The Sun.
London, England, 1846-11-23 00:00:00

4"`-)
Itlt

LONDON, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1846.

Never Oriental Govern-
ments than at this present
moment. Notwithstanding all the carnage of
more was
signally the instability
illustrated of
Sobraon and Ferozeshah, we are again driven to
arms, we are again compelled to dispatch our soldiers
to the perilous fastnesses of the east, we are again
threatened with all the vicissitudes of a precarious and
sanguinary campaign. Those who have fallaciously
congratulated themselves with the impression that
our recent victories in India, and our complicated dis-
tribution of patronage and territory, had brought
matters to a definite settlement and was inagura-
tive of a permanent tranquillity, will be now
entirely undeceived. The impossibility of es-
tablishing any enduring and pacific govern-
ment among the treacherous and quarrelsome
chieftains of Asia, has been tolerably well demon-
strated from the administration of the immortal
CLITE to that Of ELLBNBOROUGH. Numberless aS
have been the alternations of power and of military
fortune during that interval, every successive. oc-
currence has demonstrated the incompetency of the
several petty despots to maintain anything like a
stable dominion over their different principalities, or to
infuse any degree of political confidence or social re-
gularity into the :population subjected to their
sway. Religious animosities, the jealousies of caste,
and the enmities which have been generated among
the inhabitants of neighbouring provinces during the
lapse of generations, have all tended to perpetuate the
intestine strifes by which India has been for centuries
desolated. Whenever tranquillity has been temporarily
restored in one direction, war has simultaneously
broken out in another; whenever conces,
sions have pacified this ruler, or obedi-
ence has been extorted from that, some
refractory principality has involved our representa-
tives in a new and still more complicated series of
embarrassments. Disastrous conflicts have been the
invariable sequel of our Indian victories. The apple
of conquest has only possessed a superficial bloom : in
reality it has always concealed ashes and disappoint-
ment. If we were to con, one by one, the circum-
stances which have illustrated our Asiatic domination
since its first establishment, down to the latest dis-
patches from Calcutta and Bombay, we should dis-
cover nothing but a succession of tribulations caused by
our egregious confidence in the possibility of balancing
political power among the various provinces. Our
endeavours in that quarter of the globe have been as
blundering; as obstinate, and as ineffectual, as those
of SISYPHUS. We have attempted to combine in one
friendly cluster a number of heterogeneous states—
states possessing no common bond of sympathy—
states essentially opposed to the very existence of '
each other.
According to:the stipulations entered into imme-
mediately after Sobraon, we engaged, among other
things, to ensure to GHOOLAB SINGH the possession of
the Vale of Cashmere, a fruitful and naturally forti-
fied principality, which was originally annexed, in
1752, to the Dooranee empire by AlimED Soma!, but