total subversion of British power. Our advance in
Hindostan had been rapid, the changes following on it many, and not
always such as the Oriental mind could understand or approve. Early
in the reign, in 1847, an energetic Governor-General, Lord Dalhousie,
went out to India, who introduced railways, telegraphs, and cheap
postage, set on foot a system of native education, and vigorously
fought the ancient iniquities of suttee, thuggee, and child-murder.
Perhaps his aggressive energy worked too fast, too fierily; perhaps
his peremptory reforms, not less than his high-handed annexations of
the Punjaub, Oude, and other native States, awakened suspicion in the
mind of the Hindoo, bound as he was by the immemorial fetters of
caste, and dreading with a shuddering horror innovations that might
interfere with its distinctions; for to lose caste was to be outlawed
among men and accursed in the sight of God.

[Illustration: Lord Canning.]

Lord Canning, the successor of Lord Dalhousie, entered on his
governor-generalship at a moment full of "unsuspected peril"; for the
disaffected in Hindostan had so misread the signs of the times as to
believe that England's sun was stooping towards its setting, and that
the hour had come in which a successful blow could be struck, against
the foreign domination of a people alien in faith as in blood from
Mohammedan and Buddhist and Brahmin, and apt to treat all alike with
the scorn of superiority. A trivial incident, which was held no
trifle by the distrustful Sepoys, proved to be the spark that kindled
a vast explosion. The cartridges supplied for use with the Enfield
rifle, introduced into India in 1856, were greased; and the end would
have to be bitten off when the cartridge was used. A report was
busily circulated among the troops that the grease used was cow's fat
and hog's lard, and that these substances were employed in pursuance
of a deep-laid design to deprive every soldier of his caste by
compelling him to taste these defiling things. Such compulsion would
hardly have been less odious to a Mussulman than to a Hindoo; for
swineflesh is abominable to the one, and the cow a sacred animal to
the other. Whoever devised this falsehood intended to imply a subtle
intention on the part of England to overthrow the native religions,
which it was hoped the maddened soldiery would rise to resist. The
mischief worked as was desired. In vain the obnoxious cartridges were
withdrawn from use; in vain