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

324

HISTORY OF THE SIKHS

CHAP. IX

1845-6. to a Clovis. She may teach another Cymbeline the amenities
of civilized life, and she may move another Attalus to
bequeath to her another Pergamus. These are tasks of
easy achievement; but she must also endeavour to give
her poets and her sages an immortality among nations
unborn, to introduce laws which shall still be in force at the
end of sixty generations, and to tinge the faith and the minds
of the people with her sober science and just morality, as
Christianity was affected by the adoptive policy of Rome
and by the plastic philosophy of Greece. Of all these things
England must sow the seeds and lay the foundations before
she can hope to equal or surpass her great exemplars.1
But England can do nothing until she has rendered her
dominion secure, and hitherto all her thoughts have been
given to the extension of her supremacy. Up to this time
she has been a rising power, the welcome supplanter of
Mughals and Marathas, and the ally which the remote weak
sought against the neighbouring strong. But her greatness
is at its height it has come to her turn to be feared instead
of courted, and the hopes of men are about to be built on
her wished-for destruction. The princes of India can no
longer acquire fame or territory by preying upon one
another. Under the exact sway of their new paramount,
they must divest themselves of ambition and of all the
violent passions of their nature, and they must try to remain
kings without exercising the most loved of the functions
of rulers. The Indians, indeed, will themselves politely
liken England and her dependent sovereigns to the benignant
moon accompanied by hosts of rejoicing stars in her nightly
progress, rather than to the fierce sun which rides the heavens
in solitude scarcely visible amidst intolerable brightness;
but men covet power as well as ease, and crave distinction
as well as wealth; and thus it is with those who endeavour
to jest with adversity. England has immediately to make
her attendant princes feel, that while resistance is vain,
they are themselves honoured, and hold a substantive
position in the economy of the imperial government, instead
of being merely tolerated as bad rulers or regarded with
contempt and aversion as half-barbarous men. Her rule
1 See Appendix XV.