of that the Brahmins were
its original authors. Sir John Kaye, in his "History of the Sepoy War,"
at the end of book iii., c. iii., prints the following note, as
furnished to him by Mr. E.A. Reade, a gentleman of long experience in
India: "I do not think I ever met one man in a hundred that did not give
the Mohammedans credit for this prediction. I fully believe that the
notion of change after a century of tenure was general, and I can
testify, with others, to have heard of the prediction at least a quarter
of a century previously. But, call it a prediction or a superstition,
the credit of it must, I think, be given to the Hindoos. If we take the
Hejira calendar, 1757 A.D. corresponds with 1171 Hejira; 1857 A.D. with
1274 Hejira; whereas, by the lunisolar year of the Sumbut, 1757 is 1814
Sumhut, and 1857 is 1914 Sumbut."]

[Footnote 297: It is worthy of remark that, as early as 1829, the Earl
of Ellenborough, then President of the Board of Control, had come to the
conclusion that the Company was no longer competent to govern so vast a
dominion as that of British India had gradually become. In his Diary,
recently published (ii., 131), he expresses his firm conviction that,
"in substituting the King's government for that of the Company, we shall
be conferring a great benefit on India, and effecting the measure which
is most likely to retain for England the possession of India;" and from
the same work (ii., 61) we learn that Mr. Mountstuart Elphinstone, one
of the ablest servants of whom the Company could boast, and who had
recently been Governor of Bombay, even while confessing himself
prejudiced in favor "of the existing system, under which he had been
educated and lived," admitted that "the administration of the government
in the King's name would be agreeable to the civil and military
services, and to people in England. He doubted whether, as regarded the
princes of India, it would signify much, as they now pretty well
understood us." See also _ibid_., p. 414.]

[Footnote 298: 318 to 173.]

[Footnote 299: The whole bill is given in the "Annual Register" for the
year 1858, p. 226.]

[Footnote 300: See her letter to Lord Derby on the subject, given in the
"Life of the Prince Consort," iv., 308; _confer_ also a memorandum of
the Prince Consort, _ibid._, p. 310.]

[Footnote 301: _Ibid._, p. 106.]

[Footnote 302: It should be remarked that the arrangement originally
carried out awoke among the European troops of the