The most moderate among these officers argued, that no opportunity whatever had been given to the Company's army of retrieving itself; and, guilty as it might have been, they said the memory of its former fame merited some consideration; and an appeal to its loyalty and duty, combined with an act of amnesty, would, they thought, if it had been made to the officers of the Company's army with that confidence which inspires attachment, have secured the fidelity of a great part of them: and if it had been possible for Government to have gone further, and to have promised, "that in the event of the conduct of the army meriting such favour, they would recommend the case of the officers who had been suspended to the indulgent consideration of the Court of Directors[22]," they were confident all would have been reclaimed to their duty. But had efforts so worthy, in their opinion, of the clemency and greatness of Government failed in bringing all to reason, they would have acted with the most ardent zeal against men whom they should in such event not only have considered as rebels to their country, but as destroyers of the reputation of the army to which they belonged. There can be no doubt these were the sentiments of many respectable officers of rank and influence: and had Government adopted, on the 26th of July, any such measures of conciliation, it would have been completely successful; and not only the hazard of a contest, but all those disastrous consequences which were certain to be the inevitable consequence of complete success, would have been avoided. And can there be a doubt in the mind of any rational being but it might have taken such a line, at the very moment that which has been described was adopted, without any substantial sacrifice of either its strength or dignity, and certainly with the greatest benefit to the interests of the British nation in India? The measure that was taken was supposed, by almost all the discontented, to be a completion of that design which the Government of Fort St. George had from the first (they conceived) entertained, of relying solely on the King's troops; and they concluded, from the substance as well as the mode in which the step taken on the 26th of July was carried into execution, that the Company's military establishment on the coast was meant to be destroyed at the first blow; and all were therefore included in one general mass, as fit objects of suspicion and disgrace.