by the descendants of his contemporaries: his benefits are soon forgotten, but the oppression of the evil Governor, being more deeply stamped on the sensibilities of the sufferers, are more feelingly transmitted to their descendants, and give the tyrant a fairer promise of immortality than the public benefactor.

No better representation of the contrasting differences of the systems can be made, than by laying before the reader the past and present state of one of the new provinces, such as the Jhelundur Doab, that have lately passed from the hands of a Native ruler, to that of the English Government,-into which the system we adopt, improved by the experience of years, has been deliberately introduced to the extinction of every vestige of former government, or misgovernment. We would not, however, quote the former Government of the Doab, as even a fair sample of the Native system, inasmuch as the peculiar circumstances of its history, and the corruption of its rulers, have exercised a more than ordinarily unfavorable influence on its character. We give it, simply as an instance of the Native system, which will ere long become extinct, "caught alive" in our hands, and by bringing out into strong relief the peculiarities of the former system, we may possibly enable others to form an opinion of the antagonistic principles of European and Native Government. It is seldom in the annals of the world, that such great and sudden changes have been made in the form of the Government of any province: changes are generally the result of progressional events, and influenced by the feelings of the people governed. Here, by one stroke of the pen of two parties, populous districts, containing millions of inhabitants, are transferred from a Government of so simple a machinery, as to give the accused no chance of escape except by admitted and open bribery-of so benevolent a temperament, as to punish larceny with the amputation of the nose, or hamstringing the foot of the thieffounded on such discriminating and wise principles, as to make penal the slaying of a cow, and permit, or rather sanction, the crime of infanticide, slavery and inhumation of lepers :-transferred from a system of the most inert, and unimproving kind, to one the most intricate and artificial, the most elaborate in its details, and most benevolent in its intentions, whatever it may be in practice, upon the improving and adapting of which, good and wise men are daily employing their best faculties and energies, urged on thereto as well by the spirit of the age, as the principles of the Government.

Upwards of a century ago, and at the time of the decadence of the great Mogul Empire, the fertile province of the Bist Jhelundur was a dependance of the Súbah of Lahore, but was

governed by a Deputy resident, within its boundaries, who supreme in all departments paid a certain portion of the Revenue to his superior. The last and most famous of these Deputies was Adina Beg Khan, whose name serves as the last land-mark of the Mahommedan rule anterior to the Sikh deluge. Of Adina Beg's internal administration of his province little is known :-if a more than ordinary tyrant, at least the memory of his tyrannies has perished with his victories. In all probability he differed but little from other Mahommedan Proconsuls in considering provinces, but as preserves for re-filling exhausted Treasuries, and enabling the fortunate administrators, endowed with more talent for exaction than principle, to amass pro-consular fortunes. Whatever may have been the character of Adina Beg Khan in his internal administration, his talents and character in the political arena of the Empire are undoubted:and it was no easy game for him to play. During the period of his rule, Hindústan was several times invaded by the hardy races of Kabul under the guidance of Nadir Shah and his successor Ahmed Shah, and it was a hard task to keep on good terms with the invader without throwing off his allegiance to the invaded. But another and more difficult element was in existence in the limits of his own province: the turbulent Jut Zemindars of the Manjha, Malwa, and Jhelundur Doab, long difficult to manage, had now become unmanageable, and under the exciting and binding influence of the tenets of Gúrú Govind, which they had adopted, were sapping the foundation of society, and rapidly introducing a new state of things on the ruins of the Mahommedan Monarchy. Though not yet arrived at that state of independence, which they gained in a few years, they were already sufficiently numerous and determined to form themselves into large parties for the purpose of depredation, and to avail themselves of the distracted state of the Government. It will generally be found, that there is but one stage between that of a petty thief, against whom the arm of the law is raised ready to strike, and the feudal Chief or Baron; and this stage is that of the powerful freebooter and marauder, who has sufficient force to set himself up above law, but is not yet recognized as a component part of the state: and to this intermediate stage the Sikhs under Adina Beg had arrived. These stages might ordinarily be passed through in as many generations: the father throws up his occupation, and becomes an outlaw. Success, and increase of the number of his followers, enable the son openly to defy the Government, from the emissaries of which his father had been continually flying: a few short years see the grandson a territorial Chieftain and a Baron of

the empire. To remedy the evil of this state of things, Adina Beg adopted the same temporizing and fatal policy, by which the plains of Italy had many centuries before fallen into the hands of the Lombard-partly yielding to, and partly resisting his rebellious subjects, he at length took two hundred of the most notorious into his service for the preservation of his district, hoping thus to ward off the effects to himself of a calamity which he felt that it was beyond his power to cure. And his policy so far succeeded, that by judicious management, and timely concessions both to the contending powers above him, and the audacious outlaws nominally under his controul, he managed to keep possession of his province, and has left a name respectable for ability and success, as the last of the Imperial Proconsuls.

He died-and with him perished the genius to combine and the strong arm to controul the discordant elements of which his power had been composed. His feeble widows, for he died. childless, were unable to hold the reins, which his grasp could barely controul, and the province was lost to his family, and not only to his family, but to the empire. The power of the Mogul was now shattered to its foundation, and the invasions of the Abdalli bore more the character of incursions for plunder, than expeditions with a view of acquiring permanent empire, and thus the field lay open to a new and more active invader. Nor were they long in taking advantage of the opportunity; which the utter extinction of all outward form of Government presented. It was the doom of the highly civilized, but effeminate Mahommedan, to give way to the brawny arm and savage resoluteness of the hardy cultivator of the soil. The same era had arrived to the Mahommedan Monarchy, of which the page of History presents us so many, and so mournful examples: the same tale must be told of institutions overturned, of cities sacked and levelled, of the entire disorganization of Society, and return to the primary elements of brute life, where strength is Law, which marked the irruption of the hardy tribes of the North of Europe into the plains of Italy: a new race of Longobardi had sprung into existence to found dynasties and lord it over the conquered soil.

The Janissaries of Adina Beg saw their opportunity, and began to take possession for themselves of the soil, which they had been engaged to protect. Their numbers were reinforced by their relations from the neighbouring Manjha, and no sooner was it found how profitable a trade was that of a marauder, how soon a single Chief of enterprize could collect round him a party of horsemen, and convert himself into an independent Prince,

and his followers into landed proprietors, than the ploughshare was converted into the sword by every Jut Zemindar: each village sent forth its detachment of hardy youths to carve out for themselves a respectable fortune, and to pay out old scores with their ancient oppressors. Thus it came to pass that in a few years the Delhi Monarchy became a shadowy and empty name, while the solid and substantial advantages of power and wealth passed into the hands of the lowest class in the scale of civilization, the hardy but ignorant cultivator of the soil.

These were fine times for those, who were gifted with the sterling gifts of a resolute spirit and a stalwart frame. No accomplishments of the mind, no cultivated talents, no boasted descent of an illustrious ancestry were required to constitute this new and self-formed Aristocracy. Enterprise and success made the Chieftains. As large a tract of country as the walls of his Fort could overawe, and his dependant horsemen could overrun, were the limits of his dominion: his code of policy embraced the ready gathering in of his harvest: his only allies were those whom mutual advantages bound to him: his only law was his sword.

Such a state of things could neither long continue, nor was it within the bounds of human probability that principalities so easily won would be so easily preserved. In the annals of the time we read of feuds and forays, of Chieftain swallowing up Chieftain, of the hardy Jut but yesterday behind the plough, and to-day the lord of territory and castles, and to-morrow again a houseless outcast. Some few Hindu and Mahommedan Kardars of the old regime had by the aid of strong walls to their towns and forts, and by the resoluteness of a small band of their own faith, managed to resist the desultory incursions of the new invaders. Some few purchased peace by the cession of half their possessions, or the tribute of half the Revenue, and the Rajput Rajas of the Hills availed themselves of the confusion to take possession of districts in the plains: but there was no certain possession, no son could reckon upon succeeding without a struggle to the inheritance of his father: few even died in the possession of those lauds, which they had themselves won. When the strong arm became paralysed, the old man saw himself ousted from the castle, which had been the trophy of his youth, and in which he had lorded it in manhood.

For forty years this state of things lasted, a dreary time for the quiet and peace-seeking inhabitants of the country, an interval without the semblance of law, when strong walls alone protected the wealth of the trader, and the ploughman tilled his fields with arms in his hands: battles were fought for village

boundaries, the blood of man was shed in retaliation of plundered cattle. That such a state of things lasted so long, can only be accounted for by the circumstance of the absence of any individual, who, by uniting political craft to valour, could combine these heterogeneous materials and establish upon their ruin an empire.

The time arrived and the man.

In one of the smallest of the tribes, into which the Sikhs had divided themselves, with but few personal recommendations, but endowed with a keen and true visional intelligence, a craft passing all sifting, and the magic power of influencing all, with whom he came into contact, Runjit Singh consolidated under himself the shattered fragments of Empire. For the term of his own days he ruled with success, and but for the intervention of another and a stronger power, which he alone of his nation rightly appreciated, and prudently succumbed to, would have spread his rule over the North of Hindustan, and established a new Hindu Monarchy from the Indus to the Ganges.

His power fell with him his successors had not the ability, or the fortune of their predecessor, but his system was rotten at the core. To outward appearance his kingdom was wide and consolidated, but there were neither the ties of nationality, nor religion, nor interest, to cement, what his personal ability and success alone had brought together. The paraphernalia of power, and the ostentation of ruling, the splendour of his palaces and retinue, and the magnitude and fame of his armies, gave his rule the semblance of strength: the administration, though composed of various faiths, bore the garb of nationality: the Army, though a large proportion were natives of Hindustan, and subjects of a foreign state, bore the name of the Khalsa, and deliberated as a great patriot confederation. But the secret springs of the strength of a nation, and a Government, did not exist : the army melted away, as the snow in the spring; the kingdom of the Sikhs, who in their haughtiness had fancied themselves the salt of the earth, was dismembered, and divided among their enemies; and such miserable portion, as does remain, and mocks the semblance of Sovereignty, is crumbling away, and exists only by the support of hireling bayonets and foreign interference.

At the time of the first treaty entered into by the British power with Runjit Singh in 1806, when Lord Lake with his handful of veterans chased the discomfited Holkar across the Beas, and held with a comparatively small army the frontier, which we now hold with six times the force,-Runjit Singh possessed not an acre of soil in the Doab, and it was on the boundary