Note 39 — DEATH OF THOMAS HAMILTON, ESQ.

Footnote 39

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The following remarks of the Madras United Service Gazette, though intended to apply only to the Secunderabad disturbances, deserve general attention at present:—"We attribute the lately-diminished attachment of the sepoys for their European officers to a diminished inclination for the service, the duties whereof have of late years increased in about the same proportion that its advantages have been reduced. The cavalry soldier of the present day has more than double the work to do that a trooper had forty years ago;... and the infantry sepoy's garrison guard-work has been for years most fatiguing at every station, from the numerical strength of the troops being quite inadequate to the duties.... These several unfavourable changes have gradually given the sepoy a distaste for the service, which has been augmented by the stagnant state of promotion, caused by the reductions in 1829, when one-fifth of the infantry, and one-fourth of the cavalry, native commissioned and non-commissioned officers, became supernumerary, thus effectually closing the door of promotion to the inferior grades for years to come. Hopeless of advancement, the sepoy from that time became gradually less attentive to his duties, less respectful to his superiors, as careless of a service which no longer held out any prospect of promotion. Still, however, the bonds of discipline were not altogether loosened, till Lord W. Bentinck's abolition of corporal punishment; and from the promulgation of that ill-judged order may be dated the decided change for the worse which has taken place in the character of the native soldiery."