between the native and the European, and thence spreads throughout the length and breadth of the land, than from all other causes combined. Let government look to this; it is a serious and most important truth." Its causes in 1857. The causes which, in the middle of the 19th century, were thus tending to sap the long-tried fidelity of the sepoy army were partly military and partly racial. The professional conditions of the sepoy's career, especially in Bengal, were no longer so tempting as they had been in the first generations of the company's rule. The pay and privileges of the sepoy were steadily being diminished, and the increased demands made on the army by the great extension of the company's territory were by no means grateful to the average Bengal sepoy. Owing to the silladar system, under which the Indian sowar provided his own horse and provender in return for a monthly wage, the Indian cavalry were almost to a man in debt, and therefore favoured any attempt to upset the existing régime, and with it to wipe out the money-lender and his books; and the general enlistment order passed in July 1856, for the purposes of the war in Persia, made the Hindu sepoys afraid of losing caste by crossing the sea. The Indian government failed to take sufficient account of the social and religious feelings of their native soldiers, whilst a rigid insistence on the principle of seniority had greatly diminished the efficiency of the British regimental officers. Out of 73 mutinous regiments, only four colonels were found worthy of other commands. At the same time, there were deeper reasons for discontent with British rule, which specially affected, the classes from which the Bengal sepoys were drawn. Chief among these was Dalhousie's policy of annexation, which brought under British dominion such small states as Satara, Nagpur and Jhansi, and finally the kingdom of Oudh. The insistence on the right of lapse, i.e. the refusal to allow an adopted, son to inherit a native throne, and the threat of annexation on purely humanitarian grounds seriously alarmed the native princes of India, besides creating a class of malcontents, among whom the Nana Sahib, the adopted heir of the peshwa, made himself most infamous. The annexation of Oudh, which was the chief recruiting ground of the Bengal army, probably caused wider disaffection in the ranks of that army than any other act or omission of the government. There can also be little doubt that the social reforms of Lord Dalhousie and his predecessors had disturbed men's minds in Bengal. Thus the Brahmans were offended at the prohibition of suttee and female infanticide, the execution of Brahmans for capital offences, the re-marriage of widows, the spread of missionary effort and the extension of Western education. The Mahommedan zemindars were injured by the reassessment of the land revenue, which was carried through in the interests of the ryots, and the power of the zemindars was formidable,