English and Indian historians have devoted considerable research and analysis to the genesis of the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 but have ignored contemporary British reaction to it, a neglect which this study attempts to satisfy. After the initial, spontaneous, condemnation of Sepoy atrocities, Queen Victoria, her Parliament, and subjects took a more rational and constructive attitude toward the insurrection in India, which stemmed primarily from British interference
in Indian religious and social customs, symbolized by the cartridge issue. Englishmen demanded reform, and Parliament-- at once anxious to please the electorate and to preserve the valuable colony of India--complied within a year, although the Commons defeated the first two Indian bills, because of the interposition of other foreign and domestic problems. But John Bright, Lord Edward Stanley, William Gladstone, Benjamin Disraeli, and their friends joined forces to pass the third Indian bill, which became law on August 2, 1858.