If our army, as at present
constituted, cannot do without the free use of the lash, let its
constitution be altered; for no nation with free institutions should
suffer its soldiers to be flogged. '_Laudabiliores tamen duces sunt,
quorum exercitum ad modestiam labor et usus instituit, quam illi,
quorum milites ad obedientiam suppliciorum formido compellit.'[36]
Though I reprobate that wanton severity of discipline in which the
substance is sacrificed to the form, in which unavoidable and trivial
offences are punished as deliberate and serious crimes, and the
spirit of the soldier is entirely disregarded, while the motion of
his limbs, cut of his whiskers, and the buttons of his coat are
scanned with microscopic eye, I must not be thought to advocate
idleness. If we find the sepoys of a native regiment, as we sometimes
do at a healthy and cheap station, become a little unruly like
schoolboys, and ask an old native officer the reason, he will
probably answer others as he has me by another question, '_Ghora ara
kyun? Pani sara kyun?' 'Why does the horse become vicious? Why does
the water become putrid?'-For want of exercise.
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