There was over-confidence and want of real discipline; for the Native and European troops who had fought side by side and conquered the varied races of the Peninsula, and between whom there had once been sympathy, had drifted apart. In the past they had forgotten caste, and in campaigns had lived as brother soldiers. The increase in the European establishment of officers to native regiments had introduced many with whom the native was not in touch. The whole essence of our previous leadership was that the men respected their officers because they knew them, or knew the tradition of their military past. But new men meant new manners. The Sepoy’s past connection with his officer had been personal, and based on warlike experience and respect for his leader as a fighting man. “Piping times of peace” again had made the officer no longer a fighting unit, but a pay agent. This matters little in the West, but in the East it is far otherwise. The Asiatic reveres personal courage, and believes in little else. Sir Samford Whittingham, no mean judge, as far back as 1824 had seen the coming danger, and writes: “The longer I stay in India, the more I am convinced of the correct truth of all my former statements to you. The country hangs upon a thread. The slightest reverse would set the whole in a flame, and you have not the smallest hold upon any class of men in all your vast Indian dominions except that which is immediately derived from the opinion--or rather the conviction--that your bayonets and sabres are superior to theirs. The Indian army must become, and that speedily, a king’s army, the number of officers must be greatly increased, and the broken spirit of both officers and men regenerated.” He at least saw that the country won by the sword must be held by it; that the Sepoy only respected us so long as we were militarily strong. Generals and officials without number felt and said the same. The abolition of flogging in the native army, while retained with the white troops, only added to the increasing want of respect of the former for the British soldier. There is nothing worse than virtue gone mad! There is no greater vice with barbaric and ignorant people. But the Company sat still, and, civilian-like, were content so long as the outer part of the sepulchre remained whitened! The very efforts at introducing the principles of Western civilisation in too abrupt a manner had raised, long since, concealed antagonism. Immensely conservative as all the East is, such changes should be made more than gradually. The hostility of the people had been excited by measures, well meant, no doubt, but which were antagonistic to their cherished beliefs, their old-world and long-continued customs. That of the chiefs had been aroused by our continued deposition or supersession of kings, rajahs, and chieftains, who, with all their faults, were natives and not aliens. The Mahomedans felt these changes most, but the Hindus were by no means apathetic.