For many years the Brahmans at Benares utterly refused to have the sacred city lighted or drained. They declared that lighting and drainage were contrary to the Hindu religion, and the arguments of the British magistrate to the contrary were a sheer waste of words. At last, in 1851, the British magistrate, a Mr. Frederic Gubbins, carried out these municipal reforms in the teeth of a Hindu mob. Then followed a commotion at Benares precisely similar to that which occurred at Madras in the seventeenth century, when the British rulers endeavoured to reform the sanitary condition of their city. The traders and bazaar dealers shut up their shops, and refused to supply the cantonment with grain. Mr. Gubbins was pelted and fired at, and fled for his life. He called out a detachment of sepoys, arrested the ringleaders of the riot, and lodged them in the jail. From that moment Mr. Gubbins was lord of Benares. He rode through the city and ordered all the shops to be opened, and there was no one to say him nay. [Sidenote: British and Mogul rule.] All this was of course very wrong. The Supreme Court at Calcutta, with its bench of British judges, trained to respect the liberties of British subjects, would have been aghast at such proceedings. But from the days of Warren Hastings to those of Lord Canning, the Supreme Courts at Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay were prevented by the Act of Parliament passed in 1781 from interfering in any way with the administration of the Company's servants outside the limits of the Presidency capitals. It might, however, be added that the action of the British magistrate, arbitrary and high-handed as it must appear to British readers, was mild and merciful in comparison with Mogul severities. Under an imperious ruler like Aurangzeb, trains of armed elephants were driven through the masses in the streets, and trampled down all that came in their way, until the crowd broke up and fled in terror at the carnage. [Sidenote: Brave civilians.] Right or wrong, the action of Mr. Gubbins in 1851 was remembered by the people of Benares in 1857. Mr. Gubbins was by this time judge at Benares, and a Mr. Lind was magistrate and collector. The Bengal sepoys in the cantonment were disaffected, but there was no sign of insurrection in the city. The British residents were in alarm, and it was proposed to remove to the fortress of Chunar, on the other side of the river Ganges, which was occupied by invalided British soldiers. But Gubbins and Lind refused to desert their posts and abandon Benares. Accordingly the other British residents resolved to stay likewise; and it was arranged that in the event of a mutiny of the sepoys, they should all take refuge on the roof of the treasury, about two miles from the cantonment, which was guarded by Sikh soldiers. [Sidenote: Mutiny at Benares: disasters.]