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148 Nott was urgently called on for succour; and if all this should occur at Delhi, should we not have to strike anew for our Indian Empire?

'But who would attribute the calamity to the Civil Commissioner at Delhi? And could not that functionary fairly say to the officer commanding, "I knew very well that there were not only 300 desperate characters in the city, but as many thousands — men having nothing to lose, and everything to gain, by an insurrection. You have let them plunder the magazine and the treasury. They will, doubtless, expect as little resistance elsewhere. A single battalion could have exterminated them the first day, but you let the occasion slip, and the country is now in a blaze, and the game completely out of my hands. I will now give you all the help I can, all the advice you ask, but the Riot Act has been read, and my authority has ceased." Would the civil officer be blamed for thus acting? Could he be held responsible for the way in which the outbreak had been met?

'I have endeavoured to put the case fairly. Delhi is nearly as turbulent and unquiet a city as Kábul. It has residing within its walls a king less true to us than was Sháh Shujá. The hot weather of India is more trying to us than the winter of Afghánistán. The ground between the town and cantonment of Delhi being a long rocky ridge on one side of the road, and the river Jumna on the other, is much more difficult for the action of the troops against an insurgent population than anything at Kábul. At Delhi the houses are fully as strong, the streets not less defensible. In short, here as there, we occupy dangerous ground. Here, if we act with prudence and intrepidity, we shall, under God's blessing, be safe, as we should have been, with similar conduct, there.

'But if, under the misfortune that has befallen our arms,