When I have stood on the
quarter-deck of a ship in a storm, and seen the seamen covering the
yards in taking in sail, with the thunder rolling, and the lightning
flashing fearfully around them--the sea covered with foam, and each
succeeding billow, as it rushed by, seeming ready to sweep them all
from their frail footing into the fathomless abyss below--I have
asked myself, 'Are men like these to be seized like common felons,
torn from their wives and children as soon as they reach their native
land, subject every day to the lash, and put in front of those
battles on which the wealth, the honour, and the independence of the
nation depend, merely because British legislators know that when
there, a regard for their own personal character among their
companions in danger will make them fight like Englishmen?'
This feeling of nationality which exists in the little states of
Bundelkhand, arises from the circumstance that the mass of the
landholders are of the same class as the chief Bundelas; and that the
public establishments of the state are recruited almost exclusively
from that mass. The states of Jhansi[28] and Jalaun[29] are the only
exceptions.
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