Page:Ranjit Singh (Griffin).djvu/29

Rh and which had been accustomed for so long to consider license synonymous with liberty.

The effect of the Sutlej campaign of 1845-46 was almost precisely similar to that caused by the campaign of 1866 in Northern Germany. The British Government, which had for years deplored a state of things which it was unable without breaking faith with the chiefs to rectify, which had seen the people oppressed and ground down by petty tyrants who possessed absolute power in their respective States, seized the opportunity which the folly and ingratitude of the chiefs had given to inaugurate a new order of things. The most important chiefs alone were permitted to retain their power, while that of the smaller ones was taken altogether away: they were declared mere Jagírdárs of the British Government, and the whole of their territories was placed under the control of British Officers and British Courts of Law.

It will thus appear that the Málwá chiefs have passed through several distinct periods of development. First, the mere cultivators of the lands on which, as immigrants, they had settled; then, the owners of those same lands. Next came the period of conflict with the Muhammadan power, during which the chiefships grew up gradually and naturally, followed by the period of tranquillity which was the consequence of their claiming British protection. The last period saw the majority of them stripped of the power which they had infamously abused, and