Observations on the Disturbances in the Madras Army in 1809. John Malcolm
had no share in the councils of the Commander-in-Chief, and whose act of signing and issuing the obnoxious order was therefore exclusively ministerial,) effected a complete and dangerous change in the general temper. All seemed to be actuated by the same resentment at measures which they deemed arbitrary and unjust; and many officers of the highest rank and first respectability, both in his Majesty's and the Honourable Company's service, joined in reprobating the principle upon which it was adopted. The subsequent efforts made to prevail upon Major Boles to sign an apology, and the letter circulated by the commanding officer of the forces, General Gowdie, which condemned that officer for not having acceded to this proposition, had the double effect of increasing the indignation at Government and the popularity of Major Boles, who was, after this act, deemed an honourable martyr in a cause which it was the duty of every military officer to support. Before the more moderate, and with them all those officers of his Majesty's service who had given way to their first feelings, had recovered from their error, numbers of the more violent in the Company's service were irretrievably pledged to violent and guilty proceedings, into which there is no doubt they were deluded by the force of example, and the assurance that the cause in which they were engaged was general. The first of their acts which attracted the notice of Government, was the agitation and preparation of an address to the Governor General, remonstrating against the acts of the Government of Fort St. George, and soliciting the removal of Sir George Barlow; and an address, or letter, to Major Boles, conveying to that officer a contribution for his support during what the addressers deemed his unjust suspension. The Government, in an order dated the 1st of May, 1809, suspended Captain J. Marshall and Lieutenant-Colonel Martin, on the ground of their being principally concerned in preparing the Memorial[6] (or, as it is termed in this order, "seditious paper,") addressed to the Governor General; and the same punishment was inflicted upon Lieutenant-Colonel the Honourable Arthur St. Leger, on the ground of his having promoted the circulation of the Memorial in the corps under his command. Major J. de Morgan was suspended for nearly similar reasons. Captain James Grant, commanding the body-guard of the Governor, (but then absent on service in Travancore,) had signed the address to Major Boles; and, from a feeling congenial with his candid and gallant character, he deemed concealment of this act dishonourable, nor could he reconcile to his mind the propriety of continuing to hold his appointment with the line he had pursued. He wrote, therefore, a private letter to Major Barclay, (Military Secretary to the Governor,) stating the reasons that had led him to resign the command of the body-guard, and desiring that Sir George Barlow might be informed of his motives; and he enclosed (that the information of the Governor regarding the actual state of the feeling of the army might be complete,) a copy of the letter to Major Boles. He was suspended on the ground of having signed the address to Major Boles; which document, it was stated in the order, he had forced on the attention of the Governor in Council. Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Bell, the commanding officer of the artillery, was removed from all military charge and command, on the ground (as was stated in the orders,) of his having promoted the circulation of a paper similar in substance (to that address) among the officers under his command. Lieutenant-Colonel Chalmers was removed from his immediate command, on the charge of not having reported to Government, or exerted himself to repress, the exceptionable proceedings of the officers under his orders: and Lieutenant-Colonel Cuppage was removed, on the same ground, from the staff situation of Adjutant-General, to which (though he then held a station of command in Malabar,) he had been appointed: while Captain Coombes was deprived of his staff office of Assistant-Quarter-Master-General in Mysore, on the general grounds of being concerned in these reprehensible proceedings. This order concluded by a panegyric upon the discipline and fidelity which the troops in his Majesty's service had invariably shown, and by a compliment to all those of the Company's service who had not taken a share in these reprehensible proceedings, but particularly the subsidiary force at Hyderabad, the conduct of which was stated to have been most satisfactory and exemplary.
Though the right of suspending officers from the service till the pleasure of the Court of Directors was known, is one that has been very properly vested in the local Governments of India, they possess no power which should be exercised with such extreme caution. It never can be wisely exercised in any cases but those of most clearly established guilt, where trial would either endanger the authority of Government, or expose its dignity to the highest insult and degradation; which is indeed one, and perhaps the most effectual, mode of endangering its existence. Every officer is conscious, when he enters the public service, that he subjects himself to military law, but not to arbitrary power. There are, however, (as has been shown), extreme cases, which create exceptions that interfere with his right to this jurisdiction: but when the ruling power is compelled to act contrary to usage, it is bound, in all such cases, to establish the necessity of its so acting, by an exposure both of the nature of the crime and of the proof of its having been committed[7]. The King of England may, no doubt, strike any officer's name out of his army without assigning any reason; but his adviser would incur serious responsibility; and an inferior authority exercising this great power should be still more cautious, lest the very purpose for which it was granted be perverted, by the destruction of that general confidence in the justice of their rule, upon which the power of departure (when the safety of the state absolutely requires it) from ordinary forms of law is grounded. No sense of expedience, or desire to strike terror, (by the mere display of arbitrary power,) can warrant the slightest deviation from principles so essential to preserve the temper and order of a military body under this alarming though legal departure from its usual rights and privileges.
It was a remarkable fact, relative to the orders issued on that date, that (unless in the case of Captain Grant, who had come forward to accuse himself[8] of the act for which he was punished) no proof of the guilt of any of the others was brought forward. They were, indeed, almost all suspended, removed, and disgraced, on the grounds of private information; which, supposing it true, could not, from its nature, and the resentment to which it would expose individuals, be publicly stated. The consequence was, that many of the individuals who had been thus condemned and punished without a hearing, loudly declared their innocence, and brought strong presumptive evidence to support their assertion. They were generally believed; and a sense of their particular wrongs, added to the alarm caused by the sweeping use which Government had on this occasion made of its right of suspending officers without trial, greatly aggravated the discontented, who felt an almost maddening motive to action in the immediate contemplation of the ruin and disgrace which threatened some of the most honourable and distinguished of those that had taken any share in their proceedings.
The obvious and acknowledged source of the crimes which Government had at this moment to punish, was its own act—the recent suspension of Lieutenant-Colonel Capper and Major Boles; and it ought to have been evident, that the orders of the 1st of May would aggravate, in the highest degree, the general agitation which that measure had produced; and almost every paragraph of this order would appear as if intended for that object. The thanks given in it to his Majesty's troops were no doubt merited, but invidious; and, being so, could never have been desired by that body; many of whom, though they had been led (by the operation of the principles of the distinct constitution of the army to which they belonged,) to renounce every share in the proceedings of the discontented officers in the Company's service, still participated in their feelings: but the useless irritation of this part of the order appears a trifling error when compared to that eulogium which it so unfortunately bestowed on the Hyderabad force, whose officers, however much circumstances might have prevented their coming forward, could not possibly, as a body, have a separate interest from the rest of that army to whom they were on this occasion held forth as a corps on whose fidelity Government had peculiar confidence. The operation of such praise was inevitable: the Company's officers at Hyderabad were not only exposed to the reproach of inaction in what were deemed objects of common interest, but to the accusation of being in part the cause of the ruin of some of the most popular officers of the army: for the discontented argued, that if Government had not thought it could rely on their support, it never would have had recourse to so bold and arbitrary a course of measures. Correct information regarding the temper of this force would have satisfied Government that there was no good ground for this eulogium; and the slightest reflection on the common motives of human action would have prevented its being made. The Company's officers at Hyderabad treated the praise bestowed upon them with scorn, disclaimed all right to it in an address to Government, and, abandoning that moderation which had before characterized