strength, is well known to the most influential and leading chiefs. Their personal interests, endangered by the democratic revolution so successfully accomplished by the Sikh army, may induce those chiefs to exert all their efforts to compel the British government to interfere. . . .

You may be assured that, whilst I shall omit no precautions, and be prepared for any event, I shall persevere in the direct course I have hitherto pursued of endeavouring by moderation, good faith and friendly advice, to avert the necessity of British interference by force of arms in the affairs of the Punjab.

(Papers respecting the late hostilities in the North-west, 1846, p. 6.)

131. THE THREAT OF A SIKH INVASION

The Governor-General to the Secret Committee, Dec. 2, 1845.

On the 22nd November I received from Major Broadfoot the official dispatch dated 20 November, detailing the sudden intention of the Sikh army to advance in force to the frontier, for the avowed purpose of invading the British territories.

The letter was succeeded by a private communication of the following day . . . enclosing news, letters and papers of intelligence received from Lahore, which professed to give an account of the circumstances which have led to the present movement, and which would appear (if these papers are to be depended upon) to have originated with the Rani and certain of the Sirdars, who felt the pressure of the demands of the army to be so urgent, and its present attitude and temper so perilous to their existence, that they desired to turn the thoughts of the troops . . . from making extortionate demands for higher pay, by employing their energies in hostile operations against the British government. . .

I shall not consider the march of the Sikh troops in hostile array towards the banks of the Sutlej as a cause justifying hostilities, if no actual violation of our frontier should occur. . . Every forbearance shall be shewn to a weak government struggling for existence against its own soldiers in a state of successful mutiny.

(Papers respecting the late hostilities in the North-west, pp. 12, 13.)

132. THE OUTBREAK OF WAR

Proclamation by the Governor-General, Dec. 13, 1845.

The Governor-General in Council sincerely desired to see a strong Sikh government re-established in the Punjab, able to control its army, and to protect its subjects; he had not, up to the present moment, abandoned the hope of seeing that important object effected by the patriotic efforts of the chiefs and people of the country.

The Sikh army recently marched from Lahore towards the British frontier, as it was alleged, by the order of the Durbar, for the purpose of invading the British territory.

The Governor-General's agent, by direction of the GovernorGeneral, demanded an explanation of this movement, and no reply being returned within a reasonable time, the demand was repeated. The Governor-General, unwilling to believe in the hostile intentions of the Sikh government, to which no provocation had been given, refrained from taking any measures which might have a tendency to embarrass the government of the Maharaja, or to induce collision between the two

states.

The Sikh army has now, without a shadow of provocation, invaded the British territories.

The Governor-General must therefore take measures for effectually protecting the British provinces, for vindicating the authority of the British Government, and for punishing the violators of treaties and the disturbers of the public peace. (Papers respecting the late hostilities in the North-west, p. 30.)

133. THE SETTLEMENT

The Governor-General to the Secret Committee, Feb. 19, 1846.

The terms demanded and conceded are, the surrender in full sovereignty of the territory, hill and plain, lying between the Sutlej and Beas rivers, and the payment of 1 crores of rupees, as indemnity for the expenses of the war; the disbandment of the present Sikh army and its reorganization on the system and regulations which obtained in the time of the late Maharaja Ranjit Singh . . . the surrender to us of all the guns that had been pointed against us; the entire regulation

and control of both banks of the river Sutlej; and such other arrangements . . . as might be settled on at Lahore.

(Papers respecting the late hostilities in the North-west, p. 69.)

134. THE FUTURE OF THE SIKH STATE

From a Speech by Sir H. Hardinge at Lahore, 9th March 1846.

On this occasion of ratifying the Treaty of Peace... I have to repeat the assurances which have so often been given by me and by my predecessors, of our desire that peace and friendship may always subsist between the two governments. . . .

A just quarrel, followed by a successful war, has not changed the policy of the British Government. The British Government does not desire to interfere in your internal affairs. I am ready and anxious to withdraw every British soldier from Lahore. At the earnest solicitation of the Sikh government I have reluctantly consented to leave a British force in garrison at Lahore, until time shall have been afforded for the reorganization of the Sikh army. In no case can I consent that the British troops shall remain in garrison for a longer period than the end of this year.

...

...

If the friendly assistance now afforded by the British Government be wisely followed up. you will become an independent and prosperous state. The success or failure is in your own hands. My co-operation shall not be wanting; but if you neglect this opportunity, no aid on the part of the British Government can save the state.

(Papers respecting the late hostilities in the North-west, pp. 98-9.)

CHAPTER X

THE COMPLETION OF THE COMPANY'S WORK

Dalhousie

1848-1856

THE Governor-Generalship of Lord Dalhousie is not only the last important stage, it is also the culmination, of the marvellous history of the East India Company. Dalhousie was a man of immense ability and energy, untiring industry, inflexible will, absolute honesty of purpose, and real devotion to the greatness of his own country and the welfare of her Indian subjects. For sheer force of personality two only among the long line of Governors deserve to be compared with himWarren Hastings and Wellesley. He was a greater man than Wellesley, because he took a far deeper view of the problems of government; he was a lesser man than Hastings because he lacked Hastings' generous humanity, his power of reading the minds of his colleagues and understanding the point of view of the millions whom he so resolutely laboured to serve. But not even Hastings took a more lofty view of his duty, or was more unsparing of himself; not even Wellesley was more masterful, more entirely responsible for the policy of the government which he controlled.

Dalhousie was a Scotchman bred on the Shorter Catechism, and he had a sort of ferocious logicality of mind and a resolute thoroughness which were curiously un-English: he was not a man of compromises and half-measures. Penetrated by a sense of the splendour of the Indian Empire, and of the vast

services which it could render to its subjects, he deliberately set himself to extend the control of the central government to the greatest possible extent over the whole population, to round off the Empire's boundaries, and so far as possible to put an end to the anomalies of dependent and often misgoverned states; at the same time, with a sort of fierce zeal, he laboured to accelerate the introduction of Western civilisation. Both processes he carried out with such swiftness and such sweeping thoroughness that while, on the one hand, India made more rapid progress in the eight years of his rule than in any other period of equal length, on the other hand her slow-moving and conservative people were perturbed and distressed by the feeling that their whole world was being turned upside down. This sense of unrest contributed in no small degree to bring about the appalling thunderbolt of the Mutiny which swiftly followed Dalhousie's retirement, and brought the era of the Company to a sudden close. Yet it would be a manifest injustice to think of Dalhousie solely or chiefly as the precursor and the partial cause of the Mutiny. His work was not destroyed by it, but survived the storm unimpaired, and indeed largely helped to subdue it. The distinctive features of Modern India have been far more deeply influenced by Dalhousie's work than by the Mutiny itself or by the constitutional adjustments which followed it.

Two great wars were waged during his reign, the second Sikh war and the second Burmese war. Both were followed by the annexation of large and rich provinces, the Punjab and Pegu (lower Burma). These annexations added to the homogeneity as well as the extent of the Empire. The first brought it to its natural frontier on the north-west, the mountains of Afghanistan; the second completed its control over the eastern shore of the Bay of Bengal by uniting the two disjoined provinces of Arakan and Tenasserim, annexed in 1825. These two new provinces, and especially the Punjab, gave to the Governor-General an opportunity in which he rejoiced, of showing what miracles could be wrought in a short time by efficient administration (No. 136). But the wars were not