SKETCH OF THE SIKHS. '247 



which are ever most readily made, when it becomes obvious to all, that a 

 complete union in the general cause, is the only hope of individual safety. 



The Sikhs would appear, from their own historians, to have attributed 

 the conquests they made entirely to their valour, and to have altogether 

 forgot that they owed them, chiefly, to the decline of the house of Tai- 

 mu'r, and the dissensions of the government of CdhuL Intoxicated with 

 their success, they have given way to all those passions which assail the 

 minds of men in the possession of power. The desire, which every petty 

 chief entertained, of increasing his territories, of building strong forts, 

 and adding to the numbers of his troops, involved them in internal wars; 

 and these, however commenced, soon communicated to numbers, who 

 ■engaged in the dispute, as passion or interest did:ated. Though such 

 feuds have no doubt helped to maintain their military spirit, yet their ex- 

 tent and virulence have completely broken down that union, which their 

 great legislator, Govind, laboured to establish. Quarrels have been trans- 

 mitted from father to son; and, in a country where the infant is devoted 

 to steel, and taught to consider war as his only occupation, these could not 

 but multiply in an extraordinary degree ; and, independent of the compa- 

 rative large conquests in which the greater chiefs occasionally engaged, 

 every village* has become an objedl of dispute ; and there are few, if 

 any, in the Penjdb, the rule of which is not contested between brother* 

 or near relations.-f In such a state, it is obvious, tl^e Sikhs could alone be 



* All the villages in the Penjdb are walled round, as ihcy are, in alitiost all the countries of 

 India, that are exposed to sudden incursions of liorsc, which tliis defence can always repel. 



+ When the British and Mdhrala armies entered the Paijdb, they were both daily joined 

 by discontented petty chiefs of the Sikhs, who ofFered their aid' to the power that would put 

 itkcm iii the possession of a village or a fort, from which, agreeably to their statement, they had 

 been unjustly cxchidcx], by a father or brother. Holkar encouraged these applications, 

 and used them to his udvaula-jo. The Briiish cominauder abstained from all iuterfercuce ia 

 such disputes. 



