The Sun.
London, England, 1853-08-30 00:00:00

The battle was long and obstinately maintained ;
but, after much fierce and sanguinary fighting the
desperate charges of infantry and cavalry, and the
well-served artillery at length produced their effect
—the Belooches giving way after about three hours
of contest. Seventeen standards and fifteen guns
where the trophies of the fight. The " Lion" re-
tired to the desert, and a few days after the battle
the general was in the palace of the Ameers, and
master of Scinde ; having in sixteen days, with
5,000 men, defeated more than 25,000 in battle,
captured two great fortresses, Omercote and Hy-
drabad (which had been retaken during his ab-
sence), and marched two hundred miles under a
Scindian sun.

Lord Ellenborough now, upon his own authority,
constituted Sir Charles governor of Scinde, and re-
sponsible only to him ; and the general continued
his labour of entirely subjugating the Ameers, the
hill tribes, and, in general, the whole warlike popu-
lation, in all of which he was entirely successful.
The Belooches had received such fearful lessons at
the hands of the British that they confessed that
they would never face them in battle again. Mean-
time, the war of charges and counter-charges in
respect to Sir Charles'sSciudian policy, which was
so long continued, was commencing, and Sir Charles
took a manful part in pen-and-ink self-defence.
Still, amid all this hard. intellectual labour, he
worked, if possible, still harder at the improvement
of Scinde, and the elevation of its people. In fact,
he re-organised the native society ; Scinde was di-
vided into three great collectorates, which trans-
mitted every month their accounts and the amount
of taxes received to Hydrabad, the seat of govern-
ment. Powerful bodies of troops, with irregular
horsemen as police, protected the collectorates.
The next step was an amelioration of the adminis-
tration of the native law, which was effected by
keeping the local magistrates, called Kardars, well
in hand, and by paying them high salaries to make
it their interest to comply with the new regula-
tions. Sir Charles also put down the suttees, and
partially improved the feudal system, of holding
land for warlike services--the patches called " jag-
heers," belonging to the State, and being let out
by the chiefs and Ameers. At Kurrachee the Go-
vernor made great improvements, and planned
more. But in the midst of all these enterprising
proceedings, the news—astounding to Sir Charles
—arrived of the recal of his great friend and sup-
porter, Lord Ellenborough. The event, however,
did not at all interfere with the Governor's active
operations. He took Hydrabad next in hand, and
greatly improved and strengthened it, and insti-
tuted a general survey. Proceeding to Sukkur, lie
might be said to have made the tour of the pro-
vince—a point at which Sir William Napier's nar-
rative of the " Administration of Scinde " pauses
to recapitulate the Governor's achievements within

two years. We present the list. It is certainly
very marvellous :

"As Sir C. Napier had now returned to Sukkur, after
making as it were the round of Scinde in conquest, a
recapitulation of his labours will not be misplaced.
Short it shall be, yet thick with great actions. Two
years only had elapsed since he had quitted Sukkur to
war on the Ameers, and in that time he had made the
march to Emaum Ghur in the great desert, gained two
great battles, reduced four large and many smaller for-
tresses, captured six sovereign princes, and subdued a
great kingdom. He had created and put in activity a
permanent civil administration in all its branches, had
conciliated the affections of the different races inhabiting
Scinde, had seized all the points of an intricate foreign po-
licy, commenced a number of military and other well-consi-
dered public works, and planned still greater ones, not only
suited to the exigencies of the moment, but having also a
prospective utility of aim. In the execution of these
things he had travelled on camels and on horseback, at
the head of troops, more than two thousand miles, had
written, received, studied, and decided on between four
and five thousand official dispatches and reports—many
very elaborate—besides his private correspondence,
which was extensive, because he never failed to answer
all persons who addressed him, however humble or how-
ever unreasonable. He had besides read, not hastily,

but attentively, all the diaries of the collectors and sub-
collectors, and had most anxiously considered the evi-
dence in all capital trials. And these immense labours
were superadded to the usual duties imposed by the
command of a large army belonging to different Govern-
ments, namely, of England, Calcutta, Bombay, and
Madras. They were sustained without abatement under
severe attacks of illness, at the age of sixty-three, by a
man covered with wounds, and in a climate where the
mercury rises to 132 deg. in artificially-cooled tents.
They were sustained almost amidst every mortification,
every virulence of abuse, every form of intrigue which
disappointed cupidity could suggest to low-minded men,
sure of support from power, to him ungrateful, but to
their baseness indulgent and rewarding."
We must pass over encounters with the hill rob-
bers and brigand Belooches, and the formation of
a baggage camel corps—the men in uniform, and
armed and disciplined like regular soldiers. Mean-
time a Sikh war was impending, and, as a pre-
cautionary measure, Sir Charles got together a
Scindian and Bombay army of 15,000 men. While
this force was being collected, the battle of F°
rozhur was fought, and Sir Charles's plans for a
er a
v
great invasion of the Sutlej were throw' over by
his army being ordered to Bhawalpoor by the new
ne
Governor-General, while the battle of Sobrao:
putting an end to the war, put an end to
all Sir Charles's future schemes of
conquest. He
found, however, quite enough to do in the paper
warfare in which he was unavoidably engaged. He
addressed manifestoes to the East India Company
and to the Board of Control, giving descriptions of
Scinde before and after he had conquered and, to
some degree, civilised it. Unwilling, however, to
leave Scincle without an attempt at rendering its
prosperity permanent, he managed, by means of
the strong influence which he now possessed 'over
the minds of the population, to change the feudal
system of landholding into a landlord and tenant
system, and then published one of his last manifes-
toes, which concludes as follows :
" 'My motives for this step,' he said, 'are that the
host of poor ryots, hitherto slaves, not only to the
Ameers but the jagheerdars, will be enfranchised, and
enabled to live in comfort if industrious ; and I know
that the nobles can never be good or contented subjects
unless we give them public employment, and honour
them. When civilisation advance. they will, under this
;system, find themselves rich, and they will embark in
mercantile pursuits and agricultural improvements, be-