Page:Sir Henry Lawrence, the Pacificator.djvu/182

Rh which is addressed to them all. Several of them have also to-day borne evidence against a Hindu plate-cleaner of the hospital, who has been telling them his colonel has great confidence in the 48th.'

On May 4: —

'Referring to what has occurred with the 7th Oudh Irregulars and to the feeling that still prevails against the 48th, I will be glad, if it can be managed, that one of the Sikh regiments can be sent up here at once, or even a wing. It might be on the plea of taking the place of the 7th. The coup is stated to have had great effect in the city, but people go so far as to tell me that the 48th last night abused the 7th for running away, and said if they had stood the 48th would not have fired. I don't believe one quarter of these reports, but they are not pleasant. The intercepted letter of yesterday evidently fell into the wrong hands. It ended with "it is a question of religion."

On May 9: —

'I went through the lines of the 48th yesterday and talked to many of the men; all were very civil, though many were downcast at the loss of their private property as well as of their huts, the wretched jumbling up of which (as in the Bengal system) prevents, in cases of fire in a high wind, saving anything.

'Last night I held a conversation with a jemadár of the Oudh Artillery for more than an hour, and was startled by the dogged persistence of the man, a Brahman of about forty years of age, of excellent character, in the belief that for ten years past Government has been engaged in measures for the forcible, or rather fraudulent, conversion of all the natives. His argument was that, as such was the case, and