His favourites were granted large estates or assignments of revenue, and this was the more necessary as they were expected to spend the greater part of their income in the entertainment and maintenance of armed retainers to be ready at the instant call of their chief. Everything that Ranjít Singh possessed had been ruthlessly taken from someone else; and lavishness is the first cousin of avarice and greed, as may be seen every day at Monte Carlo or wherever gamblers most assemble.
Although it would be to violate the truth of history to conceal or disguise the many faults and vices of Ranjít Singh, yet it would be trivial to judge him or them without full consideration of the manners of the society in which he lived. Every age and people have their own standard of virtue; and what is to-day held to be atrocious or disreputable may, one hundred years hence, be the fashion. The vices of civilization are not purer than those of barbarism; they are only more decently concealed when it is considered worth while to practise the hypocrisy which is declared to be the tribute which vice pays to virtue. In the days of the Georges, our ancestors drank as heavily and ostentatiously as any of the Sirdárs of the Lahore Court. 'Drunk as a lord' was a popular saying which very fairly expressed the habits of the aristocracy in England in the eighteenth century. To-day the fashion has changed and men drink less or more secretly. In the matter of the relations between the sexes the
