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 CHAPTER VII

the eventful two years which followed the outbreak of the Mutiny, it was Lord Canning's fate to be almost incessantly the object of hostile criticism, on the part sometimes of the European community at Calcutta, sometimes of Parliamentary leaders or journalists at home. It was inevitable that it should be so. At periods, which arrest public attention and profoundly stir public feeling, views are quickly formed, strongly expressed, and pass from man to man with a rapid contagion. Under such a Government, too, as that of India, there is none of the relief which the outspokenness of Parliamentary interpellation in England affords to popular mistrust, misapprehension or disapproval. Many things which Lord Canning and his colleagues did at the outset of the Mutiny were mistrusted, misapprehended and disapproved by those among whom he lived, and to whom the events of the day were matters of grave personal significance. As wave after wave of disastrous news came rolling in, the tension of feeling grew intense, and Lord Canning's calm mood and untroubled demeanour were unendurably irritating to a society which was