at the feet of the Maharajah, the Sirdar Cheyk
Singh was assassinated by his rival. The murder of the favourite was
rapidly followed by the deposition of Kurruck Singh, and the elevation
to the throne of the prince, his son. The court of Lahore was now
convulsed by dark intrigues, and debased by brutal sensuality. The
ineradicable spirit of hatred against every thing British, vented itself
harmlessly in the bravadoes of the tyrant; but was more dangerously
inflamed among many of the native powers of India, by the secret
diffusion of a project for a general and simultaneous insurrection. A
double mystery of villany saved us, probably, at that time from the
shocks and horrors of war in which we have been recently involved. The
deposed Kurruck Singh suddenly expired--a victim, it was whispered, to
the insidious efficacy of slow and deadly poison, intermingled, as his
son knew, in small quantities every day with his food. The
lightning-flash of retribution descended. On the return from the funeral
of Kurruck, the elephant which bore the parricidal majesty of Noo Nehal
Singh pushed against the brick-work of the palace-gates, when the whole
fabric fell with a crash, and so dreadfully fractured the skull of the
Maharajah that he never spoke afterwards, and died in a few hours.

The power or the policy of Dhyan Singh then bestowed the perilous gift
of this bloody sceptre upon Prince Shere, a reputed son of Runjeet,
Singh. His legitimacy was immediately denounced, and his government
opposed by the mother of his predecessor, who actively assumed, and for
three or four months conducted, the regency of the state. The capricious
attachment of the army, however, to the cause of Shere Singh turned the
current of fortune; and the Queen-Mother might seem to have laid aside
the incumbrance of her royal apparel, to be more easily strangled by her
own slave girls. The accession of Shere Singh opened the floodgates of
irretrievable disorder; for the troops, to whom he owed his success, and
on whose venal steadiness the stability of his sway depended, conscious
from their position, that, however insolently exorbitant in their
demands, they were able to throw the weight of their swords into the
scale, clamoured for an increase of their pay, and the dismissal of all
the officers who were obnoxious to them. The refusal of their imperious
request had a result we are fortunately not obliged to depict; nor,
without a shudder, can we barely allude