The impregnable Indian fortress of Kote Kangra, which a con-
tumacious Sikh chieftain refused to surrender to the British, has been yielded without a blow, on a full display of our force. But the last act of the late campaign is followed by rumours of more war : "the campaign of 1847" is already the topic of gossip at mess ; and a well-informed journal in London is heaping up warnings of the most formidable kind. The Ranee at Lahore, it is said, "has gone so far as to have declared in unequivocal terms her impatience to get rid of the European force altogether"; and reports had reached the Sikh capital that the new boundary dividino. the Sikh territory had been violated by the people of Gholab°Singh,—aggressions which are to be repelled by force : on the whole, intrigue and anarchy still possess the Punjaub. We do not, however, see any distinct evidence that the state of the barbarous region is worse than might have been expected. The very " settlement " went upon the plan, not of reducing it to a state of absolute order and good government, but of dividing the native forces, setting the elements of disorder to conflict with each other, and so diverting aggression from ourselves. We perceive no proof that this policy has yet had any other than the results its own advocates might have anticipated. The dis- pute between subordinate barbarians on an unsettled boundary proves nothing that was not known before ; no more does the utterance a idle words by the ignorant and incontinent Ranee. Undoubtedly, the complete annexation of the Sikh territory will one day be inevitable, and will be rendered so by the operation of the causes which we now see at work ; but the present mail, we say, furnishes, to our apprehension' no further grounds for that conclusion, nor reason to think the final event any nearer.
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