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Editor Preface to the Cabinet Edition

In offering this volume to the public I take the opportunity of stating that I have re-read and re-examined all the documents and authorities on which the first edition was based; and that, while I have found it impossible to change the opinions then recorded with respect to any one phase of the history or any one individual therein mentioned I have re-written many passages which seemed obscure, and have added notes on all points, the meaning of which might be misinterpreted. If I may judge from the criticisms which appeared on the previous editions, there were but two matters on which any difference of opinion really existed. The first of these differences related to the case of Mr. William Tayler of Patna; the other to Lieutenant-General Lionel Showers. The second of these I have treated alike in the text and in the Appendix. The first needs some further remark here.

The treatment in this edition of the occurrences of 1857 in the Bihar division of which Patna was the capital and Mr. William Tayler the Commissioner, stands precisely as it did in the first edition. When I first wrote on this subject in the year of the Mutiny, in a work which obtained honourable mention as “The Red Pamphlet,” not only did I not know Mr. Tayler, but I had felt a strong prejudice against him, based upon his reputation as a caricaturist. In the presence, however, of facts which I witnessed on the spot, all my prejudices disappeared, and when I wrote of him, still not knowing him, I strove to render him the justice which his splendid conduct under most trying circumstances seemed to me to deserve.

Called upon, twenty years later, to complete the work which

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Sir John Kaye had left unfinished, I again approached the subject with a mind absolutely unbiased. I had never looked forward to the prospect of writing a History of the Mutiny, and I had not concerned myself with Mr. Tayler’s case since the days of the “Red Pamphlet.” I determined then to study the subject de novo, and to record only such facts as would stand the test of the most minute inquiry. Had I been capable of being biased by my interests, I should not have inclined towards Mr. Tayler, for while he, comparatively poor, and possessing few influential friends, sat in the cold shade of the displeasure of the ruling powers, his opponent, Sir Frederick Halliday, basked in the warm sunshine of a seat in the Indian Council. But I thought only of finding out the truth, and of submitting the results of my investigations to my fellow-countrymen. The end of it was that my investigations confirmed the impressions which had been made upon me and upon all the independent minds of Calcutta and Bihar in 1857. I had the satisfaction also of knowing that the same process had led minds such as those of Sir Herbert Edwardes, Sir John Low, Sir Vincent Eyre, Sir Henry Havelock, and most of the chief actors in the Mutiny, to the same conclusion; that Sir John Kaye, with all the resources of the India Office at his disposal, had recorded a similar verdict. Subsequently other gentlemen who approached the subject from a different standpoint – Mr. T. R. E. Holmes on the one side, and Captain Lionel Trotter on the other – equally resolved to search out the truth and to record it, were impelled to the same conviction. The evidence, in fact, is overwhelming; it has never been met; it is incontrovertible.

Ten years have elapsed since the volume containing my deliberate conclusions on the Tayler–Halliday question was published. Those conclusions were not questioned by a single critic. It soon appeared, in fact, that the minds of the thinking portion of the people of England had previously arrived at the conclusion that a great miscarriage of justice had occurred. My book was the spark which kindled that feeling into action; for, shortly afterwards, several members of the House of Commons, representing a very much larger body of men outside, petitioned the Government for an inquiry into the circumstances connected with the removal of Mr. Tayler from the office which he had held with such enormous advantages to the country. Amongst those who signed that petition was the present Under Secretary to the India Office, Sir John Gorst.

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But, although, as I have said, ten years have elapsed, no inquiry has been allowed. The Government of the day, whichever side was in power, has always shirked the question. When, in the course of last year, Sir Roper Lethbridge and Sir Henry Havelock did ask for an inquiry, their demand was at once met by putting forward a side-issue, and by successfully persuading the House of Commons that this side-issue was the main issue. The arguments for the main issue, ably put by the gentlemen whose names I have mentioned, were left absolutely unanswered. They were not even referred to. The action of Sir John Gorst on this occasion reminded me of the action of a certain Counsel for the Crown, who, desiring to move the court against the pardon of a man who had been wrongfully transported for life, remarked, that whatever might be the merits of the case on which the man had been transported, it could not be denied that when he was a boy he had stolen an apple!

There can be no stronger testimony to the soundness of Mr. Tayler’s case than the persistency with which Officialdom has always declined and still declines to meet it fairly.

Apart from this case and from the solitary objection of General Showers to the “merciful silence” with which I treated him in previous editions, there is no criticism which calls for remark. In many places the additions I have made are tantamount to a re-writing; I have endeavoured, in fact, as far as possible, to make the work complete. Conscious of the spirit in which it has been written, and the long labour freely given, I would fain hope that this volume, its predecessors, and its successors may find a permanent place on the shelves of those who are desirous of possessing a true record of the events of the great Indian Mutiny.

G. B. Malleson

27, West Cromwell Road,

February 14, 1889

This collection transcribed by Chris Gage
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