To secure this good feeling, we can well afford to sacrifice a little
efficiency at the drill. It was unwise in one of the commanders-in-
chief to direct that no soldier in our Bengal native regiments should
be promoted unless he could read and write-it was to prohibit the
promotion of the best, and direct the promotion of the worst,
soldiers in the ranks. In India a military officer is rated as a
gentleman by his birth, that is _caste_, and by his deportment in all
his relations of life, not by his _knowledge of books_.
The Rajput, the Brahman, and the proud Pathan who attains a
commission, and deports himself like an officer, never thinks
himself, or is thought by others, deficient in anything that
constitutes the gentleman, because he happens not to be at the same
time a clerk. He has from his childhood been taught to consider the
quill and the sword as two distinct professions, both useful and
honourable when honourably pursued; and having chosen the sword, he
thinks he does quite enough in learning how to use and support it
through all grades, and ought not to be expected to encroach on the
profession of the penman.
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