Copy of a letter from Sir George Leg= rand Jacob to his brother Philip, dated 24^{th
September 1858.}

Doubtless the spirit of r= ebellion has been raised up here and there and fostered everywhere by sundry auxilia= ry acts on these during a long course of years I have dwelt. The most prominent whereof has been the thirst for annexation. Breach of treaties commencing with the appropriation of Satara and terminating with Oade. For the first= there is no excuse, for the last some, but it was a breach of faith nevertheless = as Lord Ellenborough truly but most unwisely procl= aimed in his celebrated letter. Lord Canning had no more to do with it than you had. Why should he have borne the brunt and why should his position have been weakened at a time that he needed the fullest support, because others backed by our nation had done wrong. I have no personal reason to speak favourably of Lord Canning, quite the contrary – I ha= ve kept in order the Satarah frontier of our presi= dency, as large or larger than England, pregnant with r= evolt. The Southern Mahratta count= ry is only a portion of my cha= rge. The people testing us every now and then bursting into actual strife, but I have never re= ceived the least notice from Lord Ca= nning, when his own council unanimou= sly recommended me for promotion, he demurred, whereby I lost command of the division on General Lester’s death, and am still on receipt of small allowances. Nevertheless I conceive him to be a most able administrator and deserving of all support. He has neither given way to the clamour for blood based on the extravagant and lying tales of the English press opposed to the natives almost unanimously. Nor has he yielded to the mock humanity for whi= ch there have not been wanting advocates for shield= ing the guilty. He has steered a middle path with great firmness and proved him= self worthy of his trust.

It is not only for his ov= ersight of my labours, thoroughly acknowledged by my own Government, that I have be= en wronged by him, but his conduct is very&nb= sp; blameable as regards other matters affecting myself. His notification regarding the Persian Campaign was a tissue of errors – well, this mu= st be laid on his staff, especially Col Birch, the military secretary, but Outram was honest enough to point these out in a lett= er addressed to himself which he sent for my perusal, he expressed his deep re= gret that several (of whom I was one) to whom he was greatly indebted had been unnoticed though prominently mentioned , whilst = others who had nothing to do with the operation had been praised, naming them.

What did Lord Canning do. An honest man would have cancelled his previous fa= rrago, got up for him by others, and issued a new and revised notification, the th= ing is occasionally done. He contented himself with giving a second notification enforced by a quasi if not real falsehood, in that whereas a subsequent des= patch from Sir J Outram has mentioned parties to whom= he is indebted, who were not named in the original notification – the G G hereby thanks them equally with those before brough= t to notice – or words to that effect, and then follows a jumble of names without reference to work, standing or fitness. Look at the deceit. The names it is true were omitted by the Gov General, but they were not omitted by Sir J Outram, as the notification would infer. No notice was however taken of the error of omission pointed out and thus men are praised= for work they had never done, and Col Stewart of the 14^th Dragoons was made a commander of the Bath for the skill with which he handled his cavalry briga= de at the battle of Molumra, whereas he never was = within 300 miles of that place. He came to Persia after the fighting was over, and= the only Cavalry that landed at Molumra during the = time there was any fighting were 42 of the Sind Horse, and about as many more of= the 14th Dragoons after all was over. That’s the way honours are bestowed= .