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

319

CHAP. IX WTAR WITH THE ENGLISH

to the gates of Delhi; and while negotiations were still 1845-6.
pending, and the season advancing, it was desired to conciliate one who might render himself formidable in a day, by
joining the remains of the Sikh forces, and by opening his
treasures and arsenals to a warlike population.
The low state of the Lahore treasury, and the anxiety of The partiLal Singh to get a dreaded rival out of the way, enabled the Ption thed
Governor-General to appease Gulab Singh in a manner indepensufficiently agreeable to the Raja himself, and which still dence of
Gulab
further reduced the importance of the successor of Ranjit Singh.
Singh. The Raja of Jammu did not care to be simply the
master of his native mountains; but as two-thirds of the
pecuniary indemnity required from Lahore could not be
made good, territory was taken instead of money, and
Kashmir and the hill states from the Beas to the Indus were
cut off from the Punjab Proper, and transferred to Gulab
Singh as a separate sovereign for a million of pounds sterling.
The arrangement was a dexterous one, if reference be only
had to the policy of reducing the power of the Sikhs; but
the transaction scarcely seems worthy of the British name
and greatness, and the objections become stronger when it
is considered that Gulab Singh had agreed to pay sixty-eight
lakhs of rupees (~680,000), as a fine to his paramount, before
the war broke out,1 and that the custom of the East as well
as of the West requires the feudatory to aid his lord in
foreign war and domestic strife. Gulab Singh ought thus
to have paid the deficient million of money as a Lahore
subject, instead of being put in possession of Lahore provinces as an independent prince. The succession of the
Raja was displeasing to the Sikhs generally, and his separation was less in accordance with his own aspirations than
the ministry of Ranjit Singh's empire; but his rise to
sovereign power excited nevertheless the ambition of others,
and Tej Singh, who knew his own wealth, and was fully
persuaded of the potency of gold, offered twenty-five lakhs
of rupees for a princely crown and another dismembered
province. He was chid for his presumptuous misinterpre1 Major Broadfoot to Government, 5th May 1845. The author
never heard, and does not believe, that this money was paid by Gulab
Singh.