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Observations on the Disturbances in the Madras Army in 1809
Observations on the Disturbances in the Madras Army in 1809 Author:John Malcolm 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: POSTSCRIPT. After I had written these observations on the late disturbances at Madras, I perused a very able and ingenious article in the ninth number of the ... more »Quarterly Review, upon that subject. The first part of that article explains the progress of the violent proceedings of the Company's officers engaged in those disturbances, and enters into very full discussions to prove and establish the fact of their guilt. In almost all this part my sentiments differ little from those of the reviewer. I do hot, however, agree with the opinions he has stated on the case of Lieutenant-Colonel Munro. He conceives, that if Government had allowed that officer to have been tried by a court martial, it would have been a base desertion, and a sacrifice of a public servant. I trust I have shown, that although Government had a full legal right to act as they did, a contrary conduct might have been adopted without any such desertion or sacrifice, and with every prospect of advantage to the public interests. The reviewer dwells throughout the article upon the crude and violent Memorial to Lord Minto, and assumes, with great advantage to his argument, that it may be taken as a fair specimen of the sentiments of all the discontented officers at Madras. He is probably ignorant of the comparatively small number of those officers who approved of this intemperate production. He cannot, I think, be aware, that many of those whom he has blended in his general censure, merely because they were blended in the undistinguishing proscription of the Government of Fort. St. George, never saw that document till it was published. I have, in my observations on the disturbances at Madras, said little on the question of the suspension of Colonel Capper and Major Boles ; but I conceive all that the reviewer has s...« less