Never were their national characteristics so much endangered as in the seducing calm which followed the tempestuous agitations in which they had so long floated; doubtful, to use their own figurative expression, whether ‘the gift of our friendship, or our arms,’ were fraught with greater evil. The latter they could not withstand; though it must never be lost sight of, that, like ancient Rome when her glory was fading, we use ‘the arms of the barbarians’ to defend our conquests against them! Is the mind ever stationary? are virtue and high notions to be acquired from contact and example? Is there no mind above the level of £10 monthly pay in all the native legions of the three presidencies of India? no Odoacer, no Sivaji, [127] again to revive? Is the book of knowledge and of truth, which we hold up, only to teach them submission and perpetuate their weakness? Can we without fresh claims expect eternal gratitude, and must we not rationally look for reaction in some grand impulse, which, by furnishing a signal instance of the mutability of power, may afford a lesson for the benefit of posterity? Is the mantle of protection, which we have thrown over these warlike races, likely to avert such a result? It might certainly, if imbued with all those philanthropic feelings for which we took credit, act with soporific influence, and extinguish the embers of international animosity. ‘The lion and the lamb were to drink from the same fountain’; they were led to expect the holy Satya Yug, when each man reposed under his own fig-tree, which neither strife nor envy dared approach. When so many nations are called upon, in a period of great calamity and danger, to make over to a foreigner, their opposite in everything, their superior in most, the control of their forces in time of war, the adjudication of their disputes in time of peace, and a share in the fruits of their renovating prosperity, what must be the result; when each Rajput may hang up his lance in the hall, convert his sword to a ploughshare, and make a basket of his buckler? What but the prostration of every virtue? It commences with the basis of the Rajput’s—the martial virtues; extinguish these and they will soon cease to respect themselves. Sloth, low cunning and meanness will follow. What nation ever maintained its character that devolved on the stranger the power of protection! To be great, to be independent, its martial spirit must be cherished; happy if within the bounds of moderation. Led away by enthusiasm, the author experienced the danger of interference, when observing but one side of the picture—the brilliant lights which shone on their long days of darkness, not calculating the shade which would follow the sudden glare. On our cessation from every species of interference alone depends their independence or their amalgamation—a crisis fraught with danger to our overgrown rule.