COERECTIONS 
 
 OF A FEW OF THE ERKORS 
 
 CONTAINED IN 
 
 SIE WM. NAPIEE'S LIFE OF HIS BROTHEK, 
 SIR CHARLES NAPIER, 
 
 IN SO FAR AS THEY AFFECT THE PBESS OF INDIA, 
 
 IN A LETTER ADDRESSED TO THE AUTHOR, 
 
 BY GEOKGE BUIST, LL.D,, 
 
 Editor of the '^JBomhay Times ;^^ 
 
 FELLOW OP THE ROYAL SOCIETr OF LONDON ; MEMBER OF THE ROYAL ASIATIC 
 SOCIETY OF LONDON ; FELLOW OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON ; 
 CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY, LONDON ; 
 CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS, LONDON ) FELLOW 
 OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH ; MEMBER OF THE SOCIETY OF ARTS, 
 SCOTLAND ; MEMBER OP THE SOCIETY OP SCOTTISH ANTIQUARIES ; HONORARY 
 MEMBER OF THE ST. ANDREw's LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY ; 
 HONORARY MEMBER AND FIRST CURATOR OP THE MUSEUM OF THE FIFESHIRE 
 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY : MEMBER OF THE BOMBAY BRANCH OF THE 
 ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY ; MEMBER, SECRETARY, AND EDITOR OF THE TRANSAC- 
 TIONS OP THE BOMBAY GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY, MEMBER AND LATE SECRETARY 
 OF THE AGRl HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF WESTERN INDIA, MEMBER OF COUNCIL 
 OP THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, BOMBAY ; FOUNDER AND RESIDENT 
 SUPERINTENDENT OP THE REFORMATORY SCHOOL OP INDUSTRY, BOMBAY ; 
 LATE IN CHARGE OP THE GOVERNMENT ASTRONOMICAL, METEOROLOGICAL, AND 
 MAGNETIC OBSERVATORY, AND OP THE GOVERNMENT CENTRAL MUSEUM, BOMBAY ; 
 LATE SHERIFF OP BOMBAY, ETC., ETC. 
 
 LONDON : 
 SMITH, ELDER, AND CO., 65, CORNHILL. 
 
 Printed by Jackson & Andrew, Manchester. 
 1857. 
 
an 2>/ 
 
The following pages, prepared immediately on the perusal of ^ 
 Sir William Napier's work,* have been delayed at press till any 
 little interest that may ever have attached to the subject has 
 passed away. Aware that no amount of circulation could be 
 secured for a pamphlet intended for the correction of the mis- 
 statements concerning myself, Sir William Napier has thought 
 fit to disseminate, sufficient for the end in view, an impression, 
 so small as scarcely to deserve the name of publication, has been 
 printed to enable those of my brother journalists who may have 
 unwittingly been the means of injuring me, to afford me 
 redress. 
 
 Those alone who have suffered as I have done, from long 
 expatriation, can appreciate the sensitiveness of the exile as 
 to what is thought of him at home, and the pain that attacks, 
 such as those which have been so unwarrantably made on me, 
 before friends whose good opinions are most prized, and the 
 f ffiifi-ed most dear to me, occasion. 
 
 V\ l.a a life certainly above average spotlessness in all its 
 relations, I have, during a seventeen years' residence in 
 Bombay, devoted myself with the utmost earnestness to pur- 
 suits tending to extend the field of human knowledge and the 
 happiness and welfare of the natives of the East. Admitted to 
 have been one of the first to plan (1844), and in part carry out, 
 the scheme of concerted meteorological and hydrographical 
 observation which now engages the bulk of the civilized 
 nations of the world, my attempts in this matter will be found 
 warmly acknowledged by the celebrated Mr. Maury, of 
 Washington, who, originating the project in the United States 
 (1846), has carried his plan into execution with such tiiumphant 
 success. I have been the founder of Reformatoiy Schools of 
 Industry in the East : projected in 1843, commenced in 
 1850, and conducted in the face of neglect and opposition, till 
 
 * " The Life and Opinions of General Sir Charles Napier, by Lieut.-Gen. 
 Sir W. Napier, K.C.B. etc." London : John Murray, Albemarle-street, 1857. 
 
that in Bombay has attained a position of stability, and become 
 one of our permanent social institutions. I have been the first to 
 project and carry into effect the construction of canals of irrigation 
 by private enterprise in India, without a guarantee, or any sort of 
 assistance from government. With such claims as these as I 
 imagined to acknowledgment, I find my name stigmatised \\4th 
 every epithet that is most opprobrious in the extracts from Sir 
 William Napier's work, published in almost every newspaper I 
 read, and probably believed in by the great majority of readers, 
 solely because that through a twenty-five years' service as a 
 journalist I have endeavoured to discharge the duties of that 
 high office with honesty, fearlessness, and independence ; cen- 
 suring freely, as I praised abundantly, when praise or censure 
 seemed due, without relation to the office or position of the 
 individual, regard to personal interest, or bias from private 
 feeling. 
 
 Those who study Sir William Napier's book with care will 
 probably come to the conclusion that the principal charges 
 against me contradict each other, and can by no possibility be 
 true : that I could not have at one and the same time been, as 
 alleged, an " outcast from society," and, as affirmed, on terms 
 of intimacy wdth governors, commanders-in-chiefs, members of 
 council, and secretaries; that my statements could not have 
 been at once worthless, as asserted, and, as on other occasions 
 affirmed, derived from the very highest authorities : but the 
 bulk of mankind are apt to accept general assertions without 
 consideration, and are seldom at the pains to study a book 
 otherwise attractive, with the view of detecting its errors. 
 
 On these grounds I throw myself on the consideration of 
 brother journalists, in the hope that those of them, at all 
 events, who may have been the means of injuring me, will 
 endeavour to secure for an old member of their order that 
 justice which they would feel themselves entitled to claim, if 
 unjustly attacked as I have been, for having honestly and 
 fearlessly discharged what I considered to be my duty. 
 
TO LIEUT.-GEN, SIR WILLIAM NAPIER, K.O.B. 
 
 SlE, 
 
 In perusing the life of your late brother, Sir 
 Charles Napier, I find no fewer than seventy passages relating 
 to myself or the paper which I have for sixteen years conducted, 
 nearly every one of which contains at least one misstatement, 
 most of them more than one. The passages referred to are 
 subjoined, with such commentaries as they seemed individually 
 to demand. 
 
 When the first part of your writings concerning Scinde 
 appeared in 1845, I pointed out some three score emphatic 
 misstatements in about thrice as many pages, there being 
 in addition about twice that number made in the same space 
 inferentially. These were mostly met by references to official 
 documents as accessible to yourself as to me ; the bulk of them 
 were, I presume, in your own or your brother's hands. Your 
 errors were not accidental, and they were aggravated by being 
 subsequently repeated or persisted in, after they had been 
 exposed. 
 
 At this date you confined yourself to what was untrue ; you 
 scarcely then ventured on the impossible. Practise in prevarica- 
 tion has emboldened you since then. You now not only assert 
 the thing that is not true, but that which could not have been 
 so. It was inconsiderate in you surely to charge me with 
 stealing in Bombay, in July, 1845, your first book, when you 
 knew that I left India the May previous, and did not return 
 till the year after, and when you had yourself in your other 
 publications shown your knowledge of the fact by quoting a 
 letter published by me in England at the time you were alleging 
 I was committing felony in the East. It was surely more than 
 rash in your brother to assert that in 1844 I was in Paris, 
 writing for the Parisian press, when he shows by other letters 
 that he knew I was at that date in Bombay, and I had so been 
 without interruption from the day of my arrival in 1840. I 
 never was in Paris in my life but once, in February 1840, and 
 never wrote a line, or instigated the writing of one, on any 
 subject in any continental journal whatever. 
 
 The assertion made by your brother in 1843, that certain 
 things were contained in Col. Outram's commentary on your 
 first volume on the conquest, when Sir Charles allows that he 
 knew that the book was not written in 1845, or published till 
 1846* — that the memoir of Col. Outram, in my History of the 
 First Affghan War, was written by that officer himself — when it 
 was known that this portion of the work was prepared and 
 
 * Vol. ii. p. 345 ill. 302. iv. 51. 
 
published while the assumed author was in Europe,^- is something' 
 more than indiscreet. Under date July, 1845, Sir Charles is 
 made to afiQrni that Colonel Conway had ''compelled Outram's 
 testimonial committee to take off from the sword presented him 
 in April, 1843, the inscription intimating that the defence of 
 the residency at Hydrabad was due to him." Had Col. Conw^ay, 
 or the committee, done what is here ascribed to them, they 
 w^ould have acted in direct disregard of Sir Charles Napier's 
 o^A^l despatch of that date to the Governor-general, never aftei'- 
 wards modified or recalled, in which he said that he consi- 
 dered the "defence of the residency by Major Outram so 
 admirable that he proposed making it the subject of a separate 
 despatch." At the date assigned to this communication to you, 
 your brother must have read in the Bombay newspapers the 
 following inscrip>tion, still on the sword, which he asserts to 
 have been cancelled : — 
 
 "Presented to Major James Outram, 23rd Regiment Bombay I^ative 
 Infantry, in token of tlie regard of his friends, and the high estimation in 
 which he is held for the intrepid gallantry which has marked his career in 
 India, but more especially his heroic defence of the British Eesidency at 
 Hyderabad, in Sind,- on the 15th of February, 1843, against an army of 
 8,000 Beloochees, with six guns. — ^Bombay, April, 1843." 
 
 These are matters which concern me not ; it remains for you 
 to explain them ; unless the public are to be left to infer that 
 the so-called letters of your brother are as imaginary as are the 
 statements embodied in them, professing to be facts. 
 
 It is, I believe, a maxim that men or things that are despised 
 are treated with silence : and as a converse of the projoosition, 
 that the space a man occupies in the estimation of an adversary 
 might be measured by the amount of attention bestow^ed upon 
 him. The humble individual who now^ addresses you may w^eU 
 feel overwhelmed with the position he seems for fourteen years 
 to have occupied in the thoughts of a man, who, according to 
 his biographer, surpassed Alexander and Napoleon, and only fell 
 short of Wellington in greatness — whose conceptions exceeded 
 those of the Macedonian madman w^ho only mshed to conquer the 
 world — Sir Charles aspired to rule from his capital in Babylon 
 from the Caspian to the w^all of China. How sad that the 
 Bomhaij Times should so long have disquieted his thoughts. His 
 ten thousand a year of salary — his seventy thousand of prize 
 money — the countenance of the Governor-general — the support 
 of the Bombay Gentlemen s Gazette availed him nothing so long 
 as the ]\Iordecai of the Bombay Times sat, not as a mendicant, but 
 as a monitor, at his gate. Did it never occur to you, as an old 
 and practised author, that to devote to the abuse of Col. Outram, 
 Mr. Willoughby, and myself, an absolutely larger space than is 
 
 * Col. Outram left Bombay, April 1, 1843 ; the book was published in 
 September, being then sent to press sheet by sheet as written. 
 
bestowed on the military operations and civil administration of 
 Scinde, so far from satisfying the public that we were the despi- 
 cable persons you desired it to be supposed, that we were con- 
 sidered by you, must have convinced them that we were in 
 reality as formidable and important in your estimation as you 
 wished us to be supposed the opposite ? 
 
 You say that the editors of the newspapers in England are 
 usually gentlemen arguing fairly on the facts before them. 
 I concur with you in your opinion. Had it been otherwise the 
 Press would never have acquired the position it enjoys. You 
 make the editors of the Examiner^ the Spectator, and the Atlas 
 exceptions* — my own impressions were that the parties excepted 
 had at all times held an eminently honourable place amongst 
 the most distinguished of their brethren. The only stain on 
 them is that they have failed to worship the name of Napier, 
 and it is enough. 
 
 It was as an editor of a newspaper at home, a position I had for 
 seven years occupied not without distinction, that I was in 1839 
 selected from the midst of many applicants to take charge of 
 the Bombay Times, which during the first ten years of my 
 Administration returned ten fold into the pockets of the pro- 
 prietors the money they had invested. I leave it for the world 
 to decide whether there was any thing in the atmosphere of 
 India or in the tastes of the members of the public service I 
 have since 1840 mainly addressed likely to transform me into the 
 worthless thing you would have me supposed to be — or whether 
 it has not been my fate, in common with all others who have 
 differed in opinion with you or your brother, to be slandered 
 by that reckless pen which discerns good or evil only as the 
 worshipper or critic of a Napier. Had I like Mr. McKenna 
 tendered my services to support the conqueror of Meanee I 
 should I have no doubt shared with him in the compliments he 
 at present monopolizes, as confessedly the only journalist out 
 of some hundreds referred to by you, who espoused your brother's 
 cause. The honour is one of which I was not ambitious, it is a 
 source of much gratification to me that I have done nothing to 
 enjoy it along with one pronounced by the unanimous voice of 
 his brethren the opprobrium of his order, who was dismissed 
 from the office you are pleased falsely to assign to me, of corre- 
 spondent to The Times, and left India at last confessed by his 
 coadjutor as having " failed in the objects of life.";!: 
 
 On this as in most other occasions you have taken on your- 
 
 • Vol. ii. iv. 40. 
 
 X Bombay Gazette, Feb. 1850. iv. 114, 
 
6 
 
 self the task of refuting tlie imputations 5^ou have east on me, in 
 matters of personal character and social position. You state, 
 in part at least correctly, that I was a visitor of the Governor, 
 on terms of friendship with the Commander-in-chief, a constant 
 inmate in the house of the Chief Secretary afterwards member 
 of Council, appointed by the Crown since his retirement fi'om the 
 service East India Director, and returned to Parliament by the 
 electors of Leominster, one of the ablest and most upright public 
 men of his time — that I was the bosom friend of the man justly 
 termed by your brother " the Bayard of the Indian army^""^ and 
 who within the past four years has enjoyed four of the most 
 valuble and important appointments in the gift of the Indian go- 
 vernment, and has been twice selected by the Sovereign for the 
 highest and most responsible military duties ;| and I leave it for 
 the world to determine whether a man who without wealth, con- 
 nection, or title, without public employment or other name than 
 that which he had atchieved, in the enjoyment of privileges such 
 as these could be termed an " outcast from society," or " one of 
 the vilest of the most infamous wretches on the face of the 
 earth. "J I leave the point open for decision — it is needless for 
 me to pronounce as to whether I enjoyed the position your 
 brother assigns me or deserved the character he bestows on me. 
 That the statement can be true on both points will I think be 
 allowed even by yourself to be impossible. 
 
 I readily admit that there are many allowances to be made 
 both for you and your late brother; that your failings are 
 scarcely to be treated like those of other men : and in conside- 
 ration of this I have throughout the discussions which have now 
 endured over the greater part of fourteen years endeavoured 
 to exercise a degree of moderation and forbearance which 
 marvellous on retrospection as it now seems to me considering 
 the violence to which it was opposed, I should be inexcusable 
 in abandoning now that the victory is all my own, and the una^ 
 nimous voice of mankind on my side. 
 
 From yom' recent volumes it appears that the conqueror of 
 Scinde throughout his life was like his biographer incapable of 
 discerning right from wrong in matters of moral principle : and 
 that while at the outset he allowed the conquest to be " the ras- 
 cality" it has since been universally pronounced — he considered 
 it justifiable from the advantages expected to accrue to the 
 
 * Sukker Speech, Nov. 1842. 
 
 t Resident at Baroda, at Aden, atLuknow, and in Eajpoona — The organi- 
 zation of the Turkish contingent in 1853, the appointment not assumed; 
 commander of the Persian expedition, 1857. 
 
 Vol. ii. 172. ; Vol ii. 61. 
 
people,^' and the wealth it would secure to the house of Napier ! 
 On visiting Sattara, Sir Charles pronounced in favour of the 
 seizui-e of all native states without reference to the rights of 
 their sovereigns or the obligations of the most solemn treaties. 
 
 It is equally apparent that while the virtue of the meum and 
 tuum was ignored that neither of you ever could discern between 
 truth and falsehood. Any thing however monstrous or unsup- 
 ported was to be believed if only in accordance with your views — 
 nothing however obvious or indisputable to be accepted which 
 was opposed to them. Men were divinities or demons according 
 as they were Napierean or anti-Napierean. 
 
 With a temperament so absolute and domineering as to brook 
 no superior and endure no controul — a temper so violent and iras- 
 cible as to lead him into an incessant round of quarrels, your 
 brother, according to your account lived in perpetual strife — 
 his hand against every man, and every man's hand against him. 
 He could get on smoothly with no body, and the thought seems 
 to have occured to you both that he was throughout life marked 
 out for oppression and injustice — no reason being shewn or 
 explanation given why mankind should have conspired against 
 him. As "poor Peter Peebles" deemed all the world mad 
 when the world had come to a like conclusion with regard to 
 him — your brother from your account when he quarrelled with 
 every man with whom he came in contact imagined that all 
 mankind had determined to quarrel with him. The world is 
 ruled by majorities, and when the concurrent views of the mul- 
 titude are opposed to those of the one, the assumption may be 
 accepted that the unit is in the wrong. 
 
 Poverty and sickness seem according to you to have combined 
 to aggravate infirmates which stood so little in need of ag- 
 gravation. Suffering from your account and from his own from 
 the most abject want. Sir Charles Napier when the insurance 
 office declined to accept a policy on his life, came to India " to 
 provide for his family," with the full persuasion that he might 
 lay his hands about him, and seize on the possessions of any 
 party that it was worth his while to rob. 
 
 "These words are yours, Sir William, none of mine." 
 
 *' The Ameers were supposed to be rich," as you have 
 repeatedly iiiformed us, a million sterling existed in the trea- 
 sury, and though you assure us that the princesses of the 
 Ameers took from one to two millions away with them there 
 still remained enough to afford the conqueror of Meanee 
 £70,000 for his share of booty, What better justification for 
 
 * Vol. ii. 218. Oct. 1842. 
 h 
 
the attack on Hydrabad in yiolation of the possitive orders of 
 the Governor-general that " the minds of the Ameers were not 
 to be disturbed," could any Napier require even for a deed 
 which he himself confessed to be rascally ? 
 
 With an ignorance which appears to be incredible in a man 
 of his reading and ability, Sir Charles Napier seems to have 
 remained to the close of his career utterly unacquainted alike 
 with the principles as with the details of the mechanism of the 
 government he served. He never could realise the axiom that 
 under the British constitution the military must always be 
 subordinate to the civil powers, and that the Commander-in-chief 
 dare not at his peril order a pistol to be fired were the Horse 
 Guards attacked, unless by authority ; and took it as a personal 
 insult that the government of India should have exercised the 
 functions with which the law had entrusted them, and which it 
 would have been unwarrantable to have surrendered to any 
 man. 
 
 So ill acquainted was he with the constitution and powers of 
 the India-House that he considered the secret committee a sec- 
 tion of the directors, until Sir John Cam Hobhouse assured him 
 that the directors were powerless, that the whole political 
 authority rested with the secret committee, and that the so caUed 
 committee was in fact the chairman of the board. 
 
 The following extract from a letter published by you from 
 Sir J. Hobhouse will illustrate my meaning — 
 
 *' I have received your brother's comments on the letters of the secret 
 ^committee, and regret exceedingly to find that he has entirely mistaken the 
 purport of them, and has interpreted what was meant to soothe and pacify 
 into a fresh insult. He appears to be quite ignorant that the secret com- 
 mittee is, in fact, the President of the Board, and that if he has been 
 wronged in this last instance, I was the party responsible to him." — 
 Vol. iii. 57. 
 
 In his song of triumph on his being in 1849 appointed Com- 
 mander-in-chief, he considered that he had gained the victory 
 over LeadenhaU Street, in ignorance of the fact that though the 
 court of directors might as easily have recalled him as his Deity 
 Lord EUenborough — pity they failed to exercise the power with 
 which the law invested them — the Board of controul could insist 
 on any nomination they desired to be made, the court's authority 
 being a delusion — his appointment being due to the crown, and 
 to the panic of the occasion to which the blundering of Lord 
 Gough had given rise. 
 
 In the somewhat sordid discussion about the general's share 
 of the Hydrabad booty it is obvious that your brother from first 
 to last believed that the court of directors had a tangible and 
 individual pecuniary interest in the matter, that so much at all 
 
events of tlie money witheld from the pockets of the plunderers 
 of Scinde would pass into that of a defunct East-India Com- 
 pany or the visionary representatives of phantom traders. He 
 taunts the court with condemning the conquest yet accepting 
 the kingdom of Scinde, and talks of the proposed restitution 
 being dangerous to the indiscreet old ladies. Ignorant that the old 
 ladies, whether directors or proprietors, had not the slightest 
 personal interest in, or controul over political arrangements 
 whatever they might be, the whole power having been passed 
 into the hands of the ministry in 1783. He speaks throughout 
 of the policy of Lord Auckland having been undertaken with 
 a view to commerce, evidently considering the East-India 
 Company still endowed with the attributes of merchants, and 
 ignorant of the fact that their commercial character had 
 ceased in 1834, and that the directors and the supreme council 
 of India were all but unanimous in their opposition to the 
 Affghan war which Sir J. C. Hobhouse afterwards justly claimed 
 as exclusively his own.* It never seems to have occurred to 
 either of you that had the whole of the two millions the prin- 
 cesses are said by you to have clandestinely withdrawn from Hy- 
 drabad out of the one million, the largest sum it was ever 
 supposed to contain — I leave it to you to solve the problem of 
 subtracting two from one so as to leave an ample remainder — 
 in place of the paltry seventy thousand he secured been bestowed 
 on Sir Charles ; or that had the whole of the surplus revenues your 
 brother asserts that he realised been lodged in the treasury, 
 or the loss of the three millions Scinde has actually since its 
 conquest cost India, been made good by you, neither proprietor 
 nor director would have been one farthing the richer or the 
 poorer. The Act of Parliament of 1833 guarantees an annual 
 payment of £600,000 to the proprietors as interest on their 
 twelve millions of stock. To this the dividends are restricted, 
 and should the entire revenues of India become estranged, for 
 this the imperial treasury is made responsible. 
 
 In keeping down or limiting expenditure deemed super- 
 fluous the directors are sparing the purses of the nation, not 
 replenishing their own — assisting the Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer in restricting liabilities which must within the present 
 generation be met by the state. Individually they have no 
 more interest in the matter than what may warm the bosoms 
 of good and faithful servants in the discharge of duties exempt 
 from the responsibilities England imposes on every branch of the 
 administration, save that of India ; — duties where faithful per- 
 
 Evi.Ience before the Salaries Committee, Sept. 1850, Blue Book. 
 
10 
 
 formance draws forth no commendation, where neglect would 
 incur no blame. 
 
 The monstrous romance about Mr. Reid and Mr. Willoughby 
 summoning Col. Outram from Sattara to send him to the banks 
 of the Sutlej to supersede the Commander-in-chief of India in 
 the Sikh war of 1845-46, when the governor Sir Geo. Arthur 
 forbad the madness of his councellors, implies that the romancer 
 was ignorant of the fact that the minor precedencies are under 
 such entire subordination to the supreme government of India, 
 that the suggestion referred to if made would scarcely have been 
 more impertinent or absurd than the offer of an ensign at 
 Meanee to relieve Sir Charles Napier of command. There were 
 with the Bengal army in the field, in 1845-46, at least fifty 
 officers. Col. Outram' s seniors, including amongst them veterans 
 of ripe experience and tried ability, all requiring to be super^ 
 ceded in the face of the enemy before a brevet Lieut. -Colonel 
 from a subordinate presedency could have had so much as the 
 charge of a division. 
 
 Your late brother must have been practising on your gulla- 
 bility when he thought it possible that you could believe, or 
 send forth for belief, so incredible a canard as that regarding 
 the aUedged theft of a letter from Lord Ellenborough by Mr. 
 Willoughby then Chief Secretary to government, on the occasion 
 of the wreck of the steamer "Memnon" in 1843. The letter 
 could not have been stolen; every article saved from the wreck 
 despatches included being formally taken charge of at Aden. 
 It would have been of no use to him, and occasioned no injury 
 to the public service if it had, as there were registered copies in 
 the archieves of the supreme government ready for use, the 
 duplicates of the whole of the public letters sent by the " Mem- 
 non" forwarded by the mail of October, the first that fol- 
 lowed after accounts of the wreck had been received, are 
 now to be found both in Leadenhall Street and Cannon Row. 
 I can only hope that the production of the various papers 
 referred to — the medical opinion on the inexpediency of sending 
 the 78th to Sukker at the date fixed on by Sir C. Napier — the 
 records of the regiment shewing at what an early period of the 
 march sickness broke out, and how baseless is the assertion of you 
 and your brother that it did not appear till the end of the journey 
 — the minutes of the Bombay government if any such exist in re- 
 ference to the imagined proposal of despatching Col. Outram to 
 the Sutlej in 1846, and the duplicates of the letters from the 
 governor general forwarded by the "Memnon" lost in 1843 
 off Cape Gardafui, wiU be moved for in Parliament to confute 
 you from your own mouth. 
 
 The papers will all be found in the archieves of the India-house 
 
11 
 
 and Board of Controul, they may be had on the shortest notice. 
 If not before then, they will probably be produced should Mr. 
 Willoughby carry, as it is to be hoped he will, his purpose into 
 effect of bringing you before a court of law for defamation. 
 The nation is concerned that history shall not be polluted at its 
 source by the pens of those it employes, and that the names of 
 honourable men who have served their country with fidelity 
 and distinction should not be tarnished by those whose powers 
 of evil depend on their position in the army. 
 
 Were you to swear in a court of law to the statements published 
 in your book you would be transported for perjury which only draws 
 down punishment on falsehood, it scarcely aggrevates its guilt. 
 If such a work as yours is to be accepted as history, an unjust 
 judgment must be pronounced on those you have slandered. 
 Conduct such as yours leads your countrymen into fearful wrong, 
 and deserves a punishment proportioned to the malignity of your 
 motives and the mischief your misrepresentations are calculated 
 to occasion. The state can have no worse enemies than the 
 habitual traducers of the noblest of her sons — the men who first 
 tarnish their country's name, and then malign those who criticise 
 their misconduct. 
 
 With every disposition to make the largest allowances for men 
 prejudiced beyond all example, both ignorant of Indian affairs, 
 and the one apparently guUable to an extent almost incredible, 
 there are mistatements in your book and in your brother's letters 
 which transcend the largest stretch of charity. It is not possible 
 that men asserting (Jan. 1847) that no increase had occurred 
 in the army in consequence of the conquest of Scinde with the 
 notification of the governor-general of (Jan. 1844) before them, 
 intimating that an augmentation of ten thousand had been made 
 expressly from the exigencies in Scinde — with the returns shewing 
 that between 1843, the year of the conquest, and 1847, when 
 the declaration was made, the Bombay army alone had been 
 increased from 51,694 to 65,209 men — the frontier garrisons 
 said to have been advanced merely not augmented having been 
 strengthened by nearly 1000 men ; — it is not possible that your 
 brother could have denied that any medical opinion had ever 
 been given against the march of the Highlanders with the recol- 
 lection that the Kurrachee report had been before him, and still 
 existed in the public archives ; — it is not possible that he could 
 have asserted that no sickness was experienced by that corps 
 on their upward movement, and that they first became ill at 
 Sukker, with the regimental records open to him shewing that 
 the contrary was the fact ; — it is not possible that your brother or 
 you could have affirmed that Scinde was not only meeting its 
 own charges but yielding a surplus, when drafts on the treasury 
 
12 
 
 to the extent of above a quarter of a million were being made 
 annually to meet deficiencies, the gross revenue during the three 
 years of his administration, from 1843 to 1847, being as shewn by 
 the accounts of his own subordinates, £800,000, the expenditure 
 above two millions, without he and you being both aware that 
 you were saying " the thing that was not." 
 
 The bulk of your charges against me I can only meet by a flat 
 denial of their justice. I never entertained the sentiments or 
 employed the expressions you ascribe to me : the truth or 
 falsehood of what you have unwarrantedly put in my mouth 
 becomes therefore to me matter of indifference. The case is not 
 one of those in which it can said that one man's word is as good 
 as anothers — your assertion as my denial. If you have said no 
 more than what is true, from the files of the Bombay Times, 
 which if your brother never read he always paid for, and out of 
 my own mouth you may condemn me. In this case you have an 
 advantage over me of which I make you a gift ; I have no news- 
 papers and but few books in London to refer to, or my refutation 
 of your errors might have been much more minute and precise 
 than it is. You are welcome to the benefit of any mistakes into 
 Avhich failui'e of memory as to occurrences twelve years old may 
 have led me. If left to choose I should have waited, but this 
 was not permitted me. Your brother seems to have considered 
 himself warranted in giving quotations from a paper he says he 
 had never read, on the authority of what was stated to him by 
 the officers around him, who, if they did persuade the general 
 that the Bombay Times contained what he assigns to it, must 
 have been one of the most impudent sets of wags who ever 
 played on a prejudiced old man's credulity. 
 
 One phrase of mine, and one only, do they seem to have 
 repeated correctly — the terms liars, traitors, thieves, robbers, 
 m^urderers, he, which you say you and your brother have been 
 called, are none of mine. Their appropriateness was probably 
 suggested by your own consciences ; if applicable in fact the 
 form could not seem illegitimate to writers in the habit of 
 employing without any grounds or provocation, terms happily 
 long excluded from civilized discussion. 
 
 I can appeal to an editorial career extending over nearly a 
 quarter of a century for proof, that I have in no case exceeded 
 the courteous language of a gentleman, or the dignified and 
 measui'ed terms due to the fitting exercise of an important and 
 honoui-able profession. 
 
 The single expression I acknowledge is that in which it is 
 stated that you and your brother had indulged in practices which 
 would have caused a Knight in former times to have had " the 
 spurs hacked from his heels." I confers to the phrase, and 
 
13 
 
 adhere to the opinion it expresses. Sir Charles intimates, in 
 Oct. 1842, that he was about to conquer Scinde at the time the 
 conquest was interdicted, and when he professed to be pursuing 
 means such as might preserve the peace : — When the Simla Mani- 
 festo had just been issued proclaiming that we were " content with 
 the limits nature had assigned to us," and denouncing the folly 
 of " again advancing westward so as to place the Indus between 
 us and our resources instead of between us and an enemy advan- 
 cing from the west ; " when " the minds of the Ameers were for- 
 bidden to be disturbed," and Lord Ellenborough had promulgated 
 at large the plans he proposed to pursue, and the relations 
 afterwards to be maintained with the court of Hydrabad, '* at 
 which Outram was to be resident with the title of ' his excel- 
 lency.' "^' Without any relation to the treaties, the alledged 
 refusal to sign which formed the pretended ground of quarrel—- 
 he intimated by proclamation, in 1842, that a proportion of the 
 Khyrpoor territories was taken possession of "in terms of the 
 treaty," when the Ameer informed him that no treaty existed. 
 He kept back documents from the Governor-general the trans- 
 mission of which would have removed the grounds of quarrel 
 with the Ameers and saved the war. From the date of Meanee 
 to the close of his career his letters contain one long and 
 imbroken string of misstatements. The world mainly owes it to 
 you that all these charges have been established beyond dispute, 
 and I have sadly misinterpreted the history of chivalry if a 
 knight in the days of yore could have remained on its rolls who 
 had disgraced his name as you and your brother have in these 
 most miserable matters done. 
 
 You have been singularly unfortunate in the time selected 
 for the appearance of your book. Outram and Jacob, men at 
 one time who could not be praised too highly by you and your 
 brother for their invaluable services at Hydrabad, and are now 
 pronounced fools, poltroons, and runaways, both tried in war and 
 administration, are both now in the field selected by their 
 sovereign for commands of unusual importance, in the exercise 
 of which they are both covering themselves with glory. 
 
 One word more and I am done — I cordially concur with Sir 
 Charles in the sentiment that strong language is discreditable in 
 proportion to its strength if not borne out by facts. "f You 
 will find in the following extracts language of abundant strength, 
 and strong in general in proportion to its baselesness. Sir Charles 
 is the Daniel come to judgment on his own writings and on yours. 
 
 * Lord Ellenborough' s Simla Proclamation, Oct. 1, 1842. Blue Books 
 Fassim. 
 
 t Vol. iii. p. 281. March 1845. 
 
14 
 
 EXTRACTS. 
 
 Jan. 1843. — (1). Now also Outramhad his secret views. The vilest of the 
 Bombay journals had been filled with fulsome bombast about his abilities, 
 and sneers at Sir C. Napier's imbecility : — such was the word. — ^Vol. ii. 296. 
 
 Feb. 1843. — (2). The Ameers ofKyrpoor are not gone, they said they 
 were going but are not gone : they shall not deceive me. The " Bombay 
 Times" has a ridL\cvlous fanfaronnade about Outram. Luckily I am not of 
 a jealous disposition or this would make me angry ; it will make Outram so, 
 it places him in such a ridiculous light to those who know he had nothing 
 to do with the afi'air ; he is too delicate and fine a fellow to sit quiet under 
 such false praise. — He not only did sit quiet, but was reasonably suspected 
 of having written it himself. — ^Yol. ii. 315. 
 
 Moorah, Feb. 1th. 1843. — (3). Abuse in the newspapers : one says I do 
 nothing ; another that I do all myself : a third that I take no advice or sug- 
 gestions — ^not far wrong. A fourth that I am aware of my own imbecility 
 and am entirely guided by Outram! Ain't I a funny fellow? However a 
 letter from Lord Ellenborough attributes the prospect of peace in Scinde 
 mainly to my "decision and enterprize;" — alluding to the desert march, 
 which now appears to people an easy matter : it was before looked on as an 
 ugly job^ and it might easily have been so. — ^Vol. ii. 316. 
 
 Feb. 1843. — (4). There may be no time to write to-morrow to my best- 
 loved friends, and with my battle luck my letter- writing may be altogether 
 interrupted : if so, you and my brother "William will find in my journal and 
 letter-books ample materials to defend me from the Indian press, the editors 
 of which are perhaps the most infamous and degraded set in the world. — 
 Vol. ii. 322. 
 
 Feb. 1843. — (5). And because he has given me latitude of command, 
 have also fallen on me in a way to be sure which draws ridicule on them- 
 selves : if I am killed there will be no end to their lies ; but through the 
 English papers, whose editors are men of some character and gentlemen, 
 "William and you can set me right. God bless you. To fall will be to leave 
 many I love, but to go to many loved, to my home ! and that in any case 
 must be soon. — ^Vol. ii. 322. 
 
 I have already said that many of your brother's letters bear 
 ibe impress of having been written at dates long subsequent to 
 those they bear. " The ridiculous y*aw/aronna^e about Outram," 
 whom I had then only twice met, was, to the best of my recol- 
 lection, a short recapitulation of general orders, and of what had 
 fallen from Sir C. Napier himself or from the principal speakers 
 at the dinners given the by officers at Sukker in November and 
 at Bombay in December 1842. The latter was one of the most 
 numerously attended that had ever occurred at the presidency, 
 when a sword worth £500 was subscribed for by the army 
 at large. The phrase imbecility was never used towards your 
 brother by any newspaper in India, his errors lay in strength 
 not in weakness. Outram, I will venture to say, was never 
 suspected by any human being, not even by Sir C. Napier 
 himself whatever he may have said to the contrary, of writing a 
 
15 
 
 line in liis own commendation. The modesty of his late dis- 
 patches from Persia contrast strikingly with the Tain-glorious 
 arrogance of the writings of bis defamers. So far from there 
 being any abuse of Sir Charles Napier in the newspapers, till 
 long after the battles of Hydrabad (Feb. and March 1843) they 
 were filled with the most glowing eulogies of his achievements — 
 the Bombay Times, the most vehement denouncer of the policy 
 all now concur in condemning, being the most cordial and 
 warm. There was no room left for censure in the newspapers. Sir 
 Charles Napier had very properly himself written for the Bombay 
 Times an account of the object of the desert march (see vol. iii. 
 p. 322) which, under a mistaken idea of his purposes, I had 
 warmly commended. Lord Ellenborough very naturally expected 
 peace in Scinde after having forbidden Sir Charles " to disturb 
 the minds of the Ameers." The most despotic and head-strong of 
 govenors generals little dreamt that the General had long before 
 dertermined that there should be no peace till Scinde was ours. 
 The following are the names of the Gentlemen who conducted 
 the best known of our Indian Journals in 1843, so far as I can 
 recollect them : — the Englishman, Calcutta, Captain McNaughton 
 previously deputy-judge- advocate-general Bengal Army, Mr. 
 (now Sir Ronald) McDonald Stevenson, projector, afterwards 
 engineer of the great Bengal Railway; Hurkaru, Mr. John 
 Kaye, Bengal Artillery, now of the India House, Author of the 
 History of the AiFghan war, the best historical memoir of the 
 present day ; Calcutta Star and Morning Star, Mr. James Hume, 
 Barrister, now Police Magistrate of Calcutta; The Friend of 
 India, a journal allowed to rank with the very first newspapers 
 in Europe, Mr. John Marshman, one of the ablest advisers of 
 government and most valuable of the witnesses examined on 
 Indian afiairs in 1853 ; all but successful for Ipswich for which 
 I hope to see him returned first election. The Madras papers 
 from their position shared but little in Scinde discussion ; The 
 Bombay Courier was conducted by Mr. W. Crawford, Barrister, 
 now senior Magistrate of Police; The Bombay Gentlemen! s 
 Gazette, by Mr. P. J. McKenna, stated by Sir Charles to have 
 made him a tender of service: the journal had just come into 
 existence, and was throughout its career considered along with 
 the Kurrachee Advertiser, believed to be the organ of your 
 brother, and the Quernsy Advertiser which so largely shared 
 your sympathies on Indian questions, to be without parallel in per- 
 sonality and blackguardism. There were then some thirty news- 
 papers in various parts of India costing close on £100,000 a year 
 for their maintenance, deriving their chief support and nearly 
 all their intelligence from officers of the British army. It is for 
 you to explain how it happened that these, banded together by 
 
 d ' 
 
16 
 
 no common interest, addressing themselves to a body of highly- 
 educated gentlemen, amongst whom you assume that your 
 brother was a special favourite, should have been unanimous in 
 their condemnation of the Scinde policy, unless on the convic- 
 tion that that policy was wrong. It is only now that we for the 
 first time learn from his own letters, that Sir Charles went to 
 Scinde with the avowed intention of conquest, and began at 
 once to fasten a quarrel on the Ameers by interfering between 
 them and their own subjects. Lord EUenborough had in 
 Nov. 1842, without any treaty to that effect, proclaimed the 
 Indus open from the Mercunda (in the upper provinces) to the 
 sea. It could never have entered into any human mind that it 
 was meant by this to prescribe to the princes of Scinde under 
 what regulations their own people should navigate the rivers 
 within their dominions, to which we had only obtained access 
 for transient purposes, and from which we had solemnly bound 
 ourselves to withdraw when our operations in Affghanistan 
 were at an end. Being then ignorant of the facts just supplied 
 I censured the policy only. Your dodge seems to be to draw 
 off attention from measures, on your own shewing wholely 
 indefensible, to fasten it on parties you malign or slander on the 
 ground that they abused the individual they were ever most 
 anxious to praise. 
 
 Feb.20.l84:3, — (6). His field enemies were notho-wever the most formidable : 
 an anti-Ellenborotigh. faction was in full activity at Bombay, and its news- 
 papars were in full cry of abuse; especially the "Bombay Times," under 
 the editorship of one Buist an unfrocked priest of St. AndreVs. This faction 
 was incessantly calling on the Beloochee tribes to rise and destroy the army ; 
 they were told in detail all its weak points, plans of attack were promulgated, 
 and the Sepoys were incited in distinct terms to mutiny and murder their 
 general. Outram was the idol of this faction, and certainly its active tool 
 against Sir C. Napier. Amongst other calumnies Buist published, that the 
 Ameers* women had been abducted by the officers from the zenanas and were 
 living in their tents, and that it behoved all the Mussulmen of India to avenge 
 the insult : the answer was a document signed by the whole of the officers 
 denouncing the statement as an infamous falsehood, without even an acci- 
 dental or doubtful occurrence to excuse the fiction. — Vol. ii. 336. 
 
 The battle of Meanee occurred on the 17th of February, that 
 of Dubba on the 5th of March. The information in reference to 
 the ladies of the Zennana reached me in May. I was never 
 "unfrocked," never haying been a "priest of St. Andrew's" or 
 any other place. My university career completed in Edinburgh, 
 commenced at the venerable Seminary just named. I was, in 
 in 1826, licensed by the presbytery of Forfar, of which my late 
 father was for half a century member, and continue on their 
 records as a licentiate to this hour. I became connected with 
 the press in 1832, and continued to ojOSiciate in the pulpit till 
 
17 
 
 1836, when the duties of editor and preacher at a period of 
 extreme political excitement appeared to me incompatible, and 
 I restricted myself to the latter. Your ally the Gentleman's 
 Gazette on one occasion published portions of testimonials pre- 
 sented in 1839 to the proprietors of the Bombay Times, where 
 I am designated as "Reverend" at the date of my departure 
 for India. In 1845 it was asserted either by yourself or one 
 of your coadjutors in abuse, that I had been remembered soli- 
 citing a medical appointment from the India House — the two 
 slanders are of a pair. I first crossed the threshold of this 
 building in 1845 ; I had never till then to my knowledge seen 
 a Director, and I am a Doctor of laws not of medicine. There 
 never was any anti-EUenborough clique or political faction of 
 any kind, and never any such cry as that here asserted on the 
 part of any one. Had editors been the rogues you describe 
 they knew their trade better than to recommend the slaughter 
 of their subscribers as you maintain they did. 
 
 March lOth, 1843. — (7)* To be praised by the Bombay newspapers is more 
 disgusting than to be abused ; in England there are gentlemen editors, but 
 in India they are generally scoundrels turned out of private society. — ii. 347. 
 
 March 1843. — (8). This reappearance of the Lion was hailed with a trea- 
 sonable exultation at Bombay. " He was a great commander ; his force was 
 overwhelming ; the war was a religious one ; the people adored their 
 patriarchal princes ; the whole Beloochrace was rising in arms ; they would 
 be supported by the Affghans; and the British troops, deprived of Major 
 Outram's protective genius and led by an incapable old ruffian, would be 
 destroyed." This faction, taking Outram for their oracle, had always predicted 
 Buch an ending, and through Dr. Buist's newspaper, the known organ of some 
 members of the Bombay government, took active steps to insure such a result. 
 His articles, which were always translated, shewed how and where to attack 
 the troops with most advantage, and the chiefs were assured, most truly, that 
 persons of authority and influence in England and Bombay would hail their 
 success. Afterwards, when the general* s ability and engery had baffled these 
 traitorous schemes, the secret authors declared as earnestly, that there had 
 never been danger or difficulty and Sir C. Napier had ferociously slaughtered 
 some half-armed barbarians ! — ^Vol. ii. 370. 
 
 What would Sir Charles have liked since he is equally dis- 
 gusted with praise as censure ? Silence ? Then why be so 
 cruel as publish extracts said to be taken from his letters? 
 I confess at once to have been amongst the number of those who 
 ever praised most warmly the military exploits and many per- 
 sonal excellencies of the conqueror, it was the policy only not 
 then known to be his that I condemned. Of course, not one 
 word of the advice here ascribed to me was ever given. It 
 would not only have been superfluous for those who never read, 
 but eminently dangerous if acted on. Return-of-post from 
 Scinde was at this time about three weeks from Bombay, and 
 the attack of a position deemed assailable at the time letters on 
 
18 
 
 the subject might have been written for me might have become any 
 thing but a wise measure a month afterwards. The absurdity of 
 the charge renders it to me harmless — ^fatal to your brother's 
 veracity. 
 
 May 1843. — (9). This disagreeable eyent Las, or may, injure my plans 
 much : but it is told to you in confidence ; for there is such an extraordinary 
 coincidence in the opinions put forth on Scindian affairs by the " Bombay 
 Times, " and those in Mr. Willoughby's private notes to me — ^identical 
 words appearing in both, that I fear an attack on the person who uninten»' 
 tionally got me into this scrape. For myself I care not. A man must have a 
 miserable opinion of himself who cares for the attacks of the " Bombay 
 Times" and Dr. Buist : your order for his prosecution has given great 
 satisfaction to the officers here. I fancy Buist and his writers would greatly 
 rejoice if there should befall in Scinde a. pendant to the Cabool massacre." 
 
 The prosecution noted above was never instituted : probably from the 
 influence of Willoughby, the secretary of council and secret adviser of 
 Outram.— Vol. ii. 383. 
 
 The writer of this letter seems very soon to have forgotten the 
 words he here puts into Sir Geo. Arthur's mouth a little further 
 on (vol. iii. p. 101) where instead of prosecuting he discourages 
 prosecution. Why did the gallant general apply to the governor 
 instead of taking the matter into his own hands ? But a few 
 years before Sir John Keane, Commander-in-chief, and Admiral 
 Sir C. Malcam, superintendent of the Indian navy, each had 
 sought the constitutional mode of redress in the Supreme Court. 
 When people take the same views of the same subject their 
 expressions are not unapt to be similar. During the Affghan 
 war the sentiments of the Bengal Hurkaru and Bombay Times 
 of corresponding dates were often so similar that the editors 
 might have been supposed in communication had the thing been 
 possible. Similar coincidences will be found betwixt the ex- 
 pressions of both papers and those of the Chairman, St. George 
 Tucker, where communication was equally impossible. Sir 
 Charles Napier's views of the Vandalism of the destruction of 
 the public buildings at Cabool and the insanity of Notts advanc- 
 ing from Candahar without leaving supports in his rear, so 
 exactly correspond with the sentiments and expressions to be 
 found in the Bombay Times that he might with equal propriety 
 as Mr. Willoughby have been assumed a contributor to its 
 colmnns. I have my doubts of the whole story. Up to May 
 1843, Sir C. Napier had never, so far as I can remember, been 
 spoken of in terms other than those of respect. Sii' Geo. Arthur 
 had strongly reconmiended to the Court of Directors my con- 
 tinuance in charge of the government observatory, an unsalaried 
 appointment which I had received from his predecessor, Mr. 
 (afterwards Sir George) Anderson, then senior member of 
 council. He had always treated me with marks of consideration 
 
19 
 
 and friendsliip — and tliat he was too sternly upright a man 
 to be moved by these circumstances from a prosecution he 
 considered merited — he was too high minded to continue his 
 intercourse with any one considered deserving of it. Sir Charles 
 Napier had at his own request been introduced to me by his 
 Secretary, Col. McPherson, whom I had met at the mess table 
 of Her Majesty's 17th; and knew I presume the social position 
 I enjoyed. Sir Charles himself did the Bombay Times the 
 honour of more than once making it the vehicle of his thoughts 
 (see vol. iii. p. 332), the letter of Lucius Junius spoken of in 
 terms of the highest commendation had appeared in its columns, 
 and was understood to be from the pen of one of the ablest of 
 those who afterwards distinguished themselves in civil employ- 
 ment in Scinde. A change came over the spirit of his dream the 
 moment the Bombay Times began to expose the nefarious acts 
 of which he was not then known to be the author. Failings of 
 memory seem to have been common with you both. Sir Charles 
 states that on the 22nd of Feb. the prize agents talked of having 
 found two millions sterling in the treasury, and afterwards he 
 asserts that the princesses had carried two millions clandestinely 
 away ; and in July " he held up his hands when the Governor- 
 general told him his share would be £50,000," and in the follow- 
 ing April he tells us that no prize money had all the while been 
 expected, and that it was then (1844) doubtful if any would be 
 obtained ! 
 
 June 1843. — flO). Then came a report that you had refused to obey, spread 
 by a man called Devan. I could not believe this and wrote to you in all haste : 
 as I expected, you had obeyed, but the mere report broke off all treating with 
 Shere Mohamed when, as I hoped, we were on the point of getting him to 
 lay down his arms ! By a prompt proclamation, and replacing the kardars, 
 I have in some degree palliated the mischief Devan' s lying had produced; 
 but it has broken off all treating and will cause much loss of life. This 
 Devan was afterwards, on strong grounds, supposed to be an emissary of 
 Buist.— Vol. ii. 392. 
 
 I never heard of any man called Devan, and never had or 
 desired to have an emissary of any sort any where in the whole 
 course of my life. I never had the slightest occasion. I was 
 never engaged in any enterprise I knew from the first to be 
 " rascally." I never required any defence of that which " my 
 conscience told me was right," or any undue or illegitimate 
 stimulant to urge me to the discharge of my duty. I was on 
 these grounds saved the temptations and humiliations to which 
 Sir Charles describes himself as having been subjected by his 
 pecuniary necessities, and the wants of his family. 
 
 July 1843. — (11). About 3| lacs would make a pretty little fortune for 
 
20 
 
 tEese rascals, though from it should be deducted their payments to the 
 editor of the Bombay Times, who no doubt understands his trade as well as 
 these moonshees. Having discovered this secret, and that the poor ladiea 
 would not profit, I have told the moonshees I will not pay them a farthing ; 
 and that, unless by to-morrow night, they obeyed my orders and furnished a 
 list of rations in kind, I would put them in prison, which I mean to do 
 accordingly. — ^Vol. ii. 400. 
 
 I understand my trade quite sufficiently to know that no more 
 ruinous practice can be pursued than that which brings the 
 independence or integrity of journalism into suspicion. I have no 
 cause to feel offended with the imputation of corruption from 
 you or your brother, who appear to have considered bribe-taking 
 quite a common occurrence in India, and who saw nothing 
 unbecoming in the conduct of an editorial offer of service on the 
 part of the conductor of the Gentlemen! s Gazette. Sir Charles 
 enumerates half a dozen of occasions on which he was offered 
 money, when he obviously supposes that the offerer considered 
 him purchasable. He does not seem to have been aware that 
 the offer of gifts to public men was an oriental usage — that it 
 was an insult to refuse them — but that a government regulation 
 half a century old in daily exercise sanctioned the acceptance of 
 these, but made it imperative that they should be disposed of 
 for the benefit of the treasury, the public purse being chargeable 
 with the presents made in return. Sir Charles had no right to 
 decline the gifts professed to have been offered him. They 
 ought to have been accepted and carried to the credit of govern- 
 ment. At the very time you are magnifying the wonderftd 
 familiarity with Eastern affairs your brother in an incredibly 
 short space of time attained, you afford a demonstration under 
 his own hand that he continued a griffin to the last. I had not 
 the temptation to lay my hands about me which your brother con- 
 fessed himself unable to resist — the fruits of honest industry in 
 the exercise of an honourable profession sufficed my wants and 
 satisfied my ambition. 
 
 July 1843. — (9). I must lift the curtain of the zenana, which Mr. Buist 
 says I have already done for coarse purposes. — ^Vol. ii. 401. 
 
 Juhj 1843. — (8). The Beloochees thought they could murder and plunder 
 us. Their constant theme in dhurbar was, " We are braver and more nuriierous 
 than the Affghans under Acbar Khan, the FeringMes are not so numerous as at 
 Calooiy They are now content, and though the " Bombay Times," as usual, 
 is trying to excite a gueriUa warfare, it can do nothing against us : conci- 
 liation on one side and hard fighting on the other will succeed. — ^Yol. ii. 405. 
 
 July 1843. — (18). This fort had become very necessary, because Dr. Buist 
 had in his paper especially pointed out to the Beloochees what parts were 
 most vulnerable, accompanied with a detailed plan of attack — Sehwan being 
 marked as peculiarly favourable for such warfare. — Yol. ii, 417. 
 
 Every single one of the imputations against the Bombay Times 
 is imtrue. That Sir C. Napier could have endeavoured to per- 
 
21 
 
 suade you that an editor would pursue the course most ruinous to 
 his own interests, indicates the opinion he had formed of a mind 
 so deranged by prejudice as to be capable of believing any thing 
 however monstrous. What could the whole members of " the 
 Bombay clique " have done for me to compensate for the loss 
 of the support of the Scinde field force ? The Bombay Times 
 was never so prosperous or popular as when, according to your 
 assertion, recommending the destruction of its best supporters — 
 the persons to be slaughtered being the very correspondents who 
 supplied all I knew on the subject under debate. 
 
 Sept 1843. — (14). It is good you should know, that Dr. Buist is con- 
 stantly at the house of Mr. Secretary WiUoughby of the Bombay government ; 
 that Mr. WiUoughby is Outram's bosom friend — ^he was also his coadjutor, 
 adviser and director in his publications against Sir Charles Napier — and 
 is, the world says, chief proprietor of the "Bombay Times." I know that 
 Outram is in debt, especially to the powerful house of Rivington, which 
 house is known to be in union with the " Bombay Times," and is said to cry 
 up Outram with a view to their claim on him : I know, for he told me so, 
 that they lent him 10,000 rupees to go to England, — Vol. ii. 433. 
 
 I arrived in Bombay and assumed ofiice in May 1840 — up to 
 the date of this quotation I certainly had never been either in 
 Mr. WiUoughby' s house or office half-a-dozen times in all. 
 Outram was, as Sir C, Napier perfectly well knew, in England 
 from April 1843 till May 1844, so could not have the advan- 
 tage of counsel or coadjutorship. The bulk of the remainder 
 of the assertions have been disposed of already by Col. Outram or 
 his agents, and part in a letter I published in 1845 in the 
 Morning Herald. Messrs. Remington and Company were not 
 Col. Outram's agents : so far from being in any way connected 
 with the Bombay Times they were the chief proprietors of its 
 rival the Bombay Courier, as may be seen by the letters pub- 
 lished in 1841, on their dismissing Sir Charles' friend, Mr. 
 McKenna, from employment as editor. Mr. WiUoughby never 
 was proprietor or in any way connected with the Bombay 
 Times. In 1 842, when brought up by Chief Justice Roper, after- 
 wards threatened with removal from the bench, the proprietors' 
 names were published just as Sir C. Napier arrived in India. 
 They are given again both as they then stood and as they stood 
 in 1851, in a petition I laid before Parliament in 1852, praying 
 to be examined before the Committee on Indian affairs then 
 sitting. It will be seen that the name of Mr. WiUoughby is not 
 to be found amongst them. No human being least of all the man 
 who makes the assertion to the contrary ever dreamt that it was. 
 
 Original Proprietors of the Bombay Times : — Messrs. Frith 
 and Co. ; Brownrigg and Co. ; Ritchie Stewart and Co. ; Skinner 
 and Co. ; William Nicol and Co. ; Dirom and Co. ; Higginson 
 
22 
 
 Cardwell and Co. ; Edmond and Co. ; Martin Murray and Co. ; 
 Gillanders Ewart and Co. ; Grey and Co. ; Framjee Cowasjee 
 Esq., Merchant; William Howard, Esquire, Barrister ; William 
 Montriou, Esquire, Barrister; Dr. William Mackay. The 
 principle Proprietors of the Bombay Times in the end of 1851 : — 
 Gregor Grant, Esq. ; C. S., Sudder Adawlut ; Heniy Young, 
 Esq. ; C. S., Collector of Customs ; Colonel Holland, Quarter- 
 Master-General of the Bombay Army ; Dr. Boyd, Presidency 
 Superintending Surgeon ; Dr. Buist, Sheriff of Bombay ; Thomas 
 Forsyth Grey of the house of Dirom, Hunter and Co. ; Native 
 Manockjee Limjee, Esq., Parsee Merchant; Cowasjee Jehangeer, 
 Esq., Parsee Merchant; Manockjee Nusserwanjee, Esq., Parsee 
 Merchant ; with a large number of Natives of respectability. 
 You may recognise the name of one of the proprietors as 
 Manockjee Limjee, as the gentleman from whom Sir Charles 
 accepted an invitation to a party on his final retu'ement from 
 India. The only Lawyer amongst them at the date your brother 
 proposed to prosecute, was Mr. William Howard afterwards 
 Advocate-General. Mr. Montriou had before this gone round 
 to Calcutta. The public on perusing it may, perhaps, feel dis- 
 posed to question the probability of the statement, that such a 
 "wretch" as I am described to have been, should have been 
 originally engaged, or had his engagement three times renewed 
 by a body comprising many of the most eminent men in Bombay. 
 I have, at this date, no recollection of what the last number of 
 the Bombay Times contained in May, 1844 — just as little of any 
 writhing under any criticisms, from any quarter. If any 
 such appeared it was not, according to Sir Charles, of very long 
 endurance. 
 
 Oct. 1843. — (16). Outram -w^as l)usy, proclaiming that theTalpoor princes 
 at large must succeed ; and the Bombay Times earnestly exhorted the 
 mountaineers not to miss the opportunity of attacking the troops ^-hile pros- 
 trated by sickness ! The total loss of Scinde and the destruction of the army 
 seemed at hand, was prognosticated at Bombay, and would have happened 
 but for the master spirit at Kurrachee. — Vol. iii. p. 2. 
 
 Had Sir Charles Napier been killed at Meeanee the battle 
 would in all likelihood have been lost, and 50,000 infuriated Be- 
 loochees let loose on a force of 2,500. Scinde would then have 
 been swept of British troops, a second Cabool with the Sikhs, 
 whom we afterwards found enough by themselves, seen in the 
 field, against us. Here, again, the fate of our army depended on 
 the life of a sickness-stricken, worn out, old man. Was that a 
 risk to which any sane man would have subjected the empire, 
 for the sake of " providing for his family," on the back of a cala- 
 mity so terrible as that of Cabool. On your own shewing, your 
 brother, for his own selfish ends, placed our empire in such a 
 
23 
 
 position that its fate depended on a single life, the .silence or 
 clamour of a newspaper. 
 
 Outram was at this time in London ! He left Bombay in April, 
 1843, returned to it in January, 1844. At the date he is asserted 
 to have been in India, proclaiming the Talpoor princes, if at 
 large, must succeed, he was dating letters to you from the United 
 Service Club, St. James's. 
 
 Bee. 1850. — (17). The Bombay Times is under Outram's command, and 
 from expressions peculiar to him I beheve he wrote the part about himself in 
 Buist's book. — Vol. iii. 16. 
 
 Col. Outram left Bombay for England on the 1st April, 1843, 
 returned in January following. The memoir referred to was 
 written and published in July, and is referred to by you in your 
 Guernsey letter of the 5th of August. Both passages have the 
 appearance, like many others, of having been written long after 
 the dates they bear, when Outram's whereabout's had become 
 forgotten. 
 
 Dec. 1843. — (18). The threat of a general rising demands serious atten- 
 tion, for the Indian newspapers are calling on the mountaineers to come 
 down on me, and those of the plains to rise while I have 10,000 sick 
 unable to stir ! The natives have all the papers translated, but, thank the 
 stars, the Beloochees of the plains being as sick as ourselves cannot rise if 
 they would. One is equally obliged to the editors ; it will not be their fault 
 if our throats are not cut. The Bombay Times is also trying to make my 
 men mutiny : but all these kind designs fail. — Vol. iii. 20. 
 
 Feb. 184:4. — (19). The rabid abuse of the Bombay Times makes me laugh; 
 yet it is injurious, because good and honourable people swallow it all, and if 
 Shakespeare is riglit that does harm. — Vol. iii. 36. 
 
 It would be rather hard for you to convince English journalists, 
 that their brethren in India were in the habit of encouraging the 
 slaughter of their subscribers and contributors ; or that those 
 who mainly depended on the goodwill of the officers of the army, 
 were constantly acting so as to incur their displeasure. It would 
 be interesting to your readers to be furnished with a few extracts 
 illustrative of this anomaly. Men are said seldom to serve the 
 devil for nothing. After acquainting us with the character of 
 your brother, it is easy to understand his risking his life for the 
 hope of £70,000 ; it is not so easy to see how editors should 
 seek their own ruin just for the love of starvation. 
 
 Sir Charles was thrifty as well as chivalrous. He tells us that 
 before he had received any prize money, he had set aside as 
 much as would, at 3 per cent., allow £120 to his widow and 
 each of his daughters (vol. iii. p. 125), or £12,000 betwixt Nov. 
 1841, when he arrived with £5 in his pocket, to June, 1844, 
 When he had once got fairly above the world by lawful means, 
 he might have borne with more temper observations on the Hy- 
 
24 
 
 derabad booty. The fact of his having 10,000 of his men sick in 
 Sept. and Oct. 1843, was not sufficient to deter a man so infalli- 
 ble from dispatching a European regiment through the sludge to 
 march on Scinde in Sept. and Oct. 1 844. 
 
 March 1844. — (20). " The officers here are very angry about Dr. Buist's 
 new insult. I have not read it, but mean to do so because they -want me to 
 apply officially to the governor-general and the commander in chief of the 
 Bombay army for justice, as Dr. Buist has cast a slur on aU ; and added I 
 hear to his former insults. I hear also he has brought Sir Henry Pottinger 
 on the carpet and referred me to him. — Oh here comes the paper, for I do 
 not longer take Bombay Times. Well, it is a nice production. I long to hear 
 your opinion. You wanted to institute a prosecution at first, and I think it 
 viU come to that at last. Sir Henry Pottinger will of course contradict the 
 language ascribed to him ! 
 
 **The same, March 2nd. — Dr. Buist's article in the paper of the 17th 
 tdtimo I divide into three portions. 1. The asserted language of Sir Henry 
 Pottinger. 2, The assertion that an officer of the Hydrabad force told him, 
 Buist, the lying story of the zenana. 3. The abuse which he bestowed on 
 t]xQ par nobile fratrum.^^ — Sir Charles and his brother "William. As to the 
 first, Buist has placed Sir Henry between himself and responsibility : how 
 the plenipotentiary will like this remains to be seen. I congratulate him on 
 having such a discreet friend at Bombay ! As to the second, our officers hope 
 the government will find out who Buist's informant was ; this does not appear 
 difficult, as the commander in chief must know what officers were in Bombay 
 belonging to the Hydrabad force at the time. If this officer be found out we 
 have no doubt his conduct will meet with its just reward. "With regard to 
 the third, it is a private affair of mine and I feel doubtful whether to 
 prosecute the blackguard or not. It is with some difficulty I have prevented 
 an officer from going to Bombay for the express purpose of thrashing Dr. 
 Buist ; and I should not be at all surprised if this Httle accident happens to 
 him some fine morning. — ^Vol. iii. 63. 
 
 I have quite forgotten what the new insult on the officers was 
 in March, 1844. It could hardly have been worse, whatever it 
 was, than the advice I am alleged to have published, to have 
 them all killed by the Belooches. I know perfectly that the 
 Bombay Times never seemed more popular with the ariny, than 
 when, according to Sir Charles Napier, it was insulting them and 
 planing their destruction. The property was at this time paying 
 some 30 per cent, in dividends. The case of Sir Henry Pottinger 
 was this ; he had on hearing the particulars of the conquest of 
 Scinde, written to a staff- officer in Bombay, denouncing the mon- 
 strous cruelty and injustice of the proceeding, and concluding with 
 a request that his sentiments might be made known. The letter 
 was put into my hands, without any conditions as to the use to 
 be made of it. I did not feel quite sure that its publication was 
 intended, and refrained from this. I placed it in the hands of the 
 correspondent of the Morning Chronicle, I forget under what cir- 
 cumstances. This gentleman believed it intended for publica- 
 tion, and in the Morning Chronicle accordingly it appeared. I 
 
2$ 
 
 was annoyed at this, but did not feel that any faith had been 
 broken. The Chronicle correspondent had taken a view of the 
 matter I had not foreseen ; I had no reason to suppose he had 
 intended to do wrong or deserved to be blamed. You may re- 
 member that you at the time, without any authority, flatly 
 denounced the letter as a fabrication. By April (p. 81) Sir 
 Charles admits that " the letter is Pottinger's," and of course 
 misquotes it, and then forgets the misquotation. He says this 
 blood is not as that fellow Outram says, and as Pottinger says, 
 my fault. At page 135 he says, Sir Henry Pottinger has sent a 
 message to me through his friend Capt. Del. Harte, saying 
 " Sir Henry never could nor did it ever enter his head to reflect 
 on me — his remarks having reference only to the policy of the 
 governor- general," Sir Henry doubtless spake to the general 
 question only — Sir Charles forgets that he himself had followed 
 a policy which was in direct opposition to the views of the 
 governor general though afterwards conditioned by him. 
 
 Sir Charles, conscious of his own misconduct, takes from the 
 first blame to himself which no one cast on him, up to the publi- 
 cation of the second Blue Book in April 1844, none of us supposed 
 that the general had any thing to do with the policy he carried 
 out. By no possibility could we have any personal feeling in 
 the matter. There are few from whom less danger need be 
 apprehended than those who are constantly telling you that 
 they mean mischief. The " hold me or I '11 fight " gentlemen 
 are not in general very pugnacious. I was to have been broom- 
 sticked, prosecuted and I know not what all, only I never suffered 
 any injury from my adversaries " because they were prevented." 
 The Zenana story has already been disposed of. 
 
 March 1844.— (21). This Mainwaring was a man of humour also. Being 
 at a dinner in Bombay, Dr. Buist was placed beside him and very nervously 
 spoke thus. Captain Mainwaring I suppose I have your dislike, I am Dr. 
 Buist of the Bombay Times. Why should I dislike you my friend ? I 
 never read your paper. — ^Vol. iii. 70. 
 
 April 1844. — (22). For my part I like to let truth come out, and not let 
 falsehood fly her colours on the field without an opponent. I would punish 
 the Bombay Times if I could, and as to its doing the paper good, I would 
 not mind that ; all I want is that the public should hear the truth. — 
 Vol. iii. 74. 
 
 In April (page 81) Sir Charles tells us that Pottinger had 
 advised Lord Auckland to do the very thing Lord EUenborough 
 had done. By October he quite forgets all this and here assures 
 us (p. 152) that Pottinger and Outram wanted to have the 
 Ameers kept on their thrones. He equally loses sight of the 
 fact that Lord EUenborough had in his published letters of 
 March 1842 narrated all his arrangements for the preservation 
 
26 
 
 of the Talpoor dynasty. That long after this he had forbidden 
 their minds to be disturbed, and in the Simla proclamation of 
 Oct. 1 842 had denounced the advancement of our posts beyond 
 the Indus as an insanity and a crime. 
 
 March 1844. — (23). That miserable -wretch Buist made a comparison 
 'between Moore's retreat and the Cabool massacre, before I left Poonah. I 
 answered him. — Yol. iii. 79. 
 
 "The wretch Buist" made no such comparison further than 
 this — the Bengal Horse Artillery, who had behaved so nobly 
 during the siege of Cabool, were said to have become disorderly 
 on their retreat, and I thiok I said, I speak from memory of what 
 I wrote seventeen years ago, that the best English troops had 
 occasionally done the like under circumstances of extreme discou- 
 ragement, instancing Corrunna as a case in point. Sir Charles 
 Napier, who had very obviously taken up an entirely erroneous 
 view of what I had actually stated, wrote me a very able letter 
 on the subject to which his initials were subscribed. This as a 
 matter of course I published pointing out the misconception as 
 to my meaning under which it had been written. It was two 
 years after this that he considered the Bombay Times the fittest 
 vehicle for his account of the march on Emaurm Ghur. Had 
 I been able to approve of the mode selected by him of " pro- 
 viding for his family " by the annexation of Scinde I have no 
 doubt I should have found him a most valuable correspondent 
 all through his Indian career. He complains of his want of an 
 organ. He and his friends had always the fullest use of the 
 Bombay Times whenever they had any thing to say in explana- 
 tion or defence. It was my first duty to see that my readers should 
 not be misled by misrepresentation or disgusted by abuse, and I 
 disallowed only those which onp: etence of justifying him abounded 
 with such personalities and blackguardism as rendered them 
 inadmissible. He always had the Bombay Gentleman' s Gazette, 
 the Kurrachee Advertiser and Guernsey Advertiser at his disposal 
 — what more could he desire ? Who prevented his punishing 
 the Bombay Times ? the supreme court was open to him, and he 
 had no reason to apprehend any undue leniency on the part of 
 the Bench to the press. 
 
 JIfarcA 1844, — (24). "You may well say some of the editors of 
 newspapers are nice fellows. I am imder ban here for not being afraid of 
 them : I lashed out at a public dinner, and their fury makes me laugh. They 
 say I am more obliged to the press of India than any man ever was before ; 
 that it abused the Duke of "Wellington ^ten times as much after th-e battle of 
 Assaye as it has done me !' a nice character of themselves : but I never com- 
 plained of their abuse. — Yol. iii. 78. 
 
 The newspapers most certainly said nothing of the sort. The 
 
27 
 
 editors perfectly well knew that at the time Wellington was in 
 India, and for a dozen of years afterwards, the press was under 
 a most rigid censorship. A government secretary read all the 
 proofs before they went to press ; and was at one time severely cen- 
 sured for not having excluded the reports of the debates in par- 
 liament. Silk Buckingham was, in 1826, deported for having 
 censured the appointment of a stationary agent. Mr. Fair, in 
 1828, deported from Bombay for a misreport committed by 
 accident. The journalist who in 1803 dared to say one syllable 
 other thancomplimentary of the brother of the governor-general, 
 would have found himself in custody within the hour. It was 
 not till 1835 that the danger ceased; this Sir Charles knew 
 right well. (See Mr. F. Warden, Blue Book, 1833). The 
 passage, like many others, seems doctered for the English palate. 
 
 May 1843.— (25). Meanwliile I have much fear of the Lion getting into 
 the Delta district amongst the rivers ; a fear however -which I do not 
 mention ; for if that man Buist got hold of it he would urge the Lion to 
 do so, in hopes of destroying us in the marshes next autumn. Already 
 the Bombay emissaries have been hard at work, trying to stir up resistance 
 in the way most likely to succeed, namely, murdering our stragglers. 
 Luckily the Beloochees do not join in the wish ; but as Buist is sure to 
 do mischief there is no time to be lost in attacking Shere Mohamed, 
 ^Vol. ii. 384. 
 
 Of course in all this there is not, so far as I am concerned, 
 one syllable of truth. But Buist seems, in the imagination of 
 the conqueror of Scinde to have been omnipotent and omnipresent. 
 The people of Scinde, he tells us, were able and willing to have 
 thrust forth the Ameers had they been let lose, it required the 
 retention of 13,000 men to prevent me from bringing down 
 the hill tribes on the plains. I have here the Lion at my com- 
 mand — the only hope of the general against me was to attack 
 him. 
 
 Sept. 1843. — (26). Meanwhile the Bombay intrig-uers, finding they could 
 not with all their cries and abuse drive Sir C. Napier from Scinde, and could 
 not get the loaves and fishes which he reserved for the brave men who had 
 conquered the country, they changed their policy and became obstreperous 
 for the restoration of the Ameers — the " injured patriarchs " being now the 
 watchword. — Vol. ii. 439. 
 
 The ignorance of Indian affairs manifested by you and your 
 brother is something absolutely pitiable. Scinde was from the 
 first in all things save supplies, placed directly under the supreme 
 government of India ; it was to the Calcutta treasury Sir Charles 
 professed to have sent his imaginary surpluses, to Calcutta he 
 must have produced his accounts. It mattered not one single 
 straw to any of the governments in India or out of it, what be- 
 came of the money that passed through Sir Charles' hands. It 
 
 9 
 
28 
 
 iKras credited or debited to the treasury of tlie state. Not one 
 goYernment servant would have got one farthing the less or the 
 more had the two millions said to have been secured by the 
 princesses out of the million and a quarter the treasury contained 
 before its seizure been made over to the army, or had the six 
 millions Scinde has since 1843 cost us been obtained from it. 
 Sir Charles was never able to rid himself of the idea that power 
 in India was matter of traffic, and that pubHc men provided 
 for their families, as he did, from plunder. 
 
 Nov. 1843.— (27). But now the enmity of the Bombay and English Anti- 
 EUen-borough factions was become so virulent, and Outram so avowedly 
 acting with them, that Sir Charles Napier could no longer be blind to his 
 real character and broke off all acquaintance : it was full time. — "Vol. ii. 453. 
 
 Ifov. 1843. — (28). The attack on the Residency was an Act of virtuous 
 and " Christian war " — this is Buist's expression and a curious one : — and 
 we soldiers were all robbers and murderers. — Vol. ii. 453. 
 
 Nov. 1843. — (29). My brother gave him an opening to contradict all the 
 falsehoods put forth by the " Bombay Times," to injure me and exalt him. 
 He answers, that he will not. I could not contradict those lies at the time 
 they appeared without condemning Outram, and so held my peace for his 
 sake. Yet now the same lies are embodied in a book. — ^Yol. ii. 454. 
 
 Nearly all these statements are, as usual, utterly absurd and 
 false. Two of them afford strong presumption of having been 
 written long after the date they bear. In Nov. 1843, Colonel 
 Outram was in London, so that he could not have acted in 
 Bombay with any one. The book here asserted to have at this 
 date contained certain falsehoods, was not thought of till your 
 history of the conquest of Scinde appeared inlEombay, Feb. 
 1845, it was not published, as may be seen by the preface, 
 till the following year, about two years after the matter con- 
 tained in it is made subject of reference to General Simpson. 
 
 April. 1844 (30). " What think you of Outram asking him, Lord Bipon, 
 for a letter to LordEllenborough, recommending his being employed militanly? 
 Lord R. said he never interfered in military affairs and advised his asking 
 the duke. Outram did so, and says he got a letter" — not true. "He arrived 
 at Bombay and instantly started for Lord Ellenborough's quarters, giving 
 out that he was charged with important dispatches from the duke so said all 
 the papers. Lord EUenborough however refused to see him, reprimanded 
 h im for having addressed the secretary otherwise than through the Bombay 
 government, and finally offered him employment as assistant political agent 
 at a place where, twenty years before, he had been chief political agent ! 
 And he took it !"— Vol. iii. 87-8. 
 
 Outram left Bombay on two years furlough on the 1st of 
 April, 1843. On hearing of the GwaUior war he resolved to 
 return to India before his leave expired, and reached Bombay in 
 January, 1844. The story about the duke's letter is a Naperian 
 fiction. He never got the length of the governor-general's 
 
29 
 
 camp, nor could therefore have been refused an interview. I re- 
 member well of the Bomhay Times condemning the indiscretion 
 of his return with the view to employment under the govern- 
 ment of India at the time he had so hurt the self-sufficiency of 
 the governor-general as to render him implacable. He was re- 
 fused military service, the war being by this time over, but was 
 appionted political agent for Nimar, or first assistant as the 
 officer is termed, to the resident at Indore. He had never in 
 his life before been employed at Malwa; in 1824, when he is 
 said to have been resident at Indore, he was a subaltern in the 
 Bombay army, and Beel agent in Candesh. This passage surely 
 could never have been written in India, where all these things were 
 so perfectly well known. Is it a " Scinde House " interpolation ? 
 Pity the gazettes, the almanac, army list, in which all these things 
 are set forth, were not referred to in cases so very simple as 
 this. 
 
 April. 1844. — (31). We concluded that the Ameers would defend their 
 fortress and capitulate under a treaty, when there would have heen no 
 prize money : indeed I do not know that we are to have any prize noney 
 now ! When McPherson told me there would be some and asked me to 
 appoint him my agent I laughed at him, and told him he was welcome but that 
 I did not think there was money enough to pay an agent for the trouble of 
 collecting it ; his answer was he thought there would be enough to give him 
 a few rupees. Another circumstance also shews how little we thought of 
 prize money in the camp. Outram wanted one of the swords taken in the 
 battle, but the prize agents would not let him have it as everything was to 
 be sold by auction. For this Major Outram could not wait, and offered his 
 share of prize money for the sword ! You may conceive he did not expect 
 much, for the sword was purchased for him at £\5 — which was more than 
 he expected to pay for it ! Vol. iii. 99. 
 
 Sir Charles has by this time quite forgotten what his letter in 
 October says, that it was not the ratification of the treaty, but 
 the annexation of the country, on which he was bent. He equally 
 forgets, that instead of his having expressed any idea of a battle, 
 or a defence of Hydrabad, that he had all along professed his 
 purpose to be peaceful, and expressly claims credit for the cap- 
 ture of Emaunghur as likely to avert the war. The best evi- 
 dence we can have that he was sincere in his professions, mon- 
 strous as the thing appears, was his despatch of the Bengal 
 troops for Ferorpore, and H.M. 41st for England, just when their 
 services were most required. Most marvellous of all, he has 
 by April, 1844, forgotten that he wrote in Feb. 1843, that the 
 prize agent had reported from one to two millions in the treasury, 
 and that Lord EUenborough had assured him that his share 
 would be £50,000. He states in vol. iii. that the inventories 
 shewed that there was a million and a quarter of property in 
 the treasury just before its capture. 
 
30 
 
 May 1844. — (32). That snch. men as Buist, Fonblanque, Howick, East- 
 wick, and Sullivan will abuse bis bistory of tbe campaign is as certain as that 
 nigbt follows day, but the duke's praise will bear out bis commendations. 
 —Vol. iii. 100. 
 
 Sir Charles was in this assumption quite correct. He paid me 
 and the distinguished men whose names follow mine, the com- 
 plement of believing that we should always condemn deeds of 
 injustice, violence, and blood, that a work written in defence of 
 crime, every page of which was defiled by glowing lies, was as 
 sure to experience the disapproval of honest men, as night was to 
 follow day. The conviction of this seems to have been the con- 
 stant subject of distress to the conqueror of Scinde, when in the 
 very zenith of his fortunes. The only solace he could find was 
 in the chimera that the world at large, more particularly the 
 members of the press had formed a conspiracy against him, on 
 what ground he does not attempt to explain. 
 
 May 1844. — (33), Dr. Buist carries on bis scurrilous abuse of William 
 and me in every possible form. He might be prosecuted over and over again, 
 but most of the leading lawyers at Bombay are said to be proprietors of bis 
 paper, which would make it dangerous. Other papers take our part. I con- 
 sulted Sir G. Arthur about prosecuting, and his answer was, " I prosecuted 
 a rascally editior in Van Dieman's Land, he was imprisoned, his wife and 
 children were starving and I had to keep them out of charity. The pro- 
 secution did the paper much good, set it on its legs ; and -while I was feeding 
 his family the editor became more abusive than ever." This decided me, and 
 Buist's last number shows that he is writhing under my silence and the abuse 
 of the other papers. I am pretty sure Outram writes in the Bombay Times, 
 and the Calcutta Star. — Vol. iii. 101. 
 
 Sir Charles seems to have forgotten what he had stated (vol. ii. 
 p. 383), that in May, 1843, Sir George Arthur had promised to 
 prosecute me. Here he intimates that Sir George in place of 
 promising to prosecute had dissuaded him from prosecution. 
 Sir George Arthur knew right well, if his assumed correspondent 
 did not, that an editor might labour in his vocation quite as pro- 
 fitably in jail as out of it. I believe the whole story to be a 
 fiction. Outram never wrote a line for the Bombay Times, nor 
 I believe for any other newspaper. You have forgotten that 
 you have already described him as so illiterate as to be unable 
 to compose his o^vn books. I do not believe that up to May, 
 1844, there had been any censure whatever of yourself in the 
 Bombay Times : on the contrary, when you attacked me in 
 connection with the letter from Sir Henry Pottinger, published 
 in Dec. 1843, in the Moiming Chronicle, which you asserted to 
 be a forgery, I met you in terms of courtesy and in part of compK- 
 ment. It has been already shewn that Sir Charles Xapier must 
 have been perfectly aware of the names of the proprietors of the 
 Bombay Times, there was only one lawyer amongst them, four- 
 
31 
 
 teen who had no connexion whatever with law. The prosecu- 
 tion of a paper which confined itself strictly to the discussion of 
 public topics, would doubtless have been very dangerous, but 
 not at all on the grounds Sir Charles assumes. The chief justice. 
 Sir Henry Roper, had very nearly been removed from the bench 
 just two years before for his quarrels with the press, and I had 
 no reason to hope for any great leniency at his hands. Why 
 did not Sir Charles consult counsel in place of the governor on 
 the subject ? Was it to save a fee ? 
 
 It so happens that it was at this very date (May 1844), as may 
 be seen by the published papers, that I was experiencing the 
 most distinguished marks of consideration from the governor, he 
 having just before forwarded to the court of directors the strongest 
 recommendations of my permanent continuance in charge of the 
 observatory which I then held as an acting oJffice only. 
 
 Jtme 1844. — (34). Anything like the scurrility of the Bombay Times 
 against me, and you too,for you stung Buist to the quick, I never read, except 
 the Calutta Star which is as bad : in both we are Hiars,perjurerSy hlacJcguards, 
 villains, whose spurs of knighthood should he hacked off our heels P' The most 
 infamous efforts are also made by them to drive my young friend Brown, my 
 secretary, into a quarrel. Well, I laugh at them and take every public op- 
 portunity to call them the Infamous Press of India ! And strange to say, two 
 of them have wrtten to pay me court, and say they have defended me and 
 will defend me ! This shows there are some good, and I tell them it pleases 
 me to find such sensible men! " Mr. MacKenna, Bombay Gentleman's 
 Gazette, always justified by his conduct the title of his paper. Vol. iii. 124. 
 
 It was strange enough certainly, that even two out of thirty 
 should have preferred the services of venal pens to the man who 
 abused them one and all, till he discovered that those who ten- 
 dered their advocacy were sensible men. I recollect having said, 
 as already stated, that in the days of chivalry a knight would 
 have had the spurs hacked off his heels, had he acted as you and 
 your brother have done. To this statement, as now expressed, 
 I adhere. The other phrases ascribed to Mr. Hume and myself, 
 are the creations of your own imagination ; did your conscience 
 whisper, that perhaps they might have been applied without 
 any great impropriety, unless in so far as they violated the 
 decorums of discussion ? 
 
 August 1844. — (35). I hear Dr.Buist and his wife are the constant guests 
 of Sir Thomas and Lady M'Mahon ! This accounts for many things ! 
 Vol. iii. 136. 
 
 Is it not rather a small matter compared with the great ques- 
 tions under consideration, to discuss where Dr. Buist and his 
 wife dined. I first became a visitor in Sir T. M'Mahon's family in 
 Jan. 1 844, and ceased to be so on my departure for Europe in 
 May 1845 ; I last met hirn when a resident in the house of an 
 
 h 
 
32 
 
 honoured friend whose hospitality Sir Charles Napier accepted 
 on bidding a final adieu to India. I never so far as I remember 
 heard the name of Scinde or Napier mentioned in Sir Thomas 
 M'Mahon's presence. Sir Charles considers " Bombay society as 
 equal to that of a third-class town in England :" it is at all events 
 suflS.ciently observant of propriety to exclude from discussion 
 topics on which people think differently and feel keenly, and 
 where in the heat of argument words might be used which 
 would offend. How does my visiting at the house of the 
 Commander in chief accord with the assertion that I was " an 
 outcast from society." What are the many things for which 
 these circumstances accounted? Could Sir Charles not have 
 secured the services of some tell-tale or eves-dropping Capt. 
 Mainwaring to repeat to him the conversation of the dinner 
 table for the enlightenment of your readers ? 
 
 August 1854. — (36). Slander was continual in yarious forms, and even 
 the French press -^as employed for the dissemination of falsehood. At a 
 time -when Dr. Buist was passing through Paris, there appeared in the 
 National, a forged report from a pretended committee of the House of 
 Commons, containing a formal condemnation of Lord Ellenborough and Sir 
 C. Napier with an approval of Outram's conduct ! And in the Siecle, Sir 
 Charles was denounced as a monster whose cruelty put the Algerian Dara 
 caves in the shade ! — Vol. iii. 138. 
 
 The only time I ever was in Paris was in Feb. 1840 on my 
 way to India. From the time of my arrival, till May 1845, I 
 never was away from it. I never wrote a line for any continental 
 journal whatever, or remember to have observed any thing 
 therein said of Sir Charles Napier similar to what is here 
 ascribed to the National. 
 
 Oct. 1844.— (37). "We had a great dinner for the 13th Eegiment, and I 
 told them what was true ; that while they were fighting the Affghans at 
 Jellalabad, Dr. Buist and the proprietors of the Bombay Times were advising 
 those Affghans, not to fight but to starve them into a surrender. On all pubUc 
 occasions I thus pitch into the Bombay Times, but never so much as last 
 night when I justly attacked the proprietors. — ^Yol. iii. 154. 
 
 I have already given the names of the proprietors of the 
 Bombay Times : the reader may judge whether they were gen- 
 tlemen likely to tolerate the publication of what is here imputed 
 to it. The 13th, on coming to Bombay, were quartered close 
 to my place of residence, and many of the officers became my 
 visitors. Is it likely they would have become such had they 
 believed one single syllable of what was here imputed to me r 
 Col. Dennie had contributed largely to the columns of the 
 Bombay Times, and Col. (now Lieut.-General) Havelock I 
 have long had the honour of numbering among my friends. 
 The story about my urging the Affghans to starve out the 
 
garrison of Jellalabad, at that time in a great measure cut off' 
 from communication with other places, is not only opposed to 
 the fact but is the reverse of it. The chivalrous Broadfoot, one 
 of the garrison, was throughout the siege, as often as opportunity 
 occurred, in the habit of communicating by short notes enclosed 
 in a quill and secreted about the person of the messenger, with 
 an intimate friend of his and of mine in Bombay. The infor- 
 mation which was of the very greatest importance was always 
 communicated to me with a view of assisting me to correct 
 views on the subject. I never pulished a line of it till we had 
 retrieved all our misfortunes, and its promulgation could do no 
 harm. I could name a score of occasions, that for example of the 
 want of ordinance and ammunition when we lay entrenched on the 
 Sutlej, when I withheld information in my possession till the 
 proper time arrived, declining the opportunity of making a boast 
 of early intelligence when the use of it, however advantageous 
 to the newspaper, might have been injurious to the country. 
 These circumstances have procured me since then, numberless cor- 
 respondents who have placed information at my disposal knowing 
 that it would be dealt with only in such a manner as not to 
 injure the commonwealth. 
 
 Nov. 1844. — (38). I have given help to Bombay within the last month, 
 but confess to doing so with reluctance ; not from any doubt, having none, 
 of being able to hold Scinde with half my present force, but from fear of 
 tempting revolt and having blood to spill : for the Bombay Times is quite 
 capable of telling the people of Scinde that I am compelled to send troops to 
 Bombay, and that now is the time to rise upon their conquerors ; and this 
 might draw the hill tribes down upon us. — Vol. iii. 163. 
 
 In November 1844, there were, according to Sir C. Napier's 
 own returns, close on 13,000 troops in Scinde, while the country 
 according to the conqueror might have been kept quiet " by Capt. 
 Brown and his excellent policy," so there was nothing very 
 marvellous in Sir Charles being able to spare some for Bombay. 
 He had before this a dozen of times told us that the people 
 rejoiced in the change of government and were delighted above 
 measure with the new administration. Why in all the world 
 should they have made an outbreak to please the Bomhay Times ? 
 prepared it seems on this as on so many occasions to recom- 
 mend the destruction of one of the largest sections of its sup- 
 porters the Scinde field -force. Just a month after this Sir 
 Charles tells you that "if all the troops were withdrawn 
 and the Ameers turned lose he could defeat them with the 
 people only." It required 12,000 men to keep me from pro- 
 ducing a rebellion ! 
 
 pec. 1844.— (39). I came to India at the age of sixty to provide for my 
 children, and I was immediately to expose myself to be broke by a court-martial 
 
34 
 
 ■with, disgrace, after fifty years' service, because a fool like Major Outram, 
 and an abusive fellow like Dr. Buist, settled that barbarian robbers were to 
 be allowed leisure to prepare a massacre of the British army. — ^Yol. iii. 194. 
 
 This is all very frank and candid, and very handsomely was 
 the family provided for. Though Sir Charles in other places 
 professes that it was to carry out the policy of the Govemour 
 general he went to Scinde. Truth will out. It certainly does 
 not appear where either Outram or Buist made the recom- 
 mendation referred to. Fiction should at least be probable. 
 
 Jan, 1845.— (40). Now befell a dreadful calamity. The 78tb Eegiment, 
 designed for the hill campaign, nearly destroyed by a sickness sudden and 
 terrible. The Bombay faction instantly proclaimed, — Outram being foremost 
 in the shameless slander, " that Sir C. Napier's ignorance and reckless disre- 
 gard of the medical men's advice had caused the mortality, and that he was 
 their murderer." — ^Yol. iii. 204. 
 
 Jan. 1845. — (41). The 78th Eegiment is absolutely destroyed: two 
 hundred dead, and the living in a sad plight. Of course.I am assailed by the 
 scoundrel factious editors : that don't pain me, but the destruction of the 
 poor soldiers deeply. I am not to blame. The usual course of fever is to 
 attack in September and first half of October, after which few cases, but old 
 ones are apt to relapse and very dangerously. I had orders from government 
 to bring down the 13th Eegiment to Kurrachee, and send the 78th up : this 
 I did, so as to have the 13th away before the period of relapses, and the 78th 
 there after the period of first attacks. Movement is reckoned good, the 13th 
 escaped all sickness, and the 78th reached Sukkur in excellent health, and 
 remained so till the 1st November, when the fever broke out with imheard-of 
 violence till the end of the year ! — ^Yol. iii. 204. 
 
 On the imputation against myself I have already met you in 
 the columns of The Times and Daily News, and reduced you to 
 silence. The following are the facts as they will be found in 
 the books of the regiment at the disposal of your brother, and 
 which ought to have been before him at the time he wrote — 
 accessible at the Horse Guards, the Board of Controul and 
 India House to any one. The head quarters of the Highlanders 
 left Kurrachee on the 20th August 1844. Severe sickness made 
 its appearance at Hydrabad and afterwards on the river. The 
 first medical return after their arrival at Sukkur shewed that in 
 September out of 423 men there were 145 in hospital. The left 
 wing reported 10 sick out of a strength of 511 at Dooba on the 
 River on the 23rd September, and sickness rapidly increased as 
 they proceeded. You may select for your brother the horn of 
 the dilemma on which you would have him impaled. He either 
 knew nothing whatever of the health of the troops he com- 
 manded and said whatever came uppermost; — or uttered an 
 untruth knowing it to be such. The facts now stated appeared 
 in the Bombay Times in 1845, they were repeated in Feb. 1851, 
 when your brother renewed his misstatements on addressing 
 the Highlanders at Bombay. Gol. Twopenny, their commander, 
 
35 
 
 had been a guest in my house just before his departure for 
 Scinde. I well remember the remonstrances of Col. Hamilton, 
 and the other officers of that distinguished corps, when your 
 brother, in a letter then just pulished in your book, ascribed 
 the sickness from which the women and children as well as the 
 men had suffered, to drink. Sir Charles Napier, against medical 
 advice, dispatched the 78th from Kurrachee in August, knowing 
 as he here admits that *' the xisuAii cotjkse of fevek was to 
 
 ATTACK IN SEPTEMBER OR THE FIRST HALF OF OCTOBER," 
 
 a date at which he states there were 10,000 sick the previous 
 year. This very month the men were to be exposed to malaria 
 on the river. Fever made its appearance accordingly just as 
 Sir Charles himself expected, and claimed at once 400 victims. 
 It is now twelve years since these distressing incidents occurred. 
 It may yet be seen what composure may be looked for in Eng- 
 land for these disclosures now that you have provoked the publi- 
 lication for the third time of the facts just given on the highest 
 official authority. I trust in this age of military reform the re- 
 turns I have referred to may be called for. Mismanagement was 
 not confined to the Crimea— nor the destruction of troops through 
 the neglect of the most common-place and obvious precautions 
 for their safety, peculiar to boards, or restricted to red tape. 
 The mishap could only have occurred through the anomalous 
 arrangements of Lord EUenborough. Scinde had been conquered 
 and annexed in violation of law, and it was created into an 
 independent governorship and Sir Charles Napier placed over it 
 in equal violation of the law. The Griffin Governor had no 
 councellor to advise and no superior to controul him. In the 
 former case a protest against a proceeding so insane and by 
 which more loss of life was incurred than at Meeanee and Dubba 
 put together would have been recorded — superior authority 
 would have forbidden it. So fearful was the condition of the 
 whole corps on returning to Bombay that the Adjutant and 
 Quarter-master General and the Inspector General of hospitals 
 for the Queen's army. Dr. Franklin, recommended its im- 
 mediate shipment from India. Lest you should again commit 
 yourself by a denial of these facts I beg to assure you that I have 
 within these six weeks seen in London the official correspondent 
 on the subject. 
 
 J<m. 1845.---(42). The necessity of secresy, especially against Buist and 
 the traitor clique at Bombay, prevented my making sufficient preparation, 
 and we have consequently had great difficulty.— Vol iii. 229. 
 
 It has been seen that two months before this I had compelled 
 Sir Charles to keep 12,000 men in Scinde for fear of a rising, 
 while the Ameers if let loose would have been turned out of the 
 
country by the people themselves, even if the troops had been all 
 sent away. When Sir Charles was about to-start with 6000 men 
 into the Murree Hills he was it seems prevented from making 
 sufficient preparations for fear of me. The return of post from 
 Sukker to Bombay and back was then about a month. He cer- 
 tainly intimated in general orders at starting that a fortnight's 
 provision was aU that would be required ; wHle the troops were 
 in reality occupied six weeks. On his return a line of outposts 
 required to be established along the frontier just as if aU the 
 tribes supposed to be subdued, had still been in arms. Two 
 months before he stated that but for me, half the Scinde army 
 might have been sent to Bombay, when there would scarcely 
 have remained so many as were required for the Murree Hills 
 campaign. This may be very perfect or profound strategy in the 
 eyes of heaven-bom or divinely -inspired generals, it is rather 
 perplexing to simple-minded civilians like myself. 
 
 March 1845. — (43). I was up at two o'clock in the morning, the march 
 was twenty-two miles and we did not get to the end before twelve o'clock ; 
 I then slept under a tree till the baggage arrived, and it was half-past two 
 before my breakfast was ready. People here say that you have set Buist 
 mad with rage : I dont read him. — ^Vol iii. 281. 
 
 April 1845. — (44). Outram's friend "Willoughby is secretary, and I am 
 told keeps Sir G. Arthur in his pocket : this may or may not be true, but 
 eyerybody says so. Buist also is his friend, and is all day long at his house 
 it is said, and I have traced one or two lines in the Bombay Times against 
 me, word for word with those in a letter of his to me ; only in the letter it 
 was as a question which prevented its being an attack. Then the heads of 
 departments and that soft little silky man, Lieut. -Colonel Melville, brother 
 to the Melville who rules the Indian house ; if you bring all these upon me 
 it will be difficiilt to hold Scinde. Buist is I am told, anxious beyond mea- 
 sure to make up with me ; he is afraid of you. — Vol iii. 291. 
 
 The madness was manifested I presume by my reviewing 
 your first work in which as already stated I convinced you of 
 about three score specific misstatements in about thrice the 
 number of pages, chiefly on the evidence of official documents 
 not a few of them under Sir Charles' hand. The extreme mo- 
 deration of the tone of the review drew forth the applause of the 
 whole press of India. I have no means of knowing whether 
 Sir Charles Napier read the Bombay Times or not, I know he 
 ordered it and very punctually paid for it during the whole of 
 his Bombay career. I am under the impression that it was 
 ordered to be sent to him after his return to England. I had 
 nothing to make up : I never had any personal quarrel with Sir 
 Charles. I condemned the policy of Scinde without regard to 
 its authors, without more of feeling than a judge may be sup- 
 posed to experience in deciding on the evidence before him. 
 Some of Sir Charles' chief favourites and most ardent admirers 
 were amongst the most valued of my friends. On leaving 
 
37 
 
 Scotland I had received a public dinner where half those present 
 were my political opponents. It was in India I first found fair 
 words and moderate discussion made the ground of personal 
 quarrels. 
 
 Up to March 1845 I do not think I had been a dozen of times 
 either to Mr. Willoughby's house or office. As Chief Secretary 
 and by order of government, he in consonance with the system 
 pursued by Lord Auckland, forwarded to the newspapers short 
 notices of the movements of our troops in Affghanistan betwixt 
 Nov. 1841, when our mishaps began, and March 1842, when 
 Lord Ellenborough commenced war on the press. Beyond this 
 he never wrote or instigated a line for the Bombay Times. 
 
 Feb. 1844 — (45). Tlie rabid abuse of tbe Bombay Times makes me 
 laugh ; yet it is injurious because good and honourable people swallow it all, 
 and if Shakespeare is right that does harm.— Vol iii. 36. 
 
 Sir Charley and his friends never attempted an answer, had 
 they offered any it would have been accepted at once : they knew 
 they had none to offer. Was it not somewhat singular, that if 
 Indian journalists agreed so ill amongst themselves as here 
 described they should have been so unanimous in condemning 
 the Scinde policy, that Sir Charles states there were only two 
 out of thirty who offered to defend him } 
 
 March 1844 — (46). This Main waring was a man of humour also. Being 
 at a dinner in Bombay, Dr. Buist was placed beside him and very nervously 
 spoke thus. Captain Mainwaring I suppose I have your dislike, I am Dr. 
 Buist of the Bombay Times. Why should I dislike you my friend? I 
 never read your paper. — Vol iii. 70. 
 
 I never remember to have met Capt. Mainwaring in my life, 
 and am pretty certain that the incident here mentioned never 
 occurred. How did it happen that "a wretch" "turned out of 
 society" should have been admitted to the same table as the 
 friend of a Napier .'^ Were Sir Charles' friends in the habit of 
 reporting to him dinner-table conversations for the purpose of 
 publication ? 
 
 April 1844. — (47). For my part I like to let truth come out, and not let 
 falsehood fly her colours on the field without an opponent. I would punish 
 the Bombay Times if I could, and as to its doing the paper good, I would 
 not mind that ; all I want is that the public should hear the truth. — 
 Vol iii. 74. 
 
 Would you kindly tell us what the infamous accusations or 
 charges were. Was Sir Charles Napier or were his friends ever 
 refused the privilege of correcting errors or offering explanations ? 
 I solemnly declare that I published every thing ever sent me in 
 his justification no matter how offensively worded, and only 
 declined such blackguardism as that of " Omega," " yotjb true 
 
&c., on the score of the statements made by them 
 being untrue and the tone resorted to unfit for the ears " of the 
 society of a third rate English town," though yery acceptable 
 apparently to the goyemour of Scinde. 
 
 May 1845.— (48). ^ The Bombay Times is trying two things. One is to 
 make out that I attributed the deaths in the 78th to drunkenness, "which is 
 a lie ; the second, that in my dinner speech, in -which I called Buist the 
 ^blatant Beasf amidst great applause, and which speech he has not got ; that 
 I disclosed the whole plan and arrangement of a Punjaub war — ^whioh is 
 another He." 
 
 This lie proved a most pernicious one for the public and was doubtless so 
 intended. The false version of Sir C. Napier's speech in the Bombay Times 
 was read by the Sikhs, and more than one writer has affirmed that it roused 
 that people to hostihties, as thinking the English were going to attack 
 them !— Vol iii. 294. 
 
 "Buist " had nothing whatever to do with the matter. I had 
 left for Europe in May and did not return till the following year. 
 The fact mentioned in the Bombay Times on my departure and 
 return must have been observed by the abuse of me on the 
 occasion published in the GentlemarC s Gazette. The speech in 
 question was delivered at a public meeting at Kurrachee, on the 
 26th of April, and was published entire in the Agra Achar or 
 Delhi Gazette, I forget which, and in the Bombay Gentleman^ s 
 Gazette ; not in the Bombay Times at all excepting as an extract. 
 The comments made on it caused subsequent reports to be 
 modified and the whole ultimately denied. The accusation of 
 the Highlanders of drunkenness was made in a letter which 
 appeared in the second part of your Conquest of Scinde, published 
 in May, when I was on my way home. I never saw it till after 
 I was in England ; but I remember perfectly receiving while in 
 London letters from the officers of the 78th complaining bitterly 
 of the attacks that had been made on them. The following ex- 
 tract from the speech I find in the Almanac — " Sir Charles 
 Napier said it was highly probable he and the army he com- 
 manded would next cold season be called upon to act in another 
 country : that good policy required that the frontier should be 
 quelled before the troops were summoned elsewhere." This 
 which appeared in the Bombay Times, as taken from another 
 paper, was quite sufficient conjoined with Sir Charles Napier's 
 declarations and exploits to provoke the attack the Sikhs made on 
 on us in November. Whether it can be characterised as a disclo- 
 sure of the whole plan and arrangements of the Punjaub war, I leave 
 the reader to pronounce. The Gentleman' s Gazette was through 
 the whole course of its existence considered the opprobrium of the 
 English press. It was commenced in 1842. In 1850 it was 
 transformed into the Bombay Gazette, now a very able and 
 
39 
 
 exemplary pai^er, when its originator, Mr. TvrKenna, mentioned 
 elsewhere by Sir Charles as having tendered his services, 
 quitted India. The Agra Achar died out soon after this. The 
 Kurrachee and Guernsey Advertiser are both extinct — all Sir 
 Charles' beloved friends dead and gone. 
 
 May, 1845 — (49). Outram lately quarrelled with the Boir.hay government, 
 by resisting orders and sayine: they wanted to niake a Meeanee slaughter in 
 the Mahratta country: they recalled him, but Colonel Ovaus being captured 
 they left Outram; "and when Ovans was liberated Outrsim yolimteered to 
 assist in this second Meeanee Slaughter at the _ head of a light corps, first 
 making the amende to government. Ovans then resigned, and Outram was put in 
 his place with a large salary and the direction for the war. So much for his 
 principles : all right if he had not volunteered. This I know from Sir George 
 Arthur to be the true story; but the, papers try to cover him, saying he had 
 no quarrel with government. The Bombay Times bullies about it, and 
 Willoughby writes for the Bombay Times ; and as he is Outram's bosom 
 friend is likely to be the author of most of the attacks on me. I detected him 
 in one, though he does not think so : he is remarkably smooth-tongued, and in 
 concert with Outram is getting up a book against me. — Vol. iii. 301, 302. 
 
 Mr. Willoughby has himself already asserted that all the state- 
 ments regarding him in connection with the Bombay Times are 
 false, and I have* already most fully corroborated that statement. 
 I believe the whole of the rest of the passage to be about as 
 true as the part which refers to Mr. Willoughby. I am convinced 
 however that the words put into Sir George Arthur's mouth 
 would never have been published had Sir George been alive 
 to contradict them. The facts have been in your possession 
 since 1845 — you have published enough since then, but never 
 mentioned them. 
 
 Jwwe, 1845 — (50). What peqp/e do these papers represent ? None! they 
 are mere organs of vituperation. With a few exceptions the editors are men 
 whose vileness has driven them from good society. One was driven from the 
 church for some tricks with a child; another was broke for stealing a pearl, 
 and for cowardice. It is plausibly asked, Why mind what such rascals say? 
 But if society, by sustaining and countenancing such papers, evince a belief in 
 what they publish, then we must care. Suppose a set of rascals burn, by force, 
 deserter or thief on a man's shoulder or cheek, would he not be annoyed to be 
 so falsely exhibited to the world? AVould he not publish the truth? We 
 cannot. _ The rascal editors assert the grossest lies, and you can't get them 
 contradicted. I have been called " Traitor, murderer, thief, coward, liar, 
 perjiirer, tyrant, epicure," — and half the good people of India believe every 
 word. How can 1 enter into a controversy on my own character with such 
 miserable wretches as Buist of the Bombay Times, or Cope of the Delhi 
 Gazette ?— since arrested for thieving. AVhen w^e are dead, myself and my 
 brother William may be discovered to have been honorouble men ; but in the 
 interim we are branded by these fellows, and their worthy coadjutors, 
 Fonblanque, of the Examiner, in England. 
 
 The English journalists generally have the decency to state facts and 
 reason on them_ according to the bent of their politics, but these Indian ruffians, 
 for they are neither move nor less, invent the most atrocious falsehoods, and 
 
40 
 
 tlien pour fortli abuse as if the tilings had really been done which they have 
 asserted. Take one of a hundred instances. The Delhi Gazette and 
 Bombay Times distinctly state as a known fact, that a medical board repre- 
 sented to me the danger of sending the 78th Eegiment to Sukkur; and that 
 with murderous wilfulness I refused to listen to them. This is simply a fabri- 
 cation of the editors, and without a shadow of foundation in truth. This is 
 freedom of the press ! — Vol. iii. 304, 305. 
 
 The papers represent I presume the senthnents of then' readers ; 
 who they are will be seen further on. The great fault found 
 with me is that I frequented the very best society in the presi- 
 dency. I have abeady given (p. 15) a list of the editors of the 
 principal papers in India in 1845. Cope was never arrested for 
 thieving, but is just now prosecuting his accusers for hbel, and 
 will I trust give you the opportunity of explaining your mean- 
 ing before a court of law. I have not waited till your demise 
 to determine wiiether or not the judgment of your countr^Tiien 
 in your favour may be procured. I need seek for no better 
 test of your veracity than the question concenimg the 78th"s 
 sufferings. 
 
 It is to be supposed that Indian, Uke other newspapers, re- 
 present the parties they address, in our case English merchants 
 at the Presidencies and members of the public sen-ice. The 
 total male European population in all India, not belonging to the 
 service, falls short, as she^^ii by the returns, of 10,000 : of these 
 probably 4000 are adults. The members of the public sei^vices, 
 including officers of Queen's troops, amount to about 7000. In my 
 petition to be heard before Parliament in 1853 on the press of 
 India I gave the following in reference to the circulation of 
 news23apers in India. It will answer the question of who they 
 represent : — 
 
 " In 1848, the Mofussilite printed a Kst of all its subscribers, from which it 
 appeared that four-fifths of these were members of the public servive, and in 
 a classified list of its subscribers lateh' laid before the proprietors of the 
 JBomhaij Times, it appears that out of a thousand subscribers, assuming that 
 to be the number on the list, one hundred and twenty-three were civil servants 
 of the government, one hundred and seventy-nine messes and regimental 
 libraries, three hundred and seventeen military men. fifty -two British merchants, 
 thirty-six banks and public corporations, twenty-six were natives, two hundred 
 and forty-three were private individuals, uncovenanted servants, tradesmen, 
 &c., the rest clergymen, lawyers, native rajahs and the like, or in all, 719, or 
 two thirds of the whole, were ofiicers under the crown, or covenanted servants 
 of government. It may safely be assumed, that the maxim which holds good 
 all over the world will obtain in India, and that the amount and nature of 
 commodities brought to market, will speedily adjust themselves to the demand. 
 That newspaper proprietors will supply, and newspaper editors write, what is 
 deemed most popular and acceptable amongst the newspaper reading classes, 
 and what they are best disposed to pay for, that the returns on such things are 
 ample, will be seen from a paper published in 1850." 
 
41 
 
 I have already given a list of the proprietors of the Bombay 
 Times as vrell as a list of the editors of the leading papers. That 
 the press of India is not without its Ages and its Towns and 
 Satyrists can unhappily not be denied. It is with these Sir 
 Charles and his friends seem alone to have been familiar. The 
 question of the Highlanders has already been disposed of s^lTis- 
 FACTOKiLY by the admission of Sir Charles Napier that he 
 knew that September and October were the sickly months on the 
 Indus, and that he not the less in spite, I re-assert, of medical 
 opinion to the contrary, dispatched them in the end of August to 
 plunge into the sea of malaria in which they perished. 
 
 May 1845. — (51). Did I tell you that in this country of monsoons there 
 are no wind-mills ! We are getting two up and expect them to pay us eight 
 or ten thousand pounds a year. — ^Vol. iii. 301. 
 
 Did Sir Charles know that it was to the " wretch Buist" then 
 secretary to the " Agricultural Society of Western India," that 
 wind mills were applied for? I was in 1845, and for many 
 years afterwards, labouring to introduce this form of machine 
 into India. I had to toil single handed and at my own charge 
 and failed only for want of time and mill-wrights. " Providing 
 for my family," even by honest means, was not quite my sole 
 object for going to India or my solitary care when there. 
 
 Nov. 1845. — (52). Buist is in a fury at the London newspapers because 
 they won't adopt his filthy falsehoods ; and has told us, that his informants 
 on political and military matters are Sir George Arthur and the commander 
 in chief: for the sovereign authorities in his expression, which can only mean 
 the governor and council at Bombay. The commander in chief he plumply 
 names ! — ^Vol. iii. 350. 
 
 I never did any thing of the sort. The commander-in-chief 
 referred to was Sir Jasper NichoUs, not the head of the Bombay 
 but of the whole Indian army, who very properly selected, 
 as Sir Charles Napier himself had done, the Bombay Times as 
 the medium of defence against the attacks made on him for the 
 dispatch of the artillery-men without guns for the Peshawar. 
 The march of the men was ordered before the Ghibrie insurrec- 
 tion, and they were intended to take over the guns already at 
 Cabool. A very reasonable arrangement marred by unfor- 
 seenable circumstances. The allusion was made in a letter 
 published by me in the Edinburgh Witness in reply to an 
 attack on the press of India made in the North British Review. 
 I complained that the press of England was not sufficiently!^ 
 alive to the warnings the Indian newspapers gave them of the 
 inevitability of the disasters in Affghanistan— -" the filthy false- 
 hoods " here referred to. The allusion was only made at aU 
 when any one comparing the dispatches bearing Sir Jasper NichoU's 
 
42 
 
 name in the Blue Book and that without a name in the Bombay 
 Times might have detected the truth. If Sir Charles believed Sir 
 Geo. Arthur, Sir Harry M'Mahon, Mr. Willoughby, and Col. 
 Outram my informants no better vouchers could be had for the 
 authenticity of my information. If this again was as worth- 
 less as he describes, the Governor, Commander-in-chief and 
 Chief Secretary could not have been, as he asserts they were 
 my informants. You may stick him on which ever horn of the 
 dilemma you prefer. 
 
 July 1845 — (53). Boone has given a copy of your book to the Bombay 
 Times, and no other has reached India. The editor boasts that he got it 
 before publication. If Boone does not clear up this, I for one will never 
 darken his doors again. I have enquired about a safe lawyer at Bombay to 
 prosecute Buist for thus pirating your work, but am told yo\ir power of 
 attorney is necessary." 
 
 No copy was given. One had been stolen, and Buist' s piracy was a result ; 
 and it might be supposed such a literary offence would have debarred his 
 being elected a member of the great scientific association. Not so. Capt. 
 H. Napier made the facts known to the Eoyal Society, of which he was a 
 member, and in the face of them that learned body adopted the pirate as an 
 associate. — ^Vol. iii. 313, 
 
 I find from the publishers that the first part of your Conquest 
 of Scinde was issued in London on the 15th of December, 1844, 
 the second part on the 3d of May, 1845. The mail by South- 
 ampton with books and parcels then started on the 4th of the 
 month, that by Marseilles on the 8th. I was then in the habit of 
 receiving through my publishers, Smith, Elder and Co., publi- 
 cations of importance appearing betwixt the two dates just named 
 through the Marseilles mail, and I find accordingly from their 
 books that your book was so dispatched — there was no difficulty 
 in this, and not the slightest occasion for theft. Your books sent 
 ofi* by common course on the 8th of January or 8th of May 
 would reach Bombay on the 6th or 8th of the following month. 
 The second part, which was received on the 8th of June by my 
 locum tenens^ Mr. Scott, reached after I had left India on the 
 20th of May. It was dispatched before I reached London in 
 July, so it was physically impossible for me to have any concern 
 in the matter either at one end or the other of the line. 
 
 When the Fellows of the Royal Society were told that I had 
 stolen your book, they knew I was then in London exposing 
 your misstatements through the newspapers ; many of those who 
 supported me having seen me while in town, they must have 
 known that what was asserted was not only an untiiith but an 
 impossibility. The conduct of Capt. Henry Napier in London 
 was in keeping with that of Sir Charles in Scinde. False 
 charges were got up against the Ameers as against me, and they 
 
43 
 
 were punished, as I was meant to have been, for what was never 
 done. Did it never occur to you and your brother to withdraw 
 from the Royal Society, the members of which had either ad- 
 mitted a thief amongst them or insulted you by disbelieving 
 your statements? Are Messrs. Smith, Elder, and Co., by whom 
 the book was forwarded, to be charged with theft ? Or is Mr. 
 Boone, your publisher, in a position to state that any theft was 
 committed ? On the receipt, in Feb. 1845, of the first part of 
 your romance, I reviewed it chiefly by printing the most con- 
 spicuous passages at length, and appending to them in form of 
 notes my remarks and the quotations from official documents, by 
 which you were convicted of a misstatement in every second or 
 third page. The amount of the quotation is I presume what is 
 termed piracy. Just as the quotations in the Athmneum or 
 Quarterly Review from your present work might be so called. 
 The second part of your publication was of course placed in the 
 hands of my locum tenens. 
 
 August 1845 — (54). As to tlie puMication of tlie Conquest of Scinde, Sir 
 C. Napier -was not even cognizant of it being undertaken until tlie first part 
 was nealy ready for the press : it was commenced to meet the infamous 
 attempts then making to ruin him in public estimation, and was not even 
 spontaneous on the part of the writer, who was pushed to it by the urgent 
 remonstrances of a common friend. In fine, it was as much an act of self- 
 defence for the general as his conquest was one for India : both imperative. 
 At this very time Outram published a letter, addressed to General W. Napier, 
 libellous in the extreme as regarded Sir Charles : and he was being aided 
 by "Willoughby, secretary to the Bombay council, in the concoction of a 
 book which accused Sir C. Napier of falsehood to his government ; of 
 malversation ; of gross nepotism ; of ignorance in his command that would 
 disgrace a subaltern ; of the murder of the 78th soldiers. And when thus 
 infamously libelled by an officer under his command he will be found appeal- 
 ing to authority for protection, the answer being to appoint the offender to 
 a lucrative post!— Vol. iii. 320, 321. 
 
 August 1845 — (55). I told you Arthur had annoyed me about a com- 
 missariat officer ; but I am now pretty certain that Sir George was himself 
 deceived about the matter. However Sir H.- Hardinge had twice or thrice 
 overturned, most justly, the descripions of the governor in council at Bombay 
 about this very officer. Sir George is said to be ruled by Willoughby ; of 
 this I know not, and if it be true God only knows how far he may go ; but 
 he is generally fair, and has given me such sound support on great occa- 
 sions that I must acknowledge obligations to him. As to Outram calling 
 me a correspondent of the Bombay Times, here is the fact. When the 
 papers were calling my march to Emaum Ghur a wild goose chase, I was 
 justly fearful, that as my character was unknown in India they would shake 
 the confidence of the troops under me. 
 
 Nott, after Hykulzie, had in his first anger exclaimed, ' God defend me 
 from Bombay troops and Horse Guards generals.' Now Nott was a man of 
 great nind, and General England's defeat bore his exclamation out strongly. 
 The desert march was incomprehensible to unmilitary minds, and there was 
 therefore fear of the spirit of the troops suffering : in my army also were 
 regiments which had been defeated, exclusive of the Cabool and Ghusnee 
 
 I 
 
44 
 
 disgrace. Hence, being acquainted with. Dr. Kennedy, Willongliby's 
 .brother-in-law, a gentleman of talent who had command of the Bombay 
 Times, I wrote to him the reason for my march. Outram ought to be broke, 
 but probably will be protected. I am sick of self; but remember in your 
 answer to Outram, if you write any, that I have sent in charges against 
 him. 
 
 Aug. 1845. — (56). I lately wrote to the governor-general about the 
 flotilla, the officers of which were quarrelling with General Hunter. I, and 
 my friend Powel, who commands it, agreed that as we should not quarrel 
 the matter had better drop : accordingly my letter was never sent. It was 
 however copied in the secretary's office, and yesterday appeared in the 
 Bombay Times at full length ! This is, I think, proof of the press being 
 in league with subordinate officials; the editor bribes the clerks. The 
 original letter is in my desk, it was never sent, never of course received, 
 and therefore is a forgery. — ^Vol. iii. 322. 
 
 This is all quite correct so far as the Emaun Ghur communica- 
 tion is concerned ; and it will be allowed that Sir Charles Napier 
 acted quite becomingly in the matter. How he should have 
 sought the assistance of the Bombay Times seeing the character 
 he had before this given it does not appear. Dr. Kennedy was 
 a man of great talent and accomplishments and my intimate 
 personal friend. Neither he nor any other man, not even the 
 proprietors themselves, have ever had the slightest influence 
 over what has been published in or excluded from the Bombay 
 Times. The authority of the local government is absolute 
 within the limits of their own jurisdiction. Sir Henry Hardinge 
 could never have upset any of the decrees of the Bombay Go- 
 vernment in reference to their own commissariat officers just 
 because he could never have been appealed to. And this was 
 all it seems Sir Charles Napier knew of the powers of the various 
 governments after having been nearly four years in India! 
 The youngest ensign under him might have blushed at such 
 blundering. I do not now remember the particulars in reference 
 to the India flotilla; from May 1845 till Jan. 1846 I was absent 
 from India. The Bombay Times was then under charge of the 
 late Mr. T. A. Scott, who published four or five years since a 
 full and perfectly satisfactory explanation of the whole afiair 
 when the charge against the Bombay Times appeared in one 
 of your previous works. On this as on so many other 
 occasions a gross and slanderous misstatement has been re- 
 peated by you after having been exposed. It is some- 
 what difficult to understand why a letter should be at once 
 a copy and a forgery. Where public documents pass through 
 the hands of so many clerks of low pay and still lower 
 morals there need never be any difficulty in obtaining copies of 
 any official paper. To the honour of the Bombay press the 
 imputation of bribery or obtaining information unworthily was 
 never cast on it by any one but a Napier. You and your brother 
 
45 
 
 are unable to perceive that the charge of employing illegitimate 
 means to obtain information is the highest compliment that can 
 be paid to the value of the purchase. Men need never pay if 
 content as you assert to resort to fabrication — the manufactured 
 comes in the place of the purchased commodity. By the time 
 Sir Charles wrote to you in 1851 he must have forgotten that he 
 had in 1845 termed Kennedy his friend, and made him in 1843 
 the medium of communication with the Bombay Times — speci- 
 ally selected, as it had every right to be from its position, by 
 Sir Charles and many other distinquished men as the vehicle of 
 their thoughts. 
 
 Surely this is " coming it rather strong," it was shewn, 
 when the matter was discussed before, that Sir Charles had read 
 the proofs of the first part of the Conquest of Scinde, of which 
 he is asserted not to have been so much as cognizant, during his 
 expedition in the Murree hills. Col. Outram's book, as appears 
 from the preface, was published on purpose to meet the misstate- 
 ments of your History of the Conquest. So far from your work 
 and his being contemporaneous the latter was produced solely to 
 meet the slanders of the former. The lovers of truth are obliged 
 to you for so frequently selecting the 78th as an illustration of 
 your veracity and of the untreatableness of your views. We 
 could desire no better example, in the light in which I have 
 already stated it. 
 
 Nov. 1845. — (57). There is a very able officer who has attacked the 
 Bombay Times. He began with a letter signed Omega, and has gone on 
 with a series of facts, to every one of which every officer in Scinde wonl4 
 swear : he is putting the Indian public right. — Vol. iii. 357. 
 
 Nov. 1845. — (58). And Outram's puffing himself into notice through the 
 Bombay Times is shewn up. — Vol. iii. 358. 
 
 I remember of two writers, one subscribing himself Omega, 
 and the other Your True Fkiend — so false in statement and 
 so infamous in tone, that even the friends of the Napiers 
 blushed for them. Of course they cleared up nothing. To the 
 best of my recollection the letters appeared in a miserable 
 libellous little lithograph called the Kurrachee Advertiser, pub- 
 lished if I remember rightly at the Government Custom-house 
 press, and which was considered the Scinde official organ of the 
 time — like the Gentleman^ s Gazette and other Napier admirers it 
 has long ceased to be. In a reply to an attack on Col. Outram's 
 private affairs published in 1845, and with the highest admira- 
 tion for the gallant commander of the Persian -gulf expedition, 
 I quite admit that in thrift he was infinitely surpassed by the 
 victor of Meeanee, and was disinterested enough to protest against 
 an act by which a large amount of prize money was placed 
 within his reach, and it was stated that his agents were Messrs. 
 
46 
 
 Leckie and Co,, who never liad the very slightest connection 
 with government in any way whatever. Col. Outram was in 
 1 845 only a regimental captain but was then a brevet major. He 
 had for nearly twelve years before this been constantly in the most 
 responsible political employment. He had enjoyed the highest 
 place in the opinion of six successive governors — The Hon. 
 Mount-Stuart Elphistone, Sir Jonn Malcom, Lord Clare, Sir 
 Robert Grant, Sir James Carnac, and Sir George Arthur. The ap- 
 pointment he had held from 1841 as political agent in Scinde and 
 Belloochistan, conferred on him by Lord Auckland, was more 
 valuable than the residency atSattara, occupied by him in 1845. 
 He had in 1842 been proposed by Lord EUenborough as resident 
 at the Court of Hydrabad with the title of excellency. Since 
 the time referred to by Sir C. Napier he has been twice resident 
 at Baroda, once at Aden and once at Luknow, and is now appointed 
 to Kajpootana, with a title, and seat in the supreme council in 
 reversion. He was named, imder Lord Aberdeen's admini- 
 stration, for the charge of the Turkish contingent in 1853, and 
 has been appointed, under that of Lord Palmerston, to the com- 
 mand of the Persian-Gulf Expedition. It would take a consi- 
 derable amount of persuasion to convince the world that ap- 
 pointments for which a man had been selected under the ten 
 governments and two administrations I have just named, and 
 who found equal favoui' in the eyes of Lord Auckland, Lord 
 EUenborough, Lord Hardinge, Lord Dalhouse and Lord Cuming 
 was the creature of fortune, or jobbed into a succession of ap- 
 pointments of which he was undeserving. 
 
 March 1846. — (59). Tlie Bombay Times asserted, and with details, that 
 I was driving tlie people of Scinde to madness with excessive taxation, and 
 that I had even dared to re-establish the tax called Transit duty. These 
 assertions were accompanied with all sorts of abuse such as — Ths sordid 
 shameless leader in Scinde. — The Autocrat of Scinde. — The Scinde Czar. — The 
 unscrupulous murderer of the Soldiers of the 7Sth and 2Sth P.egiiuents. — The 
 liar at tJie head of the Scinde government. Well, all India was thus kept 
 ringing with my infamous attempts to make up a sham revenue, to the 
 destruction of the people and the country ! Now, as I never put one single 
 tax upon the people of Scinde, good bad or indifferent ; never laid a mite 
 upon anything and took off a great many taxes, I laughed at what I knew 
 must be in due time found pure inventions, somewhat like the people 
 Herschel was said to have seen in the moon. 
 
 " But could I laugh when, after India had resounded with this cry, 
 I found by a mistake of a clerk at Calcutta in sending a wrong letter — that 
 the Bombay government had transmitted a secret note of council to be regis- 
 tered at Calcutta against me ! accusing me of making up a false revenue, not 
 alone by levying taxes, for as I recollect the minute of council only hinted 
 at that, but by a monopoly of grain ! the price of which was first raised 
 it said by my command, and then sold at the enhanced price to the troops, 
 so as to make the loss fall on the Bombay government : in short that I had 
 
47 
 
 perpetrated so infamous an action, that if there had been an iota of truth in 
 it hanging would be too good for me. 
 
 "Had the clerk not made this mistake" — probably a wilful one from 
 disgust at the infamous intrigue — "there would have been in both the 
 Bombay and Calcutta archives, a direct heinous crime registered against me 
 by my bitter enemies, to be hereafter brought out and given to the world, 
 when I am no more, as an irrefragable proof of ray bad conduct ! And this 
 was done also so ingeniously by the two members of council, who are old 
 practised merchants and accountants, that it took me a good week's hard 
 work to disprove their villanous accusations, and shew that so far from 
 trying to increase the expence of feeding the troops, if there be one thing 
 to which I have more especially devoted myself for the three years of my 
 ruling in Scinde it has been to reduce the price of grain by destroying all 
 monopoly ! But this was not all. The secret minute was recorded, and 
 the authors of it chuckled in their sleeves at having so well shot their 
 assasin bolt. Not content, they manufactured their minute into an article 
 for Dr. Buist's paper, the words just slightly changed to suit a newspaper 
 article : and I, not knowing either its source or anything of the minute of 
 council, laughed, or swore, probably the latter, at Buist's usual attempts to 
 make me out a scoundrel. — Vol. iii. 405, 406. 
 
 "Was this all the result of the Bombay Times falsehoods about the 
 taxes ? No '. Enough in all conscience but not all. I got a letter from 
 Lord Ripon, to say he had heard of my taxation but hoped it was not true ; 
 and then he gave all sorts of reasons to prove I ought not to put on the 
 transit duty, showing that he was. convinced I had done so — as a nurse says 
 to a naughty child, I hope you have not been doing so and so, when she 
 knows it has. To do Lord Eipon justice he gave me very little trouble to 
 answer him ; he displayed such perfect ignorance of the subject that I saw 
 he don't very well know what a transit duty is. But thus again a day 
 was lost in answering him, and my work, real work, thrown in arrear ! And 
 what work ! Long trials to read, and to decide upon putting five men to 
 death at the time ; matter requiring calm thought and great resolution not 
 to err.— Vol. iii. 406, 407. 
 
 " At such times, with my head in agony, my nerves torn, my whole 
 mind and body on the rack, my soul intent to do good in the sight of God, 
 I am to force myself down to think, and write, and dwell upon villany and 
 folly past all belief, and beyond my power to chastise! fortunate that I 
 escape from the power of those who, while profiting from my ebbing life, 
 are seeking my destruction : and all this at sixty -four years of age in a 
 climate proverbial for destroying the energy of mind and body ! But to go 
 on with my story. No sooner had I answered Lord Eipon, and thought I 
 had been tormented enough by Dr. Buist's lies as to taxes, when down 
 comes from Calcutta a letter from the secret committee of the Court of 
 Directors. — Vol. iii. 407. 
 
 There is not one single syllable of truth in all this so far as 
 I am concerned — save that concerning the transit duty which 
 will come presently to be disposed of. The story about the 
 mistake of the clerk sending the wrong extract is nonsence such 
 as that about " Reid and Wilioughby wanting to send Outram to 
 supersede the commander-in-chief," or of " Wilioughby robbing 
 the post-office." The thing could not have occurred, as any one 
 in the slightest degree acquainted with the manner of re- 
 cording, examining, re-examining and transmitting all official 
 
 m 
 
48 
 
 documents in India right well knows. As for the transit duties, 
 the following quotation from the pen of a Scinde political 
 will best meet the assertion that Sir Charles laid no taxes 
 whatever on the people. How very extraordinary that so 
 worthless a paper as the Bombay Times should have equally 
 misled supreme authority in England as in India : — 
 
 "When Major Jacob was magistrate at Meerpoor in 1843, 
 proclamations were sent to him to publish, to the effect that £iU 
 transit duties were henceforth abolished. He did publish these 
 accordingly ; but a short time afterwards the country people 
 complained to him that a man was collecting transit duties 
 under written orders from the Collector of Hyderabad. The 
 man was brought before Major Jacob, when he produced orders, 
 signed and sealed by the Collector, directing everybody to pay 
 him those transit duties. Major Jacob, thinking that in the 
 face of the proclamation above-mentioned these orders must be 
 forgeries, detained the man in custody and informed the Col- 
 lector of his proceedings. In reply, the Collector informed 
 . Major Jacob that the orders were genuine documents ; and that 
 though the proclamations were still published far and wide, it teas 
 not intended to act on them .'" — Homeward Mail. 
 
 Aug. 1846. — (60). It is said they have got up a newspaper to attack me, 
 and subscribed 30,000 rupees: Outram's name at the head of the list. — 
 Vol. iii. 445. 
 
 What newspaper might this be? The Telegraph was the 
 only one which came into existence in 1846. It was the pro- 
 perty of Mr. John Jameson who had no partner in the concern : 
 it was edited by Mr. T. A. Scott who had acted for me in my 
 absence in England the previous year. It was afterwards pur- 
 chased by Mr. Scott, and in 1847 united with the Courier and 
 made a daily newspaper. Mr. Scott's views of Scinde politics 
 were closely allied to my own ; as were those of the bulk of the 
 Indian papers. The subscription of 30,000 rupees and all the 
 rest of it is pure romance. Has it been already forgotten that 
 Outram was affirmed to have been not quite so carefid of his own 
 family as his accuser, and to be in debt? 
 
 Nov. 1846.— (61). Sir G. Arthur writes to Lord Seaton, that I was 
 "shamefully treated by the Bombay press." "Why did he not order his 
 attorney- general to prosecute for libel ? that weuld have put a stop to it at 
 once, as he well knows, "Willoughby was his dry nurse, and the author of 
 two-thirds of the attacks on me. 
 
 As already stated, Mr. Willoughby never wrote a line in the 
 paper on Scinde politics. Is the statement about Sir George 
 Arthur's letter any better founded than that about Mr. Wil- 
 loughby' s attacks? Why turn over the prosecution to the 
 
4d 
 
 Governor? We have no Attorney General in India. Lord 
 Keane and Admiral Sir C. Malcom had eacli resorted to it about 
 two years before. The court was as open in Bombay as London 
 to Sir C. Napier, and he might have asked for a rule nisi at the 
 one place as well as at the other, and would I have no doubt 
 have got the same answer from the Chief Justice as he did from 
 the Lord Chief Justice — Refused. 
 
 Nov. 1846. — (62). " What makes the Times down on me ? " 
 Who could answer that question ? Self-interest is the moving power of 
 the Times, and like the piston of a bad pump brings up all sorts of impu- 
 rities.— Vol. iii. 476. 
 
 This refers not to me but to the first journal in Europe. 
 Why should it have been the interest of the Times or any other 
 paper to be down on him unless in so far as it is the interest of 
 every journal to advocate the right and speak the truth. 
 
 Jan. 1847. — C63). The Bombay Times makes one laugh with its sweeping 
 lies. It says we have a famine here ! We are actually deluged with grain, 
 and exporting, not only to Bombay, but also up the river to Bhawhalpoor 
 and Ferozepoor : a quantity also has, as usual, been imported, but cannot 
 be sold and is being re-shipped. Vol. iv. 32. 
 
 I really do not remember more about the famine matter than 
 this, that the Bombay Times account of it, like my account of 
 the revenue, was correct — that the accounts of Sir Charles 
 Napier were like those of the Royal British Bank and London 
 and Eastern Bank, cooked. The papers on the subject prepared 
 from the official documents supplied by Sir Charles' subordinates 
 may be had any day if desired — the statements contained in 
 them accord with those in the Bombay Times. 
 
 Feb. 1847. — (64). I knew well whence all these petitions came, but 
 laughed, because it was clearly the object to see if I would do, or say, 
 anything that might expose me to the attacks of the then Bombay govern- 
 ment, i.e. the Bombay Times. I wrote to the Bombay government, and 
 at my request it sent the body to Kurrachee, whence I forwarded it by a 
 steamer to Hydrabad. — Vol. iv. 4. 
 
 It makes one almost melancholy to think that the shadow of 
 the Bombay Times should on all occasions have hung like a 
 cloud over the path of the Governor of a province. How little 
 he comprehended the imperiousness of the duties of a jour- 
 nalist — how painful it was to censure, how pleasant to praise. 
 
 Feb. 1847. — (65). By this, taking round numbers, we can already prove 
 that there was in the treasury 127,93,184 Ks., or more than double the 
 whole of the prize money taken by the army. It is well known to you I 
 believe, that on the capture of Hydrabad, I not only enforced the most rigid 
 respect to the zenanas of the Ameers, but also gave those princes four days 
 for removing their ladies, and all their private property without molesta- 
 tion. Of this, as indeed I expected, good use was made, and we have in 
 
50 
 
 these inventories proof of a sum taken away equal to double what was left. 
 As these papers are translated and adjusted, it will appear that the ladies 
 must have carried away, at the lowest calculation, little short of one million 
 sterling, if not two millions " — it was afterward found to he more than two 
 millions ! " However, these papers prove the vast treasure in Hydrabad 
 when captured." 
 
 The high characters of Major M'Pherson, Major Blehkins, and Captain 
 Bazete have never been impeached, the captiire of Hydrabad was executed 
 with perfect order, and my own conviction is that everything foimd was 
 scrupulously accounted for : and so entirely has this been the opinion of the 
 army, that not even Dr. Buist, or Lieut.-Colonel Outram, have yet dared 
 to impeach the honour of the prize agents. 
 
 The value of a Company's rupee is two shillings, that of a 
 Scinde rupee considerably less. 127,93,184 Rs. is therefore 
 little more than a million and a quarter pounds sterling, and yet 
 the ladies took away two millions and left nearly a million to 
 be divided as prize money ! This singular statement appears 
 in a grave argumentative letter to the president of the board 
 of controul. It was intended to mislead authority, not to practice 
 on English credulity only, as so many others seem to have been. 
 
 M'Murdo went to Bombay, as I thought to see Charlie off, but I now 
 find it was to thrash Buist ; happily he first consulted Holland the lawyer 
 as to the consequence, and on his advice relinquished his intention : Mon- 
 tagu is so fierce when his blood is up, that he would probably have gone 
 further than mere beating, and even taken life. — Vol. iv. 42, 43. 
 
 There was just as little danger of the thrashing as of the ho- 
 micide even if Holland had not been consulted. Men disposed 
 for strong measures are not much more likely to consult a 
 lawyer, than to apply to a justice of the peace. I was at Bom- 
 bay perfectly well known to be at all times quite ready to see 
 my friends, and meet all my responsibilities, and accordingly I was 
 never called upon by any of your kin or champions. When 
 valour threatened to wax intemperate a lawyer was applied to, 
 and valoui' was told " it had better not " and obeyed. 
 
 March 1847. — (66). I have asked Mr. Clerk to order the law officers to 
 prosecute the Bombay Times for a villanous article; if he won't or can't, 
 the libellous article shall go to Hobhouse, or Hardinge. As to Jacob, he 
 has certainly abused mo, yet that may have been temper of the moment ; 
 he thinks Outram tne first of military men, and says he may indeed be 
 inferior to the duke, but far beyond Napoleon ! — Vol. iv. 45. 
 
 March 1847. — (67). The .arrival of Nusseer Khan's body, backed by all 
 the eff(>rts of the Bombay Times, did not create the least sensation among 
 the people of Scinde, which was the object of the whole manceuvre. — 
 Yol. iv. 45. 
 
 I have no idea what the article referred to was. But why 
 always apply to the Governor to prosecute ? ^Mr. C lerk could do 
 nothing excepting in form of law : Sir Charles could have gone 
 into the Supreme Court without his assistance. The Governor 
 
51 
 
 could only consult the advocate-general, who doubtless would 
 have told him that there was no ground for an action. I was 
 in England from July till December, 1845, quite within the 
 reach of the law, and open to meet a prosecution. This fact, 
 with my place of residence, was known to you from the replies 
 to your attacks on me published in the newspapers, which 
 were first taken up by you when you knew I had left for India. 
 The English publishers of the Bombay Times, Messrs. Smith, 
 Elder, and Co., at all times liable for anything actionable ap- 
 pearing in that journal, were always at hand. These constant 
 confessions of a desire to "thrash" or to prosecute a journalist 
 whose only fault was that he discussed public questions honestly, 
 fearlessly, and on information so exact as to be believed by you 
 and Sir Charles, to proceed from authority, are surely sad 
 acknowledgments of imbecility. 
 
 January, 1849. — (68). I am told that Buist is the correspondent of the 
 Times, and gets £500 a-year. — Vol, iv. 144, 
 
 I do not believe Sir Charles was ever told anything of the sort. 
 From 1840, the Times, the Morning Chronicle, the Morning 
 Herald, and the Morning Post, had all correspondents in Bombay, 
 and they were all perfectly well known. As they did not give 
 their names to the world, I have no right to reveal them. I 
 never was "correspondent of the Times f' that journal, since I 
 went to Bombay, has had five or six correspondents in succes- 
 sion, all men of accomplishment and ability, save one, whose 
 services were dispensed with, and he was assisted by one of 
 the ablest writers in India, but not a resident at the presidency. 
 
 January, 1851.— (69), "Men of the 78th," he said, "I have not had 
 the pleasure of seeing you since you suffered so fearfully at Sukkur, and 
 consequently have not had an opportunity of telling you publicly and to your 
 faces, that an' infamous falsehood was propagated, respecting your march to 
 Sukkur by the lying papers of India, They stated that I ordered you to 
 march to Sukkur at the most unhealthy season of the year ! That was an 
 infamous lie, men of the 78th ! " The observations of the gallant veteran had 
 by this time excited the deepest interest and attention on the part of all the 
 officers present, and they crowded thickly around him. Observing this,, he 
 said, " Stand back, gentlemen, stand back, and let the band hear what I have 
 to say," Then continuing, " I marched you at a healthy season of the year, 
 and when attacked by the fever you were in barracks. The proof of this is, 
 that the European artillery, who did not quit their barracks, who never 
 marched at all, who had been two years stationed at Bombay, these European 
 artillery men 1 say, were more unhealthy than you were. 
 
 " Men of the 78th Highlanders ! I tell you men, I tell you on your parade." 
 — here the general threw his hands together with a most expressive gesture — 
 " I tell you that this vile story of the march is an infamous, a damnable, a 
 worse than damnable lie ! And I wish and request you all to tell your com- 
 
 n I 
 
52 
 
 rades what I say. I saw you embark at Sukkur, and the state you were then 
 in was enough to break any soldier's heart ; but the low lying papers of India 
 
 never broke my heart — they never will, and they may go to ! " — ^Vol. iv. 
 
 313. 
 
 I have fally replied to all this already (see page 34), and I give 
 the preceding quotation to show with what emphasis the victor of 
 Meeanee could state what he knew to be untrue. Sir Charles says 
 here that he marched them at the healthy season of the year, 
 and when attacked by fever they were in barracks. He has 
 stated that the sickly season (vol. iii. 204) is in September and 
 the first half of October, but that the 78th remained in excellent 
 health imtil the 1st November. I have sho-^n from official 
 documents that must have been in his hands that the troops 
 were marched from Kurrachee on the 20th of August, 1844 ; 
 that they were exposed on the river at the season he knew to be 
 most deadly ; that they reached barracks in September, when a 
 third of them were immediately attacked, a large number ha\ing 
 been taken ill on the way. I leave the world to determine 
 who it was that indulged in the "damnable falsehoods" here 
 ascribed to the Bombay Times. You were not perhaps aware 
 that the Manockjee Limjee, who gave the native entei-tainment, 
 was a proprietor of the Bombay Times, and at the time I was 
 most severe on Sir Charles, one of the committee of manage- 
 ment. 
 
 July, 1851. — r70). "All Bombay knew "VVilloughby was a proprietor of 
 the Bombay Times : there can be neither doubt nor proof of it. Many times 
 I was told that Buist attended Willoughby's house daily for orders, and for 
 Willoughby's own articles : all Bombay said so, and his brother-ui4aw, Dr. 
 Kennedy, was certainly a proprietor, and a frequent contributor. I do not 
 think they dare deny this." — Yol. iv. 332. 
 
 Sir Charles has by this time forgotten that he had before 
 described Kennedy as his friend (page 44), and made him the 
 medium of communicating with me on the Emaum Ghaur 
 affair. As may be seen from the list aheady given (page 21), 
 Dr. Kennedy never was a proprietor of the Bombay Times. By 
 the passenger list it vdll be seen that he left India in April, 
 1843, nearly a twelvemonth before the Napier discussion began ; 
 Sir Charles not having been known as the author of the con- 
 quest, or as being more than the instrument of the Governor- 
 general in the matter, until the appearance of the second Blue 
 Book in April, 1844. As already stated, Mr. Willoughby never 
 wrote a line for the Bombay Times. I never waited at his house 
 or office on any single occasion to receive his wishes, and 
 recognised the control of no one whatever over what appeared 
 
53 
 
 in the journal which I have now for seventeen years conducted. 
 Any one acquainted with the topography of Bombay, would see 
 the perfect absurdity of the imputation against me. From 1842 
 to April, 1845, I was in charge of the government observatory, 
 nearly three miles from the places referred to, which were not 
 even on my way to office. I was from May, 1845, in Europe, 
 until February, 1846, when I took up my abode six miles from 
 the secretariat, for the sake of being able to bring into existence 
 a reformatory school of industry, a task of infinite labour, but 
 so entirely successful that two native gentlemen have just sub- 
 scribed betAveen them £5,000 for its support. I venture to say 
 that no human being in Bombay, or out of it, ever dreamt of 
 making an assertion so perfectly absurd as that quoted by Sir 
 Charles Napier. 
 
54 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 I have confined myself to the misstatements with which I 
 am personally concerned ; they form a ver^^ small proportion, 
 indeed, of those your work contains. I know of no book in 
 modern times that so abounds mth the most pitiable prevarica- 
 tions as that which is the joint production of t^vo heutenant- 
 generals in the Queen's senice, and of which one colonel of the 
 22nd is the author, and a previous one the subject. 
 
 In the preceding analysis I have pointed out some hundred 
 misstatements, many of them made in the clear and distinct 
 knowledge of how the circumstances you have misrepresented 
 actually stood; in reference to all of them the means of enlighten- 
 ment were within easy reach of you. The only apolog}' that can 
 be offered where your guilt assumes its mildest form was, that 
 you asserted at haphazard slanderous statements you had no 
 reason Avhatever to believe true, much to suj^pose the opposite, 
 which have been shown to be ^^dthout the shadow of foundation, 
 and which you took no pains to investigate. 
 
 Was it quite worthy of the dignity of history in the memoir 
 of one " who never tarnished his name by shameful deed ; of 
 one who subdued distant nations by his valour, and governed 
 them so msely that English rule was reverenced and loved, 
 where it had been before feared and execrated," (seepreface,vol.i.) 
 to make it subject of discussion where an indi^-idual so humble 
 as myself, represented by you as something worse than humble, 
 dined ? who were his friends and associates, what his sapngs 
 at table, what his occupations in life, what his antecedents"? — 
 even if better informed on matters so little momentous and so 
 fearfully ^^dde of any subject under discussion, than you appeal* 
 to have been. 
 
 My only fault, even on your ovm shoeing, was that in faithfidly 
 and fearlessly discharging the duties of a profession which has 
 in England earned for those connected ^^ith it the designation 
 of the " fourth estate," and which, at times, shows itself too 
 powerful for the other three, I censm-ed from the first, and long 
 before I dreamt who was its author, a line of policy all men now 
 concur in condemning, and which, from the elaborateness vrith 
 which from the outset he endeavours to excuse it. Sir Chai'les 
 obviously felt from the outset to be i^Tong. Though it was so, 
 that everv line "VNTitten in condemnation of the measures in 
 
1843, of wbicli 1 long believed your brother the executor only, 
 emanated from a single pen, you had no means of knowing that 
 that was mine, and no right to attack me by name, as you have 
 done, apart from the journal I conducted. It was with the 
 Bombay Times, and the Bombay Times alone you had to deal, and 
 when its assertions or its arguments were under consideration, 
 common usage, as well as decency, forbade all allusion to the 
 writer, real or supposed. From your having followed the course 
 you have done, I am left to assume that my facts and reasonings 
 having proved unassailable, you have endeavoured to avenge 
 yourselves upon me by personality ; threats of broomsticks and 
 lawsuits, slander and abuse, were the weapons you resorted to, 
 when no others were available. At the time Sir Charles conr- 
 plains of the want of a power of attorney to enable him to 
 prosecute me (page 42, July 1845), you and he both knew that 
 I was in London, and within your reach without the necessity 
 of any intervening authority. 
 
 I have said you have been unfortunate in the date of the 
 appearance of your late work ; the misfortune is confined to 
 the writer and his hero ; at no time could it have been placed 
 before the public at large with more hope of advantage to the 
 nation. 
 
 We have just been discussing the privileges of the press, 
 distinguished in the present age by the amount and variety of 
 talent it employs, the loftiness of its views and purity of its 
 tone, and the service it renders to the state, and considering the 
 propriety of permitting junior officers to reflect in print on the 
 conduct of their seniors. It has just been shown, that in a 
 country such as ours, the most perfect freedom of intercourse 
 between public servants and the press, in so far as this is not 
 directly injurious to the service, is of the greatest possible 
 importance to the welfare of the commonwealth, and this is now 
 demanded by the sovereign people, whom the civil service as 
 well as the army must obey. Your brother furnishes an 
 example of a man who was all his life engaged in abusing his 
 superiors, whose work on the Ionian Islands is one of the 
 most scurrilous in print, but who the moment the mildest 
 censures of his public conduct appear, turns round upon his 
 censurers with the foulest abuse, resorts to a court of law, and 
 threatens personal violence. The world, in want of other 
 information, might infer from your book, that Colonel Outram, — 
 in mildly defending himself in 1846, against a series of attacks 
 made by yourself and your late brother, commencing in July, 
 1843, with an arrogant and unwarrantable demand on your 
 
56 
 
 l^art upon him to come foi^u'ard and contradict statements I 
 had, -without his knowledge, but on the best authorit}^ made 
 regarding his sendees, — had stepped out of his way to attack 
 his superiors. It was you who were the assailants, — vou who 
 endeavoured to prevent both sides of the question h'om being 
 placed before the public, — you who wished to deny an injured 
 man the privilege of self-defence against the most gratuitous, 
 most unwarrantable and insolent of assaults ; and you, who, 
 when you failed in compelling silence, cried out that the course 
 of discipline and interests of subordination were beinginjm'edl 
 It may consist A^-ith a Napier's ideas of heroism, that a man 
 who has been unjustifiably assailed, shall have his hands tied 
 the moment he attempts to lift them in his defence ; it is not 
 in accordance certainly "\rith an Englishman's notions of fair 
 play. 
 
 England understands better than she did in 1843 the value of 
 services, of counsel, and of enlightenment, such as was then 
 afforded by Colonel Outram. The Secretaiw-at-Wai* states 
 that the officer should be stripped of his commission who 
 maligns the general j ust entering on a great enteii:>rise. You now 
 fall, as your brother formerly fell, under tlie categoiy of those 
 just pronounced by Lord Panmure worthy of removal from the 
 amiy. I cannot, I confess, concur in the opinion expressed by 
 that nobleman, that it can be at any time " inconvenient to 
 inquire into misstatements" made by officers in reference to each 
 other ; nothing, as it seems to me, can be so inconvenient to 
 the public seiwice, or injm-ious to the chai'acter of the army, a- 
 to suffer men com-icted of habitual prevarication to remain in 
 the emplo^'ment of the state. "Conduct unbecoming the character 
 of an officer and a gentleman," was wont to be deemed woilliy 
 of dismissal. If falsehood is hereafter to be deemed venial, 
 would it not be better to repeal a rule tliat has become obso- 
 lete, than to permit it to remain on the militaiw code, treated a- 
 a dead letter, provided only the man who most violates it 
 occupies the position m which it should have been most 
 strictly obseiTed ? 
 
 At the time when the idea of a double government for India 
 is fast becoming insupportable to the people, and a direct and 
 intelligible responsibility to pai'himient is being demiUided 
 with an emphasis tliat \\ill not much longer be ^^-ith^tood. you 
 have shown us that it is not with a double, but with a quadruple 
 government we have to deal. We require but to read the Blue 
 Books of 1842, 1843, 1844, and compare them witli the journal 
 and letters of your brother, con-esponding in dates with the 
 
57 
 
 despatches of the Governor -general, to find that the two 
 are diametrically opposed to each other — that while Lord 
 EUenborough had determined on peace, Sir Charles Napier 
 was resolved on conquest; that at a time supreme authority 
 specially desired to avoid extension of territory, pronounced it 
 an insanity to dream of pushing our frontier beyond the Indus, 
 the fragment desired to be estranged from the Ameers, being 
 intended for the chief of Bhawulpure — a subordinate had 
 determined that within the year, Scinde from side to side, end 
 to end, should be British ground, and that subordinate, by 
 withholding the information it was his first duty to have for- 
 warded to his chief, accomplished the ends he desired — ends 
 which the Governor-general had forbidden, and which England 
 ever since has blushed for and deplored. Up to this date (1843) 
 the object of the Governor-general was, according to his own 
 showing, the pacification of Scinde ; and, so anxious was he that 
 nothing should be done to irritate, that he had intimated his 
 desire to abandon all idea of tribute, and accept the cession of 
 a moderate amount of territory instead. He was anxious not 
 so much as to push the supplies of firewood for our own 
 steamers to an extent that might annoy, When your brother 
 threatened to press so severely on the Ameers as to drive them 
 into violence. Lord EUenborough authorised the terms of the 
 treaty to be altered. Your brother, so early as October, 1842, 
 in defiance of all the positions laid down by supreme authority, 
 intimates his purpose of conquering the country within the 
 year ; and, with an infatuation, and an ignorance of the people 
 wholly without example, ordered the Bengal troops to ascend 
 the Sutlej to Ferozopore, and H.M. 41st to embark for Europe, 
 when he himself was on his march to Hydrabad, with less 
 than 3,000 men under his command, with the object now con- 
 fessed of deposing the Ameers, and securing their dominions 
 — the extinction of a dynasty, and annexation of a kingdom, 
 which, according to your account, had 50,000 armed men in 
 the field eager for the fray, being expected to be accomplished 
 without a battle ! 
 
 According to the best information, as yet within our reach, 
 the present deplorable mutinies have mainly been occasioned by 
 our late nunerous annexations. The first and most scandalous 
 of all was that of Scinde, of which the conquest of the Punjaub 
 was the natural and necessary consequence. The whole of 
 your book, from first to last, abounds with the strongest recom- 
 mendations to the British government to seize, with or without 
 an excuse, every native state within the limits of Hindostan. 
 
58 
 
 Your brother loses uo opportunity of denouncing the imbeciUty 
 which suffers a native prince to reign, and the book containing 
 these recommendations of wholesale plimder, with haK a million 
 of square miles vet to annex, and 400,000 native troops to 
 defend them, makes its appearance at a time when we find we 
 have pushed annexation so far, that the pohcy you desire to see 
 extended already imjDerils the empire. 
 
 In your attempts to excuse the blundeiing of the despatch of 
 H.M. 78th from Kurrachee in the end of August, 1844, so that 
 they must unnecessarily have been exposed to the most malari- 
 ous portion of the atmosphere of Scinde, which youi' brother 
 correctly states to be within ten miles of the river, at a season 
 which he with equal truth mentions as the most deadly, you 
 have afforded us another gleam of hght which the world at the 
 present jiuicture vnH be glad to take advantage. Lord EUen- 
 borough, in permitting the commencement of the wai', much 
 more in promulgating the sentence of annexation, without the 
 cognizance or sanction of the home authorities, had -violated a 
 whole series of Acts of Parliament. The creation of a new 
 governorship A\ithout authority, was as illegal as the invasion 
 or the conquest, and ought to have been visited by the instant 
 recal of both the culprits. Your brother was mstalled in a 
 new office, which had, against all law, been pui'iDosely created 
 for him, of which the powers and pri^ileges could not be 
 defined. He was thus, in a fit of caprice, in the face of his own 
 avowed information on the subject, in defiance of all warning, 
 enabled to plunge a EurojDean regiment into a sea of malaria 
 so fatal, that the fragments that remained when they reached 
 the shore, were only fit for the hospital. The despotic 
 authority with which he had been so illeg-ally and unwisely 
 entrusted, might be exercised T\ithout the advice of any one, 
 or any fear of responsibility, in any way he pleased. The 
 details, as well as the results, are now before us. And all this 
 occurs, it seems, under a system of rules, restrictions, refer- 
 ences and records, — a machinery and combinations so complex 
 and cumbrous, that progTess in the right dkection becomes 
 almost impossible — unlimited as is the velocity -vrith which we 
 may rush on in wi'ong-doing. Well may Manchester ask, — 
 "Who governs India?' and pause till Lancashu'e is as desolate 
 as tlie sandy plains of Scinde before recei^Tllg a reply. 
 
 Matters seem in no way to have improved since 1843. We ai'e 
 just concluding a war with Persia, which those best acquainted 
 ^vith. the subject and tlie country — Sir Henry Rawlinson amongst 
 others — shows us ought never to have been begun, and have 
 
59 
 
 given up by treaty the point which involved us in the war, — 
 the sanctuary of the British residency. We have ordered our 
 armies to remain behind at a season and position where they 
 can be of no use, and may be decimated by disease. It is only 
 by the braving of responsibilities that Sir James Outram has 
 sent back the European troops to India just in time to relieve 
 the difficulties your brother's policy as conqueror of Scinde, 
 and neglect as commander-in-chief, to abolish high-caste enlist- 
 ments and seniority promotions, tended to create. India has 
 to pay a couple of millions for the solution of a question in 
 which she never was consulted, in which she has no interest 
 whatever, or if any, an interest on the side of peace, — and this 
 at a time when a deficiency of two millions is increased by a 
 loss of at least two millions more occasioned by the mutiny, — 
 a seventh being thus added in a single season to her debts. In 
 1856, we send an Admiral to command the naval portion of the 
 Persian expedition, in the teeth of an express and positive order 
 of the Court of Directors, not seven years old, that he, as Super- 
 intendent of the Indian navy, should on no account, and under 
 no pretext whatever, quit the presidency, and whose first exploit 
 is to ground his fleet, and to fire so high as to keep our own 
 troops from advancing on the fort they meant to take, winding 
 up by firing on a friendly tribe. And all this is done in the 
 recollection, fully recalled as a warning, that it was a Commo- 
 dore in the royal navy who brought on the Burmese war, by 
 seizing, without occasion, and in defiance of the Governor- 
 general, a Burmese royal ship that was not in his way, and 
 just as another royal navy Admiral gives us the war in China. 
 Confusion worse confounded than this seems impossible ; of 
 course, as in the case of H.M. 78th, no one was responsible, 
 and the same round of folly will follow, with no one to blame. 
 
 It is now for the first time that all these facts are fully 
 brought before us by the publication of your brother's letters. 
 Hitherto the belief has been that the conflict which Sir Charles 
 Napier professed himself anxious to avoid, was the result of the 
 indiscreet violence with which the ratification of the treaties of 
 1843 was urged by him. It now appears from your book that 
 the treaties were in your brother's eyes delusions, their ratifi- 
 cation or their refusal matters of non- account. He wanted 
 Scinde, the whole of Scinde, and nothing but Scinde, and its 
 prize money ; and supposed that to a measure so moderate no 
 resistance would be offered by its rulers or its people ! 
 
 Peace or war, robbery or abstinence from plunder in India, 
 are, as it will thus be seen, occasionally not only beyond the 
 
60 
 
 control of the India house, India board, and Governor- 
 general, but may sometimes be in the hands of one who, both 
 as strategist and politician, sets at defiance every rule of com- 
 mon sense and common honesty. These are, indeed, momen- 
 tous revelations, and they come before the world at a most 
 momentous crisis. The £6,000,000 sterling the swamps and 
 sands of the Indus have since 1844 absorbed, doubled by the 
 amount of interest since then accruing on it, is exactly the 
 sum required for the redemption of the dividends, and the 
 rescue of India from that position of extreme insecurity she at 
 present occupies. The sum would have given us just two 
 thousand miles of railway, anticipated the wants of Lancashire, 
 diminished the drain on Europe for specie, and rendered a 
 mutiny impossible. 
 
 Lord EUenborough, carried away by the glare of triumph 
 and shouts of victory, having sanctioned that which he had most 
 positively forbidden, proceeded next, in violation of successive 
 acts of parliament, to add to our dominions (proclamation, 5th 
 March 1843] without the reference to England he was bound by 
 the oaths of office and acts of parliament to make — a province 
 wiiich he described to be "fertile as Eg-j-j^t," and which speedily 
 proved as sicldy as Sierra Leone. You thus once more show 
 us, that besides having to deal with, or endeavour to compre- 
 hend the mysterious doings of the India House, or Board of 
 Control, we may occasionally have a Governor-general acting 
 in defiance of both, rewarded by the sovereign lor doing that 
 which his ministerial superior condemns, with an adven- 
 turous and needy general officer, defying supreme authority, 
 reversing the policy we jDrofess to have prescribed for our- 
 selves, rewarded by a magnificent fortune and the thanks of 
 parliament for that which should have occasioned his dismissal. 
 
 The world which, by common consent, had on the grounds 
 of his gallantry as a soldier, and force as a writer, agreed to 
 rank Sir Charles Napier amongst its heroes, must lament the 
 dispulsion of the delusion you have accomplished, and sorrow 
 over the ship^Teck a brother has made of a brother's name. 
 ^\Tiile no one dreams of interfering -^ith the laurels won at 
 Meeanee and Dubba, you have shown us that, while claiming 
 credit for an extraordinary msight mto the character of the 
 people. Sir Charles Napier ^expected to conquor Scinde without 
 a battle — that he actually sent his auxiliaries away when most 
 requiring them, and rushed into conflict with a force ten times 
 the strength of his own, ^^ithout necessity, without a resen'e.^ 
 without the means of retiring or feeding his troops, in case of 
 
61 
 
 a reverse, and when tlie fate of an army and safety of an 
 empire were made to hang ui^on the hfe of an individual. 
 
 The right to depart from all the old traditions, usages, and 
 plans on which the several administrations of the East had 
 for two centuries been conducted, was supported by claims of 
 a superhuman power that could discover by intuition what 
 others learned by long experience, and an infallibility which 
 needed neither example nor instruction. It turned out in 
 reality that the revenues of Scinde fell off from the moment it 
 came into our possession.* — that in the haphazard paroxysm of 
 violence and haste, which your brother deemed energy and 
 vigour, there was neither method nor system, plan nor purpose. 
 The present distinguished commissioner, Mr. Frere, required 
 at starting to commence with surveys and assessments — an 
 intelligible plan of raising the revenue and keeping the 
 accounts. By your brother's method of accounting you were 
 able to show a balance of some £200,000 in favour of the 
 imperial treasury, whereas in reality there was about double 
 
 * " Thrown into confusion by wai', and suddenly abandoned by the revenue 
 officials of the old government, the country was immediately subsequent to the 
 conquest parcelled out into three collectorates, and entrusted to three military 
 officers wholly untrained in revenue management. Even when constituted civil 
 administrators of areas, varying from 15,000 to 27,000 square miles each, these 
 officers were not absolved from military responsibilities or from military control. 
 As magistrates, their judicial cases were subjected to a military commission. The 
 police, in lieu of being placed in subordinate co-operation with the magistrates, 
 were a recognised check on him, and were frequently in direct and open 
 antagonism with his proceedings. Nor was it until a revision of salaries and 
 establishments was carried out in the years 1852-53 that regular and permanent 
 revenue establishments were entertained. At that period many of the native 
 employes were still only temporarily engaged, and were remunerated in grain. 
 No adequate fiscal offices had been erected. No proper or uniform system of 
 accounts had been introduced. The record of demands and realizations was 
 very imperfect. No regular district accounts were kept. No registry of, or 
 investigation into, the proprietary rights in the soil had been commenced. All 
 hereditary village offices, emoluments, and accounts were ignored, and not even 
 the roughest descripton of revenue survey and settlement had been attempted. 
 Added to this that a pernicious system oi forced or statute labour evei-ywhere 
 sapped the sources of wealth, and disgusted the minds of the people; that the 
 revenue was collected in grain by actual division of crop ; that this grain was 
 then sold by reserved auction at artificially high and sometimes even ?ii famine 
 prices hy the government as the great grain dealers of the country : that the 
 natural condition of the market, thus directly interfered with by government, 
 was yet farther forced by the circumstance of the commissariat drawing the 
 grain required for the troops at nominal prices from the government grain 
 stores, and it will not be difficult to understand the fiscal and financial condi- 
 tion of Sindh prior to the revision of its administration in 1852." — Homeioard 
 Mail. 
 
62 
 
 this sum against it ; the system pursued being .that which has 
 of late found favom^ with the Tipperaiy and Eoyal British 
 Banks. If others have reheved you of the task of demonstrating 
 the advent of results so unhappy as these I have adverted to, 
 you have shown that under the circiniistances of the case they 
 were inevitable. You have proved to us that Sn Charles, in 
 place of being able to master at a glance the mysteries of 
 Oriental financialship and diplomacy, could never throughout 
 the whole of his career contrive to comprehend the simple and 
 familiar foims on which the business of the government he 
 sei-^-ed was conducted. From not kno^^ing the rules of the 
 road your brother was perpetuall}' getting run mto by those 
 Avho did, and misconstruing accidental colhsion, for which he 
 was to blame, into intentional insult, to the fearful impediment 
 of public business and the destruction of all haimonious pro- 
 ceeding. 
 
 The world is so greatly obliged to you for the expositions on 
 these i)oints you have given us, just when they were most 
 required, that your other errors will perhaps be forgiven you. 
 Your misstatements have at length become so monstrous as to 
 deprive them of the powers of e^il they might have possessed 
 if less incredible. The demonstrations you have supplied that 
 the control England believes to be exercised over India is a 
 delusion and a snare, and that yom* brother's claims on fame 
 were based on the boldness with which a daring, needy, and 
 unscrupulous soldier defied the government he seiwed, when 
 bent upon the replenishment of an empty purse, are at the 
 present juncture invaluable to us. 
 
 Your obedient sen^ant, 
 
 GEOEGE BUIST. 
 
 7, Sussex Place, 
 New Kensington, August, 1857,