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Who then, again I ask–who are those that, after seven months’ watching of the revolt, appeared, by any plausible construction of events, to have been the primal movers in this hideous convulsion? Individual opinions on this question, and such as could plead a weight of authority in regard to experience, to local advantages for conjecture, and to official opportunities for overlooking intercepted letters, there have been many; and at first (say from May 10 to the end of June), in the absence of any strong counter-arguments, some of these were entitled to the full benefit of their personal weight (such weight, I mean, as could be drawn from the position or from the known character of him who announced the opinion). But now–namely, on the 15th of December (or, looking to India, say the 10th of November)–we are entitled to something weightier. And what is there which generally would be held weightier? First, there are the confessions of dying criminals;–I mean, that, logically, we must reserve such a head, as likely to offer itself sooner or later. Tempers vary as to obduracy, and circumstances vary. All men will not share in the obstinacy of partisan pride; or not, by many degrees, equally. And again, some amongst the many thousands who leave families will have favours to ask. They all know secretly the perfect trustworthiness of the British Government. And when matters have come to a case of choice between a wife and children, in the one scale, and a fraternity consciously criminal, in the other, it may be judged which is likely to prevail. What through the coercion of mere circumstances–what through the entreaties of wife and children, co-operating with such circumstances–or sometimes through weakness of nature, or through relenting of compunction–it is not to be doubted that, as the cohesion of party begins rapidly to relax under approaching ruin, there will be confessions in abundance. For as yet, under the timid policy of the sepoys–hardly ever venturing out of cover, either skulking amongst bushy woodlands, or sneaking into house-shelter, or slinking back within the range of their great guns–it has naturally happened that our prisoners have been exceedingly few. But the decisive battle before Lucknow will tell us another story. There will at last be cavalry to reap the harvest when our soldiery have won it. The prisoners will begin to accumulate by thousands; executions will proceed through week after week; and a large variety of cases will yield us a commensurate crop of confessions. These, when they come, will tell us, no doubt, most of what the sepoys can be supposed to know. But, meantime, how much is that? Too probably, except in the case of here and there some specially intelligent or specially influential sepoy officer, indispensable as a go-between to the non-military conspirators moving in darkness behind the rebel army, nothing at all was communicated to the bulk of the privates, beyond the mere detail of movements required by the varying circumstantialities of each particular case. But of the ultimate purpose, of the main strategic policy, or of the transcendent interests over-riding the narrow counsels that fell under the knowledge of the illiterate soldier, since no part was requisite to the fulfilment of each man’s separate duty, no part would be communicated. It is barely possible that so much light as may be won from confessions, combined with so much further light as may be supposed to lurk amongst the mass of unexamined papers left behind them by the rebels at Delhi, might tell us something important. But any result to be expected from the Delhi papers is a doubtful contingency. It is uncertain whether they will ever be brought under the review of zeal united to sagacity sufficient for sustaining a search purely disinterested. Promising no great triumph for any literary purpose, proving as little, perhaps, one way or other, as the mathematician in the old story complained that the AEneid proved–these papers, unless worked by an enamoured bookworm (or paperworm), will probably be confiscated to some domestic purpose, of singeing chickens or lighting fires.