when the ship was condemned as
unseaworthy, and no conclusion could be formed as to when the ship might sail. According to the articles, this Government are bound to convey men from the- place of their discharge to that of their enlistment, maintaining them all the while ; but they are not bound at all to convey them anywhere else. It was, however, agreed that on leaving for the Cape or Australia, or any of her Majesty's Colonies, they should receive their English passage-money ; but they were not to do so till after they had sailed. And this last, though apparently a severe measure, was in reality a wise and salutary one : had the money been advanced at once, every shilling of it would have been spent in the bazaar in six weeks' time. Failing to get away immediately, the men were left in a state of utter destitution :,a few, days cleared them of their little all ; when they betook themselVos to the last refuge of destitute sol- diers and seamen, the grog-shop,. and began, to sell their clothes for drink. Under these circumstances, they were taken ni hand by some benevolent par- ties iiiTombay, who got them encamped six miles out of town, close by the &hod of Industry, under the following conditions,—that those of them who were tradesmen should work regular hours in the school; those who were not so should employ themselves in the grounds around ; but that all should be indestrious, ill should be sober, and all under the military discipline of petty officers selected by themselves from their own number. They were to be supported by public subscription ; and the party taking charge olthem, as the time of their departure approached, advanced 2001. amongst them to enable thimlO purchase necessaries before leaving Bombay; having been subsequently repaid, as was expected, from the balance in their favour of the difference between passage-money to Australia and passage-money to England. Reli- gious mitustration was provided for them during their stay by the clergy of the denomination to which they had belonged on enlisting, and Bibles and Prayer-books were offered to each. But although the military authorities described the whole as the best men in the corps to which they belonged, otherwise they would not have got their discharge, a Hindoo woman would have done as much work in an hour as most of them did in a day or some- times in a week ; and they were as incapable of keeping from drink as of keeping at work, although they knew they were living on charity which might at a moment be withdrawn, and their violating, as every one violated, daily, the conditions on which they were taken in charge. Nearly a third of them could neither read nor write; and out of the eighty there were at least sixty who had infinitely less sense of religion—I do not mean of Christianity, but of the veneration which influences the most benighted heathens—than the beasts around them. From what I could gather from these un- happy men, proceeding to Australia under the delusion that they were fit for colonists, (and the fact has been confessed by all the officers I have since conversed with,) there are of the fifty thousand European soldiers now in India forty thousand at least in no better condition than those I have described,—men who, like Sergeant Bothwell, hope in nothing, believe in nothing, and fear nothing, save the canteen, the colonel, and the cat-o'-nine tails. If this frightful picture' be a true one, as I am confident it is, you will, I think, allow that England incurs an awful amount of responsibility in permitting the state of matters thus depicted to exist.. The root of the whole evil is idleness on the part of the men, together with non-merit promotion on the part of the officer. It may not be possible all at once to extinguish canteen sales of liquor, but much may be done to diminish and discountenance them ; and if the men were kept full of oc- cupation and amusement, by means of regimental reading-rooms, libraries, and above all workshops, the desire for drink would in a great measure dis- appear. The village communities of England do not consist of drunkards; why should soldiers drawn from these become such on joining the army, unless to get quit of idleness and ennui ? Surely that must be a most de- testable state of discipline which makes men as helpless and as absurd as children the moment they are relieved of the fear of the lash. After being six weeks in Bombay, the men already mentioned sailed in the ship Elphin- stone for Australia. It had been arranged that no liquor should be allowed them on board : but at every point where the ship touched parties of the men were left behind, immoveably drunk, although they knew that their pas- sage was paid and all their earthly possessions were on board. The greatest care was taken to secure for them a balance of from one to two pounds due to them on their arrival. I have not the slightest doubt that every shilling of this was spent in drink before they had been a week on shore. So com- pletely is the army under the control of those at its head, that the order has only to be issued that some such system as is now recommended hall be in- froduced, accompanied by the intimation that officers will find favour and promotion. in proportion to the zeal exhibited by them in carrying it out, and;thi reforms desired will be accomplished in three years' time. To say nothing Of the drunkards 'belonging to the Queen's Army inured to inebriety and idleness during their service in India turned loose on England annually, it is surely a very terrible thing to think that there are several hun- dreds of men pensioned annually in India, from the European por- tion of the Company's service, at the age of from thirty to forty-five, whose existence from that time forth must be spent in the lowest and vilest debauchery, and whose families, if they have any, become the outcasts of so- ciety ; that for one Christian the Missionaries convert from heathenism, the Governmenta of England and India convert ten Christians into something much worse than heathens. Why should not the British soldier be so train- ed while in the army, that he should be returned as a creditable citizen on the community, or, if serving in India, transformed into a valuable Australian colonist ? - Why should Englishmen alone be treated on joining the army as from that day forth fitted for nothing else but soldiers ?
TRUTH.
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