It was a remarkable fact, relative to the orders issued on that date, that (unless in the case of Captain Grant, who had come forward to accuse himself[8] of the act for which he was punished) no proof of the guilt of any of the others was brought forward. They were, indeed, almost all suspended, removed, and disgraced, on the grounds of private information; which, supposing it true, could not, from its nature, and the resentment to which it would expose individuals, be publicly stated. The consequence was, that many of the individuals who had been thus condemned and punished without a hearing, loudly declared their innocence, and brought strong presumptive evidence to support their assertion. They were generally believed; and a sense of their particular wrongs, added to the alarm caused by the sweeping use which Government had on this occasion made of its right of suspending officers without trial, greatly aggravated the discontented, who felt an almost maddening motive to action in the immediate contemplation of the ruin and disgrace which threatened some of the most honourable and distinguished of those that had taken any share in their proceedings. The obvious and acknowledged source of the crimes which Government had at this moment to punish, was its own act--the recent suspension of Lieutenant-Colonel Capper and Major Boles; and it ought to have been evident, that the orders of the 1st of May would aggravate, in the highest degree, the general agitation which that measure had produced; and almost every paragraph of this order would appear as if intended for that object. The thanks given in it to his Majesty's troops were no doubt merited, but invidious; and, being so, could never have been desired by that body; many of whom, though they had been led (by the operation of the principles of the distinct constitution of the army to which they belonged,) to renounce every share in the proceedings of the discontented officers in the Company's service, still participated in their feelings: but the useless irritation of this part of the order appears a trifling error when compared to that eulogium which it so unfortunately bestowed on the Hyderabad force, whose officers, however much circumstances might have prevented their coming forward, could not possibly, as a body, have a separate interest from the rest of that army to whom they were on this occasion held forth as a corps on whose fidelity Government had peculiar confidence. The operation of such praise was inevitable: the Company's officers at Hyderabad were not only exposed to the reproach of inaction in what were deemed objects of common interest, but to the accusation of being in part the cause of the ruin of some of the most popular officers of the army: for the discontented argued, that if Government had not thought it could rely on their support, it never would have had recourse to so bold and arbitrary a course of measures. Correct information regarding the