1 74 COLONEL OCHTERLON\'s MEASURES. A. D. 1812.
2 rights. These differences, whenever they have arisen,
3 have required adjustment and arbitration by the British
4 officers on the spot, and have formed the subject of con-
5 tinual references to the Supreme Government at Cal-
6 cutta. The regulation of successions was also a matter,
7 that from the first required to be undertaken by the pro-
8 tecting' authority, and failing heirs of any kind according
9 to Sikh custom and law, the escheat is considered to fall
10 to the protecting state.
11 Until the year 1812, the duties of protection, and the
12 settlement of these mutual disputes, though giving con-
13 stant employment to Colonel OcHTERLONY, the British
14 officer, appointed superintendent of Sikh affairs, produc-
15 ed nothing of sufficient moment to require relation. In
16 that year, however, the disorders in Puteeala consequent
17 upon the Raja's imbecility, produced a crisis that called
18 for an exertion of authoritative interference. The pro-
19 tected territory was invaded by a public depredator, for
20 whose punishment and expulsion the Puteeala Raja was
21 called upon to furnish a quota of horse. This chief holds
22 territory yielding a revenue of more than thirty lakhs of
23 rupees, yet the whole force he could furnish on the
24 occasion consisted only of two hundred horse of the very
25 worst description, and these arrived so late in the field as
26 to be of no use. Colonel OcriTERLONY, taking with
27 him the Chiefs of Jheend and Naba, proceeded to Putee-
28 ala to remonstrate with Muha Raja Saheb Singh upon
29 the evidence of inefficiency ad'orded by this state of things,
30 and it was endeavoured to persuade him to discard the
31 low favorites who ate up his revenues, and prevented
32 those better disposed from carrying on any consistent
33 system df government, and from introducing the desired