I asked only to be allowed to submit the name of one
officer from each Presidency. The name which is selected from the
Bengal army was your own, and I ventured to express my hope that Her
Majesty would be pleased to mark her sense of the long course of
able, and honourable, and distinguished service through which you had
passed, by conferring upon you the civil cross of a Knight Commander
of the Bath.
As yet no reply has been received to my letter. But as you have now
arrived at the Presidency, I lose no time in making known to you what
has been done; in the hope that you will receive it as a proof of the
high estimation in which your services and character arc held, as
well by myself as by the entire community of India.
I beg to remain,
My dear General,
Very truly yours,
DALHOUSIE.
Major-General Sleeman.
Reply to above. Dated 11th January, 1856.
MY LORD,
I was yesterday evening favoured with your Lordship's most kind and
flattering letter of the 9th instant from Barrackpore.
I cannot adequately express how highly honoured I feel by the
mention that you have been pleased to make of my services to Her
Majesty the Queen, and how much gratified I am by this crowning act
of kindness from your Lordship in addition to the many favours I have
received at your hands during the last eight years; and whether it
may, or may not, be my fate to live long enough to see the honourable
rank actually conferred upon me, which you have been so considerate
and generous as to ask for me, the letter now received from your
Lordship will of itself be deemed by my family as a substantial
honour, and it will so preserved, I trust, by my son, with feelings
of honest pride, at the thought that his father had merited such a
mark of distinction from so eminent a statesman as the Marquis of
Dalhousie.
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