574

LIFE OF QOBDEN. [oma

1887. witnessed in India—the assassination and massacres on On¢
&r. 63. side, and the wholesale executions on the other—must O°
over perpetuate and deepen this feeling of alienation.’
“I can see nothing but increased difficulties in future i?
consequence of the almost indiscriminate slaughter with
which every commissioned officer and his drum-head court
are visiting the Sepoys that fall into their power. Unless
bhis is persevered in until the 100,000 mutineers are hung
up, the only effect will be to convert those who escape into
worse assassins and incendiaries than before. How are We
to maintain despotic sway in future over 100,000,000 of
Asiatics (for it must be undisguised despotism henceforth)
and preserve our own freedom at home? Will it be pos
sible to find a sufficient number of recruits in England 0
keep up a sufficient army for this purpose ?
“These are questions that I shall not answer at present, bu!
I confess to you that I have no faith in the doctrine that by
any possible reforms we can govern India well, or continue
to hold it permanently. God and nature have put a visible
and insuperable obstacle in the way of our rash and
audacious scheme. And if it be true, as even Voltaire
believed it to be, that there is ‘un Dien rétributeur eb
vengeur,” the deeds perpetrated by the British in times
past, and still more the bloody deeds now being enacteds
and which all arise from our own original aggression upo?d
distant and unoffending communities, will be visited with
unerring justice upon us or our children. But I am sinning

1 Almost on the very same day Lord Elgin wrote in his Journal :—** It if
B terrible business, this living among inferior races. I have goldom fro™
man or woman since I came to the East heard a sentence which Wo?
reconcilable with the hypothesis that Christianity had ever come into th
world. Detestation, contempt, ferocity, vengeance, whether Chinamen 0!
Indiang be the object.” —Lord Elyin’s Journals, p- 199. (August 21, 1857.)
On March 29, 1858, there is a similar entry :— The truth is that the whol?
world just now are raving mad with a passion for killing and slaving.”