The very quietude of the nations under our rule is misleading, and misleads those who now think that all the varied peoples and sects of India love us, love one another, and are of the same race and feeling. The natives of India are as different as those between John o’ Groat’s House and the South of Spain, only more so. Even Wellington, whose experience of India was not vast, writes: “The natives are much misrepresented. They are the most mischievous, deceitful race of people I have ever seen or heard of. I have not yet met with a Hindu who had one good quality, even for the state of society in his own country, and the Mussulmans are worse than they are. Their meekness and mildness do not exist. It is true that the feats which have been performed by Europeans have made them objects of fear, but whenever the disproportion of numbers is greater than usual, they uniformly destroy them, if they can, and in their dealings and conduct among themselves they are the most atrociously cruel people I ever heard of.” The real cause of the Mutiny was hatred to the institutions we had introduced, and growing contempt for our power; to which may be added, if not as a cause, as a nominal standard round which the malcontents assembled, the practical deposition of the Kings of Oudh and Delhi. Military weakness or indifference, and political impotence, are with Eastern peoples synonymous terms. The ostensible reason for the outbreak was a cartridge, and this, though actually bees-waxed, was said, by those who were fomenting the outbreak, to be lubricated with cow and pig fat, which would make it abhorrent to the touch of either Hindu or Mahomedan. There is little doubt that in the first pattern there _was_ cow fat, as Captain Boxer seems to have admitted; and in order to lessen the evil, the next pattern was made so that the end might be torn off rather than bitten off. But the error was made, and to remedy it was too late. Disaffection first appeared at Berhampore, and the disbanding of the 19th Native Infantry followed; and next, the 34th Native Infantry at Barrackpore behaved mutinously, and was also disbanded. Both measures tended rather to spread the disaffection than stamp it out. In the last case blood was shed, two officers being badly wounded, the culprit being a certain “Mangul Pandy,” whose second name became the nickname of the Indian Sepoy, as “Tommy Atkins” was that of his European comrade.