circular letter to several of the other stations, stating that imperious circumstances and mature reflection had induced them to sign the declaration, and that they earnestly entreated their brother officers to follow their example.

When this address reached Masulipatan, the ringleaders at that station sent to General Pater, who had been commissioned to see the test carried into effect there. The time was arrived, they said, when they could no longer oppose the authority of the government without injury to the interests of the country, and they invited him to assume the command, promising to obey him in all things. This determination was probably accelerated by what they had already experienced of the consequences of mutiny: the sepoys were declaring that they would plunder the country, and great part of the inhabitants, expecting this natural effect of such transactions, had already taken to flight. Major Storey himself, interfering in a dispute between a sepoy and an artilleryman, had been in personal danger. The soldier told him he would do as he himself thought proper, and gathering two hundred of his companions, they went to his house with loaded guns, threatening to kill him. The major escaped upon an unsaddled horse to the fort, and got a guard of 200 sepoys and 100 Europeans to protect him. This was a timely lesson, showing the officers in what a miserable state of insecurity they would find themselves, even if there were any hope of succeeding in their rebellion. General Pater, upon receiving this letter, went immediately to the fort to see that the declaration of allegiance was signed. He found the garrison in the greatest agitation; the men of the European regiment sus

pected that the officers, after having seduced them into mutiny, were now about to desert their cause and aban don them to punishment: they assembled tumultuously, and threatened to shoot any officer who should sign the test; and the tumult became so great, that General Pater thought it expedient not merely to rest satisfied without having the declaration subscribed, which his discretionary power authorised him to do, but, without any authority whatever, to promise, in the name of the government, a ges neral pardon both for officers and men. Still the men apprehended treachery; and the next day 180 of the European regiment, with a few artil. lerymen, determined to set out for Madras. General Pater assented to their determination, and suffered them to select such officers as they pleas sed: he thus got rid of the more tur bulent spirits, subordination was then restored, and the whole of the remain ing officers signed the test. Their example was followed by all the offi. cers in the northern division. The troops from Jaulnah, receiving the news on their march, returned to their station and submitted; and the rebels at Seringapatam, finding all their hopes had failed, surrendered unconditionally.

Thus when Lord Minto arrived he found the rebellion crushed, and had only to take the necessary measures for punishing those who had been most forward in exciting it. The pardon which General Pater had promised at Masulipatan was revoked, as being entirely unauthorized by his instructions. Lieut.-Col. Bell, Major Storey, and Lieutenant-Colonel Doveton, were ordered for trial; and the governor-general, making, as he said, a small selection from a great mass of delinquency, excepted 18

other officers from the amnesty, giving them their choice either to quit the service or stand trial. Colonel Bell was found guilty, sentenced to be cashiered, and declared unworthy of ever serving the company in any military capacity whatsoever. A sentence so altogether inadequate to the crime, shows but too plainly the prevailing temper of the army offences of the same kind, but infinitely lighter in degree, had been repeatedly and recently punished in India with death; and the commander-in-chief called upon the court-martial to revise their sentence, which appeared the more objectionable, because the prisoner's defence was in itself an aggravation of the offence. But the court adhered to their former opinion; and General Gowdie, confirming the sentence, expressed his pointed disapprobation of the punishment awarded, as bearing no proportion to the magnitude of the crime so clearly proved. Major Storey was sentenced to be cashiered, but not declared incapable of serving again; and the court, from some facts which had appeared upon the trial, and from many palliative circumstances, recommended him as not unworthy of mercy; "feeling," they said, "every hope, that should such a very extraordinary and unprecedented forgiveness be granted him, Major Storey would, from his well-attested uniform good conduct previous to these criminal transactions, feel a most perfect and proper sense of such benign lenity, and once again become a good and valuable officer to the honourable company." The judge advocate, in the name of the commander-in-chief, replied, that

if the sentence had been such as the law pointed out for the offence, the recommendation of the court might then justly have had great weight,

but the general could not consent to the remission of a sentence, which he considered as inadequate to the crime. He directed, in this instancealso, a revisal of the sentence, which was, as in the former instance, confirmed. Both prisoners had made their defence in great part a justification, and had been advised by the court to expunge certain improper parts, which both refused to do. Colonel Doveton rested his defence upon better grounds, maintaining that he had only marched with the troops for the purpose of moderating them and preventing greater evil; and he produced a correspondence with the resident at Hyderabad, showing that this had been really his motive, and that the resident had sanctioned it. The court therefore honourably acquitted him. This sentence they were called upon to revise like the former, and they in like manner adhered to it. General Gowdie expressed his disapprobation in general orders, and recommended to government that Colonel Doveton should be suspended from all military functions till the pleasure of the directors could be known, drawing meantime his allowances; and this advice Lord Minto followed, declaring that in every case of mutiny, whatever may be the pretext for it, the first obligation of every officer and soldier is to oppose its progress by every effort of persuasion; the sec. nd, is to separate himself from the guilty; and the last and most sacred, is to join the standard of his sovereign, his employers, and his duty.

These disturbances became the subject of much and violent controversy in England. The Court of Directors, after many discussions and much opposition, removed Mr Petrie from council, because through the whole of the disturbances he had differed in

opinion from the other members, to the great encouragement of the disaffected party. They continued Sir G. Barlow in the government, but they disapproved of his conduct in the case of Major Boles, declaring that that officer ought not to have been suspended, and that the refusal to let him take his passage on board the Lushington was an unnecessary hardship. They therefore restored

him to the service, but forbade him to return to India till he should receive special permission, because he had accepted the assistance of the army when it was offered in so repre hensible a manner, and because in his various memorials he had adverted in offensive terms to the conduct of his superior officer, General Gowdie, and of the governor-general.

THESE domestic evils did not prevent the Indian government from pur. suing their usual vigorous policy to ward foreign foes. In 1809, the dewan, or premier of the Rajah of Travancore, in consequence of some political differences, attempted to assassinate the British resident; that officer effected his escape, but shortly afterwards a transport, having on board a surgeon and 33 soldiers of the 12th regiment, put into the port of Alippes, on the coast of Travancore, and the men were persuaded by some of the rajah's officers to land; they were then surrounded and overpowered, tied in couples back to back with a stone round their necks, and in that manner thrown into the back-water off the port, to perish with the returning tide. Colonel St Leger, whose name appears far more honourably in the history of the war, than in the transactions of the Madras army with its government, in one short and decisive campaign subdued the rajah. The dewan fled into the wilds, and thinking it impossible to escape the close pursuit which was made for him, destroyed himself there; his body, however, was discovered, and gibbetted, it is said, in sight of his master's palace, an act which, if it really were committed, is inexpiably disgraceful to the person by whose command it was done.

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Two expeditions were also un

dertaken against the pirates in the Persian Gulph, a set of men whose strength and audacity were daily increasing, and whose cruelties towards their prisoners were such, that the British government was called upon by every feeling of indignation, as well as of policy, to crush, and, if possible, to exterminate them. The first of these attempts was directed against the town of Mallia, which was taken, together with its strong fort; in the second, Rus ul Kima, their principal port and arsenal, was captured, all their guns spiked, their magazines blown up, and their flotilla, consisting of above 70 vessels of different sizes, burnt. Their minor settlements were afterwards attacked with equal success, and the depredations of these merciless freebooters were thus stopt, till they should be able to get other vessels and renew them, as undoubt. edly they soon will do. The points which Albuquerque wished to secure, that he might make Portugal the mistress of these seas, were Ormuz and Aden; to Ormuz he was led as much by its prosperity as its situation; Aden still retains all its natural advantages, and happy would it be for Abyssinia and Arabia if that city were to be made a British settlement.

Amboyna was taken in the month of January by a squadron under Captain Tucker, and its surrender was

followed by that of the subordinate islands, Saparona, Harouka, and Nasso Lant, with Boura and Manippa. Banda Neiva, the chief of the spice islands, was taken in August by Captain Cole, by a coup-de-main of extraordinary gallantry: with less than 200 men, who had been labouring in their boats through a dark and squally night in the open sea, he landed unseen within a hundred yards of a battery of 10 guns, attacked it in the rear, and made the officer and his guard prisoners without firing a shot, though the enemy were at their post with matches lighted. They then attacked Fort Belgica, took it by escalade, and were proceeding to storm Fort Nassau, when the governor sur. rendered, and this handful of Britons found themselves in possession of an sland, the forts and batteries of which mounted 120 pieces of cannon, and which was defended by 700 disciplined troops and militia.

Our commerce meantime suffered severely from the French, who, from the island of Mauritius, infested the Indian seas with their cruizers, and carried on their intrigues against the British interest in the Red Sea, and in the Persian Gulph. The amount of the losses which the East India Company sustained from this island, in the course of the last war and of the present, would have sufficed for its capture twenty times over, had not the French persuaded us, as well as themselves, that the place was impregnable. The English, said they, may send out expeditions against it, but its distance from them will ever be an impediment to their arriving in good

condition; and when arrived before it, the winds, want of provisions, and obstacles of every description, will soon oblige them to abandon their + enterprize. The first difficulty was easily obviated. A British squadron was attempting to blockade Port Louis, and in order to assist the squadron Lieutenant-Colonel Keating was sent with a small force of Europeans and sepoys, early in the year 1809, to occupy the island of Rodriguez, about 100 leagues east of Mauritius. This little island, which is about six-andtwenty miles long and twelve broad, was taken possession of in 1691 by a party of French refugees, under protection of the Dutch, who were at that time masters of Mauritius. Eight Frenchmen, young and enterprising, most of whom were of good family and some property, thought to find an asylum there; as they drew near the shore, they could scarcely satisfy themselves with gazing on its hills, and woods, and rivulets; they called to mind the scenes on which Di' Urfe had placed his Celadon and Astræa, and imagining that they were about to realize the ideal happiness of Arcadian romance, blessed that Providence which, having permitted them to be cruelly driven from their country, had at last suffered them to dry up their tears in this earthly paradise, where, they said, it depended upon themselves alone to be rich, and free, and happy, where they had only to employ their peaceful lives in the undisturbed enjoyment of what they possessed, in glorifying the Author of all good, and in preparing for their own final salvation. A hermit indeed

+ De Guignes.