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    bhey aTe not unwilling to send the officers of the Army to school . They will not have men rf any "but the purchasing class , . with some receptions , of which much is made ; but as the purchasing class are not at all up to the mark in point of training and attainments , they do not object to < send men in commission to school . A minority of three in the Army Purchase Commission has expressed a dejided opinion against any change in the present system . They will not even have

    Lieutenant-Colonels selected for their proved ibilities . Selection by merit , they think , ( Fould be dangerous ! Their principal argunent however is , that ' theoretically' the arhole system is bad , and it ; is absurd to make i reform only in the case of Lieutenant-Dolonels ; so that it is better to make no eform at all . They stand by the regimental lystem , and say , look to the Staff . There is , ndeed , a residue of guilty conscience even in ; he minority , where they

    say—Whether the adoption of other reforms and amelioraions , admitted on all hands to be necessary in our military system , may in the end place the army on the efficient ind satisfactory footing expected by the country , or rhether it may still he necessary , at some future time , igain to raise the question that has been submitted to » ur examination , we do not pretend to anticipate . " 3 o even the minority of three—Mr . Edwabd BiiiiiCE , General Wtntabd , and Sir HENitY Bentinck , are haunted by that ghost , the A . bolition of Purchase ; hut put it off , they zry . And these three of the Commission are evidently in official quarters the favourites .

    But the authors of the report have been too clever not to put forward at least some pretence of reason . U The principal complaint against our military system , " they say , " has been , not of the regiments , but of the manner in which they have been directed , provided for , and handled by the staff , on service and in campaign . Purchase cannot have given grounds for that complaint , For purchase has only influenced regimental , and never staff appointments or promotion . "

    They beg off one reform on the strength of another which is already taking place . The Royal Military College at Sandhurst has been sonverted into a Staff College , in which afneers are to be trained in the mathematics , the . French , German , and Hindostanee languages ; fortification and artillery ; military drawing and survey ; reconnoissance ; military art , history , and geography ; military administration and legislation ; elements of natural philosophy , chemistry , and geology ; riding , and even writing ! Before the officer enters the college , he must show some attainments under several of these heads . Whether

    m or out of the college , the student need not make himself a proficient in all ; but he must Btudy most of them : he must make considerable progress in mathematics ; French is essential . In short , he must be master of the military science and art , abstract and applied , ethnographical and historical . Thus our Staff officers will become masters for judging the proficiency of others , will understand the handling of anilitary tools whether living * inert , and will be masters in the business of coercing classes or nations ; for such are the duties of armies .

    The college of course , should it be effectual , will tend to elevate the standard for officers in the Army generally , and may , perhaps , create a demand for enlarging the field of selection ; but the efficiency of the Army is not the only point to be kept in view . There is also a moral consideration . The service of the Army is profitable , honourable , and congenial to the disposition of men besides those who are born in the upper claaaea ; and every man in the country has a right to an equal chance in obtaining a share of the advantages . It may suit royal commissioners to put this political and social point out of view , but it is as essential as the question of military proficiency .

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    THE JBTIFOSSE TRIAL . This curious case , lately tried before a French tribunal , has ceased to have the interest attached to causes c&lebres in general . There is no doubt about the facts—no mystery about the motives of the accused . Madame Jetjfosse , annoyed by M . Gtjillot ' s prowlings about the house- —knowing him as a man who had tried to seduce a governess and had made love to her own daughtercharged her servant-man to shoot all trespassers , and by the tone of her instructions evidently meant him to shoot Guillot as he would shoot a dog . Guillot was shot , and he was left to die like a dog within a few hundred yards of the house . This was terrible retaliation for the profligate impudence of the man , but it lacks one quality of revenge—it was not ' wild justice . ' It was calmly concocted , and persistently urged upon a reluctant menial . Guillot certainly contrived to accumulate claims to contempt and hatred . He was a coarse and . confident

    sinner , boasting of shameful conquests , probably a liar , and without even the miserable merit of being a hypocrite . He had not even the grace of being a clandestine lover ; he comes more like a burglar than a thief ; he intentionally alarms the neighbourhood , and manages to hare the Jeueosse family seriously compromised . It was certainly hard on Madame . Had he been a secret seducer she might have

    hushed up the affair , but he was a wolf in wolf ' s clothing * She did not commit to the two young men , her sons , that mission of avenging honour which Frenchmen so frequently assume . Like the mistress of an ordered household , she charged her servant to do her w . , and the murder was done . French justice considers it justifiable homicide , and in this French justice merely reflects French manners .

    We must not at once denounce a sentiment so different from our own . The French retain in their social life something of the individual independence of earlier times , when every man was the guardian of his own life and honour . The duel , extinct in England , lingers in France , and has some of its old prestige . The husband who avenges the outraged honour of his bed is always acquitted by French juries . It is curious to contrast the tone of French and English society towards offended and offenders . The lover who quietly attempts the honour of a married woman is in . France

    an interesting scamp , and the illicit lovers are pitied for the misfortune of the lady being married . In England the seducer of a married woman is regarded with general loathing , and for the fallen wife there is no redemption . But let the husband avenge himself , and , strange to say , all is changed . In France , the homicide is made a hero ; in England , he is tried at the Old Bailey , and can only hope to be transported . In France , the murdered

    lover loses all popularity with his life ; in England , he obtains the sympathy we always give to the victim . W © can only account for it by supposing that Frenchmen love outlaws . Whoever takes the law into his own hands , whether it be the laws of honour , of morality , or of politics , is admired by the French . They have the respect of revolutionists for violations of law ; while Englishmen idolize law , and have a prejudice against all' prisoners at the bar . '

    To English law and practice the French verdict in this Jeufobse case would be entirely impossible . Suppose Madeleink Smith admitted that in an access of fury she poisoned her lover who had threatened to expose her , a French jury would have acquitted her , for her crime would have less guilt than the premeditated murder of Guillot by order of Madame Jhujposse . Judged by a French verdict , all the Irish agrarian

    murders are pardonable , for the murderers could possibly prove much stronger provocation than any received by the Frenchwoman . But justice , which is truth in action , is most true when it acts according to circumstances , and we must not condemn French law for a decision which merely carries into action the tone of French society . The j ury at Evreux took into consideration not only the extenuating circumstances of the immediate case , but the extenuation which the education and habits of every French family suggest .

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    BRITISH DUTY TO INDIA . The public should be on its guard against one great danger . It would be a fatal error to allow the Sepoy mutiny to create in the popular mind at home a sentiment of hostility to the Indian races . They are generally guiltless of the English blood that lias flowed in so many cities of our Eastern empire . "When the insurrection disappears , we have a work of generosity , if not of gratitude , to perform ; we have to establish , for the benefit of the people of India , an improved administration . The undertaking branches into three divisions—public works , revenue , and police . These must be separately / discussed ; at present we would refer to some points

    connected with the actual condition of the natives , and the possibility of ameliorating it . Able writers have shown that , whatever philanthropy and wisdom may attempt , it is out of the question to convert India into another England , ripe , rich , and brilliant . It may have its glory , but its brig-litest plains will never afford one ghmpse of Kent or Devonshire . When Indian agriculture is at its highest point , tlie farmer , accustomed to Yorkshire loams or Essex clays , would be disappointed . He sees a thin j > easant with a rag about his loins loitering late in June behind a pair of attenuated bullocks , which , drag an

    implement resembling a crooked stick ; the ground is a sandy waste , tlie hot wind has scorched the surface into blisters ; "but , upon the fall of a shower , the peasant goes to work ; he has no guano or bonedust , no three-horse plough , no patent machinery . Return , however , in November , and the district , is one waving mass of grain , each plant nine feet high , and each ear of corn weighing from six to eight ounces . Many a dismal sketch of India has been taken from the one phase of this landscape , uncompared with the other . We must stipulate , then , for moderation in the rhetoric of Indian

    reformers . It is not everywhere that the village has its mango grove , its tank , and its shrine ; it is not at all seasons that the summer bloom hears its promise of abundance ; hut it may be at once conceded that a cumbrous and often cruel revenue system has depressed the agricultural classes , whose necessities cry loudly for more benevolent laws . It is highly desirable that a new system of collection should , if practicable , be universally adopted , although in Bengal it involves the delicate task of abolishing the powerful order of Zemindars , the middle men , who pay a fixed assessment , and extort as much , in the shape of surplus , as they can wring out of the ryot by terror , and , in some districts , by torture . The Indian peasant has an undoubted claim to be relieved from tins extortionate dfisnotism . hfinrf . -

    less and implacable as it is . The case of the non-proprietary classes , in provinces where the Zemindary principle remains at work , is one of peculiar hardship . But where , as in Madras , their thraldom has been abolished , and where merchants , ryots , and officials form the three principal classes , the universal feeling of the poor—in spite of the torture atrocities —is in favour of the British Government , on the ground that its policy has for many years been entirely in their favour . Why not extend the operation of these beneficent reforms '? The evils in Madras are traceable rather to the police than to the revenue system ; but in the Bengal Presidency both sources of mischief

    are combined . Tlae Zemindars arc extortionate ; the peace officers incapable and cruel ; the courts inefficient ; "while the land , never completely surveyed or distributed into registered estates , is made the subject of perpetual vexation . We do not accept as authentic all the individual grievances showered from India hy men who have failed in litigation , or who have been persecuted by the Pagoda people , or have been unable to avenge themselves upon sonic arbitrary Chcristadar ; but the conspicuous and indisputable truth is this—that , taking British India generally , the securities of life and property are defective , public works have progressed partially and slowly , industry h& 3 not re-

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    No . 405 , December 26 , 185 ? . ] THE IEADEB . 1237

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 26, 1857, page 1237, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2223/page/13/