CAUSES OF THE INSURKECTION. 229 



the mutiny of the 41st Native Infantry took 

 place, he had information that twenty-four other 

 regiments were in league with them. 



The cause of the insurrection of 1857 seems 

 still unexplained to general satisfaction ; in my 

 own opinion it arose from our continued mis- 

 government, our grasping policy of annexation, 

 our repeated breaches of faith, and the humilia- 

 tion of native princes by British functionaries, 

 even a Governor- General himself, who thought 

 it not beneath his own high station to tell an 

 Indian sovereign that he considered him '' as the 

 dust under his own feet." The only redeeming 

 feature in this affair being that the paramount 

 authority in India was so ashamed of what he 

 had thus written, that the despatch, in its true 

 and original form, was never allowed to see 

 daylight, the obnoxious passage being expunged 

 before it was printed. To the above causes we 

 may add the laxity of discipline in the native 

 army of Bengal. 



It so happened that Mr Layard, of Nineveh 

 celebrity, was at Bombay, on his Indian tour, 

 just at the time when Meer Ali Moorad re- 

 turned to Sindh, and His Highness, being asked 

 by that gentleman to what he attributed the 



