It will be acknowledged, that the example of a sedition proceeding so far without punishment, is an evil: but it was to be balanced against other evils;--against the calamities of civil war; against the mischief of rendering one part of our military force in India the enemies of the other; against the evils of a victory which must be gained over the spirit of the army, and consequently over the strength of the Government. It will be considered, whether a measure, _not of concession_, but _of conciliation_[33], offered a prospect of greater evils than a plan of division, such as Machiavelian politicians have sometimes employed against the public enemy;--but which was now to be, for the first time, employed against the only safeguard of the state;--a plan to make the King's troops look down on the Company's with the proud contempt of conquerors, and the Company's army feel towards the King's all the mortified pride and secret indignation natural to the vanquished; a plan for suppressing a rebellion of European officers by clandestinely instigating a mutiny of native soldiers against them; a plan for securing the Government by dividing and dispiriting the army, and for founding general tranquillity upon a monstrous balance of officers against soldiers, and of one army against another. It will be ascribed to the unbending temper of Sir George Barlow, that he did not perceive the probability of amnesty being at length granted, after open resistance, by the humanity of the British Administration in India and England, almost as general as that of which, before the sword was drawn, he treated the proposal as every thing but a crime. Future Governments will not be insensible to the dreadful dangers which have been incurred, even if the character of British officers should prevent the threatened evils from being realized; and they will see, that though the policy of Great Britain has supported the cause of authority, yet her equitable benevolence has virtually disavowed these measures, by interposing to repair their harsher consequences. POSTSCRIPT.