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viii mained. Circumstances had proved to me that extraneous causes were at work to promote an ill-feeling, a hatred not personal but national, in the minds of men who for a century had been our truest and most loyal servants. When the Mutiny had been quelled I renewed my researches regarding the origin of this feeling, and, thanks to the confidences of my native friends in various parts of the country, I arrived at a very definite conclusion. That conclusion I placed on record, in 1880, when I published the then concluding volume of a History of the Mutiny, begun by Sir John Kaye, but left unfinished by that distinguished writer. After the publication of that volume I again visited India, and renewed my inquiries among those of my native friends best qualified to arrive at a sound opinion as to the real origin of the Mutiny. The lapse of time had removed any restraints which might have fettered their freedom of speech, and they no longer hesitated to declare that, whilst the action of the Government of India, in Oudh and elsewhere, had undermined the loyalty of the sipáhís, and prepared their minds for the conspirators, the conspirators themselves had used all the means in their power to foment the excitement. Those conspirators, they declared, were the Maulaví of Faizábád, the mouthpiece and agent of the discontented in Oudh; Náná Sáhib; one or two great personages