and extended cultivation as far as was possible under a system which held forth the minimum of inducement to the cultivator, but they acknowledged nothing higher than the husbandman, they respected no rights and they recognized no property where such respect or such recognition conflicted with their pecuniary interests, and he who was not a Sikh, and therefore a soldier, was only valuable in so far as he could be utilized as a payer of revenue. Their rule was just and even in that they meted out oppression to all with an equal hand.'
Now let us see what Sikh rule was in the Rájput hills. The short-sighted Rájás had called in the Gúrkhas in their domestic squabbles, and, as with the frogs and King Stork, these fierce mountaineers established a reign of terror in the Kángra and Simla hills, till, after three years of anarchy, the fair Kángra valley became a desert, and the towns were depopulated. The Mahárájá Ranjít Singh and the Sikhs were called in, and the Gúrkha host departed like locusts. But the Sikh Kárdárs of the Mahárájá were not much better. Mr. Barnes, in his Settlement Report of the Kángra district, writes: —
'The Kárdár was a judicial as well as a fiscal officer. But his fiscal duties were most important. Corrupt judgments, or an insufficient police, were evils which might be overlooked even supposing they excited attention; but a Kárdár in arrears was an offender almost beyond the hope of pardon. The problem of his life was therefore to maintain cultivation at the highest possible level, and at the same time to keep the cultivator at the lowest point of depression. The burthen of the people was as heavy as they could bear; the utmost
