But the main blunder had been the annexation of Oude without excuse, and executed in such a manner that for the first time the Mahometan princes felt that they had an identity of interest with the Indian rajahs. “... You see how the plot thickens.... Men of different races and different religions ... traditionary feuds and long and enduring prejudices with all the elements to produce segregation, become united--Hindoos, Mahrattas, Mahommedans--secretly feeling a common interest and a common cause.” Princes and proprietors are against you. “Estates as well as musnuds are in danger. You have an active society spread all over India, alarming the ryot, the peasant, respecting his religious faith. Never mind on this head what were your intentions; _the question is, what were their thoughts--what their inferences_?” And a further aggravation had resulted. The Oude sepoy, who was a yeoman, had recruited the Bengal army. “Robbed of his country and deprived of his privileges, he schemed and plotted, and sent mysterious symbols from village to village, which prepared the native mind,” agitated by princes deposed, religion insulted, soldiery discontented, for an occasion and pretext “to overthrow the British yoke.” “_The Mutiny was no more a sudden impulse, than the income tax was a sudden impulse. It was the result of careful combinations, vigilant and well-organised, on the watch for opportunity...._ I will not go into the question of the new cartridges.... I do not suppose any one ... will believe that because the cartridges were believed to be, or were pretended to be believed to be, greased with pig’s or cow’s fat, that was the cause of this insurrection. _The decline and fall of empires are not affairs of greased cartridges. Such results are occasioned by adequate causes and by an accumulation of adequate causes._” And now what remedies would meet such emergencies? Force, it was agreed, must now be employed. The force proposed was inadequate. “There should be an advance from Calcutta through Bengal, and an expedition up the Indus. The Militia should be called out. An Empire, not a Cabinet, was in danger.”