The Sikh nation, who have, throughout their early history, always appeared, like a suppressed flame, to rise into higher splendour from every attempt to crush them, had become, while they were oppressed, as formidable for their union, as for their determined courage and unconquerable spirit of resistance: but a state of persecution and distress was the one most favourable for the action of a constitution like theirs; which, formed upon general and abstract principles, required constant and great sacrifices of personal advantage to the public good; and such can alone be expected from men, acting under the influence of that enthusiasm, which the fervor of a new religion, or a struggle for independence, can alone impart, and 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 Taimúr, and the dissensions of the government of Cábul. 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 dictated. Though such feuds have, no doubt, helped to maintain their military spirit, yet their extent and virulence have completely broken down that union, which their great legislator, Góvind, laboured to establish. Quarrels have been transmitted 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 comparative large conquests in which the greater chiefs occasionally engaged, every village[65] has become an object of dispute; and there are few, if any, in the Penjáb, the rule of which is not contested between brothers or near relations[66]. In such a state, it is obvious, the Sikhs could alone be formidable to the most weak and distracted governments. Such, indeed, was the character, till within a very late period, of all their neighbours; and they continued to plunder, with impunity, the upper provinces of Hindústan, until the establishment of the power of Daulet Ráo Sindíá, when the regular brigades, commanded by French officers in the service of that prince, not only checked their inroads, but made all the Sikh chiefs, to the southward of the Satléj, acknowledge obedience and pay tribute to Sindíá: and it was in the contemplation of General Perron, had the war with the English government not occurred,