DEATHS.

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A FEW OBSERVATIONS ON JACK SEPOY AND THE SIN OF CARTRIDGE-BITING.

THOUGH well aware that the belief in the great number and variety of sins committed by the depraved appetites of fallen man is pretty general, we have the extreme hardihood to assert that few of our readers ever even dreamt, much less thought, of including cartridge-biting in the catalogue. Leaving the justness of the imputation of gross ignorance an open question, we invite attention to the intelligence from India, of the violent state of agitation into which the Sepoys of the Honourable the East India Company have been thrown, by reflecting on the moral and physical degradation of biting a cartridge. Its origin is traced by the journals to the following trivial incident:-On a certain day, over a well at a place rejoicing in the name of Dumdum, in the Presidency of Bengal, a klassee (tent-keeper) begged a Sepoy to favour him with a drink from his lotah (a brass drinking vessel). "What!" scornfully cried the Sepoy, shall I give such as you water to drink?" "O ho!" returned the other, considerably nettled, "the idea of your talking! why, you and your companions will soon swallow bullock's fat day after day" -in allusion to the Enfield rifle-musket cartridge, just introduced into the native army, which is greased at the ball end, to increase facility in loading. It may be remarked, en passant, that, there being no grease at the extremity intended for the bite, no good reason exists why the grease and the teeth should come in contact. The bull, however, like the monkey and the peacock, being an object of adoration, the insinuation strikes home, and the sensitive warrior, touched to the quick, hastens to his comrades and co-religionists and imparts the grievance. It is passed on from one to the other; punchayots or councils are convened forthwith, and grave discussions ensue; finally, a general state of disquietude throughout the Hindoo portion of the regiments of the line, by no means a small one, is the alarming result, and rumours of meditated mutinies, onslaughts, massacres, incendiarisms, plunderings, and so forth, startle and disturb government, and render the Anglo-Indian public painfully apprehensive of some impending calamity, at a moment when a financial crisis in the affairs of our Eastern Empire is productive of great anxiety, and our relations with two first-rate Asiatic powers are the very opposite to peaceful.

It would be an unnecessary digression from the object in view to pursue further the ramifications of this narrative, and enter into circumstantial details of the discovery that a fraudulent contractor had substituted cow's fat and hog's lard*-the one being too holy, the other too impure, for such a purpose-in lieu of mutton fat, a substance less objectionable to caste; of how, when a remedy was guaranteed on this point by directing the use of ghee (clarified butter), unclean animal fat was denounced as an ingredient in the manufacture of cartridgepaper; and of the belief in the notion-one, by the bye, subject to peri

The wild boar, being the third Avatar of Vishnoo, is not an object of aversion to the Hindoo; indeed, we have heard it asserted that, in some places, the high caste partake of his flesh; but the domestic swine is abhorred by the worshipper of Brahma, as well as by the Moslem.

U. S. MAG., No. 344, JULY, 1857.

Y

odical fits-that Koonpanee Bahadoor was taking decisive steps to convert the whole Hindoo population en masse to Christianity.

The history of the Sepoy positively teems with tales of acts of insubordination, apparently caused by circumstances analogous to the one just related. Indeed, it may be safely declared that every mutiny on his part has been owing either to some imagined or actual insult or slight to the sanctity and majesty of caste, or to some real or fancied reduction of pay and allowances; which goes far to prove, were any proof wanting, that excessive penuriousness and a blind devotion to caste are two of the principal weak points in the character of the mild Gentoo, as we love to call him.

Caste may not inaptly be considered a vital principle, necessary to man's existence in a gregarious state; hence we find no inhabited spot entirely free from it. Its strength seems to vary according to the nature and condition of the soil. In Hindostan it has attained the culminating point of power; it has so incorporated itself with religion that the two may be regarded as synonymous; it has rendered a people priest-ridden to an extent beyond the powers of description; it revels in bigotry the most uncompromising, fanaticism the most fearful, and prejudices the most ineradicable; it contemptuously ignores proselytism and denies the possibility of conversion; by the mere accident of birth it elevates one class of its votaries to the rank of demi-gods, and debases an other to a level below the brute creation, without the faintest hope of rising by any means whatever from their degraded position.

To contend with such difficulties, it has been deemed advisable to adopt a system of conciliation and compliance, of the wisdom of which there cannot be the shadow of a doubt; but "est modus in rebus," says the old adage, and perhaps, in the zeal to put into practice a political theory, based on the virtue of forbearance, the limits have been passed, and moral weakness has supplied the place of moral courage.

Of the numerous bodies of artillery, cavalry, and infantry, regular and irregular, local and contingent, and of armed police, scattered over the immense expanse of Hindostan, the regular regiments of Sepoys, -with the exception, perhaps, of the Bombay battalions-are beyond comparison the most troublesome and the least useful in proportion to the anxiety they occasion, the indulgence they meet with, and the care lavished on them. Various reasons are assigned for this unsatisfactory state of affairs. It is argued that, with the large portion of officers (for the most part the smartest) holding staff and civil appointments, and those absent on medical certificate, furlough, and private affairs, urgent or otherwise, the number present with their regiments is never sufficient; that they, as well as those of a higher grade, have lost, and are daily losing, much of their influence, in consequence of the measures constantly taken by government to diminish their immediate power and authority over their subordinates; that, owing to the improvement in the means of communication with England, the old race of expatriated Qui Hyes and hookah-smoking Anglo-Indian Nabobs is pretty nearly extinct; and the ties between the officer Sahib, whose thoughts always run upon home, and the Sipahee, redolent of jat anna paisa, and ghee, are gradually becoming weaker and weaker, from the rapid decay of sympathies; that caste, and what it forbids,

danger attending any attempt to control or weaken its deshave been grossly exaggerated and greatly overrated, which, nly too apparent to the apprehension of the native, has ed to him the advantage of keeping up the delusion, and usly furnished him with a formidable weapon to check the 3 of improvement, and a pretext under the cloak of which he ther his own ends.

e Presidency of Bengal, European civilization may be said to ade the least progress, and bigotry and prejudice the most ful resistance. Many a prevalent abuse of the olden time has rely been countenanced and suffered to flourish in all its pristine but has received support and assistance. Caste, for example, n found by the Hindoo to be so efficacious in working on the ' a government which actually goes out of its way to indulge ms and follies and pander to its vices, as to give some foundation idea that the number of castes has considerably augmented since ablishment of our power in the tract of land watered by the

Knowledge of the English, save in "The City of Palaces" immediate vicinity, is confined among the natives to a very few, ese usually the lowest of the low, and the most dishonest the dishonest.

se preliminary remarks may serve somewhat to prepare the for a due appreciation of the nature, constitution, and discipline Bengal army of Sepoys.

ching the first reason assigned, our belief in its validity is y shaken by a consideration of the fact, that few regiments in regular force have more than three British officers each-a indant, a second in command, and an adjutant; yet it is more it and less insubordinate than the line.

he second and third reasons there is much soundness and truth, any an old officer, not necessarily a martinet, sighs for the when batches of Sepoys were summarily tried, convicted, and ced to be blown from the mouth of a cannon, which was duly d into effect.

we hasten to the last reason, on which our attention is mainly d; for on it, we are convinced, hinge many errors of consequence reference to the Hindoo soldiers.

practice prevails, unheard of elsewhere, of not permitting one of orking class, or one of menial birth or occupation, whatever may s qualifications, to enlist. Strange though it seem to most of us, considered a most excellent plan, and prized as a mark of aristic distinction by many Englishmen; but the real position in which ces the discipline, trustworthiness, and loyalty of the Sepoy, may thered from the following anecdote, the authenticity of which can ouched for, from personal cognizance. Not many years since, 1 H.M.'s ―th Regiment was quartered in the fort of Lahore, a stee (water-carrier), in the employ of an officer of "ours," in the se of an altercation with a sapper, had the astounding temerity ll him, in retaliation for some abuse, a tokree wallah, that is, a et-carrier. Such a terrible insult was not to be borne; the swarthy of honour, touched on the tender point, hastened, brimful of