calcutta_review_v23
The Calcutta Review
64. ; Burkhardt, p. 175.) <A cleft among the rocks about six feet square, is still shown in the vicinity as the cave in which Mahomet meditated. Others make it four yards long and one to three broad. (Sprenger, p. 94, n. iv.) 1 The traditionists say that Mahomet used to spend the month of Ramadhan yearly in the cave at Hira. Thus Hishami :—* Mahomet ased to visit Hira for a month every year. Now that was a religious practice which the Coreish used to perform in the days of their heathenism. And so it was that Mahomet was wont to spend this month at Hira, and he used to feed all the poor that resorted to him : and when the period of his visitation at Hira was fulfilled, he would return and encompass the Kaaba seven times : and that was in the month of Ramzin.” he 60, 61 ; (so Tabari, pp. 86—90.) Others add that Abd al Muttalib commenced the practice :—** That it was the worship of God, which that patriarch used to begi with the new moon of Ramadfian, and continue during the whole of that month” Sprenger, p. 94,n,. v.) Tabari goes still further:—™“ It was the habit of those orcishites who aspired to being thought very pious, to spend the month of Rajab at Mount Hira, in seclusion and silence. This habit was more particularly observed by the Hashimites. I-very family had its separate place on the Mount for this purpose, and some had buildings in which they resided during their seclusion.” (As quoted by Dr. Sprenger from the Persian version of Tabari; but we do not find the passage in the original Arabie copy.) We doubt the whole of these traditions, and do not bel’eve that the inhabitants of Mecca had any such practice as is attributed to them. It is the tendency of the traditionits to foreshadow the customs and precepts of Islam, as if some of them had existed prior to Mahomet as a part of “ the religion of Abraham.’ (vide Canon Il. hk.) Itis very evident that the idea of a fast was jirst borrowed from the Jews, and that after Mahomet had emigrated to Medina. It was originally kept like that of tho Jews, on the 10th of Moharram, and afterwerds when Maho- . ais 94 THE LIFE OF MAHOMET FROM HIS YOUTH, ETC. ® stilling his anxiety, magnified into sterner and more impressive shapes the solemn realities which perplexed and agitated his* soul. a by was the grave of the aged Zeid, who having spent a life-time in the same enquiries, had now passed into the state of certainty: and might he himself not reach the same assurance without crossing the gate of death ? All around was bleak and rugged. ‘'l'o*the é@ast and south, the vision from the cave of Hira is bounded by lofty mountain ranges, but to the north and west, there is an extensive prospect thus described by the traveller :—*“ ‘he country before us had a * dreary aspect, not a single green spot being visible ; barren, * black, and grey hills, and white sandy valleys, were the only * objects in sight.”"* ‘There was harmony between these wild s@enes of external nature, and the troubled chaotic elements at that time forming his view of the spiritual world. By de- grees.his impulsive and susceptible mind was wrought up to the highest pitch of excitement; and he would give vent to his agitation in wild and rhapsodical language, the counterpart of his mind struggling after the truth. he following frag- ments, which found their way into the Coran, may perhaps belong to this period: ai? SURA CIIf. By the declining day, I swear! ~ erily, man is in the way of ruin; Excepting such as possess faith, And do those things which be right, And stir up one another to truth and steadfastness. And again :-— SUBA C. I swear by the rushing (horses) that pant! By those that strike fire (with their hoofs) flashing! By those that scour (the enemy’s land,) And darken it with dust, And penetrate thereby the host! ~ —— - + = » = met receded from them. he established a fast of his own in the month of Ramadhan. " (See Tahari, p. 243: Cnf also p. 37 of the Washat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume auf genonqmen”’ of Abraham Geiger.) The trath seems to be that Mahomet retired frequently ( not periodically,) to Mount Hird, for several days at a time, and stayed so long as his provisions lasted. Then he returned home, and either remained there for a while, or furnishing him- _ self with a fresh supply, retired again to the cave. ( Tubari, p. 86.) His wife, anxious and surprised at this strange demeanour, may have sometimes accompanied him to watch his movements, and see that no ill befel him. * Burkhardt’s Travels, p. 176; Cnf Sura XXXV., v.28, “Dost thou not sce that * * * inthe mountains, there are strata white and redj of various hues, - and others are of a deep black ; and of men and beasts and cattle there are whose colours are various in like manner, &c,"’ > - 7 + HIS RETIREMENT. 95 Verily;,man is to his Lord unggatefal : * And he is himself a witness t f; yo And, verily, he is keen in the love of (this world's) good. ~~ Ah! avotteth he not, when that which ts in the graves shall. be scattered abroad, . ll %, And that which is in (men's) hearts shall be brought forth ;. Verily, their Lord shall in that day be informed as to them. And perhapse—. SURA XCIX. oF > When the earth shall tremble with her quaking ; - And the earth shall cast forth her burthens; | m - And man shall say, What aileth her ? In that day shall shé unfold her tidings, . = Because the Lord shall have inspired her. “Mes a In,that day shall mankind advance in ranks, that they may be- i jhe hears. e dian *. nd whoever § ave wrought good o e weicht of a grain, shall behold it. : ght g : = , ad And whoever shall have wrought evil of the weightof a grain, shall behold it. Re Rs Nor was he wanting in prayer for guidance, to the great Being who, he felt, alone could give it. ‘The following petitions, though probably adapted subsequently for public worship, ¢on- tain perhaps the germ of his daily prayer at this early period.” _ SURA I. : Praise be to God, the Lord of Creation ; The All-merciful, the All-compassionate! Ruler of the day of reckoning! - Thee we worship, and Thee we invoke for help. Lead us in the straight path ;— hes. The path of those upon whom thou hast been gracious, Not of those that are the objects of wrath, or that are in error. How such aspirations developed themselves into the belief that the subject of them was inspired from heaven, is a dark and painful theme, to which in some future paper We may possibly recur. “a * Of the four Suras above quoted, which we believe to be the earliest extant composition of Mahomet, the efi and ¢, are generally placed by the Mahometan traditionists early, ¢. ¢., about the 10th or 12th in order. But the «err is reckoned | about 90th, and is generally represented as a Sura revealed at Medina, though some are critical enough to dispute this. The reader will hence perceive how entire- ly dependent we are on internal evidence as fixing the chronological order of the Coran. The Ist Sura is said to have been more than once revealed, which, if it has any definite meaning, may signify, that although one of the earliest pieces, it was afterwards recast to suit the requirements of public worship. : * 96 GREAT BATTLES AND THE E. I. CO.’S ARMY. Art. IV.—1. The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World. By Professor Creasy, 2 vols. : _2. Remarks on the Native Troops of the Indian Army. By Major John Jacob, C. B. We live in an age of re-action. Young Fords, who not long ago, put forth such lines as, “‘ Let laws and learning, wealth and commerce die, But give us still our old nobility!” _ : Are now lecturing at Mechanics’ Institutes, and playing Cricket with the pupils of Ragged Schools. @ @In Church matters we knOw, many of us too painfully, how a slothful carelessness as to outward forms and ceremonies has brought us to a perfect foppery of crosses, candlesticks, paint- ed fonts, &c. In the Army the same _ ultimately-purifying tempest is also raging, and our libraries are inundated with Manuals, duly bound in red, on almost every technical sub- ject connected with the profession of arms. As was to be expected, many of these hot-pressed publications are likely to be as temporary in consideration as the*feeling which has given rise to them. Many of them are simply childish; merely technical Manuals, to be learnt by heart as a cram; utterly unsuggestive, and carrying the art of war no farther than the drill-ground. Here, in accordance with the wise law of the mutual balance of opposite forces, while we have Members of Parliament enun- ciating Peace-Congress absurdities, we have a grave Professor int a Classical University, taking for his thesis, “The Fifteen Battles of the World.” |The subject is a grand one; it would have been too much, perhaps, to expect that the treatment of it should be equally grand. It is a good book, though we do not think the Professor has made the most of his subject. Without wishing for the lengthened and inflated, though often beautiful, imagery of Alison, we should have liked a greater warmth in description, and a greater depth of inference and reflection after each battle described ; both as a battle, and as an event in the history of the world. But we do not purpose entering into a criticism on mere language and style. As regards the selection of the battles to be pronounced the decisive ones of the world, we think, if we must start by limiting the ato fifteen, the Professor has selected the fifteen: the arbitrariness of the num- ber he adverts to very sensibly in his Preface. It is hardly ia Sori () : Ke gy Des NT oss CENTRAL LIBRARY GREAT BATTLES AND THE E. I. CO.’Ss AR . =e tenable, perhaps, but not worth arguing about. We con- fess, however, while agreeing in the selection, we think the battles are not all selected’quite consistently, with the Professor's own principle of choosing for his list, that battle which com- menced to turn the tide of affairs at the time, or we should have Vimiera instead of Waterloo, which would be manifestly absurd. But lebus come to the battles. mags 1. First on the list comes Marathon, 490 B. C. The Greeks, 11,000 strong, under Miltiades, Callimachus, Aristides, and The- mistocles, completely beat the infinitely superior invading fofce of the Persians, under Dates and Artaphernes ; killing 6,400 of them, with a loss to themselves of only 192. The great dispro tion in loss maay be partly accounted for by the superior armour, both offensive and defensive, of theGreeks. Itseems thatthe Greek soldiers were in such good wind and training, that they were able to advance to the attack at a run, and so quick, that they broke into the Persian line before the Cavalry could get at them. There was no Greek Cavalry in the field. After the battle, Miltiades proved himself a true and able General, by at once marching back to cover Athens, which he succeeded in doing by a forced night-march ; completely bafiling the Persians, who had sailed round on the chance of the Greek army going to sleep after its victory, and leaving Athens unguarded at their merey. An interesting historical incident of this battle, is the volun- tary march, and turn-out to aid the Athenians, of the whole armed muster of the Plateans, only 1,000 strong, in titude for help given them formerly in a quarrel with the Thebans. Perhaps, about the only instance of real national gratitude on record ! o 2. Next comes the siege of Syracuse, 413 B. CG. The Athenians, first under Nicias, and afterwards under” Demos- thenes (not of course the Orator) were completely beaten off by the Syracusans, aided by the Spartans, under the direction of the traitor Alcibiades. There was a good deal of fighting by sea as well as on Jand. The high ground of Epipol, which commanded Syracuse, was the key stone of the business, and tilfis Nicias had quite overlooked. Demosthenes turned his attention to this point at once, but it was too late then, and there was nothing left but to retreat. 3. ‘The battle of Arbela, 331 B.C. Alexander the Great, at the head of 40,000 men, of whom about 5,000 men were Cavalry, attacked Darius not far from the ancient Nineveh, and totally defeated him, though nearly three times his su- perior in numbers. Alexander seems to have first recon- noifred closely and well: @vould that Lord Gough had done .-o » ve 98 T BATTLES AND THE E. I. CO.’S ARMY. so at Chillianwallah, or General Whish at the first siege of Mooltan :) and decided, most properly, against a night attack. He advanced his columns obliquely, not perpendicular, to the enemy's line. The battle was decided chiefly by the Cavalry ‘under Aretes, Ariston, and Menidas. Alexander himself, seizing the opportunity of a gap in the enemy’s line, dashed at it with the Cavalry near him, and had all the Persian’s flank at his mercy. This is what that veteran and thorough-bred Iight-Cavalry-man De Brack calls the d-—propos. This is the grand secret of wielding Cavalry. No wild useless gallop- ing about, but a quiet and far-seeing sharp look-out for the proper opportunity, and then—and not till then—spurs home, and no stopping. The Macedonian Infantry, the famous Phalanx, was found sixteen*deep, with two feet between each rank ; their spear was twenty-four feet long. A most cum- bersome formation and equipment, one would think, but gallant things were done with it. The Cavalry were armed with lance and sword. 4. Battle of Metaurus, 207 B. C. . The two Roman armies under Claudius Nero and Marcus Livius, defeated the Carthaginians under Hasdrubal. Nero was opposed to and watching the division of the Carthaginian army under Hannibal, but having seized some important despatches from his camp, he, Nero, determined to make a junction if possible with Marcus Livius, and overwhelm MHasdrubal first. He made foreed marches, letting his men _ rest by turns, without halting, in waggons that the country people gave him as he went along ; and having arranged with Livius, reached his camp at dark, and the additional force was quietly admitted without any more tents being pitched, or sign made. The battle was fought next day, and completely succeeded. Hasdrubal was himself killed in the action, and Nero, on re- gaining his old post before Hannibal, flung the brother’s head into Hannibal's camp, the first tidings he received of the blow inflicted on the Carthaginian arms. The battle was a hard- fought one, but chiefly decided by Nero, who having been unable to make much way against the enemy, posted o® some high ground in front of his might, coolly counter-marched the whole of the right wing which he commanded, round by the year of the centre and left, and then bringing up his left shoulders, on the extreme left of the line, fel) on the enemy’s flank, and overturned him from right to left. The whole busi- ness was a fine piece of strategy on the part of the Roman General, and well deserved the success it gained. 5. The famous battle between Arminius the German, ind GREAT BATTLES AND THE E. I. co.’s ARM 99 the Roman General and Governor Varus, A. D.9. Arminius, one of those men raised up for their country at a crisis, got the whole country round the head-quarters of Varus, in West- phalia, to rise in arms, and managed to get Varus to put him- self at the head of the Roman army of occupation, to quell the insurrection, which was represented as trifling, but requirmg a demonstration of force against it. The German set the country people to bully the Romans well on the march, and kept his army close pressing on, but without risking an en- gagement, until he had got them into a difficult and danger- ous bit of country for an army to pass. Here the road was broken up, and well barricaded in front, and now Artoinius, exactly timing his attack, dashed in upon the, Roman legions, and almost annihilated them. An interesting episode in the history of this German hero ; he was opposed to his brother, Flavius, who served with the Roman army; the two brothers had a long conversation with each other from opposite banks of the river Weser, and it ended in a mutually earnest and fruitless effort to win the other over to his own side. I6 was somewhat a novel lesson to the Roman arms this, and a very severe one, and caused great indignation when reported at Rome. It was a shadow cast before of coming ¢yents. 6. A long interval now, and a sad one for Rome, the Mis- tress of the World, brings us under Mr. Creasy’s guidance to the battle of Clalons, A. D. 451. Attila, at the head of his Huns, beaten by the allied forces of the Visigoths and Ro- mans, under 4itius and Theodoric. The Cavalry did the busi- ness principally, but Attila saved himself by a nays well- ordered retreat on his camp, which he had roughly fortified; and he was not molested next day. This victory sayed Rome for a while. 7. A. D. 732, just a hundred years after the death of Mahomed, brings us to the battle of Tours; the Saracens, in the summer of their power—the Arabs under Abdurahman, having over-run Spain, crossed the Pyrenees and commenced to ravage the south of France ; they were met and complete- ly deféated by the French under Charles Martel, after a long and fierce fight. The Arab force was princi at 2 Cavalry, but very badly disciplined, and not being able sie ept together, particularly from plundering in the town of Tours, they got most thorgughly thrashed, and their course further northward was stopped. + Ey 8. On English ground at last. The battle of Hastings, 1066 A. D. The Normans chiefly indebted to their capital Cavalry for the victory. The ons had nothing to be ‘ ’ 100 — BATTLES AND THE E. I. CO.’8 ARMY. ashamed of ; they seem to have fought right well. Harold was badly wounded at last, and unable to command, or surely he would not have let his Saxons leave their vantage ground, se- duced by the stale and most ticklish mancuvre of a sham retreat, which perfectly succeeded in this instance. If the Saxons had been able to slip some Cavalry at the Normans, as soon as they turned their backs to execute the feint, and the Infantry had staid on their position, there might have. been a different. tale to telL 9. We pass over to France. The English have at last got check-mated ;—the battle of Orleans, 1429 A.D. Joan of Are, a true heroine, who has not had historical justice by any means done to her, having raised the spirits of the French army to fighting order again, managed to get through the besiegers into Orleans, beat the English under Talbot, Salisbury and Suffolk, in a pitched battle, and compelled them to raise the siege. There must have been gross negligence in the English lines to allow Joan to pass into Orleans with a re-inforeement, for which the subsequent trouncing served them right. Joan did not pretend to any tactics ; leaving all the actual Generalship, with a woman’s tact and sense, to Dunois. She said, “I used to tell them.to goon boldly, and then I went before them boldly myself£” Nota bad foundation for tacties, this. 10. Launch we now upon the sea. <A. D. 1588, a glorious band of the old English areca of heroes, Lord Howard of Effingham, Hawkes, Frobisher, Drake, Fenton, Southwell, and others, all good men and true, set sail from Plymouth to meet the gigantic Armada of Spain. They steered straight for the Spanish line, as it bore in sight in form of a lon crescent, sailed through it, and then turned about, followed them up, and despite their superior size, took or destroyed all that did not run away. 11. Next on the “ decisive” list comes the battle of Blen- heim, A-D.1704. The allies, under Marlborough and Eugene, eompletely beat the French under Tallard and Marsin. Cavalr decided the day. The famous Irish Brigade in the Frene service were carrying all before them, when Marlborough caught them in flank with his Cavalry, broke them, got his Cavalry together again, and finished by a general charge. (Here is the d-propos again). It was a complete victory. Twenty-four battalions and twelve sinadninn were surround- ed, and had to surrender, in the village of Blenhei Tallard here was evidently no match for Marlborough ; he was beaten ot!-hand before his reserves could move. The Ameers at Meanee seem to have made something of a similar mistake in GREAT BATTLES AND THE E. I. CO.’s 101 occupying a walled Shikargah which had only one opening, Sir Gharles Napier posted a com a of grenadiers _ this opening, with orders to hold it till tp ; they did so, glorious- ly, and some 6,000 men of the Ameers’ foree were thus para- lysed by this one company. 12. Next comes Pultowa, A. D. 1709. What a difference to the Russia of 1854, that is now bnllying Europe! The Russians having invariably been beaten by the Swedes, at last learned to beat in turn. Peter the Great seems to have managed his countrymen admirably. The Swedes under Charles XII. attacked the Russians in their entrenchments, which they forced ; but Peter got a body of Cavalry and Infan- try in good order outside his lines, and caught the Swedes in flank and rear, and completely ovef-turned them. Beyond his indomitable chivalry of character,—a grand feature certainly to commence with in a Commander,—Charles XI]. seems to have had little of the General in him. He was always too far ahead of his resources. 13. The New World now. Battle of Saratoga, A. D. 1777. General Burgoyne, at the head of tle British army, after bein well beaten, surrendered to the American Generals Gates a Arnold, who seem to have done their part with their raw troops right well. A great deal of bad management on our side all through this unfortunate war, and the affair under notice was a disgraceful one. The other English General, Sir Henry Clinton, was marching straight on Saratoga ; on the day of the fight, the advance detachment of Clinton’s division was only forty miles distant, and on the day Burgoyne capitulated, he got news from Sir Henry Clinton’s head 5 ebay only fifty miles off, and all in high order and Bpanthan ut this was just too late ; the British army had surrendered. The two Generals, Clinton and Burgoyne, should have opened a communication with each other at all risks; their mutual ignorance of each other’s movements was most disgraceful to them as Commanders, and on the part of Burgoyne, there was a great want of endurance and devotion added in surrendering, when there was the least possible hope of re-infureement, and which he must have known was somewhere near at any rate. We are rather surprised at having come to Saratoga without any notice of Plassey in the Professor's “ decisive” list. What Saratoga was against our dominion in America, Plassey was equally the crisis for our dominion in India. i4. The battle of Valmy, 1792 A. D. The French, after several defeats, beat, under the very able she See at i Dum- ouriez, who succeeded La Fayette, the Prussian allied forces 102 GREAT BATTLES AND THE E. I. CO.’8 ARMY. under the Duke of Brunswick. The Duke seems to have .managed very badly. After he had taken Verdun, he was, with his fine army, actually between the two French corps, Dumouriez, and Kellerman’s ; whom he ought to have turned upon fiercely and singly, and either beat them one after the other, or, at any rate, destroyed one of them; but he let his opportunity pass; Dumouriez out-mancuvred him, effected a junction with Kellerman, and the whole aspect of the war was changed. 15. As we have come to the mystic limit of fifteen, we need hardly say that it is Waterloo which crowns our list. In a notice like this, any thing more than naming the battle - would be almost an impertinence. Siborne’s we would refer the reader to as the best account ; next best Sir Walter Scott’s, in his Life of Napoleon ; and all soldiers who have the oppor- tunity, should consider it a duty to pay a visit to that famous field, and go over the ground carefully. We duly made our pilgrimage thither, aos having of course read well up the accounts of the battle, the ground seemed quite familiar to us, and it was no great effort of imagination to people it with the respective Commanders, divisions, brigades, and regiments, whose names are so imperishably connected with that awful glory. After seeing the ground, it struck us that the French Cavalry should have done more. They faced the fire pear ch enough, but seem to have made the fatal mistake of pulling up, instead of going on. We read of their horsemen coolly sacrificing themselves, trying to back their horses into the squares, and so on; but on such ground they should have done more than trot up to the squares and back again, although the said squares were British. However melancholy for human nature the reflection, the fact is beyond question, that the chief events in the histories of nations have turned upon the issues of battles. Under Pro- vidence, soldiers have had the principal parts in the execution of the fates of nations and of people. Surely then the sys- tem of our armies is a subject for earnest and constant con- sideration. As we are in India, and would fain be practical in our generation, we will confine ourselves to the army serving in India ; or, rather to the chief portion of it, the Company’s army. As we said before, it is an age of re-action we are in. No doubt, things will come right in due time inthe army, as in other parts of the body politic, but just at present the effects are injurious. The school-master just now is so in- tensely abroad, that instead of grafting mental accomplishment on the profession of arms in the bringing up of the young gene- © 7 « GREAT BATTLES AND THE E. I. Co.s ARMY. 103 ration of soldiers,—the red coat, the sword, “ the circumstance of glorious war,” seem entirely put on theshelf. It is openly put forth as a principle of Government, that the highest reward for an Officer is to remove him from the exercise of his pro- fession ; that no military zeal, achievements, or long service, is to be weighed in the selection of Officers for the Staff, in default of their having “ passed” in the Hindustani lIan- guage; and the appointment of a Bazar Master, or a subor- dinate situation in the Commissariat, is conceived an in- finitely fitter object of ambition to our young Officers than the command of a company. and workers together in that duty.* We are here at issue with an authority, to differ with whom we are very reluctant, and * * Wo must in our judicial capacity protest against Major Jacob's expression of “ frivolous duties.” A courtier may haye frivolous duties to perform, but to a soldier nothing that is duty “ can be frivolous ;” every bit of pipe clay or blacking is an item in the grand sum required to win battles. “We believe no man living can practically have a higher sense of what duty is than Major Jacob; we suspect him only to be somewhat wanting in adic@nois. 104 . GREAT BATTLES AND THE E. I. CO.’s ARMY. for whom we have the very highest respect, Major John Jacob ; but on this point, we must conqner our habitual respect, and boldly disagree. It did not need that distinguished and able Officer to tell us that quality is better than quantity, or that three or four first-rate men are worth an infinite number of ordinary andinferior ones. But even to this quantity standard there is.a limit. One good horse may pull as much as two bad ones, but he eannot pull a load which it takes six bad ones to move. Major Jacob, indeed, would bodily do away with a great part of the load; Courts-martial, Committees, and so forth, he would do away with; to a great extent his ideas are no doubt right ; but they go the length of an entire change of system in the British service; and there is no more chance of the whole army being organized on the model of the regiments of Scinde Horse, than there is of getting a Commandant for every regiment of the stamp of John Jacob. But conceive the whole system of the British army changed; Articles of war, Rules and Regulations, all issuing from, and centering in, the Commander of each regiment; these Commanders are to be selected from the entire body of Officers, who are to be borne on the strength of the European portion of the army. What will the European portion say to it? Select @r the native branch, and leave the “refuse” for the command of our European soldiery! Surely, this is not an unfair resolution of Major Jacob’s problem. A most noble example has Major Jacob set before the army, both in himself, his Officers and his men ; but when he says from his eyrie at Khangur, where he has been working away for some ten years past, absolute com- mander of his fine body of 1,600 horsemen, and monarch of all he surveyed ; that because his system has been tried and not found wanting ; therefore it is manifest, that the same system is the true one for our Indian army; we can only say at the sequitur strikes us the other, way, that the splendid success of his system for a portion of the army under ape tienal circumstances, is no sufficient reason why ft would answer for the army at large, under the usual concomitant circumstances. But let us start afresh. The fate of England’s Empire in India may, in the course of events, hang, as it has before hung, on the issue of a battle ; that is, underProvidence, on the con- duct of our armies. | Can our armies in India afford to make light of such a consideration? No—they cannot—they dare not. No man in his senses dares. Clearly for our armies to be efficient ; we x ° GREAT BATTLES AND THE BE. I. CO.’S ARMY. —=~+105 should have none but able hands and hearts in our ranks ; none but able heads and hearts to command. And Is it not notorious that there are numbers in the upper ranks of our Native soldiery, particularly in the Ben Presidency, totally unable, decrepid in body and mind? And on the pre- sent system of regimental duty, being the punishment of “ un- passed” officers, how can you expect them to be able Com- manders? For the first serious evil, an alteration of the pre- sent system of pay, pensions,* and discharges, is absolutely and urgently required: for the second we would simply sug- gest, not a Stati Corps, nor a Staff Appointment Corps, but a Commissariat Corps; and for the general Staff, to freely admit Queen’s as well as Company’s Officers. All the sub- ordinate Commissariat situations, Instead of being objects of ambition to our young Officers, would make suitable and ex- pedient berths for deserving men of the non-Commissioned and Warrant Ranks. We do not think that the throwing open Staft situations to the Royal Service would act unfairly on the Company’s. We consider that the majority of Officers of the Royal Service, who stay out in India, have no more interest to get them appointments than the majority of the Company's Officers; while the perpetual answer to present and worthy appli- cants for Staft employ, “‘ too many Officers already absent a your regiment,” would be no longer available. e have gone to the utmost of our limits in the present article, and must per- force stop. Earnest men however will not stop ; and it is to earnest men we would fain fancy ourselves speaking. Only let us all be in earnest, think of what our duty is, and strive and pray to do it, and we need not fear. “7 106 PRISON DISCIPLINE IN BENGAL. Art. V.—Government Gazette.—A pooenimens of Mr. T. G. Loch to be Inspector of Jails in the Lower Provinces. THE great Macaulay (and may his shadow never be less !) commenced, as our readers will probably remember, one of his famous contributions to the Edinburgh Review, in this wise. ‘“ Those who have attended to the practice of our literary ‘ tribunal, are well aware that, by certain legal fictions similar ‘ to those of Westminster Hall, we are frequently enabled to ‘take cognizance of cases lying beyond the sphere of our ori- ‘ ginal jurisdiction.” We freely confess ourselves to be now somewhat behind the age; for we intend to follow Mr. Macau- lay’s example ; and to make Mr. Loch, (with no disrespect to him, however,) for the most parta mere Richard Roe, ath wil be but seldom mentioned in any other stage of the proceedings. This gentleman’s rather appropriately-sounding name therefore is placed at the head of our article, principally for the purpose of bringing the subject of ‘ Prison Discipline in Bengal” into Court. This same Mr. Macaulay, from whom we have borrowed, was some eighteen years ago appointed a member of a Prison Discipline Committee, that sate in Calcutta, and printed a long and elaborate report, which is now lying before us. That report appears to have gone the way of most reports of the kind ; being speedily engulphed in the vast vortex of print, which, in these latter times, agitates and distracts the world: It is to be found, however, worn, venerable, and worm-eaten, among the records of many Offices, and Cutcheries ;. but its re- pose is now-a-days seldom disturbed ; andonlyone Member of the Committee which indited it, Mr. John Peter Grant to wit, remains in this country, to awe the stamp of the present generation to the woe-begone volume that bearshis name. ‘To this report, we intend occasionally to refer throughout our article, for a reason, which few practical minds will wonder at —hecause, although the world has had the benefit of its wisdom, and ought through it to have been sucking the learned brains of its authors, for sixteen years and more, yet (lamentable fact !) toany of its best suggestions need our humble services to-day : So much more glibly does the pen run over the paper, than men along the road to reform ! As we are no more believers in the perfectibility of the hu- man race than the verbose Alison himself, we will not here trouble our readers with learned demonstration of how Jails and Jail-birds are inevitable appurtenances of society. Since first our famed Review spread her light wings (alas! not of PRISON DISCIPLINE IN BENGAL. 107 “sulphur and of blue?” but) of ignominious mud-color, we ~ have had the bad fortune to come across nonsense of all kinds and degrees. For the credit of mankind however, be it spoken, that we have never yet heard any one propose the experiment of abolishing Jails, either by Act of Parlia- ment, Circular Order, or otherwise. We believe that the most Utopian colony, though led by Mr. Seeing then the inevitability of their existence, we might have reasonably supposed that the subject of Prisons Would have found a ready and eager attention in all ages, and in all countries. Yet such has not been the case ; But from time immemorial, till within a century of our day, prisoners have been treated, even in England herself, much as if they were rats or cockroaches, not apparently with any view to reformation*® or example, but merely to keep them out of the way of the untaint- ed portion of the community, it mattered not how. The horrors, which, in consequence, became habitualin prisons, wereof a kind which, in this tender-hearted age, it is difficult to conceive. Prisoners were constantly, and with impunity, destroyed piece- meal by neglect and ill-treatment, before they were brought to trial. If they were poor, their fate was indeed deplorable ; and even if they were rich enough to purchase human forbearance, they often, nevertheless, became food for the pestilence, which was the almost invariable adjunct of a jail. The awful jail-fever, which at the celebrated Black Assizes at Oxford, and the no less celebrated Old Bailey Sessions, in 1750, struck down the whole Court with disease and death, sprang into existence, as its name suggests, and spread from its miserable birth-place to the army, * Such in practice was universally the case. In profession, it was occasionally othorwise, foward found the following inscription in one of the prisons of Rome :— “ Parum est cocrcere improbos Pana > “ Nisi probos efficias disciplina.” 108 . PRISON DISCIPLINE IN BENGAL. the navy, and the country at large. Official doctors fled before it, and left its stricken victims to struggle single-handed for life, amid filth, damp and tainted atmosphere. Those were the days when the term “jailor’ was accompanied with inevitable associations of the most siekening cruelty, and the most in- human neglect; when, although instruments of torture had ceased to be, in England, the legal furniture of a prison, the thing itself was daily and everywhere practised ; gheii imagi- nation gnight find ample and awful food in the narratives of the suffegngs of innocent and even unconvicted men; when debtors were avowedly starved, morality avowedly set at defi- ance, every thing avowedly neglected ; when dungeons, dread- ful to behold, were sunk down far below the level of the ground, from which, if their tenants ever emerged, they generally emerg- ed idiots or deformed.* On the Continent of Europe, those were the evil days when iron masks, and seeret executions, and wallings up, and poisonings, and stranglings, and blindings of risoners, were in vogue. Most of these abominations have now een swept away, by the advancing tide of civilization, we hope for ever; but Mr. Gladstone’s comparatively recent revela- tions must remind us that the system is not even yet wholly dead. Ini prisons, where such enormities were proscribed, yet abuses the most flagrant grew and increased, to the ruin and vexation of the watchin prisoners. Some prisons were private property, which the jailors would rent on condition of being allowed to ex- tract the rent and their own profits from their luckless cap- tives: The disgraceful consequence was, that many prisoners, declared not guilty by a Jury of their countrymen, or against whom the Grand Jury found no true bill, or prosecutors did not appear, after having been confined for months, were dragged back to jail, and locked up again, till sundry fees owing to the jailor had been duly paid—such fees being of all kinds, strange and numerous.+ In many instances, these speculating jailors were allowed to keep taps, aT of course, produced, in such asoil, rich and luxuriant crops of drunkenness and debauchery. Howard speaks of jee as being at the time of his first visitation, the scenes of filth and contagion, of idleness and intemperance, of extortion and eruelty, of debauchery and immorality, of profane- ness and blasphemy ; where all sorts of prisoners, debtors and * Even when the Statute the 14th Geo. iii. c. 59 was passed “for the preservation of the health of prisoners in gaols,” after requiring that gaols should be kept clean and well ventilated, that infirmaries, and baths therein should be provided, &c. it merely enacted that prisoners should be prevented being kept under ground when it could be done conveniently. + Not uutil 1774, by the 14th Geo, iii, c. 20, were acquitted prisoners relicved from these abominable extortions, : e F PRISON DISCIPLINE IN BENGAL. * 109 felons, men and women, the young and the old offender, were huddled together in hideous confusion. The province of Bengal did not fall into English hands, until the horrible system detailed above, had nearly run its full course in England; but in Bengal, itsexistencecan be clearly traced : our unread readers are, perhaps, not aware that the English them- selves had employed the famous Black Hole as a prison, and as Mill justly remarks, “ had their own practice to thank for sug- gesting it to the officers of the Subadar, as a fit place con- finement.” In the year 1782, the common jail in Caleutta was described by a Select Committee of the House of Commons, as a “miserable and pestilential place.’ That Committee examined two witnesses on the subject. One said, “the jail is an old ruin ‘ of a house ; there were very few windows: to admit air, and those very small. He asked the jailor how many souls were then confined in the prison? Who answered, upwards of one hundred and seventy, blacks and whites included. Tht there was no jail allowance, that many persons had died for want of the necessaries of life! The nauseous smells arising from such a crowded place were beyond expression. Besides the prisoners, the number of women and attendants to carry in provisions, and dress victuals, was so great, that it was astonishing that any person could long survive such a situa- tion. It was the most horrible place he ever saw, take it al- together.” The other witness said, “it is divided into small apartments, and those very bad; the stench dreadful, and more offensive than he ever experienced in this country, that there is no thorough draft of air, the windows are neither large nor numerous, the rooms low, that it would be impossible for any European to exist any length of time in the prison, that aEnEOeS and criminals were not separated, nor Hindus, Mahomedans and Buropeans.’* At last in England came the reaction ; and the zeal and perseverance which characterized the early reformers, made the triumph of justice over prejudice and selfishness more rapid than might have been expected. The famous John Howard led the van. “His travels through his mother country, and through Europe, his labors unceasing, his book without parallel, made a great and a lasting impression on the British mind. chap. 3.. i110 « PRISON DISCIPLINE IN BENGAL. ‘ of ancient grandeur, not to form a scale of the curiosities of * modern art, not to collect medals, or collate manuscripts, but * to dive into the depths of dungeons, to plunge into the in- ‘ fection of hospitals, to survey the mansions of sorrow and ' * pain, to take the gauge and dimensions of misery, depression ‘ and contempt, to remember the forgotten, to attend to the * neglected, to visit the forsaken, and compare and collate the * distresses of all men in all countries.” The weaker sex soon presseg, forward for a share in the glory of humanity. In spite of cruel and bitter mockery, in spite of ‘ Turkey-carpet’ sarcasms from fat-witted and close-fisted aldermen, in spite of more direct discouragement, the subject of prisons was brought prominently before the public. The »public reflected, and was horrified. /rymania,* as it was called, daily gained ground. The interior of prisons underwent a total change. Now, order, cleanliness and health reigned within their walls: now, wrisoners grew fat and lusty on prison fare: now, they were “ employed in tailoring, white-washing, flagging, slating, painting, carpentering:’-+ now “notorious poachers, as well as bad men, in consequence of extreme contrition and good conduct, were, at the intercession of the clergymen of their parishes, released before the expiration of their terms of punishment :’4 and now, as was remarked at the time, poor men might see clergymen and ladies busy with larcenous pupils, whilst lads who had respected the eighth commandment, were consigned, in some dark alley, to the frowns and blows of a ged pedagogue. {rs. Fry, the female Howard, (as she was styled) and his suc- cessor as leader of the crusade, soon became a public character, and was apostrophized as such by the popular poet of the day :— Oh! Mrs. Fry ! Why go to Newgate? Why Preach to poor rogues? and wherefore not begin With Carlton, or with other houses? Try Your hand at harden’d and imperial sin. To mend a people’s an absurdity, A jargon, a mere philanthropic din, Unless you make their betters better—Fy ! I thought you had more religion, Mrs. Fry.§ * In an interesting collection of tales called “ Experiences of a Gaol Chaplain,” a Magistrate, during a discussion respecting the election of a chaplain, is represented as saying, “ Mrs. Fry again! now mark me. The principles of that woman will eventually undermine the framework of Society”” We do not think this unnatural; end the “ no Innovation” cry was in those days tar more powerful than now. + Third Report of the Society for the improvement of Prison Discipline, p. 22. 7 Ibid, p. 29. } Don Juan, Canto xi. 85. We are very far from questioning Mrs. Fry’s reMgion, though in some points we do question her discretion. - PRISON DISCIPLINE IN BENGAL. m lil pe - When the tide had fairly set in, there was no stopping it. The opposition, that in the first instance withstood humanity, had quickened the pursuit of it into a species of religious excitement, which could not easily be checked, though the op- position itself was gone. Ladies and gentlemen, good and worthy as ever breathed, went racing on, at killing pace, striving ap- arently with might and main, who should pet prisoners most. he cruel wrongs done to common-sense in the struggle, and the desperate dislocation of cause and effect in the statistical arguments, which they published in defence of their views, need not be dwelt on here: But the results were equally distressing and ludicrous; incarceration became not only healthy but elegant, and it was scarcely exaggeration to say that “a jail ‘ had become precisely the place tO which any pauper might ‘ wish to retire, to gratify his taste for magnificence, as well as ‘ comfort.” The instruction offered in some cases, was so ex- cellent, and so much appreciated by the lower classes, that it actually came to pass that parents aceused their own children of crime, to procure it gratis ; and the governors of a Juvenile penitentiary, called the “ Philanthropic Chane were even obliged to make it a rule never to receive a child upon the ac- cusation of the parents alone. Im those days, a novice, who had not been initiated by “ family-men”-+ in jail mysteries, might indeed have trembled, whilst he heard the Judge, in solemn and severe accents, passing sentence upon him; but he must soon have learnt to laygh at his former fears, and if required again to face the judgment-seat, he most probably made up his mind that “that ‘ere old gemman in red and rabbit skins’ } was rather a pleasant old gemman than otherwise. 