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to above, it was further provided that the members of this council should be approved of by the British government; and that its acts should be all under the control and guidance of a British officer, with an efficient establishment of assistants, resident at Lahore. In the conduct of the administration it was agreed and declared that the feelings of the people should be scrupulously consulted; the national institutions and customs preserved, and the just rights of all classes maintained. For the due execution of this agreement it was provided that, not only the capital, but any military post in the Lahore territories should be occupied by a British force, of such strength and quality as the governor-general might think fit; and the expenses of such occupation were to be partly met by the inadequate contribution of two and twenty lakhs of rupees (220,000%) annually from the Sikh treasury. At the expiration of the minority of the young Maharajah, or at any earlier period when such a measure might seem practicable to the parties concerned, all these provisions were to cease and determine; and the Punjab was to be delivered over, safe and entire, into the hands of Dhuleep Singh and his ministers. In default of any more regular or cognisable authorities to be found in the disorganised state, Lord Hardinge reverted to the precedents of its earlier constitution; and summoned a council of Sirdars to express freely their will and their intentions. It affords a startling view of the extent of the preceding assassinations to find that out of the sixty-six leading chiefs and Sirdars who were alive at Runjeet Singh's death-but seven short years before-thirtysix had been violently made away with, twelve had been killed in action with the British, seven had died natural deaths, and eleven only were yet surviving at Lahore! Of these eleven, seven affixed their seals and signatures to the treaty above mentioned; and the remainder, together with many officers and notabilities of inferior rank, attended in state with their Maharajah, at its public and formal ratification.

Such were the stipulations by which it was attempted to reconcile our duties and requirements, and to surmount the embarrassments arising from the conquest of a province which we were scarcely able either to retain with advantage or surrender with security. It will, of course, be in the recollection of our readers, that the non-participation of Gholab Singh in the aggression upon our territories, was acknowledged by his eleva tion to the rank of Maharajah - and the grant of his own principality, augmented by certain cessions, in full and independent sovereignty. Irrespectively of other matters of convenience, this measure was presumed to be sound in policy; as it raised a

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formidable rival to the Durbar of Lahore, and thus balanced in some degree the native Powers of the Punjab. Besides, however, that the whole affair was an experiment, unwarranted by any precedent in the political history of India, there were many obvious reasons for anticipating difficulties in its execution, In the first place there were two rival factions still surviving in the court of Lahore; that, as we have described it, of the Ranee and the creatures of her favour, and that of the more respectable Sirdars who demurred to her authority. The ascendency had been secured to the latter party by the recent arrangements; but the consequent jealousies were sure to be prolific of intrigues. In the next place, though it was presumed, and, as events have shown, with great justice, that the population of the country would willingly accept our protectorate, yet there were serious elements of disaffection, both in the savage soldiery of the disbanded battalions, and in the petty chieftains who were now compelled to surrender, for the needs of the state, those jaghires or grants of land which they had acquired by selling their swords to various parties during the recent anarchy. Lastly, there was the intractability of the greater feudatories; and the likelihood which existed that the governors of the outlying provinces would refuse either to recognise our authority or obey our behests. For it must not be forgotten that the Punjab,' as we have said, was no compact or well consolidated inheritance, which had descended from father to son through a long line of ancestry, nor any ancient or peculiar habitation of a definite nationality.' Runjeet had pushed his dominions to the north and west beyond even the natural boundaries of the Indus and the hills; and among the dependencies of the Durbar were now reckoned cities and provinces of which the subjection had sometimes, even under the iron rule of the conqueror, been little more than nominal. Yet on each or any of the various contingencies thus involved, our interference would be practically found necessary; nor was it long before events disclosed the responsibilities of the task we had undertaken.

We need not recapitulate incidents of such recent occurrence. It will be remembered that the chiefs of the province of Cashmere, which had been made over to Gholab Singh by the Durbar, refused at first to acknowledge their new sovereign, and that a campaign in the hills was nearly being the consequence; that the Ranee was next found intriguing against the established government, and that she and her paramours were removed from the scene; and that some minor plots, and no few rumours of more, kept the British authorities constantly upon the alert. At length came the present crisis, which bids fair to terminate

the existing arrangements, and to precipitate some new solution of the problem.

We have observed that Mooltan was one of the provinces brought at the latest period, and with the greatest difficulty, under the yoke of Runjeet. It has remained in the hands of the same family ever since its conquest; so that the Dewannee, or governorship, may almost be considered hereditary, and it will be readily imagined how reluctantly so powerful a feudatory would discharge his obligations to the Durbar. At the very commencement of our intervention, Moolraj, the present Dewan, was embroiled, upon the usual subject, with the court of Lahore, -that is to say, respecting the non-payment of his stipulated tribute to the treasury. By the mediation of our authorities these differences were at first temporarily adjusted; and at length, under our guarantee, the Dewan was even induced to trust himself in the city of Lahore, for the purpose of personally arranging a final and amicable compromise. After this he returned to his province; but some time subsequently it was agreed, or alleged to be so, that he should retire from his office; and in pursuance of this understanding two British officers departed in the spring of last year (1848) from Lahore to Mooltan, to receive his surrender and instal his successor. While in discharge of this duty, they were treacherously and foully murdered; Moolraj shut himself up in his fort, strengthened his defences, collected adherents from all parts of the country, and has since that time been permitted to defy with impunity the British power. The successive mails from India will have put our readers in possession of all the details respecting the military operations which have been as yet attempted; and we may therefore pass over this part of the subject, to our concluding considerations respecting the ascertainable character of the insurrection, its general influence on the empire of India, and the probable policy by which it may now be found necessary to supersede our experimental protectorate.

The last intelligence from the scene of action leaves, we fear, scarcely any reasonable doubt but that the chiefs of the Punjab are generally disaffected to that control which was the result of their own solicitations. Yet the circumstances of the case seem almost to preclude the possibility that the present state of things should have been the issue of any long-concerted plot. We can hardly imagine that any motive more extraordinary than the spectacle of one unsubdued and apparently prosperous insurgent, has been acting on the minds of those chiefs who have more or less overtly confessed their designs of insurrection. Nominally and ostensibly we are executing the decrees of the Lahore Durbar against one of its refractory feudatories; but in reality we are once

more brought into collision with the whole Sikh State-the Sirdars and troops of which, as far as they dare, are daily making common cause with the rebel against us. In addition to the causes of discontent which we have enumerated above, it is highly probable that the Sirdars are wearied of a restraint which deprives them of their old license, at the same time that it relieves them from their old responsibilities; and that they are willing to regain their independence at the expense of peace. We are doubtless suspected, to some degree, as foreigners and intruders; but it is certain enough that any native government which put the like curb with ours on lawlessness and extravagance, would be the object of the like conspiracies. We have never deprived our administration of its purely provisional character; nor have we ever violated the stipulations of our compact. That we should have to contend with local disturbances, was no more than we always anticipated; and arrangements were made by Lord Hardinge, by the full execution of which, this insurrection in Mooltan might have been effectually prevented from growing into a war. Still this matters but little to the decision of the main question; for if the Sirdars were really and at heart as indisposed towards us as they now appear, our experimental policy must needs have proved a failure; and a second conquest of the country could only have been delayed. And on the other hand, had the true feeling of the chiefs been with us, according to their professions and engagements, we could have readily dealt with any contumacious or disaffected individual; while if their faith was no firmer than it now would seem to be, our whole policy was built upon sand.

We need not waste words in anticipating the immediate result of the existing struggle. If our hasty and imperfect musters, three years ago, were sufficient, first to resist and finally to shatter to pieces the old Sikh army in all its insolence of discipline and strength, we can have no misgivings about the result, when the full force of British India is to be measured against the disarmed and disorganised remnant of this defeated host. Still it must be remembered that the Sikh troops, though disbanded, yet retain the formidable character inseparable from their habits and education. Under institutions which make every man a soldier, and war the chief duty of a citizen, it is difficult to break effectually the force of a nation. We have seen that it is one of the characteristics of this singular race, that even when beaten by a more powerful enemy, they have ever reappeared on the field with unsubdued and almost undiminished vigour. Nor is the fanatical spirit extinct among them. Though the generality of the Sikhs have

for some time disused many of the more rigid observances of their sect, yet the true spawn of the old brood still survives in the Akalees-those desperate enthusiasts, who, formidable by their numbers as well as daring, affect an unchanging attachment for all the harsh peculiarities of the ancient discipline. Even under Runjeet these Ironsides are said to have been so indiscriminately dangerous, that they were always paraded at a review, between two battalions of ordinary troops,-lest they should make a dash at any thing upon the field! It must be remembered also that, though we robbed the Sikh army of its sting, by sending its guns in triumph to Calcutta, we permitted the retention on the full establishment of at least 30,000 men, independent of the local force in Mooltan; and it is quite possible, if matters are indiscreetly managed, that every man of this force may be in the field against us.

As regards the possible influence of the struggle upon our Indian dominion, it is satisfactory to think that under few circumstances could a war be conducted with such safety as the present. Not only are Central India and the Deccan profoundly tranquil, but the Sikhs are precisely the persons with whom the very least sympathy is entertained by the inhabitants of Hindostan. In the infancy of their State they were always reputed as outlaws-little less barbarous than the wild tribes of the Vindhyan hills; and even in the earlier part of Runjeet's reign, they are described as a savage and ferocious people entirely disconnected from all around them. The recollections of their atrocities, and of the retributive severities of the government, have conspired with the misrepresentations, to which all such sects are subject, in assigning them a repulsive and odious character throughout all the countries which their name had reached. This odium was increased by the aggressive character of their religion. Not only were they infidels in the eyes of Hindoo and Mussulman alike, but they wreaked their puritanical hatred on Mussulman and Hindoo with equal and unsparing vindictiveness. The mosques and temples erected in the Punjab by the magnificence of earlier dynasties, have been gutted and defaced by the Sikhs, as some of our own cathedrals were by the troopers of Cromwell. No longer ago than 1826 a holy war was proclaimed against them. In so popular a cause as the rescue of the Mussulman principalities from their hated dominion, a fanatical preacher was enabled to levy a vast force of crusaders throughout Hindostan and the Deccan. From the strongholds of the Mahometan population - Lucknow, Delhi, Hyderabad, and Surat-even from Madras and Calcutta, were despatched supplies and reinforcements, until the undisciplined

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