imes in doubt whether the pen or the sword is the
more potent weapon in their hands. A few reflections and remarks will
probably inweave themselves with the tissue of the story, just because
such things cannot be told or heard without a quickening of the pulse, a
glow upon the cheek, a beating in the heart. Otherwise we shall attempt
to be "such an honest chronicler as Griffith." It is indispensable,
however, not only to preface the details of the campaign with a concise
description of the condition of the disordered and degraded people whom
our enmity and vengeance smote so heavily; but likewise to explain, with
some degree of minuteness, the views and purposes which, from first to
last, influenced our Indian government in its conduct of these delicate,
and ultimately momentous transactions, in order fully to appreciate the
union of moderation and energy which, under the auspices of Sir Henry
Hardinge as governor-general of India, and Sir Hugh Gough as commander o
the army of the Sutlej, has satisfied the world that right and might
were equally on the side of Britain.

Since the death, in 1839, of the famous Runjeet Singh, when the sacred
waters of the Ganges received the ashes of the greatest of the Sikhs, it
is impossible for language to exaggerate the anarchy, the depravity, the
misery of the Punjaub. Tigers, and wolves, and apes, have been the
successors of the "Old Lion." The predominant spirit of that energetic
and sagacious ruler bridled the licentious turbulence which for the last
seven years has rioted in the unrestrained indulgence of all abominable
vices, and in the daily perpetration of the most atrocious crimes. Five
Maharajahs in this brief period, "all murdered," have been sacrificed to
the ambition of profligate courtiers, or the rapacity of a debauched
soldiery. Kurruck Singh, the son of Runjeet Singh, and the inheritor
of an overflowing treasury and a disciplined and numerous army, was an
uneducated idiot, and easily induced to frown upon his father's able
favourite, the Rajah Dhyan Singh, and to invest his own confidential
adviser, the Sirdar Cheyk Singh, with the authority, if not the title,
of his prime-minister. But the humiliated Rajah found the ready means of
revenge in the family of his incapable sovereign. The Prince Noo Nehal
Singh lent a willing ear to the tempting suggestions of a counsellor who
only echoed the inordinate desires of his own ambition. At midnight, in
the private apartment and