1 56 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE PLNJAUB.
2 respective systems, we have no hesitation in
3 coming to the conclusion that a despotism is the
4 best suited to their temperament.
5 Runjeet Singh exercised an absolute and
6 arbitrary sway over the people, constituting him-
7 self chief judge and referee in questions of im-
8 portance, collecting and appropriating the reve-
9 nue, appointing and removing all the state
10 officers at will, personally regulating all political
11 negotiations, and exercising the royal preroga-
12 tive of coining money and making war. Under
13 his rule the whole country was divided into
14 provinces, and these provinces into districts,
15 which were farmed out to the highest bidders.
16 The Maharajah pressing upon the provincial
17 administrators for their quota of revenue, and
18 these authorities, who were armed with the ter-
19 rible power of life and death, in their turn
20 grinding the farmers with their exactions, the
21 condition of the peasantry, whom the farmers
22 in like manner squeezed for rents, was always
23 the most abject and pitiful that can be con-
24 ceived.. The provincial governor, remunerating
25 himself with the surplus of the revenue which
26 he had contracted to pay the sovereign, sel-
27 dom at a lower rate than four annas in the
28 rupee, or one-fourth of the estimated annual
29 value of the cultivated land (about 2,500,000/.
30 sterling), was unscrupulous as to the means