MORAL STATE OF THE INDIAN ARMEES.
Tr is scarcely to Sir Charles Napier that one -would go for a character of the Indian Army. Sir Charles is most efficient as a Commander-in-chief, but he is by no means unready to resign that character. The function in which he makes himself most perseveringly prominent is that of Censor-in-chief. He has bestowed praise, indeed ; but when he comes to precise details, such as dwell in the memory, it is of gross faults that he speaks. It may almost be said that he confesses military merits, excepting among the ancommissioned classes, in the generalizing and evanescent terms of reluctance, but that when he comes to condemnation his style resumes its full force, its raciness and. unction. The salient points which the English reader bears in mind are the crushing censure of this court-martial for lax judgment, the overwhelming of that commanding-officer for lax discipline, and such things as this last sweeping tirade against an indefinite number of officers for habitually neglecting to pay their debts. Sir Charles Napier takes pains to mark the fact, that his censure is not universal; he is "bound to say that the number of officers who have misconducted themselves m a manner so derogatory to the character of gentlemen is not inordinate ; but," he adds, "at the same time it is so large as to demand repression with a strong hand" and his formal recognition of the limitation in number does not produce half the effect on the mind which follows from his severe, his almost fiercely forcible terms, when he engages in the congenial task of reprobation. It must be allowed that his instances are formidable. He quotes statements by officers of rank which, indicate that habituel "indebtedness" is common, that creditors are ruined, that the efficiency% of officers is impaired, that cases in courts of requests are of scandalous frequency, that many an officer enjoys "champagne tiffins and swindles his servants," and that letters on this " degrading subject" come to him, "anise
✓ ited, from men of high rank in both the Queen's and the Company's services."
It was but last week that a field-officer challenged our allusion to stories of demoralization in the Indian Armies; the same writer spoke with great respect of Sir Charles Napier it is not for us, who are at a distance and. out of the profession, to reconcile accounts which seem to be so conflicting; perhaps they are not irreconcilable, but it would be well to know the exact truth. Sir Charles Napier may exaggerate, and in that case we ought to be fortified by a complete refutation from those who are teneeious of geed name on behalf of the Indian Armies. If Sir Charles Napier
does not exaggerate, those who have the good name of the Indian Army at heart would do well to accept Sir Charles's censure, to apply it strictly, and to chastise the evils which he denounees. Flinching will not serve in either case—the true officer will grapple either with the accuser or with the evil. If the officers of the Indian Army will undertake the work, we will gladly cooperate with them.
Sir Charles Napier has been justly blamed for being more forward with the easy work of accusation than with the laborious task of reformation. Viewing the transactions in India from a distance, through the published accounts and despatches, we must confess that Sir Charles appears to have followed up his sweeping denunciations with less of searching and patient reconstructing than of hasty harshness. In this, the most recent case, he denounces an evil which he will not stop to cure ; he will not delay his burning pen even to perform the work of giving sound advice. The counsel which he does give is totally inadequate to the causes that he assigns. The causes which he assigns are manifestly superficial: they are—defective or vulgar education in some young men who get commissions; the notion among young men "escaped from school" that it is "manly to be dishonourable " ; expenses occasioned by "the constant marching of regiments " ; "the extravagance of messes"; and the banks, "which afford a ready means for the young and foolish to obtain money at an enormous interest." So acute a reasoner as Sir Charles Napier ought to perceive that these are only proximate causes. A closer questioner will ask, why is it almost the rule of the service to render the messes extravagant ? why are young men sent from school into a service placed at the receipt of a good income, and left to shift for themselves at discretion, "without that labour that attends the initiation into most other professions"? why are regiments constantly marched in time of peace ? why are the necessary expenses of wax cast upon individual officers ? and why are " men invited into the service ? Does not Sir Charles see that these are but secondary causes, indicating others which lie much deeper? Hie remedies apply to the secondary causes,—retrenchment at mess, strict lessons in duty and plenty of drill, and something -which is implied but not defined in this passage " It is the bounden duty of the commanding-officer to refuse to such a person all indulgence, and to hold him so strictly in hand that such misconduct on the officer's part may, at all events, be as disagreeable to that officer himself as it is to his regiment and his tradesmen."
So, the final resort of military authority is, for a comman officer to make himself " disagreeable " ! Is not this advice a at tifying comment on the whole of the tirade ? Rather than meddle thus, it were better to leave the whole affair alone.
To us it appears that none of Sir Charles's remedies reaches the radical causes which draw into the service untrained hobbledehoys and vulgar upstarts ; which make expensive messes the rule rather than the exception; which make ostentatious lavishness the test of regimental esteem, and make most men shrink from the avowal of a poverty that Sir Charles Napier himself only avows retrospectively from the vantage-ground of his exalted station. Following the General's own reasoning, we should be inclined to seek the causes of the evils he describes in the very system of commissioning and promotion, which does not turn exclusively or even mainly upon capacity, training, and good service, but upon money and interest. Perhaps he will supply the omission we observe, when he comes home.
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