Colonel Pearse determined that the golundaz should not be reduced, if any exertions on his part could save them; and accordingly, as soon as the rumours reached him, addressed a letter to the commander-in-chief, in which he urged the necessity of employing native artillery, from the impossibility of keeping up sufficient European artillery for the service of our extended empire, liable to be attacked at both extremities, and at such a distance as to preclude the possibility of assistance. He combated the argument of danger from native artillerymen deserting and teaching their art to the golundaz of native powers, by proving that, at that time and previously, the native states had artillerymen not inferior to ours in the mere gun exercise and preparation of common stores, and that, were this not the case, the desertion of a few European artillerymen would render all precautions useless; that in reality for many years past there were thirty men nominally infantry, but in reality artillerymen attached to each battalion, for the service of the two field guns, which arrangement entailed the possibility of all the evils now feared, though without the advantages which a regular corps of native artillery would give. He deprecated the system of battalion guns as useless, the guns being without officers to manage them so as to produce the best effect, by attending to the advantages of ground and selection of ammunition best adapted to the occasion; the two European artillerymen detached with each battalion for this purpose being ignorant of the higher—the more scientific parts of the profession, which knowledge is confined in general to the officers; that it ruined the discipline of these men, who, though they went out good men, returned, in general, drunken vagabonds; that the lascars sent, though of the artillery, were only employed in dragging the guns, and were unarmed and undisciplined, but that they served for menial offices, which made them desirable to captains commanding the infantry battalions. He recommended that the guns should be collected in small brigades, or batteries, and brought to the points wanted, instead of being frittered away along the line; that the discipline of the men working them, from being under their own officers, would be better preserved, and that cannon would be better looked after, and their fire produce more effect in action, by being under the exclusive command of an officer bred up to the profession. He concluded by urging that, even should the artillery desert and take service with native powers, there was in reality little to fear, for though the country powers have infantry formed like ours, they are inferior in every respect: their irregularity of pay is the grand foundation of it; their want of sufficient instruction and of the essential knowledge of our discipline, will long keep them so; and such as their sipahis are to ours their artillery will be to our artillery,