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Anglo-India, social, moral, and political
AngloIndia social moral and political Author:Unknown Author Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: they deal sparingly in those official attacks which seem so much to the taste of our author. In truth, no civil or military duties could be discharged, beneath t... more »he terrors of such an inquisition. Amongst the sketches contained in these volumes, there is a full-length one of an officer, shadowed under the name of Colonel Scovell. It is evidently taken from life, but deformed by the exaggerations with which all unpopular characters are usually delineated when they sit for their likeness to those who have been habituated, from some real or fancied grievance, to contemplate them with disgust. A sealed press, it is true, has sheltered many a Colonel Scovell; but how many, at the same time, has it sheltered, who have been most undeservedly disfigured by traits equally disgusting ? Command of all kinds is an unenviable prerogative. It places a man upon an elevation, from which he is surveyed by those below through those false and refracting lights that distort and darken every lineament and magnify every mole or speck into deformity. Every glass that is pointed towards him, presents its object through a thick incrustation of prejudice, or wounded pride, or disappointed expectation. No doubt there are Colonel Scovells in India, and if it be true that the secret-report system exists to the extent described, such beingswill continue to plague and dishonour the army. It is a system that ought not to exist at all; for it is twice cursed ;—cursing those who act upon it, and those whom it oppresses. But the encouragement of private reports from the native officers, of their European superiors, is not only a criminal violation of the regulations of the service, but the disruption of the strongest holdings of the Indian army. That subtle and mystic link, which unites the sepoy to his British c...« less