uring, trading, and commercial industry that provided them
with the comforts, conveniences, and elegancies of life while they
were in a higher grade of service is in its turn thrown out of
employment; and the whole frame of society becomes, for a time,
deranged by the local diminution in the demand _for the services of
men and the produce of their industry_.

I say we do the soldiers' work with one-tenth of the numbers that
were formerly required for it. I will mention an anecdote to
illustrate this. In the year 1816 I was marching with my regiment
from the Nepal frontier, after the war, to Allahabad. We encamped
about four miles from a mud fort in the kingdom of Oudh, and heard
the guns of the Amil, or chief of the district, playing all day upon
this fort, from which his batteries were removed at least two miles.
He had three regiments of infantry, a corps or two of cavalry, and a
good park of artillery; while the garrison consisted of only about
two hundred stout Rajput landholders and cultivators, or yeomen. In
the evening, just as we had sat down to dinner, a messenger came to
the commanding officer, Colonel Gregory, who was a member of the
mess, from the said Amil, and begged permission to deliver his
message in private. I, as the senior staff officer, was requested to
hear what he had to say.

'What do you require from the commanding officer?'

'I require the loan of the regiment.'

'I know the commanding officer will not let you have the regiment.'

'If the Amil cannot get more, he will be glad to get two companies;
and I have brought with me this bag of gold, containing some two or
three hundred gold mohurs.'

I delivered the message to Colonel Gregory, before all the officers,
who desired me to say that he could not spare a single man, as he had
no authority to assist the Amil, and was merely marching through the
country to his destination, I did so. The man urged me to beg the
commanding officer, if he could do no more, merely to halt the next
day where he was, and lend the Amil the use of one of his drummers.

'And what will you do with him?'

'Why, just before daylight, we will take him down near one of the
gates of the fort, and make him beat his drum as hard as he can; and
the people within, thinking the whole regiment is upon them, will
make out as fast as possible at the opposite gate.'

'And the bag of gold--what is to become of that?'

'You and the old gentleman can divide it between you, a