^^70 The King's Troops in India. [March, 



and all offices of trust, or peculiar delicacy, or even of superior emolu- 

 ment are of course distributed among them. If any actual competition 

 of interests could be supposed to arise between the Company's and 

 King's officer, favour would of course lean to the latter. Will the 

 English world, who know so little of foreign proceedings, will they 

 believe that the very reverse is the fact ? The very reverse, however, is 

 the fact. The officer of the line, who at home looks down with contempt 

 upon the domestic and constitutional forces of his country, as soon as he 

 arrives in India, must in his turn succumb to the supremacy of the 

 Company's officer. He is at once of an inferior order. The truth is, the 

 Company regard the King's troops with jealousy, and instinctively so. 

 They would gladly have nothing to do with them, but their presence 

 and protection are indispensable ; and there is too little of the spirit of 

 magnanimity about them to make a virtue of necessity, and treat them 

 with liberality. Tliough depressing their own officer, though resolving 

 to keep him in subjection, and casting all advantages into the civil scale, 

 towards the King's officer they shew besides a grudging and a tyrannous 

 disposition. The monopoly- of Leadenhall Street appears at every turn; 

 The Company have not the disposal of the King's commissions, and 

 they will patronize none but their own proteges. 



It is not at all our present intention to dwell upon the impolicy of this 

 inferiority in the circumstances of the military to the civil department ; 

 but rather to exhibit the degradations in the condition of the borrowed 

 forces of the King, which, after all, the Companj' must confess to be the 

 elite of their army, and the real prop of their power. 



At each presidency, the principal military officer, by the terms of the 

 charter, must be a King's general, and command the Company's forces. 

 This is an exception to the ruling principle; but, even in this case, 

 observe the prevalence of the monopolizing spirit. Should a vacancy 

 occur, a Company's officer, and not the next senior King's officer, is, as a 

 matter of course, appointed, till the successor arrives. In certain sta- 

 tions, the troops have allowances for quarters and mess, under the name 

 of tentage, half-tentage, batta, &c. — but we have no need of technical 

 terms in garrisons, and at all stations south of Allahabad, these allow- 

 ances are partly reduced, or entirely withdrawn. Now these disad- 

 vantageous stations usually, we say not in every case, designedly fall to 

 King's troops. For consigning these forces to the garrisons there maybe 

 very good reasons, but none for making them, particularly Fort William, 

 the most unfavourable position in India; no very good reasons, or at 

 least no very generous ones for so commonly, not to say so exclusively,* 

 planting them in the new allowance stations ; and certainly none for 

 placing them in a worse condition with respect to allowances generally 

 than the Company's own officers. Yet the truth is, that even where the 

 stations are the same, the Company's officer has the advantage. 



At home, a regimental captain, with the brevet-rank of major has two 

 shillings a day over his captain's pay ; and a lieutenant of seven years, 

 standing has an extra allowance of one shilling a day ; but no sooner does 

 the King lease them out to the Company than they are docked of these 

 privileges, on the pretence, that no such custom prevails in the Com- 

 pany's troops, and they cannot make distinctions. Not make distinc- 

 tions ! Then why not give the same extra allowances to their own 

 officers, rather than deteriorate the condition of those, who come good 



» Gliaripoor, Danapoor, Berhampoor. 



