A history of the Sikhs, from the origin of the nation to the battles of the Sutlej.

CHAP. ix WAR WITH THE ENGLISH

287

Sikhs may thus appear as unaccountable as it was fatal; 1845-6.
yet further inquiry will show that the policy pursued by the
English themselves for several years was not in reality well
calculated to ensure a continuance of pacific relations, and
that they cannot therefore be held wholly blameless for a
war which they expected and deprecated, and which they
knew could only tend to their own aggrandizement. The
proceedings of the English, indeed, do not exhibit that
punctilious adherence to the spirit of first relations which
allows no change of circumstances to cause a departure from
arrangements which had, in the progress of time, come to be
regarded by a weaker power as essentially bound up with
its independence. Neither do the acts of the English seem
marked by that high wisdom and sure foresight, which
should distinguish the career of intelligent rulers acquainted
with actual life, and the examples of history. Treaties of
commerce and navigation had been urged upon the Sikhs,
notwithstanding their dislike to such bonds of unequal
union; they were chafed that they had been withheld from
Sind, from Afghanistan, and from Tibet, merely, they would
argue, that these countries might be left open to the ambition
of the English; and they were rendered suspicious by the
formation of new military posts on their frontier contrary
to prescriptive usage, and for reasons of which they did not
perceive the force or admit the validity. The English looked
upon these measures with reference to their own schemes of
amelioration; and they did not heed the conclusions which
the Sikhs might draw from them, although such conclusions,
how erroneous soever, would necessarily become motives of
action to a rude and warlike race. Thus, at the last, regard
was mainly had to the chance of predatory inroads, or to
the possibility that sovereign and nobles and people, all
combined, would fatuitously court destruction by assailing
their gigantic neighbour, and little thought was given to the
selfish views of factious Sikh chiefs, or to the natural effects
of the suspicions of the Sikh commonalty when wrought
upon by base men for their own ends. Thus, too, the original
agreement which left the province of Sirhind free of troops
and of British subjects, and which provided a confederacy
of dependent states to soften the mutual action of a half