2. It may be feared that the Governor-General has in the following point lamentably neglected a great duty of his place. It must have been remarked with astonishment, as a matter almost inexplicable, how it has arisen that so many gallant men, at the head of every regiment, should have suffered themselves to be slaughtered like sheep in a butcher's shambles. Surely five-and-twenty or thirty men, in youthful vigour, many of them capital shots, could easily have shot down 150 of the cowardly sepoys. So much work they could have finished with their revolvers. More than one amongst the ladies, in this hideous struggle, have shot down their two brace of black scoundrels apiece. But the officers, having the advantage of swords, would have accounted for a few score more. Why, then, have they not done this?--an act of energy so natural to our countrymen when thus roused to unforgiving vengeance. Simply because they have held themselves most nobly, and in defiance of their own individual interest, to be under engagements of fidelity to the Company, and obligations of forbearance to the dogs whom they commanded, up to the last moment of possible doubt. Now, from these engagements of honour the Governor-General should, by one universal act (applicable to the three Presidencies) have absolved them. For it cannot be alleged _now_ for an instant, that perhaps the regiments might mean to continue faithful. If they _do_ mean this, no harm will come to any party from the official dispensing order; the sepoys could suffer by it only in the case of treachery. And, in the meantime, there has emerged amongst them a new policy of treason, which requires of us to assume, in mere self-defence, that _all_ sepoys are meditating treason. It is this: they now reserve their final treason until the critical moment of action in the very crisis of battle. Ordered to charge the revolters, they discharge their carbines over their heads; or, if infantry, they blaze away with blank cartridge. This policy has been played off already eight or nine times; and by one time, as it happens, too many; for it was tried upon the stern Havelock, who took away both horses and carbines from the offenders. Too late it is _now_ for Bengal to baffle this sharper's trick. But Bombay and Madras, should _their_ turn come after all, might profit by the experience. 3. For years it has been our nursery bugbear, to apprehend a Russian invasion on the Indus. This, by testimony from every quarter (the last being that of Sir Roderick Murchison, who had travelled over most of the ground), is an infinitely impossible chimera; or at least until the Russians have colonized Khiva and Bokhara. Meantime, to those who have suffered anxiety from such an anticipation, let me suggest one consolation at least amongst the many horrors of the present scenes in Bengal--namely, that this perfidy of our troops was not displayed first in the very agony of conflict with Russia, or some more probable invader.