Page:The Indian Mutiny of 1857.djvu/445

Rh sight of a sword drawn in anger, were discussing which man amongst them was the fittest to be Chancellor of the Exchequer under the King of Dehlí, there was not an Englishman in that city who did not feel the most absolute confidence that the cruel deed would be avenged. There was not one cry of despair — not one voice to declare that the star of Great Britain was about to set. In the deepest distress there was confidence that the sons of Britain would triumph. The same spirit was apparent in every corner of India where dwelt an English man or an English woman. It lived in the camp before Dehlí, it was strong in the Residency of Lakhnao, it prevailed in every isolated station where the few Europeans were in hourly dangers of attack from rebels who gave no quarter. Nowhere did one of them shrink from the seemingly unequal struggle. As occasion demanded, they held out, they persevered, they pressed forward, and, with enormous odds against them, they wore down their enemies, and they won. The spirit which had sustained Great Britain in her long contest against Napoleon was a living force in India in 1857-8, and produced similiar results.

How did they accomplish the impossible? The answer must spring at once to the lips of those who have witnessed the action of our countrymen in every part of the world. The energy and resolution which gave the Britain which Cæsar had conquered to the Anglian race; which almost immediately brought that Britain to a preponderant position in Europe; which, on the discovery of a new world, sent forth its sons to conquer and to colonise; which, in the course of a brief time, gained North America, the islands of the Pacific, and Australasia; which, entering only as third on the