[Footnote 64: Mr. D. B. Jones comes forward to defend the commandant of Meerut. How? The last sentence only of his letter has any sort of reference to the public accusation; and this sentence replies, but not with _any_ mode of argument (sound or unsound), to a charge perfectly irrelevant, if it had ever existed--namely, an imaginary charge against the little army assembled on May 10 at Meerut. The short and summary answer is, that no such imaginary charge, pure and absolute moonshine, was ever advanced against the gallant force at Meerut. Secondly, if it had, such a charge could have no bearing whatever upon that charge, loudly preferred against the commander of that district. Thirdly, the charge has been (I presume) settled as regards its truth, and any grounds of disputation, this way or that, by the Governor-General. The newspapers have told us, and have not been contradicted, that Lord Canning has dismissed this functionary for '_supineness_.'] Thinking of that vile _lachete_, which surrendered, with a girl's tameness, absolutely suffered to lapse, without effort, and as if a bauble, this great arsenal and magazine into the hands of the revolters, involuntarily we have regarded it all along as a deadly misfortune; and, upon each periodic mail, the whole nation has received the news of its non-capture as a capital disappointment. But, on steadier consideration, apparently all this must be regarded as a very great error. Not that it could be any error to have wished for any course of events involving the safety of our poor slaughtered compatriots. That event would have been cheap at _any_ price. But that dismal catastrophe _having_ happened, to intercept that bitter wo having been already ripened into an impossibility by the 11th and 12th of May, seven-and-forty days before our thoughts at home began to settle upon India, thenceforwards it became a very great advantage--a supreme advantage--that Delhi should have been occupied by the mutineers. Briefly, then, why? First of all, because this movement shut up within one ring fence the _elite_ of the rebels (according to some calculations, at least three-and-twenty thousand of well-armed and well-disciplined men), that would otherwise have been roaming over the whole face of Bengal as marauders and murderers. These men, left to follow their own vagrant instincts, would, it is true, in some not inconsiderable proportion, have fallen victims to those fierce reactions of rustic vengeance which their own atrocities would very soon have provoked. But large concentrated masses would still have survived in a condition rapidly disposable as auxiliary bodies to all those towns invested by circumstances with a partisan interest, such as Lucknow, Benares, Cawnpore, Agra, Gwalior, and Allahabad.