Service in Burma, which entailed crossing the sea, and, to the Hindu, consequent loss of caste, was especially distasteful.

So great an objection, indeed, had the sepoys to this so-called 'foreign service,' and so difficult did it become to find troops to relieve the regiments, in consequence of the bulk of the Bengal army not being available for service beyond the sea, that the Court of Directors sanctioned Lord Canning's proposal that, after the 1st September, 1856, 'no Native recruit shall be accepted who does not at the time of his enlistment undertake to serve beyond the sea whether within the territories of the Company or beyond them.' This order, though absolutely necessary, caused the greatest dissatisfaction amongst the Hindustani sepoys, who looked upon it as one of the measures introduced by the _Sirkar_ for the forcible, or rather fraudulent, conversion of all the Natives to Christianity.[6] That the long-existing discontent and growing disloyalty in our Native army might have been discovered sooner, and grappled with in a sufficiently prompt and determined manner to put a stop to the Mutiny, had the senior regimental and staff officers been younger, more energetic, and intelligent, is an opinion to which I have always been strongly inclined.

Their excessive age, due to a strict system of promotion by seniority which entailed the employment of Brigadiers of seventy, Colonels of sixty, and Captains of fifty, must necessarily have prevented them performing their military duties with the energy and activity which are more the attributes of younger men, and must have destroyed any enthusiasm about their regiments, in which there was so little hope of advancement or of individual merit being recognized.

Officers who displayed any remarkable ability were allowed to be taken away from their own corps for the more attractive and better-paid appointments appertaining to civil employ or the Irregular service.

It was, therefore, the object of every ambitious and capable young officer to secure one of these appointments, and escape as soon as possible from a service in which ability and professional zeal counted for nothing.[7] So far as I understand the causes which led to the rebellion of 1857, I have now answered the question, 'What brought about the Mutiny ?' The reply to the second question, 'Is there any chance of a similar rising occurring again ?' must be left to another chapter.
[Footnote 1: In this matter it seems to me that Lord Dalhousie's policy has been unfairly criticized.